Tess did as she was told. She looped the short chain between the two bracelets around the railing of the hospital bed, leaving the cuffs loose. Keller reached across her and gave each ring a squeeze. The cuffs clicked several more times and Tess winced as they pinched her skin.
“Now you can go, right?”
“No. We stay here until she tells me how she killed my dad and stole our money.” Keller gestured at Bernadette with his free hand.
Still trying to shield Frieda with her body, Tess turned to look at Bernadette.
“Killed? Bernadette, what is he talking about?”
“Her name isn’t Bernadette,” Keller said, dripping with arrogance. “It’s Paulette. Paulette Johnston.”
He knew, too.
Bernadette closed her eyes. Her shoulders sagged, as if she might die right there.
“He’s right,” she said. “That was my name a long, long time ago. But I haven’t been Paulette for nearly fifty years. I ran away, and an angel gave me a second chance to start over.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Bernadette tried to make her voice sound soothing, hypnotic, her eyes pleading.
“Jack, I swear that I never knew your father. Maybe I can help you understand some things, but Ron and the rest of these people here, they have nothing to do with any of this.”
“The old man does,” Keller said. “The two of you took what’s mine. It’s millions of dollars in today’s money. While my dad couldn’t come home, while my mom had to skip meals, you two had all our money. You ruined my family.” His voice was rising, getting louder.
I have to get him away from here.
“Dad is gone,” Keller continued. “Benham wasn’t him. You used the money. I saw the bank accounts. You bled my life dry.”
The rising anger was clear in his face. Keller’s eyes darted between all the people in the room. His nostrils flared as he breathed between words. “Dad is gone. Millions of dollars are gone. All because of you. I’ll never have a family again. All because of you.” His face reddened and his arms shook.
“Jack,” Tess said. Her use of his name appeared to stop the escalation for a moment. “How does your medicine help, Jack? Do you need your medicine?”
What is she talking about?
Keller, though, seemed to acknowledge Tess’s questions.
He rubbed one of his eyes with the back of his hand, his bottom lip sticking out, like a child at the beach with sand in his eye. “Dr. Tennant said that it’s so that my brain doesn’t lie to me. So it tells me the truth.”
“We’re in a hospital, Jack,” Tess said. “We can get you more medicine.”
Keller squinted at Tess. His nose crinkled and his top lip curled to show teeth. “Are you calling me a liar? I took my medicine. I took my medicine this morning.”
He pointed at Benham and Bernadette, spit gathering in the corners of his mouth as he spoke. “The old man is a liar. This Paulette bitch is a liar. She lied to everyone about everything. Her name is a lie. Her life is a lie. She killed my family and stole our money. I was just a kid, like this one.”
He turned his attention to Frieda, watching from behind Tess, and aimed the stun gun. “You laughed at me in the coffee shop. You stole from my car. You all think you’re better than me and smarter than me.”
“Wait,” interrupted Bernadette. “Jack, look at me.” She tried to focus his attention on her. “I can’t bring you back your dad, but I can give you your money.”
This had the desired effect. Keller turned his entire body to face Bernadette. His bottom lip pouted, and the stun gun lowered a little.
“You can have your money. I can give it to you. Do you understand?”
He nodded. “You really took it. It’s mine. I found it. I want it.”
“You can have it.” She stood to speak to him. “You have to understand that this involves no one else. I can take you to it, but we first have to let everyone else go. Okay?”
He looked around the room. “Where is it?” he asked.
“It’s not far.”
“Bernadette,” Tess said, “what are you doing?”
Bernadette didn’t take her eyes from Keller. She waved away Tess.
Keller knit together his eyebrows, reading Bernadette. “You might trick me.”
“We are going to trust each other. All right?” Bernadette said.
“How do I know I can trust you? Did you leave me the pin?”
“What pin?” Bernadette asked.
Frieda gave a small gasp.
Out of the corner of her eye, Bernadette caught the blood drain from Frieda’s face and tried to recover. “I did,” Bernadette said. “Where is it?”
“No. You’re trying to confuse me. You’re a liar.”
Bernadette watched Keller follow her attention through the air, a virtual thread connecting her to Frieda.
“She’s coming with us,” he said.
His long arm shot past Tess and grabbed Frieda’s hair. Tess, with her hands cuffed, shouted, “No!” and kicked out at Keller. She struck him more than once, but it meant nothing to his colossal form. He pulled Frieda out of her hiding place. She dropped her satchel and tripped over Tess.
He moved the young girl about like she was weightless. Keller pressed Frieda’s back against his abdomen and rested the stun gun on her shoulder. Their difference in size seemed even more exaggerated; even in her cloak, she appeared smaller than ever next to his tall, bulky frame. Frieda looked at Tess with pleading eyes.
“Don’t hurt her,” Tess said. “She’s done nothing to you. Take me. Uncuff me and take me.”
The panic from Tess only seemed to fuel and embolden him.
For the first time in months, Bernadette’s side radiated no pain.
Bernadette’s voice became cold and emotionless. “If you so much as harm her, Jack, you piece of shit son of a bitch, you will never know what happened to your dad. You will never get your bloody money. I will kill you.”
