“At this early stage of development, what is the growing organism called?” He waited. “What? Right. An embryo. Good, Anna.” He made another mark.
His questions and answers continued this way until he reached “How does the mother’s body begin to change during the first trimester?” He paused, smiled, and brought his face very close to hers. “You don’t have to think too hard about this one, Anna, do you?”
His hands moved to her breasts.
“Don’t your breasts feel fuller? Don’t they tingle? Of course, I don’t know how large your breasts were before, do I, Anna? How large were they? Or is it too early to tell the difference? I don’t really know that much about maternity. Mommy’s the mommy expert. But,” he added, his hands still gliding over her breasts and along her ribs, “your body is a wonderful place for a baby to be formed. That’s not true for every woman either. I’ve seen women who look like they would be the last place I would want my baby formed.”
His fingers paused at her nipples. He rolled his thumbs over them, tracing them beneath the soft nightie. His breathing quickened, his eyes grew smaller.
“Baby’s lips are going to like this. Yes, they will.”
Small beads of sweat broke out on his brow. His tongue glided over his lips.
“Mommy understands that I have to feel like Daddy, you know. She understood before; she’ll understand now,” he said.
He took the test paper from her lap and put it on the table. Then he stared at Anna a moment before he said almost in a whisper, “I’m sure you can understand too.”
Anna didn’t turn her head; Anna didn’t hear him. She didn’t see him drop his robe to his feet, and she didn’t feel his hand on her shoulder. There was just a little resistance to the pressure he put on her upper body before she was forced back. Her head was on the pillow, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. She blinked, her eyelids closing for a full second before she opened them, only to blink the same way once again.
She didn’t feel his hands move the nightgown up her legs and over her hips. He grunted and crawled over her and between her thighs.
“Got to feel like Daddy,” he chanted. “Got to make a baby too.”
When he entered her, she started to scream, but her mouth locked open and her tongue lay still. The scream began and died somewhere deep within her where she was closed up in the fetal position, a fist, squeezing harder, tighter.
She couldn’t hear his grunts and his chants.
“It’s just Daddy,” he said. “It’s just Daddy making a baby. Don’t be afraid.”
He shuddered as if he had a cold chill down his spine and grew still, but there was just the slightest realization in Anna that he had finished and withdrew. He lifted himself and sat back, gazing at her glassy eyes, her mouth still agape, and then he looked frantically at the door.
He got off the bed quickly and put on his robe.
“You better stop this, Anna. If Mommy sees you this way, she’ll…change her mind about you. She’ll think you won’t be a good baby-maker and then…then you’ll have to be disposed of, Anna.”
Anna didn’t move. He returned to the bed and pulled her nightie down. He tucked her under the cover and patted the pillow before placing it beneath her head. Her head felt like a melon in his hands. He couldn’t stand looking at that open mouth and tried to close it, but her jaw was locked.
“Stop this, Anna. Stop this now.” He raised his hand as if to slap her, but she didn’t react and he lowered it.
“You’ll be all right,” he decided. “You’ll have a good night’s rest and you’ll be fine.” He picked up the test paper. “Mommy will be so happy when she sees your answers on the test,” he said, and stroked her hair tenderly. “It’s very important you understand the miracle happening inside you.”
Then he smiled.
“I’m going to be a father. I’ll be a good father too,” he added. “Don’t you worry about that. Don’t you worry about anything. You just go to sleep and dream good dreams. Dream of the baby going, ‘Goo-goo.’ That’s what Mommy dreams of every night. She tells me. The baby’s going, ‘Goo-goo,’ and in her dream she’s feeding the baby at her breast and she looks absolutely radiant. Just dream that,” he advised.
He took a deep breath, gazed around like a proud father, and strutted to the door. “Good night. Mommy will see you in the morning, and I’ll see you after work.
“It’s wonderful, how we all just get along, isn’t it?” he added.
He unlocked the door, flipped off the lights, stepped out, and closed the door. After he locked it, he walked away, his footsteps quickly growing softer and softer on the stairway until they were gone.
Anna blinked, even in the darkness.
Some moments later she began to unfold herself within and gradually grow until she fit her body again. She was positive that she had just regained consciousness and everything that had happened to her, right up to the last hour, was nothing more than a nightmare.
Thank God, she thought, thank God, I’m only dreaming. She breathed relief and then sat up quickly, but the chain rattled and the collar fell against her throat. It was as if someone had poured a glass of ice water down the back of her neck to assure her that she was in reality.
She moaned and crawled off the bed. It was so dark. She started to whimper, when suddenly the door was thrust open. She hadn’t even heard the lock being turned or any footsteps on the stairway.
He was there again. He appeared as if he had never truly left but instead had lingered on the other side of the door.
He flipped on the light. Anna shut her eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I completely forgot to put on the night-light in the bathroom for you. Mommy reminded me and sent me back and, sure enough, here you are, struggling to find your way, aren’t you? Mommy is so smart. She just knows everything that’s going to happen before it does. Anyway, I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
He crossed the room, went into the bathroom, and turned on a small light.
