Girl Who Wasn’t There

by Vincent Zandri

  But it’s all backfired.

  Just five days reunited with my wife and daughter and I’m convinced the bastard has struck back. He’s abducted my daughter, and now it feels like there’s not a goddamned thing I can do about it.

  I know Rabuffo. I know the men who work for him. Human life is cheap to them. The value of human life is measured only in how much money it can earn them. When that life suddenly stops being profitable, it is cut off, sometimes in the most brutal and violent of manners.

  I look up at the clear night sky. Up this high in the Adirondack Mountain country, the sky is so clean and clear it’s like you can reach out and touch the stars. A billion stars.

  “Star light, star bright,” I whisper to myself, wiping a tear from my eye. “First star I see tonight. Please watch over my little girl. Let her live so that I might see her again.”

  CHAPTER 20

  WE’RE PASSING BY a coffee shop when I feel it.

  Someone following us.

  No, I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. But what I have developed over the past ten years of incarceration is a sensitive built-in-bad-guy detector. It’s as simple as this: when in the penitentiary, you don’t watch your back, you’re a dead man. You don’t join Jesus; you join the devil. The devil is by far the more feared.

  We move on, slowly. Agonizingly slow. On our right, a takeout pizza place. The smell is drawing me in, yet I can’t fathom eating anything knowing my little girl might be going hungry tonight. But like Detective Giselle said, it’s important that Penny and I maintain our strength. No, that’s not right. It’s imperative that we maintain our strength. Not for us, but for Chloe.

  I take hold of Penny’s hand, stop her.

  “Whaddya say, Pen. Maybe we should grab a couple of slices, take them back to the room, sit by the phone.”

  “How can you think of food at a time like this?”

  It’s the question I anticipated most.

  “Strength,” I say. “We’re going to need it. You know that. It’s not like I’m asking you to head out for a five-course celebratory meal. I’d hoped we would be doing that as a family tonight, but it will have to wait until we get Chloe back, safe and sound. And we will get her back.”

  “What about your stomach?”

  “It’s better now.” It’s not entirely the truth. But I’m thinking of our endurance, our ability not to collapse under the strain, the pressure.

  “Okay, okay.” She nods. “But we make sure to get a big slice for Chloe. I mean, what if she comes back soon? She’ll be hungry.”

  For the first time in what feels like forever, I feel myself smiling.

  “Of course,” I say. “We should get her two big slices, a large Coke, and a chocolate chip cookie.”

  Letting go of my hand, she heads into the pizza place. I follow, one eye on her, and the other on the man who’s following us.

  The bagged box of pizza slices in hand, we continue along Main Street toward the hotel. I manage to walk a half step behind Penny. I don’t want her to notice the way I’m looking over my shoulder, just enough to increase my periphery. Whenever possible I use the glass storefronts as mirrors to see what they might be reflecting. In every case it’s the same man.

  He’s a slim white guy, maybe five feet nine. My height, in other words. He’s wearing a thin black leather coat over a black t-shirt. There’s writing on the t-shirt in big white block letters. I’m pretty sure it says CBGB, which I recognize as the name of a long defunct punk rock nightclub in New York City. He’s wearing black jeans and a pair of black combat boots. If he’s trying to look like a thug, he’s doing a really good job of it.

  So here’s the twenty-thousand-dollar question: Do I confront him now while we’re walking back to our hotel? Do I risk the mistake of confronting an innocent guy who just happens to be walking the same path we are along Main Street? Do I threaten a man who’s merely minding his own business? Or do I play it cool? Not confuse my built-in-bad-guy detector for paranoia?

  I think the answer is obvious.

  Keep your good eye on him while you let the police do their job. God willing, in just a few short hours or maybe even minutes, Chloe will be located and this hell will already be a memory. A bad dream best forgotten.

  We enter back into the hotel through the lobby. The same desk manager is standing behind the counter. He looks up at me as I walk through the door.

  “Good evening, Mr. O’Keefe,” he says. “Any luck finding your daughter?”

