Remember Mia

by Alexandra Burt

  “Okay, Mrs. Paradise, one thing at a time,” the first cop said and took out a small green notepad. “You are reporting that they have your baby and that he’s your neighbor. Is he the father of the baby? I’m not sure I’m following you.” He closed his notebook. “What I can tell you is that I have no legal cause to search their house. You’re hours away from where you live and I can’t make sense of your story.”

  “Why won’t you just search the house?”

  “Because—”

  “Because it doesn’t work that way, I remember.”

  “Officer,” Anna called over from the front porch, “this is just a mix-up. I think she’s got the wrong address.”

  “We’ve been telling her that all along,” David Lieberman said and put his arm around Anna.

  “I understand, sir, I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  When the officer turned toward me, I continued, “Mix-up? This isn’t a mix-up. He took my child. I was here earlier. She told me to leave and I heard my baby cry. I followed him here from Brooklyn.”

  “You followed him? Why didn’t you go to the police where you live?”

  “I did, I tried, but . . .” I was going in circles. I knew that if I continued this route, I was going to end up in a psychiatric ward in this godforsaken town.

  “Ma’am, is there anyone we can call to pick you up? Your husband, a friend, anyone?”

  “I don’t need anyone to pick me up.”

  “I’m doing you a favor here. This can go either way and I’m offering to call someone to pick you up.”

  “Let me just show you what I found—”

  “I told you before not to reach into your purse. Are you on any medication? Are you in treatment for any kind of mental illness? Now would be the time to tell me.”

  “No, no, no. I’m . . . Why are you asking me this? Why don’t you ask him what kind of medication he’s on? Ask him if he’s crazy. He took my child. He’s the one—”

  “Mrs. Paradise, honestly . . .” Then his face lit up. “Ah, now I get it.” He closed the notepad and turned a dial on the radio attached to his shoulder.

  “I’m telling you the truth. If I—”

  “Relax, Mrs. Paradise. I know what this is,” he interrupted me. “You’re the girlfriend and you’re trying to keep it a secret from his wife. You probably stood in the rain watching the house. You followed him out here and you realized he has a family. He”—and he pointed at Lieberman—“is pretending he doesn’t know you. Which, by the way, is not a crime. You, on the other hand, you could be charged with disturbing the peace and trespassing. And that doesn’t include the scratches on his arm, that’s an assault charge. You are potentially in a lot of trouble.”

  I had seen him earlier getting clothes from the backseat and with any luck . . . “His car, can you check his car, just look through the window. If there’s anything like baby clothes, diapers, formula, anything, then you’ll know I’m telling the truth.”

  I turned around. Everything about Lieberman was wrong, his smile seemed pasted on and there were two dark wet patches under each armpit.

  “Please, just look through the car window, you’ll see,” I said and watched Lieberman’s face change to straight fear. His shoulders were hunched, his movements uncoordinated. He kept moving toward me, yet his body seemed to be going sideways at the same time. His face was paper white. He leaped off the porch, causing the officers to put their hands on their holsters.

  “My husband isn’t feeling well.” Anna Lieberman pulled him back, holding on to his arm while wrapping her other arm around his waist. “We haven’t done anything wrong. I think we’re done here.”

  “Sir,” the cop called over to the porch, “do you want to file charges for assault against this lady?”

  “We’re not filing any charges, Officer. This is just a mix-up.” Anna Lieberman sounded convincing, and if I didn’t know any better, I would have believed her myself.

  “Please check their car, you’ll see—”

  “That’s enough.” His voice was harsh, his eyes stern. “Either you get in your car and leave or I’m going to put these cuffs on you,” he said and pointed at his duty belt.

  I wanted to drop to my knees. I felt like a little child whose parents insist that there are no monsters under the bed. No one was going to help me, because they believed me to be a lunatic. I gave him a halfhearted smile and held up my car key.

