God, all this planning around drinking, it was like being back in high school. Although, she had to admit, her attitude on the subject had not changed much since then. What did it matter what they drank so long as they got a good buzz on? And then, maybe, with any luck, they could finish what they’d started the other night.
She wouldn’t have to go back to the office to write this. The Standard had an office at city hall. Julie would pop in there, write a story on one of the computers about this ridiculous debate, file the damn thing, and get the hell out of here. These bozos actually had to think about this? It amazed her that even one person thought putting up tacky advertisements alongside roses, tulips, and azaleas was a good idea. You didn’t need brains to hold office; you only needed votes.
Sitting there, taking notes, Julie thought she’d rather be making calls about Allison Fitch. Who she was, why she’d disappeared, how she’d ended up dead in Florida months after vanishing from her New York apartment. She believed there was a story there, but she knew that when and if she got it, it’d be a hard sell with her own editors. “What’s this got to do with Promise Falls?” they’d want to know. She’d have to sell them on a local angle. That’d be Thomas, who’d inadvertently uncovered whatever it was that had happened by exploring the planet on Whirl360.
That gave her pause.
Would Thomas be okay being part of the story? How would Ray feel about it? She’d written plenty of stories without giving any thought to the embarrassment it might cause the principals, but she didn’t want to do that this time.
She’d find a way around it.
The ads-in-gardens debate ended with a courageous vote to defer any decision at all, and instead refer the matter to a committee for further consideration. Everything left on the agenda was of even less consequence, so Julie grabbed her notepad and her purse and filed her story from the Standard office on the premises. Then she got in her car, reached around to the floor behind the passenger seat to make sure her beverage purchases were still there, and headed out of town to the Kilbride place.
She was about two hundred yards from her destination when she saw a white panel van pulling out of the driveway, heading her way. The van’s headlights flashed past. She couldn’t see who was driving, and didn’t really even try to catch a look. It didn’t strike her as a big deal. At first, she wasn’t sure the van had come from Ray’s driveway.
She did catch a glance in her side mirror of the van retreating, enough to notice that it had one burned-out taillight.
Julie hit her blinker and turned into the drive, rolled the car up to the house. Ray’s car was there, as was his father’s old Chrysler van, and the house was lit up like there was a party going on. The living room lights were blazing, and she could see the lights were on in Thomas’s room.
She grabbed the booze from the backseat, got out of the car, climbed the steps to the porch, and rapped on the door. When no one came after ten seconds, she opened it and shouted, “Hello?”
She waited a moment. When she heard nothing, she called out, “Ray? I can’t drink all this wine alone! Well, maybe.”
Still no response.
She went into the house, set the bag of bottles on the closest chair, and gazed into the kitchen. No one there, so she went to the bottom of the stairs and called up, “Anybody home?”
Julie went up the steps two at a time, poking her head first in Thomas’s room, then the spare room and what used to be Ray’s father’s bedroom. The door to the bathroom was open.
Something about Thomas’s room.
Julie returned to his room, stepped in, and immediately saw what had caught her attention at an unconscious level a moment earlier. A jumble of disconnected wires on the desktop. All three monitors were blank.
The computer tower was gone.
“What the…” Julie said under her breath.
She went back downstairs, and as she was going through the kitchen she noticed light spilling up from behind the open basement door. “Anyone down there?” she called.
She went down the stairs even though no one responded. Something on the floor caught her attention. Something even more worrying than the missing computer tower.
A white plastic wrist restraint.
“No,” she whispered.
She ran back up the stairs and out the rear door. She ran to the top of the hill that overlooked the creek and shouted for Ray and Thomas. Then she ran over to the barn and did it again.
“Fuck me,” she said, and ran back to her car.
She’d been here, what, maybe four minutes? Not a long time, but a van could cover four or more miles in that time. What kind of chance did she have of catching up with it?
That didn’t stop her from spinning the car around and hitting fifty miles per hour before she’d reached the end of the drive. The car skittered and nearly went onto two wheels as she turned onto the road, then floored it in the direction the van had gone.
Once she hit the first intersection, which direction would she go? Left? Right? Straight? She didn’t have a clue where the van was headed. On top of that, she didn’t know with any certainty that Ray and Thomas were in it.
“Shit!” she shouted. Why the hell hadn’t she just phoned his cell?
She fumbled blindly through her purse on the seat next to her until she’d found her phone. She held it in front of her, one eye on the road and one on the phone, and called up Ray’s number, tapped it.
She put the phone to her ear, her left hand gripping the wheel. It rang once, twice—
“Come on! Answer your fucking phone, you asshole!”
After the seventh ring, it went to voice mail. “Hi, this is Ray. I can’t—”
“Fuck!” Julie screamed, but not because Ray had not picked up. She slammed on the brakes, let her phone fly so she could get both hands on the wheel, and steered the car over onto the shoulder.
Up ahead, at the Exxon station, was the van.
A man was standing at the side, using the self-serve pump to fill the vehicle. From where she sat at the edge of the road, she couldn’t see the front of the van, although she thought she could see an elbow resting on the sill of the driver’s window.
