Set Free

by Anthony Bidulka

  The first proof-of-life photographs obviously hadn’t done the trick. They needed to step up the threat. That’s when the beatings began. The day before yesterday was the second one. Worse than the first. This time Hun didn’t stop at the face. He’d pummeled my entire body. When his hands grew sore, he yanked me out of the chair, threw me to the ground, and began kicking me. This time, young Hun stripped me bare before taking the photograph, to better show the growing extent and seriousness of my injuries. My body was a map of their brutality: red and black squiggles for tears in my skin, green blotches for old bruises, blue for new.

  Someone was holding out, not giving them what they wanted.

  Was it because they couldn’t?

  Or was it because they didn’t want to?

  Was Jenn holding all the cards? Was my wife acting out her anger towards me? Was she punishing me for the horrible thing I’d done?

  On the worst day of our lives, I came to know something about my wife that I’d never imagined could be true. It rocked me then; it rocked me now. I’d been with this woman for almost twenty years. In that time, we’d had our share of fights. Our fuses burned fast, but not particularly bright. Shouting wasn’t our thing, nor was passive aggressiveness. We just got over things. We loved each other. Life was too short to be unhappy. Things were too good the other way.

  That night, neither of us was supposed to be home on time.

  A few years earlier, we’d scraped together enough money to move from our two-bedroom apartment in downtown Boston to a bigger place in the suburbs—close to schools, a park, public transportation. Normally, when Mikki got home from school at 4:00 p.m., I’d be there. Jenn typically got in by six-thirty, in time for us to eat dinner together. But that day I had a book signing in the city, and Jenn was going out for drinks after work with her friend Katie. Both irregular occurrences, both important. I was feeding a burgeoning career, and Jenn—who rarely managed enough personal time to tie her own shoelaces, never mind have a friend—needed whatever outlets she could find to unwind.

  We discussed it and decided that, at thirteen, Mikki was finally old enough to be alone in the house. I promised to be home by seven at the latest, so at most she’d be by herself for three hours. I’d bring home pizza, so she’d still have dinner with one of us. Jenn would be back by ten.

  I screwed up.

  Weeks had passed since we’d made the decision. Life had been its regular hectic self in the days leading up to that one. When a colleague who’d stopped by my signing asked me out for a beer, I mindlessly left a phone message at home to tell the girls I’d be late, and accepted.

  When I stepped through the front door of the house sometime after ten-thirty that night, Jenn, unusually wan, was right there in my face. Katie’s car was in the driveway, so I knew she was somewhere in the house.

  “Do you have her?” Jenn asked in a way that immediately put me on alert.

  “Who?” I asked, my face already draining of color, my heart thumping.

  “Mikki! Is she with you? Why the hell didn’t you answer my texts?”

  I glanced about wildly, as if that would help. “My phone died…I…didn’t you get my phone message from earlier? What are you saying…where’s Mikki?” I saw Katie’s face peek out from around the corner that led to our front room.

  “You don’t have her?” Jenn’s voice moved to pleading.

  “I…I don’t…”

  “You were supposed to be here!” Now she was screeching.

  What the hell is happening? my brain screamed back.

  And then she did it. The force of the blow nearly sent me to the floor. My hand rose to meet the burning outline of my wife’s hand on my cheek.

  “Jenn!” Katie shouted, rushing to her friend’s side as if she was the one who’d just been slapped.

  “What’s going on?” I demanded to know.

  Words dripping with acid, eyes blazing through tears, Jenn turned on me with pure hatred and ripped my world apart forever. “Mikki is gone!”

  Chapter 9

  When he stepped into the room, I knew something bad must have happened. Not that Hun’s arrival ever signaled good times.

  Today his voice wasn’t loud or demanding or harsh. His eyes didn’t burn with fever fueled by righteous intent. Instead, they fell on me with something closer to despair. Everything was about to come to an abrupt end.

