Under Abduction

by Andrew Neiderman

  It was really going well. It was going better than ever. This time it was definitely going to happen.

  17

  For a long moment McShane sat in his car in the sheriff’s department parking lot, just thinking about what little he had accomplished on this missing woman case before having to turn it over to the FBI. He felt like someone without a destination, without a purpose.

  It was Sunday, and lately Sundays were the loneliest days. Before his separation, when he wasn’t working and he was home, he and Cookie would at least enjoy a big breakfast together. Usually he would go out for fresh bagels, usually him while she prepared the omelets. He’d get the Sunday papers and they would eat and read the papers and relax. By late morning, if they didn’t go to her parents or have some other destination, he would plant himself in his overstuffed chair before the television set and watch football, baseball, basketball, or golf. Whatever was in season or whatever he could find usually sufficed.

  During the early days of their marriage, Cookie often watched with him and asked questions. She would curl up beside him on the sofa and doze or she would bring out her schoolwork, her reports, and work on them while he sat mesmerized by events on the small screen.

  After a while the noise, his shouts and comments, began to annoy her. She couldn’t work in that atmosphere, and if he had any friends over, it was even worse. On those days she would go visit her friends or her parents and it started to be that they didn’t see each other for most of Sunday, meeting finally in the late afternoon or early evening to go to dinner. Many times, however, he was on duty over the weekend, and even the Sunday dinners were lost.

  It was actually true that for McShane the weakening and eventual death of his marriage was insidious. Whether it was his work or his many distractions that prevented him from seeing the breakdown, he didn’t know, but he was blind to it. The first time Cookie complained with any vehemence, he was sincerely surprised. Somehow he was under the impression that she accepted their marriage as it was. She was annoyed with him at times, sure, but he believed that came with the territory. All of his fellow law enforcement officers had similar experiences, but as far as Cookie feeling deep pain? Never.

  The more she pointed out and complained about, the more he fled from her and the worse it became. She called him an ostrich, pounced on his rationalizations, his excuses, and his apologies. She diagnosed his classical avoidance of responsibility and, like a hawk, she spotted every infraction, every minor failure, every unrequited promise, every failed obligation.

  When she nailed up the small blackboard in the kitchen and chalked in his every screwup, no matter how minor, his embarrassment turned to irritation. It was like getting a report card. He attributed that to her educator’s mentality and he actually stopped going into the kitchen, bringing home snacks from fast-food restaurants instead. Again she pointed her finger and accused him: “Avoidance. Choose the easiest way out, Jimmy. You always do.”

  He sulked, but then he began to wonder if she could be right. Was that something he always did? As he sat there thinking about it now, his gaze went to the manila envelope on his seat. He opened it and took out the documents, perused them, and found where he was to sign each. After a deep sigh of resignation, he plucked his pen from his inside pocket and scribbled his John Hancock wherever so indicated. Then he shoved the documents back into the envelope.

  He started the engine.

  He could go home. It was Sunday. He had the rest of the day off, now that the FBI had taken over the investigation of Anna Gold’s abduction. The forgeries he was assigned couldn’t be followed up until Monday because he had to go to the bank.

  He glanced at the envelope again and then made a snap decision and drove out of the parking lot. Now that he had time on his hands and wasn’t eager to return to his two-by-four apartment, he would do one good deed: He would hand deliver the signed papers to Cookie.

  It was curious the way he felt when he pulled into what had once been his driveway. Cookie hadn’t done anything different with the house over this short period, save to put up the real estate broker’s FOR SALE sign on the front lawn, yet something of his old home’s familiarity was already gone. Somewhere in his glove compartment he might have another key to the front door, but using it now was the equivalent of breaking and entering. This house was as forbidden to him as anyone else’s, he thought.

  He got out slowly and paused to gaze around, suddenly fascinated by the surroundings. It wasn’t that the woods and fields had changed so much as he had never really appreciated them. Because they had built their house a little over a half of a mile from the hamlet and had a good two acres of land, there was a peacefulness, a serenity, around them. They didn’t have municipal sewerage but a septic tank, and they didn’t have municipal water: They had to have a submersible well. But they had cable television, which had been more important to him at the time.

  Cookie made fun of that.

  “You’d live in an outhouse as long as you could get ESPN, Jimmy.”

  He had laughed when she said it, but he couldn’t laugh about that now. Maybe his priorities were screwed up, or maybe he was just feeling sorry for himself today. Like any poor schnook involved in a divorce, he was feeling like a loser. Surely this feeling would pass. Or maybe Cookie was right: Maybe he always saw himself as some kind of loser and retreated into the comfort of mediocrity, never challenging, never pushing too hard, never seeking advancement either in his marriage or his profession.

  This divorce could be a wake-up call. Would he change? Change to what? he wondered. I am who I am, he thought. There’s really not much I can do about it except find someone else who’s not unhappy with what I have to offer. Still, he couldn’t help wishing he hadn’t lost Cookie.

