The Girl Who Didn't Die--A Suspense Novel

by Tim Kizer

  “I will,” David promised.

  Before leaving, Detective Barton asked for a copy of the surveillance footage for the last week, and David gave it to him.

  4

  They showed Annie’s picture on the 10 pm news, and when David saw it, his head began to throb with pain. After the news ended, David went to the website of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and searched for Annie’s name. His daughter’s name was not in the Center’s database. He called the Center and learned that Annie’s poster would be added to the database by midnight.

  Then David phoned his friend Noah Hallford, who was the president of a small bank headquartered in Dallas, and asked if he knew the Plano police chief or the head of the Dallas FBI office. Noah said he was friends with the Plano police chief. He had never met the head of the Dallas FBI office.

  David told Noah about Annie’s disappearance and then said, “Can you ask the chief to give Annie’s case special attention?”

  “No problem,” Noah said. “I’ll talk to him tonight. I’m very sorry about your daughter.”

  David spent an hour reading online articles about missing children. He found out that in forty percent of stereotypical kidnappings—that was what they called abductions perpetrated by a stranger or slight acquaintance with the intent to exact a ransom, rape, murder, or permanently keep the child—the victim was killed. And in four percent of these kidnappings the child was never found.

  At one o’clock in the morning, David went to the dining room and poured a glass of whiskey. He was tired, but he didn’t feel sleepy. He drank some whiskey, then picked up the receiver and brought it to his ear. The phone was working.

  Why wasn’t the kidnapper calling?

  Maybe it wasn’t about ransom? Maybe Annie had been abducted by a sex predator? If that was the case, she was probably dead already.

  David drew a deep breath.

  The abductor might be an organ harvester. David had read that the body parts of one person were worth about a million dollars on the black market.

  David began to pace the room.

  He needed to be hopeful. He needed to think of a scenario under which Annie wasn’t harmed.

  A childless couple. Annie’s life isn’t in danger if she was abducted by, or sold to, a childless couple.

  What would a childless couple do when they discovered that Annie had epilepsy?

  They might kill her. She had seen their faces, so it would be too risky to let her live, wouldn’t it?

  He drank the rest of his whiskey.

  He had failed Annie.

  And Brian—he had failed Brian, too.

  David’s chest tightened at the thought of his son, who had drowned in the pool two years ago at the age of four.

  Would he have been more watchful if Annie were his biological daughter? Would he have let her out of his sight in the park that day if she were his flesh and blood?

  It was a ridiculous question. He loved Annie as much as he’d loved Brian. He didn’t care that she didn’t carry his DNA.

  David took the bottle of whiskey to the great room and finished it. He fell asleep on the sofa.

  5

  The next morning, at Carol’s suggestion, David called a billboard advertising company and bought a spot on twenty digital billboards in the Dallas area. The company also agreed to design the ad, which was going to feature Annie’s photo, description, and last known whereabouts, as well as the reward amount and the contact number for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

  After a long debate with himself, David decided to wait a few days before telling his parents about Annie’s disappearance. They weren’t going to hear about it on the news because they lived in Florida.

  He arrived at the police department at a quarter to one. After they greeted each other, Detective Barton asked David if he had heard from the kidnappers. David said that he hadn’t.

  The detective looked calm and unconcerned. He surely wouldn’t have been so calm if it were his child who had been abducted. David wished he could grab Barton by the lapels and instill a sense of urgency in him.

  “Have you finished searching the pond in the park?” he asked.

  “Yes. We didn’t find your daughter there.”

  David felt a sense of relief.

  Barton took David to the polygraph room, introduced him to the examiner, and left. After David signed a Miranda rights waiver form and a polygraph consent form, the examiner inquired if he was taking any medication.

  “No.”

  “Are you under the care of a physician?”

  “No.”

  After each response, the examiner checked the appropriate box on the form in front of him.

  “Do you have any pain or discomfort right now?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “How many hours did you sleep last night?”

  “Five.”

  After the pre-test interview, the examiner explained the procedure and reviewed the test questions with David. Then he began to place sensors on David’s body.

  “Are you comfortable, Mister Miller?” the examiner asked when he attached the last sensor.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any questions?”

  “No.”

  “The test is about to begin. Answer only yes or no.”

  The first question was: Is your name David Miller?

  “Yes,” David replied.

  “Are you forty-two years old?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you completely convinced that I will not ask you a question on this test that has not already been reviewed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you deliberately cause your daughter Annie’s disappearance?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever lied to get out of trouble?”

  “No.”

  “Did you kill your daughter Annie?”

  “No.”

  “Do you live in Plano, Texas?”

  “Yes.”

  “During the first twenty-six years of your life, did you ever deliberately hurt another person?”

  When they reviewed the test questions, David had asked the examiner if hurting someone in self-defense counted as deliberately hurting another person, and the examiner said that it didn’t.

  “No.”

