Why? It was the detective’s question, and it saved his life.
He dropped the gun and fell back on the bed, sobbing out loud, with no idea of how he would make it through the next few moments. His heart was pumping madly, and he wondered if a heart attack would finish what he had just stopped himself from doing.
He lay there for hours until daylight gave way to evening. Each thought brought with it the same realization—he had no right to be there. The same brain that was contemplating each new speck of an idea could just as easily have been spattered on the walls, leaving those thoughts nowhere to go, no place to be born. As the night wore on, he realized that the images coming into his mind had been reclaimed out of nothingness.
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Why? He couldn’t answer her question.
The only answer he could think of made no real sense—maybe he’d been rejected by death and sent back to live his life.
Sylvia finally dropped her glare. She’d apparently decided she’d get more out of him if she talked to him in a more businesslike tone.
“Well, if you can’t answer that, just tell me why I should trust you.”
“All I can say is that I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to help.”
Sylvia gave a short grunt, seemingly taking at face value what he had just said to her.
“Gina’s kind of taken with you. I can see that. But I just want you to know that I’m not nearly as convinced as she is that you won’t screw things up again. I only have your word that you’re not in touch with those people. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
He nodded yes. He didn’t want to get into an argument.
“So let’s just say this—as far as I’m concerned, you’re on probation.”
She pulled out a business card and wrote something on the back. Then she handed it to him.
“That has my cell phone number on it, and I want you to call me if anything comes up—anything at all, okay? Will you promise me that?”
“I’ll do whatever you want.”
Sylvia allowed herself a smile. “Good, then I know we’ll get along.”
“There is one thing I need to tell you, however. Susan Wilder is flying into San Francisco tomorrow. I’m supposed to meet her at the airport. We arranged it a few days ago, and I don’t want to change it.”
The frown was back on Sylvia’s face.
“What’s that all about? Is she working with them on this?”
“No, I’m sure she isn’t. She hasn’t talked to her husband in days, and I doubt if she has talked to Blaiseck at all. She may not even know about the shooting and Alexi’s disappearance. I doubt any of this even made the news in the Midwest. Either way, I need to talk to her.”
He was dreading the prospect. He had no idea how Susan would react to everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.
“Maybe you should just tell her to stay home. If she comes here, she’d be in the way. We need to focus on finding Alexi.”
He shook his head no. “I can’t do that to her. I’m worried about what she might do if she’s left alone. She hasn’t told me all the details of what she suspects about her husband, but I know it’s pretty serious.”
“Well, if she suspects something about her husband, she’s very right.”
Sylvia put her notebook computer on the table and faced it toward Davey.
“Let me show you what was going in that house. Alexi kept a journal—it was apparently part of a whole series of journals. She had the current version of it with her when she got here. Here are some pages that I scanned. They’re pretty devastating.”
He looked at the pages until the descriptions became too brutal. “I had no idea this was going on.”
Those pages answered a lot of questions. The last time he had talked to Susan, she had just found some of the earlier journals in Alexi’s guitar case, and they were probably just as sordid as the pages Sylvia just showed him. Those descriptions must have torn her apart. And she was probably even more devastated when she read what else Alexi had been saying. He couldn’t understand why Susan had been telling him, “We failed her.” But now he understood. The explanation was there in Alexi’s own words. In the journal, she kept asking the question, “Why can’t my mother see what’s going on?”
“There’s one other thing you need to see,” Sylvia said. “Gina flew to Indianapolis to get Alexi out of there right after Alexi sent her this. Take a look.”
He thought he was beyond the point of being shocked by anything involved with the case, but the video was making him sick. It was so explicit that he found himself darting his eyes from side to side, hoping that there was no one else in that public waiting room watching him as he looked at something so awful.
“Now do you see why Gina did what she did? You’re an ex-cop. You know the risks she was running. I knew them too, and I told her so. But she just had to do the right thing. I say that, so you’ll know what kind of person you’re dealing with.”
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The nurse came into the waiting area and told them that Gina was awake. She wanted to see them.
As they got back near Gina’s room, Sylvia took him aside one more time. “Okay, I’m going to trust you in all this. So don’t let me down. I love Gina dearly. And if anyone hurts her, I’ll come after them.”
He nodded that he understood.
At the doorway to the room she stopped him again.
“There’s one other thing you need to know so that you won’t make a fool of yourself. Gina is transgender.”
Alexi
She refused to get out of the van. When they pulled into the parking lot of the motel, she kept sitting in the back, screaming when they tried to touch her. Finally, the fat man grabbed her and held her as the bald man tied a rope around her wrists. They pulled her out of the back and dragged her into the motel room. She wished there were someone in the parking lot who could see what they were doing, but the lot was empty. There were a couple of cars in the parking spaces, but there were no people.
She didn’t know where they were, but it seemed to be somewhere in the industrial part of the city. There was a major street just beyond the intersection, but the cars were too far away for the drivers to see her. They couldn’t have heard her no matter how loud she yelled. Even the motel office was out of view around the corner, and she couldn’t see anyone who was running the place. The only thing visible was the sign that said “Sands Motel” sticking out from the side of the building.
