by Roger Hayden
“I need to call my mom,” she said, phone in hand.
“Yes, of course you do. In time, my dear. In time. Rest now, and I’ll explain everything.”
Tara flung the phone onto the floor in a rash moment of anger. “I don’t want to rest!” The room went silent as she looked down and felt the man’s cold stare.
“You just lost your phone privileges. Congratulations. Now get in bed. I’m not going to ask you again.” He then turned slightly and pointed to the unconscious girl on the other bed. “You see her? She didn’t cooperate either, and she got the straps. Is that what you want, Tara?”
Tara sniffled and wiped the tears from her cheeks, feeling defeated and hopeless. She backed against the bed, head down, and reluctantly lifted herself atop the mattress with her legs hanging over the side. The man crouched down and took her cell phone without saying a word. He then handed her a white rag pulled from the white coat he was wearing. She knew better, though. He was no more a doctor than Mickey Mouse.
He took a step back and locked his hands behind his back and then talked to Tara the same way one of her teachers would. “You see, you’re a long way from home. Your family, I’m afraid to say, are dead. Your friends are most likely dead too. There was a terrible war and many, many people died. Do you know what a nuclear bomb is?” He paused, waiting for Tara to answer, but she didn’t know what to say beyond nodding.
“Well, several bombs were launched against the United States by an enemy country. I’m afraid there may only be a few hundred people left alive.” He paused again and took notice of her mortified shock. “Not to worry. We’re safe down here. I was able to save you, just in the nick of time.”
Tara recoiled against the wall with her knees up and arms wrapped around her legs. She couldn’t stop shaking as her rapid breathing intensified. She clenched her eyes shut and squeezed more tears out while praying under her breath to wake up somewhere else. The man’s words had made little sense in explaining where she was and how she had gotten there. It was an impossible story, rendered irrelevant as more things began to come back to her. In her last vague memory, she was at her house. Someone had followed her. A van. That was it.
The man laughed to himself, breaking Tara’s recollections. “Relax. There was no nuclear war. Your parents are alive and well. You’ve been selected to take part in something very, very special. I don’t want to overwhelm you with all the details just yet, but rest assured that no harm will come to you if you cooperate.”
Tara brought her face into her knees and sobbed while rocking herself. She supposed that it didn’t matter what the explanation was. She was being held against her will, and that was bad enough.
“The other girl is about your age too. Her name is April, and she’s been here for almost two weeks. I keep her restrained and sedated because she won’t cooperate.” He placed his hand over his chest and looked at Tara with a concern she couldn’t decide was genuine or not. “I sincerely hope that our relationship will be different. For now, you’ve been given a clean slate.” He turned toward the center of the room and pointed to the far corner where a dome protruded from the ceiling. “See that? That’s a security camera. I can see everything that happens down here, so please keep that in mind.”
Tara stared ahead, crippled by fear and confusion. The man was a mirage, a figment of her imagination perhaps. She had never had an IV attached to her wrist before and didn’t know if she could just yank it out. There was tape holding the needle in, but she was prepared to do what was necessary to escape. The man crouched down, eye level, and leaned against his knees.
“Do we have an understanding?”
Tara looked around the room and right into the tinted dome of the security camera. There were boxes and cluttered equipment everywhere. Surely she could find something to defend herself with when necessary. She would stall for the time being, earn the man’s trust if possible, and then find a way out.
“Yes…” she said, head down.
“Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I’m sure.”
The man clapped his hands together with enthusiasm. “Great! Now you just hang tight. I’ll bring you down some lunch in a little bit.” He pointed to a large water bottle on an empty nightstand next to her bed. She hadn’t even noticed it before, despite the dryness in her mouth and throat.
“Make sure to drink plenty of fluids in the meantime,” he continued. “I’ll even bring you down some magazines. Kids still read magazines today, right?”
Tara’s head remained down. She couldn’t stand to look at the man and his large, reflective glasses.
“Of course they do,” he said, pacing away from the bed. “I might have to replace those bulbs and get more light in here first, but I don’t want you to be bored.” He continued past the oscillating fan and stopped at the end of the staircase with one gloved hand on the railing. “I hope we can be friends, Tara. I really do. I’ll give you some time, but don’t take it for granted. You could just as easily end up like April there.”
With that, he walked up the stairs, seemingly satisfied with himself. Tara was no closer to finding out why she was there than when she first woke up, dizzy and disoriented. Suddenly, a fresh recollection came to her of gloved hands around her mouth and neck.
“The van!” she shouted out.
His footsteps halted midway up the staircase.
“That was you, wasn’t it? You… you broke into my house and kidnapped me.” All she could see were his legs, but she knew that he had heard her. “Answer me!” She held up her bandaged hand, horrified at the realization before her. “My hand… what happened to my finger?” Her body shook in a cold sweat, and she felt sick to her stomach. “What did you do to me?”
“Approximately half of your index finger is gone. You’ll live,” he said in a callous tone.
