“We certainly all hope that but it’s unlikely. Kidnapping victims rarely escape, and this seems to have been a very professional operation.”
“It does, doesn’t it? What do you think of the terrorist connection?”
“I haven’t seen any indication that this was done by terrorists,” Erin said flatly. Tabloid journalists liked to probe with outrageous questions, hoping to get a reply they could creatively edit in order to further their own pet theories.
Bridges changed tack.
“This case must strike close to home, being a kidnapping, I mean.”
“I’ve worked on kidnappings before. Last year I helped locate a little girl who had been abducted by her estranged father.”
Bridges leaned forward, interested now. “Tell me about it.”
Erin gave him what he wanted, relieved to finally be on safer ground. It had been an open-and-shut case, really. The father and mother had finally broken up several years after two sane people would have gotten a divorce. He’d moved out, spent months not speaking to her or their daughter, and then finally decided to be a daddy again by abducting his own daughter from right in front of her school. The mom hadn’t wanted to call the cops since both she and the estranged husband were mid-level marijuana dealers in East Providence.
There hadn’t been much doubt as to the identity of the abductor, and finding him had been simplicity itself. Erin felt like printing up a t-shirt saying, “PRO TIP: If you commit a major crime, stop hanging out at your favorite bar.”
Of course all this was confidential information, so she changed the details just enough that she wouldn’t breach confidentiality.
“Sounds like an easy one, unworthy of your talents.” Bridges chuckled, then turned serious, or at least attempted a look of concern. “But how did that make you feel? Being hot on the trail of an abducted girl must have brought up all sorts of issues for you.”
Erin shrugged. “Actually, I didn’t really think about it all that much. I was too busy trying to crack the case, and it wasn’t really all that similar.”
As soon as she said it she realized her answer had been a mistake. Bridges was sure to write about how she was in denial. He’d probably get some hack psychologist to back up his theory too, insert some smug little analysis to get his readers nodding their heads. Yes, that’s right, I was thinking the same thing. The poor dear is in denial.
With a little smile, Bridges went on.
“So what motivated you to become a private investigator?”
Erin shrugged. She saw no reason to dodge this one since the answer was obvious enough.
“I’ve lived with the legacy of my kidnapping all my life. That made me naturally interested in psychology and criminal justice. Of course I had therapy growing up—the last article in the Daily Review dwelled on that far too long, I think—and while I don’t have any real trauma from those days, I’ve been left with lingering questions. My therapists instilled in me an interest in psychology so I majored in it when I went to college. I also double-majored in criminal justice. I decided to become a private investigator. I learned under an experienced firm for a few years here in New York City before moving back to Providence to be with my father and start my own practice.”
Bridges shifted in his seat, leaning forward a little like all these journalists did when they were about to pop a big question.
“You say that you have no trauma from those times, but many unanswered questions. One of the mysteries of your kidnapping is that you were found with the number thirty-one scrawled on your hand. You just turned thirty-one a couple of weeks ago. Has that had any sort of psychological effect?”
Erin put on her best poker face. “Not at all. I doubt that was what my abductor meant when he put that number on my hand.”
She couldn’t imagine that her poker face was convincing, but she wasn’t about to tell the truth to this hack. That damn number had been an obsession all her life. When she had looked for her first apartment in New York, she had found the perfect one with a great view and rent that wasn’t outrageous, but pulled out at the last minute when she’d discovered to her horror that Bus 31 passed right in front of it. She had avoided friends’ thirty-first birthday parties, and made excuses for not having one of her own. In the week leading up to that day she had woken up every night in a cold sweat, flashes of memory fading from her conscious mind along with her dreams.
They came only as fragments, confused images and sounds she couldn’t put in place. He was there, the old man with the hands. She had a vague impression of a pale face with a prominent chin, but no more. She had heard his voice again too, and yet could never remember what he had said to her in her sleep. All she could recall was that he seemed to be telling her things, giving her instructions, making her repeat things so that she wouldn’t forget.
But she had forgotten. She had no idea what those things were.
And the dreams never got clear even though they kept on coming.
Every night they came, and every night she’d wake up in a cold sweat, his image fading like a ghost, his voice echoing through the years.
She went through the days in a haze, sluggish and exhausted, or wired from too much coffee. Her work suffered and she took a day off, only to end up pacing in her room the entire time. At last she resorted to sleeping pills.
The pills helped, but she still woke up in the morning with a vague, unsettled feeling that she’d had those dreams anyway.
She loathed sleeping pills, and if she hadn’t been so desperate to get some rest she would have never taken them. He had used them on her, keeping her in a daze for the eleven months of her abduction. Her doctors had told her parents that there shouldn’t be any long-term effects, but how could they know? It wasn’t as if anyone had done any laboratory tests on the effect of a year of sleeping pills on five-year-olds.
Bridges studied her with a clinical look.
“We sure?” he asked.
“I don’t think we will ever know what that number meant,” she said in all honesty. She had given up trying to figure it out years ago.
