The Maddening

by Andrew Neiderman

  Finally there was a knock on his door.

  Normally David would have been put off by the appearance of the man who stood there, but Chicky Ross’s salty, disheveled look was a welcome contrast to the businesslike efficiency and cool indifference of Barry Hingen.

  Chicky Ross was a little over five feet eight and at least twenty-five pounds overweight. He wore a dark brown sports jacket that was stretched out of shape, wrinkled, and even a little frayed at the collar. His pants were baggy and wrinkled as well. He looked as though he had been sleeping in his clothes. He wore no tie and his open shirt revealed a mat of curly gray hairs that rose to his neck.

  David estimated him to be easily in his early fifties. His thinning black hair was dulled by streaks. Unlike Hingen’s neat, styled coiffure, Ross’s hair looked greasy and uncombed. David wondered if he had a convertible or had ridden up to the hotel with his head out the window.

  Despite all this, he saw a welcome humanity in the man’s chubby face and soft, light brown eyes. His rounded chin had a Kirk Douglas dimple deepened by the weight of his cheeks. He looked as though he had gone over his face quickly with an electric razor, missing portions under his jawbone and over his neck.

  “Mr. Oberman?” His deep voice was laced with fatigue. He sounded like a man who had already made ten similar calls today.

  “Come in.”

  “We got a call from Barry Hingen. He says you’re missing your wife and daughter.”

  The simplicity with which Chicky Ross restated the terrible situation almost made David laugh.

  “That’s right. I’m afraid it’s become very serious.”

  “I understand. My wife has kept me waiting for all kinds of hours, but,” he said, fixing his eyes on David intently, “I always had a good idea of where she was.”

  “Exactly,” David said. He held his fingers up, the forefinger almost touching the thumb. “I’m only this much away from a total panic.”

  “Sure. Who the fuck wouldn’t be?” he said, sitting on the only chair. “Let’s go from the beginning,” he added and pulled a small pad from his jacket pocket.

  David found it very difficult to give Ross a detailed description of Stacey and Tami, not because it was hard to remember specific things, but because picturing them himself only intensified his worry and fear. As he drew to a conclusion, his voice began to crack. Ross looked up quickly, but chose not to dwell on the emotional reaction. Even so, it seemed to confirm something for him.

  “Did you give your wife a specific route to follow, Mr. Oberman?”

  David laughed. “I drew a red line on a map and even wrote out the turns and exits. My daughter could have been the navigator.”

  “There’s not that much room for error, and even so, it wouldn’t take this long to correct any,” Ross said as though he were thinking aloud.

  “Exactly.”

  “You’ve called home recently, I assume.”

  “Just minutes before you arrived. I even called a neighbor,” David said and related the story.

  Ross nodded and thought for a moment. “Let’s go down to my car and take a look at a map,” he said. “I have some ideas.”

  “Okay.” David said, impressed with the detective’s decisiveness and animation. At least he didn’t suggest that they keep waiting for a phone call.

  “Just call the main desk and tell them to page you if you get a call,” Ross said as David went to the door.

  “Right,” he said, and followed the detective’s instructions before they left the room.

  If David had been taken aback by the detective’s physical appearance, he should have been bowled over by his car. It was a late seventies model Chevy Impala, but the body was badly dented and rusted. The upholstery on the back seat was slit down the middle, the stuffing poking through, the interior walls were gouged and scraped.

  “I’m kind of sentimentally attached to the car. We’ve been through some hairy situations together and both of us have taken beatings, but she’s got a great engine,” Ross said, anticipating David’s reaction.

  “I hope she’s got something.”

  Chicky Ross laughed and reached into the glove compartment. He took out a map of the area and spread it on the roof of the automobile. He studied it for a moment and then circled an area with a pen he drew from his inside jacket pocket.

  “If anything happened from here to here, she would have probably contacted someone local, right?”

  “Yes, and then me.”

  “Uh-huh. From here to here, she’s on state highways, so there’s no difficulty getting help, and she wouldn’t have gone off before the proper exit.”

  “And even if she made a mistake, it would be easy to get back on and continue.”

  “Exactly. So that leaves us with this area. As you can see there are a number of side roads. It’s a very rural area, sparsely populated.”

  “Why would she go off the path I drew for her?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Oberman, but why wouldn’t she call you if she wasn’t coming or if she broke down?” David nodded. “The whole situation is unexpected, so we’ve got to look for the unexpected.”

  “I understand. Yes,” he said. He was impressed with the quick, clear way the local detective went to the heart of the matter. So much for first impressions, he thought. “What’s next?”

  “Well, let’s confirm one more time that nothing’s been reported in these areas, and then let me contact some of the local ‘gestapo’ within these perimeters,” he said. “I know someone to contact in all these police districts.”

  “How long will this take?”

  “I know it’s going to be hard, Mr. Oberman, but you’ve got to be patient a little longer.” David nodded.

  “You’re going back to the station?”