  He rang the doorbell, something he realized he had never done. A few moments later all five feet ten inches of her stood before him, those long legs and that tight butt encased in tapered dungarees. She was barefoot, her toenails polished a bright pink. That always bugged him. Most of the time women had their feet covered. Why did they bother polishing toenails?

  Cookie wore one of his New York Giants T-shirts, the sleeves rolled up to her shoulders. Her perky breasts lifted the letters. Her hair was brushed back and tied with a light-blue ribbon, a shade lighter than her cobalt eyes. She had that number-two pencil stuck in her hair, so he knew she was working on her reports. She never put the pencil behind her ear. It always stuck up like a hairpin.

  Cookie was pretty and not in a cutesy way. She had classic features, a strong, straight nose just a trifle too big, with a firm mouth whose slightly puffed lips were tantalizing. He loved the way her jawbone gently lifted toward her perfect ears, making her cheeks smooth. Except for a tiny patch of freckles under her right temple, she had a nearly clear alabaster complexion. It wasn’t hard to understand why, when he had first set eyes on her, he had rushed at her like a defensive tackle intending to sack the quarterback.

  Right now, seeing how beautiful she was made him feel as if he had a small ice cube traveling through his heart. He didn’t have to wonder any more if there was another man in her life, because if there wasn’t one today, there would surely be one here tomorrow.

  “What?” she said sharply.

  “You opened that door pretty fast,” he chastised. “You should be more careful. It’s the times we live in, I’m afraid,” he added, thinking about Lidia Ambrook standing in her doorway with a Taser in her right hand.

  She smirked.

  “I saw you drive up, Jimmy. I was working in the den.”

  “Oh. Right,” he said.

  “So?”

  “I got your papers here,” he said, holding up the envelope. “I thought since it’s Sunday and the post office is closed, I’d just pop by and drop them.”

  “You’re not working?”

  “No. I’m off the big case. Sheriff put me on some forgeries and I can’t do anything with that until tomorrow. Bank’s closed,” he added, stating the obvious.


  “No important ball games?” She softened when he smirked. “You don’t know what to do with yourself, do you, Jimmy?” she asked perceptively. It bothered him how sharp she was sometimes. There’s great danger in marrying a woman who is a lot smarter than you are, he thought.

  “I just thought, since I didn’t get the papers back as promptly as I was supposed to that…”

  “All right,” she said. “Thanks.” She took the envelope and then stared at him a moment. “You look lousy, Jimmy. Like you slept in your clothes and didn’t have any real breakfast.”

  He shrugged.

  “I feel…lousy,” he admitted. His failure to put up an argument brought a smile to her face. She folded her arms under her breasts.

  “Why did they take you off the case?”

  “It’s a complicated mess,” he said.

  She stared a moment. He felt like a little boy trick-or-treating on Halloween.

  “You want some lunch, Jimmy?” she asked. “I was about to put in a pizza.”

  His eyes widened and brightened.

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  She stepped back and he entered what had recently been his home.

  “I’m just going to put this in the den,” she said, holding up the envelope. She went to the left and he paused at the living room doorway.

  To him it felt weird standing there, looking at his overstuffed chair, at the settee, the coffee table, the fireplace and mantel, where some of the small things he had left there still remained. It looked frozen in time. It was almost as if he had died and returned in a different body.

  “That mess at the clinic is all over the local news,” Cookie said, returning. “Word’s leaking out that the FBI think it ties in with some sort of national conspiracy.”

  She paused to look at him to see if he would comment.

  “Yeah, it’s possible,” he said.

  “Really? Why would the lunatic fringe of the religious right target a community smaller than most cities? What’s that clinic do, a dozen abortions a month?”

  He followed her into the kitchen. That notorious blackboard was gone.

  “Maybe they went after it for that reason.”

  “Huh?”

  She took out the frozen pizza and turned on the oven.

  “These radicals want to show that no one, no matter how small or how remote, is safe from what they called divine retribution.”

  She thought a moment and nodded.

  “Could be. Want a beer?”

  “Sure. Thanks,” he said.

  “Left over from the cases you bought,” she reminded him, and took out a can. She gave him a glass and then took out the plates, knives, and forks. He sat at the table and poured his beer into the glass.

  “So, if it’s so important a case, why did they take you off?”

  “FBI,” he said, as if that was all he needed to say. She nodded.

  “You can’t assist? You have before, haven’t you? At least, that’s what you used to tell me.”

  “And I did. No one asked this time.”

  “Did you volunteer?”

  “I did, but the sheriff wasn’t in the mood to keep me on it since the FBI was involved. He’s feeling put-upon these days and not very generous. The supervisors are calling him on the carpet to find out how this demonstration took place so unexpectedly. Everyone was caught with his pants down, apparently, and someone’s got to be in the hot seat.”

  He sipped his beer.

  “What about the missing woman?”

  He shook his head.

  “How do you feel about being taken off the case, Jimmy?” she asked with the all-too-familiar psychoanalytical face, her eyes piercing as she waited to weigh his words.

  “I don’t know. I guess I should be relieved.”

  “Aren’t you?” she fired back, those eyes of hers quickly filling with fire, burning into him.

  “I have to follow orders,” he said. She smirked.