  “Did you have a plan to cause your daughter Annie’s disappearance?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever deliberately hurt another person?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who caused the disappearance of your daughter Annie?”

  “No.”

  “Can you drive a car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know where Annie is?”

  “No.”

  “Did you deliberately do anything to try and beat this test?"

  “No.”

  The examiner said that the test was over, and began to remove the sensors.

  6

  Carol was at the Plano Police Department when David came home. He changed clothes and then visited the websites of the local affiliate stations of ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox. He was pleased to see that all four of them had a story about the reward he was offering for finding Annie. David hoped they would mention the reward on the air. A few minutes after his closed his laptop, the phone rang, and David dashed to it, hoping it was the kidnapper.

  The caller was Susan Yasbeck, an assistant news producer at NBC’s Dallas-Fort Worth affiliate. She asked David if he would like to give an interview to her channel. David agreed to do an interview without hesitation.

  NBC’s TV crew arrived forty minutes later. David didn’t recognize the reporter, which was to be expected because he rarely watched the news. After they went over the questions he was going to ask, the reporter inquired if David’s wife was home. David said that she was taking care of some things.

  “When is she coming back?” the reporter asked.

  “Around five.”

  The reporter
glanced at his watch. “We’ll do the interview without her, if you don’t mind.”

  “When are you going to air the interview?”

  “It will be on the six pm news.”

  The interview was shot in the backyard of David’s house and was eight minutes long. When the reporter asked the last question—Do you have anything to say to our viewers?—David cleared his throat and said, looking into the camera, “I’d like to say a few words to the person who has my daughter. If you bring Annie back to me, alive and unharmed, I’ll pay you two hundred thousand dollars, no questions asked. You will not be arrested or prosecuted, I give you my word. I don’t care how you came across my daughter. I just want to get her back, that’s all. I won’t ask Annie what happened to her and who was holding her. I’m not interested in revenge. Bring Annie back to me, and you’ll receive two hundred thousand in cash, or diamonds, or whatever you prefer.” He turned his face to the reporter. “That’s all I have to say.”

  “David, as I understand, you’ve just doubled the reward you’re offering for finding your daughter.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Thank you for the interview, David.” The reporter signaled the cameraman to stop filming.

  “You’re welcome,” David said. “Can I ask you for a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you aired what I said to the kidnapper in full. Can you do that?”

  “I think we can.”

  “That’s the reason I agreed to do this interview.”

  “Don’t worry, David. I’ll make it happen.”

  His interview was aired in the first half of the 6 pm newscast. It had been cut down to a little over a minute, but fortunately his message to Annie’s abductor had been left intact. When the segment about Annie was over, David asked Carol what she thought about it.

  “I think it’s a good idea,” she said.

  “Did I sound trustworthy?”

  Carol nodded. “Yes, you did.”

  That was the crucial part: David needed Annie’s abductor to trust him.

  Since their phones were tapped by the police, he and the kidnapper would have to use email to arrange the exchange. He would give the kidnapper his email address when the kidnapper called him.

  THE END OF THE SAMPLE

  Buy The Vanished on Amazon Kindle

  DAYS OF VENGEANCE

  Description

  First, he murdered his wife.

  Then he lost his memory.

  Now he has to remember where he buried the body or his in-laws will kill him.

  "Dear Frank, I know you killed your wife, and I can prove it..."

  After receiving this note, Frank Fowler, a man suffering from amnesia, begins to suspect he may have murdered his wife Kelly, who vanished three days before he lost his memory. The bad news is Kelly's family has the same suspicions and will stop at nothing to make him remember what he has done to their beloved sister and where he buried her body.

  Frank's search for answers becomes a fight for survival after he recalls that his wife's relatives are a clique of ruthless serial kidnappers serving a mysterious one-legged man. His chances are slim: one of the in-laws is a cop and another is a multimillionaire.

  However, the question still remains: Why did he kill his wife?

  Frank's options are limited: he either finds his wife's body or dies. In his race against time Frank has all the clues to the puzzle, he just needs to remember them before it's too late.

  Chapter 1.

  DREAM

  1.

  The note read: “Dear Frank, I know you killed your wife, and I can prove it. You are a reasonable person. I’m sure you don’t want to go to prison. All I need is a $20,000 loan. Please think about my request very carefully.”

  But before this, the last six years of his life had been wiped from his memory.

  Then there were darkness and dreams...

  2.

  Owl. Owl. Owl? This word flickered at the edge of his mind for a few seconds and then vanished. Frank somehow knew that it was not the word he’d been trying to recall. His very life depended upon this important word buried deep inside his memory, and he had to fish it out as soon as possible if he didn’t want the one-legged man and his people to cut his throat. He had no idea who the one-legged man was. Sometimes he doubted this man actually existed.

  The word sounded similar to ‘owl.’

  He would give it another shot later. Right now, he would like to focus on something else. Those dreams. Yeah, on those amazingly vivid dreams.

