Abducted

by T. R. Ragan

  “Yes, sir.”

  Before setting out after Maggie, he shook his head at her as if she’d gone and lost her mind for good. Lizzy put her gun back in the drawer. She located the notebook and pen she kept by the phone and wrote down the part of the license plate she’d seen along with a description of the driver: petite, dark hair, small nose. Forest green Jeep with the number 1, 8 and the letter N in the first four digits of the license plate. She set down her pen. Who was that woman and what did she want?

  A knock sounded, startling her. She’d already forgotten about Jared and Maggie. She hurried to the front entry and opened the door.

  Maggie clawed at Jared’s neck and chest. He groaned and tossed the cat in the general direction of her living room. He shut the door behind him and clicked the main lock.

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “You don’t say.”

  She ushered Jared toward the kitchen, trying not to smile at the irritation lining his face. She found a clean cloth and ran a corner of it under cold tap water. Dabbing the cloth over the scratch across his jaw, she fought the urge to smooth a hand over his handsome face. It startled her to think he could have this effect on her after all these years.

  “I hope that thing has had its shots.”

  “That thing is named Maggie.” She smiled, and when she dabbed the cloth at his jaw again, he cracked a smile, too. “It’s good to see you smile,” he said.

  “It’s either laugh or cry.”

  A moment passed before he said, “I guess your sister hasn’t forgiven me yet.”

  “Cathy isn’t the forgiving type. She’s a lot like Dad.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t deserve to be treated that way.”

  “At some point in our lives we all have to learn to deal with the cards we’ve been dealt.” She left his side and busied herself with feeding Maggie.

  “About the Jeep,” he said. “Did you get a look at the guy?”

  She knelt down and scooped food onto Maggie’s dish. “It was a woman.”

  “Anyone you know?”

  She shook her head.

  “You can’t go chasing after every suspicious car you see parked outside your apartment.”

  She straightened. “I appreciate your concern, I really do. But please don’t start telling me what to do.”

  “Still so stubborn after all these years?”

  “I do my best.” By the time she finished cleaning up in the kitchen, Jared was checking the windows in the front room.

  “Cathy already checked the locks,” she told him, but she knew she was wasting her breath.

  “Jimmy wants to bring in a couple of his guys to set up a surveillance camera and a wiretap.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Same goes for your office downtown.”

  “Great.” Not.

  “Jimmy also asked me to tell you to hold off on sending Spiderman any messages via the media.”

  “Why?”

  “The agency doesn’t want to put Sophie in any more danger than she’s in already.”

  Lizzy followed him down the hallway, unable to bear thinking about what Sophie might be going through. “I think the agency is making a mistake. Sending Spiderman a message will distract him. He might not hurt the girl if we can divert his attention. He doesn’t just torture his victims on a whim. Everything he does is carefully considered and calculated, designed for optimum pleasure on his part. He plans his next move in the same way an accomplished chess player would. If I send him a message it’ll throw him off his game, cause him to concentrate on me instead of her—”

  “Or he might get angry and take out his frustrations on Sophie.”

  She gnawed on her bottom lip, considering their options.

  “I’ll talk to Jimmy,” he said before he disappeared down the hallway.

  “When you’re done checking windows, meet me in my bedroom,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

  A few minutes later, Jared found Lizzy in her bedroom. A neatly made bed took up most of the room. The blinds were shut, curtains drawn. The walls were beige and the only hint of femininity in the room consisted of one well-used stuffed animal sitting front and center between the pillows on the bed. The stuffed animal was either a fox or a cat—hard to tell with its matted fur, missing tail, and one eye hanging from a thread.

  Lizzy sat at a desk in the corner of the room farthest from the door. On the wall above the desk, a four-by-four whiteboard was covered with scribbles. The walls on both sides of the whiteboard, from ceiling to floor, were covered with lists and notes, all stapled or taped to the wall in an unorganized mess. Papers and notebooks were stacked high on the floor around her feet. “Looks like you’ve been busy,” he said.

  “After I returned home last night, I couldn’t stop thinking about Sophie. You were right when you said that I need to remember everything I can in order to help her, but it’s not easy. Scenes from my time spent with Spiderman pop into my head like film clips from a movie, flashing through my mind in bits and pieces when I least expect them. Some clips are blurred and choppy, others remarkably clear.”

  Jared didn’t say anything, he just let her talk.

  She gestured toward the papers taped to the wall. “I made lists of all of Spiderman’s victims. Did you know that all except one of the girls was brown-haired and brown-eyed?”

  He shook his head.

  “I think that’s more than coincidental.”

  “If there’s even one girl with green or blue eyes,” he told her, “it doesn’t mean anything.”

  It was quiet for a moment. Her brow furrowed. “I still can’t remember her name. A day hasn’t gone by in the past fourteen years that I haven’t seen her face, and yet I still can’t remember her name.”

  “Whose name?”

  “We were so close to getting away,” Lizzy said, her eyes focused on the floor, her voice barely audible.

  “Do you mean the girl you tried to save? The one you used to talk about when you first returned?”

  She nodded.

