Perfect Nightmare

  As Kara opened her mouth to object to what she knew was coming next, Grant spoke again, quickly enough to cut her off.

  “Tell you what—I’ll call you in the morning.” He handed Steve a card. “If she shows up, give me a call at this number, no matter what time it is.”

  “That’s it?” Kara said, staring at the officer. “My daughter’s been abducted and all you do is take a quick look around the house and ask us questions for half an hour?” Though his partner had the decency to redden at Kara’s words—presumably in embarrassment—Sergeant Grant only took a deep breath.

  “I’m afraid there’s not much more we can do right now, Mrs. Marshall,” he said. “Given that there aren’t any signs of a forced entry or a struggle—or anything else that would suggest she was taken against her will—I’m afraid we have no choice but to wait twenty-four hours. And I have to tell you, the odds are overwhelming that she’ll come home, or at least call you.” As Kara started to interrupt him, he held up a hand—as if no matter what she was going to say, he’d heard it all before. “Look, I know what you read in the papers and see on TV about how many perverts there are out there, but I have to tell you, it’s not nearly as bad as everyone thinks. If we went chasing after every kid that took off for a night or two, we wouldn’t have time to do anything else.”

  “But she said—” Kara began, and once again Grant didn’t let her finish.

  “I know. There was an open house, and she thought someone was going through her stuff.”

  “And there was another open house today,” Kara insisted. “Which is why I don’t understand why you’re so interested in looking for signs that someone broke in. Anyone could have just walked into the house, hidden, and waited for Lindsay to come home!”

  Grant and his partner exchanged a glance, and then Grant frowned and reopened the clipboard he’d closed as he stood up. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to talk to the agent,” he said. “Do you have his home phone number?”

  As the two officers left the house a minute or two later, Kara wondered if they were going to talk to Mark Acton or whether they’d just taken his number to appease her.

  She strongly suspected it was the latter.

  And she hated it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Pain.

  Pounding pain, hammering at her head like a great mallet.

  Pain so overpowering that it was all Lindsay felt as she slowly rose up through the layers of consciousness.

  She tried to shrink back from it, tried to sink back into the blessed nonreality of unconsciousness, but the pain wouldn’t let her.

  And with consciousness came the memories.

  Memories of him. Except they were barely memories at all, for she had no face to put to them.

  Only impressions.

  Hands closing on her ankles.

  Then he was on top of her, scuttling out from beneath the bed like a rat from the sewer, his weight pinning her to the floor, crushing her.

  Then there had been something over her face, pressing down on her, and she couldn’t breathe and tried to struggle but she wasn’t strong enough and she thought she was going to vomit and—

  Nothing.

  She opened her mouth to scream, to cry out against the blackness and the throbbing pain in her head, but before any sound could escape her throat, she cut it off.

  Quiet, she commanded herself. Be still and make no sound and maybe it will go away. Maybe the pounding will stop.

  Maybe it’s just another bad dream.

  Lindsay tried to take a deep breath, but her heart was racing harder and faster, which made her head hurt even more, and she knew it wasn’t just a bad dream.

  She moaned, and heard the sound of it echo hollowly.

  Where was she?

  Panic rose up now, and she tried to move, but couldn’t. It was like the terrible helplessness of nightmares in which her feet felt mired in mud and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t escape whatever terror pursued her. But this was even worse.

  Her wrists were so tightly bound to the arms of a hard chair that she couldn’t move them at all, and her hands felt numb. Both her ankles were bound to the front legs of the chair, and something in front of her neck held her head utterly immobile—even the slightest movement made her feel as if a blade was about to slash into her throat.

  As the wave of panic threatened to break over her, Lindsay suddenly knew with terrible clarity that if she gave in to it and began thrashing against her bindings, she would surely die, her neck laid open by the razor-sharp edge she could feel against her larynx. Forcing the panic down, holding it at bay by nothing but her will, she pulled against her bonds.

  And flinched again as fire shot through her right wrist, the one she’d injured at practice.

  The pain in her wrist penetrated the throbbing in her head, and more memories came slinking back into her consciousness.

  He had been under her bed all along!

  She felt sick as she remembered peeling off her shorts and T-shirt.

  He’d been under her bed, watching her all along.

  Watching her, and listening as she talked to Dawn.

  Listening and waiting and—

  She breathed as deeply as she could against the wave of panic suddenly looming over her again.

  Where was she? The air smelled moldy and damp. Like Dawn’s basement.

  With each deep breath, her head cleared a little more. He’d covered her face with something, and then her nostrils had filled with fumes that made her sick.

  She’d fought—fought as hard as she could—but he was heavy, and her wrist had hurt and—

  He’d said something—whispered something.

  Angel. He’d called her Angel.

  Then nothing.

  Blackness.

  Quiet.

  Unconsciousness.

  Now there was still blackness around her, and quiet, too. But she was no longer unconscious. She was alive, and awake, and whatever had happened, it wasn’t a dream. She began going over her body, trying to feel every part of herself. Nothing seemed broken, nor was she bleeding anywhere, at least not badly.

  So she wasn’t hurt.

