Katarina

by Alona Jarden

  Chapter 6

  Kate

  "To answer my first question, you'll have to go back to your earliest memories and tell me if you can recall anything about your parents." The way he approached the situation didn’t cause me to defend myself and I was surprised that the nature of his question was different from what I’d thought it would be.

  "Seriously? Is that what you want to know?"

  "Oh, I already know the answer to this question, Katarina. I am asking you this because that's what I want you to know."

  "But...you remember that you have only three questions, right?"

  "Yes."

  "And do you understand that you are wasting the first one on memories I lack of parents who left me in an orphanage as a baby?"

  "What's wrong with that?" I hated that he found my question amusing.

  "It's a bit like getting three goldfish wishes and wasting one of them so he'll tell you about his fishy friends," I laughed. "I had a whole other line of questions from you in my mind."

  "Now you’ve gotten me all curious. What exactly did you think I would ask?" he took a bite of the bait I'd put in front of him.

  "And this, psycho, was a waste of your second question!" I grinned contentedly.

  "No, no, no," he tried to back-pedal as he realized what I'd made him do and laughed.

  His voice finally sounded less in control and for a brief moment I felt as if I was talking to an old friend, even though the conversation was still taking place in Spanish while my eyes remained covered.

  "Please, Katarina, I want to know if you have any memories from your parents."

  "And then you'll want to know if..."

  "Answer the question, Katarina," his self-control returned within seconds.

  "No."

  "Why won't you answer?"

  "I did answer. My answer is, no. I do not remember anything from my parents, psycho."

  "Nothing at all?" he sounded genuinely disappointed. "Please, don’t rush into answering me. Close your eyes, breathe deeply, and think again about your parents."

  "Okay," I decided that as long as his questions weren't too offensive or too sexual, as I’d thought they would be, I would answer them exactly as he asked. "No," I repeated my initial answer sincerely and truthfully, but then felt the urge to continue. "I did once, you know? But I learned that it was nothing more than a childhood dream."

  "Why do you think it was nothing but a dream?"

  "Because I came to the orphanage when I was a little baby. Every memory I thought I had from my parents' home faded away once reality and the facts intervened."

  "Facts?" he snorted while giggling.

  "Yes, the facts."

  "I'm willing to bet you never saw any proof," he said so cocky and sure of himself.

  "Oh," I stretched a huge grin across my face, "I have to admit I'm a bit sad for you, psycho."

  "Why is that?"

  "Because it sounds like you really believe the reality you’ve painted in your mind. But I did see the adoption documents and I have pictures of myself in my father's arms from the day he took me in and on."

  "Did you really see pictures of you as a baby in your father's arms?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you absolutely sure about that, Katarina?"

  "One hundred percent, psycho. Now, are you ready to re-think your answer to my previous question? Are you willing to take into account the slight chance that you may have misidentified your abductee?"

  "I am willing to admit that I wasn’t expecting such an answer, but you didn’t fall into the wrong hands, Katarina. You might have matured and grown up, you also changed a bit, but you're still you. I am certain of it, since I know things you've forgotten."

  "Hey, hold on, you just got my first answer!" I sighed in relief and immediately switched to English, extending a smug smile on my lips. "English amigo. From now on, only English!"

  "With pleasure, senorita," he chuckled, and his gentle voice was deliciously pleasant to me. "I am a man of my word, Katarina. From now on, we will speak the English language you love so much," he completed his sentence in the familiar language, and I made every effort to relate a face I might have known to his voice, but with no success.

  I could have sworn he suddenly sounded familiar, even though he’d only said one sentence in English. But already, from the short words spoken, even though his identity was still an unknown factor, I knew he was someone who had been very present in my life.

  I was sure I had met the owner of that voice at a much earlier date…and more than once before.

  "Can I go on to the next questions, Katarina?"

  "You may, psycho." I smiled, full of excitement to discover his name and remove the blindfold which had kept me in the dark.

  "Have you ever wondered why Spanish feels so natural for you?"

  "Well, you asked me before where I learned the language and the answer is now very clear to me. I was adopted from an orphanage in Costa Rica and there, probably, they spoke to me in Spanish."

  "Is that your final answer?"

  "Yes."

  "That it's because you were spoken to in Spanish when you were a baby? Just a few months old, right?"

  "Yes." Suddenly my forehead wrinkled on its own and the contradiction in the words I spoke revealed itself to me. "Um...wait...that can't be true… Can it?"

  "I don’t know Katarina. Can it?" His tone made it very clear that he was pleased with my stutter.

  "Look, I also know French." I felt the need to find another reason why Spanish had always been embedded in me. "I have a phenomenal memory and an extraordinary talent for picking up new languages."

  "Wow, Katarina. You're so smart and wonderful," he managed to make me laugh out loud, "but I'm smarter than you."

  "Like hell you are!"

  "At least I know that in order to know a language, even with an innate talent and a special mind like yours, you still have to learn it."

  "Well… I know that," I answered as I tried to figure out my next reply.

  "Did you learn Spanish?"

  "No," I looked down, though my eyes were covered, as I remembered so clearly that this wasn’t the first time that question had popped in my mind.

