Murder Across The Ocean

by Charlene Wexler

  “My granddaughter told me it was really something to see. I guess it is four hundred years old or more, with a massive country home.”

  “Yes, ma’am, but the real charm is the grounds. Sir Jeffry Wyattville, a renowned architect, designed the gardens in 1810.”

  Lori looked out the window. Rain had begun falling in an even, rhythmic motion over the narrow winding road, which was partially hidden by enormous trees. The sun and the clouds were playing hide and seek, brightening and darkening the landscape. It seemed after they crossed a wooden bridge they went from flat land inhabited by cows to a dark foggy forest.

  “I guess you know these roads well.”

  “Don’t be alarmed by the roads. I know them as well as the back of me hand. Even though we are on the estate, we still have a ways to go. Used to have foxhunts out this way. In fact, if you look out to the right, there is a large grey hawk in the tree watching some animal intently. I can’t make out what it is through the rain. He is hunting something.”

  Lori felt jumpy at the prospect of talking to someone who could unlock her family secrets, secrets that had haunted her for seventy years. Josh’s death even took a back seat. Lori sat there thinking about the many times her mother retreated into her room with a migraine any time Lori asked her questions about her life in Germany. Lori’s father protected and cared for her mother like she was a china doll that could break easily, and even a daughter’s love could not penetrate this fragile, protected figure. Lori’s childhood spent with an aloof and untouchable mother had been painful and puzzling. She leaned back in deep thought.

  The black sedan flew around the curve and slammed directly into the front of the Rolls. It pushed it off the road right into a ditch, wedging the Rolls between the runaway car and the trees.

  Bly, shaken but unharmed, turned back towards Lori and asked, “Are you okay, ma’am? Don’t know why another car would be racing on the lordship’s estate now. Must be visitors.”

  Before Lori could answer, the front car door opened, and she heard a loud blast. Lori saw Bly fall against the steering wheel. Blood ran down his face.

  Lori felt a surge of panic take over her body. She screamed once and promptly blacked out.

  Her car door opened. A huge man with massive hands slapped her face. "Wake up, and shut your bloody hole! Do as you are told.” His voice was even-toned quiet. A chill took over her whole body as her eyes gazed upon a cold steel gun pointed at her heart.

  She looked at Bly’s lifeless form slumped over the steering wheel, and her whole body began shaking. The man with the gun yanked her out of the car, leaving her coat and purse behind. She screamed, "No, no!" He grabbed her other arm and secured her hands behind her back with some kind of rope.

  “One word out of you and you’ll be next to the geezer,” he said as he pointed to Bly’s body.

  She froze and fought the darkness closing in on her. She desperately wanted to be awake. It would only be worse, not being conscious of where they were taking her. He pushed her into the back seat of the black sedan and slid in next to her, keeping the gun near her side.

  “Move,” he said to whoever was driving.

  “What is happening?” Lori asked, her voice small and creaking. She shut her eyes tightly as she felt the cold steel up near her cheek.

  “One more word out of you and I’ll tape your mouth shut, and one scream and I’ll blow you to bits.”

  The young man driving turned around, scowling at his partner. “Ye didn’t have to kill the old guy. We’re in deep shite enough as it is, killing those—”

  “Shut it! Mind your tongue, you. So ye want witnesses? Are you daft?”

  The driver answered, “What about the old bird? I thought you were gonna blindfold her.”

  “You’re right. Stop the car and help me. I can’t be doing everything.”

  “Yeah, you’ve done plenty enough on yer own,” the driver said under his breath as he stopped the car, fumbled in the glove compartment for a dark scarf, and handed it to the man guarding Lori. Lori detected alcohol on his breath. The driver held the gun on her while his companion, his face sporting a jagged three-inch scar, tied the scarf over her eyes. In a moment, all went black, sending her further into panic. Not able to move her hands, and now not able to see a thing, she began breathing in shallow quick breaths.

  In a hard cold voice, the man closest to her said, “I am goin’ to frisk you for electronic devices. Be assured I have no other interest in an old goat.”