  He said something to me, a lifeless, exacting statement of fact which I was helpless to comprehend.

  Our eyes met and held.

  He spoke again.

  Something in the words told me my ordeal was done, except for one last, unpleasant act about to be played out.

  “No,” I whispered. “Don’t…please, don’t.”

  More words.

  He was telling me what happened. About the plan they’d had, about how it had come to a fruitless end. We’d been on a speeding, runaway train, hurtling out of control, about to fly off the tracks unless someone pulled on the brakes. Their bluff had been called. They’d promised to kill me unless they got what they wanted. The look on his defeated face told me that they’d ended up empty-handed. And now their promise would have to be fulfilled.

  The kidnapped American had to die.

  Young Hun shuffled through the doorway, no doubt in preparation for one last photo shoot. Thanks to the miracle of technology, in a few short seconds young Hun would press a button and broadcast to the world a final image. Jenn would be sitting on our couch, feet tucked up beneath her, laptop perched on her thigh. She’d hear the familiar ‘ting’ telling her a message had arrived. She’d click on the attachment to access the picture. And then she’d know once and for all: the man who’d failed her was finally dead.

  Chapter 10

  As horrible as it was, I felt relieved. Relieved to finally know something. Mikki had been gone for more than forty-eight hours when the letter appeared in our mailbox. During those long, torturous, sleepless hours, through arguments that morphed into shared agony, interviews and interrogations by police, countless pots of coffee brewed by Katie and other well-meaning friends and family, every horrible thought imaginable had crossed our minds about what might have happened to our little girl. At least now we knew: she was alive.

  The note was old-school in every way. It wasn’t texted or emailed or even faxed or thrown through our window tied to a rock. It was mailed. The slowest delivery system there is. The kidnappers had cut out letters and words from a variety of sources—newspapers, magazines—and meticulously pasted them onto a blank sheet of paper. The message was short and simple: We have Michelle. We’ll trade for $10 million.

  That was it. No instructions on what to do next. No warning not to involve the police. No specific threat of harm to come to Mikki if we didn’t comply.

  Instantly, the authorities we’d been dealing with to this point began to take the situation a whole lot more seriously. Our house was besieged—inside by criminal justice professionals, outside by media. Not only was the kidnapping of a thirteen-year-old girl big news, but when the father of the child is a public figure, suddenly it was circus time.

  “Tell me exactly what happened that day,” Agent Bukowski asked the question we’d answered about two dozen times since Tuesday, the night Mikki didn’t come home. We didn’t care. We’d have happily repeated the story two thousand times if we thought it would help.

  “Mikki was supposed to come directly home from school, like she did every day,” Jenn began.

  “Did she usually walk? Get a ride? Would she have been alone?”

  “She always walks. Even in winter. Unless the weather is really bad. Her school is only a few blocks away. It’s one of the reasons we bought this house.”

  “Did she walk alone? Did she have friends she might have been with?”

  “Mikki has a lot of friends. She’s, I guess, what you’d call one of the popular girls at her school.”

  Jenn’s eyes alighted briefly on mine. Our daughter’s popularity was one of the things we
often joked about when discussing her. Neither of us had been a member of the in-crowd growing up. We’d actually had mild disdain for the kids who were—an attitude we now knew, as adults, was born of petty jealousy. We certainly never imagined a child of ours would be “one of those kids.” But there she was, as sweet and as popular as a frozen slushie on a hot day. Usually the topic brought smiles to our faces. Now it hurt like hell.

  “She usually walks home with her friend Delores. She lives on the next block. But I talked to Delores’ dad and she was sick that day and hadn’t been in school.”

  “So Mikki was alone?”

  “Yes,” Jenn replied. Then, ever the lawyer, she added, “As far as we know.”

  “What time was she supposed to be home?”

  “Usually no later than four.”

  “Usually?” Bukowski questioned, his deep-set eyes making a tour of our faces. “Was something different on Tuesday? What time were you expecting her home that day?”

