Under Abduction

by Andrew Neiderman

  “Sweet dreams,” he said.

  “Sweet dreams.”

  She giggled. He laughed and cuddled against her.

  The fingers of the wind moved over the roof and then moved on into the darkness and down the long road of night toward the promise of another day. They were both positive that every day would be better than the day that had come before it. And, after all, that was the meaning of true happiness and contentment.

  12

  Despite the lateness of the hour, the commotion around the county lockup seemed even more intense. A half-dozen television station trucks with their satellite dishes atop were in the parking lot. Clumps of radio and print reporters were gathered around the main entrance, many of them still quite animated. Some of the patrolmen had been pulled in from their regular highway beats to assist and were speaking near the reporters, looking almost as excited themselves.

  McShane parked and sauntered toward the entrance. Anyone new on the scene attracted everyone’s attention. He could see people asking the patrolmen if they knew who he was. Leo Hallmark, a tall, light-brown-haired twenty-two-year-old, stepped forward to greet him. They often played racquetball at the gym, and it was important for McShane’s ego to beat him whenever he could.

  “Where the hell you been, McShane? Everyone else’s been chained to the fort.”

  “I knew you guys would have it all under control,” Jimmy said. “What’s been happening?”

  “He confessed. It was wild. No remorse.”

  “Who confessed?”

  “The leader, someone named Roy Gault. He claims he obeyed a higher moral law and can’t be held accountable for killing the doctor who kills babies. He doesn’t recognize the authority of our police and justice system, which he says is run by the Devil. So, welcome to hell.”

  “It’s like a disease,” McShane said, shaking his head. “You sit in your living room and watch it on television happening far away, thinking it’s someone else’s problem, and then, before you know it, it starts to spread and—”

  “It’s in your own backyard. Seriously, where you been? Even the janitors are on overtime.”

  “Investigating a missing person, a young woman who appears to have been abducted in the Van’s Supermarket parking lot early this afternoon.”

  “No shit? In broad daylight?”

  “Would I kid you? How’s the sheriff?”

  “Not in a good mood. You know how he gets when he doesn’t have a nap.”

  McShane laughed.

  “I know how I get.”

  “We still on for Tuesday morning?”

  “Far as I know. Prepare to lose again.”

  “We’ll see.”

  McShane continued into the station. Ralph Cutler came down the corridor from the holding cells, lumbering as if his upper body were just along for the ride. His big head actually wagged with each plodding step. He glared at McShane and then gestured with his eyes toward his office. McShane followed. At the doorway Cutler turned.

  “They want to know why it took us so long to get a patrol car to the clinic. They cut me back five personnel from last year. I’ve got thousands of square miles to cover, and the chairman of the county board of supervisors wants to know why we didn’t get there before the state police.”

  “Didn’t the clinic call the state police first?”

  The sheriff nodded and raised his hands.

  “You’re going to go and apply some logic to this?”

  He entered his office. McShane followed and took a seat while the sheriff made a phone call to his wife.

  “I don’t know when I’ll be home tonight, if at all,” he told her. “I did take my pill.…I know, I know…” he said, rolling his eyes at McShane. “Don’t be waiting on me, Lois…. I’m not still here because I want to be. In fact, this is the last place I want to be. I’d even go to dinner at your sister’s.”

  Whatever his wife replied made him smirk. He said good-bye, put the phone back on its cradle, and sat back.

  “It was a madhouse,” he said. “You missed the best of it: State dicks are racing around with the print results, and all of a sudden this Roy Gault steps forward and admits he heaved his cross at the doctor. Turns out, the thing is more like a boomerang. I mean, it’s deliberately made to be a weapon. When we asked him how he could do that with such an important religious symbol, he says, What better weapon than the cross to end the murder of innocent children? These people are beyond control.” He took a deep breath and held his hand against his diaphragm as though he were having heartburn.

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I got reporters having orgasms, lawyers coming out of the walls screaming at the DA’s people that their clients had a right to protest and can’t be charged with accessory to murder, cameras everywhere, and politicians ringing the phone off the hook, wanting to know why we didn’t see this coming. How, they want to know, could fifty people drive down one of our county’s highways, surround a clinic, start a demonstration, and the sheriff not know about it? And in broad daylight!”

  McShane nodded sympathetically. He knew his boss well by now. It was better to remain silent at this stage, let him vent, and look sympathetic rather than offer any comment, which would more than likely be misunderstood.

  “Forget the fact that we’re investigating traffic accidents, enforcing speed limits, assisting in fires, transporting prisoners…. I’m stretched so thin, I could be made into shoelaces.

  “I have to meet with these government people at nine and update them on my internal investigation tomorrow. On Sunday I’m supposed to run an internal investigation of our response time while all this is going on,” he wailed.

  McShane shook his head. Ralph Cutler stared at him a moment as if he had forgotten who he was. Then he sat forward, took another deep breath, and relaxed.

  “So what do you have?”