She yelled that they were hurting her wrists. The bald one slapped her and told her to “shut up,” as he pushed her down on the bed. The fat one just laughed. There was nowhere she could get away from them in that tiny room—one of her two kidnappers was with her at all times. A doorway connected that room to the adjacent one, and when they switched positions, they came and went by that door. When she told the fat one she needed to use the bathroom, he smirked and pointed her toward the bathroom door. She wanted him to untie her hands, but he wouldn’t do it. And he refused to close the door. He just sat outside with the door half open and made snickering noises.
When nighttime came, she lay on the bed in the dark, wondering what they were going to do with her. The next morning she tried to prop herself up, but she couldn’t do much more than stare at the curtains, wondering where she was. She knew the name of the motel, but that was all she knew. She had to find a way to get out of there, but she had no idea how to do it.
The connecting door opened, and another man walked in. She hadn’t seen him before. He was tall and thin with brownish-gray hair. He had a weird moustache that curled around the corners of his mouth. He walked over to the bed and stared down at her. Then he grabbed one of her wrists and worked his hand under the twine that was tying them together. He appeared to be trying to take her pulse, but his touch gave her the creeps. Then a second man stepped through the doorway. This on
e had funny eyes and a mean look on his face. He looked like he might be the guy in charge. He stopped and said a couple of words to the bald man, and then he walked over and stood behind the one who was hovering over her. She thought for a second that she recognized him. Then, when she heard his raspy voice, she was sure of it. He was someone who hung around the church. And he was a friend of the reverend.
The thin man leaned farther over her bed and acted like he wanted to examine her body. He tried to lift her skirt, but she flailed around with her legs to try and stop him. Finally, the man with the raspy voice grabbed her legs, pinning them down harshly to the mattress, while the other man pulled down her underpants and felt around her lower abdomen. He finally backed off and said something about needing to go get his kit. She kept squirming, but the man in charge gave her a short slap with the back of his hand that got her attention. She found his finger poised at the tip of her nose, eyes glaring down at her. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll lie still and shut up.”
The thin man came back a few minutes later with a black satchel that he opened up. He pulled a syringe out of the bag and hooked it up to a small tube of liquid, pushing down on the plunger a couple of times to see if the liquid would squirt out of the tip. She tried to wiggle away, but it was useless. The second man had her in a tight grip that kept her immobilized on the mattress. She started screaming, but they ignored her.
The thin man took a deep breath.
“I think it’s ready to go.”
“Do it. I can’t hold her down forever.”
“It won’t take effect immediately. It’ll be few minutes before she’s sedated, so you may have to hold her for a while.”
“Then we need to get started.”
The thin man looked uncomfortable. “Are you sure you want me to do this? These aren’t the most ideal conditions, you know.”
“What the hell are you talking about? You’ve done it before, haven’t you?”
“Once—several years ago, but that was in a hospital. This is different. You’ve only given me an hour’s notice.”
The other man was right in the thin man’s face. “I told you to get busy, so listen to what I’m telling you. If this thing blows up, you’re in as much trouble as anyone else. So if you don’t put in that syringe, I’m going to do it myself.”
She felt the needle go into her arm, and after a few minutes the men started to back away. She tried to move her arms and legs, but she could feel them getting heavier. Although she was woozy, she could hear men’s voices coming from the connecting room. The man who had given her the shot said he was stepping outside for a second while he waited for the anesthesia to take effect. Although her hearing was getting foggier, she could hear that the other one was talking to someone else in the adjacent room. She recognized a voice that terrified her. It was the reverend.
“Does he know what he’s doing?”
“He’s a doctor. He’ll be okay.”
“But is this his specialty?”
“What the fuck do you want me to do then? Do you want me to write a letter to the medical association for a recommendation?”
His voice was getting louder, as he seemed to be getting annoyed with the reverend’s questions.
“But do we know anything about him?”
“We know all that we have to know. We know that he has the same taste for little girls that you do. And we know that if he doesn’t do this, you’re both going to be in deep shit. Now, do you want us to drive her down to some fancy new clinic, fill out all their forms, and give them all your personal information? How long do you think it would be before the police and the newspapers got their hands on that?”
She felt herself losing consciousness. The reverend’s voice was starting to fade, but she could still hear the man with the loud raspy voice.
“What are you talking about killing? Nobody’s killing anybody.”
There was a pause. She strained to hear what the reverend said, but she couldn’t make out his words. But the other man had apparently heard him, as he yelled out an answer.
“What is this? Are you telling me you’re concerned about killing a fetus? Is that what has you all worked up?” He let out a huge laugh. “What is it with people like you? It’s okay to bonk your teenage daughter, but it suddenly becomes sinful when you try to clean up the mess?
“Now, will you just shut the fuck up and let us get on with the job?”