  I was only six when I realized that I could understand our maid's conversation with her cousin. She cleaned the apartment in the morning while I was in school, but that day, I was sick and my father allowed me to stay at home so that I could rest and get better.

  "No, Bernardo." She smiled at me and continued to speak in Spanish on the cellphone she was holding. "I'm not going to steal anything from them, stupid." She continued to speak freely, as if I were not sitting right in front of her. "He's the best boss I've ever had. They are good people. They don’t deserve to be robbed."

  It wasn’t the first time I had heard Spanish. Hell, when you live in the U.S. you have no choice but to be exposed to the language. But until that specific moment, I had never noticed that I understood much more than a word here or a sentence there. Eavesdropping on her long and charged conversation that day made it clear to me that I understood everything she said, even if the meaning and the insight had not yet penetrated my mind.

  "My daddy is your boss?" I asked her in English.

  "Si," she confirmed and looked puzzled.

  "And is he really the best boss you've ever had?" I continued asking in English.

  "Si, chiquita." She raised an eyebrow at me, "Comprendo?"

  "Si," I answered her with a smile.

  "Can you speak Spanish, Kate?" she asked in wonder.

  "Yes," I went on, talking to her for a very long time in fluent Spanish.

  That day, she asked me questions about my life with my father and I heard stories from her about the place she came from and her life in recent times.

  Today, when I think about it, it seems like she was happy to find another soul with whom she could speak her mother tongue. I can't think of any other reason for her to engage in that deep of conversation with a six-year-old
girl, the daughter of her best boss, the one she refused to steal from.

  "Katarina, are you even listening to me?" The voice of my kidnapper brought me back to reality, using a sentence I thought I had heard from him before.

  "No. I'm not listening to you, psycho. You asked me to delve into my memories, and that's exactly what I did."

  "And did you find anything interesting in there?"

  "I found something rather confusing there."

  "All that’s important to me is that you think things over, Katarina." Suddenly, he placed his hand on my palm and a shudder of anxiety passed through every part of my body.

  "Don’t touch me!" I screamed and tried to cling to the wall behind me as close as I could to get away from him. "DON’T FUCKING TOUCH ME!" I lost it, probably looking like a lunatic.

  "Calm down."

  "You're severely screwed up if you think I'm going to let your dirty hands land anywhere on me."

  "Calm down, Katarina."

  "Don’t you tell me what to do!" I couldn’t for the life of me calm the fuck down and went on lashing out at him. "You better understand, miserable pervert, sooner or later you'll sit in prison for this and I pity the gang member that cuts off your dick and eats it, because he will go to bed hungry that evening."

  His laughter stopped being pleasant and my blood began to boil with anger. I felt that by daring to touch me, without informing or asking for permission to do so, he’d broken the trust we had built between us.

  Earlier, when he’d helped me to pee, the unpleasantness of the situation was evident in every word and sigh of frustration he expressed, but now? Suddenly, he’d put his hand on me in a romantic and moving way without any confirmation or expression of my previous interest or his...or mine...or… What the hell?

  "I hope you know I'm not interested in hurting you, Katarina."

  "How should I know what your intentions are, psycho? You have a plan for me, right? Two weeks you said? Tell me what will happen at each and every stage and maybe then I will know for a fact that rape is not included in your plan for me."

  "I don’t want to hurt you and I believe that you know that."

  "You touched me in a way that... It was uncomfortable and unpleasant."

  "I only touched you because I was going to shake your hand and introduce myself using my real name."

  "Well slap my face and call me Shirley." My muscles loosened a bit. "Are you saying that psycho isn't your real name?"

  "It's not." I guessed that he smiled as he continued, "Katarina," his hand was once again on mine, but this time I felt ready for it. "Nice to meet you. My name is Andrew."

  "Hey, Andrew," I shook his hand. "The pleasure is all mine and my name is Kate. K-a-t-e," I pronounced each syllable of my name slowly for him and for a few moments neither one of us said anything.

  I heard Andrew breathing heavily in and out and realized he was preparing for his third question or, rather, for my third answer. The answer that was supposed to grant me the removal of the blindfold, allowing me to see who was behind the familiar voice. The man who had snatched me from my life and had brought back my nightmares.

  "Last question, Katarina. Are you ready?"

  "As ready as I'll ever be, Andrew the psycho," I managed to make him laugh again.

  "All I want is to know what you want me to call you. Will you stick to the name your parents gave you or change to the name that the circumstances of your life gave you?"

  My breathing became heavy, not because I didn’t know the answer, but because I realized I was seconds away from looking at my kidnapper's face.

  "Think carefully, Katarina." His voice was calm. "Only a straight and from the heart answer will grant you progress in this significant stage."

  "Andrew, I don’t have to think much to answer such a question. I understand that you believe in something that I can't see right now. I also understand that you plan to explain yourself to me step by step. But I believe that, even if you succeed in your mission and lead me to believe that I am your Katarina, I would still want you to call me Kate."

  "Very well, Kate." I no longer needed to take the blindfold off my eyes. It was enough, hearing him say my name, for me to recognize the identity of my kidnapper.

