Read Online Dead Head: A Dirty Business Mystery by Rosemary Harris - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Rosemary Harris
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pilfered items.
I stuffed the stolen goods into my bag. The guys who drove me from Ann Arbor
to Dayton and from Dayton to Pittsburgh didn’t really want to know my name. The first one thought he might make out—teenage runaways were probably less discriminating and undoubtedly found themselves in situations where it was easier to just do the deed than to get beaten up and tossed out of a moving vehicle. But after a few feeble attempts to engage me in sexy chat, he dropped the idea and was just grateful to have a human to talk to on his long drive south, instead of simply singing along to oldies on the radio.
The next driver wanted to replay his own hitchhiking experiences or live vicariously through mine. He looked like an aging hippie, ten or so years past his Woodstock days, and he kept saying things were far-out, which I knew from an
old boyfriend meant “good.” Up until that point my own travel anecdotes (the
Upper Peninsula to visit grandparents and one class trip to Chicago) weren’t adventurousenough to keep him interested, so we soon fell into that silence that takes over on long drives when the rocking of the vehicle or the rhythm of the windshield wipers is all the sound you need and keeping quiet is more natural than saying anything. I rolled down my window to feel the nighttime breeze and to stay alert, just in case he tried anything.
In Pittsburgh I was picked up by a woman in a Volkswagen van. She said
I looked like an Abigail, and I told her it was remarkable, but she’d guessed
my name; so I was Abigail for a few days. I got shorter lifts across the endless
state
of Pennsylvania, and all the way I tried out various fictional autobiographies and names until I found the handful of story lines I was comfortable de
livering. My parents were dead. I grew up with my grandmother, who was
back home in Oregon. Oregon was a nice touch. I never met anyone who’d ever been there.
I had a lightweight nylon bag that contained everything my twenty-year-
old brother thought I’d need: some clothes, dark glasses, one of the wigs our mother wore during her chemo sessions—I wasn’t sure I could wear it—a hat, my passport, and the entire contents of my brother’s college fund. Six hundred and forty dollars to start a new life.
Nine
The stranger we’d all known as Caroline Sturgis was named Monica Jane Weithorn. Why do all convicted felons have three names? And she wasn’t from Oregon, as we’d thought; she was from Michigan. Caroline/Monica had been convicted on a drug charge when she was eighteen years old and had been sentenced to twenty years in jail—a surprisingly draconian sentence given her age and the fact that it had been her first offense.
By that night, Caroline’s story was dribbling out on the local news channels. The following day it was all over the Internet. Springfield, Connecticut, was soon flooded with news media from every major market in the country who wanted to learn all they could about the woman they were calling the Fugitive Mom.
News trucks lined the streets around the Sturgis home. Reporters camped out at the Paradise Diner. It was impossible to buy a quart of milk without some overzealous helmet-haired reporter sticking a microphone in your face. And my best friend, Lucy Cavanaugh, came dangerouslyclose to being one of them. As soon as she heard the story, she called me.
“Paula, this would make a great feature for sweeps week. If you can get us the story, Danielle might offer you a job.”
“You just spent an entire weekend telling me what a jerk your boss is—why would I ever want to work for her? Besides, you know the story,” I said. “Everyone knows it by now. She walked away from a work release program, hitchhiked out of town, changed her name, and started a new life.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “That’s like saying
Moby-Dick
is about a guy who goes fishing. This is a huge story and
you know her
. I
met
her. This could be big. I could
I stuffed the stolen goods into my bag. The guys who drove me from Ann Arbor
to Dayton and from Dayton to Pittsburgh didn’t really want to know my name. The first one thought he might make out—teenage runaways were probably less discriminating and undoubtedly found themselves in situations where it was easier to just do the deed than to get beaten up and tossed out of a moving vehicle. But after a few feeble attempts to engage me in sexy chat, he dropped the idea and was just grateful to have a human to talk to on his long drive south, instead of simply singing along to oldies on the radio.
The next driver wanted to replay his own hitchhiking experiences or live vicariously through mine. He looked like an aging hippie, ten or so years past his Woodstock days, and he kept saying things were far-out, which I knew from an
old boyfriend meant “good.” Up until that point my own travel anecdotes (the
Upper Peninsula to visit grandparents and one class trip to Chicago) weren’t adventurousenough to keep him interested, so we soon fell into that silence that takes over on long drives when the rocking of the vehicle or the rhythm of the windshield wipers is all the sound you need and keeping quiet is more natural than saying anything. I rolled down my window to feel the nighttime breeze and to stay alert, just in case he tried anything.
In Pittsburgh I was picked up by a woman in a Volkswagen van. She said
I looked like an Abigail, and I told her it was remarkable, but she’d guessed
my name; so I was Abigail for a few days. I got shorter lifts across the endless
state
of Pennsylvania, and all the way I tried out various fictional autobiographies and names until I found the handful of story lines I was comfortable de
livering. My parents were dead. I grew up with my grandmother, who was
back home in Oregon. Oregon was a nice touch. I never met anyone who’d ever been there.
I had a lightweight nylon bag that contained everything my twenty-year-
old brother thought I’d need: some clothes, dark glasses, one of the wigs our mother wore during her chemo sessions—I wasn’t sure I could wear it—a hat, my passport, and the entire contents of my brother’s college fund. Six hundred and forty dollars to start a new life.
Nine
The stranger we’d all known as Caroline Sturgis was named Monica Jane Weithorn. Why do all convicted felons have three names? And she wasn’t from Oregon, as we’d thought; she was from Michigan. Caroline/Monica had been convicted on a drug charge when she was eighteen years old and had been sentenced to twenty years in jail—a surprisingly draconian sentence given her age and the fact that it had been her first offense.
By that night, Caroline’s story was dribbling out on the local news channels. The following day it was all over the Internet. Springfield, Connecticut, was soon flooded with news media from every major market in the country who wanted to learn all they could about the woman they were calling the Fugitive Mom.
News trucks lined the streets around the Sturgis home. Reporters camped out at the Paradise Diner. It was impossible to buy a quart of milk without some overzealous helmet-haired reporter sticking a microphone in your face. And my best friend, Lucy Cavanaugh, came dangerouslyclose to being one of them. As soon as she heard the story, she called me.
“Paula, this would make a great feature for sweeps week. If you can get us the story, Danielle might offer you a job.”
“You just spent an entire weekend telling me what a jerk your boss is—why would I ever want to work for her? Besides, you know the story,” I said. “Everyone knows it by now. She walked away from a work release program, hitchhiked out of town, changed her name, and started a new life.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “That’s like saying
Moby-Dick
is about a guy who goes fishing. This is a huge story and
you know her
. I
met
her. This could be big. I could
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