  “I’m afraid it’s definitely breaking out like some sort of abduction. I visited with the family. The woman was estranged from her father. There’s no mother. Just an older sister,” he added. “Sister’s been in contact with her, but not the father. Treats her as if she’s dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “They’re religious Jews. Apparently she turned her back on their ways, whatever, and he feels she betrayed the faith.”

  “What happened to this country?” the sheriff asked, arms out. “Everything’s wrapped around religious beliefs. Everyone’s got a direct line to the Almighty and feels he or she can do anything they want because God told them to do it.”

  His eyes widened.

  “Maybe that’s what I should tell the board of supervisors tomorrow,” he quipped. “I do only what God tells me to do.”

  “Yeah, well, I got the missing woman’s address and phone number from her checkbook and went to the apartment.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Anna Gold, twenty-six, works for the public defender’s office.”

  “A lawyer? Abducted? Who would abduct a lawyer? It’s like having a rattlesnake for a pet.”

  “I don’t think she’s a full-fledged lawyer. I’ll find out.”

  “What do you know about her at this point?” the sheriff asked, the corner of his mouth twisted.

  “She lived alone, but apparently had a secret lover, a married man who impregnated her. She told one of her friends and her sister that he was going to leave his wife and family and marry her.”

  Ralph Cutler’s eyes widened and then grew small. He leaned toward McShane.

  “Who’s the lover?”

  “I don’t know yet. Not even her sister knew.”

  “So you went to her apartment?”

  “Yeah. There was a set of keys in the purse left in the car trunk. I didn’t find too much. There was a message on the answering machine from this girlfriend. I followed up with her, but she couldn’t give me much more than I already knew, except to say that she believed Anna Gold’s boyfriend was well-to-do.”

  The sheriff nodded and thought
for a moment.

  “Did her father know she went and got herself pregnant?”

  “No, her sister kept it from him, according to what she told me.”

  “You sure he never found out?”

  “I don’t think so, Sheriff. Why?”

  “You got to suspect everyone involved in a situation like this.”

  “I don’t know,” McShane said, shaking his head skeptically. “I spent some time with the father and sister—”

  “About fifteen years ago,” the sheriff said, leaning on his elbows on the desk, “there was this teenage girl over in Hurleyville got herself pregnant and wanted to run off with the guy who had done it. Her father got wind of it and went berserk. He caught her, locked her in the car trunk, and drove off to do battle with the boyfriend.”

  “What happened? I never heard of that case.”

  “Way before your time. There was this car chase, banging into each other. The father missed a turn on the old river road below Woodridge and went into the Neversink River. He got out, but the car sunk.”

  “With the girl in the trunk?”

  The sheriff nodded.

  “You never know what people will do when they’re enraged,” Cutler continued. “A little paranoia is a good thing, especially for a detective, Jimmy.” The sheriff leaned back. “I’ll have to call the district attorney and tell him about all this. We’ll have to call the FBI, of course. Where’s the woman’s car?”

  “I had it towed to our lot.”

  “Okay. They’ll want to go over it for prints. Well, one good thing’s come out of this Shepherds of God mess: The local media is so overwhelmed covering it, they’ve apparently not gotten wind of Anna Gold’s disappearance yet. We have a little breathing time before they make this county sound like the South Bronx.”

  “Maybe. The supermarket had a little crowd when I arrived. People will be asking questions tomorrow.”

  “Okay, keep going. I’ll speak with Frank Reynolds at the FBI office and see what they want to do. Most likely they’ll send someone over here in the morning. Check in with me before I go over to the county supervisor’s office.”

  “Right.”

  The sheriff stared a moment in thought and then looked at McShane with more sympathy.

  “How are things between you and Gayle?”

  “Not good.”

  “Yeah, I heard a little here and there. Bad news spreads faster than cream cheese around here.”

  “Anywhere, not just here.”

  “Well,” Ralph Cutler said, folding his hands on his stomach, “keep busy. It’s the only remedy to hard times, I find.”

  McShane smiled.

  “That’s what got me into trouble in the first place, I think,” he said.

  The sheriff gazed at the phone.

  “Yeah, maybe you’re right. We should all remain bachelors until we retire.”

  McShane laughed and rose.

  “See you early in the morning,” he said.

  “I’ll probably not have moved much from where I am right now,” Cutler said sadly.

  On the way out, McShane stopped at the dispatcher’s desk.

  “Do me a favor, Marta,” he said to the small Hispanic woman manning the phones and radio. He reached into his pocket and produced the other index card he had taken from Anna Gold’s desk. It was the one with the cellular phone number. “Get me the name that’s behind this number. Leave it on my desk. I’ll get it in the morning.”

  “Cellular,” she said immediately when he handed her the card.

  “I know.”

  “They can be hard-asses, demand a paper,” she warned. “Demand you show probable cause and go through security.”

  “Use your charm,” he said. She smirked.

  “The last time I did that, I got myself stuck with a lazy husband and three children.”

