The Abduction

by James Grippando

  She crossed her legs and stirred her coffee. “I’ve been feeling somewhat torn about our meeting in your office today. The last thing I wanted you to think was that I played Emily’s audiocassette for sympathy. That was sacred to me, like showing you my soul. But I was getting pushed out unfairly. I knew the only way to earn your trust was to show you in dramatic fashion that I’ve walked in Tanya Howe’s shoes.”

  “It was powerful, I’ll say that.”

  “Is that what brings you here tonight? Or is this part of the investigation General Howe referenced in his speech?”

  “Investigation?”

  “Yes. He said there was an investigation underway to determine whether someone from my staff had leaked confidential details about the investigation-specifically, the ransom demand.”

  “I suppose you could consider this visit part of that, yes.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Could you be a little more vague, please?”

  He paused, then said, “Between you and me, I think the allegation is totally bogus.”

  “Oh,” she said with a thin smile. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” Her smile faded. “I guess the tape did make a convert out of you.”

  “Partly. That, and the simple fact that there was just no way you could have leaked it. You didn’t know about the demand. And I didn’t tell you.”

  “You think General Howe leaked it?”

  “Do you?”

  She sipped her coffee, thinking before she spoke. “I’ve been thinking about it, trying to figure out what he might have been trying to accomplish. It’s true he’s not a rich man. I’m sure he doesn’t have a million dollars laying around the house. Maybe he thought that leaking the kidnappers’ demand would stimulate private donations and help raise the money. Then he blamed the leak on me so the kidnappers wouldn’t hold it against the Howe family and take it out on Kristen.”

  “That’s certainly giving him the benefit of the doubt,” said Abrams. “But a few things make me wonder whether his motives are all that pure.”

  Her interest piqued. “What?”

  “The first thing is just the whole TV stunt. His declaration of war. It’s the kind of macho move you might see in an action-adventure movie, but not in real life. I have to question whether a man who believed his granddaughter’s life was on the line would really react that way.”

  “He is a military man. It may be the only way he knows how to respond.”

  “True,” said Harley. “But his attack on you is also curious. The kidnappers told Tanya not to go to the FBI. Then Howe accuses you of leaking the ransom demand to the press. He’s basically admitting to the kidnappers that either he or his daughter relayed the demand to the FBI in the first place, against their orders.”

  “I can’t fault him there. That’s an inference the kidnappers would make just as soon as the ransom demand became public.”

  “Possibly. But if he were really concerned about saving his granddaughter, he would have used his airtime to assure the kidnappers that he and his daughter followed their instructions to the letter. He could have said that no one called in the FBI, and that some slimy reporter must have bugged Tanya’s apartment and overheard her talking to her mother about the ransom demand. Instead, he essentially admitted he called in the FBI, just so he could take another political shot at you. That troubles me, especially when you consider the more subtle points of his presentation.”

  “Like what?”

  “Most important, the way he talks about his grandchild.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I noticed it before, but it really came out in tonight’s broadcast. He never refers to Kristen as ‘my grandchild.’ He rarely even mentions her name. He refers to her as ‘this innocent child’ or ‘this little girl’ or ‘that poor child.’ It’s a very subtle thing, but I picked up on this about ten years ago when I moved over to CASKU, one of my first cases. A three-month-old baby disappeared. We interviewed the father. He would talk about how happy he and his wife were when they brought ‘our baby’ home-how much they loved little Amy. Then, as the interview progressed, he’d talk about how for three months ‘the baby’ just wouldn’t stop crying, or ‘the baby’ was getting to be a strain on the marriage. You see what I’m getting at? No more ‘Amy.’ No more ‘our baby.’ He was distancing himself. Turned out the father killed ‘the baby.’”

  The thought chilled her. “But how could that be in this case? What about the photographs taken the night of the abduction-the ones of Lincoln Howe crying his eyes out in the back of his limo?”

  Abrams was deadpan. “There are two kinds of tears. Tears of sorrow. And tears of regret.”

