by Joy Fielding
And then Hunter was beside her, Michelle balanced precariously on the inside of his arm. He wrapped his other arm around his sobbing wife and led her back to their suite. Then he called the front desk, told them his child was missing, and instructed them to call the police.
“But where can she be?” Caroline asked over and over again. “You just checked on her half an hour ago.”
“She was sound asleep,” Hunter assured her, repeating the same thing to the hotel manager when he arrived twenty minutes later, having been roused from his bed at home.
“You left your children alone in the room?” the portly, middle-aged Mexican man asked, not even attempting to mask his disapproval. “We offer a babysitting service…”
“The sitter never showed up,” Hunter said.
The hotel manager lifted his cell phone to his ear, muttered something into it in Spanish.
“We checked on them every half hour,” Hunter told him.
“We never should have left them alone,” Caroline said.
“Our records show that the request for a sitter was canceled,” the manager stated, lowering his cell phone to his lap.
“Obviously a mix-up,” Hunter said. “We never canceled.”
“We never should have left them,” Caroline said again.
“Where are the police?” Hunter asked. “We’re wasting precious time.”
“They are coming,” the manager said. “They have to come from Tijuana…”
“Shit.” Hunter jumped to his feet. They were gathered in the living room. Michelle had fallen asleep on the sofa, her head in her mother’s lap.
“I assure you we are doing all we can in the meantime. We have every available staff member searching the premises.”
“Someone’s taken her,” Caroline wailed softly. “Someone’s taken my baby.”
“Can we go over this once again?” the manager asked. “To make sure I understand and can help with the police investigation.”
“It’s our anniversary,” Hunter began, his voice low and steady, despite having already told the manager everything they could about the evening. “We’d arranged for a sitter, the same thing we’ve done every night since we got here a week ago, but she didn’t show, and our friends were downstairs in the restaurant waiting, so we thought…”
“You thought,” Caroline interrupted.
Hunter continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “…that since the restaurant was right downstairs…It’s right under our window, for God’s sake…We thought it would be safe…”
“You thought,” Caroline said again.
“We checked on them every half hour.”
“The last time you checked was when?”
Hunter glanced at his watch. “About an hour ago now.”
“Oh, God,” Caroline said.
“If she’s anywhere in the hotel,” the manager said, “we’ll find her.”
“And if she’s not, if someone took her,” Caroline said, trying to muzzle her growing hysteria so as not to wake Michelle, “she could be anywhere by now.”
“Who would take her?” the manager asked. “How would they have gotten inside the room? You said the door was locked when you got home.”
“I don’t know how,” Caroline said, looking to her husband for an answer.
“You lost your keycard,” Hunter said.
Caroline tried not to hear the hint of accusation in his voice.
“When was this?” the manager asked.
“This afternoon. At the pool. I dropped my purse. Everything fell out. I didn’t realize I’d lost the damn thing until I got back upstairs…”
“This wasn’t the first time you lost one,” Hunter said.
“That’s right. I lost one earlier in the week,” Caroline confirmed, her voice shaky. “Oh, God—you think someone might have picked it up and used it to steal my baby?”
“Can you think of anyone who might have done this?” the manager asked, the same question the police asked when they finally arrived almost half an hour later.
“Did you notice anyone suspicious, perhaps someone following you around?” the police asked.
“No one,” Caroline said, her body growing numb with fear and fatigue. Every time she answered one of their relentless questions, she felt her energy dim, her voice grow weaker. Almost two hours had passed since they’d returned to their suite. It was after midnight. A search of the hotel and its grounds had thus far proved fruitless. Samantha was gone. By now she could be anywhere. “Can’t you issue an Amber Alert?”
“We’re not in California,” Hunter said, his voice betraying his impatience. With the police. With their questions. With her. “They don’t have Amber Alerts in Mexico.”
“We’ve notified the border patrol to be on the lookout for anyone traveling with a small child,” one of the officers said. Caroline had initially thought there were two policemen, but now she saw that there were three, two of them looking barely out of their teens, one closer to middle age. All had black hair and piercing, judgmental eyes. The younger two wore uniforms of navy pants and white shirts; the oldest was dressed in street clothes, gray pants, and a rumpled short-sleeved shirt he hadn’t bothered to tuck in.
Caroline thought of the thousands of people who snuck across Mexico’s border into California every year, and her body filled with despair. The border was so close, and they’d already lost so much time. If someone had wanted to sneak her daughter into the United States, she was long gone by now. The greater likelihood was that whoever took her was still in Rosarito, that he’d taken her somewhere close by for his own perverse purposes. The police were conducting room-to-room searches of both wings of the hotel. “There was a waiter,” Caroline said with a shudder, her mind’s eye filling with the image of a man in a white jacket pushing a portable dinner table down the hall. “Room service. I passed him in the corridor after I checked on the kids. He stopped a few doors down.”
“What time was this?”
“Around nine o’clock.”
“We’ll check on it,” the hotel manager said, already speaking into his cell phone.
