Vanishing Point

that my search would have a happy ending. Even before I’d come face-to-face with Laurel, I knew there would be no such ending, and that I would be legally bound to turn over everything I knew about her wrongdoings to the proper authorities. Seeing her in the flesh cemented that resolve.

“All right,” she said after a moment. “I’ll tell you my story from the beginning. And then you’ll go away and let me be.”

Laurel and I talked for more than two hours, and I recorded it all. She was alternately defensive, petulant, angry, and defiant. But eventually she confirmed most of what I’d already surmised. Reinforced my initial negative reaction to her as well.

“Josie was in the terminal stages of her illness, and at times she barely knew who she was. But at others, she was lucid, and completely herself. I’d always known she could be cruel; I’d seen her nastiness directed at others plenty of times. But until that afternoon, she’d never directed it at me.”

“She taunted you about her affair with your husband?”

“Yes.”

“And you shoved her down the stairs?”

“No! I would never have done that. I made a move as if to slap her. She ducked, and fell. By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, she was dead.”

“But you didn’t call for the police or an ambulance right away. Why not?”

“What a question! I was in shock. And, I admit, afraid for my own skin. Wouldn’t you be?”

“After Josie died, I couldn’t stand to be around Roy. Didn’t want him to touch me. And I couldn’t deal with Sally, because I knew she probably suspected what had happened. And my little girls… I never wanted to be a mother. Roy forced that on me.”

“You didn’t love them at all?”

“God, don’t look at me like that! I loved them in my way. I was a good mother. A good mother. That’s why, after the accident with Josie, I was afraid I’d somehow contaminate them. I decided everyone would be better off without me.”

“So you planned your disappearance for a long time?”

“Yes. And it was a solid plan; it worked like a charm. With the money from Josie’s estate I bought a van, stored it at a facility in Morro Bay. I wore a red wig so if they asked for my identification I could pass for Josie. Later I had my own picture put on her driver’s license. And then, after a trip to Cayucos to paint one last canvas, I took off.”

“Do you still paint?”

“No. I gave it up that day. I’d read about how to disappear. If I was to make a new life, I had to give up everything from the old. I left my VW bus with the canvas and all my painting supplies in a public parking lot in Morro Bay, put on the wig in the restroom, so the people at the self-storage place wouldn’t think a stranger was taking the van. Then I walked up the hill, and drove away from there.”

“And never looked back.”

“Oh, I’ve looked back. Believe me, I have.”

“Santa Rosa was just a temporary stopping point. It looked like a nice place, the hospital was hiring, and it was far enough away that I didn’t think I’d run into anyone who might recognize me. But I didn’t like the summer heat there-too much like Paso Robles-and then I heard that Sutter Coast Hospital in Crescent City was opening its new facility and hiring. I loved Crescent City. Cool and gray a lot of the time, like the coastal areas down south. And I wasn’t so lonely. I made a friend there.”

“Debra Jansen.”

“You talked with her?”

“She told me you were in Klamath Falls.”

“How…? Oh, the Christmas card I sent her. A stupid, sentimental gesture. Probably the last I ever made. And since that’s how you found me, the worst. Trouble was, it was the Christmas season, and I was depressed. I had good reason to be.”

“Because of what happened a year before to Bruce Collingsworth?”

“… You have done your homework, damn you.”

“Debra Jansen says his death was an honest mistake. That during the confusion in the ER you started an IV with the wrong bag of solution.”

“That’s the truth. I grabbed a bag out of the wrong cabinet.”

“But it wasn’t the usual ER confusion that rattled you.”

“Have you ever worked on an ER? Even a good nurse like I was-”

“Come on, Laurel. You couldn’t have helped but recognize Collingsworth. What really happened?”

“A mistake! That’s all-a mistake! Bruce was in terrible pain, but conscious. We were stabilizing him, and he looked up and recognized me. He said, ‘Laurel, you’re alive.’ That’s what threw me.”

“And you’re sure giving him dextrose instead of saline was an accident?”

“Of course it was! I’m… I was a nurse. I would never deliberately kill anyone. Never!… No, don’t you give me that look. Bruce Collingsworth’s death was an accident!”

“I decided to settle in Klamath Falls because my van broke down here, and I’d run out of the energy to keep going. The first year I lived in a cheap apartment, hoping I’d get it together and move on. Then I realized I wasn’t going anyplace, so I bought a house. For the past ten years I’ve worked in a nursing home. Just grunt work- changing beds, wheeling the patients outside to get some air, cleaning up after them. I don’t mind it. I like helping people. And I volunteer for our hospice. Easing the last days of the terminally ill, it’s rewarding. And, I suppose, something of an atonement for the things I’ve done-to Josie, to my family, to Bruce Collingsworth. I live very quietly. One of my neighbors has been kind to me, and tried to forge a friendship, but I find I’ve lost the ability to function socially. I’m only good with the dying.”

“All right-I’m sorry I haven’t asked about Roy or the girls. How are they?”

“Roy died seven months ago. Of pancreatic cancer. Terry’s married and teaches at a cooking school in Davis. Jennifer is a textile designer; she was living in Atherton, but now is separated from her husband and temporarily staying with Terry.”

No reaction to that news. “You said it was Jennifer who hired you to find me?”

“Yes.”

“That makes sense. She was always the inquisitive one.”

“And she loved her mother.”

“Did she? I wouldn’t know. Children are such voracious creatures. What we think of as love is often pure need. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with satisfying a child’s need. Someone has to fill it.”

Until it becomes inconvenient or difficult, and then you just walk away.

“So now are you satisfied? You’ll go away and leave me alone?”

“Yes, but I’m required to report any evidence of wrongdoing that I find in the course of an investigation to the authorities.”

“You promised-!”

“I said I wouldn’t bother you again. I can’t speak for the police in San Francisco or Crescent City. Or the state board of nursing.”

“You lied! You’re going to turn me in to them, even though I’ve told you everything.”

“It’s the law, and if I don’t comply, I’ll lose my license. Even if you can convince them that your version of what happened is true, there will be consequences. You’ve committed fraud, practiced nursing under another person’s credentials.”

“I’ll lose my livelihood. The nursing home will fire me. The hospice will turn me away.”

“As I said, consequences.”

“But my work is my whole life. I have nothing except helping dying people.”