Stranger in the House

by MacDonald, Patricia

  She kept looking through the terminal as she walked, her eyes like two divining rods, trying to cover every inch of the place. She moved slowly, out the sliding doors, giving him time to return to the car. As she walked, she twisted the car keys in her hand.

  The street was jammed with cars, and she picked her way through them, trying not to look at her own car as she crossed the road again. When at last she reached the door, she already knew what she would see. There was no sign of him anywhere. She stared down at the empty seat. Slowly she unlocked the door on the driver’s side and got into the seat. I’ll just sit here and wait for him, she thought. He ought to be back in a minute.

  She sat for a few minutes in the silent car, staring through the windshield, her mind as numb and blank as if it had been covered by a snowdrift.

  A sharp rap on the window startled her, and she looked up to see a female security guard holding a pad and pencil and peering in at her.

  “You’re going to have to move this car, lady. This is a fifteen-minute-only parking area. Just move it out of here.”

  Anna looked up at the officer and opened her mouth.

  The other woman’s face softened and then wrinkled up in concern. “What’s the matter?” asked the airport meter maid, suddenly abandoning her official stance at the sight of the face, white as death, which stared up at her. “Are you all right?”

  “Help me,” Anna whispered. “My son. He’s gone. It’s happened again. He’s gone.”

  20

  Edward crawled on all fours across the surface of the loft, pushing piles of newspapers and half-empty brown cardboard cartons out of his way as he went. It was a small loft, but sturdily built. He had meant to house some of his finished work up there, but instead it was filled with broken pieces of ships and an assortment of garbage. Edward studied the post in the corner to which one side of the loft was anchored. That would suit his purposes. He sat back on his heels and folded his arms, lowering his head to avoid an overhead beam. There was no ceiling above him, for the windmill continued up with its narrowing sides. There was nothing to climb toward, just the dark, windowless tower above him. It looked satisfactory to him. He shifted awkwardly around to reach the ladder, and one of the cardboard boxes sailed off the edge of the loft and landed with a thud on the stone floor below.

  Edward peered over the edge of the loft to the floor, where the box lay on its side, empty tubes of paint, brushes, and a coffee can of turpentine spilling from its open flaps onto the floor. The turpentine began to trail across the floor until it was stopped, and then absorbed, by the worn camouflage-patterned fabric of the vest worn by the boy sprawled on the stones.

  Paul’s inert body did not react to this disturbance. He lay with his mouth open, his eyelids only half-closed, the whites giving off a sickly gleam in the gloom of the stuffy windmill.

  Edward sighed as he gazed down at the frail body. He did not relish the thought of carrying the boy up the ladder to the loft. Not at all. But the body would be safer there in case anyone should stumble in here by accident before the night fell. It was unlikely but not impossible. He thought again, glowering at the memory, of Iris’s surprise of the night before. He continued to shove boxes aside, making a place for the boy among the trash. After it got dark, he could move the body to somewhere far from the house. A dump or possibly the landfill in Kingsburgh. It could be months before anyone found him.

  A weak groan came from the figure lying on the windmill floor. Edward looked over the edge and saw the boy’s eyelids flicker and his arm move slightly. Grabbing a few rags and a length of rope, Edward hurried down the ladder to the loft and approached the prone form.

  “Help me,” said the boy. Edward reached down and stuffed a rag in the boy’s mouth as a reply. Paul’s eyes opened wider in that expression of recognition and fear which Edward had seen in those same eyes, long ago. Edward lashed the boy’s hands and feet together and rolled him over onto his back. The boy jerked his head from side to side, his eyes sick with fear.

  Edward did not look at Paul. He staggered to his feet and picked his way through his equipment until he reached the odd-shaped windows that were cut into each of the six walls of the windmill. It was a hazy, uncomfortable afternoon now, and the Stewart estate was in perfect stillness, no sight of anyone to disturb the peace. Satisfied, Edward squeezed past his sewing machine and back to his prisoner, who was slumped on the floor. He looked up again at the loft. There was nothing to do but to take the boy up.

  He took a deep breath and tried to ready himself for the unaccustomed exertion. It would all be over tonight, he reminded himself as he squatted down and reached under the sharp shoulder blades and bent knees. Edward lifted the boy and staggered to his feet. It took him a moment to regain his balance, and then he started toward the ladder, straining under the boy’s weight.

  As he did so, he remembered the last time he had carried the boy. Paul had been much lighter then. Just a toddler. He had been lying in the grass by the edge of the exit road, just after the car had struck him. Edward paused at the foot of the ladder, recalling the frightened, pleading expression in the child’s eyes when Edward bent over him. He remembered the unpleasant shock he received when he recognized the injured, bleeding child as his neighbor’s son.

  Edward sighed, remembering the panic in his heart when he recognized Paul on that long-ago day. He felt a little sorry for himself, recalling the sudden choice he’d had to make. But he’d always been decisive. You didn’t get to be rich and successful by backing away from a challenge. It had taken only a moment to make his decision. And then he had acted on it.

  It had been such a bold action, and it would have worked, too, if Rambo had not seen it all and saved the child. Still, he reminded himself, for a long while he had been safe. Given the same choice, he would still have done the same thing.

