The Vanished

by Tim Kizer

  As soon as Carol entered, Devon shut the door and Tom pointed his pistol at her.

  “Tom?” Carol’s eyes widened in shock. “You’re alive.”

  “If you scream, I’ll kill you,” Tom said.

  The Honorable Curtis Gutterud had had given Tom the maximum sentence because he was what they called “a tough judge.” The first thing Tom said to Gutterud after explaining why they had abducted him was, “You’re not so tough now, are you, tough judge?”

  He had come up with this line five months earlier and couldn’t wait to say it to the judge. He had no cool line prepared for Carol.

  Devon took the phone from Carol’s hand and then led her to a chair. When she sat down, he cuffed her hands and tied her feet.

  “What’s going on?” Carol asked in a trembling voice. “Where’s Vincent?”

  “He’s in the kitchen,” Tom said.

  “What are you doing here, Tom?”

  “I live here.”

  “Why did you fake your death?”

  “I think you know why.”

  “Did you kidnap Annie? Where is she?” Carol’s face was pale with fear.

  “Remember what you said to me when you married that cocksucker? You said you were going to make his life hell. Why did you break your promise, Sis?”

  “Where’s Annie? What did you do to her?”

  Tom wanted to tell Carol everything. Not because he felt the need to confess, but because it was a good story.

  Their plan had been first to hypnotize David into believing that he had murdered his daughter and wanting to confess to this crime, and then to kidnap Annie. Devon was going to program David to remember killing Annie ten hours after her disappearance.

  Devon only conducted one session with David, which took place in a rented van in the parking lot of Collin Creek Mall in Plano fifteen days before the abduction. Devon intercepted David as he walked toward the mall, and used hypnosis to make him get in their van. Near the end of the session, Devon told David that for the next two months he was going to fall asleep for five minutes every time he heard the word “Limpopo.”

  Limpopo was the name of a river in southeast Africa. Devon had chosen it as a trigger word because it sounded good to him and because it was almost never uttered in America. Tom’s trigger word was “oystercatcher;” it had no effect on Tom unless it was said by Devon. When he heard his trigger word, Tom went into a hypnotic trance and became receptive to suggestions from Devon.

  After programming David to believe that he had murdered Annie, Devon gave him a knife (which the police would later find in the bushes behind the restrooms in Ardmore Park), so his fingerprints would get on it.

  Abducting Annie from the Millers’ house was out of the question because of surveillance cameras (David had to have a lot of them on his property). They decided that a park would be a good place to carry out the kidnapping, so Devon programmed David to take his daughter to Ardmore Park on May 6. They picked Ardmore Park because David said it was Annie’s favorite park.

  On May 6, Tom followed David and Annie from their house to Ardmore Park. As a precaution, he had put false number plates on his car and wore sunglasses and a baseball cap. In the parking lot, Tom pulled up behind David’s Porsche Cayenne, waited for David to open his door, and said loudly, “Limpopo.”

  David fell asleep instantly.

  Annie was standing a few feet from the Porsche, waiting for her father. Tom got out of his car, called the girl’s name, and waved. Then he walked up to her and said that her daddy had asked him to take her home. When Annie looked at David’s car, Tom said, “Your daddy’s taking a nap. Look what I’ve got here.” He extended his right hand, in which he held a small gray kitten. “Do you want to play with it?”

  The kitten was Tom’s idea. Children loved kittens.

  Annie smiled and nodded. He handed her the kitten, and then she climbed into his car. Two hours later, using a syringe, Tom drew some blood from Annie’s arm and poured it all over the knife that David had held in the van on April 21. Annie had had blood drawn many times before, so she hadn’t complained during the procedure.

  “She’s fine,” Tom said.

  “Where is she?” Carol asked.

  “My friend’s place.”

  “Where?”

  “Austin.”

  Carol looked at Devon and asked, “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Bill,” Devon said. “I’m a friend of your brother’s.”