  After returning home Lizzy mentioned a small malnourished girl without a tongue, but none of the bodies found fit the description. The original three girls Spiderman had been linked to had all been viciously tortured. They had spider bites on their legs and arms. All three victims had been left near a body of water: a community pool, a lake, and a reservoir.

  While Lizzy was missing, another body had turned up in the same lake as the number two victim, tortured like the others...burn marks, spider bites, but no missing tongue. Since Lizzy’s return, no other victims had been discovered, which was another reason some in the agency had a difficult time buying her story. Jimmy, among others, believed Lizzy was never caught by the madman at all, believing instead that Lizzy hid out for months until she tired of the game. Rumors quickly spread that she had made up the abduction story—all for attention.

  Jared knew her well enough to know that wasn’t the case. “What happened to the girl?” he asked, watching her closely.

  She lifted her gaze to meet his. “All of those horrible things I talked about—”

  “You mean the poison, the hot iron, the burns?”

  “Yes, all of it.” She stood. “It all happened to that poor little girl. Oh, my God.” She put a hand to her mouth. “And the other girls. These atrocities didn’t happen to me, did they?” Her face paled. “You were right. All of those horrible awful things happened to those other girls, but not to me.”

  He couldn’t stand it another moment. The dark haunted look on her face told him she hadn’t had a moment’s peace since her abduction. Jared pulled her close. He felt her wobble in his arms as if her legs might give out at any moment. Lizzy had transferred the shame and guilt that belonged with the killer onto herself. She had also taken upon herself the disgust and horror of what had happened to his victims. More than likely, Lizzy had been engulfed by emotions until it became too much for her to bear. Unable to see the torture and beatings for what they were—inhu
man acts performed by one human on another—Lizzy had been forced to deal with the horror in the only way she could in order to move on with her life.

  Her forehead rested against his chest. Her body trembled. He rubbed her back. “Why did he keep you alive Lizzy?”

  There was a long stretch of silence before she said, “Because he thought I was a good girl. He wanted to keep me with him forever. He wanted me to watch and learn and see what happened to bad girls.”

  She was tense. Her voice raspy.

  Jared moved away just enough so he could push flyaway hair from her face. “What did he want you to watch?”

  “He wanted me to watch him do unspeakable things to the girls so I wouldn’t make the same mistakes they did.”

  “How many girls?”

  “Three. After the girl without a voice...three more girls. That I know of.”

  Jared had read every file, every note taken on the case, and Lizzy had never changed that part of her story, always stating that there were three more victims after she nearly escaped the first time. That would mean there were eight victims total and four bodies were still missing, including the girl with no tongue. “How did he force you to watch?”

  “He used manacles.”

  He drew in a breath. Lizzy had been one of the most compassionate, caring people he knew. Back in high school she was the one who went out of her way to make new students feel welcome. She was involved in a half dozen clubs, all having to do with raising awareness about animal cruelty, saying no to bullying, and helping to make the world a kinder, gentler place. The worst thing anybody could have done to her would be to make her watch another person being harmed.

  “The girls always looked the same at first,” she said without prompting. “Scared, pale, shivering.”

  Lizzy appeared to be in a trance as she spoke, her eyes glazed and unblinking. “He would tie his victim up, usually to a bedpost or a chair and use a blunt object like a steak knife to chop their hair at weird angles. Then he would ask them if they wanted to go home.”

  As she continued, her voice became clearer, easier to understand. “The moment Spiderman saw hope in their eyes,” she said, “he would tell them they needed to pass a few tests if they wanted to go home.” She looked up at him. “They never passed. Nobody could pass his tests.”

  He felt her shiver. “Days later—sometimes weeks later, once the hope was gone from their eyes, he would retrieve a glass jar filled with a clear liquid. It was always the same. He would dip a utensil into the jar. And then always, just when I thought his victim had nothing left, he’d drip acid into their eyes and the real screaming would begin.” Her forehead fell gently against his chest.

  He held her tight. Moments passed before her breathing calmed.

  “And then what?”

  “And then he’d bring me back to the room with the spiders. We were all in the same boat. We were all trapped with no way out.”

  “You and the spiders?”

  He felt her nod.

  “Most nights,” she went on, “I just wanted to go to sleep and never wake up. But I couldn’t sleep because those girls were always in my mind—the fear in their eyes, the horrors they’d endured. I could hear their screams...and sometimes I would hear a drilling sound.”

  “What kind of drilling?”

  “High-pitched screeching...and never-ending.”

  “An electric saw?” he asked. “Sawing or drilling?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Nobody other than the agents working the case knew that two of the three original victims had been blinded by acid. One victim had been found with needles protruding from her retinas. But the drilling noises didn’t make sense, didn’t tie into anything they had found on the bodies.

  “Come on,” he said, hating to see her look so broken. “I’m going to tell Jimmy you’re not ready to get involved.”

  “I won’t let you,” she said, drawing in a steadying breath. “I need to do this...for me as much as for Sophie.”

  He led her to the kitchen, filled a glass with water, and held the rim of the glass to her lips. She took a few sips before he set the glass on the counter. Then he cradled her face between his hands. She had a pale, heart-shaped face, big eyes and full lips. She was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on. He missed everything about her—missed their long talks about life, missed her easy laughter. “I never should have let you push me away.”

