Woman on the Run (new version)

  Julia was puzzled. Ordinarily Missy and Rafael were best friends and swapped baseball cards and tadpoles.

  “Baffroom,” Rafael mumbled into her waist, head down. He needed to cry in private. Julia opened her arms and the small boy snaked around her and rushed off to the bathroom across the hall.

  She walked over to where Missy was staring after Rafael, a stricken look in her cornflower-blue eyes.

  “What was that about, Missy?” she asked quietly.

  “I don’t know, ma’am.” The little girl’s lower lip quivered. “I didn’t mean nothin’. All I asked was whether Rafael’s momma would take him trick-or-treating with me.” Missy raised troubled cornflower blue eyes. “Then he just runned away.”

  Uh-oh. Julia thought. Trouble. Right here in River City.

  “Ran,” she corrected automatically. “Well, then, just let him be. We have to get to work if we want everything ready for this evening.” Julia stepped away and clapped her hands. “Okay, class, let’s get going. We’ve got Mr. Big to get ready.”

  All the kids had brought their own pumpkins to prepare for Halloween that evening. Twelve small pumpkins with crazed, skewed grins were lined up on the shelf. Now it was time to tackle Mr. Big. One of the local farmers had dropped by that morning and without a word—the inhabitants of Simpson were not talkers—had deposited a forty-pound whopper of a pumpkin for the kids to carve up.

  Carving the enormous pumpkin was going to be a class project and that evening the finished product would be put out on the steps of the school with a candle inside.

  Like most expatriate Americans, Julia and her family had observed American holidays religiously, no matter where they were posted. Julia’s mother had managed to find a turkey for Thanksgiving in Dubai, pumpkins for Halloween in Lima and a Christmas tree in Singapore. Julia had felt cheated when she found out in New York and Boston that kids no longer trick-or-treated because it was too dangerous.

  Luckily, about the only danger to children in Simpson was getting gored by an elk. Her kids had been excited all week at the thought of dressing up and going trick-or-treating.

  “Henry, Mike, I want you to get the big plastic sack. That’s where we’ll put the seeds and pulp. Sharon, get the felt tip pen so we can draw the face. Who’s got the candle?”

  “Me.” Reuben Jorgensen gave a gap-toothed grin and held up an industrial-size candle.

  “Great. Okay, gang, let’s get going. We’ve got half an hour to put the biggest, meanest jack-o’-lantern this town has ever seen on the school’s steps.”

  “Yeah! Oh boy!” In a tangle of limbs and with a maximum of fuss and mess, Mr. Big began to take shape. Oddly, the noise and confusion soothed Julia, who was used to the clamor and bustle of a big city. Simpson was silent and deserted even at noon and it creeped her out.

  She watched the kids try to wrestle the seeds out of the enormous pumpkin, interfering only to pick up most of what slopped out onto the floor so the kids wouldn’t skid and fall down. Jim, the janitor, would take care of the rest.

  After about a quarter of an hour, Rafael slipped inside the classroom, eyes dry but red-rimmed. Julia hoped he would join in the fun, but he stayed on the outskirts of the whirl of activity. Julia sighed, and penned another note to his parents, asking to meet with them, and slipped that one, too, into the little boy’s lunch pail. It was the fifth note in two weeks. Much as she hated the thought, if she got no response this time, she would ask Jerry for Rafael’s home number and call his parents up on Monday.

  “Miss Andersen, lookee.”

  What kind of parents could be so indifferent to the sadness of such a sweet little boy, she thought. It took her a minute to respond to the excited request. She turned to find twelve shiny faces turned up to her, so many blossoms to her sun. If they only knew that she was winging it.

  “Look what we done.” Reuben stood proudly, one small hand on the enormous pumpkin.

  “Did,” Julia corrected. But she was smiling as she walked around the desk, raising an eyebrow at Mr. Big’s ferocious stare. Pressed for time, the kids had left a lot of pulp and seeds in, but the outside had been carved into a horror movie fan’s fondest dream.

  Tongue in cheek, Julia tilted her head. “He’s real scary. Looks like something carved by Freddy Kruger.” Something sharp and painful tugged in her chest at the sighs of satisfaction. Her smile faded. They were so young. Being scared was fun at that age—things that go bump in the night, ghosts leaping out of closets, and mommy and daddy ready to make them go away with a hug and a smile.

