Under Abduction

by Andrew Neiderman

  “No,” she said. She said it so quickly, he looked up.

  “Oh?”

  “She wanted to keep it secret. You see, he’s a married man. But she said it would soon be known because he was going to get a divorce and leave his wife for her. That’s when I read her chart and told her about it being a bad month for change, especially romantic changes.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Friday, after work. Frankly, I thought she was going to be very disappointed and there really wouldn’t be any dramatic change in her life. But she wouldn’t listen, even though I pointed it out logically,” she added.

  “How did you do that?”

  “I could tell from just the way this clandestine romance was being conducted. She said she couldn’t call him either at home or at work. She told me she always had to wait for him to call her, and they met in the most out-of-the-way places, traveling great distances for a tryst. It’s exactly like what happened in Love on the Run.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Love on the Run, a Grace Blush romance novel. It was on the best-seller list for months this year. Eventually the heroine realizes she’s being used and abused and exposes her phony lover for what he is.”

  “I missed that one,” McShane said.

  “Just like the heroine in the book, she would think nothing of driving fifty miles to have a rendezvous. It was usually an expensive restaurant or an expensive motel. No fleabags. Anna made a point of telling me all that. She thought the more he spent on her, the more committed he was. She bought everything he said hook, line, and sinker. She would go anywhere to meet him. Once she even went to New York City to meet him. I pointed out how the man in Love on the Run did the same thing, but she just ignored me.”

  She sighed and shook her head.

  “I gave her the best advice I could.”

  “This isn’t a chapter in a romance novel. It’s very serious, so whatever you know, you should tell me,” he said.

  She stared at him as if deciding whether or not to say something more.

  “Why is it so important to know who she was seeing?”

  “I’ve got to follow up on any lead,” he explained. “I’ve already seen her family.”

  “I bet they weren’t any help. You probably know her father and she didn’t get along.” She shook her head. “‘Didn’t get along’—that’s an understatement. He’s very religious. Kept her chained in on Friday night and Saturday. She wanted to be on her own and have her own life and make her own choices. That’s the price you pay sometimes. My mother doesn’t always approve of the things I do either, but she’s a different generation. We can’t be like our parents; we have to be ourselves.” She paused and shook her head. “This is terrible. This is so terrible!”

  “Is there anyone you can think of who might want to do her harm?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “She never said anything about anyone like that. As far as I knew, the only one to be angry at her was her own father.” Her eyes grew big. “Do you think he might have something to do with it?”

  “I have no reason to think that, no.”

  “He was so angry at her, she couldn’t call home. He did something Jewish people do when someone dies, rip his shirt or light some candle. I don’t remember exactly. She knew that he was doing it every month and it made her very sad. I don’t have any Jewish friends, really, and none that are religious, so I don’t know much about it.”

  “Uh-huh. Did you ever meet anyone when you went out who might have had some interest in Anna?”

  “I don’t know why I went out with her,” she said instead of answering his question. “All she talked about was…this clandestine love of her life. She wasn’t interested in any of the guys we saw at the dance clubs. They were all either too immature or…not good-looking enough for her.”

  Her eyes brightened and her face took on the tinge of indignation.

  “It’s hard, you know, when you go out with someone and you can have someone interested in you but your girlfriend isn’t interested in meeting anyone. Everyone goes out in pairs these days. It’s safer, but for me, going out with Anna was usually a waste of time.”

  “So why did you call her to go out with her tonight?”

  “All my other friends were busy,” she replied.

  McShane nodded but thought to himself that she was fantasizing.

  “Did she tell you anything else about herself—anything personal?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m just looking for clues,” he replied. He was really looking to see if Anna Gold had mentioned her pregnancy. He couldn’t see Lidia leaving it out, but he wanted to be sure.

  She thought a moment.

  “Nothing. Only what her chart told me. It was the wrong time for change. I warned her: Anything new in her life right now, anything different, could be dangerous.” She shook her head and then gazed up at him quickly. “What’s your birthday?”

  “October twenty-sixth.”

  “Scorpio. My brother’s sign too.” Her face turned a bit grayer and she shook her head sadly.

  “What’s up for me?”

  “Stay away from anything involving finances this month,” she warned. “Something will happen to change your economic condition, and not for the better.”

  “No problem,” he said. He was about to make a joke when he remembered his divorce. “Maybe you oughta do charts on horses and predict winners.”

  He handed her one of his cards.

  “If you think of anything specific that might help me, please call.”

  “Okay.”

  He paused at the door.

  “Thanks.” He smiled. “At least you should have better luck tonight,” he said.

  “Pardon?”

  “You’re going out alone, aren’t you?”

  “Oh.” She shook her head. “I’m just meeting my mother for dinner,” she said. “I don’t like going out alone. As I told you, I don’t feel safe.” Her eyes widened. “And now, after you’ve told me about Anna, even more so!”

  McShane nodded and started out.

  It really was hard for a young, single woman today, especially if she happened to be as unsophisticated as Anna Gold appeared to have been.