He continued up the stairs with a closing comment that let Tara know what kind of person she was dealing with. “That’ll just make you appreciate the rest of them even more.”
The creaking door closed, followed by the turning of several locks. Save for the other girl in the bed, Tara was alone again. She regretted throwing her phone on the ground, believing that she could have gotten a signal if she had tried. She brought the single white sheet over her knees and to her neck, trembling in despair. As her sobs morphed into cries, a faint voice called out to her from the other bed.
“Hey…”
Tara went silent and listened. Was she hearing things?
“Did you say something?” she asked the other girl.
Shrouded in shadow, the girl’s eyes were open. She turned her head to Tara with a bleak look of hopelessness. “I tried to escape already. It’s impossible. If… if you do, you’ll only end up tied up like me.”
Tara threw the sheet off her and climbed off the bed. “Where are we?”
The girl shook her head and squeezed her eyes closed as tears came out. “I don’t know. He won’t say. He never says.”
Tara approached the girl with stern conviction. “We need to get out of here.”
The girl shook her head. “I know, but he’s always watching.”
“I don’t care,” Tara said. “We can take him.”
The girl’s eyes opened with a glazed despondency. “You don’t understand. We’re not the first. Look at the walls.”
Tara thought to herself and then moved back to her bed, examining the concrete blocks that comprised the walls. Upon closer look, she could see marks on the walls, scratches everywhere, like someone had attempted to claw their way out. She noticed red spots, barely noticeable at first.
“No…” she said, backing toward the girl’s bed. “It can’t be.”
The girl continued in a melancholy tone as though their fate had been sealed. “I can remember when he took me. But it wasn’t a van. It was, like, a normal car. He put me in the trunk. I woke up here on the bed just like you. I tried to get out. I refused the food he brought down. I refused everything. I don’t even know how lo
ng I’ve been here. He keeps sticking needles in me and making me sleep. There are no dreams, only darkness. Now I can’t even get out of bed.”
“I’ll untie you,” Tara said, moving forward.
“No!” the girl said in her loudest tone yet. “That’ll only make matters worse.”
“Then what are we going to do?” Tara asked, desperation rising in her voice.
“We wait,” she said. “It’ll be over soon, I know it. I’ve been praying every day for our rescue.”
Tara glanced at the camera and then returned to her bed and sat. “So, he kidnapped us?”
“Yes,” the girl said. “He hasn’t done anything to me yet that I can remember. Just stay brave.”
Tara held back her tears and tried the best she could as to not upset the girl further.
“I’m April, by the way.”
“I’m Tara.”
They then sat in silence as Tara tried to gather her fragmented thoughts. She was in more danger than she had imagined. But there was still hope despite the circumstances. She wasn’t going to give up. She and April were getting out of there. It was all she could tell herself to remain sane.
***
The man turned from the door leading downstairs and entered a walk-in pantry, whistling to himself. He then pulled a wheeled shelving unit from one side of the wall to the other, effectively blocking the entrance to the secret room below. There were two underground rooms in the house, and neither could be accessed without the right key.
Below the kitchen was an old wine cellar that had been converted into a holding room for captives. The second underground room was located through a crawlspace in the master bedroom, leading to a personal study and lab where the man could operate freely and undisturbed.
He entered the adjacent kitchen, as spacious and modernized as any room in his expensive rural dwelling. The house was well-furnished and aesthetically pleasing with post-modern artwork, hard tiled floors, track lighting, and an air of sophistication throughout the entire four-bedroom western bungalow.
He paced the kitchen, prepared to make lunch for the day. Sun rays beamed against the spotless gray counters from surrounding windows that looked out into a large backyard of trimmed grass and a surrounding privacy fence. A welcome breeze emanated throughout the house from the many open windows. It had been a calm and peaceful day, and everything was going just as planned. He felt an immense satisfaction with the situation and the control he had over everything.
The police couldn’t catch a break. He almost felt bad for them, but also knew that there’d be no sympathy for him if it were his ass against the wall. Miriam Sandoval had done exactly as he wanted. She’d found the house, just as planned, and killed Walter Browning. Meanwhile, across town, the sting operation had ended with more questions than it had begun with.
The police were no closer to catching him than they were to ending world hunger. But none of this was a matter of chance. Years of methodical planning had brought him to this point of success, where the most important rule was one he reminded himself of every day: Don’t screw up.
Local news played from a small television on the kitchen counter. There had been recent developments. He could tell by the intensity in the reporter’s tone. The entire town was in a panic. He had never seen anything like it. It had been almost two weeks since April Johnson’s disappearance. Multiple searches involving hundreds of people had occurred. Candlelight vigils. Impassioned pleas from parents and residents alike.
How would they react at the news that only one girl had been found? Not April, but Natalie Forester. How far their spirits would be crushed. Would they believe the claims of a trigger-happy out-of-state former detective that there was more than one kidnapper? He guessed that he was about to find out.
