by Mark Gimenez
He had not found his manhood on Wall Street; perhaps he would find it in Idaho.
He had tried to imagine life without Gracie. He couldn’t. It was not the life he had lived or the life he wanted to live. And it would be a life without Elizabeth. Gracie’s birth had brought them together; her death would drive them apart. Elizabeth would leave him, and Sam with her. His family, his tenuous connection to the real world, would be gone; and he would give every dollar of his new fortune to save his family.
But he knew his money could not save his family. He knew his only hope lay with a drunk. Ben Brice offered hope. Hope that somehow, somewhere, Gracie was alive. Hope that one day she might come home. Hope that her father might again cup her perfect face and think how swell she was. He knew it made no sense. He knew there was no logic to it. No reason. No odds. There was just emotion. And hope. John had read about people with terminal cancer going to Mexico for enemas and other quack therapies, hoping for a miracle. He had wondered how desperate a person must be to do such a thing, to travel thousands of miles hoping for a miracle. Now he knew.
So John R. Brice would unplug from his virtual world of cyberspace and computers and code that defined and protected him and venture forth into the real world, untethered to his technology like an astronaut untethered to the mother ship, chasing Ben’s dream and his daughter. And hoping.
For the first time in his life, John Brice would follow his father.
The mansion sat dark and silent, as if in mourning. The FBI had packed up and moved out. Everyone had retired to their respective rooms to consider life without Grace. Everyone except Elizabeth.
She was in the media room watching the late news. A child abductor was dead. He would be buried tomorrow. Life would go on as before. But not Grace’s life. Or her mother’s life.
Her daughter was dead.
Evil had won again.
11:07 P.M.
Ben was lying in bed; the only light was coming from outside. His hands were clasped behind his head and his mind was filled with questions: Why couldn’t Clayton Lee Tucker identify Gracie or the men or the tattoo? Was he really a nutcase? And why was his phone line busy all day and night? Why had the two men taken Gracie to Idaho? And the most troubling question of all for Ben Brice: Had his past come back to haunt Gracie?
The door to the pool house opened, and Kate’s head appeared.
“Ben?”
“Yeah.”
Kate came over and sat on the edge of the bed; she stared at her hands and fiddled with the belt to her bathrobe. He gave her time to work up to what she wanted to say.
“Ben, has there been another woman?”
“No, Kate, just another drink.”
Kate stood, untied her robe, and let it fall to the floor. She pulled back the blanket and lay beside him, resting her head on his chest. Where she would be when he woke the next morning.
DAY SEVEN
4:59 A.M.
Ben Brice opened his eyes not to a dog needing to pee but to his wife sleeping next to him for the first time in five years. The warmth of her skin against his brought a sense of regret to his mind: all the years he had lost with her.
Dawn was near and he needed to leave, but he lay still; he was not yet ready to let go of the moment. When he was young and life hadn’t yet had its way with him, he had let go of such moments freely, assured there would be many more to come; now he held onto each moment for as long as possible. He wrapped his arms around his wife one last time.
Ben recalled the first time Katherine McCullough had lain with him, on 6 June 1968, their wedding night. He was twenty-two and a second lieutenant; she was twenty and a virgin. When she came to him that night and let her gown slip off her shoulders and fall to the floor and stood before him, he knew he would never want another woman.
But life soon had its way with Ben Brice.
She had left him and now he must leave her. He released her and rolled out of bed slowly so as not to wake her. He was dressed and packed when she stirred. He went to her, sat on the edge of the bed, and brushed stray strands of red hair from her face. She opened her eyes and stared into his as if trying to read his mind. Finally, she said, “She really is alive.”
He nodded.
“Why? Why’d they take her?”
Ben broke eye contact. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t you?”
Kate got out of bed, slipped into her robe, and pulled the belt snug around her waist.
“Does this have something to do with that tattoo?”
“You mean with the war?”
“Yes, with that damn war.”
Ben stood and grabbed his duffel bag. “Kate, everything has something to do with that war.”