  What was it going to be like for Cookie? he wondered, and for the first time, as if it were an idea completely out of the blue, he wondered if she already had someone else.

  Maybe she was right about something else: Maybe he was a terrible detective when it came to his own life.

  11

  You were right, Mommy,” he said when he returned to their bedroom. “When I opened the door, I found her grappling with the darkness. I don’t know how I forgot to put on the bathroom light for her.”

  “I know how. You’re just excited,” she said. Her thin metal-framed reading glasses rested on the bridge of her nose. She was sitting up in bed reading Dr. Spock. She had read Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care at least five times before, and she had underlined many passages.

  “Yes, I am excited,” he agreed, a wide smile on his face. “This time it’s really going to happen, isn’t it?”

  “If you’re careful and you do what I tell you, and…if you don’t forget to do things like put on the bathroom light,” she warned.

  He laughed and took off his robe. Then he crawled under the blanket and snuggled up against her.

  “It’s colder tonight, isn’t it?” he asked.

  She looked at him askance, suspicious of his motive.

  “No, I mean it. It feels like winter’s knocking on the door.”

  “Don’t answer it,” she said, and he laughed. “What are you working tomorrow, the eight-to-four shift?”

  “Eight to four and then I’ll hurry home.”

  “Call first. We’ll always need something, now that the baby’s on the way.”

  “I will. Boy, am I tired,” he said and yawned. “It’s been a long day, hasn’t it?”

  She continued to
read. He closed his eyes, and then the phone rang. His eyes snapped open. It rang again. Her eyes went to the clock.

  “He’s right on time. I’ll talk to him,” she said. She closed the book and set it on her lap before reaching for the receiver. “Hello?” She looked at him as she listened. He stared at the ceiling. “It went fine,” she said, “just as we promised it would. No, she’s resting comfortably by now. She ate a good dinner too…. No. I told you, we were very careful.…I know, and we’re grateful. Thank you.”

  She listened. He turned because she was listening so long without speaking, but she was nodding her head as if the speaker could see her.

  “I understand.…I don’t see any reason why we would have to call you, anyway….Yes…. Good-bye, and good luck to you too.”

  She replaced the receiver carefully and sat back with a deep sigh.

  “So?”

  “Everything’s fine. He’s satisfied with us.”

  “What did you mean when you said you didn’t see any reason for us to call him anyway?”

  “He asked that we don’t call and never come by.”

  “Oh. Right, right.”

  They looked at each other, both so excited and happy that they couldn’t stop smiling. Suddenly she got out of the bed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I can’t help it. I’ve got to look one more time before I go to sleep.”

  “But it will all be there in the morning, silly.”

  “I know. I just can’t help it, and it helps me fall asleep. It fills my head with good dreams,” she replied firmly. “Stop being so critical.”

  He shook his head as she hurried out of the bedroom. After a moment he rose and, naked, followed. She was standing in the nursery bedroom doorway, looking in at everything. He stepped up beside her and took her hand. Without speaking, they both gazed at the bassinet, the baby basin, the rattles, and the pile of real cloth diapers on the changing table. She didn’t mind washing them. Modern-day mothers with their disposable diapers weren’t as committed to their babies as they should be, she believed.

  She let go of his hand and walked to the dresser. She opened the top drawer and reached in for a baby’s sleeping outfit. This one was blue, for a boy, but the one beside it in the drawer was pink, for a girl.

  “Which do you think it will be?” he asked when she held up both of them.

  She thought a moment.

  “It just feels like a girl,” she said. “A precious little dainty princess.” She put the blue one back and cradled the pink one in her arms as if there were a baby in it.

  “Who you will spoil terribly,” he said.

  “So what?” she snapped back at him. “No one spoiled me. My older sister, Tami, she was spoiled, and so was my brother, Teddy, but my mother was tired and I was an accident. She never stopped reminding me about that whenever I did something wrong.”

  “I know,” he said. He did. He had heard the story many times before.

  “If I spilled something at the table or broke something, she would slap me and say, ‘None of this should be. You shouldn’t even be here.’”

  He shook his head.

  “Your mother didn’t know how lucky she was, having a healthy child. She should have thanked her stars.”

  “She didn’t thank anyone or anything and especially not my father. He would look at me and say, ‘Thanks to you, she won’t let me live.’”

  She returned the outfit to the drawer and closed it.

  “Let’s go back to bed,” he said. “We’ve got big days ahead of us and we’ll need our strength.”

  She nodded and, with her head down, followed him to their bedroom. After they were under the blanket again, she bit her lower lip and choked back a sob.

  “What?” he said.

  “When I was looking at you standing there in the doorway with your pendulum dangling like the pendulum in the grandfather’s clock, I thought how you must hate me for being sterile.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Mommy, and you know it. I couldn’t ever hate you for any reason.”

  “But you’re armed for bear and I’m…I’m an empty woods.”

  He laughed.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “I’m not laughing at you; I’m laughing at what you said: ‘armed for bear.’”

  “Well, you are, aren’t you? Don’t you tell me how you’re so full to the brim, you just explode at the most unexpected times? Even driving to work?”