  “You folks are free to go about your business,” he called to the front porch, then he turned toward me. “I’m going to consider this issue resolved. I will escort you to 434 and we will forget about all of this. Just a lot of paperwork over nothing and these good folks over there have somewhere to be. Four-thirty-four will take you straight back to New York City,” he said and motioned me to get in my car.

  We reached exit 434 and the officer in the passenger seat waved to the right. I took the exit and the cruiser disappeared from my view. I had to give it to the Liebermans: discrediting me in front of the cops and getting away with it was bold. My appearance, wet and disheveled, hadn’t helped, I was sure. What was I to do? Enter the house, gun in hand, and demand my daughter back? There was only one thing no one would be able to discount: DNA. All I had to do was prove to the police that the baby in Anna’s house was mine and science was on my side.

  In order to get the DNA I had to return to Anna’s house. While I thought about how to proceed—maybe snatching a dirty diaper from the garbage sitting on the curb—I quickly realized I had missed my turn and passed my exit altogether. I pulled over and turned off the ignition. I switched on the overhead light and unfolded the map, struggling with its size. After a few minutes I gave up.

  Daylight had faded and traffic had turned from sparse to nonexistent as the autumn night became thick with darkness, sticky almost, as if covered in ink. The moon, like a ghostly apparition in flight, appeared and disappeared behind thick clouds.

  A set of headlights emerged out of nowhere as if a car had silently approached with the lights off and had just now turned them back on. Slowly the car pulled up behind me but no one got out. It rolled another foot or two forward, then stopped. The car’s lights went out and it was dark again. I kept staring in the rearview mirror. I couldn’t make out any movements behind me—it was more a hunch than anything—but suddenly my heartbeat went into overdrive. I reached for the gun in my purse without taking my eyes off the mirror.

  Finally, a car door opened. Before my mind realized what was happening, my body reacted. My elbow hit the central locking mechanism and my brain messaged my body to start the car. At that very moment, the back window shattered and shards of glass rained on the rear seat. Then all went quiet.

  I sat paralyzed with fear. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow by the driver’s window. I grabbed my purse, scooted into the passenger seat, and reached for the passenger-side door handle. The driver’s-side window shattered next and I covered my face with my arms. As I reached to open the passenger door, someone tugged at my hair through the driver’s window and yanked me back into the driver’s seat. My scalp pounded with pain. I turned my head and a shadowy man stood next to my car.

  Fate may visit unannounced, but once it knocks, you know nothing will keep it from entering. Insanity hung in the air, a jumbled scent of sweat and wrath. The Prince of Darkness had come for me. And he was mad.

  CHAPTER 22

  “Take a deep breath,” Dr. Ari says.

  I can’t contain the panic, it unfurls like a ball of yarn, expanding through my entire body. My breath comes in short spurts as I press the palms of my hands deep into the cold leather of the couch. I try to concentrate but my eyes scamper.

  “I need to speak with the detective. They are looking for them, right? What are they doing to find them? All this here, what we’re doing, doesn’t matter at all. We have to find Mia.”

  “Let me rea
ssure you that police are doing everything in their power to locate them.” He pauses for a moment as if something is irking him. “We haven’t reached the end.”

  “The end?” I ask.

  “We have to continue . . . there’s just too many questions unanswered,” he replies.

  I feel the need to retreat for a short while, seek shelter like an animal before birthing her young. “What does Muhammad say about fate, Dr. Ari?”

  “Muslims call fate one of the pillars of faith. I know what befalls me couldn’t have missed me, and what misses me could not have befallen me.”

  Dr. Ari wipes his forehead with the palm of his hand as if to remove invisible pearls of sweat, maybe his way of clearing his mind. Suddenly I realize he is as much afraid of the truth as I am.

  Reliving the moment when Lieberman’s hand came through the shattered window and unlocked the car door coats my entire body in a layer of sweat. I recall Lieberman’s unnaturally long fingers reaching for me, like a sprout of some bloodsucking plant. Suddenly it’s all so clear. Bright as daylight, my memories reconcile, gather like oil on top of the ocean surface.

