open,” she said. “The one in the living room will get the couch wet if I left it open.”
Eric squeezed her hand, and let go. He kissed her cheek, wrapping his arms around her frail shoulders. “Bye, Mom.”
His mother grabbed his sleeve, tears rolling down her cheeks and onto the bruises on her neck. “There’s ten thousand dollars in my savings account. Take my driver’s license and get the money. If they won’t give it to you they can call me here.”
“I can’t take your-”
“I couldn’t stand it if I thought you were on the street somewhere. Please.”
He nodded. “All right.” Another kiss on the forehead and he pulled away from her, taking the driver’s license out of her purse. He looked back once when he was at the doorway and a deep sadness filled him and tightened his throat; he wasn’t sure if he’d ever see her again.
Eric chose a female teller who appeared young enough to be in high school. She let him withdraw from his mother’s account and he took five thousand and left the driver’s license on the counter, knowing the teller would keep it for his mother.
The drizzle had turned into a full drenching rain and he pulled up his collar as he walked across an intersection and toward the downtown city library. The city smelled like wet dirt and salt and it disgusted him.
The library was a circular flat building across the street from a small public park. It was packed with the homeless, overflow from the only shelter in town. But the dusty book smell was pleasant as Eric waited patiently to get on a computer. It took nearly a half hour-that being the limit that each person was allowed on a computer-and he sat down and stared at the computer screen before starting to type. He Googled a world map and looked at it like it had some great secret to reveal to him if he just looked long enough. He spent nearly the entire half hour just examining maps of various countries and then looking up facts about them: cost of living, ties with the United States, cost of a one way ticket there. Mexico was cheap and the law was flexible but it was too close to the United States. Europe was too expensive for how little money he had. He thought about just going to another state but decided against it since if he was even pulled over for a traffic ticket a warrant for murder would show.
There was one place he kept coming back to: Bangkok Thailand. It was one of the most populated cities in the world and a big tourist spot; he could blend right in. He found a last minute one-way ticket for three hundred dollars out of JFK in two days and reserved a seat online, printed the ticket, and rushed out of the library.
When he was on the steps of the front entrance, he froze. His passport was at the dorms.
CHAPTER
15
Eric sat on the stone steps of the library in the pouring rain, hardly noticing that he was soaked from his hair to his shoes. Jason wasn’t answering and he couldn’t trust anyone else to bring the passport to him without alerting the police that were no doubt combing the campus for him.
He had no connections to get a phony passport; this was his only shot to leave the country. It was a risk he had to take. The water dripped from his bangs into his eyes and he wiped at them and stood up, grabbed his gym bag, and walked to the bus stop.
It took nearly twenty minutes for the bus to come and by this time Eric was shivering and unable to keep his teeth still. When he got on he changed shirts and tried to dry his hair. There wasn’t anybody on the bus and about half-way to the university campus the driver, an elderly man with a constant scowl on his face and his name printed on his belt, pulled into a side-street and unbuckled his seat belt. He walked to the nearest seats, and lay down. “What’re you doing?” Eric said. “Break.” “Are you joking? I’ve gotta be somewhere.” “You got legs asshole.”
Eric stormed off the bus back into the rain. The campus was a good mile away and he started a slow jog. The sidewalks were cracked and uneven, making running difficult and dangerous; the last thing he needed was a twisted ankle. He eventually reached the campus and waited across the street from the main parking lot, just watching the cars come in and out. He popped another Lortab and checked the bandage on his shoulder. The ten stitches felt like a zipper going up his arm but there was no blood; only swelling and tenderness.
There weren’t any squad cars around but he knew detectives wouldn’t drive those. He saw a group of people running onto campus from a nearby coffee shop and he tagged close behind them as if part of the group.
They made their way past the Field House gym and around the library. Eric left the group and sprinted into the library. He walked calmly across the linoleum floors, his soaked shoes squeaking with each step, and out another set of glass doors on the other side. The dorms were just across a small grass enclosure.
The dorms were cold but dry and Eric stood in the entryway for a minute building up his courage. He peeked down the hall; it was empty. There was music coming from somewhere, heavy bass thumping the walls. Slowly, he started his way down.
Each sound was like an alarm going off and he’d stop and listen whenever he heard something. There was an argument coming from a room up ahead, a girl on the phone yelling over some indiscretion that happened the previous weekend. Two doors down was his room.
His stomach was fluttering from adrenaline as he walked down and stopped at his door. He put his ear to it and listened, plugging up the other one with his finger. It was silent. He put in his key and unlocked it.
The room was a little messier than he’d left it but other than that it looked the same. There were no dirty shoe prints on the carpet or anything else indicating a lot of people had come through. He ran to the closet and began throwing around clothes and old books and papers. In a shoebox with letters of academic awards he found his passport and social security card. He put them in his gym bag and changed his clothes and shoes, putting on his jacket and a gray beanie with the University of New Hampshire logo on the front before walking out.
As he shut the door, relieved, he heard voices down the hall. He looked to see two men walking toward him. One was balding and older, Hispanic, wearing a cheap tan overcoat and the other was young and wearing a business suit that was wet at the shoulders.
Eric jumped away from his door. He walked down and knocked on the girl’s door that was having an argument. The men were now only a couple dozen feet away, eyeing him. The girl opened the door wearing sweats, a cell phone to her ear.
“Yeah?” she said.
“Hi,” Eric said, “I’m David Russell with the UNH Student Committee and I’m just going around today talking to people about the upcoming elections and reminding them to vote.”
She gave him a quizzical look and then said, “Oh, yeah, I’m gonna vote. When are the elections?”
The two men walked behind Eric and he felt his heart drop. They’d walked past him and were going down to his door. He glanced at them quickly. The older one smiled and was about to turn back when he looked down and noticed the dripping wet gym bag Eric was holding. He looked up and they caught each other’s eyes. For a moment, neither did anything.
Eric sprinted toward the entrance of the building at the same time the man yelled out “Police!” Eric heard the girl scream behind him as he rammed the doors open and turned toward the parking lot, the water on the ground splashing up around him as he ran through puddles formed in the small potholes, the shouts of the detectives muffled by the rain.
He ran into the library and a guy was walking toward him with books held under his arm. Eric knocked them out of his hand and they landed on the floor behind him as the guy started yelling. The officers weaved around him and kept shouting “Police!” startling everyone nearby. Eric got through the door and looked back to see them not thirty feet behind him. He darted into the rain again, the gym bag hitting his knees as he sprinted past the Field House and into the main parking lot before hitting the street. He looked back and saw the older officer far behind him but the younger one was keeping up.
There was a residential neighborhood across the street and Eric dashed for it, a black SUV having to slam on its brakes and blare the horn as Eric crossed its path. He ran down the sidewalk and saw the detective still behind
