Play Dead

Chapter 30

James LaRue was on the run.

On the run.

He liked the phrase. It sounded important.

His frantic escape from Savannah had been harrowing, with cops everywhere, all of them eyeing his car with suspicion. One hour into his panicky flight to the Big Easy, he'd exited Highway 95 and taken the back roads the rest of the way.

Exciting.

Like a movie.

Or television.

James LaRue, badass.

To someone who had been teased and humiliated his entire life, it had a nice ring.

Not that he'd always been a straight edge. Hell, no. As early as eleven years old he was doing a bit of walking on the dark side.

Always a curious kid and never one to pass up an opportunity to get something for free, he'd been digging through the trash behind a funeral home one day and had come upon a mother lode of Polaroids.

Of dead people.

The family funeral business was folding and they'd cleaned out their files.

One person's trash was another's treasure.

He took off his hooded sweatshirt and filled it with photos, then tightly bundled the sleeves together. He pedaled home, dumped his treasure in his bedroom closet, then returned at night with garbage bags to fill with more loot.

The photos were a hit with his school buddies.

He could have unloaded them for five bucks a pop. Instead, he kept them all, every one of them. They filled four shoe boxes that he hid in the back of the closet. His favorite was a full-frontal nude of a teenage girl whose face had been smashed in, but whose body had remained flawless.

He sometimes let his buddies take a look at his private collection, which was something he learned to never do again.

Never let anybody else in on your secret or it won't be a secret anymore.

The photos gave one of the kids, Shawn Hill, nightmares and he ended up telling his dad about the stash in the closet. Big trouble. A life-altering moment.

All because of some snapshots that had been thrown away. Trash was trash. Public property, if any of the public wanted it. He hadn't done anything wrong.

His father was shocked. Disgusted. Confused.

Embarrassed.

His old man had been reading the latest parenting book, written by the latest self-proclaimed expert on child rearing. In the chapter "Punishing the Wayward Child," the author suggested that the punishment should always be related to the crime. Say, if you had a dog that killed a cat, then you would beat the dog with the dead cat.

As punishment for his Polaroid crime, James was locked in his bedroom closet for two weeks with the Polamids.

Cunning.

Sick.

James' father wasn't an evil man, just misguided. How was he to know that the person who'd written a book on child rearing would end up in prison for child pornography?

In adult time, two weeks wasn't much. For a kid, it was a lifetime.

Things became confused in that closet. Even though it was dark, James could see the photos in his mind. He could see the dead people.

They became his friends. His comfort.

Things were never quite the same after he got out.

He was never quite the same.

Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

A psychiatrist would probably say that his time in the closet had twisted him, maybe even damaged him. Not true. It had cleared his head. Made him strong.

And just maybe a tad obsessed with death.

But one thing hadn't changed. He wanted to please his dad. Needed to please him.

James would have enjoyed his present notoriety more if it hadn't been for his dad. James kept imagining him sitting in the living room in front of the TV. James' face would suddenly fill the screen. His dad's heart would leap, because he'd long expected James to gain international attention as a famous scientist, someone who'd used his knowledge to better the world. Not as a fugitive from the law.

James had tried. He'd really, really tried.

He knew he should call home, tell his dad everything was okay, but cops would be watching the house. That was the first thing they'd figure he'd do. They'd also be watching previous associates and members of the academic community. Friends, if he had any.

Funny how you could be an outcast even among your own kind.

He had to go it alone.

He had to disappear.

New Orleans was perfect for that. After things cooled down, he would hitch a plane to the Bahamas, then on to Haiti. Once there, he'd call his dad. Tell him he was okay. Try to convince him he hadn't really done anything wrong.

Shouldn't have done it. With hindsight, he could see it had been a bad idea. But he'd been a little out of his mind at the time. And when he was out of his mind, he did unpredictable things. Crazy, foolish things.

Sometimes, when he looked back after a particularly wild encounter, he couldn't remember what he'd done, where he'd been.

Who he'd been.

When he reached New Orleans, James referenced movies he'd seen, as a blueprint to disappearing.

He didn't use his credit card. He cut hisJ Bleached it blond. Quit shaving. Wore Different clothes.

A whole new persona. It felt good. Great to reinvent himself. Step into a new life…

But not many days into being a fugitive, the novelty began to wear thin. He grew tired of trying to find places to sleep, tired of being dirty, tired of wandering the streets of New Orleans.

Then he was mugged.

The last straw. The last fucking straw.

"Don't spend it all in one place!" he shouted after the three hoodlums as they ran down the alley with his billfold.

Enough.

He wandered into the New Orleans Police Department Headquarters.

"I'm James LaRue," he announced to the female officer at the front desk.

His new persona must have been good, because nothing about him registered with her. She stared blankly, waiting for him to state his purpose.

"If you look up the name on your computer, you'll see that I'm wanted in Savannah, Georgia, on a felony charge."

She called for assistance.

Two more officers showed up, one huge black guy and a white guy who looked as if he spent every free second in the gym.

"James LaRue," the female officer confirmed when she checked the computer. She eyed him, then the screen. "But you don't look much like the guy in our database."

Another officer wandered by, glanced at the screen, then back at James. "Could be him. What about prints?"

"No prints in the system. Never been in trouble before."

"Got any ID?" the black officer asked.

James patted the pockets of the baggy tan shorts he'd picked up at a thrift store and shrugged, his hands spread. "I was robbed."

"Did you report it?"

"I'm reporting it now. And aren't we getting a little off track?"

"I think we'd better get one of our facial-identification specialists down here," the black guy said.

"Why would I say I'm somebody I'm not?" James asked. "Especially somebody who's wanted for a felony?"

"Happens all the time," the woman told him. "You could be a Confessing Sam, looking for some attention your parents didn't give you as a child. Or you could just be looking for a free ride to Savannah."

Ingenious. He'd stepped into a whole new sick world.

"You could have run into LaRue somewhere. You could be pulling this switch for LaRue."

Until they could make a positive ID, they put him in a holding cell, fed him, and gave him a pillow and blanket.

After what James had been through, it felt like a five-star hotel.