  Frank had been having bizarre dreams while he was in a coma. When he regained his consciousness, he did not remember their contents. As a matter of fact, he was not even sure he’d had any dreams at all.

  Very hard. Really damn hard! It was so hard to open his eyes. To unglue his eyelids, which, as he had begun to suspect, must have been sewn together, otherwise how could one explain the fact that he had been trying to put them in motion for ten minutes now (or maybe ten days), and they had not budged one bit?

  Then two flashes of recollection lit up his mind. First, Frank remembered that there was a steel-plated safe holding a body the one-legged man’s people would love to get back. He had no clue where he’d hidden it. Within seconds, this memory disappeared into the ether.

  The second flash was one of those strange dreams.

  Frank remembered seeing a man who stood by the bathroom door, collecting his thoughts. The man clasped a nine-inch long knife in his right hand, but Frank knew he was nursing a hope that he would not have to use it. Strangle... He would prefer to strangle her.

  Frank could also see a woman in the bathroom. She was in the shower cabin, carefully rubbing soap on her shoulders, forearms, and breasts, firm jets of hot water massaging her back, her hands sliding smoothly on the soft lather. The man wrapped his fingers around the knob, turned and pulled it, swore at himself—this door opens inward, idiot!—and then began pushing the door slowly until the gap became wide enough for him to see the woman.

  The woman’s progress was easy to observe since the bathroom fans had been doing a great job of venting most of the steam out. The man asked himself if he should wait until she finished showering. The answer was no.

  The woman turned around towards the showerhead and remained in this position for a while as the water rinsed the front of her body. Then she grabbed the shampoo bottle and squeezed some of its contents into her palm. She seemed preoccupied with the task at hand and would have hardly noticed if someone had sneaked into the room, especially with all that mist on the shower door. After gently lathering the top of her hair, the woman poured more shampoo into her palm and applied it to her hair in the back.

  The man gathered his courage and finally stepped over the threshold. He quickly shut the door behind him so as to prevent the draft of cold air from breaking into the bathroom and thus alerting the woman. Frank still couldn’t discern both the man’s and the woman’s faces—they were the only blurry spots in this vivid dream—but at the same time he had a feeling he knew these people very well. The man stood mere feet away from the shower cabin, watching his target massage the shampoo into her scalp. He was excited she didn’t see him enter the room. Lucky for him, the woman usually closed her eyes when lathering up her hair, which meant he had the surprise factor on his side, just like he’d hoped. Now there was a chance he wouldn’t have to hear her ear-piercing scream after all.

  With a pleased smile, the woman breathed in the hot steam, letting it warm up her nasal passage and lungs, as her hands slowly moved from her forehead to the back of her head, her fingers digging into the shampoo foam in circular motions. She obviously enjoyed taking shower.

  Hiding the knife behind his back, the man made the first step towards the cabin. Through the water jet noise, he heard the woman start humming some tune, and he froze for a second to shake off the momentary doubt that he would be unable to yank that bitch out and accomplish what he had planned. She’d better shut up and qu
it distracting him! He inhaled through his nose and exhaled through his mouth and quickly calmed down.

  The tune reproduced by the woman was Dancing Queen by ABBA. Like millions of other people, the woman loved singing in the shower, where there were no critics or gawkers.

  With her eyes still shut, the woman stepped closer to the showerhead, allowing the water to rinse her hair. As the shampoo lather streamed down her naked body, she kept humming Dancing Queen, while running her fingers through her locks. She was enveloped in puffs of steam, the water noise drowned every other sound in the bathroom; oblivious to the world outside the foggy shower door, she didn’t see the man approach the cabin.

  3.

  The memory expired as abruptly as it had come to his mind. A few seconds later, he only had a vague idea of what the dream had been about. And the memory of the one-legged man had vanished completely.

  So, one, two, three. He was summoning his strength. Summoning his strength. He had to open his eyes. And here was the light. His eyelids finally opened. Focusing, and...

  A woman's face. Perhaps he should go to the bathroom and wash his face and brush his teeth. He also did not want to be late for work. By the way, where did he work?

  “Mister Fowler,” the woman said in a low voice, putting her warm palm on his hand.

  Lying in bed was pleasant. The woman’s palm was very warm, as if it had rested on a hot towel for a while before landing on his hand. He had no desire to get up. It felt as though he had grown into the bed, become part of it. The woman was apparently kind. Kind as a mother.

  He moved his lips apart and forgot to register how difficult this action was because all of his attention was drawn to the face of the kind woman clasping his hand. His right hand. Or was it his left hand? Damn, which hand was she holding?

  “Mister Fowler, if you can hear me, move your right thumb.” A pause. “Move any finger if you can hear me, Mister Fowler. Hang on a second. I'm going to get the doctor.”

  Yes, sure, he could hear her. He moved (or so it seemed to him) his right index finger. Yes, it was the index finger on the hand the woman was squeezing. He wagged it with sufficient amplitude so that the woman would easily notice the movement.