Keller matched her stare. “Let’s go.”
Tess stood still in disbelief as Frieda, Bernadette, and Keller all left.
She waited for some signal from Bernadette, but there was nothing; they were leaving the hospital. Shouting and raising the alarm could only trigger him to blow up at this point. The door to the stairs was right next to Mr. Benham’s room. As soon as Tess heard it close, she pulled at the cuffs, trying to force either of her hands backward through the bracelets. The skin around her wrists began to peel. She tried to deconstruct the bed in her mind.
Will the bar come off?
She was attached to the large side rail and there was no apparent way to remove it. She pulled again, as hard as she could, her wrists on fire.
As she shook the bed, Ron stirred.
“Mr. Benham!” She shook some more. “Are you awake?”
She didn’t know what good his being awake might do, but any change in this situation was an improvement.
“Young lady,” he muttered, “I’ve been awake this entire time.”
“What do you mean this entire time? Why didn’t you say something?”
“In case you haven’t noticed,” he inhaled a deep, raspy breath, “I’m useless.” His eyes were still closed, his skin still pale.
Tess shook her cuffed hands. “I’m pretty well useless, too.”
“Did I hear that Henry was here, too?”
“Yes, but that monster knocked him out with a stun gun.”
“My dear, you can’t knock someone out with one of those things. Did he hit his head on the way down?”
“How are you so calm?” she said with frustration, pulling again at her wrists. The pain burned up her arms.
“I’m not calm. I’m unwell.”
She stopped shaking the bed. He was so still that, if he wasn’t making a sound, Tess wouldn’t even have noticed his lips moving.
Mr. Benham spoke again. “Did he hit his head on the way down?”
Henry was still sprawled out where he had fallen. His nos
e had stopped bleeding. “Yes, I think he did.”
“Then that’s what laid him out. Wake him up.”
“How?” She knocked with her handcuffs against the bedrail.
“I don’t know. Water? Slap him? Pinch him?”
Tess got down on her knees, then sat on the floor. She stretched one leg out until she could just reach Henry’s face with the toe of her boot. She said a quiet, “Sorry,” and pressed hard into his nose. Henry made a small whining noise, like a creaking door. The harder she pushed, the more insistent and loud the noise became. Finally, his hand came up to slap her ankle.
There was hope. “Henry, are you all right?” She realized her voice sounded happier than it should under the circumstances.
Henry rolled over onto his side and looked in Tess’s direction through unfocused eyes. With his jaw slack, he took long breaths.
“Hen, help me get out.”
“What happened?” he said.
“He sounds worse than me,” Mr. Benham said from the bed.
“Henry,” Tess said, “I need you to focus. We’re at the hospital. Keller was here. He shocked you with a stun gun and you bashed your head. Now he’s gone and he’s taken Bernadette and Frieda.”
Henry shot upright. His eyes rolled back, and he almost fell on his side, his arm shooting out to save him. Tess watched him fight to clear his head.
“Where?” he managed.
“I don’t know.”
“I need to find her.” The panic rose in his voice. “It’s my fault.”
“We will. But first we have to get me loose.”
Henry crawled to her and studied her cuffs through blinking eyes. His pupils were like wide black drops of ink.
“Stop pulling,” he said. “You’ll never fit through there. We would need something to cut through the links.”
They both scanned the room from the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I have to find Frieda.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed, avoiding Tess’ eyes and raising the device to his ear.
Something rang in the room.
Tess twisted to look for the sound beneath the bed. Henry peered around her and grinned.
“Are you serious?”
Henry stretched under the bed and dragged out Frieda’s leather satchel. He withdrew Frieda’s phone and stopped the ringing.
“I’m sorry, Hen,” Tess said.
“Hang on,” Henry said, fishing deeper inside the bag with one hand. “Notebook, ear buds, nail polish, cat treats, dice, and . . .” He pulled out a small leather case and held it in front of his face with a look of triumph.
He opened the case. Inside were a dozen thin metal instruments, each a different, but equally dangerous-looking, bent tip.
“Lock picks.”
He poked through them and chose one with a short L-shaped tip. Handcuffs, Frieda had explained, were unimpressively easy to escape.
As she watched Henry work at the lock, her own excitement matched his. It was everything: the thought of being free, unconfined. With a click, one bracelet opened.
“Thank god,” she said, rotating her free wrist as Henry worked on the second bracelet.
“Keller was here?” Henry asked.
“He doesn’t think Benham is his dad any longer, it seems. Instead, he was raving about Bernadette stealing his family’s money, which may be Cooper’s ransom or something, and he wants it back. Keller knows her name was Paulette.”
“So, he still thinks he’s related to Cooper?” Henry said. “Maybe Kevin Fullarton was his dad. Fullarton looked like Cooper, but I’m still convinced that they can’t be one and the same if the handwriting in the ledger was all Fullarton’s. It means he was in Vancouver the whole time. Then I have to come back the possibility that, despite the drawing, our best bet is that Ron Benham is DB Cooper.”