  It’s a hard thing to admit, but I half expected him to burst out with a smile as soon as we came through the door. I hoped against hope that he might tell us Chloe showed up at the desk and she is now in the room waiting for us. If Penny expected the same thing, she’s not saying anything about it.

  “We’re still looking,” I reveal.

  “The police are on it,” Penny adds, both her hands gripping the pizza. “They’ve issued an Amber Alert.”

  “I’m aware of it,” the man says. “The night manager comes on soon. I’ll make sure he is fully abreast of the situation.”

  “Thank you,” I say. Then, “Is Detective Fontaine still around?”

  “She’s gone home for the night. But if there’s a problem, or you feel the need to speak with her, just contact the front desk, and we will contact her on your behalf.”

  I should have asked her for a card when I had the chance. My brain is not working right. Human nature tells us that under times of extreme duress, our minds overwork themselves. We tend to overthink situations, imagine the worst. But at the same time, the brain’s overworking process can cause temporary memory loss. It can also cause a breakdown in lucid thinking.

  “Thank you,” I utter, not sure if I mean it.

  Penny goes to the staircase that leads down to the ground level. She silently descends the stairs, not like she’s making her way back to our room. But more like she’s entering back into the lowest depths of Dante’s Inferno.

  CHAPTER 21

  THIS ISN’T A happy, fun hotel room on the lake.

  This room is lifeless and empty. It’s cold for the summertime and it reminds me of the first time I visited a morgue as a young med student and examined my first corpse. The dull pain that suddenly emerged inside my gut. The feeling of finality when gazing at the lifeless flesh and bones. Like a famous writer once said, the dead look really dead when they’re dead.

  If only I could stop thinking for a while.

  Chloe’s suitcase is still laid out on the bed, wide open, her clothing strewn about from House Detective Giselle’s search. Setting the pizza onto the desktop, Penny immediately goes to the case. She begins folding Chloe’s clothing, piece by piece, repacking it, nicely and neatly.

  “If I told Chloe once, I told her a thousand times,” she says, her voice taking on a strange inflection, like she’s not herself, but another woman entirely, “don’t throw your clothes all over the place. Keep them nice and organized in your suitcase. That way you don’t lose anything. You don’t leave anything behind.”

  She’s folding feverishly now, packing them almost violently.

  “That girl will be the death of me, I swear,” she barks, her words verging on shouts. “Maybe it’s time I took the iPod away. That will get her to listen to me.”

  I go to her, take hold of her hands. I remove the article of Chloe’s clothing that she’s holding, gently set it into the case.

  “Penny,” I say, “listen to yourself.”

  Her face scrunches up like a woman who’s been stabbed in the back with a surgical scalpel. The pain is that bad, that severe. I pull her into me, her face pressed against my chest. But she battles me. The pain has become like a demon and it’s showing itself. She makes tight fists, pounds them against my chest.

  “It’s you, Sidney!” she screams. “You did this! Everything was all right until you came back. Why did you have to come back in our lives?”

  A trap door opening underneath me. I’m falling into a lake of fire and re
morse.

  “Penny, please,” I say, feeling my heart break. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re upset is all.”

  She punches me in the chest, tries to claw my face. No choice but to hold her back, so tightly I fear I might break her arms.

  “I’m not upset, I’m enraged. You did this. Do you hear me? You … did … this. You made our daughter disappear. You did something in prison. You talked to the police and the district attorney about Rabuffo. You told them everything they wanted to know. You did the one thing that would place us in danger. That’s why you got out when you should be doing life for murdering that family. Don’t tell me I don’t know what you did to get out. You told them everything you know. And because you told them everything, somebody is having his revenge. Before this is over, we’re all going to be dead.”

  “Penny, you’re hysterical.”

  “Fuck you, Sidney. Fuck you for what you’ve done to us.”

  “Penny, stop it. Stop it now.”

  “I’ll never stop. I won’t stop until you’re gone again. Until you’re dead.”