  Their eyes locked.

  “Are you saying that Lincoln Howe arranged for the kidnapping of his own granddaughter?”

  “I don’t think I’m going that far. Not yet. But think of the possibilities. Some underling stages the kidnapping to push his candidate over the top. Lincoln Howe finds out about it, but he does nothing to stop it. Before he knows it, Reggie Miles is dead and everything’s out of control. In a matter of hours he’s in deeper than Richard Nixon and his Watergate cover-up.”

  Allison leaned back, shaking her head in disbelief. “I can’t imagine someone like Lincoln Howe actually doing something like that. We’ve had our differences, but he’s a man of integrity.”

  “He’s a man of ambition,” said Harley. “Immense ambition.”

  Allison turned her stare to the logs crackling in the fireplace. Finally she looked back at Harley. “Is this what you came to talk to me about? The possible incrimination of my political adversary?”

  “At this point I’m exploring every angle. Including a possible connection between the abduction of Kristen Howe and the abduction of your daughter eight years ago.”

  Allison knew the danger of false hopes, but the fact that someone other than herself was even considering a possible link to Emily was the best news she’d heard in eight years. “What makes you think there’s a connection?”

  “Nothing, as yet. But one thing I’d like to examine more closely are the threats you may have received in the past eighteen months or so. See if anything stands out. Particularly anything that might tell us whether the person who took your daughter eight years ago has resurfaced.”

  Allison thought for a moment, then shook her head. “I can’t think of anything. The attorney general gets the usual spate of weird calls and threatening letters from crackpots around the country, all of which the FBI investigated.”

  “I’ll get someone to pull the files, maybe probe a little deeper. I’d like to construct a profile of the person who abducted your daughter, and then compare it to the profile I’ve constructed of Kristen Howe’s kidnapper. To do that, I’ll need to flesh out some details that you’ve probably suppressed in the healing process. I know it’s late, and I hate to stir up anything painful. But can we talk?”

  She took a deep breath, then smiled sadly. “I’d better put on another pot of coffee.” She started for the kitchen, then stopped and glanced back. Her expression was troubled, a mixture of suspicion and curiosity. “There must be something that makes you suspect a connection between Emily’s abduction and this kidnapping. Tell me. What is it?”

  Harley grimaced, though it didn’t seem as though he was holding anything back. Maybe he was just having trouble articulating it. “I think it’s just a feeling I have,” he said. “Not a goofy groundless thing, like people who think they can pick the winning numbers in the lotto. It’s an instinct based on experience.”

  “And what is your experience telling you?”

  “Emily’s abduction was very unusual. You don’t see many cases where a total stranger actually breaks into a house and snatches an infant right out of her own crib. Emily’s abductor took a big risk, and he went to an awful lot of trouble, with the tape recording of her voice and all that. A scheme that elaborate tells me that whoever took her wasn’t just after a baby. What they really wanted was to hurt you.”


  Allison shuddered. “How does kidnapping Kristen Howe fit into that scheme?”

  “That’s the leap of logic, but maybe it’s not that big of one. On the surface, it’s tempting to look at the way the general has shot up in the polls after Kristen’s abduction and infer that her kidnappers are trying to help Lincoln Howe win the election. But maybe that’s not their real motivation at all. Maybe they don’t really care if Lincoln Howe wins. What they really want is for Allison Leahy to lose. Again, they want to hurt you.”

  She froze, thinking. “But why?”

  “The more you can tell me, the sooner we’ll figure that out.” He glanced at her empty cup. “Some more coffee’s probably an excellent idea.”

  “I’m actually immune to the stuff,” she said, then shot him a look that drained him. “It’s been a long eight years, Harley. Every night’s a very long night.”

  21

  The titanium-coated knife hurled through the air, sticking into the plasterboard wall with a quick thud.

  Tony Delgado crossed the living room to inspect the damage. Concentric circles drawn in black Magic Marker covered the living room wall, forming the rings of a makeshift dartboard. Inch-long puncture marks dotted the target, most within a few inches of the bull’s-eye.

