WHEN THE TIME finally arrived for Jamie to call Mrs. Brammer once again, she and Billy rode the bus east to Shawnee, a small town with huge grain elevators towering over it. If anyone was monitoring the Brammers’ phone calls, they would have realized that Jamie was living in central Oklahoma, but she was determined that they would not be able to pinpoint her location any more closely than that. Next time, if there was a next time, she planned to go farther east, rather than always fanning out from Oklahoma City.
Like before, Mrs. Brammer answered on the fourth ring.
“Oh, Jamie,” she said. “Joe called, but Art and I weren’t home so he called our next-door neighbor just to make sure we were okay. He was calling from someplace in Turkey and said it would probably be a couple of weeks before he called again. With that in mind, Art and I decided we’d head over to Arkansas for a little fishing. I hope that’s okay with you.”
“Of course it is,” Jamie said, trying to conceal her disappointment. “I hope you have a wonderful time.”
“Is your…your situation still the same?” Mrs. Brammer asked.
“Yes, still the same. But I’m okay for now,” Jamie said halfheartedly. “Enjoy your trip, and I’ll call in two weeks. If you’re not back, I’ll try the following week.”
“Jamie, it seems to me that whatever your trouble is, you probably need someone with an established law practice. Joe has a law degree but has yet to take the bar exam. And I know I said that Joe was coming home this summer, but I don’t want you to count on that. We really have no idea what his plans are. He has an inheritance from his great-aunt and can do pretty much what he wants. He might even decide to take another course at Oxford, so I really think you need to find someone on this side of the ocean to help you.”
“You may be right,” Jamie allowed. “It’s just so complicated. I’m afraid someone else might think I’m crazy or paranoid.”
The bus was only half full for the ride back to Oklahoma City. Jamie sat in the rear and went over the conversation with Mrs. Brammer, who was probably getting weary of all the intrigue. Just as Jamie herself was. After all, she was not in jail. Other than the abrupt cancellation of her bank account, she had no evidence that anyone was looking for her or following her or plotting her demise.
Then she remembered how she had felt at that ATM machine in Liberal, Kansas-like a housefly that was about to be swatted. She could not begin to imagine the power and resources of someone who had the ability to manipulate other people’s lives in such a manner.
Jamie felt almost angry with Joe. He was off having the time of his life while she was having the worst of hers. What was the point of all this waiting around for him anyway, she asked herself. He had earned a law degree but he wasn’t a practicing attorney. He hadn’t even taken the bar exam. What could he do? What could anyone do to change her “situation”? She was living in limbo, and maybe she would have to settle for such an existence for years and years to come. To settle for always being afraid. Always thinking that disaster was just around the next corner.
She looked down at Billy, who was the reason for it all. What a confusing, frightening, catastrophic mess her life was in, yet at its center was love.
Evelyn Washburn watched through the screen door as the two nice-looking young men in dark suits walked down the front walk toward their car. With a sigh, she closed the door and headed for the kitchen.
She sat at the bar and picked up the telephone, anxious to tell her daughter and son-in-law about the two visitors.
Evelyn started to dial their number in Houston, then remembered that Millie and Art were on a trip. Millie was good about checking in every few days when they were away from home, but Evelyn wished that they weren’t so stubborn about getting a cell phone. It was ridiculous for them not to have one in this day and age. And a computer, for goodness sake! Some folks were so old-fashioned.
She opened the sliding-glass door and stepped out onto the patio, where she had been watering her potted plants and hanging baskets before the two men rang her doorbell and flashed their badges. She turned on the hose and went over the strange encounter in her mind while she finished up. The badges had certainly looked official and the men were very polite, but the entire encounter had made her uncomfortable.
She had answered their questions but volunteered nothing. Yes, she and her husband had been neighbors of Jamie Long and her grandmother, but they hadn’t seen or heard from Jamie since her grandmother’s funeral. And no, her grandson Joe had never dated the girl.
When Evelyn finished watering the plants, she paused to admire her yard. Everything was so green and lush in Georgia. In Mesquite, it had been a battle to keep a pretty yard throughout the long, hot summer.
She went inside to wash some salad greens and start dinner. Shortly, she heard the garage door opening and dried her hands. “Good haircut,” she said as her husband came through the door.
She accepted his peck on her cheek. “The strangest thing happened,” she told him as she took her usual perch at the bar and watched as Paul poured two glasses of wine.
In the middle of her story, the phone rang. Evelyn had a feeling that it might be Millie.
“Hi, Mother. How’s it going?” her daughter’s voice asked.
“Where are you?” Evelyn asked.
“In Texarkana. We’re having car trouble and will be here overnight.”
“Well, I’m glad you called,” Evelyn said. “I have something rather disturbing to tell you.”
Ruby Duffy continued to make overtures of friendship toward “Janet” and little Billy, but Jamie found herself making excuses when the landlady invited her for lunch or dinner. Or offered her a ride to the grocery store, even though it would have made her life easier. She was fearful of giving herself away, what with the web of lies she had created around herself, and was disturbed by Ruby’s adoration of Amanda Hartmann, whose name she seemed to work into every conversation.
Jamie tried to pass the time reading and walking but was growing more restless with each passing day. Her spirits rose, however, when her Social Security card arrived. She could get a driver’s license now and buy a car and look for a job. She looked in the phone book for the nearest tag agency.
After lunch, with Billy in his sling, she hiked over to Classen Boulevard.
The agency was quite busy, and Jamie took a number and the required form and headed for the waiting area. She filled out the form then watched as those ahead of her had their picture taken and then a few minutes later received their driver’s licenses. It took her a while to realize that these people were also being fingerprinted. Jamie tried to remember if she’d been fingerprinted when she obtained her Texas driver’s license. Or perhaps at some other time in her life.