  “I hope you’re not thinking of kissing me, because it’s been so long since I’ve been kissed, I can’t even remember how it’s done. I don’t think—”

  He dipped his head and put his lips to hers before she could get another word out. Her lips were soft. He shouldn’t be kissing her, certainly not now when she was vulnerable and weak. Maybe not ever. But he couldn’t help himself. He’d spent a lot of time thinking about this kiss. It wasn’t a matter of wanting to kiss her—he needed to kiss her, needed to hold her close and somehow let her know he would never let anyone hurt her again.

  His cell rang. Lifting his head, he watched her eyes come slowly open.

  “You’re right,” she said.

  He grabbed hold of his cell when it rang again. “About what?”

  “You never should have let me push you away.”

  He smiled and flipped open his cell. “Yes, I’m here with her now. She’s fine with the wiretap.”

  He looked at her and she shrugged noncommittally.

  “Okay,” he said, “see you in ten.”

  Chapter 8

  Tuesday, February 16, 2010 11:00 AM

  His heart drummed heavy against his ribs. He had dozed off. Sitting up straight, he glanced at the clock. He had a few more hours before he needed to get back to the office. “Cynthia,” he said aloud, his dream still vivid in his mind. He longed to see her again, to be with her. He hadn’t realized how much he missed Cynthia until this very moment.

  For Cynthia he’d been able to stop killing. In fact, he thought he kicked the habit for good. For nearly fourteen years she had been enough. It hurt to think about the way she looked at him when he first told her the truth. But there was nothing he could do about that now. He already hit the point of no return.

  “Once a killer, always a killer.”

  There was no time for melancholy, he decided. He looked around the living room. He had a lot to do. The house hadn’t been lived in for years. The walls needed a coat of fresh paint, maybe some new curtains. Cynthia had liked bright colors...reds and blues. He preferred more subdued colors like taupe. A mushroom yellow might work well to brighten things up some.

  Movement inside a nine-gallon aquarium on the table in front of him caught his attention. Inside were two Australian funnel-web spiders he’d ordered online. Brownish-black in color and highly venomous, they were his favorite type of spider.

  Cynthia had never been fond of spiders or snakes. His love for her had been strong, he realized. Still was. He’d overcome so much because of her.

  He tapped the glass and smiled when the larger of the two spiders lifted its front legs and extended its fangs. “That’s a good boy,” he said. “Don’t worry, you’ll be eating soon.”

  Tuesday, February 16, 2010 11:55 AM

  Lizzy couldn’t remember the last time she’d had this many people in her apartment at once. Two men with the agency were working on her telephone, rewiring and connecting her phone to a black box resembling a miniature DVD player.

  Jimmy Martin stood in the middle of her living room. He was on the phone again, telling law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for a woman wearing a baseball cap and driving a green Jeep Grand Cherokee with the numbers she’d given him.

  Lizzy didn’t know what to think of Jimmy. He was stern in the face and rigid in movement. He didn’t smile easily, if at all. In the kitchen, Jared opened another cupboard in search of a coffee cup and teabags. She didn’t have the coffee he liked, so he’d opted for tea instead. Apparently, he was addicted to caffeine. And he was picky.
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  “Do you have any Indian Black Tea?” Jared asked.

  She joined him in the kitchen, opened the drawer nearest the refrigerator and pointed to a box. “Store brand Green Tea. It’s the best I can do.”

  He took one of the packets from the box, although he didn’t look happy about it. If she wasn’t so tired she might have laughed at the displeasure scrawled across his face, unhappy with her tea collection. Picky or not, she already found herself enjoying his company. The kiss had sparked her imagination and had miraculously managed to take her mind off of everything else for a few glorious moments.

  “Did you ever leave Spiderman’s house during those two months you were held in captivity?” Jimmy asked from the other room.

  “No,” Lizzy said with a shake of her head, wondering why the feds liked to ask the same questions over and over again. Leaving Jared to fend for himself, she headed back to the living room. Jimmy had moved from the chair to her couch where he hovered over her glass coffee table strewn with notes, pictures of Sophie, and a map of the Sacramento area surrounding the American River.

  As she looked at the map, an image of the house from which she’d fled flickered through her mind. When Lizzy escaped the second time, she went through the bathroom window, the only window in the house without bars. In the beginning, Spiderman hadn’t allowed her to use anything other than a bucket. Three weeks into her imprisonment though, he led her to the bathroom and left her alone long enough for her to figure out she would need to lose a lot of weight in order to squeeze through the tiny window above the bathtub. She’d also known that she needed to stay alive long enough to make the attempt.

  Lizzy looked at the map for another moment before she pointed at a specific street. “This is where I was picked up by Betsy Raeburn, the woman delivering dry cleaning that day.”

  Jimmy penciled a circle around an area nearly four blocks from the area she pointed at. “This is where Raeburn said she found you.”

  Frustrated, Lizzy looked at Jared. “Can somebody take me here—” she stabbed a finger at the map, “—to the spot where Betsy said she found me?”