  Just bound to some kind of chair, with a terrible taste in her mouth.

  She tried to think, to tell herself it was going to be all right. She was smart, and strong, and somehow she would get out of this.

  She’d escape.

  Just the thought of finding a way out somewhat calmed her, and as her pulse slowed and the agony in her head finally began to recede, she concentrated on the blackness around her.

  She was in a room, and it was dark and cold and damp.

  Her wrists were bound to the chair with something.

  Not rope.

  Duct tape?

  Yes, that had to be it—duct tape.

  And something was pressing against her throat, holding her head in place.

  She licked her lips, trying to get rid of the bad taste in her mouth.

  Then, out of the darkness, she heard something.

  A whimpering sound.

  She froze.

  What was it?

  A dog?

  She heard it again, and even in the darkness, Lindsay was certain it wasn’t a dog.

  Was it possible she wasn’t alone?

  She wanted to call out, to cry for help from the unseen person in the darkness.

  But what if it was him?

  Then the sound came again, but this time she was almost sure it wasn’t just a sound.

  This time it sounded like a word.

  And then it came again, still almost inaudible, but clear enough for Lindsay to hear: “H-Help . . .”

  The voice trailed off, and Lindsay’s mind spun. She wasn’t alone!

  There was someone else here!

  Someone who could help her? Without thinking, she spoke into the darkness. “Who is it?” she whispered. But her voice emerged from her throat as little more than a low croaking sound, the words barely compreh
ensible even to herself.

  There was a silence for a moment that seemed to go on forever, and then she heard another sound.

  “Shh . . .” the voice said, quivering in the darkness. “Shhh . . .”

  More silence.

  As Lindsay began to wonder if she’d actually heard anything at all, the voice spoke again.

  A fragile voice, barely audible.

  A girl’s voice.

  “Shannon . . .”

  The voice fell silent, and once again the silence—and the darkness—closed around her.

  Chapter Twenty

  “This is crazy!” Kara exploded. “We’re sitting here, helpless, waiting! Waiting for what? Waiting for nothing. Waiting for no reason!”

  “Kara . . .” Through red-rimmed eyes, Steve looked at her from the shadows of his wing chair. Tiredly, he rubbed his unshaven chin.

  “It’s seven o’clock,” she said. “The sun’s been up for an hour and I’m not waiting any longer! I’m calling the police again—they have to do something!”

  “Honey, it hasn’t been anywhere near twenty-four hours—” Steve began, but Kara cut him off.

  “I have to do something. I can’t just sit here and wait for the phone to ring. I’ve called everyone and every place I can think of, and she’s not with anyone she knows and she’s not in any of the hospitals—not on Long Island, anyway—and I can’t just sit here and wait for a ransom note or somebody to find a body—” Putting voice to that thought for the first time was like a punch in her own chest, and Kara sagged back. But a second later she rose from the couch and began to pace.

  And to pick at her last remaining undamaged fingernail.

  “Make some coffee, babe,” Steve said, searching for something—anything—to distract her.

  He didn’t have to ask twice.

  “Coffee,” she said, her voice taking on an almost hysterical edge. “Okay, I’ll make coffee. And I’ll wait. I’ll wait until eight o’clock. But at eight o’clock I’m calling Sergeant Grant.”

  Too tired to argue, and every bit as frightened and exhausted as his wife, Steve nodded.

  Kara put the coffeepot on, then came back to fidget once more on the edge of the couch. “I feel like I want to go do her laundry. I want to change her sheets and clean her room and—and—” Her voice faltered and she fell silent. “I’m so scared,” she finally whispered. “What if—” she began again, but now her voice dissolved into a helpless sob.

  “Shhh,” Steve said, rousing himself from his chair and going to her. He put his arms around her and drew her close, and a moment later thought he felt some of the tension in her body ease.

  Kara rubbed the tears from her cheeks, pulled away from him and went back to the kitchen. She returned with a cup of coffee for each of them. “At eight o’clock I’m going to call the police, and the newspapers,” she declared. “And then I’m going to make flyers and start taking them around. Somebody must have seen something!”

  “Kara—” Steve began, but she shook her head, cutting off his protest.

  “What do you expect me to do, Steve?” she asked. “Sit here like a helpless idiot while nobody does anything?”

  “The police—”

  “This is not Sergeant Grant’s daughter we’re talking about,” Kara said, her voice taking on an edge. “He thinks she ran away, remember? He’s not going to do anything.” She felt a mixture of panic and anger begin to rise inside her, and in the end it was the panic that won out. “Oh, God,” she sobbed, and collapsed onto the couch again. But as quickly as the panic overcame her, she forced it back. Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself and stood up. “I’ve got to do something.” Taking her coffee cup, she headed upstairs, leaving Steve sitting alone in the living room.

  In the silence, Steve’s exhaustion from the sleepless night began to overtake him, and despite his worry about Lindsay, his eyes drifted shut.

  And then Kara screamed.

  Steve sat bolt upright in the wingback chair and for one terrible instant thought that Kara must have found Lindsay.

  And she was dead.

  Then Kara yelled again. “It’s gone, Steve!”