Elizabeth spat the last of the bile into the toilet and flushed again. The taste burned her throat; the lining was raw from her morning vomits. Still kneeling, she grabbed the bottle of green mouthwash that she now kept by the toilet, took a mouthful, swished it around, and spat it into the toilet. She sank to the floor; the marble was cool on her bare legs. She rested her head on the toilet seat.
When she had woken, her mind had immediately taken advantage of the early morning, when she was most vulnerable, and tortured her again with more gruesome images of her daughter: Grace’s body, dead and decomposing and dumped in a ditch, maggots crawling out of her silent open mouth and over her pale lips, vultures pecking at her blue eyes and rats gnawing on her beautiful face, fighting over her flesh …
She felt her body’s regurgitation process gearing up again.
Seven mornings ago, Elizabeth had gotten dressed in this bathroom in her best closing argument outfit; that day had begun like any other day but had ended with Grace gone from her life. How can that be? How can life turn on us in a split second? How can life be so unfair? Harsh? Cruel? Evil? She had asked herself those same questions ten years ago. She had no answers then; she had no answers now. But back then, she had Grace. Now Grace was gone.
“I’m going.”
John was standing in the doorway. She knew he wanted her to go to him and embrace him and say “I love you” to him. He needed her to, and she wanted to. She tried to push herself up from the floor, but she hadn’t the strength. He started to walk away.
“John, I …”
He turned back. She had never been able to give voice to those words. And she could not now. Evil had taken that kind of love from her life. John walked out of sight.
She leaned over the toilet and vomited again.
Ben and Kate walked out of the pool house to find John standing next to a shiny red Range Rover. He was wearing sneakers, jeans, and an MIT sweatshirt. He appeared not a day older than the day he had left for college.
“I’m going with you, Ben.”
Ben reached out and squeezed his son’s shoulder. “I understand your wanting to, son, but this isn’t your kind of work.”
Ben turned away, but John grabbed his arm. “I know that, Ben. This is man’s work, and I’m not much of a man. But Gracie’s my daughter. And if she is alive, I want her back.”
Ben started to order John to stay home, but he saw in John’s eyes the same truth he felt in his heart: finding Gracie was life or death, for her and for him.
“All right, son. We’ll do this together.”
Ben walked around to the passenger side of the vehicle. Kate went to John and embraced him. “Be careful,” she said. Then, in a lower voice she must have thought Ben couldn’t hear, she said, “Do exactly what Ben tells you to do, and we might get Gracie back. This is what he knows.”
8:23 A.M.
The landscape below was bleak and endless. It was Thursday and they were somewhere over West Texas. The plan was to fly to Albuquerque, drive to Ben’s cabin outside Taos, pick up his gear—the kind you can’t take on a plane, he had said—and drive nonstop to Idaho Falls to talk to Clayton Lee Tucker, the last person who had seen Gracie alive.
Ben’s hands were folded in his lap, his eyes were closed, and his breathing w
as steady and slow. The flight attendant raised her eyebrows at John when Ben failed to respond to her offer of coffee, tea, or juice.
“Coffee, black, for both of us,” John said to her.
He lowered Ben’s tray then his. The flight attendant placed cups of coffee on their trays. John drank his coffee, assuming they would fly in silence; but Ben opened his eyes and spoke.
“Thanks for letting Gracie visit me. She told me Elizabeth was against it but you stood up to her.”
It was, in fact, the only time John R. Brice had ever stood up to his wife.
“Last time I saw her,” Ben said, “we drove down to Santa Fe to deliver a table. When we got there, I took the table into the gallery. She stayed outside to check out the Indians selling their products on the Plaza. When I came back out, she was on the other side standing next to this old Navajo like they’re best friends.” A slight smile. “She was wearing a tribal headdress. She smiled and waved at me. I’ll never forget her face that day.” Ben turned to John; his eyes were wet. “Do you remember the last time you saw her face?”
John leaned back in his seat. He did remember.