  Who would make her ghosts go away?

  A wild clanging noise erupted. Julia jumped at the bell and cursed Jerry. Jumping and cursing Jerry was by now an automatic reflex.

  “Bye, Miss Andersen. Bye.” In the space of a second or two, the room was emptied. Nature knew nothing faster than small children leaving the classroom at the end of the school day. In an amazingly short time, the whole school was deserted. It was Friday and the teachers left as soon as possible, too.

  She would see most of these children that evening, decked out in their costumes. A bag full of candy was waiting on the scarred and scuffed occasional table next to the front door.

  A couple of times a week, Julia stayed on after hours with one excuse or another. Herbert Davis had asked her to call collect from a public phone at least once a week since cell phone reception was spotty in the boonies and he didn’t want her to use her land line.

  Davis obviously had no idea what Simpson was like. There were three public phones in the town, one outside the school, one in Carly’s Diner and one in the grocery store. Julia had to rotate her calls among the phones to avoid attracting suspicion.

  Julia’s footsteps echoed hollowly in the corridor as she walked to the exit. The janitor would be coming soon, but for now she was alone in the deserted building. The cheery confusion created by the children hid how old and dilapidated the building was. She walked on cracked tiles, eyeing the crumbling plasterwork and yellow waterstains of the walls. A far cry from the posh private school she attended the year the family lived in Rome. It had had a Tiepolo fresco in the auditorium.

  Julia stopped for a moment at the entrance to the building looking up and down Main Street. The only street, really, in Simpson, Idaho, population 1,475. Almost two thousand souls, actually, if you counted Greater Metropolitan Simpson, which included the inhabitants of the ranches scattered over the wide, empty countryside.

  It had stopped sleeting for the moment, but the bruised-looking clouds over Flattop Ridge heralded a possible flurry later in the evening. She knew the kids would brave the weather to go trick-or-treating, no matter how frigid. They were tough little survivors. They had to be, in such a harsh country.

  Davis was wrong, Julia thought bleakly. I need a passport to be here.

  The wind lifted and she pulled her sweater more tightly around her. For a moment, just a moment, she felt as if the wind were pushing her until she stood poised on the edge of the world. One more step and she’d fall off…

  She remembered a medieval map she’d seen once. The earth was flat and at the outer rims was wilderness, where the mapmaker had penned in “Here be lions”. The end of civilization. It was like that now, the only difference being—“Here be cougars”.

  Santana can never find me, she thought. How can he, when I can’t find myself?

  Simpson was like the old joke--you either wanted to be here or you were lost. It didn’t lead to anywhere, it wasn’t on the way to anywhere. Thirty miles back down the potholed road was a turnoff that led either to Rupert, a buzzing metropolis of 4,000, or to Dead Horse, a smudge on a crossroad as sophisticated as its name.

  A single tiny snowflake drifted by. It melted before it hit the ground, but one quick glance at the sky told her that there was more up there where that came from. And her boiler had chosen now of all times to go temperamental on her.

  A huge lump of homesickness lay heavy and sodden in her chest. Back home, if anything went wrong
with her heating system she would have called the super, Joe, from work and it would have been fixed by the time she got home. Back home, on a cold, dank day like this, she’d have made a point of doing something special. Maybe rent a movie classic, buy herself a new book or arrange to meet a friend for dinner. Dora, say. Dora liked hot spicy meals on cold, sleety days, too. They could go to The Iron Maiden, that funky new Ukrainian restaurant on Charles, or maybe try for some Szechuan…or even order in some Mexican…

  Or she could call Mason Hewitt. They’d track down some standup comic, have dim sum at Lo’s and late night coffee at Latte & More. Lately she’d been thinking seriously about letting Mason seduce her. It had been a long, long time since she’d had sex. Since her parents’ deaths, as a matter of fact. She hadn’t planned it that way but that’s the way it had turned out.

  Mason might be a good person for her to dip her toe back into the waters of sexuality. Though he wasn’t sexy, he was funny and if it went badly, they could always have a good laugh about it.