  —

  Lieberman’s eyes were feverish, dark and intense. The interior overhead light bathed us in a golden glow and the moonlight caught bits and pieces of lunacy in his eyes and reflected them toward me.

  “And so we meet again,” he said and smiled wickedly.

  Having to fight, hurt, or kill him horrified me, but I was determined. Whatever panic took over my body, I would not allow it to reach my mind, and I’d contain it and use it to my advantage. I wasn’t shaking, I wasn’t crying. I took my fear and hauled it into the darkness. This moment was as inevitable as the black night around me, and wanting Mia back was the only thought I had left.

  “You worthless piece of shit.” Lieberman’s voice was sharp. He no longer was the man who had lied to the cops earlier, the man who had leaped off the porch. His eyes darted about as if voices in his head were tossing him left and right. “Next time you visit my home without an invitation, you should be more careful.” His voice had turned into a hiss.

  Occupying the same space with him was electrifying. Did he think it was his God-given right to take someone’s daughter? What kind of madness ruled his world? Was I supposed to just let it be and let him keep her, walk away without a fight? As I watched his eyes dart about, I realized logic might not be familiar to him anymore.

  “Get out of the car.”

  “Where is my daughter?” My lack of fear was mutinous as he reached for the door and opened it. I didn’t move.

  “I told you to leave us alone. Why did you come all the way out here and harass my girlfriend?”

  We had just begun, but already I was lost. Anna Lieberman was the girl in the paper, his sister. She looked just like the photo in the newspaper.

  “What girlfriend? The one you called your wife earlier? You mean your sister, Anna?”

  “Who are you to tell me who we are? Why’d you have to come out here? Everything was fine until you came up here.” With these words, he waved a gun, motioning me to get out of the car.

  The colorless moon covered the world in shades of gray. The clouds had given way to a starry sky, and the moon was bright as if someone had flicked a switch. For the first time I could clearly see my surroundings. We were parked by the side of a cornfield, a dirt road running adjacent to the cornfield. A few gnarled trees obscured the field to the right. I got out of the car, stood in front of him, and I was surprised by how short he was.

  Behind him, I made out the silhouettes of cornstalks and sucked in the pungent aroma of wet soil. A dirt road led between the cornfields, cutting them neatly in two halves. The dark night seemed unforgiving, leaving no room for mistakes. A few hundred yards down that dirt road and I’d all but disappear into the darkness.

  “You should’ve left when you had the chance.”

  “I’m not leaving without my child. You should know that by now.”

  “Everybody thinks you are incapable. Even the cops.”

  “You know nothing about me,” I said and dug my feet into the gravel.

  “Get down on the ground.”

  His voice was full of anticipation but I stood unwavering. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You go where I tell you to go, sweetheart. And you’re going down.” He grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back, forcing me onto my knees.

  “The cops are still around making sure I leave town. They’ll be here any minute,” I said, but we both knew not a single car had passed us since he had pulled up behind me.

  “You’re just a deranged stalker, remember? No cop is looking for you, trust me.” He took a step back and pointed the gun at me. “Stay on your knees,” he added, “and don’t try anything stupid. Put your hands on your head so I can see ’em.”

  I interlaced my hands on top of my head. Facing the cornfield, I heard footsteps walking off into the distance. I turned my head and watched him as he leaned through the broken car window, searching my purse. He stuck his hand in, then pulled out the gun. He walked to his car and, through the open window, dropped it on the passenger seat. He looked left and right as if to find a perfect spot to do to me whatever his crazy mind was telling him to do. As he peered down the dirt road, he was confident, so sure of himself, that he was pulling the strings. His smugness forced strength I didn’t know I had to boil to the surface.