The journalist shrugged. Erin got the impression that he’d fill in the blanks later to his satisfaction.
His next two questions were softball, something about her work habits and the funniest case she ever had. This was a typical trick by journalists to give a nervous interview subject more confidence. She knew all their tricks by now.
There were a few more questions after that, obvious questions about her career, other cases she’d worked on, and a few more probes about the Isabel case that she answered obliquely or not at all. He wrapped up sooner than she expected, glancing at his watch. Erin figured he must be on a deadline to make the next day’s morning edition in England. Since it was afternoon here, the night editor in London would be waiting for him.
They walked out together. Erin tried to relax. Well, it hadn’t been too bad, and that money would pay off part of the nursing bill.
“Thank you for the interview. Best of luck and hope to see you soon,” Bridges said, stopping right outside the door and fishing out a packet of cigarettes from his pocket.
As he lit up, the flare of the lighter was like a light going on in Erin’s head.
Isabel had gone out for a cigarette break in the service parking garage. Erin hadn’t known that Isabel smoked. In fact, she couldn’t recall a single photo or movie that showed Isabel smoking — it didn’t fit Isabel’s image.
The general public didn’t know Isabel smoked, but whoever abducted her had bet on the fact that after the press conference she’d go out to the nearest quiet place where she could smoke and waited for her there. Not only did the abductor know Isabel smoked, but that she smoked right after tough moments like that press conference.
That meant that whoever abducted her was someone close to her.
And not only that, it was someone who had known quite a bit about her movements and plans. The Wall Street protest had been very close to her abduction, so the press con
ference had been a hastily planned response to Isabel’s arrest and release on bail. The abductor would have had to work fast to get to know the layout of the building and guess where Isabel would smoke her cigarette after facing the cameras. Erin had studied a blueprint of the building and the parking garage was the most obvious route from the conference room. All Isabel had to do was go straight out along the least busy area, through a kitchen, and out into the garage. It was really the only likely route for her to take, but to know that you had to know the building, and you had to know Isabel.
But wait, what about the van? It had been stolen a week before. And that magnetic sign would have taken some time to do. Had the abductor planned all that in advance and kept the van ready, awaiting the best chance?
Whoever had taken Isabel had run a terrible risk. Someone that close to her could surely have found a safer time and place to abduct her than right after a press conference in a building full of reporters and surrounded by police and protestors.
Maybe that had been the point. Maybe the perp was a chronic risk-taker. Or maybe whisking her away right out of the public eye was part of a message. Maybe the kidnapper wanted to make a statement.
But if the abductor wanted to make a statement, why hadn’t there been a note or some other sort of announcement? Why the silence?
Was the act itself the statement? A sort of thumbing of the nose at society and authority, a way to make the abductor feel powerful?
Erin licked her lips, her mouth dry.
Or maybe the message the abductor wanted to send might come in the form of Isabel Morales’s corpse.
Erin was so embroiled in her own thoughts she did not notice that the disheveled man who had been sitting at the next table sipping a frappuccino got up right after they did and strolled out of the Starbucks. He paused when they paused, browsing the papers and magazines at a nearby newsstand and picking out a copy of the Daily News with a banner headline about the Isabel kidnapping.
When Erin turned to go, the man tucked the newspaper under his arm and followed her from a discreet distance.
Chapter 7
Isabel awoke. Despite her terror, the exhaustion of the previous day had pulled her into unconsciousness. She didn’t know how long she had slept, but it felt like she had slept through the night. It was impossible to tell in this cellar, though. She rubbed her eyes and looked around. The televisions still showed the frozen image of her bare body.
The screens brightly illuminated her and her cage, bathing them in a brilliant flesh tone.
Something else caught her attention. A thermos and a covered plate sat at the end of her bed. Next to it stood a bucket with a lid and a roll of toilet paper. He had crept up to her cage while she slept.
She shuddered and looked around. He had been here. She felt her skin crawl at the thought. Had he touched her? She felt ill again, as ill as when she had been locked in that box in the back of the van.
Isabel looked at the covered plate again. Curious, she popped the lid off and saw two omelets. Breakfast. It must be morning of the next day. The food was still a little warm but not hot. It had been sitting here for a while. The thermos contained hot tea.
A tightness in her bladder made her look at the bucket. She had to go, and she had to go pretty soon.
Isabel glanced at the camera on the ceiling, pointing right at her. Was that perv looking at her right now?
She grimaced. There was no point holding it in. She could wait a while, but sooner or later she would have to relieve herself. She moved over the bucket, slipped her underwear down, and tried to use her dress to shield herself from view as she squatted down, drawing the dress around the bucket as she let out a stream of urine that rang loudly against the metal side of the bucket.
A metallic laugh came from the sound system.
“Oh, now you’re modest? I thought you were proud to show off your body, Isabel. Why the change of heart?”
“Go to hell!” Isabel sobbed.