  “Same time,” Jenn said quickly. “We just don’t know…I mean, we didn’t expect her…I mean…”

  I took over. “What Jenn means to say is that neither of us were going to be here when Mikki got home that day. Usually I was,” I hastily added as if I needed to apologize—which I probably did. “That day, both my wife and I had appointments in the city. I was supposed to have been home by seven, but I didn’t get here until around ten-thirty. Jenn got home at ten.” With every word that came out of my mouth, I kept thinking to myself: This is bad, this sounds really bad, this sounds fishy even to me.

  “I’m sure it’s been covered, but can you confirm that both of you have provided officers with exact details of where you were on Tuesday night? And contact information for the people you were with?”

  Bukowski was being straightforward and unapologetic. He was basically saying we needed to prove we didn’t do something bad to our own daughter. Fine by me. Do your job and find my kid. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.

  Our heads bobbed up and down in unison, looking at the investigator like two penitent children caught near an empty cookie jar, and then at each other. Jenn’s hatred, which had roared over me like a tsunami on Tuesday night, had since receded. She’d made accusations and stripped me bare and lashed me raw with indictments of guilt. That night, I’d slept on the couch. But eventually her logical lawyer’s mind wrested back control from the distraught mother she also was. She knew my mistake had been stupid, but not intentional. We both knew our energies were best spent on solving the problem rather than laying blame.

  “When I realized Mikki wasn’t with my husband,” Jenn said, “that’s when we called the police.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Ten thirty-seven, when he came home. I know exactly because I looked at my watch when he opened the front door.”

  Bukowski referred to his notes, then stated: “Since the last witness to see Mikki observed her leaving school shortly after three-thirty, that means she was missing for a maximum of seven hours before you contacted police.”

  I swallowed hard. It was a long time. I couldn’t bear to think of what my daughter was going through while her mother and I were at separate downtown bars having drinks and laughing it up with friends.

  Bukowski was studying the ransom note through a clear plastic evidence bag, deposited there by one of his officers.

  “What now?” Jenn wondered aloud. “What do we do now?”

  The agent’s eyes shifted up to take me in. “Do you have ten million dollars, Mr. Wills?” He’d obviously heard about the book and movie deal.

  “No,” I told him. “Nowhere near it. This is impossible. I can’t raise that kind of money.”

  He quirked an eyebrow. “Then I guess we negotiate.”

  “You mean for a smaller amount?”

  “No, Mr. Wills. For your daughter’s life.”

  Chapter 11

  I was surprised when a third man entered the room. Other than the two Huns, I hadn’t seen another human being since I’d been taken. By the look on the new guy’s face, he was surprised to see me too.

  With only a single narrow opening—I’d come to think of it as an air hole—at the top of the room, I’d had no reliable measure of passing time, but I estimated that by this point I’d been in captivity for over a week. In all that time I’d had no way to see my face—no mirror, no reflective surfaces. But I could guess at the vision this newcomer was staring at. A man who’d been severely beaten, bloodied and bruised, covered in cuts and scrapes, hair and clothes in filthy disarray. The water I’d been given was by the cupful. I could use it to clean myself or drink. I drank it. The picture could not have been a pretty one. The look in his eyes confirmed it.

  The two older men—Hun and the newcomer—began to argue. Young Hun stood back as usual, silent, near the door where he would stay unless called upon. My mind began to wander. I’d been having an increasingly difficult time focusing on anything. I’m not sure whether I was sleeping more or simply losing consciousness with some regularity—often I’d find myself startled awake by some small sound when I hadn’t even been aware of falling asleep. The heat, the murkiness, the odious smell of my prison, the wracking pain in most parts of my body—from injuries, from hunger—all once intolerable, now meant little to me.

