by K. T. Tomb
“You’re wrong. This is much more than we had a minute ago. Tell me what he looked like,” Zack said. “Black, white? Tall, short? Heavy, slender?”
Mary shook her head. “I’ve blocked this out for so long.”
“That’s understandable, but try,” Special Agent Donovan said compassionately.
“It’s hard to remember the fine details when I’ve shoved it down so far inside of me.”
“Come on, Mary. You can do this!” Grace said. “Cassidy’s life depends on what you remember and tell Special Agent Donovan.”
Mary nodded. “He was much taller than me. Heavy-set. Muscular. Big arms. Yellow blonde, thick hair.”
“Bleached?” Zack asked.
“I don’t think so. The eyebrows were blonde, too.”
“Eyes?”
Mary bit her lip. “Blue-green, just like my daughter’s eyes.”
“This is very helpful,” Special Agent Donovan said and tapped into his tablet computer. “What else? Age?”
Mary shook her head. “A student, I think. Pretty sure.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He’d been drinking.”
“I need something more concrete than that. We’re on the right track to finding Cassidy. What else distinguished him as a student? Any scars or distinguishing marks?”
Mary snapped her fingers. “Yes!”
“What was it, Mary?” Grace asked.
Zack raised an index finger to Grace in a silent request to wait for Mary to speak.
“I remember! A tattoo. A fresh tattoo. No, not a tattoo. A burn. A burn, in a shape.”
“Do you mean branding?” Zack said.
“Yes! Yes! Like, with a Band-Aid over it that fell off in the rain. I…I saw it when he was on top of me, on the side of his neck. He was branded all right. Before he knocked me out with his fist, I saw it.”
Grace gritted her teeth, trying not to speak.
“What was the branding of?” Zack asked gently.
She scrunched her eyes tightly. “Greek letters.” She opened her eyes. “I’ve never remembered this part before. Honest.”
“Fraternity letters?” Zack offered.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Yes, I think so.”
“You’re a math teacher. You know Greek letters,” Zack said. “Which ones?”
“It’s hard to remember. Three letters. I know there was a delta in there.”
“Try to remember the others.”
Mary got up and walked to the window, looking out into the darkness. “Oh, God…He hurt me so badly. It was weeks before I could even chew without pain or properly see out of my eyes. It was almost a year before my husband and I could be intimate because…of the destruction he wrought inside of me.”
Grace came up behind her and hugged her sister from behind. When she broke into sobs, Grace got her a box of Kleenex. “I’m so sorry, little sis.”
“Zack?” Mary said.
“Yes?” he said as he set up his laptop on the dining room table and began tapping the keyboard.
“I wasn’t really a good little Catholic virgin. I was molested as a child and Joe was the only one I could stand to touch me. He was so gentle. So kind. So understanding. So patient. Joe and I did sleep together before we were married because I wanted…I wanted to make sure I could get past my childhood issues and be a proper and loving wife to him. And it was beautiful. He was. I loved Joe.”
“I’m glad you and Joe had some time together before he was killed,” Zack said softly.
“Thank you. When that man—that student—raped me, I wasn’t a virgin, but the violence brought me to my knees emotionally because it had happened to me as a child, too. Even through my wedding ceremony, I was like a zombie. Until Cassidy was born, I was just so devastated about the rape.”
Grace didn’t often cry for others, but her eyes were wet.
“Keep going, Mary,” Zack said. “You’re doing a fine job of this.”
She swallowed and continued, “My rape as an adult was a stir of echoes of the past, but the minute Cassidy was in my arms for the first time, it was like things in my life were equalized. I had my husband who loved me, and my baby daughter, and I had Joe’s mom, who was the best substitute mother ever, after the upbringing that Grace and I had. I had a good life and I did appreciate it.”
“You and Joe were so happy then,” Grace said.
“Yes. I was over the rape, I thought, until Joe was shot and died in the convenience store robbery where he worked as a manager. For less than two years, I was the happiest I had ever been. When I found myself a widow, my life was shattered and all that mattered then and now was Cassidy. But my fears from childhood came back. It all came back. And then, it was compounded and a therapist told me that I transfer my fears onto my daughter and make her afraid of strangers, too. In an unhealthy way. She only likes to be with me or Grace and her family. I can’t send her to school, not only because I am afraid for her, but because I have made her afraid for herself.”