  At his mercy, she sat quietly, trying hard to keep from vibrating nervously while the man ran his large rough hands over her body. He snickered when Lori jumped as his hands now moved up her legs past the hem of her dress. He wrapped his hand around her diamond ring and gold bracelet. She was sure he was going to rip them off, but he left them on her arm. At a time like this, material things had no meaning.

  She said, “Take my jewelry, but not my life.”

  He laughed softly, menacingly. “Aren’t you generous. Well, neither are yours to give now. It’s my choice. Hey, Tony, the old lady dressed up in her finest just for us,” the man sitting beside her said.

  Lori thought she was going to be sick. She swallowed hard and leaned back against the seat. Do not faint.

  They drove for a long time before they stopped. She heard the door open before her arm was grabbed and tugged forward. "Get outa the car," her captor demanded.

  Blinded, she had lost her sense of balance and nearly fell stepping out of the sedan. The man pushed her up a flight of stairs and against a cold metal door with a metal handle. Then he shoved her into a building and through another door into a warmer place, probably an inside room. He thrust her down on a hard wooden chair, untied her hands, and handcuffed them to the chair arms.

  She immediately screamed, "Help! Help!"

  The only response to her cry was a sarcastic laugh and the click of a key in the door. Because of the blindfold and the handcuffs, she was afraid to move and wasn't sure if she was alone. The room felt cold and damp on her arms and legs. Either no light could get through the blindfold or the room was totally dark

  She called out, "Is anyone in the room with me?" No answer, except for a creaking noise, which could be pipes or, God forbid, a small animal.

  Short of breath and experiencing heart palpitations and cold hands, she knew she was panicking. Think, think, and calm down, she told herself.

  If they planned to kill her, she guessed they would have done so back in the car when they shot Bly. Her mind was a mess as she tried to piece together what was happening and where she was.

  She surmised they were in some type of warehouse or factory. She deduced this from the hum of a powerful electric motor and the reverberating echo when she called out. She also took note of having heard the echo of shoes clicking on the hard cement floor. Possibly the building was abandoned; it smelled of mildew.

  If only I had remembered my cell phone with the government tracker, she thought dismally. Oh what's the difference. It would be sitting in my purse in the limo anyway, or taken away from me.

  After a short time, she heard the door lock open, heard a chair being moved, and felt the presence of a person sitting directly across from her. She moved her head around awkwardly when he started speaking. She couldn’t see him due to the blindfold, but his voice, cold and devoid of feeling, made her skin crawl. She knew it was the scarred man from the car.

  “You're the Brill old goat, right?"

  Lori didn't answer right away. The blindfold and her nerves left her confused. He hit her on the face. "You answer when I talk to you, do ye hear? Just hand over the safe deposit keys and the codes to the bank accounts and we will return you to your granddaughter unharmed.”

  Lori flinched from the sting on her face. Her impulse was to touch her cheek, but her hands were secured to the chair. She had seen enough movies to know if she really had what they were looking for, they would take it and then kill her. Look what they did to Josh and to poor Bly, and to her now.
Afraid to further provoke her interrogator, she tried to answer in a calm voice. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  "Don't play games with us. We know Wheeler was intending to clean out his safety deposit boxes in London and then go on to Switzerland. We searched everything Mr. Wheeler had, and then all of your and your granddaughter's things in the house."

  She heard the creak of the chair, and the voice grew closer to her ear, a soft, low whisper. She felt his giant hand on the top of her head. “Where did you hide the keys and codes?”

  Lori was puzzled. “Why do you think Josh would give me those things?” she whispered conspiratorially.

  “Why wouldn’t he?” he asked, continuing his eerie, raspy pillow talk in her ear. “You were his traveling partner, after all. Hmm? Look.” He began to play with her hair. “Stop playing games and just tell us what you’ve done with the items. They are of no use to you now. Remember, we know where your granddaughter is at every moment. Cate… is a tasty morsel. And I like to play with my food.”