  “Why is it all you quasi military types have the same excuse?”

  “It’s no excuse,” he said, raising his arms. “I’m not the one who decides.”

  She shook her head.

  “How far did your investigation go? Did you get to meet the young woman’s family?”

  “Yeah, father and a sister. Mother died recently.”

  “Is that the complicated mess you mentioned?”

  “No.”

  “Top secret?”

  “For your ears only,” he said, took a swig of his beer, and then added, “FBI believes her abduction has something to do with the clinic riot.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “As I told you on the phone, Anna Gold was pregnant. Her sister admitted Anna had gone to the clinic to see about an abortion. FBI says similar abductions happened to three other women in Texas and California recently.”

  “When was she scheduled for an abortion?”

  “I’m not sure if she had actually scheduled herself. She believed—believes, I should say—her secret lover will want to leave his wife and marry her. Maybe under those circumstances, she wouldn’t go for the abortion.”

  “Of course, her lover could have wanted her to have an abortion whether they got together or not. Some men just don’t want the responsibility of a family, as we know,” she said, glancing at him quickly, “but she could have also been having some doubts and didn’t want to find herself a single mother on welfare, which could happen, especially with the estrangement she had with her family. She was sort of between a rock and a hard place.”

  Cookie continued: “Did her sister tell you who the secret lover is?”

  “No. She didn’t know.”

  “Didn’t know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anna didn’t have a good relationship with her?”

  “Well, that’s where it does get a little more complicated,” he said, and described Harry and Miriam Gold and what had happened to alienate Anna Gold and her father.

  Cookie listened, asked for a few more details about Anna Gold, and then took the pizza out of the oven. She cut the slices and put his on a plate.

  “What about friends: Maybe one of them knows.”

  “Maybe. I visited with one who had left a message on her answering machine, but she seemed reluctant to give me a name, violating some feminine trust, I suppose.”

  Cookie smirked.

  “You probably came on like a sledgehammer.”

  “I told her how serious it was, but she’s a kook, into astrology. She’s probably consulting the stars to decide.”

  “Why don’t you just go back and calmly explain why you need a name. Give her the details, treat her like an equal, treat her with some respect.”

  “Pop psychology again?”

  “Maybe, but it works.”

  She ate and thought for a few moments, and he did the same.

  “If these fanatics kidnapped her to keep her from aborting, they’ll have to keep her incarcerated for months, and then…” She looked at McShane, who blew on his piece of pizza.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Have any of the other women the FBI described been found?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I suppose then it’s no different from any other kidnapping. The victim might know too much to be set free, right?”

  He chewed and nodded.

  “You have no leads?”

  “Not really. I just got started when the FBI stepped in and took over.”

  “If you were still on the case, what would you do next, Jimmy?”

  “Well, there’s a cellular number I wanted to have checked out. There was no name, just a number. Her apartment was so sparse, there wasn’t much else I spotted. Of course, I didn’t cut open the mattress. Anyway, I found the number in her Rolodex, along with this friend Lidia Ambrook’s number and address. Now that you’ve given me instructions on how to interview, I suppose I should go back to Lidia Ambrook and try a softer, more reasonable approach,” he said, smiling. He mulled a moment. �
��As far as her being the victim of the lunatic fringe, the FBI usually keeps track of suspicious characters, and would know if any who are connected to this sort of thing are in our area.”

  “Would they tell you?”

  “Yeah, I suppose, or they might say, ‘Don’t worry about it, we’re on it,’ like they did.”

  Cookie ate and thought.

  “Who knew Anna Gold was pregnant?”

  “Far as I can tell, just her sister and, I imagine, her lover. If Lidia Ambrook knows the lover’s name, she might know Anna’s pregnant. I haven’t interviewed people at the public defender’s office, where she worked. Might be someone there.”

  “Her sister didn’t tell anyone?”

  “Doubt it. She was so ashamed of it, she didn’t tell me about it when I spoke with her the first time.”

  “People don’t exactly pour out their hearts to you the first time they meet you, Jimmy.”

  “This woman did,” he insisted.

  She raised her eyebrows and then took his can of beer and poured what remained in her glass. It brought a smile to his face, remembering how she had listed the only two occasions she would drink beer. One was with pizza, the other was with a cheeseburger. Otherwise it was chardonnay.

  “Could someone have been watching the clinic to report on who goes in and out?”

  “Possible, I suppose, but this clinic’s out of town. Anyone loitering nearby would be noticed after a while.”

  “What about someone there reporting to the Shepherds of God—a spy for the fanatics?”

  “Possible,” he agreed. “I’d have to question the employees, do some background checks.”

  She stared at him a moment.

  “Sounds like you know where to go, what to do.”

  He nodded.

  She put down her glass and leaned toward him.

  “How can you just turn this over to the FBI, Jimmy?” she demanded. “You know people and places here better than some agents sent in from Washington. Every minute is probably critical for this abducted woman. She has to be living in some sort of abject terror.”

  “I told you—”

  “You’re not doing anything worthwhile with yourself today, Jimmy. Why not keep on it for free?”