When she arrives back in the checkpoint office with Grenier, she can breathe again. She takes a notepad and pencil from her backpack, writing down everything she can recall from her conversation with Simon.
She is too busy writing to observe the way he and Kristin interact.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In the parking lot of the asylum, Francks is standing beside the open driver’s door. He’s a tall, lean white man of about fifty with a graying mustache and prominent ears. His demeanor is all quiet firmness and pragmatism as he holds up the pager usually clipped to his belt.
‘Miss Lewis, I got a page. Special Agent Carter wants you and Miss Gutmunsson back in Pittsburgh.’
Emma hikes up her backpack strap, still walking toward the car. ‘Now?’
‘Soon as we can. Arrangements have already been made for flights.’ Francks gestures to the car. ‘Hop on in.’
En route to the airport, Emma adds details to her written notes and glances frequently at Kristin, who is looking out the passenger window as they make the straight run down Roosevelt Boulevard. It’s about one in the afternoon, and the air outside the car is pale, insipid, with the sun in a caul of cloud.
They’re not returning to Philadelphia International, Emma discovers, but to Northeast Philadelphia Airport, where they’re catching a twin prop, a new experience for her. Francks drives past thelittle rinky-dink aviation academy at the airport’s southeast corner, turns onto the concrete tarmac. Ahead through the car’s windshield, a small white plane with a pointed nose and racing stripes, like an airplane version of a Matchbox car.
Emma leans forward from the back seat. ‘Is that thing safe?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Francks replies. ‘It’s a Piper Navajo.’
‘Are you riding in it with us?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Francks is stoic, but he doesn’t look entirely happy about it.
The pilot has already started the propellors spinning at the sight of their approach. There’s a little set of stairs behind the wing, for climbing up into the plane. The inside windows have curtains against the glare, and there are only four seats, two pairs facing each other. The cockpit is situated directly behind the front pair of seats. Emma can see the piloting array, which she finds disconcerting.
She and Kristin find their places and strap in as the Piper rumbles and blats. Francks settles in with a folder of paperwork. They taxi around a set of orange traffic cones to reach the runway. Emma watches out the window, sees the propellors blur, feels every surface inside the little plane vibrate as they make the impossible leap into the sky.
Once they reach altitude, she looks at Kristin in the seat facing her own. Kristin has been very quiet. ‘Are you okay?’
Kristin makes a wan smile. ‘I’m perfectly well. I’m quite adaptable, you know. And any day I’m not at Chesterfield is a good day.’
‘They were okay at Chesterfield? About …’ Emma thinks the wordsletting you outmight be inappropriate. ‘… about you working with this unit?’
Kristin pleats the fabric of her palazzo pants over her knee as the plane buzzes around them. ‘Well, they weren’t excited about it. If it were up to my therapist at Chesterfield Clinic, I would simply sit in my room andmolder. But fortunately, our lawyer is an old family friend, and we pay him very well, so he’s always happy to sign off on me going out for a jaunt.’
‘I’m sorry I never went to see you in the hospital, after St Elizabeths,’ Emma says. In the open cabin of the Piper, she and Kristin have to speak louder, and their conversation is not private. But this is something that has been bugging her. ‘I didn’t really see anyone afterward. Just ran straight home. But they said you had a concussion, and I should’ve at least said goodbye.’
‘I didn’t mind.’ Kristin draws her cable-knit cardigan more closely around herself. ‘You didn’t upset me. Honestly, the experience we had at St Elizabeths … Well, I know it was horrible, and we all nearlydied. But it was good for me, I think. I’d been just flopping about at Chesterfield for so long, being the perfect patient. St Elizabeths made me realize I could get out and do things.’
Emma takes that in, then considers how to phrase the next question. ‘Did Simon seem okay to you today?’
‘Oh yes.’ Kristin makes the weak smile again as she looks out the window. ‘I think the cigarette you gave him lifted his mood. Although he is still dreadfully jealous that you and I get to spend so much time together – because my presence is such a gift, apparently.’
Kristin emits a small, self-conscious laugh, and Emma blinks. Allowing Kristin to visit her brother has been a show of good faith. Emma has not considered the flip side before: the idea that Simonsees Kristin as uniquely precious, that giving Emma access to her is a sign of his largesse. That he is favoring Emma in this way, and in the way he shares information, and in the way he killed Anthony Hoyt to save her …
Emma feels a twitchy discomfort. These concepts are rattling on so many levels, not the least of which is the idea of beingfavoredby Simon Gutmunsson.
‘I really can’t tolerate that awful place he’s in,’ Kristin goes on. ‘But it was lovely to see him, even in such dreadful circumstances.’
Emma broaches the next topic carefully. ‘He should be getting more concessions. They tend to be a bit kinder to death row prisoners.’
‘Mm,’ Kristin agrees, still facing away. ‘His execution is scheduled for November. Our lawyer, Mr Jasper, says he will be able to make a strong argument for clemency now that Simon is assisting the FBI with this case.’
Emma’s not sure that such an argument is as powerful as Kristin believes.
‘We can try to delay things in court,’ Kristin goes on, ‘but it will depend on the judge. For some reason, killing eleven people gets you a criminal insanity plea, but killing twelve people somehow pushes you over the edge of the legal cliff, even if the twelfth person you kill happens to be a mass murderer of teenagers …’