“And I saw a housekeeper on the floor at four o’clock. No,” she amended immediately, “it was closer to four-fifteen. I told her I’d lost my keycard and asked if she could use her master key to let me inside.”
The manager nodded, relayed this information to the person he was speaking to.
“Just how many people have access to master keys?” Hunter asked.
The hotel manager lifted his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “Many people—the senior staff, housekeeping, the clerks at the reception desk, the valets who bring your luggage to your rooms. The same as in hotels in America.”
Caroline noted the defensiveness in the manager’s voice.
“So the last time you saw your daughter was…when exactly?” the oldest officer asked Hunter.
“Nine-thirty.”
The officer turned his gaze to Caroline. “And you checked her again at ten?”
“No. We were leaving in a few minutes, so Hunter said it wasn’t necessary.” She glanced accusingly at her husband, who immediately looked away. In truth, it had been more like ten minutes, she realized. Would those ten minutes have made a difference?
“So it would appear your daughter disappeared sometime between nine-thirty and shortly after ten o’clock.”
“Yes,” Caroline and Hunter said together.
“And that you were the last person to see her,” the officer said to Hunter.
“Yes,” Hunter said, his eyes growing opaque with tears.
The phone rang. One of the younger officers directed Hunter to answer it.
Caroline felt a sudden surge of hope. Was it possible Samantha had been kidnapped and was being held for ransom? Was it the kidnapper on the phone, calling with his set of demands? Whatever you want, Caroline thought. We’ll give you all the money we have. Just bring my daughter back to us, unharmed.
“Hello?” Hunter said, listening for s
everal seconds before lowering the phone to his chest. “It’s your brother,” he told Caroline. “He’s calling to make sure everything is okay. Apparently the police just searched their room, told them a child had gone missing…” His voice caught in his throat. He hung up the phone without saying anything further.
Minutes later, Steve and Becky were banging on their door. The police ushered them inside. Peggy and Fletcher arrived soon after, Rain and Jerrod only seconds behind them.
“My God, what happened?” Becky asked, rushing to Caroline’s side, her voice as shrill as an alarm clock, jolting Michelle from her sleep.
“Mommy!” the child cried, sitting up and burrowing into her mother’s chest.
“Where’s Samantha?” Becky asked.
“Oh, God,” Peggy said, eyes darting frantically in all directions.
“It’s Samantha?” Rain asked. “Samantha’s the child who’s missing?”
“How can that be?” Jerrod asked. “You checked on her every half hour.”
“The eight of you were having dinner together?” one of the officers asked.
Caroline could no longer differentiate between the various voices. She felt as if someone had lowered a giant glass bell jar over her entire body, like that author who had committed suicide by sticking her head in an oven. What was her name?
“Breathe,” she heard Peggy say as she sat down beside her and put her arm across her shoulder, although the invisible jar prevented Caroline from actually feeling her touch.
“Yes,” Jerrod answered the officer. “In the garden restaurant directly below. You can see it from the window.” He walked to the window and pointed. “Yes. There. You can actually see our table.”
“What was the name of that writer?” Caroline asked Peggy. “The one who committed suicide by sticking her head in an oven?”
“What did she say?” Becky asked.
“Sylvia something, I think.”
“Sylvia Plath,” Peggy told her.
“Right.”
“Why is she talking about Sylvia Plath?” Rain asked.
“I think she’s in shock,” Peggy said. “Caroline? Caroline, are you okay?”
“Samantha’s gone,” Caroline said.
“I know.”
“I should never have left her.”
“Mommy, I have to go to the bathroom,” Michelle said.
“I’ll take you,” Peggy offered.
“I want Mommy to take me.” Michelle’s hands wrapped around her mother’s neck, breaking through the invisible glass shield.
Caroline felt the air being squeezed from her body, as if she were being strangled. “Please, somebody,” she cried. “Get her off me.”
Everyone’s eyes focused immediately on Caroline.
“I’ll take her,” Becky said quickly, lifting the squirming youngster into her arms and carrying her into the bathroom, Michelle screaming in protest.
The police continued to ask variations of the same questions for the next hour, to which the group gave variations of the same answers. “Did any of you accompany your friends when they went to check on their daughters?” one of the officers asked.
“No,” they answered.
“Why do you ask that?” Steve said.
“What are you implying?” Hunter asked.
Caroline knew why they were asking. Her husband had been the last person to see Samantha. Was it possible that something had happened on his watch? Could he be in any way responsible for their daughter’s disappearance?
No, he wasn’t responsible, she decided, answering her own question. Still, it was at Hunter’s insistence that they’d left their girls alone. Which made him responsible after all.
Except I can’t blame him, she thought in her next breath. I gave in. I went along. I’m just as guilty. This is my fault, too.
“What happens now?” Hunter asked as the police were closing their notepads and preparing to leave.
“You go to bed, try to get some sleep,” the oldest of the officers answered. Caroline thought she’d heard one of the other officers refer to him as Detective Ramos, but she wasn’t sure. “We’ll meet again in the morning.”
“You expect us to sleep?”