  “Good shot,” Tony told his younger brother. He yanked the knife from the wall.

  Repo sat erect on the couch, stewing in his thoughts.

  Tony sucked down the last of his Budweiser, then checked the refrigerator. The twelve-pack his brother had brought with him from Philadelphia was gone. “Repo!” he shouted. “Your turn for a beer run.”

  “I’m not even drinking.”

  Tony gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Hey, you didn’t kill Reggie Miles, either. But we’re all in this together.”

  The Delgado brothers shared a laugh.

  Repo rose from the couch, grumbling. “You two are a couple of real jokesters.”

  “Just lighten up,” said Tony.

  Repo turned. “That’s your answer to everything. I just gotta roll with it every time you two dickheads change the plan. Well, that isn’t the deal I cut. Nobody was supposed to get killed, and there wasn’t supposed to be a ransom. All we were supposed to do is hold the girl until after the election.”

  “That’s right. That’s what we were supposed to do.”

  “Then why’d the guy on the news say there was a ransom demand?”

  “Because I leaked it to them, that’s why. It’s just strategy. Kidnapper says don’t leak it to the cops, then the kidnapper leaks it to the press. Gets everybody on the other side all fucked up, everybody pointing fingers at each other.”

  “So the ransom demand isn’t for real? It’s just a ploy?”

  Tony stepped forward, tapping the flat side of the blade against his palm. “You ask too damn many questions, Repo.”

  “I got as much on the line here as anybody. Is it too much to ask who the hell hired us? Who’s in control?”

  Tony smiled thinly. “That’s two very different questions. Who hired us? That’s none of your concern. Who’s in control?” He turned and flung the knife at the wall, sticking a bull’s-eye. “So long as we got the girl, I’m in control.”

  At 2:00 A.M. Repo lay restless on the couch, staring at shadows on the ceiling in the dark living room, thinking of Kristen Howe alone in the basement. He knew she was terrified. He’d seen it in her eyes. He was the only human being who had looked into those eyes since the abduction. Tony and Johnny had no interest in caring for a twelve-year-old girl, so Repo had volunteered. Every three or four hours he’d don his ski mask to walk her to the bathroom or bring her a sandwich and a glass of water. Tony had ordered him to keep her blindfolded at all times, but Repo figured it would be less scary for her if every few hours she could see that she wasn’t buried alive in a coffin or tied to a stake in some imaginary snake pit.

  The furnace kicked on, giving Repo a start. Tonight was colder than last, and the drafty old house seemed incapable of warming to a comfortable room temperature. He covered his exposed toes with the blanket, then thought again of the girl. The basement was colder than the rest of the house, and he wasn’t sure if the heating vents were open down there. She could be freezing. He slid off the couch, pulled on his trousers, then grabbed his ski mask and headed for the stairway.

  He paused halfway down the hall. Loud snoring poured from the master bedroom, where Tony and his brother lay sleeping off a case of beer. He peeked into their room. Sprawled across the bed in their underwear, they seemed more unconscious than asleep. But for the snoring, they almost looked dead-not a wholly unappealing prospect, thought Repo. Quietly he stepped back into the hall and closed the bedroom door.

  He stepped slowly toward the door that led to the basement steps, so as not to make a sound. Before opening it, he pulled on his ski mask. He glanced over his shoulder, making sure the Delgados hadn’t heard him, then froze. His reflection showed in the bathroom mirror at the end of the hall.

  He looked frightening as hell.

  He gripped the doorknob as he thought things over. He couldn’t let her see his face, but he didn’t have to look like a terrorist, either. He pulled off the mask, then grabbed a small hand towel from the bathroom sink and tied it around the lower half of his face. He checked himself in the mirror. He looked like those bank robbers in the old movie westerns. Effective, but not terribly scary. Perfect.

  He grabbed the flashlight that was hanging on the wall, then opened the door. He started down the narrow staircase, closing the door behind him.