“I bloody well am not,” said a weak voice from the bed above them, followed by a coughing fit.
The second bracelet opened and surrendered Tess’s wrist. “Thank you,” she said, hugging him. “Bernadette said she had his money and that’s where they’ve gone. To get him his money.”
“Did she say where they were going?”
“No. I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
Henry looked again like he might pass out. “What are you saying? We lost Frieda?” He stared at her and sat next to her on the floor. “I lost her?” Henry’s breathing got louder and heavier, his eyes more frantic. “I have to find her. I have to get her back. I never should have let her come.”
Tess put her arm around his shoulders, out of comfort, but also in fear that he may hit the floor again. “We don’t know where they are. The only thing that we can do is call the police.”
“Young lady, you don’t want to do that.”
Tess gasped. She’d forgotten for a second that Mr. Benham was there. They stood to speak to him, Henry leaning on the bed rail.
“Benham,” Henry said, “I’ve had enough of all this don’t-tell-the-police crap. I don’t know what you and Bernadette have got going on, or what you’re running from.” Maybe it was because the old man was lying down, or maybe it was the concussion, but Henry felt taller than ever.
He pulled his shoulders back and stood his ground. “Don’t give me some bull about doing the right thing. Keller is a murderer and now he has my niece. There is no way in hell that I’m not getting every law enforcement officer searching this city after this guy.”
The old man opened his eyes. “If Bernie’s taking him to the money then she’s gone back to Richardson Street. That’s where they’ll be. Just there.” He pointed weakly out the window. Even though buildings and trees blocked any possible view of the old house, the message was unambiguous: they were close by.
Ron paused only for a second, to ensure that he had Henry’s full attention.
“So, young man, do you want to stay here and help the police fill out reports? Or do you want to go get this niece of yours?”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Bernadette led Keller and Frieda down the hospital stairwell.
At the bottom, Keller said, “Through here,” and they exited into a parking lot.
She walked in front of Keller, who held Frieda between them, until they reached an off-white, boxy car with Washington plates. Keller threw her the keys.
“You drive,” he said. “We’re riding in the back.”
Bernadette hadn’t driven in years. Decades. The license Keller had found was the last one she had ever held. Technically, only Paulette Johnston had ever had a license. Bernadette Pruner only existed in the barest of ways. She had never had a social insurance number and had never paid personal taxes. She had neither a bank account nor medical insurance. Thank god it’s an automatic, she thought, getting in.
She adjusted the front bench seat forward as Frieda and Keller climbed in the back. As she oriented herself to the controls, a reflection in the windshield of something on the dash caught her eye. She snatched it and dropped it into her lap.
Bernadette twisted the rear-view mirror to see Frieda in the back seat. She gave the girl a wink and a smile, although there was nothing to smile about.
Bernadette looked at the object in her lap. It was the small brass brooch that belonged to Frieda. The pin was missing, but the Pepsi logo was unmistakable. The violation of the young girl’s property stiffened Bernadette’s spine like rebar and hardened her heart toward the bastard.
Did he go through all the apartments at the house?
“Where are we going?” Keller asked.
“My home,” Bernadette said. It was only a few blocks away as the crow flies, but she’d have to weave around all the one-way streets to get there by car. She’d never once driven in these neighborhoods, in all of her years. Maybe they would have the luck of being pulled over on the way.
Keller seemed surprised. “I already searched there. My money’s not there.”
“You shouldn’t have broken into my home, Jack.”
“You shouldn
’t have stolen from my family.”
Bernadette started the car. “I didn’t steal a thing, Jack. Do you want to know the truth?”
“Tell me,” he said, close to her ear, his breath warm and rotten.
She resisted looking over her shoulder as she backed the car out of its parking spot, knowing Jack’s grimacing face would be right there. She waited until they started the roundabout journey through the parking garage before continuing.
“I grew up with just one parent, too. You know my name then. I was Paulette. My dear mom tried so hard to give us everything, my little sister Angie and I. Everything we did had to be better. Better than what mom had, better than how mom did. I never thought, growing up, that our life was so awful, but she did. Mom hated every minute of it. So she wanted us to go to university and become professionals. No friends. No parties. We weren’t even allowed to wear denim or leather because she said it made you look hard.”
“What does this have to do with anything?” Keller asked.
“If you want to know the ‘what’, Jack, you have to understand the ‘why’.”
Keller grunted his lack of argument.
The parking attendant kiosk was empty, and they rolled past and onto the street. There would be no stopping now.
“I chafed under all the expectation and pressure. Mom and I, we fought like spiders in a jar some nights. It all sounds small now, after forty-plus years, but I guess that didn’t suit me then. I’ve learned to accept it was just how things were.
“I had friends, despite her rules, maybe to spite them, in fact. We partied a lot, and I dated a few boys. I remember her tracking me down at a school dance. I don’t remember where I was supposed to be, but it sure wasn’t there. Well, she slapped a boy right across the face when she found us dancing together, right in front of the entire school. We were only dancing. She worried that I would get a “reputation”. Well, I got one all right. I was the girl with ‘that mom’. I couldn’t get another date to save my life.
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