  I darted toward the cornfield and the second I crossed the outer limits and made it through the initial rows of cornstalks, I knew I was in trouble. The rain had soaked the soil and after a few steps the muck sucked at my shoes and made my feet heavy. I felt as if I was stuck in one of those dreams where my legs don’t obey and regardless of how hard I try to get away, my feet won’t cooperate.

  I made my way straight down a path. After about twenty feet, like a rabbit, I made a sharp turn as if avoiding a predator. I took only a couple more steps and collided legs-first with a solid structure. The impact made me drop to the ground with my shins throbbing and my kneecaps pulsating with pain. With the moon high above, I made out a small wooden booth with a partial roof, a swinging side door, and a wooden sign with chipped paint.

  CORN MAZE ENTRANCE. PLEASE PURCHASE TICKETS HERE.

  Sucking sounds heralded his approach before I could make up my mind which direction to turn. Whatever disadvantages the wet soil had imposed on me also applied to him. I got up and after a few stumbles caught myself and continued down the path. There was one trail leading to the left, one to the right. My knees were in such bad shape that running was no longer an option and I decided to hide between the stalks. I crouched down, sat in the mud, and willed my breathing to slow. I waited, childlike, with closed eyes, hoping that if I didn’t see him, he wasn’t going to see me, either. My heart beat like a drum in my chest as I waited.

  Click. The cocking of a gun coincided with my sucking air into my nostrils.

  He came up from behind, forced my hands to my back, almost dislocating my shoulders. He held on to my arms behind my back, pulled me to my feet, and with each step the pain in my knees intensified. When we reached the parked cars by the roadside, he gave me a shove. I fell knees-first on the ground. I tried to stay still but the spiky gravel digging into me made my eyes tear up. The agony in my knees produced colorful eruptions of lights tracing back and forth behind my closed eyelids. I moaned, which made him snicker. He slid something around my wrists. Judging by the ziiiip sound of it, he was attaching plastic handcuffs.

  When I looked up, he was standing in front of me, his outline framed by the moon. He was slick with sweat and the moonlight caught a shiny object in his right hand; a knife blade flashed a clandestine Morse code spelling deep gashes and blood soaking the already-saturated soil. We locked eyes—three, maybe five seconds or more—and I found it impossible to tear away from him.

  “Who’s after who n
ow, huh? You aren’t cut out for this, you should’ve never come after us,” he said, taunting me with the knife in short, deliberate surges toward my face.

  “Where’s my daughter?” My voice was small, puny, not at all how I intended it to be.

  “‘Where’s my daughter?’” He mocked me, then lunged again, the high sheen of the blade a promise of things to come. “Why are you worried about her now? It’s not like you took care of her. All that crying, day and night. Was it so hard for you to take care of such a little thing? Why’d she cry all the time? You probably didn’t feed her, didn’t change her. Why’d you have her?”

  “Mia, where is she? Where is my daughter?” I insisted.

  He was so close that I could smell his sweat and his anxiety. He was going to take pleasure in holding the handle of the knife while twisting it into my flesh, the warm blood feeding his frenzy. Then he’d get off coiling fabric and tightening it around my neck while watching my eyes protrude and my face turn blue. The way he was going to kill me was not important; watching me die would make his day.

  “How’d you figure it all out? You didn’t strike me as the quick-witted kind,” he said. He was inches away from me, and when he lifted his right hand, I closed my eyes. He got so close that I could smell his breath.

  “You thought you had the perfect plan but you made mistakes.”

  “All I had to do was get you out of the house. I hid your wallet, I prepared all those baby bottles, and left you a bottle of my special water. Made you sleepy, didn’t it?” He snickered and his face switched from normalcy back to lunacy, his eyes piercing, shifting about. “That night, I came in through the dumbwaiter. While you were knocked out in your bed, I stood over you with your crying baby in my arms, and you didn’t even wake up. I just walked out the front door with your kid and came back later through the shaft and locked the door. And the only mistake I ever made was that I didn’t shut you up sooner.”

  “You left her blanket in the attic. That was your first slipup.”