Gracie yanks Brenda and Sally to an abrupt halt. It’s suddenly very important that she turn and look back for Dad. That same bad feeling has come over her again, like a nightmare while she’s still awake. The feeling that something really awful is about to happen to her. The same feeling she has experienced for more than a week now, always when she is outside on the playground during recess or at soccer practice or on the way home from school. Like someone is watching her. Waiting for her.
Her entire body is covered with goose bumps.
The sun is in her eyes; she squints. She spots her dad, looking back at her from soccer field no. 2. Usually, when the bad feeling overcame her, she would get close to a grownup and the feeling would leave. But not today. Not now. She wants desperately to run back to her dad.
“Come on, Gracie,” Brenda says, tugging at her arm. “There won’t be any banana snow cones left if we don’t hurry.”
She decides she’s just being a silly girl, something Mom always said was not allowed in her house. She’s in the middle of a big crowd at the park after a soccer game. The bad feeling can’t get her here. She is safe. She smiles and waves at Dad. He waves back with the cell phone. The goose bumps are gone.
They arrive at the concession stand. Holding hands, they weave their way through the crowd of kids and grownups. Sally gets her snow cone first then Brenda orders hers.
“Panty check!”
Gracie whirls around to the snot standing five feet away and taunting her with no adult supervision. Way stupid. The snot realizes her mistake. Her eyes drop to Gracie’s hands, now Ms. Fist and her twin sister. The sneer leaves her face and is replaced by fear. The snot starts to back away, then she runs, but Gracie has her by the hair before they’re behind the concession stand, alone, no big-mouthed butthead jerk football dad to save her now. Ms. Fist, meet the snot’s nose. The snot collapses to the ground like a bunch of pixie sticks.
What a wimp! And she’s eleven!
The snot cups her nose and starts crying like a baby. She looks up at Gracie; her eyes are wide with fear. But her eyes aren’t on Gracie, her fear not of Gracie, but of—
The goose bumps are back. The bad feeling is back. It’s all over Gracie now, smothering her like a thick blanket on a hot day. It’s behind her. It’s breathing on her. She turns to face it.
Something wet covers her face. She tries to fight it off, but she smells something funny. Every nerve in her body starts tingling and now she’s dizzy; her arms lose all strength, her legs go limp, her eyes want to close. She’s floating now, a gentle bounce. No, she’s not floating; she’s being carried. She hears crunching below her, like someone stepping on dried leaves.
The bad feeling is taking her through the woods.
Gracie’s mind is fading to black; she fights hard to think of something to save herself. She thinks of Ben. She calls out to him, but no words come out of her mouth.
Ben.
With her last ounce of strength and willpower, Gracie reaches up, grabs her necklace, and yanks hard. Her arm drops. Her hand releases the necklace. Ben’s Silver Star.
Save me, Ben …
… A hard bounce startles her awake, but she can barely force her eyes open, just enough to see that wherever she is, it is dark. She hears the drone of a car engine and feels the rumbling of tires against the road beneath her.
The bad feeling is taking her far, far away.
Her eyelids outweigh her will. She can no longer hold them open. She drifts off into that murky world again …
… And coming alive now. But she is groggy, like she can’t wake up all the way. She hears voices. She smells cigarette smoke and fast food and body odor. Her stomach feels really queasy, like she might barf. Her mouth is dry, but she does not lick her lips. She does not move any part of her body. Instead, she opens her eyes to slits.
It’s morning. She’s in a car, wrapped in a scratchy green blanket and lying across the back seat. Up front are two men. The driver has blond hair under a black cap; he’s wearing a plaid shirt. The other man is bigger with a flattop, like Ms. Blake, the P.E. instructor, except his hair is gray. His left arm is slung over the seat back. It’s a very big arm. With something on it she has seen before.
The big man’s big head swivels toward the blond man, and he says, “That geek’s gonna be a billionaire.” A cigarette hangs on his lip. “Maybe we oughta ransom this little cherry. Bet he’d pay a million bucks to get her back.”