  The wood steps creaked with each step. The light fixture in the stairway was broken, so the narrow beam of the flashlight showed the way. He paused halfway down the steps, taken by the familiar smell. It reminded him of his old house in Philadelphia as a kid, where he’d spent countless hours in a virtual hole in the ground playing Ping Pong and bumper pool. Funny, the way basements all seemed to smell alike.

  He stopped at the base of the steps, shining the flashlight ahead of him. Cracked linoleum covered the cold cement floor. It had buckled along the baseboards, where groundwater had seeped in. Mildew stained the corners. Warped sheets of old wood paneling covered the walls, as if some previous owner had made a half-hearted attempt to give the basement a finished look. The small ground-level window, high over the sink, had been boarded from the outside.

  Repo fumbled for the lamp on the bar. He switched it on and cut off the flashlight.

  In the dim ball of light he saw Kristen lying beneath an old army blanket, her body stretched across the thin mattress of a convertible sofa. Metal cuffs secured one hand to the frame at the top, near the sofa back. Her ankle was cuffed at the opposite end. A black blindfold covered her eyes, and a wide strip of silver duct tape covered her mouth.

  Her body tensed with the sudden awareness of someone else in the room.

  Repo approached slowly, so as not to startle her, then sat in the chair beside the bed. He leaned forward and whispered, “I’m going to take off your blindfold now.”

  She didn’t move.

  He reached behind her head and untied the blindfold. With a gentle tug, it slid out from beneath the pillow. Her long lashes fluttered. Even the dim glow of light from across the basement seemed to bother her unadjusted pupils. Repo watched as she struggled to bring her big brown eyes into focus. Like a sleeping angel, he thought, waking to a nightmare. Finally their eyes met.

  She looked confused at first, as if expecting to see the ski mask. She still looked frightened, but less so than before.

  “I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said in a hushed voice. “And if you just let me help you, ain’t nobody else gonna hurt you either.”

  It was after 3:00 A.M. before Allison finally bid Harley Abrams good night. She headed upstairs, quickly got ready for bed, and quietly crawled beneath the covers beside Peter. He was sound asleep.

  She lay on her back, her head sinking into the soft pillow. Her body was exhausted, but her mind was still at
work. Just keeping her eyes shut required concentration. They opened instinctively, and as her pupils dilated familiar objects began to take shape in the darkness.

  She glanced at Peter. His profile was barely visible, and she wasn’t completely sure if she was actually seeing or remembering it. She was good at recalling little details about people-the shape of the eyes, the curve of the cheek. It was an acquired skill, something she’d worked on ever since Emily had disappeared. Memory has a way of improving when it’s all you have.

  Memory, however, was a two-edged sword. The four-hour conversation with Harley Abrams about Emily had stirred up the bad old days, the sleepless nights. She laid the extra pillow across her eyes, enveloping herself in fluffy goose down. In minutes, the feeling approached sensory deprivation. Hearing nothing. Seeing nothing. Her only connection to the night was the air she breathed. She could feel her eyeballs moving beneath the weight of the pillow. She saw nothing, but the emptiness before her was turning white. As her mind drifted into sleep, the whiteness took shape. A white building. A white door. White columns. The White House…

  Allison closed the heavy front door at the north portico and stepped into the formal front entrance hall. The State Floor was like she’d never seen it before. Dark and quiet. She flipped the wall switch, lighting the brass chandelier above the grand staircase. She walked to the base of the stairs and called out tentatively, “Hello?”

  Her voice echoed. There was no reply. She felt a chill down her spine, a sudden realization. She was home. This was her home. And she was all alone.

  She started up the stairs to the executive mansion, the upstairs living quarters. Halfway up she heard a noise. She stopped to listen, then climbed quickly to the top of the staircase.

  A long hallway stretched to either side, east and west. Crystal wall sconces provided just enough illumination for her to see all the way to the end of each hallway, right and left. She wasn’t sure which way to turn-until she head the noise again, clearer this time.