  My heart is splitting in two, but I’m also feeling the anger build up inside me, like steam heat rising up out of a boiler. That’s when the bad dream suddenly gets a whole hell of a lot worse. I’m about to do the one thing I should never consider doing. But I do it anyway. I raise my hand, slap Penny across the face.

  The hotel room becomes a still life.

  Penny is silenced. She stares up at me with wide, unblinking eyes, the mark on her face where I’ve hit her, red and painful looking. Slowly, she brings the tips of her fingers to her face, touches the tender place on her cheek. She sits herself down on the edge of the bed.

  “You’re right, Doc,” she says, her voice reduced to a hoarse whisper. “I’m hysterical.”

  Someone occupying the adjoining room knocks on the wall, tells us to “Keep it down.” Instinct takes over. I go to the wall, pound my own fist against it, shout, “Go to hell!”

  Maybe it’s the sight and sound of me yelling at a blank wall, but when I turn back around, Penny is slowly working up a smile.

  “Now that’s what I call hysterical,” she says.

  I stare down at my own fist. One of my knuckles is bleeding. But I don’t care. I welcome the pain. Welcome the distraction. My face … I can feel the anger radiating from it in the form of heat and bursting blood corpuscles. I go back to Penny, sit down beside her.

  “I’ve never raised a hand against a woman in my life,” I say.

  “We’re losing it,” she says, exhaling. “It’s only been eight or nine hours, and we’re losing our minds.”

  “Can you blame us, Penny?”

  “No,” she mumbles, “I cannot blame us. I cannot blame us one bit.”

  I set my hand gently on her thigh, lean into her, kiss her on her red cheek. She slips off the bed, reaches into her bag, pulls out her cell phone. Looks at the screen.

  “Nothing,” she says.

  I pull out my phone, flip it open.

  “Same. But then, I’m not sure Chloe even has the number.”

  She goes to the table, sets the cell phone down onto the desk, then opens the pizza box.

  “Are you hungry?” she says. “Can you eat something?”

  “Sure,” I say. But it’s a lie. A lie meant to passively aggressively demand that Penny eat. But she’s too smart. She sees right through it.

  Taking a slice from the box, she bites into it, places it back down. She goes to hand me a slice. As I’m reaching out for it, I hear something coming from outside the sliding glass doors. It’s a voice. It sounds like a little girl calling out for her mommy.

  CHAPTER 22

  PENNY DROPS THE pizza box onto the desktop. She goes to the sliding glass doors. I practically leap over the bed, plant myself directly beside her. I pull the curtains open just enough to see out into the dark.

  “Too much artificial light in here, Pen,” I say. “I can’t see anything outside.”

  Penny goes to the opposite side of the room to the wall-mounted universal light switch, kills the overheads. Now I can see out onto the beach. It’s dark and empty, but the lights from the buildings on the opposite side of Mirror Lake create two silhouettes. The first is a tall person. I can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman. The second figure is far shorter.

  “Is that her?” Penny cries, having returned to the glass doors. “Is that our Chloe?”

  She grips the door opener with both hands. But I reach out with my left hand, press it against the aluminum doorframe.

  “Wait,” I insist. “Something’s not right.”

  It’s my built-in-bad-guy detector speaking to me again. Telling me not to blindly jump even when sufficiently provoked.

  “Listen, Pen,” I say, heart pumping a paradiddle against my sternum, “if that’s Chloe, why isn’t she running toward us? Why isn’t she banging on the door, begging us to let her in? Why would she be standing there on the empty beach next to someone else? An adult? I know it sounds crazy, but it feels like a trap.”

  I can hear Penny breathing hard. She so badly wants Chloe back, it’s like she’s lost all reason. All ability to see behind her wish. Desperation is consuming her. The same holds true for me. But I learned over the years not to take the bait. At least, not at first. You need to swim around it, nibble it, test it, before committing to that one, final decisive bite. The one that hooks you, reels you in for good.

  “Stand back,” I tell her.