  "So it's you, Andrew?" I asked, even though I knew the answer.

  "Yes." I could feel his breath close to me.

  "Are you ready, Andrew?" I asked. "Because from the moment I see you, there will be no turning back." My heart lost a beat when his hands gently grabbed the blindfold.

  "I'm ready." He pulled it over me, taking me out of the darkness, and revealing his face.

  I knew it!

  Chapter 7

  Mr. Briggs

  Aidan stayed with me that whole night.

  Together, we tried time and again to reach Kate on her cellphone, without any luck. After we exhausted all other options, I ended up pacing nervously from one end of the living room to the other while Aidan looked for any appearance of her beautiful face on social media. Eventually, morning arrived, and I can't say I was surprised that we’d found nothing of her whereabouts online.

  "I just don’t get it. She has to be somewhere." Aidan slammed his hand on his forehead, full of frustration.

  "You think?" I rolled my eyes at him scornfully.

  "Sure, well… I didn’t mean it that way," he exhaled. "It's obvious that she's somewhere, but I can't understand how she could just disappear into thin air without leaving a trail or any traces."

  "Well that's why you're here, Aidan. Go ahead. Find her trail. Contact everyone you know and fucking find her!"

  I was so glad when the doorbell rang. If I’d had to spend a few extra minutes listening to his rhetorical sayings, I would have had to explain to the nice officer standing on the other side of the door why I had murdered him.

  "Are you Mr. Briggs?" she asked as I opened the door.

  "Yes, yes," I gestured toward the living room. "Please, come in."

  "Thank you. I'm Officer Swenson and I understand that you still haven’t made any contact with your daughter?"

  "That's right. She left the house yesterday morning and, since then, no one has heard from her."

  "So we're talking about a disappearance of more than twenty-four hours, right?" Clearly she’d made sure she began handling the case only after checking it was actually relevant for her to do so.

  "Yes," I lied.

  "No, no," Aidan intervened. "Mr. Briggs didn’t hear from Kate since yesterday morning, but I saw her all day yesterday, except for the two hours during which she graded exams with Professor Thompson."

  "And you are?"

  "I'm Aidan," he flirtatiously smiled at her, "Kate's friend from medical studies. Third year, if you must know."

  "Is your relationship with Kate of a romantic nature?"

  "I'm single, if that's what you're asking," he winked at her.

  "I just need to hear your answer, Aidan. Are you and Kate a romantic couple?"

  "Oh, God, please let the answer be negative. Please, please, oh my God, please say no." I thought I was talking inside my head, but the way the two of them stared at me made it clear that I had spoken aloud.

  "No, Mr. Briggs," he smiled at me. "Your brilliant daughter has been too stupid to understand what an amazing man is sitting right under her nose." He finally came out with a witty sentence I was impressed by.

  "Well, gentlemen, I'm confused." Officer Swenson opened her yellow notepad and waved her pen towards Aidan. "Let's start with the details you know about Kate's daily routine." She gazed at him and sat there for a long time while Aidan spelled out everything he had seen and knew about my daughter's daily routine. He spoke about their studies and their daily walk home, and detailed everything up until the moment he parted from her in front of Starbucks which was their regular split point.

  Everything he said was bits and pieces of information he had already told me before and it was hard not to notice him flirting shamelessly with the beautiful officer who s
at across from him.

  Having no choice, I listened to them.

  Officer Swenson and Aidan were engaged in a lively conversation as I tried to think of everything but his description for the last minutes Kate was seen alive. It was hard for me to accept the fact that those might have been her final minutes. It just wasn’t possible.

  "Sir?" Officer Swenson turned to me.

  "Yes?"

  "Do you have anything to add to all this?"

  "Well, it's important that you understand something. This is very unusual behavior for my daughter. She never stays out without informing me of her whereabouts."

  "I agree!" Aidan supported my claim. "She never dares to walk around alone without a fully charged phone."

  "You know, gentlemen? I understand that you are concerned and worried about Kate's safety, but I must say that her not coming home at night sounds very ordinary for a twenty-four-year-old woman."

  "Kate's not an ordinary twenty-four!" I was surprised to hear Aidan's description of Kate and listened fully to him. "When you look for her, it's important that you leave behind all the profiles you've built for college girls of her age."

  "What does that mean?" she asked him.

  "I means that, unlike her classmates, Kate is not surrounded by girlfriends. She doesn’t care about her popularity."

  "She's an outsider at school?"

  "No. She's just not interested by them. In fact, she hates almost all of them."

  "And, in your opinion, do they hate her back?"

  "Some of them, yes," he grinned smugly. "You have to understand, Officer Swenson, Kate despises everything that our classmates are proud of. I wouldn’t be surprised if the hatred between them is mutual."

  "Do you agree with that, Mr. Briggs? Maybe you can think of some good friends I can contact that might help me find your daughter?"

  "No," I replied, gesturing to Aidan. "Unfortunately, this is as close as you'll get to a friend or girlfriend of Kate's."

  "And would I be correct in assuming you do not like him very much?"