by Roger Hayden
Lady in the Big Dress
At first glance, the kidnappings seemed random, but O’Leary formulated a discernible pattern. The unsolved abductions—five total—happened exactly one year apart from each other. This concerned him. If the pattern was correct, the Snatcher was going to strike again very soon.
Lee County had already been placed on high alert following the anniversary of Jenny Dawson’s disappearance, but there was only so much law enforcement could do. The vigilance of parents was needed as well. The pattern of disappearances was largely happening in small towns within the county, and there was little doubt the Snatcher would strike again. But where?
At around the same time O’Leary drove up I-75 toward Sarasota to meet up with Miriam, ten-year-old Emily Beckett was at the Palm Dale Safeway store shopping for groceries with her mother, Karen, not realizing that they were being watched closely by someone they did not know.
In the soup aisle, Karen was pulling some cans off the shelves when Emily told her that she needed to use the restroom.
“We’ll be over in that direction soon enough,” Karen said, exhausted from a long day of running errands.
Emily, fresh out of school for the day, wore a floral-pattern top, jean shorts, and sneakers. Her mother, dressed in a beige hem-sleeve top and blue jeans, pushed the cart down the aisle as Emily swung her blonde pigtails back in the other direction. “But I gotta go now.”
Karen glanced at her through her thin, rectangular glasses. “That’s enough. No whining or I’ll put your fruit snacks back on the shelf.”
“Oh, come on!” Emily protested.
As they bickered, Karen noticed what looked like a large woman at the end of the aisle watching them. The person was wearing sunglasses—black as night—and was hunched over her cart, staring at bags of flour. She looked out of place: red-and-white polka-dot dress, blond beehive, and way too much make-up. Karen paid her little mind and moved on.
“Can we hurry up, then?” Emily asked.
Karen turned back to her momentarily. “Yes. Just hold your horses.”
They pushed on toward the produce section, leaving the mystery person behind. Elevator music played overhead as customers sifted through produce. A high school stock boy stocked heads of lettuce. An elderly woman broke apart some bananas and put one on the seat of her cart. Karen approached a display of potatoes and grabbed a five-pound bag. She pointed to a restroom sign ahead near the meat section.
“There. Go use the restroom. I’ll be right over here,” she said.
Emily walked off toward the women’s restroom as Karen pushed ahead into the meat section and began looking at packaged ground beef. Behind her, she heard a cart moving with a squeaky wheel and turned to catch a glimpse of the same strange beehive person going down another aisle.
Karen looked back at the rows of ground beef for dinner. A pound would probably do the trick. She looked over at the restrooms, growing impatient.
Moments passed and Karen was ready to move on. She pushed back toward the restroom, ready to go inside and tell Emily to get in gear, when suddenly the door opened and her daughter came out, wringing her hands.
“Let’s go, slowpoke,” Karen said.
“Wasn’t that long. Sheesh,” Emily said.
They were headed toward the checkout area in the front when Karen caught yet another glimpse of the beehive person entering one of the aisles ahead. She shrugged it off, but she couldn’t shake an uncomfortable feeling in her gut.
They got to the front of the store, but Emily stopped and turned in a slight panic. “Oh no, we forgot to go down the cereal aisle!” Her braces glistened in the bright supermarket lights overhead.
Karen looked at her watch. They were running behind. She had mail to drop off, and the post office was closing soon.
“Okay,” she conceded. “Go grab a box and meet me down the frozen food aisle, but hurry.”
Emily nodded and ran off toward the cereal as Karen looked for an empty checkout line. Three were open, and each one had a line. Karen sighed and looked to the cereals three aisles down. Something didn’t seem right. Another strange feeling in her gut. She bypassed the checkout line and went to the cereal aisle. Emily was nowhere in sight.
Karen looked at her watch and sighed again. “Emily!” No one answered. She pushed the cart back toward the checkout line, growing nervous. She looked around past the blurry lines of customers in front of her.
She backed away from her cart and began walking past each aisle. “Emily!”
“Mom?” she heard Emily’s voice say. Karen stopped at the frozen food aisle to see her daughter standing there with a box of Fruity Pebbles in hand and looking at the frozen pizzas. “What’s wrong?”
Karen hurried down the aisle and took her by the arm. “You said you were going to the cereal aisle. Let’s go.”
Emily struggled and tried to pull away. “I was just looking at the frozen pizzas!”
“No,” Karen said, dragging her away. “We have pizza rolls at the house.”
Emily groaned again as they went back to the cart all by itself near the first checkout line. Karen told her to help unload the groceries onto the conveyor belt. It had been a long day for both of them, and all Karen wanted to do was get home and relax for a minute. Tom, her husband, would probably get home from the office around the same time, asking about dinner, and she wasn’t in the mood.
They exited through the automatic doors with six paper bags of groceries in her cart toward the third parking row, where her blue Nissan Sentra was parked. Karen pulled her keys out of her purse and unlocked the car remotely.
“Can you help me with my homework tonight?” Emily asked, skipping along beside her.
Karen opened the trunk and began loading groceries. “I’ll try, but you might have to ask your dad first. I’ve got a lot of work to do tonight.”
“But he makes it so boring!”
Karen laughed. “That’s not true. Your father is a very exciting man.”
Emily rolled her eyes as they placed the last of the groceries in the trunk. “Yeah… sure,” she said with a laugh. She then placed her hands on cart and began to push it toward the car return. “I’ll take it.”
“Thanks, honey,” Karen said, shutting the trunk.
Suddenly, the mysterious person in the polka-dot dress grabbed the end of the cart, blocking it from moving. Emily looked up as Karen turned around, shocked. She felt a chill and pulled Emily away immediately.
“Excuse me, miss?” The person asked, beehive perfectly still. In one hand she held a tote bag full of groceries. “I can’t seem to find my car around here. Do you think you could help?”
Karen pulled Emily closer and inched toward the front of the car. “Sorry, no. We’ve got to get going.”
“Please,” she pleaded. “I’m not feeling too well. Eyesight is not what it used to be.” Her voice sounded too deep to be a woman’s. The makeup was unconvincing. At a little over six feet tall, the “woman” was about the tallest Karen had ever seen.
With Emily at her side, she looked around and inched backward toward the car. There were people in the distance going to their cars, and their presence was reassuring.
“Have you been following us?” Karen asked.
“What do you mean?” the person asked in a surprised tone.
“I saw you in there. Multiple times. What do you want—”
At the tail end of Karen’s sentence, a big, meaty fist pummeled her right between her eyes. A pop sounded, and she collapsed to the ground like dead weight. It happened so fast that Emily wasn’t even sure what had happened. She turned to see her mother lying on the pavement next to the car, unconscious. And the same woman was now moving toward her as Emily backed away, ready to run.
She opened her mouth and breathed in, prepared to scream, when a cloth came down over her face, followed by a hand on the back of her head, pushing her nose and mouth into the noxious fumes. She kicked and swung, desperate
ly trying to break free, but the woman was much too powerful. She tried to scream but only panicked, and muffled wheezes came out. The sounds of the parking lot—the cars, the carts, and the chatter—began to fade.
She managed to grab the thick, hairy arms holding her and dig her nails into the flesh as deep as they would go. The woman winced in pain and pushed her against the car in a fit of anger, knocking her out.
Emily fell to the ground next to her mother. The woman bent down, picked up the cloth, and then grabbed Emily, pulling her up, lifted her easily, and carried her away. No one, it seemed, noticed anything amiss. Several minutes passed before a car drove by and stopped abruptly when the driver apparently noticed a woman lying next to her car, motionless, and an empty cart wheeling away.