  “What?” he called back, taking the stairs two at a time. When he got to the top, Kara was waiting for him, her face ashen, a slipper—one of Lindsay’s slippers—clutched in her right hand. “Her blanket’s gone!” Kara said. “The one she always kept folded at the foot of her bed. And I can’t find her other slipper.” She gazed at him, her eyes wide, her voice bleak. “Where’s her other slipper, Steve?”

  Steve ran his hands through his hair and massaged his scalp. “Did you look in her closet? Under the bed?”

  Kara’s look told him she had. “I’m calling the police again,” she said, her tone leaving no room for argument. “Right now.”

  Steve nodded and followed her back down to the kitchen, feeling utterly useless. All night he had tried to convince Kara that the police were right, that Lindsay had just taken off somewhere and would come home when she cooled off.

  And not once had he taken the time to go upstairs and look around the room for himself—to look at it the way Kara just had.

  Now, seeing that single worn and forlorn-looking slipper in Kara’s hand, he was finally as terrified for his daughter as his wife was.

  But it might already be too late . . .

  Mark Acton and Sergeant Grant arrived at almost the same time. Steve poured each of them a cup of coffee while Kara introduced the two men, then told Grant what she’d been doing all night, from calling every one of Lindsay’s friends—and every one of their friends—to calling every hospital and police department on Long Island, and then she told Grant about finding the slipper and the missing blanket. But even as she spoke, she could see in Sergeant Grant’s eyes that he didn’t feel nearly as certain about what had happened as she did.

  Mark Acton, apparently stunned by what Kara was saying, handed his logbook to Grant. “Your girl is missing?” he kept repeating, over and over again, as if the concept were somehow evading him.

  “She isn’t technically missing yet,” Grant said, “given that it hasn’t been twenty-four hours since she—” He hesitated, saw the look of cold fury in Kara’s eyes, and smoothly shifted gears. “—that she’s been gone,” he went on, glancing at the names in the book as he spoke. His eyes shifted to Acton. “Did everybody sign in?”

  The agent shrugged. “It was busy—I was talking with people the whole time. I’m pretty sure everybody signed in, but—” He spread his hands helplessly. “I always ask them to, but I guess I can’t be sure.”

  “Did you see everybody leave?” Grant asked, more to appease Kara Marshall than because he thought there might be any merit to the idea she’d expressed last night and repeated again this morning.

  Mark took the guest book back from the policeman and looked down the list of names. But now his hands were sweating and he was trembling, and he was sure the sergeant knew just how nervous policemen made him.

  Kara Marshall noticed it as well, and her eyes bored into Grant, willing him to see what she was seeing. But if he was aware of Mark Acton’s nervousness, he gave no sign.

  “Rick Mancuso was at both open houses,” Acton finally replied. “He’s an agent with Century 21. I remember him coming in yesterday, but I’m not sure I remember seeing him leave.” He pointed to the name near the bottom of the list.

  Kara fixed her eyes on Acton. “Did anybody—” She hesitated, searching for the right word, then settled for the first one that came to mind. “—strange come through?”

  “Strange?” The question seemed to catch him off guard.

  Sergeant Grant took back the logbook and, to Kara’s relief, picked up the thread of her question. “Anybody who seemed out of place? Nervous?”

  “It’s a public event,” Acton said, shrugging. “We get lots of strange people.” He paused, reflecting. “Nobody who stood out.”

  “And what did you do afterward?” Grant asked.

  “A
fterward? After the open house?”

  Grant nodded.

  “Went to Fishburn's, like I always do. Had a couple of beers, ate a little something, went home and watched television.”

  Grant eyed the agent speculatively for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. “Thanks for your time,” he said. “If I have any more questions, I’ll be in touch with you.”

  Mark Acton shot off the couch and almost ran toward the door.

  “I’ve got some things to follow up on, Mrs. Marshall,” Grant said, rising to his feet as the front door closed behind the real estate agent.

  “And I’ve got a reporter from the Sentinel-Gazette coming over at ten,” Kara replied, her eyes fixing on the policeman as if daring him to ask her not to talk to the press. To his credit, he only nodded, and then she pressed a wallet-sized school photo of Lindsay into his hand. “She’s our only child,” she said. “Please—you’ve got to find her. I’m begging you.”

  “She’ll be home,” Grant assured her, but she could see in his eyes that he wasn’t as certain as he’d been last night.

  “Only if we find whoever took her,” Kara said.

  Grant looked at her appraisingly, clearly taking her measure. Then: “I’ll be in touch.” He shook hands with Steve, who opened the door for him, and when the door closed behind him, the house again was quiet.

  Too quiet, and too empty.

  “No,” Kara said softly, “I’ll be the one in touch.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Everything about the place had changed, and though Claire Shields Sollinger knew exactly why it had changed—and when that change had come—she still wasn’t used to it. Until last Christmas, she’d always felt a sense of peace fall over her as she waited for the big estate gates to swing open. Today, though, her fingers tapped nervously on the steering wheel of her Range Rover as the gates moved back. She looked again at the newspaper on the seat beside her and firmed her resolve as Lindsay Marshall’s eyes seemed to look right into her own.