  Lori cried out in anguish and fear. “I don’t have any keys or whatever you are looking for! You are making a big mistake! You leave my granddaughter out of this! We’ve got nothing to do with this! Why won’t you believe me?”

  He sat back in his chair and stared at her coolly, silently. She sat, her head erect, her chest rising and falling rapidly from sobbing, her face half obscured by a blindfold. He surmised it would take her only a few hours to die if he beat her to death with his fists, keeping his blows central to her body for slow bleeding and maximum injury. This one was old, but she was fiery. Perhaps she would put up a better fight than he imagined. He hoped so. Time would tell.

  “I’m going to give you some time to think about it.”

  The scraping of a chair against the concrete floor and the receding footsteps told Lori that her interrogator with the monotone voice was leaving the room. She soon discovered someone was to replace him.

  She heard lighter footsteps approaching. She felt a cold chill down her spine. Instead of another interrogation, a different man fed her bread, soup, and water.

  She would be fed the same way once every day during her captivity. She was given bathroom privileges twice a day and interrogated every morning by the same hard, raspy voice that sickened her, as it grew tender in her ear, like the soft speech of a lover. She knew her interrogator was the same man who kidnapped her. She could detect the smell of Jack Daniels anywhere. It had been her husband’s drink of choice.

  ***

  She guessed she had been there for four days already, though it was hard to distinguish day from night, and it was nearly impossible to sleep on the chair. In her lifetime, Lori had known emotional pain and fear, but never had she experienced such physical pain. She longed to move her aching body, to lie down on a bed, to take a shower, to eat enough to keep from starving, and to scratch her back.

  Minutes moved so slowly. She tried to pass the time by mentally putting herself elsewhere. She shut her eyes and pictured herself home in a suburb of Chicago laughing and smiling while playing with her beautiful young blond daughter. The pleasurable memory only lasted a short time before she pictured her Julie lying in a blue coffin. She woke up with a start.

  She wondered how her mother had endured two years in a concentration camp. Lori’s bladder was about to burst as she sat there, still in her Sunday best, held together with an uncomfortable girdle, long-line bra, and pantyhose. Here I am fearing for my life, and the only thing I can think about is how miserable I am in this damn girdle or whatever they call them now! She took a risk and asked for a bathroom break.

  “Please may I use the restroom?” She had addressed this person before, but he never responded to Lori or engaged her in conversation, although he went about dutifully tending to only her very basic needs.

  “Yeah,” her guard answered. She heard him move closer and walk behind the chair. “I’ll remove the handcuffs, but remember, I still have the gun pointed at you, ma’am.”

  His fumbling hands while loosening the cuffs and the quiver of his voice made her believe he was younger than the other two and not a hardened criminal nor a murderer and gangster as the other ones were. For heaven’s sake, he had called her “ma’am”. She was slowly, over time, getting her guard to loosen up and talk a little. She could tell he was British—and scared. He had confirmed for her that she had been held captive for four days. It only seemed like an eternity.

  “Thank you,” Lori wearily answered as she rubbed at her wrists and rose from the chair. Her body was stiff from sitting in a cramped position for so long, and her wrists were numb and sore. She could barely walk. In the toilet, when she was certain she was alone, she lifted her blindfold, and she blinked repeatedly at the fracture of light that slipped through an open window, adjusting her vision until an open field of grass came into view. She leaned over the unclean sink for a while, hoping the cold water would ease the pain in her wrists. She cupped her hands and drank the tinny water from the faucet. She removed her girdle and stuffed it behind the pedestal sink. What a pathetic clue that I was ever here, she thought sadly. There was no escape route in this bathroom.

  Her guard was somewhere behind the closed door, waiting for her to finish. When he heard nothing, he shuffled and cleared his throat to let her know of his presence. Relief overcame her embarrassment. She still felt the loss of her privacy.

  Lori’s bladder felt better, but her throat was still sore and dry. She desperately needed a drink. As she left the toilet, she asked in a rasping voice, “Could I possibly get something to eat and drink?”