“Probably not,” Ramos conceded. “But it would be a good idea to try.” He checked his watch. “It’s almost two A.M. Nothing more will be accomplished tonight. We’ll resume our search in the morning and contact the local papers if we haven’t found your daughter by noon.”
“That’s it?”
“The border has been notified. Officer Mendoza will be posted outside your door all night in case anyone tries to contact you. We’ll follow up, check on the waiter you saw in the hall and the housekeeper you talked to, conduct interviews with the entire staff. But this will all take time. Please, Mr. and Mrs. Shipley. Try to get some sleep. Your daughter needs you.” His eyes fell on Michelle, who was once again fast asleep in her mother’s arms, then circled the room, sizing up its occupants. “Obviously I need all of you to be available tomorrow.”
“We’re supposed to be leaving tomorrow,” Rain said.
“Clearly that’s not happening,” Peggy said, her voice a sharp rebuke.
“Of course not. I didn’t mean…”
“Mr. Shipley, do you have a picture of your daughter that I can borrow?” Officer Ramos interrupted.
Hunter reached into his wallet, removed a small photo of Samantha from behind his driver’s license. “I’m sorry. It’s a few months old.”
“Beautiful child,” Ramos said, tucking the picture into the pocket of his shirt. “I assure you, we’ll do everything in our power to get her back to you.”
“Do you want us to stay here tonight?” Becky asked Caroline after the police and the hotel manager had left.
“No,” Hunter told their friends. “Ramos is right. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow. Get some sleep. We’ll see you in the morning.”
Caroline watched her friends approach in single file to kiss her cheek or give her a hug. But she felt nothing. Her baby was gone. Someone had entered their suite and taken her while she and her husband were downstairs enjoying crêpes suzette. She should never have let him persuade her to leave their daughters alone. If she’d stood her ground, none of this would be happening.
Her brother and Becky were the last to leave. “You’re sure you want us to go?” Becky asked again.
Caroline nodded. Steve leaned in to take her in his arms. “Please don’t call Mom,” she whispered.
“I won’t.”
But even as he was saying the words, Caroline knew he’d be on the phone first thing in the morning. Please, God, she thought, let us find Samantha before then.
The phone rang at just past six-thirty the next morning. Caroline reached across the bed and answered it before it could ring a second time. “Hello?” she whispered, glancing toward the other bed and watching Michelle turn over in her sleep.
“It’s me,” Lili said.
“Thank God. Where are you?”
“Can you meet me?”
“Of course. When?”
“Now.”
“Where?”
The girl gave Caroline an address. “Come alone.” The line went dead.
Caroline threw herself out of bed and jumped into her clothes, taking less than a minute to brush her teeth and splash some cold water on her face. She scribbled a brief note for Michelle—Back soon. Don’t worry—then snuck out of the hotel room and hurried down the hall, boots in hand. She gave no thought to what she was doing or that no one would have any idea where she was. She gave only fleeting thought to the fact that Lili knew she wasn’t alone.
She raced down eight flights of stairs and pushed her way through the lobby doors onto the street, her boots now on her feet, although she had no memory of having put them on. A cab was idling on the other side of the road, but even after she waved frantically in his direction, the driver remained stubbornly where he was. She ran across the street, slipping on the icy road and almost f
alling before she reached him.
“Where to?” he asked as she climbed into the backseat. Caroline recognized him as the same man who’d driven her and Michelle to the hotel from the airport the day before, but she quickly dismissed the coincidence. “I am not familiar with any such place,” he said when she gave him the address.
Caroline wondered if the girl was playing with her, leading her from one dead end to another in some sort of elaborate sick joke. “Can you check? Please, I’m in a hurry.”
“My GPS, she’s not working.” Reluctantly, the cabbie pulled a map from his glove compartment and unfolded it, studying it carefully before dropping it to the seat beside him. “Ah, yes. Now I see it.”
Except he couldn’t find it, and they drove around for almost twenty minutes until it became obvious even to Caroline, who didn’t know the city but did recognize the same snowdrift after they’d passed it for the third time, that they’d been driving around in circles.
“Am lost,” the driver admitted finally, pulling to a stop and checking the map again.
“Please,” Caroline begged. “I’m already very late.” Would Lili decide Caroline had changed her mind about meeting her and leave? Would she call the hotel again, wake up Michelle?
“Ah, here it is,” the driver said, jabbing at the map with his index finger. “I know now. Is not so far away.”
“Hurry. Please.”
“Don’t worry. We be there in five minutes.”
Except they’d already been driving around for almost half an hour, the morning rush hour had begun, and they soon found themselves mired in a traffic jam several blocks long. “Looks like an accident,” the cabbie said with a shrug. “What can you do?”
“Is there another route we could take?”
Without a word, the driver did an illegal U-turn and sped down a side street, gunning the engine and throwing up a cloud of snow in his wake.
Caroline heard the sirens before she saw the police car. “No,” she muttered. “Please, no.”
“Where’s the fire?” the policeman asked, approaching the car and leaning into the front seat, his helmet covering his head and face except for his dark eyes.