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The drab walls and the frayed curtains were the first things she saw, as she fought her way back to consciousness. For a second she couldn’t remember why she was there, but then the whole awful story hit her. She felt a gathering nausea and weakness that seemed to penetrate her entire body. Her clothing was ripped in a couple of places, and when she looked more closely she could see blood stains on her dress and legs. She tried to move, but that only triggered a pain that stretched across her stomach.
She lay there for several minutes, fighting a sense of panic. She still thought about escape, but that seemed hopeless. And if she didn’t have the strength to get out of there before this happened, she would never be able to do it now when she felt a lot sicker and weaker. She was starting to despair, until she suddenly realized something. She was alone in the room for the first time since they kidnapped her.
The door to the adjacent room was still open, and she could hear the voices of the men. They were all in there. The man with the raspy voice was telling the men who had grabbed her off the street they had to leave.
“What’s the big rush?” one of them asked.
“Someone identified you. It was on television a few minutes ago. The police released both of your names, and they’ve got a manhunt on for you.”
“How the hell did that happen?”
“How the fuck am I supposed to know?”
Their voices seemed to be moving away, and she guessed that they were headed to the outside door of the other room—maybe even out toward the van. As she listened to them talk, she looked over at the corner of the room near her bed. Her shoulder bag was still lying in the place where they’d thrown it when they forced her into the room.
This might be her only chance. She eased herself over the side of the bed until she reached the floor. The pain in her stomach got worse as she did so, but she forced herself to crawl across the carpet, inch by inch on her back until she reached her bag. Her cell phone was still in the pocket. Although her wrists were tied together, she managed to maneuver the phone out of the bag and into a position where she could manipulate the keyboard with her thumbs. She typed the letter “G” on the address line, and Gina’s cell phone number popped up. She thought for a second and then typed “M” as well. Her mother’s cell phone appeared. She heard noises from the other room, and she sensed that they were coming back in from the outside. The message had to be quick: “Help Sands Motel.”
She dropped the phone into the bag and tried to crawl back to the bed. She got halfway there and blacked out.
Gina
Someone had placed a picture of Morrie in a handmade frame on the sidewalk outside the store under the boarded-up window. The photo was one that Miriam had taken of him reading a story to a little boy. He always said it was his favorite picture. People from the neighborhood had come by and put flowers next to it—an intimate gesture that might not have been expected in this young, hip, urbane neighborhood. That alone would have broken me up, but next to the flowers were several small piles of children’s books that had been arranged in loving fashion. Kids had apparently been coming by in a steady stream to leave books for their favorite storyteller. I started crying so heavily that Sylvia and Cristina had to usher me over to a place where I could sit down to try to regain my composure. It took a little while.
Marco, Sylvia’s paralegal assistant, had parked the van in a temporary spot in front of the store when they let me out. Sylvia wanted me to head
upstairs to my apartment to get some rest—the bookstore could wait for a day or so until I got my strength back. But I told her no, I couldn’t do that. I had to make an appearance downstairs. The booksellers who worked there were a pretty resilient group, but I needed to show them—and show myself—that this kind of thing wouldn’t intimidate us. We were in business to stay no matter who attacked us.
I was still worried about Alexi. Even as I put on my bravest face and walked through the store, I had to fight a sense of panic. There’d been no developments in the case. The police had taken Davey’s information about the kidnappers and released it to the news stations, but there were still no leads. I kept telling myself that she was still alive, because they had no reason to kill her. I was pretty sure it was just me they wanted to kill. Oddly enough, I found that comforting.
The store showed all of the damage that two high-caliber bullets fired through a plate-glass window can do. The front, of course, was partially boarded up, waiting for the glass repair company. In the meantime, we would simply have to live with the large pieces of plywood that were blocking out the light from the street. A couple of local artists had taken it upon themselves to paint some impromptu murals on the boards. That was fine with me, as long as they kept them respectful. Inside, a few of the bookcases had been splintered and were looking rather forlorn. There were a lot of damaged books as well. Some of them had to be thrown out, but others had been put on a shipping cart that someone had placed near the door. Miriam or someone had added a handwritten sign that said, “Buy a book and prove the murderers wrong.”
Good wishes, I was told, had been pouring in from everywhere. The mayor’s office had called to give us the city’s condolences. City Hall was only a few blocks away, and the mayor planned to visit the store the following afternoon. The former mayor, who had an apartment down near the Ferry Building, had already been by to show his support. The American Booksellers Association called to ask how we were holding up and said they had sent out a special bulletin about the shooting. Shelf Awareness, the book-business trade journal, was planning a story about the shooting and had posted an in memoriam for Morrie. Publishers Weekly called and said they wanted to interview me when I felt up to it. The NCIBA, our local trade association, was already arranging a special benefit in Morrie’s honor to raise money for the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence—an organization on Bush Street where Morrie volunteered. Most poignantly of all, the staff had rearranged the children’s section to find space for a permanent memorial and a new name: “Morrie’s Room.” Most of this was unexpected, and I was overwhelmed by it.
Through the Bookstore Window Page 20