  “I’m sorry I told you that, Mommy.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “I am,” he insisted. “I shouldn’t tell you things that might make you feel bad.”

  “We promised never to lie to each other and never to keep secrets, ever. We agreed, Daddy.”

  “I know, but now you’re making me feel sorry for telling you.”

  “I’m sorry if I did that, but I just felt…”

  “Don’t say it,” he warned.

  She bit down on her lower lip and her cheeks bloated as if the words she kept in were inflating and putting pressure on her mouth. Finally, she released it in a puff of air, too inarticulate to be understood.

  They were both quiet. She put the book on the night table and turned off the light. Their eyes remained open in the darkness, however. They both lay there, listening. They had lain there before like that, and they knew the sounds of the house and the sounds that should be coming from below. They were so used to the monotonous grinding noise from outside, they didn’t hear it anymore. But they heard the wood walls and floors creak, and heard the wind become fingers scratching at the windows. Suddenly she heard what sounded like a muffled scream.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  He listened. “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “I did.” After a pause she added, “Maybe she’s doing something to herself; maybe she’s doing something to our baby.”

  “Now, don’t get crazy, Mommy.”

  She sat up with such force, the bed shook. And then she spun around and put her fingers around his eyeballs, her nails sharp and long and pressing just enough to convince him that, in a split second, she could tear his eyes out.

  “Don’t ever call me crazy,” she said, her words escaping her lips like air leaking from a tire. “I told you that a thousand times if I told you once.”

  “I’m sorry, Mommy. I didn’t mean crazy. I meant, don’t get upset.”

  Her fingers relaxed and he let out his own breath.

  “I’ve got to be sure I didn’t hear anything bad,” she said, and got out of the bed. She opened the night table drawer and took out the flashlight.

  “Mommy,” he pleaded.

  “No. You remember the last time. You remember what she did to herself…all the blood and then our baby,” she wailed. “I want this baby, Daddy. I want this baby. It’s going to be a girl. I’m sure.”

  “Mommy,” he said, but she was already out the door.

  He rose like an arthritic old man to go after her. He heard her open the basement door and then go quietly down the stairs without putting on the light. She just used the flashlight. He knew why. He stood at the top of the steps and listened. She was tiptoeing across the basement floor to the maternity room. She took the key off the rack so quietly, only he would know it, and then she inserted it sharply into the lock, turned it, and thrust open the door.

  Anna raised her hands instinctively as the beam of the flashlight hit her face. She couldn’t see the woman until she was at the foot of the bed. She realized the woman was standing there naked.

  Anna’s heart pounded. She cringed as the woman reached down and drew back the blanket, directing the beam at Anna’s legs and stomach. Then she leaned over Anna, pulling her nightie up her legs. Anna screamed, but she ignored her as she inspected.

  “What do you want? Please. Let me go. Please.”

  The woman brought her face closer. Her taut, small breasts were white as bone, and her shoulders glistened like alabaster in the wake of the flashlight’s gl
ow. Her eyes appeared luminous, two glittering dimes. She drew closer until her face was only inches from Anna’s.

  “Don’t you hurt my baby,” she said through her teeth. “Don’t you do anything to hurt her.”

  Anna whimpered and pressed her palms over her breasts. She was back as far as she could go.

  “If I hear my baby scream again, I’ll make you very sorry,” she threatened. “Do you understand? Do you?”

  “Yes,” Anna said, nodding.

  “Good.” She retreated. “Good.” She took a deep breath and then walked to the doorway. In the dim glow of the bathroom light, the woman’s backbone appeared embossed. She was very thin, her shoulder blades distinct, sharp. It was like watching a skeleton for a moment, and that put another chill into Anna’s heart. She could barely breathe.

  The woman turned in the doorway.

  “Good night,” she said softly, sweetly. Then she walked out and closed the door. Anna heard the lock snapped shut.

  He still waited on the stairway.

  “Mommy?” he said as she approached.

  “It’s all right. Everything’s fine,” she said.

  “Good. Let’s go to sleep, Mommy. I’ve got to be up bright and early and fresh for work. You wouldn’t want me making mistakes with people’s veins, would you?”

  “No,” she agreed as she came up the stairway. He waited until she was almost there and then he returned to the bedroom. She came in and put the flashlight back in the night table drawer. Then she crawled under the covers beside him.

  “I’m so tired,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  “It was a long day, wasn’t it?”

  “Very long.”

  “But a good day. The best day.”

  “The best,” he agreed.

  “We did good, Daddy. He told me on the phone. He said, ‘You guys did real good.’”

  Daddy laughed.

  They were both quiet for a moment and then, low—so low, she didn’t hear him for a moment—Daddy began to sing.

  “Ninety-nine baby bottles of milk on the wall, ninety-nine baby bottles of milk. If one of the bottles should happen to fall…”

  “Ninety-eight baby bottles of milk on the wall.”

  They laughed and hugged each other. He kissed her cheeks and her forehead and then her lips. She kissed his eyes, the eyes she had nearly ripped out.