“Describe the man, please.”
“Um, Caucasian, maybe in his thirties or forties, not fat or anything, kind of average . . .”
“And where—”
“At the mall! The Fulcrum mall.”
“Is that where you’re calling from, ma’am?”
“No! I’m following them. They’re heading south on the Old Buckeye Pike. You need to get somebody to stop that van.”
“What van, ma’am?”
“The kidnapper’s van!”
“Make and model?”
I had no idea. Had never paid much attention to cars. “I can see it from here,” I said, hating myself for sounding like a child. Far ahead of me the van’s rear looked like a square of bread. In any normal place with hills, I wouldn’t have been able to see it at that distance at all. “It’s kind of beige,” I said, “or silver. A light silver brown. Kind of taupe.” Excitedly my mind seized upon the exact comparison. “Actually, it’s the color of a Weimaraner.”
The dispatcher sounded unimpressed. “License number?”
“I don’t know! It’s a big van. It has kind of darker brown stripes on the sides.”
“Ohio plates?”
“Um, I don’t know. It has a wheel cover on back,” I supplied helpfully, “with a design that looks kind of like one of those diagrams in a doctor’s office of the female reproductive tract—you know, the ovaries and the uterus and . . . and stuff.”
The dispatcher’s tone of voice declared me a nutcase. “Recent model?”
I felt tears stinging in my eyes. “Listen, I’ll call you back when I get closer.” I started to set the phone aside.
“Ma’am! Ma’am, I need you to stay on the line. Your name and location?”
“My name, um . . .”
Nobody was supposed to know about me.
Thumbing buttons blindly, I tossed the phone onto the passenger seat. I blinked hard. No time for tears right now. Clutching the steering wheel with both hands, I stepped on the gas. And if the car was shaking, so what? So was I.
This was definitely my day for new ventures into automotive danger. I pushed the Kia up to ninety, ninety-five, a hundred, and still nary a police cruiser appeared in my rearview mirror. But I was getting closer to the van, and I could see it better now, including its Weimaraner-colored wheel cover with the white design that looked like ovaries, et cetera, on it.
And probably the driver, if he was looking at his rearview mirror, could see me tearing after him.
Did I want him to know I was following? If I got close enough to read the bastard’s license plate, he was sure to notice me. And then what would he do, and what might happen to Juliet? How could I keep her safe? What was I going to do until County Control got its act together and the police showed up?
I had no idea.
Slowing down, I blended back into the right lane, three cars behind the van, and tried to think.
But all I could think was Juliet. Daughter. Was she still unconscious? Or awake and crying? Or trying to talk the driver into letting her go? I didn’t have any idea how Juliet might be reacting. Would she get hysterical? Would she do something impulsive and dangerous, break a window, try to jump? Would she get angry, mouthy? Or would she be thinking, watching, ready to seize a chance to escape?
I didn’t know.
I didn’t know my own daughter.
If I sped up and hung by the van’s left rear corner till I could call the cops with the make, model, and license number, then the kidnapper would notice me for sure. And then what? He’d get away, that was what. He wouldn’t wait for the police to come and stop him. He’d go tearing off, maybe take a side road, and being male, not to mention being criminal, he’d probably had a lot more practice at speeding than I had. Plus I had a feeling a big van could go faster than a Kia.
Unless . . . maybe I could get in front of him quick, cut him off, make him slow down so Juliet could jump . . .
And break her neck, probably. Get run over. Killed.
I stayed where I was, following the van from a discreet distance. I thought of phoning Sam, my husband, but how could he help and what could I say? He knew nothing about this—my other life, my daughter. I would call him as soon as I had figured out what to tell him. Meanwhile, I trailed that van like toilet paper stuck to a shoe. It was all I could do.
* * *
Three hours passed. Three hours and forty-one minutes, actually.
I kept telling myself that as long as he was still driving the van, he couldn’t have hurt Juliet. Or not much.
And sometime he was going to have to stop for gas.
I still had more than half a tank. I’d started off the day with a full tank, and on the highway the Kia got forty miles to the gallon. The van couldn’t possibly get mileage like that. He’d have to stop soon.
On the other hand, the van probably had a much bigger tank of gasoline than my car did—
I bit my lip to discipline the doubt away.
About that time I saw green highway signs ahead, and a jumble of motels, fast-food restaurants, gas stations. We were coming up to the interstate.
I stiffened as I saw the van’s right turn signal flashing. Now what? Where was he taking her?
Into the Exxon.
I breathed out.
And swerved into the BP just before the Exxon.
I pulled around back of the building and lurched out of the Kia, leaving it running, leaning against its door with one hand until I could stand upright. My lupus doesn’t affect my organs—yet—thank God, but it gnaws at my skin, my muscles, my connective tissue, and my bones, especially my spine. After so many hours in the driver’s seat, my back was screaming.
When the pain subsided enough so I could walk, I limped around the corner of the BP building, head down, fumbling in my purse for a pen while I looked for the van through a screen of my own limp hair. Not like Juliet’s anymore, my hair, not sleek and brown with golden lights, but faded and grayed to the color of a squirrel.