  A year ago, I would have claimed that nothing in my privileged life could have prepared me for this. I’d been your typical American who had more than he could ever need, and took most of it for granted. Then Mikki was taken. Lying on this floor, my skin caked with blood and filth, preparing for death, listening to these men argue over how to end my life, was nothing compared to what came after losing my daughter. I’d prayed to every god I could think of for that ordeal to be over. For my daughter to be found and brought safely back to us. Now I prayed for the same thing: I wanted this to be over. But this time, I had no expectations of a safe return home.

  As the staccato ping pong of voices played in the background—two strangers determining my fate—all I could think about was how Mikki must have felt when the kidnapper took her. Evidence suggested she’d never even made it home that afternoon—which meant he’d grabbed her off the street, or maybe lured her somewhere. Either way, she would have immediately known something very bad was happening to her. She’d have been frightened from the start. Just the thought of it brought a weight to my chest that threatened my every breath—a feeling once distressingly alien, but now all too familiar. The only difference today was that I simply didn’t have enough moisture left in my body for the tears that normally accompanied the attack.

  It was a beautiful spring day when we’d splurged on a big party to celebrate Mikki’s seventh birthday. She was a fairy princess: beautiful, with hair of woven gold, cheeks perpetually pink, eyes an astoundingly rich cobalt blue, and a smile that could turn barren tundra into a botanical wonderland. The spitting image of her mother. My heart exploded with love each and every time I laid eyes on either one of them.

  Having been at school for a year and having already developed her reputation as a social animal, Mikki had many friends and wanted to invite them all. We’d just moved into the new house, complete with a wide open backyard and small above-ground swimming pool. It was the perfect setting in which to create a seven-year-old’s dreamland. Jenn went overboard with decorations, attempting to make up for the store-bought cake. We all knew any confection she’d bake would be an unmitigated disaster.

  I was in charge of entertainment. I couldn’t swing a pony—more my dream than Mikki’s, anyway—but instead hired a company specializing in children’s birthday parties to provide a magician, a balloon artist, and—the pièce de résistance—a clown named Beeper.

  The cake was quickly demolished by hungry little mouths, the gifts ripped open. Forty kids and thirteen parents were seated throughout the yard, finishing off ice cream floats, when Beeper made a noisy entrance in all his multi-colored, polka-dotted, oversized-shoe, red-nosed grandiosity. Mikki—who’d been strategica
lly placed to be the first to greet the surprise guest—took one look, threw back her head, and let loose a blood-curdling scream heard in Fenway Park.

  With her princess tiara flying to the ground and fat tears spurting from her eyes, Mikki found me in the crowd and ran toward me as if her life depended on it. I fell to my knees and held open my arms just in time for her to crash into them. Within seconds, my shirt was sodden with baby princess tears. Jenn was leaning over my shoulder saying logical things in a sweet, calming voice, attempting to convince our daughter that the clown was not actually there to eat her. All I did was hold my little girl, one hand gently rubbing her shuddering back, the other cradling her golden head. In that moment, the clown was my enemy too. I would have done anything to protect my child from dangers real or imagined. I pledged to play that role for the rest of my life.

  I failed.

  I wasn’t there to protect my daughter when she needed me most. Instead, I was busy feeding my ego, inviting some sycophant to tell me how great I was, spouting bon mots about my newest writing project as if that was the most important thing in the world. No one was there to rub her back or cradle her head. She’d been alone. Frightened. Confused by what was happening to her and why. Wondering when mommy and daddy would save her. Not yet knowing they never would.

  I was ruined that day.

  There was no reason to go on.

  “Kill me.” I calmly said the words aloud.

  The two men stopped arguing and stared at me. I prayed they understood. I prayed they’d grant my wish.

  Chapter 12

  Once again I was tied up and gagged. This time lying contorted on the floor of a van, which was not as bad as you’d expect. Not that I’ve ever had much call to think about such a thing. If I was an author of thrillers or murder mysteries, maybe then. But I don’t write those kinds of books—or even read them much. They don’t appeal to me. I write about travel; I write about my observations of people coping with life’s normal challenges—often with humorous undertone.