Second Chance (8 page)

"What happened?" I asked.

"An hour or two after you left, Kirsty came to
the apartment," the girl said breathlessly. "Mr. Stoner,
she was . . ." Marnee Thompson wrung her hands, as if she'd been
infected with some of the same craziness. "I didn't know what to
do. After she left I just waited here. I didn't know what else to
do."

I put a hand on her shoulder. "Calm down. This
could be important."

Marnee Thompson shrugged my hand off. "I know
it's important! Don't you think I know that? I wanted to tell you,
but I didn't know where you were. Couldn't you have cal1ed?"

"I did call. You weren't here."

"I was with Kirsty," she cried. "That's
why I wasn't here. I was with Kirsty!"

The girl was almost shouting and very close to tears.
I edged her out of the hall and into the apartment, closing the door
behind us. "Easy, Marnee. I'm a friend, remember?"

She gave me a wet-eyed look of frustration. "It's
just that I spent a couple of hours, driving around with her in this
beat-up car, trying to talk her into staying with me. But she
wouldn't listen! I'm so afraid . . . I'm afraid she's going to die."

Marnee Thompson stamped her foot and started to cry.
She ran into the living room, curled up in the armchair, and
cried—with her hand over her eyes and her knees tucked against her
chest.

I went into the tiny kitchen, found a kettle in the
cabinet, and started boiling water for coffee. It wasn't just for the
girl. I was afraid that if I didn't wake myself up, I'd miss
something important—or lose my concentration completely. And then I
was pissed off at my bad luck. If I'd stuck around the apartment, I
would have found Kirsty in time to stop her and Ethan. Instead, she'd
slipped away. For a moment I felt as if fate really was conspiring
toward her death, just as Kirsten herself believed.

There was a can of instant on top of the
refrigerator.  When the kettle started to shriek, I mixed two
cups and took them back into the living room.

The girl was still sitting in the chair, stiflly now,
her feet planted on the floor as if they were weighted with chains. I
handed her a cup and sat down across from her on the desk stool.

"Let's start again," I said. "Kirsty
came back here around . . . ?
"
"Eight, I think," Marnee said in a dull,
cried-out voice. "Maybe a little after."

"She wanted the manuscript?"

"Not just the manuscript. She wanted to say
good-bye to me. To tell me . . ." Her voice started to tremble
again, but she caught herself before she broke down, crossing her
arms and squeezing tightly as if she were physically holding herself
together. "To tell me she loved me and to say goodbye."

"Did she tell you where she was going?"

"A11 she said was that she was going away. That
she'd made a decision. The right decision, she called it."

"What was this decision?"

"To kill herself, I think," the girl said
with a hopeless look. I didn't want to give her the chance to brood
about it, so I raised my voice a little, startling her. "Was
Ethan with Kirsty?"

"Yes. He didn't come into the apartment. But
when I went out to the car with Kirsty, he was sitting in the
backseat. Kirsty dropped him off at The Eagle while we drove around
and talked. I guess she must have picked him up later."

"
What did she talk about in the car?"

"Jay, her dad, her mom, her
breakdown—everything. She said she'd been confused for so long
about her past and that she was just now beginning to see what it
meant her to do. She talked like that—like her past was this
guiding light. She said she thought, at first, that Jay was her
destiny. But now she knew that was wrong. Her destiny was with her
family. 'The way she talked about her mom . . . it scared me."

"What did she say about Estelle?"

"She said she was just like her."

"You mean, suicidal?"

"More than that, I think. She said that for
years she'd hated her mother and never understood why. She used to
feel terribly guilty about it, as if she had driven her mother crazy.
She'd punished herself for that. She talked as if Jay and the
breakdown were somehow part of the punishment. But this summer, when
she was in therapy, her shrink gave her Pentothal and she remembered
something about her mom. She wouldn't tell me what it was, just that
it had terrified her at first. But now she said it didn't scare her
anymore. Now she understood that she'd been punishing the wrong
person."

"Who was the right person?"

Marnee Thompson shook her head. "I don't know."

We sat in the living room for a while, drinking
coffee. Marnee slowly calmed down, and once she got her bearings back
she started asking me questions.

"How did you know that Ethan was with Kirsty?"

"Stein said Kirsty planned to see him this
weekend." I gave Marnee a monitory look. "You knew that,
didn't you?"

She ducked her head. "I knew a lot of things,"
she said in a whisper. "I just couldn't . . . I was afraid to
tell you. Except for Jay, I mean."

The girl looked up guiltily. "Did you talk to
him? To Jay?"

"We had some words."

"
What did he say about me? Something ugly?"

She flushed as if she already knew what Stein had
said, as if he'd said it before and it had come back to her.

"Don't worry about him, Marnee. Guys like Stein
aren't worth the time."

"I'd like to believe that." She stared at
me for a long I moment. "Are you going to stay here tonight?"

"I'll probably get a motel room by the airport.
I have to fly back to Cincinnati tomorrow, early."

"You could stay," the girl said shyly. "I
want you to stay. I could use the company."

"I can't, Marnee. I'd like to, but I can't."

She ducked her head. "Okay," she whispered.
"I understand."

But she didn't understand. She thought I was
rejecting her because of what Stein told me, and there was no way
short of spending the night to prove that I wasn't. It was a sad way
to end it. But she had the resources to survive. Her friend didn't.
As I went out the door I told her that I'd call her, when I had some
news about Kirsty.

10
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I caught a cab to 0'Hare and checked in at the
airport Hilton. If the bars had been open, I might not have bothered
with the room. But the lounges were shut, and I needed a place to sit
and think. I also needed a phone. The room was clean and featureless,
with a view of the snowy runways, still busy with mail and parcel
traffic even at that hour of the night. I took a hot shower, ordered
some coffee up from room service, then phoned Delta reservations and
booked a seat on their first flight to Cincinnati at seven in the
morning. After the busboy arrived with the coffee, I called Phil
Pearson.