What to do? She wasn’t even sure it was the same van that had pulled out of Ray’s place. It sure looked like the same van. A commercial type, no windows on the side. Should she drive in, pull up to the pump right alongside? See whose elbow that was? Whether there was anyone else in the van?
All she could think of was Allison Fitch, the dead couple in Chicago. If the people who’d killed them had figured out Ray had been to the apartment, then—
The man replaced the cap on the van’s gas tank, replaced the pump, and went into the Exxon to pay. So he was using cash, since you could use your card at the pump if you wanted to.
Lots of people paid cash.
But if you didn’t want a record of where you’ve been, you sure wouldn’t use credit.
Before Julie could decide what to do, the decision was made for her. The man returned to the van, getting in on the passenger side. The taillight came on—just one, so this was the right van—and the truck pulled out of the station and got back on the road.
Julie took her foot off the brake, and followed. She kept well back. There weren’t that many cars on the road this time of night, and the van was big and boxy, and white, so it wasn’t hard to keep it in sight.
The van slowed a couple of times at intersections, like the driver didn’t know where they were, or which way to go. But soon the van found its way onto the interstate, and got on the southbound.
Which, if you followed it for a couple of hours, would take you into New York City.
Julie glanced down at her fuel gauge. About half a tank. She hoped to God that wherever this van was going, it got there before she ran out of gas.
ONCE they were on the highway, Julie stayed well back so as not to make the driver of the van suspicious. Her phone was somewhere on the floor in front of the passenger seat. She unbuck
led her seat belt, and through some precarious contortions managed to reach the phone with her right hand, her head dipping below the dashboard, while still keeping the car going in a straight line.
Glancing back and forth between her phone and the road, she called the Promise Falls police, identified herself as a reporter for the Standard, and asked to speak to Detective Barry Duckworth.
“He’s off duty,” the dispatcher said.
“Well then fucking get him at home and tell him to call me!” Julie said.
“Excuse me?” the dispatcher said.
Julie rattled off her cell phone number. “Just have him call me, okay? It’s about the Kilbrides.”
“We’ll see,” the dispatcher said frostily, and hung up.
Shit, Julie thought. She’d come on too strong. She didn’t like her chances that the dispatcher would pass on her message.
Seconds after the dispatcher ended the call, a police car screamed past Julie in the passing lane, giving her a momentary heart attack. At first, illogically, she thought it had something to do with her call to the Promise Falls cops, but this was a New York State police car, the kind that regularly patrolled the interstate.
Julie watched as it continued to speed away from her, but as it got closer to the van it slipped into the lane behind it, rode there for a minute or so, and then the flashing lights came on.
“Yes!” Julie said as the van pulled over to the shoulder.
Julie did the same, killing her lights, but she kept driving along the shoulder, closing the distance between herself and the patrol car, so she could get a better look at what was going on. She figured if Ray and Thomas were actually being held against their will in that van, as she suspected, this would be the end of it. This would be their rescue.
The cop—it looked like a woman from here—approached the van. She shared some words with the driver, probably asking for license and registration. Then she went back to the cop car, got in, and sat there while the van waited.
“Come on, come on,” Julie said aloud.
A good three minutes went by before the cop got back out of her car and returned the paperwork to the driver. Then—hello, what was this? The driver—it was a woman, a blonde—was getting out, coming around to the back of the van with the cop.
She wants her to open up the back.
“Open the door open the door open the door.”
But just as the blonde had her hand on the lever, the cop turned and ran back to her cruiser, hopped in, and sped away.
“No!”
Julie could guess what had happened. Another, more urgent call had taken priority.
Maybe, when the trooper was talking to the driver, she’d noticed something in the back that raised her suspicions. Not actual bodies. If she’d thought she’d seen bodies—living or dead—she wouldn’t have headed off to another call. A large box, maybe? Some kind of container big enough to contain a body?
She had to have seen something.
“Shit,” Julie said as the flashing lights of the police car faded away in the distance. The woman got back into the van, and seconds later it continued on its way.
So did Julie.
Almost twenty minutes later, Julie’s cell rang. She answered without looking to see who it was.
“Hello.”
“Detective Duckworth here. What’s so important you have to get abusive with our dispatcher, Ms. McGill?”
“I think—okay, I don’t know for sure—but I think someone may have snatched Ray Kilbride and his brother.”
“What are you talking about?”
She told him about getting to the Kilbride house seconds after the van pulled out of the driveway. The fact that no one was home. The missing computer, the set of plastic cuffs.
“He was supposed to call me back,” Duckworth said.
“What?”
“Ray Kilbride called me. Then he was interrupted, said he was going to call me back soon, and he hasn’t.”
“I’m right,” Julie said. “They’ve been taken.”
“Who the hell would do that?” Duckworth asked. “Listen, I’m gonna go out to the Kilbride house, see what’s going on. You got the license plate on the van?”
“I’m not close enough to read it. When I had the chance, I wasn’t thinking.”