  Her guard, after securing her blindfold tighter, took her by the hand and led her to a different room, where she was handed a slice of sausage pizza and a bottle of beer. Normally, she wouldn’t have touched either. Starving, she inhaled the smell of garlic and gobbled down the crunchy crust and smooth cheese topping. Even the foamed bottle of beer tasted good; for the last few days, she had been given only bread, something that passed for soup, and iron-tainted well water.

  “Thank you,” she said, relieved at having eaten. As they walked on, she suddenly felt his hand across her mouth. He made a shush noise as they passed a room where she could hear her interrogator and another man talking.

  “What should we do with ‘er?”

  “Maybe she doesn’t have the stuff. She says she doesn’t.”

  “Then we should just get rid of ‘er.”

  “Our instructions are to wait for Suzi Wu.”

  “Who the hell is she?

  “Suzi works for Wu Industries, the company that hired us. I was told she would represent her boss.”

  “Well, fuck it, I can’t keep track of all these foreign names. So, where the bloody hell is she?”

  “Don’t get yer knickers in a twist. Her plane was late. She’ll be here soon.”

  “It’s your neck that’s gonna be in a twist.”

  Lori flinched and her heart pounded, filled with dread at the words “get rid of her.” She had always thought she would accept death when the time came. Why, she could do nothing else in view of her seventeen-year-old daughter’s bravery. But this was different; here, as a kidnap victim, she was not afraid of death, but of the unknown and of the isolation from anyone who loved her. She found herself bargaining with God when the quote there are no atheists in the foxholes entered her mind. She was terrified of this game of not knowing what would happen next.

  “God damn it!” she had hollered, to the horror of her guard, who quickly pushed her back towards her prison room. She heard shouting in the hallway.

  “What’s all this?”

  “I’ve got it. She’s just scared, thass all.”

  “Keep her quiet.”

  “I’ve got it!”

  Lori felt a glimmer of hope at the mention of Suzi. As her mind raced, she tried frantically to recall where she had heard or read the name Suzi Wu. She figured it was somehow associated with Josh.

  When they got into her prison room
with the door closed, the guard’s fine, thin hands grappled with the bindings as Lori allowed him to tie her hands behind her back to the hard wooden chair. She duly noted he had tried to be gentle when tying the ropes that held her, patting her hands when he was done.

  In hushed tones he said to her, “Ma’am, please keep quiet. I won’t tie you again too tightly, but you must stay in the chair. I understand that you are scared. So am I, to be perfectly honest. But they won’t be doing anything until that bird Suzi comes.”

  “Nate! What the hell is going on? What is she shouting about? Do I need to take over?” one of the captors hollered down the hallway.

  “I’ve already told you, everything is fine, Tony. She’s tied up and settled in,” Nate, Lori’s guard, answered in a shaky voice.

  “Do you want me to take over?” Another man’s voice seemed closer to the door; this time it was the man with the icy voice. It came in clearly as the door to Lori’s prison room opened wider.

  “No, no. It’s fine, Ro,” Nate said again. “She is obviously upset and cried out. I got everything sussed out. She’s just, you know, excitable. She’s an old’un,” Nate explained, sounding a bit meek. “Ease up on ‘er,” he said, shrugging nervously.

  “Well, if you need to play nursemaid, do it. Just shut ‘er gob. And keep ‘er tied up.”

  “Roland. I’ve got it. I had to let her go to the loo.”

  “I don’t give a toss if she pisses herself, got it? Just shut her up, Nate. Or I’ll shut her up.”

  Lori could hardly breathe, much less move. This could not be a good sign, these men being so open about using their names in front of her. She knew her captor named Roland was capable of murder; the picture of Lunt’s chauffeur, murdered in cold blood by him, never left her mind. In fact, a nightmare where Bly’s dead face slowly turned into Josh’s bloody face had startled her so that she had nearly fallen off the chair.

  I've been kidnapped. My friend's face has been blown to bits. I could be tortured and killed. This doesn't happen to middle-class Jewish Americans. I must be in a nightmare. Oh God, let me wake up!