  Edward looked up the ladder and hoisted the boy up in his clumsy grip. Slowly he began to climb, resting with each step. The boy was stiff, but he did not struggle. His head lolled back, his mouth stuffed with the rag. Edward counted the stairs and made his ascent.

  Anna closed her eyes and rested the base of her head against the back of the wooden chair. The area around her eyes stung, and she raised the heels of her hands to rub it, as if she could rub the pain away, but the piercing sensation lingered.

  She blinked and looked around the Stanwich police station. There was a low level of activity that provided a constant hum, the blue-uniformed officers coming and going with papers in their hands, their holstered guns looking incongruous against their hips inside the station house.

  Anna turned to the uniformed woman who was sitting at the desk beside her. “May I use your phone?” she asked. “It’s long distance, but I can charge it to my home phone.”

  “Dial nine first,” the policewoman instructed her.

  Anna placed the call to Boston as she looked around the station house for the young officer who was supposed to be helping her. After two fruitless hours with Airport Security at LaGuardia, the officers there had suggested she go home and wait. A young officer had kindly driven her car back to Stanwich for her, advising her to take a nap and not to worry. Kids tended to roam. Anna had insisted on being taken to the Stanwich police station, where she had now been for half an hour.

  “Copley Plaza.” The operator’s voice interrupted Anna’s thoughts. She asked for Thomas but was not able to get an answer from his room.

  “Do you wish to leave a message?” asked the operator.

  “Yes,” said Anna softly. She thought for a minute how to put it. “Please tell him that his wife called. Tell him, ‘Please come home right away. Paul is missing.’ ”

  The operator read back the message and promised to deliver it. The policewoman at the desk beside Anna pretended not to have overheard the conversation. Anna sat back and closed her eyes again.

  She had debated whether or not to call him. Their reconciliation was so fragile. She was loath to put on it the strain of yet another crisis
over Paul. But she needed Tom now. Something terrible had happened to Paul. She knew it in every fiber of her being, no matter what the police thought.

  “Mrs. Lange?”

  Anna opened her eyes and then rose to meet the young patrolman who had emerged from an office obscured by a clouded glass door. “Yes,” she said anxiously.

  “I think we have all the information we need now.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  The young officer assumed a patient smile and put his notebook in his back pocket. “Well, there’s not much we can do right now. We’re just going to have to wait a little while and hope he turns up.”

  Anna stared at him incredulously. “What do you mean? Aren’t you going to start looking for him?”

  The young man shrugged apologetically. “We don’t even know if he ran away or not. There was no note or anything. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t take off on a little jaunt. Kids do it all the time.”

  Anna could feel her anger rising, and she knew that her face was reddening; but she tried to control her voice. “This is not a case of a runaway. Officer Parker, I’m telling you that something happened to my boy. We can’t just wait and see.”

  The young policeman folded his arms over his chest. “Mrs. Lange, technically I shouldn’t have even made out the report. The boy is not officially missing yet.”

  “But he was right there in the car, and when I came back…” Anna heard her voice start to rise, and she made an effort to lower it. “What about the computers, the data bank on missing kids? I know you are connected to those systems. Believe me, I am familiar with everything about this process.”

  “We can access that information if we need it,” the officer said. “But there’s no evidence to indicate that your boy didn’t just get out of the car and go off exploring.”

  Anna gazed at the young man intently. “Officer,” she said, “I imagine you must know about some of the troubles I’ve had with regard to my son.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I do know,” said the young cop respectfully.

  “It’s my belief,” said Anna carefully, “that my boy’s life may be in danger. It is just possible,” she said, shivering involuntarily at her own words, “that someone has kidnapped him again.”

  The cop smiled at her sympathetically. “It’s only natural that you would think the worst, ma’am. After all that’s happened. But Paul is a teenager now. This kind of thing happens frequently. I’m sure he’ll show up. He’s probably back home already. Really.”

  Anna stared at the man’s impenetrable smile for a few moments. Then she glanced over at the policewoman, who had ceased her paper work for a moment and was studying them. The policewoman quickly looked down at her desk.

  Anna clenched her fists in frustration. “Oh God, if only Buddy were here. He’d understand. He’d do something.”

  The young officer did not take offense. “Try not to worry, Mrs. Lange. If Paul doesn’t turn up by tomorrow, we will begin looking for him. By then, Lieutenant Ferraro should be back, and you can talk to him about it. Meanwhile, try to relax.”

  Without another word, Anna picked up her pocketbook and stalked out of the station. Officer Parker watched her go with a combination of pity and grudging admiration. For years, she had been something of a legend around the station, for her dogged pursuit of her kidnapped son. Every cop on the force had known of her obsession, although he had personally never come into contact with her before. Well, she had turned out to be right about the boy. He had to hand her that, but now it seemed the whole thing was too much for her.

  Officer Parker had been taking some psychology courses at NYU at night, and he had his own theory about her. He’d heard that she’d called the station the night before about an open window in her house, and now this. It confirmed what he had been thinking: She was so obsessed with the boy’s disappearance that she couldn’t accept it when she got the boy back. She had to keep the ball rolling somehow. It was sad, really.