“Okay, look, anything happens with the van, call me at this number. This is my cell. Got that?”
“I got it.”
She stayed with the van.
THERE was an accident at the far end of the Lincoln Tunnel. Traffic was getting through a car at a time by the mouth. The white van was about five car lengths ahead. Once it was past the accident, it took off.
By the time Julie’s car was past the fender bender, and she drove onto the island of Manhattan, the van was nowhere to be seen.
“Motherfucker!” she shouted, banging her fist against the steering wheel.
SIXTY
AFTER pulling off the moving blankets and dragging me from the van, Nicole or Lewis tore off the tape that was binding my legs. But the ski mask stayed on. They led me through a door and guided me no more than half a dozen feet down what I supposed was a short hallway. My shoulder brushed up against a wall at one point, and wooden boards creaked below my feet. Hands from behind held both my shoulders, as though guiding me through a doorway.
Then the hands stopped me, and turned me 180 degrees.
“Sit,” Lewis said, working my bound arms over the back of what felt like a standard wooden chair, then shoving me down into it. Then he ran a couple loops of duct tape about my waist, securing me to the chair. He didn’t tape my ankles to the legs, so I moved them around in small circles, getting my blood circulating wherever I could. Suddenly, someone grabbed a fistful of ski mask at the top of my head and yanked, grabbing some of my hair in the process.
I blinked several times as my eyes adjusted to the light, although there wasn’t all that much of it. Lewis was standing directly in front of me, then moved out of the way as Nicole brought Thomas into the room. He was pushed down onto a second chair a couple of feet away from me, taped in, and then Nicole pulled his ski mask off. He blinked a couple of times, as I had, then exchanged a frightened glance with me.
“I’ll get the computer,” Lewis said. “And let Howard know we’re here.”
We were in a windowless room, about twelve by twelve, that had the feel of being the back of a shop. In one corner was a heavy, antique rolltop desk, the sliding door in the up position to allow for a computer. The various cubbyholes were jammed with paperwork, what looked like bills, receipts, newspaper clippings. The walls were almost entirely covered in shelves, made from the same kind of planks that made up the worn, wood floor. The shelves were crammed with old, musty books, antique clocks, Royal Doulton figurines, old-fashioned cameras with bellows that could be stretched out, accordion-style. But most of all, there were toys. Decades-old tinplate cars and trucks, the paint worn off by children who were very likely dead now. Pewter toy soldiers. Dinky Toys, like the ones I had when I was a kid. I spotted an Esso tanker truck my father had given me around the time I was three. An assortment of Batmobile models, in metal and plastic and in various scales. A set of lawn darts and hoops, like we once had and played with in the backyard until Thomas nearly speared the neighbor’s dog. A child-sized plastic fireman’s helmet in red with the word “Texaco” emblazoned across the front. Cardboard boxes of old board games based on long since canceled television shows, like Columbo, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Brady Bunch, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. And, of course, countless dolls. Barbies, Raggedy Anns, Cabbage Patch Kids, and life-sized plastic babies whose eyes would shut when you laid them flat. Some were minus limbs; others, heads. One shelf contained a collection of old metal robots; another a pile of tinplate trains that looked as though they’d been in a catastrophic wreck. Three black balls, each about the size of a squash ball, which I recognized as sixties-era Wham-O Super Balls, the kind that could bounce over a house.
But I did
n’t feel nostalgic, looking at these treasures from yesterday. What I felt was scared. Scared shitless.
Lewis returned with the computer tower and set it on the desk. He detached various cables from the computer that was there, then attached them to Thomas’s.
Nicole, expressionless, addressed Thomas and me. “Someone’s going to be asking you some questions, so the tape’s coming off. If either one of you starts yelling, I hurt the other one. Fast and hard. Are we clear?”
We both nodded. Nicole ripped the tape off me with one short, cruel, backhanded stroke. I winced, licked my lips, and tasted blood. When she did it to Thomas, he yelped. “That hurt!” he said, like he’d been kicked in the schoolyard. But then he immediately apologized to Nicole. “Sorry. I’ll be quiet. Don’t hurt Ray.”
I said to him, “You okay?”
He shook his head. “No. My arms hurt, my lips hurt, and I can’t feel my hands.”
I couldn’t feel mine, either. The plastic cuffs had cut off most of the circulation. I appealed to Nicole. “My brother’s hands, they’re probably turning blue. Mine, too. Can you help us out here?”
Lewis went into his backpack for a pair of orange-handled snippers. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he said as he cut my cuffs, then secured my wrists to the chair with duct tape. The blood rushed back into my fingers, and I closed and opened my hands a dozen times to get the tingling out of them. Lewis did the same thing for Thomas, then went back to work on the computer tower, hooking up the last of the cables and pressing the start button. The machine began to whir and the monitor he’d commandeered started lighting up.
Thomas said, “Anything that’s on there is confidential.”
The home screen, powder blue with only a couple of icons on it, cast a soft light across the room. There was one to open up an Internet browser, one for mail, one down in the corner for trash.