Collecting surveillance was a specialty of his, and for as much as law enforcement and their investigators reveled in their high-tech gadgetry to catch the bad guys, he had invested in the very same equipment to watch them. For now, it was all fun and games. The FBI would soon take over the investigation. He was almost certain of that, but not before he delivered one last fatal blow to the town of Odessa. It would be something they’d never forget.
He opened the two-door stainless steel tall refrigerator and pulled out some bread and lunch meat. The newscaster hadn’t mentioned the sting operation just yet. Nothing about a finger or how the police had bungled yet another opportunity to catch their man. Instead, they were discussing a residential shooting. He smiled at the mention of Alamo Drive. He glanced at the screen and saw that the cameras could only reveal so much: police tape around a small house, red Datsun in the driveway, and at least a half dozen police cruisers surrounding the area.
My, oh my, he thought. She sure works fast.
He then set the loaf of bread on the counter next to a jar of mustard and a half pound of sliced turkey. He took a step back and pulled off his white lab coat, not wanting to get any food stains on it. Sleeves up, he got to work, spreading mustard across each slice of bread. On the TV, there was no mention of Miriam or Walter Browning or what the police had found. They weren’t even speculating at this point.
It was clear that the police weren’t providing many details just yet. An ambulance raced by one of the cameras on-site, and the man had a good idea of who was riding inside. Natalie would be the lucky one. All she had to do was spend a few days handcuffed to the bed of Walter’s shitty guest bedroom. April and Tara, however, had a much worse fate ahead, depending on how they felt about the experiment.
The man felt a sense of superiority knowing more than anyone about the case. He knew more than the police, more than Miriam, more than his victims, and more than the average clueless viewer at home. It was close to noon, and he hadn’t planned on going to the office that day, but there was still plenty of work to do. He liked going to town, even for a few things. It was good to get out of the house whenever he could. Living within the rural tundra of his isolated ranch house where most of his work was conducted underground had a strangely draining feeling.
His lab coat hung over the side of one of the three high chairs surrounding his elegant dining room table. On the table lay a collection of local newspapers from the past week. He read several different papers each day in addition to planning his moves against the police, step by crucial step. In his experience, the average detective seemed no more familiar with the game of chess than Walter Browning was with the quadratic equation.
Walter Browning had been a troubled and easily impressionable man, and now he was dead. It would have been a shame had things not worked out so perfectly. But complacency was the marks of foolishness. Stupid people get caught when they make stupid mistakes. The man was very content with taking his time, striking when it was necessary, and pulling back when things got too heated. Ector County PD was on high alert now. The hornet’s nest had been stirred.
Tara McKenzie’s disappearance would alert the nearby Midland Police Department, causing them to join the hunt, followed inevitably by the FBI. The authorities had the letters, the severed finger, and the bike carrier who had delivered his package, for starters. But there were some things they’d never discover. He’d carefully seen to that already.
He placed the turkey on each sandwich, adding a slice of Swiss cheese and leaf of lettuce. He felt immense satisfaction at the thought of Miriam reading his letters again and again, trying to extract anything useful.
“Just relax, Miriam,” he said to himself while cutting the sandwiches in half. “There’re more letters to come.”
He had initially chosen the “ransom note” design of clipped magazine letters to increase suspicion of a hoax. Though very time consuming, he enjoyed the endeavor nonetheless. The last two letters he had sent Miriam would mystify the authorities. The first was in twelve-point Time New Roman. The second letter, placed on her windshield at the Food Mart, was handwritten. He had to write it on the fly, but he was confident that they’d soon match the handwriting to someone else.
; For the past few days, the police had been on the hunt for Walter Browning’s blue van. He knew that Miriam would eventually scour the used car lots or salvage yards for a potential lead. She would have the investigators search the vehicle database for registered vans as well as anything reported stolen. But he was far prepared for any such move.
Buried twelve feet underground, Walter’s van was gone forever. The man had a special hiding place in the desert, far on the outskirts in a location of his knowledge and his alone. He had heard the APB for the Walter’s van on his police scanner shortly after Natalie’s abduction.
That idiot, he had thought.
He had met up with a panicked and desperate Walter the following evening, and the man had assured Walter that everything was going to be okay. He then took the van to his spot in the desert and disposed of it accordingly. Things after that were supposed to stay quiet, but Walter contacted the man with paranoid worries that his neighbors had seen the van and were suspicious of its disappearance. Walter was beginning to prove himself as a liability. His sloppiness was destined to get him caught. He had to go. Thoughts of the confusion on Miriam’s face after she shot Walter made it worth it.
The man backed away from the kitchen counter and replayed the conversation with her on the phone. He had told her that they were “just getting started.” He asked her if she was ready for it. Envisioning her stunned silence had filled him with abundant, intense gratification. As he slid one hand down his pants, a breaking news alert flashed across the TV.
He rushed to the counter as the reporter mentioned witness accounts of another van roaming the streets of a quiet Midland neighborhood moments before Tara McKenzie disappeared. She had only been missing for a few hours, but there was evidence of a break-in while she was home alone and accounts of a van being seen in her driveway.