  “I feel sorry for her,” said the policewoman at the desk, interrupting his thoughts.

  “Yeah, me, too,” he said. “It’s no wonder she’s overreacting. After all she’s been through, you can’t really blame her. Well, Marian, I’ve got work to do.”

  The policewoman, Marian Hammerfeldt, leaned back in her chair and tapped her pencil on her desk, thinking about the conversation between the distraught woman and Parker. The young officer had scarcely been able to conceal the fact that he thought Mrs. Lange wasn’t operating with a full deck. But Marian wasn’t quite convinced. She had often talked with Buddy Ferraro about the Lange case over morning coffee. He had once told her that he had a lot of respect for a mother’s instinct. It was something Marian believed in as well, being a mother herself.

  She punched up the file on her computer with all the information about the on-and off-duty officers. The inn where Buddy was staying at his son’s campus was listed there, along with a number where he could be reached in an emergency. She debated for a few minutes, and then she picked up the phone. It was his case, she thought. It always had been. And he’d want to know.

  This is just the way it used to be, Anna thought as she sat limply in the wing chair, gazing around the living room. Everywhere she looked there were chores she could do. The plants needed watering, there was dusting to be done, and the refrigerator held nothing for dinner. But she could not move from the chair.

  It had been that way for months after Paul had been taken and she had lost the baby. The house had been a prison to her; her household tasks, no matter how simple, had seemed more than she could do. It had taken every ounce of strength she had just to wait. Wait for the phone to ring, and when it did not, wait for the day to end. Wait in that numbed state of relentless dread that made inertia into a way of life. It was just as it had been then, but this time she doubted if she had the will to withstand it.

  “The Lord doesn’t give you more burdens than you can bear,” her mother used to tell her. Anna turned her head and looked up at Paul’s baby picture on the mantelpiece. She could not call her parents in Ohio and tell them this. Not yet. They were all excited, busily planning their visit to their long-lost grandson. They were old now. This news could precipitate another stroke in her father. You were wrong, Mother, she thought. It is more than I can bear.

  But even as she sank deeper into her exhaustion, there was a sliver of will inside, nagging her to get up, to do something, anything, to try to recover her son.

  There was that sheriff in West Virginia. She could call him up and try to find out if he knew anything. Or tell him to keep an eye out for the boy. If Paul had run away, he might be likely to go to a place he was familiar with, although even as she told herself that, she knew, with utter conviction, that the boy had not left of his own choice.

  She recalled a psychic, a nice woman who was a New Jersey housewife, who had told her, some years back, that she saw Paul alive and in a warmer climate. She was right about that, Anna thought, remembering the prediction. Maybe she will know something.

  The realization gave her the needed energy to get up from the chair. I have her number in the folders, Anna thought. She had kept voluminous folders in the years while Paul was gone, holding every scrap of information that had ever seemed useful. I’ll dig them out and find the number. The thought of having to go back to the folders overwhelmed her with a sense of despair that almost sent her back to the chair, but she marshaled her strength and headed toward the den, where she kept all her papers in a desk drawer.

  The sudden ringing of the phone sent a shock through her that made her jump. She raced to the telephone and grabbed it before the second ring. “Yes. Hello,” she cried into the receiver.

  There was a second’s pause before Iris’s anxious voice reached her ear. “Anna, it’s me, Iris.”

  Anna closed her eyes and fell against the wall. “Oh, Iris. Hi.”

  Iris hesitated a little before she spoke again. “Am I interrupting you? Can you talk?”


  Anna felt tears that she had held back all day rushing to her eyes at the sound of the familiar voice. “Oh, Iris. I’m sorry. I’m in kind of a bad way.”

  “What is it?” Iris asked. “What’s the matter? Is it Tom?”

  “No, it’s not that,” said Anna, unable to keep the tears out of her voice. “It’s Paul. He’s disappeared.”

  “Disappeared? What do you mean?”

  “Oh, God, it’s such a nightmare. I took him with me to the airport this morning to see Tom off on his trip to Boston, and when I came back to the car, he was gone. Gone. Just like that.”

  “Did you call the police?” Iris asked.

  “Yes. I was there already. They weren’t much help, I’m afraid. I thought this might be them now, on the phone with some news.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Iris, feeling guilty for calling. “I won’t keep you. I know how worried you must be.”

  “That’s all right,” said Anna wearily. “It’s good to hear your voice. They probably won’t call me anyway. They think I’m just an alarmist. I had them here last night because I thought someone broke into the house. And now this. I just don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

  “Someone broke in?” Iris exclaimed.

  “I’m not sure. I thought so.”

  “How about that?” Iris said, half to herself. “Edward was right.”

  “Right about what?” Anna asked half-heartedly.

  “About last night,” Iris said. “He thought he heard a prowler; but he went out to check, and there was nobody there.”

  “He did?” Anna asked, gripping the phone tightly.

  “He told me he heard someone outside, but then he decided it was nothing.”

  “But I called him this morning and asked him, and he said he didn’t know anything about it.”

  Iris’s voice took on a doubtful tone. “Maybe he didn’t want to worry you, Anna.”