Once she was done, she pulled her underwear up again and covered the bucket before going over to the breakfast and starting to eat. She felt too nervous and sick to eat, and this was a far bigger breakfast than she ever ate even on a day she wasn’t dieting, but she had to keep up her strength. She wasn’t dead by a long shot. If that freak showed up right now he’d get a bucket of urine in the face.
The metallic voice stayed silent throughout her meal.
Once she was done it spoke.
“Feel around the outside of the bar just to your right and you will find a latch,” it said. “It will open a small hatch so that you can put out the bucket and breakfast plate.”
Isabel saw that the bars were seamed in a small hatchway about a foot across. It was clearly visible, but she had missed it in the half-light and panic of the night before.
She glanced around at the rest of the cage, hoping to see another door. There was only the one she had seen the night before, firmly padlocked.
A metallic chuckle echoed through the cellar.
“Don’t be silly, Isabel. Now put out the plate and the bucket. I’ll refill the thermos with water and give you back the bucket once I’ve cleaned it.”
Isabel’s heart fluttered. That meant he would finally reveal himself.
She needed to fight, but what with?
“I’m not done with the breakfast, may I keep some for later?” she called out.
“You are done, Isabel. I will not let you keep the plate so you can fling it at me. You are a fighter, I’ll give you that. A fighter and a harlot.”
Slumping her shoulders, Isabel opened the latch and did as she was told. She decided to test him by putting out the breakfast materials and the bucket but leaving the roll of toilet paper in the cage. Isabel had no idea how she could use that as a weapon but anything she could get might prove useful in some way.
Isabel studied the hatch. It looked too small to worm her way through, and even if she could she’d be seen. This sicko seemed to spend his entire time in front of the monitor, watching her.
“Who are you? Mark? John?” She called out the names of her cameraman and video editor. “What do you want with me?”
A metallic laugh came through the sound system. “I am neither. Why do you think I am one of them? Because of the raw footage? No, I’m someone just as close, but someone you never see.”
“What are you going to do?” she demanded, pressing herself against the bars.
“I’m going to give you your wish, Isabel. I’m going to make you beautiful forever.”
With a snap all the televisions turned off at once, leaving her in utter darkness.
Isabel froze.
For several minutes she stood there, ears perked as she listened to nothing but silence, eyes straining to see any shade but black.
Wait, what was that? A faint rattle and creak of a door, and the faintest glimmer of light, like a reflection of a reflection, the barest graying of the black.
Then another rattle and the glimmer disappeared, making her wonder if it had only been in her imagination.
A long moment of silence. Isabel stepped onto her mattress, getting into the center of the cage, her gut twisting with the knowledge that no matter where she stood she remained within easy reach of anyone outside the bars.
Creak, creak, creak.
The sound of someone descending old wooden steps. Isabel got the impression that whoever was coming down was deliberately making noise.
Creak, creak, creak.
But how could he see? It was pitch black in here.
Silence.
Isabel shivered, eyes bugging. Where was he?
A faint ding on the bars to her left made her jump and scream.
She clamped her hand to her mouth, instinctively thinking that she could hide. But she knew that was hopeless. He knew right where she was.
That had sounded like a small metal object banging against the steel bars, like a key or a coin.
Or a knife.
Then she heard another s
ound.
Breathing.
It sounded muffled, heavy and low like the dirty phone calls she sometimes got in hotel rooms. Why hadn’t she heard it before?
It came from her left, the same direction as that metallic sound against her cage.
The breathing moved, slowly going behind her. She turned to face it, staring into the darkness. How did he see?
Ding.
Isabel jumped again. The heavy breathing continued.
Her abductor continued to circle, coming around to the next side of her cage.
Ding.
Still he circled, his path marked by the sound of his breathing. He came to the front, where the door and the hatch stood.
Isabel jerked and flung herself to the far end of the cage as the padlock rattled.
She strained her ears, dreading the sound of the padlock being unlocked and the door swinging open. The thought of that monster approaching her in the pitch darkness made her sick with terror.
But those sounds never came. Instead she heard some faint sounds near the floor. Her bucket, plate, and thermos being moved?
The breathing receded.
Creak, creak, creak.
He was ascending the stairs, but instead of feeling relief all that knowledge gave her was renewed panic.
“Kill me! Just kill me and get it over with!” she screamed and sobbed. “I can’t take this anymore!”
The only response she got was creak, creak, creak.
She heard the door open. Through eyes made blurry with tears she saw the faint glimmer of light, and then the glimmer faded.
And she knew she was alone, and that it wasn’t over until he decided it was over. She might be here for hours, days, months, years. She might grow to be an old woman in this cage, gawked at and tortured by this maniac.
And there was nothing she could do about it.
She curled up on her mattress, cradling the roll of toilet paper like a teddy bear. In a distant part of her mind she realized how foolish that was, but it felt like she had scored a little victory. She had kept something from him. Perhaps he’d noticed and hadn’t cared, because she would need it again and it was of no danger to him, but in a small way she had defied him.