  “Are you going to kill me?” Carol asked.

  “No,” Devon said.

  “Are you going to let me go?”

  “Of course.” To Tom, Devon said, “Do you have a video camera?”

  “Yes,” Tom said.

  “Can you give it to me? I want to make a video.”

  Tom went to the chest of drawers, took a compact camcorder from the bottom drawer, and brought it to Devon. As he studied the camera, Devon asked, “Do you have a tripod?”

  “No.”

  Devon looked around, then walked over to the table in the dining area, grabbed a wooden chair, and put it on the coffee table in the living room.

  “Move your sister to the couch and take off the cuffs,” he said to Tom.

  After Tom removed the handcuffs, Devon switched on the camera and placed it on the chair on the coffee table, with its lens facing Tom’s sister.

  “I want you to memorize this text.” Devon reached into his pocket, pulled out the sheet of paper with the text he had composed on Tom’s laptop forty minutes ago, and handed it to Carol.

  After reading the text, Carol raised her eyes to Devon’s face and said, “What is this?”

  “It’s your part. I need you to say it out loud while I film you. Please sound sincere, okay?”

  Carol looked at the text and said, “Why do you want me to say all this on camera?”

  “It will be our insurance policy. If you talk to the cops, we’ll send them this tape and you’ll go to jail.”

  “So you’ll let me go if I say this on camera?”

  “Yes, we will. You agree that you’ll go to jail if the cops see this tape, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the cops won’t be the only ones who’ll see it. This video’s going to be all over the news if you tell the police about me and your brother.”

  “I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

  “You won’t if we have the tape. Let’s get to work, shall we?”

  Carol spent ten minutes committing the text to memory, and then announced that she was ready. Devon stood behind the camera, looked into the viewfinder (he made sure the rope tying Carol’s legs wasn’t in the shot), and said, “Okay, I’m going count to three. One, two, three.”

  He pressed the Record button.

  “My name is Carol Miller,” Carol said. “My husband’s name is David Miller. Right now David’s in prison for killing our adopted daughter, Annie. I want everyone to know that my husband is innocent. He didn’t kill Annie.” Carol paused. “I did it. I killed our daughter. I killed her because I couldn’t deal with her condition. I’m truly sorry for what I did. I hope God will forgive me.”

  There were tears welling in her eyes.

  Devon pushed the Stop button and said, applauding gently, “Bravo! Great job, Carol. Great job.”

  “Is Annie really alive?” Carol asked.

  “Yes,” Devon replied.

  “Do you give her medication for her epilepsy?”

  “Yes. She’s in very good hands, Carol.”

  “When are you going to let her go?”

  “In six years.”

  “Why?”

  “Because your brother served six years in prison.”

  “You ought to be happy about this situation, Sis,” Tom said. “You get to spend your hubby’s money as you please while he’s in jail.”

  Devon grabbed the camcorder and said to Tom, “Can you give me the cable for the camera, please? The one you use to connect the camera to the laptop.”

&nb
sp; When Tom brought him the cable, Devon sat down at the desk, connected the camcorder to Tom’s laptop, and moved the recording of Carol’s confession from the camera’s memory card to the laptop’s hard drive.

  “Why are you helping my brother?” Carol asked Devon when he closed the laptop.

  “Do I have to have a reason?”

  “There must be a reason. You could be executed for this.”

  “Only if they catch me.” Devon scratched his cheek. “Look, Carol, since God’s allowing me to do that, it must be His plan, right? Everything’s God’s plan.”

  Pointing the lens at Carol, Devon placed the camera on the chair that stood on the coffee table, and said, “I want to make another video.”

  2

  “What’s the point of this video?” Tom asked when Devon stopped filming.

  “I’ll explain later.” Devon glanced at his watch. It was half past five. “Cuff her.”

  He put the camera on the coffee table and returned the chair to the kitchen.