She really could not remember.
She left before her name was called. On the way home, she stopped at a pay phone and placed a phone call to the tag agency in Mesquite, Texas. She told the woman who answered the phone that she was a reporter doing a survey for a story. Did the state of Texas fingerprint those applying for a driver’s license?
The answer was yes.
No matter what name she used, if she obtained a driver’s license, she could be traced through her fingerprints. She slumped against the wall, discouragement washing over her like a tidal wave. What other obstacles were waiting for her?
She felt like a hunted animal in the middle of an ever-tightening circle of native beaters with a man on horseback waiting to take the perfect shot.
Late that afternoon, when Ruby climbed the two flights of steps to tell Jamie she had a pot of homemade vegetable soup on the stove and cornbread baking in the oven, Jamie didn’t have the heart to decline her invitation to dinner, which even included Ralph.
Except for the picture of Amanda on the refrigerator door, Jamie liked Ruby’s homey kitchen, with a rocking chair in the corner, a herb garden on the windowsill, and a television on its stand with Jamie’s old friend CNN often flickering on the screen. It was on now with the sound muted.
She sat with her back to the refrigerator. The soup and cornbread were delicious, and she accepted seconds. She was explaining how she hoped to find work in a day-care center so she could keep Billy with her when she realized that Ruby was no longer listening. Something on the television screen had captured the landlady’s attention.
Jamie glanced at the screen.
It was Amanda Hartmann. Holding a baby.
Jamie felt the blood rush from her head and for an instant felt as though she was going to faint. She grabbed hold of the edge of the table to steady herself and closed her eyes.
“Would you look at that!” Ruby exclaimed as she grabbed the remote and turned up the sound.
Jamie could hear Amanda’s voice praising the Lord for the miracle that He had brought her. She opened her eyes. Amanda was standing in front of a door. A very handsome paneled door with a brass knocker. A beaming Toby Travis was at her side. There was a close-up of the baby’s face. Then suddenly the picture changed to a female news anchor at her desk. She explained that these were the first pictures of the internationally revered evangelist Amanda Tutt Hartmann and her baby, Jason Tutt Hartmann. The baby had been born three days earlier. In an effort to protect the family’s privacy, the birth was only now being announced from their home in northern Virginia. The news anchor went on to recall the death of Hartmann’s son after an accident involving an all-terrain vehicle on the family ranch in the Texas Panhandle. Then the woman smiled and said that the sports news would be up next, following a commercial break.
Ruby pointed the remote at the screen and muted the sound. “Praise the Lord!” she said. “I’ve been so fearful for Amanda. She was too old to be having a baby, but the Lord helped her through, bless her heart. After what happened to her son, she deserves this baby. She surely does,” Ruby said, nodding her head in agreement with her own words.
“I heard Amanda’s mother preach back when I was still a young woman,” Ruby continued. “In Dallas. My mother and I went down front to confess our sins and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal savior, and Mary Millicent put her hands right on my forehead,” she said, placing her own hands where Mary Millicent’s had been. “And Lord, did I feel the power! It went all through me, and one of the ushers caught me when I fell right over backwards. I’ve never forgotten the feeling of all that power just taking me over and scrubbing me clean. And sometimes when I really need it, I can close my eyes and feel it again.”
Ruby sighed and brushed tears from her eyes.
Jamie rose and busied herself with carrying dishes to the sink. “Don’t bother with that, Janet,” Ruby insisted. “Do you feel all right? You look a little peaked.”
Jamie smiled as brightly as she could. “Just tired,” she said, picking up Billy in his carrier. “Thanks for dinner. The soup was delicious.”
Amanda with a baby. What did it mean?
Jamie kept asking herself that question while she waited for sleep. Was she safe now?
Something had not been right about that seemingly joyous televised picture in front of the beautiful doorway. Amanda’s voice seemed half a register too high. And the way she held the baby seemed stiff. Was it really her baby or just a stand-in until her brother brought her Sonny’s baby?
When Gus was informed that the official report had been filed, he went to his computer and used his agency password to access it. The suspect had been located. In Oklahoma City. From the calls she had been making to Houston, they had known for several weeks that she was someplace in central Oklahoma. Then one of their Oklahoma City-based agents recalled seeing a girl in a park that fit Jamie Long’s description. She and the baby were living on the third floor of a rundown apartment house in central Oklahoma City.
That evening Gus met with Felipe and handed him a handwritten list of salient points, which he would memorize then destroy the list before leaving the room.
“My first priority is the baby’s safety,” Gus said, drumming the desk with his index finger to emphasize his words. “I want him out of that apartment before you kill the girl. She is to disappear without a trace along with the mutt. I want it to look as though she bolted in the night with the baby and the dog with absolutely no indication of what actually transpired.”
Felipe nodded.
“You have someone lined up to bring the baby here?”
Felipe responded with another nod.
“I don’t want anything left in that apartment that identifies the girl as Jamie Long or would link her to me or my sister,” Gus said.
Once they had gone over the entire plan, Gus leaned back in his chair and looked past Felipe into the meditation garden. His bowels were starting to churn. He sometimes wondered if his conscience was located in his colon. In fact, he’d had loose bowels off and on ever since he realized what Jamie Long’s eventual fate would be. If he didn’t love his sister so damned much, he could hate her, but out of this whole fiasco had come Sonny’s child.
Gus rose from his seat abruptly. “Check in when you get to Oklahoma City,” he told Felipe as he hurried toward the john, tightening his sphincter with all his might, but already he could feel it starting.