  He laughed and left the station. On the steps, he paused to gaze at the media that remained: the remotes, the reporters, cameras, microphones. Maybe all this has come back to bite us, McShane thought. Criminals, fanatics, terrorists of all sizes and shapes, could utilize the electronic age as well as the police powers utilized it. There had been serial killers in the eighteenth and even the seventeenth centuries, probably serial killers as far back as the caveman days, but they couldn’t kill as fast or in as many places then. The serial killers of the future will probably kill through E-mail, he thought.

  The sheriff was right: To be a good detective, you had to be somewhat paranoid. Everyone was a suspect. Maybe Anna Gold’s father had had her abducted, and maybe her older sister, Miriam, didn’t know it. Maybe he had heard one of those phone calls Anna made to Miriam. Maybe he had had her kidnapped so he could have her reprogrammed, like those parents who had their kids kidnapped away from cult groups and reprogrammed. To Harry Gold, the outside world was like an evil cult his daughter had joined. Look how he treated her leaving, behaving as though she had died.

  No possibility was too far-fetched in today’s world, McShane concluded.

  And so, maybe he would have to give some credence as well to what he had told the store manager: It was aliens.

  He laughed at himself.

  “I’m definitely overtired. I’ve got to get some sleep,” he mumbled, and went to his car.

  The problem was, he didn’t sleep very well in his small apartment. He, like Anna Gold, had fled to claustrophobic quarters, which only served to heighten his isolation. He realized he hated leaving work because that was when he felt most alone now. Of course, Cookie would say it was his work that had isolated her. Now it appeared that his work isolated both of them.

  He started the engine and then his stomach churned.

  “I forgot to eat,” he reminded himself. He would stop at the Monticello diner and grab something fast. He had to get some sleep and be fresh in the morning. There was plenty to do, and besides, he thought, there was a young woman out there being held against her will. She must be very frightened—if she was still alive, that is.

  He started to put the car into drive and then paused to reach into the pocketbook beside him on the seat to take out the wallet. He opened it and glanced at the picture of Anna Gold on her license.

  Sweet face, he thought, vulnerable. He saw the resemblances between Anna and Miriam and he recalled Miriam holding the Sabbath candle, the light flickering on her face, which would most likely have been serene if his arrival hadn’t put the look of fear into her eyes.

  He wanted to wipe away that fear almost as much as he wanted to free Anna Gold from her captors, whoever they might be.

  And, in a strange way, he thought he might just set himself free in some way as well.

  13

  He liked the early-morning smell in the hospital after the maintenance people had done their mopping and their dusting. The floors and windows gleamed. As he strode through the entrance to the lab he inhaled the aseptic aromas of cleansing agents, alcohol, and polish. He thought of it as safe. All the germs were dead. He was especially happy for the babies on the maternity floor.

  He hated the afternoon smell because it was a composite of unpleasant aromas: blood, phlegm, urine, and stool, as well as the odors visitors brought in with them, especially on rainy days, which today promised to be. On rainy days there was a dank, musty odor visitors tracked over the floors and through the hallways. He thought: On days like this, no one should be permitted in the maternity wing except the nurses with their clean white shoes.

  As much as he could, he kept to himself while he worked. He wasn’t very good at gossip. His mother used to say that if you talk about someone, it will come back to haunt you somehow, someday. Most of the conversation depressed him anyway. Usually the nurses, the other technicians, even the doctors, talked about their children, their families, vacation plans, holidays, and homes.

  He wasn’t unpleasant to anyone, and no one had to ask him twice for a favor. He just wasn’t anyone’s first choice for conversation, not only because he wouldn’t gossip, but because hi
s responses to their questions were concise, often monosyllabic. He offered no elaboration. If someone asked him where he had grown up, he replied, “Albany.” He didn’t describe the neighborhood or the house; he didn’t say whether he liked living there or not, and he never volunteered information about his family.

  Apparently he hated talking about where he lived now. Everyone thought it was because he was ashamed of it. All they knew was that the place had been in his wife’s family for generations, actually going back to the mid–nineteenth century. No one at the hospital had ever visited him or his wife, but most knew that the house was down a side road that turned into a dirt and gravel road. There was no municipal water or sewer, no cable television. He was lucky to have electricity.

  He was just as closemouthed when they asked him about his schooling. He didn’t seem proud of anything he had done or anyplace he had been. Most important, he rarely if ever asked anyone else any questions about their background. Having a conversation with him was like hand-pumping gasoline into your car.

  Everyone simply thought he was shy, but he was good at his work; he was efficient, pleasant to the patients, obedient; he never complained. He treated the doctors and the nurses with the utmost respect. In fact, there was only one thing he did that attracted any attention, and when people found out about his wife’s health history, it usually meant he attracted pity as well. All his coworkers knew that, especially on days like this one, when he had a large gap in his workload, he would inevitably wander down to the maternity ward. He would go to the nursery window and look at the babies. When the proud fathers arrived, he would stand beside them.

  “I bet I know which one’s yours,” he would say. It was about the only time he would ever initiate a conversation.

  “Really?”

  “The boy with the dimple.” He pointed to an infant. “Am I right?”

  “Yes. How did you know? I don’t have any dimples.”

  “I have this ability to look at a newborn infant and see the parents in his or her face.”