  It takes her a moment, but eventually she lets go of the door, takes a small step back. I put my hand on the closer and slowly pull the door open. Just enough for me to step outside into the dark of the cool Adirondack night.

  My eyes focus on the two silhouettes. One big, one little.

  They’re not moving. They’re not speaking. It’s like they’re not alive, but instead, cardboard cutouts of live human beings.

  “Chloe,” I call out. “Is that you, sweetheart?”

  “Daddy?” says the voice of the little girl.

  … Oh, sweet Jesus, it’s her …

  “I’m coming, baby!” I shout. “Don’t you move!”

  Instinct kicks in once more. I take a step forward, then attempt to break out into a sprint. But I’m on the ground before the abrupt collision to the head registers with my brain.

  CHAPTER 23

  BLACKOUT.

  Maybe for a full minute. Maybe for only a second or two. Head trauma can be a tricky thing. Even a minor bump in the right place can cause unconsciousness for a short or long period of time. But as I’m regaining consciousness, I make out the blurry movement of someone pulling the little girl … my little girl … back across the beach and into the darkness, until they disappear.

  I see something else too. The image of a man. He’s dressed all in black.

  He blends in with the night.

  I reach for him, try to grab his ankle. But he backsteps at just the right moment. I don’t possess the strength to try again.

  “Who … are … you?” I ask, the words peeling themselves from the back of my throat like dead skin. “Where … is … Chloe?”

  “You’ll be hearing from us,” he says.

  He runs off.

  The sliding glass door opens. Penny shrieks and comes to me. She drops to her knees, takes my head in her hands.

  “Sidney, my God,” she exhales. “What have they done to you?”

  “Chloe,” I say, my head ringing like a bell. “That had to be Chloe.”

  I lift myself up onto my knees. The dizziness still swimming around my brain, I nonetheless manage to stand up straight.

  “Stay here,” I say.

  “Where are you going?” she begs.

  “I’m going after the son of a bitch who took our daughter.”

  CHAPTER 24

  THE MAN IN black can’t be that far ahead of me.

  He ran off in a northerly direction.

  Head fills with a thousand screaming voices, veins on fire, blood boi
ling, searing. The rage consumes me. I make chase to the sound of Penny screaming at me. Screaming for me. This is not me being smart. This is not even me losing my cool. It is me acting on raw emotion. It is acting on the survival instinct I learned inside prison. It is something you cannot understand, nor comprehend. That is, unless you’ve spent any time inside a maximum-security prison yourself, and done so as a perpetually hunted man. You don’t become the victim of another attacker. You face the attacker head-on. You attack the attacker. You use your brain, but you also use brute force. It is survival of the fittest in its purest form. Prison Darwinism.

  Penny screams. “Stop! Wait! Sidney, we need to call the police!”

  But I can’t help myself, can’t ignore the anger. It’s the instinct of an animal. A rabid animal. It’s all consuming. I don’t feel myself moving, don’t feel myself breathing. It’s as though I am dreaming this moment rather than living it for real. It’s all about finding this man who cold cocked me over the head. Finding out what he knows about Chloe, where they’re keeping her. Finding out the identity of the bastards who stole her.

  I come to the edge of the beach and the hotel property. A storm fence lines the perimeter of the property. Nowhere to go other than to the right and into the lake, or go left in the direction of Main Street.

  That’s when I spot him.

  The same man who followed us back from the police station. He’s climbing the storm fence, trying to make his way to the safety of the other side. I run to him, thrust myself at him like a line-backer trying to make an impossible tackle. I grab hold of his legs, yank him down from the fence.

  Throwing him onto his back, I jam my knees into his shoulder joints, cock my right arm back, land three swift back-to-back tight-fisted punches to the face. His bottom lip pops like a water balloon filled with blood. His nose snaps. His left eye swells up like a plum. When you’re trained to heal someone, it’s easy to damage them. You know precisely where it hurts, precisely where the most damage and the most bleeding will occur while expending the least amount of effort.