“I wouldn’t take no amount of money for her,” the blond man says. “We was meant to be together.”
The big man shakes his head and exhales a cloud of smoke. “Just ’cause you wanna be with her don’t mean she wants to be with you. You think about that?”
“Yeah, I thought about that,” the blond man says. “She’ll learn to love me.”
“And what gal wouldn’t? Funny thing about women, though, sometimes they’re real stubborn about learning to love a man what kidnaps ’em.”
The blond man gives the big man a look. “It happened before.”
The big man nods. “So it has. All I’m saying is you ain’t had no experience with women—whores at Rusty’s don’t count. And I’m telling you, boy, an unhappy woman … damn. Only two things you can do with an unhappy woman: make her happy or kill her. Take it from me, it’s a helluva lot easier to kill her.”
That tickles him.
The engine is making strange noises. And it smells awful. She sees the tops of other cars and eighteen-wheelers passing them. They’re on the highway. The sun is shining in the right side of the car. Which means they’re heading north. Which must be why she now catches a slight chill, particularly when—
Without moving her head, Gracie checks herself over. Her white soccer shoe is on her left foot, but her right shoe is missing; she’s still wearing the blue knee socks and shin guards. She feels around inside the blanket and—her uniform is gone! Her jersey, her shorts—all she’s wearing is her Under Armour! Why did they take her uniform? And the answer comes to her: Oh my God, they raped me! She bites her tongue to silence her feelings and squeezes her eyes tightly to hold back the tears. But one tear escapes and rolls down her cheek, lands on the seat, and disappears into a crease in the cracked vinyl.
Gracie wasn’t entirely sure of everything that being raped included, but she knew it meant some male person sticking his penis into a girl down between her legs without permission (although she could not imagine ever giving a boy permission to do that). Mother never talked to her about sex or any of that stuff yet; she learned what she knew from Ms. Boyd in health class. Ms. Boyd told the girls that when a boy makes unwelcome physical advances, they should point their finger at him and firmly say, “No! And no means no!” The girls and boys attended separate sex ed classes; the girls giggled at the drawings of penises in the book. The only real live penises she had seen were Sam’s, which was
really little and couldn’t hurt a girl her age, and Dad’s, one time when she walked in on him in his bathroom. He got totally embarrassed and covered up real fast, but she got a good look at it. Dad’s penis was big enough to hurt a girl her age.
But she doesn’t hurt down there. She doesn’t feel different at all. Maybe the two men have little penises like Sam’s and that’s why she doesn’t hurt. Or maybe they didn’t rape her.
Or maybe … she closes her eyes and sleeps again …
… Until she is awakened by a door slamming.
She cracks her eyelids. The blond man is gone. The big man turns toward her; she quickly shuts her eyes tight. She feels his gross hand over the blanket, shaking her leg not so gently.
“Wake up,” he says.
She pretends to be asleep, but she hears his heavy breath as he exhales, and she knows cigarette smoke is coming her way. She holds her breath, but the toxic fumes find their way into her nose. She coughs. She can’t pretend to be asleep now. She opens her eyes. The big man is looking at her and not like he wants to be friends.
He is way past ugly.
His nose is broad and flat, like he had run face first into a brick wall. A long scar zigzags down the left side of his face. One eye doesn’t look right. His whiskers look like Coach Wally’s hair when his burr cut starts to grow back in. The skin on his face is blotchy and leathery and filled with little pockmarks like that guy at BriceWare. (Dad said the guy had bad acne as a child.) A cigarette is clamped between his teeth and smoke comes out with each breath. He’s the biggest human being she has ever seen, and he looks really mean. Gracie realizes she is trembling, she is so afraid. But her mother’s advice plays in her ears like a song on her iPod: Men are like dogs. They can smell fear on a woman. Never let them smell your fear. Never let them see you cry. Always act tough even when you don’t feel tough. So Gracie acts tough.
“You wanna put that thing out?” she says. “Passive smoke is dangerous to a child’s health.”