There. The van had pulled in for gas with its rear end and passenger doors toward me, the pumps on the other side. The driver stood over there pumping gas. I could see him only indistinctly, through a blur of the van’s window glass, but I could clearly see the license plate, and I could see—
I choked back a scream.
I could see Juliet sitting in the passenger seat.
She was conscious. Sitting up.
To me she looked as pale and fragile as a porcelain swan. How could everyone not see she was in trouble?
Yet, because there she was in full sight, everyone assumed she was all right. Sitting there in the front seat. Not duct-taped or handcuffed or anything.
But—but if she wasn’t physically injured or tied hand and foot, why didn’t she run, flee, escape? This was her chance, with the kidnapper on the far side of the van from her. Why didn’t she dash into the Exxon and tell somebody to call the police?
Maybe she was thinking about it. She turned her head slightly. I saw her frozen face.
I understood. Or thought I did.
She was the way I had been.
A good girl. Obedient.
I wanted to run to her, shake her, yell at her to snap out of it and run, run—
Already the chance had passed. The kidnapper was hanging up the gas nozzle. As he screwed the lid onto his gas tank, I peered at his license number and wrote it down on the palm of my left hand. The chrome lettering on the van, I saw, read DODGE RAM.
Aaak. That white design on the Weimaraner-colored wheel cover was supposed to be an abstract front-view rendering of a ram’s head. I had given it a Rorschach inkblot interpretation.
The kidnapper strode around the rear of the van.
Hastily I turned away so he wouldn’t see me watching him. W
ith my back to him, I opened a door in the side of the BP station and walked in.
I found myself in a rather rudimentary bathroom, and suddenly realized how badly I needed to use it.
Quickly, though. A minute later, when I peeked out, the van was still at the pump and Juliet was still sitting woodenly in the passenger seat. I hadn’t lost them.
The kidnapper seemed to be paying for his gas inside the Exxon. He would be smart to do that, use cash so as not to leave a paper trail. If I could get to Juliet—
No, already it was too late. Here he came.
With one eye to the crack in the door, I watched as he strode across the parking lot to his vehicle. I wanted to have a description of him to give to the police. But I saw little more than before. Nothing special about his build, his weight, his height. Average, average, average. Khaki slacks, blue Windbreaker, baseball cap. Face mostly turned away from me, shadowed by his hat. About all I could see was the pale outline of one cheekbone, yet I felt a chill snake up my spine and coil in the hair at the nape of my neck, making me want to hide. I fought an impulse to close the door and stay in the bathroom.
Juliet.
Where was he taking her? Farther down the Old Buckeye Pike? Or onto the interstate?
Couldn’t hide. Had to follow.
The kidnapper, with his back to me, had almost reached his van. Closing the bathroom door gently behind me, I trotted around the corner to where I’d left my car running. It was still there. Sighing with relief, I wedged my hind end into the driver’s seat, put the Kia in gear, and nosed it out from behind the BP just in time to see the van pulling away from the Exxon pump.
I waited. Didn’t want the kidnapper to see me following. After he’d made his turn onto the highway, I pulled forward just enough so that I could see past the Exxon to watch the interchange. The kidnapper could either continue south on the state route or head east or west on the interstate.
He pulled into the left turn lane to head up the ramp on the other side of the overpass. Interstate, eastbound.
It was time to call the cops again. They’d have to pay attention now.
I pulled out of the BP, positioned myself in the correct lane with several cars between me and the van, stopped to wait for the traffic light to turn green, then reached toward the passenger seat for my cell phone.
It wasn’t there.
Excuse me?
I peered at the passenger seat where I’d tossed the phone, then at the passenger-seat foot well. No phone.
I saw my purse plopped on the seat, my plastic shopping bag plopped on the floor. I lifted the purse. No phone under it. I leaned over and clawed at the bag to move it in case the phone had fallen on the floor. A horn sounded behind me.
No phone.
I dumped my purse onto the passenger seat. An embarrassment of private items fell out, but no cell phone.
Three or four more horns added their plangent tones to the first.
Blinking at the green light and open road ahead of me, I stepped on the gas and turned left onto the interstate’s eastbound ramp, trying to think. I’d lost sight of the van, but it couldn’t be very far ahead of me. What had become of my phone? Had it slid under the seat, or slipped down between the seat and the passenger door? I couldn’t look either of those places without pulling over and stopping the car. Meanwhile, the man in the van would be taking Juliet farther and farther away from me.
My right foot made the decision for me, pressing on the accelerator as I roared up the ramp. I needed to catch up with that van. Needed at least to get in sight of it. A giant hurtful fist of need had clenched around my heart, making it cry like a toddler when the parent threatens to leave it behind. I had to find Juliet.