  “Yeah.” David looked back at the hotel. “You’d better stay here,” Ross said, anticipating David’s next suggestion. For a moment, he worried: the younger man was brash enough to prowl around the countryside by himself. That might create a dangerous situation for the man and his wife, but for the moment he chose to soft-pedal. “It’s the only place she knows where to contact you,” he cajoled.

  “This isn’t exactly the best place to be when you’re worrying to death.”

  “Yes and no. I’ll go back in and talk to Bernie Lefkowitz if you want.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “He and half a dozen mortgage-holders own the place,” Ross said. “They’ll have a meal brought to your room and clue you in on any new information.”

  “Thanks,” David said. Why didn’t Hingen think of that, he wondered. “I wasn’t too impressed with their security man, though.”

  “Barry boy? He’s related to one of those mortgage-holders. Don’t worry, Mr. Oberman, I won’t go through him. You and I have direct lines from here on in.”

  “Good.”

  “Come on. We’ll talk to Bernie quickly and I’ll get going,” Ross said.

  David walked back into the hotel with him, not that much more relieved but definitely sheltering hope now.

  It was nearly eight-thirty before Chicky Ross got back to him. He had eaten a little of the supper and spent most of the time lying on the bed, pacing about the room, and staring out the window. At one point he thought he might go down to the lobby and hover around the front desk, just to be near the incoming calls and other people. But he opted to stay put because he was afraid he might get distracted and miss her call.

  There was a knock on his door and Ross appeared. David knew immediately from his expression that he had come up empty.

  “Mr. Oberman, no police authority in the geographical areas we pinpointed has reported anything involving your wife or your automobile. I assume you’ve called your home again?”

  “And again and again.”

  “Uh-huh.” Chicky crossed the room and gazed out the window.

  “It’s dark now,” David said, stating the obvious.

  “Mr. Oberman,” Ross said, turning slowly, “I didn’t
ask you anything like this before. I went to work on the situation assuming there might have been a breakdown or an accident, or she might have even gotten lost and was wandering about.”

  “Go on,” David said.

  “Was there any trouble between you two? Any arguments?”

  “Believe me, Mr. Ross, I would have told you right away. To tell you the truth, I almost wish that were the answer. At least then I wouldn’t be at a complete loss. No, we’ve got a great marriage. She was coming up here to spend some days with me.”

  “I had to ask,” Ross said. David nodded.

  “In your place, I probably would have asked sooner. Thanks.” Chicky Ross nodded. “Well, where do we go from here?”

  “We’ve handed the description of your wife and car over to the state police, and all the local police departments who patrol the route have been alerted. There are cars now searching for an automobile that might have gone off the road, especially any of those secondary roads that branch off into back country.”

  “In other words, we just wait for a report?”

  “For right now, yes. There’s no point in our driving up and down the highways. We won’t know the back roads as well as the localities who police those areas.”

  “I feel so helpless,” David said, trying to fight off despair. He was itching to get out on the road and look for himself.

  “You gotta believe that the law enforcement agencies are out there trying.”

  David nodded and settled back on the bed.

  “I keep going over it and over it. It’s like both of them just disappeared from the face of the earth…no phone call, no reports of accidents, no return home.”

  “You’re involved in that utility company’s project up here, aren’t you, Mr. Oberman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Big project. You must have been here a while.”

  “From the start.”

  “And your wife never drove up before?”

  “This is the first we’ve been separated for a long time. I usually returned on weekends, but the project supervisors are stepping up the work schedule.”

  “Well,” Ross said. There was a long pause during which the policeman just stared. “You know,” he finally said, “that I’ll contact you the moment I hear anything.”

  “I understand,” David said. “It’s just that I wish we could do something more. The police believe there’s something wrong, don’t they?” he asked, thinking about Chicky Ross’s questions. Obviously the detective wondered if Stacey hadn’t fled from a strife-torn household, their little girl in tow. And if this seasoned pro had suspicions, certainly the state authorities did, too. They might not take the situation seriously until it was too late. He looked up quickly.

  “They’re trained to assume the worst and proceed accordingly, Mr. Oberman. Give it some time.” Chicky Ross waited a moment and then walked to the door. After he opened it, he paused again. “I’ll be at the station until eleven. If anything turns up after that, the dispatcher will call me immediately. And, of course, you call if you should learn anything.”

  David looked up at him and nodded. After the detective closed the door behind him, David drove his fist into the mattress, little relieving his frustration.

  Obviously Chicky Ross was losing hope.

  But he wouldn’t. He bolted to his feet, went to the phone, and called his home. He repeated the call every half hour on the hour until midnight.

  He tried to watch some television, but felt guilty as soon as he felt his attention being captured by something he was watching. Eventually, he turned the sound down, but kept the screen glowing just for the comfort the light and the movement seemed to provide.

  He never got undressed to go to sleep. He kept thinking the phone would ring any moment and he would have to go somewhere to do something. It never did. He dozed off for short periods of time, each time waking with a start, either dreaming or hoping the phone had rung. But when he picked up the receiver, he faced only silence.