“There you are,” he said. “Happy dreams.”
He flipped off the ceiling light, closed and locked the door again, and walked away. She heard him move quickly up the stairway.
Anna looked toward the bathroom. She felt so tired, even too tired to walk the few yards, but she did so.
Afterward she returned to the bed and fell on her side, folding her legs in the fetal position and putting her hand to her mouth. She lay there for a while, just listening to her heart pound and that monotonous grinding noise coming from beyond the walls.
He raped me, she thought. Oh, God, he raped me. She felt contaminated and wanted to tear the skin off her body. How many ways and how many times would she be violated? Pity for herself quickly changed to rage.
“They can’t do this to me,” she muttered. The defiance built in her and she pumped up her courage. “I won’t let them do this.”
She rose and followed the chain back to where it was embedded in the wall. She pulled until it cut into the palms of her hands, but she didn’t budge it an iota from where it was attached.
Even if she could open that door, she thought, she couldn’t escape until she found a way to break this chain. All they had left her was a toothbrush, a hairbrush, soap, shampoo, toilet paper. She didn’t know if there was anything else in the room. She went to the light switch and turned it on. Then she returned to where the chain was embedded and studied the hook that had been screwed into the cement wall. The chain was attached to that. She tried to turn the hook, but she didn’t have the strength.
There must be a way, she thought. There must be. She walked around the small room, looking for something to use as a tool. She was the daughter of a stonemason; she had watched her father work for years. Something of his mechanical talent must have been passed through to her in the genes. She paused in the bathroom doorway and considered the plumbing. Her gaze centered on the bathtub faucet handles. She studied them a moment. They were long, narrow, and looked like they were
made of stainless steel. She turned one in the opposite direction and, as she had hoped, it unscrewed.
Once it was off, she took it back to the hook in the wall, put it through the eye to use it the way she had seen her father use a crowbar, and tried to turn the screw. It didn’t budge. She paused, took a deep breath, and tried again, pulling the bottom of the faucet with two fingers of her left hand as she pushed on the top with her right. There was a tiny movement.
Encouraged, she put all her strength behind another attempt, pressing her body weight into it. Again there was just a tiny movement. She paused, caught her breath, and then, using the base of her palm like a hammer, struck the faucet handle repeatedly. It reddened her palm and hurt, but she kept it up. Some of the cement flaked away and the screw turned just a bit more.
She paused again, regained her strength, and tried to turn, laying her entire body weight against the top of the handle. She discerned more of a movement. She had caused almost a quarter of a turn. Heartened, she kept it up until she was exhausted.
But now at least she had hope. She could eventually free this chain from the wall and thus make it possible to walk out of here, even with the chain attached to the collar around her neck. But first, of course, she had to get that door open, or hope that they would forget to lock it once.
She gazed at the faucet handle. It was scratched and even a bit dented from her use of it as a tool. They might notice that, she thought. She quickly wiped up the tiny particles of cement that had been chipped away and then returned the faucet handle to its place on the tub.
She would just have to be alert and wait for an opportunity, but she wouldn’t die here and she would never let these two horrible people have the baby growing inside her.
Hope stopped her tears, silenced her screams, and gave her the strength to go to sleep, even in this prison of madness.
10
At the first traffic light, McShane dug into his pocket and produced the index card with Lidia Ambrook’s address. She was the one who had left a message on Anna Gold’s answering machine. Her address took him past the Monticello trotter racetrack to a complex of modest cream stucco town houses. He located Lidia’s unit and pulled into the closest parking space.
The chill that he had felt earlier intensified after the sun had dropped under the horizon. A shelf of Arctic air was clearing the way for winter, leaving no doubt that the first snowfall was imminent. The last two winters had been characterized more by sleet than snow. Icy rains filled with pneumonia and flu fell from the angry skies. Now, with his separation and divorce from Cookie looking more and more inevitable, McShane toyed with the idea of migrating to a warmer climate, maybe the Southwest. Of course, everyone would accuse him of running from his problems instead of solving them, which was Cookie’s chief accusation. But he could live with that, couldn’t he? Especially while he basked in the warm sunshine and lounged with a tumbler full of gin and tonic. He might find some soft security-guard or patrolman position, maybe work for one of those private surveillance companies that cruised through private communities, reassuring the wealthy residents. Their biggest problem was probably teenage vandals.
The question—and he recognized it as a legitimate question—was: Was he ready for the slow death? He would grow soft, complacent, years before his time.
“Your problem is simple to diagnose,” Cookie told him after she calmed down following a recent blowup. “You’re afraid of personal responsibility, Jimmy. You’re an adolescent in an adult’s body. I’m tired of waiting for you to grow up.”
“Really?” he said, his face crimson.
“Yes, really. You’re out there playing cops and robbers with all your toys, and when you come home, you’re bored. Think about it: You’re always trying to find something to distract you, something that will help you postpone a decision. If it’s not the job, it’s football or baseball or your card game with your buddies. You’re relieved every time I make a decision for us.”