Pearson must have been used to late-night calls.
Either that or he was expecting trouble, because he sounded fully
alert when he answered the phone. There was no easy way to break the
news, so I just told him outright—at least as much of it as I
understood. He didn't say a word as I went through his kids' bizarre
history—his own history. When I finished, the silence at the other
end was so profound that I thought he'd gone off the line.

"Pearson?" I said. "Are you still
there?"

"I'm here," the man said in an awful voice.

"Look, I know this is a terrible shock. But
there are some things that have to be done immediately if we're going
to prevent a tragedy."

"I'm listening."

"Ethan and Kirsten were still in Chicago as of
early last night. I'm not completely sure where they've headed, but
it's possible that they're going to Cincinnati."

"To find this man, this convict?"

I said, "Yes. They've had at least four or five
hours on the road, which would put them south of Indianapolis, almost
to the Ohio line. If we alert the Ohio State Patrol and the
Cincinnati police, we might be able to stop them before they get in
trouble."

"Stop them, how?" the man said in the same
deadened voice. "With guns?"

"Of course not. We could arrange to have them
detained as missing persons."

"You said my son had a pistol, didn't you? What
makes you think he'l1 stop for anyone?"

He had a point, but he'd also made one. "Someone
will have to stop him," I said.

"I don't want the po1ice!" Pearson said,
his voice rising. "My children aren't criminals. I 'm not a
criminal."

It was an odd thing to say under the circumstances.
But he was badly upset, and it was already clear that he felt
personally responsible for his children's problems. And more than a
little embarrassed by them.

"I don't want Kirsten or Ethan hurt," he
said in a cooler voice. "I don't want anyone hurt."

"Then let me notify the police."

"What exactly would you say?"

"Standard missing persons reports. I don't have
to go into detail."

It was precisely what he wanted to hear.

"Do it, then," he said resignedly. "But
don't volunteer anything more than necessary. If Kirsty and Ethan are
going to survive this—if the family is going to survive this—it's
essential that they know I still love them."

He said it with great
feeling. But he was saying it to the wrong person. At least that's
the way it sounded to me—like a plea for approval.

* * *

After finishing with Pearson, I made the necessary
calls to a friend I knew with the State Police and to Al Foster at
the CPD. I phoned Brandt Scheuster, too, leaving a message on his
machine. By then, it was almost three.

I lay down on the bed and tried to sleep, but the
coffee had kicked in. Anyway I knew I was going to have to get up
again in a few hours. Clicking on the reading light above the bed I
picked Ethan Pearson's manila folder up from the nightstand. The
clippings fell out on the bedclothes. A dozen of them, yellowed with
age.

I gathered them together, sorted them by date, and
read through them one by one. The first clipping was from the
September 5, 1976, edition of the Enquirer: It was a short article,
two paragraphs long, detailing Estelle Pearson's disappearance.

INDIAN HILL WOMAN REPORTED MISSING
Estelle Pearson, of 3 Woodbine Lane, Indian Hill,
has been reported missing by her husband, Dr. Philip Pearson. Mrs.
Pearson disappeared on the afternoon of September 3, after failing to
show up for a doctor's appointment in Clifton.
Mrs.
Pearson has been ill for some time, and it is feared that she may
have overmedicated herself or is in some way incapacitated by her
illness . . .

A brief description of the woman followed, along with
a number to call if Estelle Pearson was found. The next article
appeared two days later. It was considerably more detailed and its
tone was grim.

INDIAN HILL WOMAN FEARED DEAD
Indian
Hill police have launched an extensive search for Estelle Pearson,
wife of Dr. Philip Pearson. Mrs. Pearson, 34, was reported missing by
her husband on September 3, when she failed to return home after
missing an appointment with Dr. Sheldon Sacks, a Clifton
psychiatrist. Mrs. Pearson has a long history of emotional problems
and has been recently hospitalized for depression. It is feared that
she may have taken her own life . . .

There was a small photo of the woman with the
article. It was difficult to tell much from the newspaper halftone,
but she looked like a pretty woman with bee-stung lips and a thin,
angular, careworn face. There were several more paragraphs over the
next week, reporting the lack of progress in the Pearson case. And
then the big one—the front-page story—on September 14.

INDIAN HILL WOMAN FOUND DEAD
ESTELLE
PEARSON, APPARENT SUICIDE
The body of Estelle
Pearson, of 3 Woodbine Lane, Indian Hill, was discovered late last
night in the Great Miami River by two fishermen, Claude Carter of
Delhi and Sam Livingston of Terrace Park. Mrs. Pearson, wife of
Indian Hill psychiatrist
Dr. Philip Pearson,
has been missing since September 3.
The
fishermen found Mrs. Pearson's body Boating in an estuary of the
Miami River, east of Miamitown. She had been in the water for at
least ten days, according to Hamilton County Assistant Coroner Dr.
Jeffrey Hillman. Pending an inquest, the Cincinnati Police Department
is reserving comment on the cause of death. Foul play is not
suspected.
Mrs. Pearson was first reported
missing on September 3, after she failed to show up for an
appointment with her psychiatrist, Dr. Sheldon Sacks of Clifton.
There was concern at the time that she might have taken her own life.
Dr. Sacks has indicated that Mrs. Pearson was hospitalized for
depression in June and on several other occasions over the past ten
years. Mrs. Pearson, née Estelle Frieberg, was 34 years old, a
Cincinnati native, and a graduate of Miami University and the
University of Cincinnati Medical School. She is survived by her
husband, Dr. Philip Pearson, a
psychiatrist,
and her two children, Ethan, 10, and Kirsten, 6.