  “What happened to Vincent?” Carol asked. “Is he asleep?”

  “Yes.” Tom snapped the cuffs on her wrists.

  “What did you do to him?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Carol, do you love Annie?” Devon asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You used to have a son, who was your biological child, didn’t you? Do you love Annie as much as you loved your son? I want an honest answer.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Really? You know, I never understood why people love adopted children. They’re not your real children. Why the hell would you love them?”

  “Do you have children?”

  “No.”

  “Are you married?”

  “No, and never have been.” Devon clasped his hands over his knee. “If you had to choose between Annie and your biological son, who would you choose?”

  “It’s a stupid question.”

  “Most questions are stupid.”

  “I don’t know how to answer it.”

  “I’m sure you know the answer, you’re just ashamed to tell it to me. You’d choose your son, I have no doubt about it.”

  “Did your parents abuse you when you were a child?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Just curious.”

  “She wants to understand what made you so evil.” Tom chuckled.

  Devon smiled, and said, “No, they didn’t abuse me. But I argued with them a lot.”

  “When I was a teenager, I argued with my parents almost every day.” Tom said.

  “I think arguing is good,” Devon said, “even healthy.”

  “What’s healthy about arguing?” Carol asked.

  “It’s a great way to release bad energy,” Devon replied. “It helps you relieve stress. If you keep your mouth shut, if you keep your anger bottled up inside, you’re going to damage your sanity. And one day you might snap and go on a killing spree.”

  “I think you should respect your parents,” Carol said. “They gave you life.”

  “You don’t know my parents.” Devon smiled. “Interestingly, we always found a reason to yell at each other.”

  “You argued with Mom and Dad, too, Carol,” Tom said.

  “But not every day,” Carol paused. “I’ll pay you a hundred thousand dollars if you let Annie go.”

  “Just a hundred grand?” Devon said.

  “How much do you want? Five hundred? A million?”

  “You think money can buy everything,” Tom said. “And you’re right. But not in this case.”

  “Your brother doesn’t want your money, Carol. He wants justice.”

  “Are you going to let Vincent go?” Carol asked.

  “Yes,” Devon said.

  “Can I…”

  Vincent’s phone rang, interrupting Carol in mid-sentence. Devon looked at the screen. The caller ID read: “David Miller Jail.”

  “It’s David,” Devon said.

  Tom snatched the phone from his hand, plugged in the voice changer, which Devon had detached earlier, and took the call.

  “Hello, David.” Tom turned to Carol and pressed his index finger to his lips.

  “Hi, can I talk to Vincent?” David said.

  Tom realized he had to be careful what he said because calls from jail were monitored.

  “How’s jail treating you, David?”

  “Who is it?”

  “Your friend Ben. Do you remember me?”

  There was a long silence. Then David said, “Yes, I remember you.”

  “Do you like it there? Do they beat you up?”

  “No, they don’t. Is Annie alive?”

  “Yes. She’s fine.”

  “How did you get Vincent’s phone?”

  “I borrowed it. How does the medicine taste, David?”

  “What medicine?”

  “Your own medicine. Get it? How does it taste? Doing time for a crime you didn’t commit.”

  “Please don’t hurt my daughter.”

  “How many innocent people did you put in prison?”

  “I’m sorry about what happened to you, Tom. The system isn’t perfect, we all know that.”

  “Who’s Tom? My name’s Ben. What happened to ‘it’s better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer’? Are you familiar with this expression, David?”

  “Yes. It’s called Blackstone’s formulation.”

  “That’s right. Do you agree with it?”

  “I’m very sorry about what happened to you, but please understand that I was just doing my job.”

  “This is bullshit! You enjoyed it. Prosecutors love having power over people’s lives. I know your kind very well. You can destroy a person’s life without breaking a sweat. You force innocent people to take plea bargains, you break their spirits, you bring them to financial ruin.”

  “I’m not a prosecutor anymore.”