  A flurry of ice needles hitting the side of her face pulled Julia out of her reverie. She wouldn’t be going anywhere with Dora this evening. She wouldn’t be renting a movie or buying herself a book. She definitely wouldn’t be getting any sex. She probably wouldn’t even have heating at home.

  What am I doing here? Julia thought bleakly, fifty miles from the nearest Estée Lauder outlet, where the only fast food is deer?

  The irony of it was that Dora, Mason and everyone else thought she was in Florida. Davis had had her call the office on an untraceable phone line and ask for unpaid compassionate leave to tend a sick grandfather in St. Petersburg. At irregular but frequent intervals, postcards signed by her were mailed from Florida to her office colleagues and to a list of friends Davis had had Julia draw up. Probably Dora and Mason were envying her right now, getting to spend time down in Florida, basking in the sunshine, doing well by doing good.

  The unfairness of it ate like acid into Julia’s soul.

  A wave of despair so strong it nearly brought her to her knees swept through her. What on earth had she done to deserve this? She was being punished for a crime she hadn’t committed. She’d accidentally witnessed a murder and her life had been snatched away from her in the space of a few hours.

  She slowly crossed the street and walked the half-block to the public phone with its intact shell. Unlike the public phones she’d seen in New York and Boston, it wasn’t vandalized. Simpson didn’t do vandalism. But it was in a state of woeful disrepair, on the blink more often than not, as if the phone company hadn’t bothered to swing round for repairs since Edison.

  The phone stood outside the ramshackle, two-story clapboard house of Ramona Simpson, the last descendant of Casper Simpson, the town’s immortal founder. Rumor had it that Ramona Simpson was crazy. Julia fervently believed the rumor. She glanced at the ROOMS TO LET sign in the front window of Mrs. Simpson’s home and shuddered. Except for the fact that it wasn’t on a hill, the house looked exactly like the Bates Hotel in Psycho.

  Julia stopped at the phone and looked up and down the street. She needn’t have bothered. Main was deserted. It would be nice to think that Main Street was deserted because it was 4 p.m. on a freezing Friday afternoon, but that wasn’t it. Main Street was deserted all the time.

  She pushed a coin in the slot and asked the operator for the collect connection to be made.

  “Davis.”

  Julia slumped against the hard plastic shell in relief at hearing his voice. “Hi, it’s me.” Davis had given her strict rules never to state her name. When he wasn’t in, she was supposed to say that cousin Edwina had called. Where does he get these names? she wondered for the thousandth time. From Names R’ Us?

  “How are you doing?” Davis’ voice was even, almost bored. It enraged Julia to think that he was in his warm office in one of the great cities of the world and she was in this freezing dump. He had Louisburg Square and she had Main. He had access to great food and she had access to soggy macaroni and ketchup.

  “How am I doing?” Julia pursed her lips and looked to the livid sky for inspiration. She drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly, waiting to make sure her voice wouldn’t tremble. “Well, let’s see. It’s about forty below and the temperature’s dropping. The town looks like Tombstone during a gunfight. Missy Jensen made Rafael Martinez cry and I feel like joining him. I’m a thousand miles from nowhere. How the hell do you think I’m doing?”

  It was a little routine they had, like old married couples who’d stayed together for the sake of the kids first and then for the sake of the dogs. She complained and he listened and sympathized. Julia waited for Davis to issue soft, comforting sounds, but they weren’t forthcoming.

  “How long?” Julia sighed, and rubbed her free hand up the arm holding the phone. She huddled further into the shell, hoping to escape the icy tendrils of wind.

  How long? It was the question she always asked.

  “Looks like after Easter, now.”

  “After Easter?” Julia straightened and sucked in an outraged breath. “What do you mean after Easter? How on earth do you suppose I can stand being here for another six months, Mr.—”

  “No names,” he warned quickly.

  “Arghh—” If there was anything Julia hated, even more than Simpson, Idaho, it was having to watch what she said. “You were supposed to get me out of here as fast as possible, remember? What’s happened?”

  “What’s happened is that our friend, Fritz—” their code name for Santana “—has engaged the services of S. T. Akers.”

  “Who?” Julia asked blankly.