  Finally, a little before four in the morning, he fell into a sleep deep enough to carry him off until his wake-up call. When the phone rang, he jumped up so quickly his head spun. He waited two rings to recover his senses, then grabbed up the phone, praying it was Stacey, or news. He was met with the monotonous drone of the operator who chimed out the time. He thanked her and sat up, still somewhat dazed.

  The silence and emptiness of the room crashed down on him. He called his home again, this time his fingers shaking so that he could barely dial. After the tenth ring, he hung up and then called the police station. The dispatcher knew all about him.

  “No, sir. We have nothing to report.”

  “Are you sure? Could someone have failed to call me?”

  “No, sir. Your situation is right on the board here. Detective Ross called in himself only moments ago.”

  David couldn’t speak. He just cradled the phone. There was no way in hell he could go to work. There was no way he could concentrate on the new engineering safety design. He called Judy Davis to tell her he wouldn’t be at the command trailer, and that Cullen should orchestrate their plans. He didn’t want to give her the reason, but she sensed it.

  “Something wrong? Nothing happened to your wife?”

  He closed his eyes. The anguish felt like a knife cutting through his brain.

  “She didn’t arrive and I can’t seem to locate her.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “The police are helping me. Call the hotel if there are any major problems.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll talk to you later,” he said quickly and hung up. When he got up and looked at himself in the mirror over the dresser, he couldn’t believe how drawn and pale he looked. He knew that he couldn’t let this go on. He couldn’t simply sit around a hotel room and wait for some phone call. It wasn’t like him; he was too much a man of action. Worse, Chicky seemed less convinced than before about an accident on the road. Would the detective’s investigators lose momentum?

  He stripped down quickly and took a shower, keeping the stall door open so he could hear if the phone rang. Afterward, he put on a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved cotton shirt. Then he called the police station.

  “I’ve got to talk to Detective Ross,” he said.

  “He’ll be in about two p.m.,” the dispatcher said.

  “No. I must talk to him now. Give me his home phone number.”

  Instead, the dispatcher promised to call Chicky Ross immediately and have him phone David.

  “Immediately,” David insisted, then hung up. He paced the room, impatient with the five minutes it took for the dispatcher to reach Ross and for Ross to call him.

  “I was going to call you in a little while,” Ross said. “I wanted to keep you updated and to be sure you haven’t made contact.”

  “If I had, you’d have known it. What are you going to do now?”

  “Well, like I said, we’ve alerted all the police agencies…”

  “They should have come up with something by now. It doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  “These things are hard to fathom, Mr. Oberman.”

  “I can’t sit around here any longer and wait. I just can’t.”

  There was a pause on the other end. “Well, what are you going to do?” Chicky braced himself.

  “I don’t know. I’m going to drive back over the route she should have taken.”

  The other man sighed. “There are patrol cars covering that route.”

  “Nevertheless, I’m going. I’ll check in with you every few hours,” David said.

  “I hate to see you just going off. There are professionals—”

  “I’m not just going off,” David interrupted. “I’m looking for my wife and child.” David’s words were clipped.

  “I understand,” Ross said. He resigned himself to the situation. He knew it was useless—and possibly dangerous—for a civilian to be haunting the roads, but wouldn’t he do the same i
f his family had evaporated in thin air? Then again, perhaps this was a ruse. A detective had to remain skeptical.

  David regretted the tone of voice he had used. “I know you’re doing what you can and you should,” he said, “but I can’t help trying to do something myself.”

  “Of course,” Chicky said hesitantly, “but don’t forget to call in.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And, Mr. Oberman…”

  “Yes?”

  “Good luck.”

  David exhaled in relief at the detective’s newly relaxed response. “Thank you,” David said and hung up. He wasn’t going to eat breakfast, but he realized he would need his strength. What he couldn’t get himself to do was eat in the hotel, even though he had already paid for dining service. He just felt it would be too difficult for him to sit at the table where three seats had been reserved for himself, Stacey, and Tami. The empty chairs would haunt him.

  Instead, he stopped at a diner on the way. He had coffee and scrambled eggs, but found he couldn’t finish the eggs. He had to force down everything as it was. As soon as he finished, he shot out of the diner and continued his prowl down the highway.

  He had no idea what he would find and, aside from the car, he had no idea what to look for. He fantasized turning down some side road and finding them as they emerged from some makeshift shelter where they had spent the night because the car had broken down and they had no one to help them repair it. He would appear like the hero he should be to his wife and daughter, and he would rescue them. They would all embrace and be together and the ordeal would come to an end. As simple as that.

  The fantasy buoyed him. He straightened up in the car seat and peered intently down and around the road as he drove on.

  3

  The moment Stacey opened her eyes the terror continued, for although she was alone in the room, her tormentors had obviously come while she slept. The lamp beside the bed glowed and the tray of uneaten dinner food was gone. In its place were juice and coffee and a bowl of cold cereal. She stared at it until the full realization of where she was and what had happened to her sank in. She scrambled upright.