And in order to do that, I was going to have to drive even faster than before. Traffic on the interstate averaged around seventy miles an hour. Merging, I pushed the Kia up to seventy, seventy-five, feeling it shaking, poor little car; I could actually see the hood vibrating. I moved into the passing lane. Seventy-eight, seventy-nine—
POW, like a gun blast, and simultaneously a sound as if the Velcro that held the world together had just ripped apart. Everything in front of my eyes went crazed and blank. Hurtling along at eighty miles an hour, I couldn’t see the road—had I gone blind? No, blindness should be black, not ribbon blue. In no way could I comprehend what was happening, but my right foot, once again more intelligent than my mind, pumped the brakes as I ducked to peer through an inch or two of daylight at the bottom of the windshield. Something huge had crashed into the rest of it, covering it, and all the glass had alligatored, would have shattered if it hadn’t been held together by a layer of safety plastic. I could just barely see to keep the Kia under control as I braked while swerving toward the median, coaching myself: Slow down—don’t roll it, Dorrie! Wrestling with the steering wheel, I bumped onto the grass and blundered to a downhill stop.
I turned the car off.
For a moment I just sat there, listening to the sound of my own heavy breathing and the whoosh of cars swishing by at seventy miles an hour. And staring at my own car hood, which for some reason had just tried to enter the passenger area via the windshield. Maybe it wanted to sit on my lap.
Nothing made sense.
And that man still had Juliet.
The thought got me moving while my heart was still pounding like my father thumping his Bible. Fighting my own shock, I opened the car door, lurched out, then leaned on the door, staring so hard I barely noticed the pain in my lupus-eaten joints. Why would my car hood fly open and turn itself inside out on top of my Kia’s windshield and roof? Sam was going to be furious when he saw the damage.
All I could do now was call the police with the frustratingly little information I had regarding Juliet’s whereabouts. And ask them to send a tow truck for me. I limped around to the other side and opened the passenger door to get the phone, which had to have slipped under the seat or beside it.
But it still wasn’t there.
And I still couldn’t believe it. I got down on my knees and peered under the seat, searching with my hands. Phone.
Not. There. On my knees in the grass by the passenger seat, I packed wallet, checkbook, pill bottles, pens, junk ad infinitum back into my purse in case I had somehow missed seeing the phone. But I bared the seat and it still wasn’t anywhere.
It was gone.
Cell phones don’t just walk away by themselves.
I stood up, lips pressed together, starting to comprehend. “That bastard,” I whispered between clenched teeth.
If you loosen somebody’s hood latch, what happens when they accelerate up to eighty?
“That consummate bastard.”
The kidnapper. Smarter than I’d given him credit for. Had seen me tailing him, even though he had no reason to think anybody might be following. During the minute I’d spent in the bathroom, he had taken care of me very quickly and simply.
And efficiently. I could have crashed. I could have been killed.
Now I’d lost him.
Where was he taking Juliet?
* * *
Sam White hardly ever got out of the machine shop before seven p.m., even on a Saturday, but today he made a point of leaving before six. Dorrie would be pleased. Driving home in his freshly washed Chevy Silverado, Sam thought about taking her out for dinner. He hated to waste money on restaurants, especially those overpriced steak-and-seafood places Dorrie favored, but he knew he ought to do it anyway. He’d noticed Dorrie had been acting kind of quiet lately, a little bit down, and once again he was getting that stupid feeling she wanted to leave him.
A feeling he had never mentioned to anyone, of course, not even to Pastor Lewinski and especially not to Dorrie, because it was nonsensical. Even when she was really angry at him, which happened seldom, she had never threatened to leave him. And she�
��d never shown the least indication of possible infidelity. Sam knew where she’d be and what she’d be doing just about every hour of every day, and whenever he’d phone or stop by, yep, there he’d find Dorrie, right where she’d said she was going to be, at the church or the grocery or whatever. She’d never given him any reason to worry the way he did. It was just . . . sometimes, even though she was right by his side, he felt as if she were far, far away. Sometimes, looking at her, Sam wondered what she was thinking, but he was afraid to ask.
Like when she sang in the church choir on Sundays. All the other women would be watching the director and smiling, but Dorrie would be staring sad-eyed out a window, gazing at something only she could see.
He wished she would sing to him. It was her voice that had startled his heart like a song he could never forget.
Her voice, even before he saw her, even though her words were ordinary. College. Finishing his bachelor’s in business administration, Sam had been sitting in Appreciation of Modern Art, which he had been taking only because three credits of “culture” were required for graduation. He had been thinking about what lay ahead, a job of some sort, when a softly resonant voice speaking from the other side of the classroom had captured all his attention.
Something in him deeply recognized something in the voice, and he still remembered the exact words. “It bothers me that they put Monet in those heavy, ornate frames when his water lilies are so light and free. The frame kind of imprisons the painting. To me, anyway.”
Sam, to whom none of this made much sense, had looked over to see a girl whose beauty he recognized at once, unlike any lipstick advertisement and unlikely to be noticed by anyone fashionable, but ineffably like the beauty of the Mother of God, modest and innocent.
“How would you frame the Impressionists, Miss Birch?” the professor had asked.
Dark Lie (9781101607084) Page 3