  “S. T. Akers. Jesus, I keep forgetting you weren’t brought up in the States. He’s America’s most famous criminal attorney. All his clients are very, very rich and very, very guilty. His slogan is he always gets his man…off.”

  Julia’s breath clogged in her throat. “And does he?”

  She heard a heavy sigh. “Yeah, he does. So far he’s batted a thousand. He’s just snowed the District Attorney’s office with so many motions for reprieval that it looks like a Russian winter over there. It will take them a month just to process everything. The DA told me privately yesterday that they’ll be lucky to come to trial before summer.”

  “And…” Julia swallowed around a heavy lump, “…and me?”

  “Well, you…you’re our trump card. All the other evidence is meaningless. Akers could get Hitler off on a technicality. It looks like you’re going to have to stay put for a while longer.”

  Julia’s eyes stung. Another six months—maybe longer—in Simpson. Her chest burned.

  “What?” she asked. Davis had said something, but it sounded as if a snowstorm had hit the telephone wires. “The connection’s bad. What did you say?”

  She heard static, then “…strange?”

  “I can’t hear you,” she shouted. “What did you say?”

  The connection was suddenly clear and she heard Herbert Davis as if he were speaking directly in her ear. “I said…have you noticed anything strange lately?”

  “Strange?” Julia ruthlessly repressed the urge to cackle like a crazed witch. “You want strange?”

  She looked around. Dark clouds had built up until they covered the horizon in muddy layers, so that the fading light of day came up under the sky. The light mercilessly showed the shabbiness of the town.

  Main Street was, as always, deserted. Every building on Main Street needed a coat of paint. Every other shop was boarded up. The failed businesses didn’t surprise her but the open ones did. Simpson was a town that had died but the news hadn’t reached the corpse yet. She turned back to the phone.

  “This whole place is strange. Did you have anything specifically strange in mind?”

  “Well…” To her surprise, Herbert Davis sounded embarrassed. Maybe it was the faulty connection. “I mean, have you noticed anyone different…out of place…around. Someone…odd?”

  Julia stamped her feet and blew a breath of frustrati
on, which came out in a white plume. The temperature was dropping quickly. “Everyone here is odd, they’ve been marrying their cousins forever and the gene pool is shallow. No one here is normal. Otherwise they wouldn’t be here at all, they’d have left years ago. What are you talking about?”

  White noise buzzed in her ears so loudly she had to hold the phone away from her ear. “What?”

  Herbert Davis’ voice was faint. “Computer…encrypted…confidential.” Then, alarmingly, “…files lost…your data…” Then static.

  “Hey!” Just in time, Julia swallowed Davis’ name. “Run that by me again.”

  Abruptly the static stopped. “…telling you we lost a section of our computer files. We were transferring our files to the cloud.” Julia could hear the enthusiasm in Davis’ voice. “We’ve got a new data-compression program in, it’s great, and we’ve been able to convert…”

  Julia huddled into her sweater and watched the black roiling clouds cover more of the sky. A flash of sheet lightning briefly lit the horizon.

  “Come on, cut to the chase.” The tough-guy line was out of her mouth before she could stop herself and she winced. The chase. Bad choice of words. “Why are you telling me this? What does it have to do with me?”

  “Oh.” Julia could almost see Davis at the other end of the line, blinking and stumped because she wasn’t showing enthusiasm for his new computer toy. She heard him draw in a breath. “Now, I don’t really think this affects you, and I don’t want to alarm you, but we…misplaced some files for a while and part of the files we lost…misplaced—just for a while—concerned your case.”

  “What?” she shrieked, then lowered her voice just in case there were any living human beings in the vicinity. Her heart thumped high and wild in her chest. “My case? You mean information on where I am now? In files? That you lost?”

  “Well…lost is too strong a term. I prefer to think of them as misplaced. Temporarily. But…” Davis lowered his voice to what he probably assumed was soothing, but only had Julia more terrified than ever. “…don’t worry. All of the information was in code and our encryption programs are very tight. And our Witness Security files are double-encryped. 164-bit. It would take a genius or array computers more than a month to crack the code and, believe me, Fritz doesn’t have access to either. The files are programmed to self-destruct unless a special code is entered every half hour, so you’re safe. We’ve found the files and they’ve been re-uploaded in a new encryption format.”