She put her hands on her hips and fired on, her blue eyes blazing. “Do you know what our mortgage is, Jimmy? Do you know how much we pay for home owner’s insurance? How much do we spend on electric, gas, and water every month?”
“You’re good at all that, so I let you do it.”
“You let me!” She laughed. “You think I want to do it? Jesus, Jimmy.”
“If you’re so smart and you know all this about me, why did you marry me in the first place?” he demanded.
“How come you’re such a good detective when it comes to everyone and everything else but your own life?” she shot back.
“Just answer the questions, Cookie. Why did you marry me if I’m such a fuckup, huh?”
“Because you’re good at what you do, Jimmy. You went undercover and pretended to be a grownup. You had me fooled,” she replied.
He felt as if the top of his head would split open. There was a surge of blood up his veins and into his neck. He couldn’t swallow. She saw how angry he was and turned away. He fumed for a moment and then took a deep breath and walked out. Somewhere along the line they definitely had lost it, and maybe it was his fault, or maybe—maybe—she had just outgrown him. The reason didn’t seem to matter as much, and that, he at least recognized, was the first sign of the inevitable end.
It could be, he thought—it could be—he was still an adolescent. Cookie wasn’t the first to characterize him that way. His brother Robert loved to point out that he got along better with Robert’s teenage son than he did with Robert: They had more in common. Robert was an accountant living in Yonkers. He had a son and a daughter and had been married nearly sixteen years. There were only four years separating him and Robert, but it was as if one of them had been adopted. Robert was studious, always well organized, neat, actually meticulous, and the one their mother turned to whenever there was a problem. Robert had always been the responsible one.
“Maybe,” Cookie had concluded the last time they had a civil conversation, “your problem is you just don’t believe in anything, Jimmy. I’m not saying you have to be religious, but you have to find something bigger than yourself—bigger than your own immediate comfort and pleasure. I know you don’t believe in the justice system, even though you risk your life bringing in criminals. You don’t think of yourself as especially important either, do you? If you don’t do it, someone else will come along and do it, right? And it’s not that you’re doing something for society; you’re just doing it because it’s something you can do, something you think you enjoy and something that brings in a paycheck.
“You have no passion for anything, Jimmy. It’s no wonder you have no passion for our marriage either,” she said, shaking her head and leaving.
All of these conversations and confrontations were haunting him these days. They hovered around him like buzzards waiting for an opportunity to peck on his dead brain. He hated the quiet moments for that reason, and for that reason it was better to keep busy, go, go, go, until he was ready to pass out every night.
He approached Lidia Ambrook’s unit and pressed the buzzer. There was a blue and white welcome mat in front of the door and he could see dainty light-blue curtains in the windows. He waited and then pressed the buzzer again. It was after seven, he thought. She might have gone to dinner. Christ, he himself had forgotten to eat. He wondered why he still wasn’t very hungry.
The door opened and a young woman about five feet seven with a rather plain face and dull, short red hair greeted him with a look of hesitation and some fear. In her right hand she held a Taser, which he knew was capable of jamming his nervous system and instantly incapacitating him for up to fifteen minutes.
“Evening,” he said quickly, and produced his ID and badge. “I’m investigating the disappearance of a friend of yours.”
“Disappearance?”
“Anna Gold.”
“Anna’s disappeared?”
He quickly told her what had been found in the Van’s Supermarket lot, and she lowered the Taser to her side.
“That’s horrible. I was wondering why I hadn’t heard from her.”
“You left a message on her machine. That’s how I found you,” McShane said. “May I come in?”
“Oh. Yes. I’m sorry,” she said stepping back. “I was getting ready to go out.”
“I won’t take up much time,” he said. “I see you’re a careful woman,” he said, nodding at the Taser.
“Yes,” she said. “Someone was attacked here recently. She was nearly raped in the parking lot.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
“What do you think’s happened to Anna?” she asked, leading him to a small living room.
“I don’t have much to go on yet. How long have you two been friends?”
“A few months. I work for the county clerk and Anna works for the public defender, so we met at the government building and started to go out together occasionally. Then she got involved with someone and we haven’t been doing all that much together socially.”
Lidia lowered herself to the blue-and-white-pattern sofa, the Taser still clutched in her hand like a club. McShane gazed around. With the blue curtains, the light-blue rug, and some of the other pieces of furniture in a matching sapphire shade, it was obvious what was her favorite color. She was even wearing an aquamarine pantsuit. Not that the color made any difference in her case, he thought.
“I just knew something was going to happen to her. I just knew it,” she muttered, shaking her head.
“Why?”
“Her astrological chart. I’m into that,” she said. “I told her this was a bad month for change. We’re both Pisces,” she added, her eyes wide.
McShane swallowed a smirk and flipped open his notepad. This was promising to be a waste of his time.
“Do you know the man with whom she had become involved?”
Under Abduction Page 7