  “You’re a child killer, David. That’s what the government says.”

  “You’re right. I’m a child killer.”

  “Bye-bye.” Tom hung up.

  3

  When Devon was twelve, his father took him to his boss’s house to watch the Super Bowl. His father’s boss, Paul Hallahan, was a man of means and owned a beautiful six-bedroom mansion, whereas Devon’s family lived in a small two-bedroom apartment in a working-class neighborhood.

  Also attending the party were his father’s coworker and five men who didn’t work at his father’s company. Besides Devon, there were four other children in the house, two of whom were Hallahan’s kids. An hour after the game began, Hallahan saw they were out of beer and said to Devon’s father, “Mike, why don’t you go get us a sixpack from the kitchen? No, better make it two.”

  Devon was dying to call his dad’s boss’s name and say, “Go get the fucking beer yourself, you asshole!” But he kept his mouth shut because he was a big boy and knew the consequences of such a move.

  With a servile smile, Devon’s father sprang from the couch and hurried to the kitchen. He didn’t even ask if he could wait until a commercial break. Devon was embarrassed that his father acted like an obedient dog, caring nothing about what his son might think about his undignified behavior. It was then that Devon realized that the only thing that mattered in this world was power. Power—the ability to make others do what you want. His father’s problem was that he had no power. Michael LeRoy was a lowly accountant with a pitiful salary, and he remained a humble cog who supervised no one until he retired.

  His father seemed to be satisfied with his lot, and Devon hated it. He often asked his old man why he wasn’t striving to be the one in charge, to be rich, to be powerful.

  “Do you like being ordered around by other people?” he would ask. “Do like being a nobody? No one’s afraid of you.”

  His father would smile vacantly, sigh, and then stroke him on the head with his soft pale hand.

  “Money and power are not the most important things in life, son,” his dad would say. �
�Everybody can’t be the boss, everybody can’t be rich. And let me tell you something: I don’t want anyone to be afraid of me.”

  “So what? Why do you have to be a nobody? Let the other people be your minions. I want you to be the boss.”

  His father would make no reply, shrug, and then go to the living room to work on a report for his boss. Hunched over a pile of papers, punching buttons on a printing calculator, he looked pathetic.

  When Devon was thirteen, he had sworn to himself that he would do whatever it took to become rich and powerful. He had vowed to be ruthless and relentless in the pursuit of his goals.

  To be successful, you needed to be ruthless and relentless, even when dealing with friends and family. Contrary to what the Bible said, the meek were not going to inherit the earth.

  Devon had devised a plan, and he was going to execute it because he was ruthless and relentless.

  “We have to kill her,” Devon said. “I think she’ll run to the cops as soon as we let her go.”

  “You think so?” Tom asked.

  “Yes. And we have to kill him, too.” Devon pointed at Vincent.

  “You promised you’d let me go,” Carol whimpered.

  “The thing is, I don’t trust you,” Devon said.

  “You have the videos. I’m not going tell anything to the police. You don’t have to kill me. Please!”

  “I’m sorry, Carol, but we have no choice.”

  “I’m your sister, Tom,” Carol whined. “Are you going kill your own sister?”

  “You stopped being my sister when you sold out to David,” Tom said.

  “I didn’t sell out. I love him.”

  “Same difference. How can you love the guy who put your brother in prison? You’re a traitor, Carol.”

  “Do you have another gun?” Devon asked.

  “No,” Tom said.

  “Use this as a silencer.” Devon grabbed a pillow from the couch and handed it to Tom.

  Although the nearest house was seventy yards away, it was still a good idea to muffle the gunshots.

  Devon grabbed Carol by the arm and pulled her up from the couch.

  “Please don’t kill me!” cried Carol, mascara running down her cheeks. “Please!”

  Devon dragged her to the center of the room. She began to wriggle, trying to break free. For some reason, she didn’t scream for help.