Zack’s fingers were going wild on his laptop keyboard. He talked and typed at the same time. “You speak as if your fear brought the rape on you. You have to stop thinking like that, Mary.”
“I know. What are you doing?” Mary asked. “Typing what I said?”
“No, I have a nearly photographic memory, so I don’t take many notes on a case. Right now, my brain was listening to you while simultaneously making a spreadsheet and working up a profile of your college campus rapist…who is also Cassidy’s kidnapper.”
“You’re kidding,” Grace said. “From just that, what she just talked about, you can make a profile?”
“Yes, because now, we’ve really got something to go on. Many things.”
Chapter Four
The big man with blonde hair and blue-green eyes like hers led her through the woods. She hated being away from her mom, but pitching tantrums did not work on this man. Now, she tried to make friends with him. Fake friends.
“What happened on your face?” Cassidy asked as the big man gave her a fruit roll-up while they walked. She stared at his gruesome face, waiting for him to answer.
“My face?” he echoed, not wanting to talk about it.
“You have a big line on your face.”
His hand went to cover the Frankenstein scar on his left cheek, from the corner of his eye to his chin. “It was a big cut,” he said. “I had several operations on it, but it still shows.”
“I’m sorry. Was it owie?”
“Yes, quite owie.”
“You can’t smile right?”
“That’s exactly the problem. Only one side of my face can smile normally. I know it looks scary when I smile, but I can’t help it.”
“Did…did…” Her voice trailed off.
“What?”
“Did the other kids make fun of you?” Her little brows were furrowed in concern.
“No, it happened when I was a grownup. No one made fun of me, but no one likes to look at me, either. Or hire me. Or date me. Small children usually scream when they see me because I look like a movie monster.” His voice turned gruff.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice.
“What are you sorry for?” he said sarcastically.
“I hurt your feelings. Mommy says not to make fun of people who look different.”
“She said that?”
“Uh-huh. When a kid in my tumbling class had to get a patch on his eye, the other kids called him a pirate, but I laughed, too. Mommy said that was mean and she gave me a time out to think about it.”
“Is she a nice mom?”
“Pfft! Of course she’s nice. She’s my mom.” Cassidy chewed on the fruit roll-up and swallowed a bite. “Was your mom a nice mom?”
“Yes. She died a long time ago,” he replied.
“That’s sad,” she said.
They fell silent and she struggled to keep up with him.
“Can we stop again, please? My feet hurt.” She was wearing the hiking boots
he had bought her in the same size as the shoes in her closet, but they must have run small.
“No rest yet. I told you I can carry you.”
“No. No. No!” Cassidy said firmly. “I told you I don’t want you to carry me.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“Because why?” he insisted, trying to talk to her on her own level of understanding.
She took a deep breath and let it out. “Because my mom told me my dad used to carry me when I was a baby. Before he turned an angel, he carried me. He’s the only one who carried me. Ever. So it’s special.”
He swallowed hard and nodded.
“Where are we going?” Cassidy asked.
“To see the wild horses.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“You said that yesterday. We’ve been walking and walking. I didn’t see any wild horses, only regular ones. Are you lying?” Cassidy asked.
“Nope,” he lied.
“Where’s my mom?”
“I told you she’s in the hospital. She got bit by the rattlesnake. She’s going to be okay, but she has to be in the hospital for a long time. Weeks.”
“I want to call her or go there.”
“No, I told you she’s not awake. They’re giving her medicine.”
“Mom saved me from the snake.”
“I know. That was very brave.”
“Why can’t she wake up?”
“Snakebite, munchkin.”
“I’m not a munchkin.”
“Sorry.”
“Can I call Aunt Grace then, please?”
The man looked alarmed. “Who’s that?”
“My aunt.”
“What’s her last name?”
“I don’t know. If I knew it I would remember.” I remember everything.
“Then how can we call her if we don’t know her last name?”
Cassidy’s bottom lip quivered.
He continued, “I can’t look it up without a last name. Where does she live?”
“Santa Monica. I don’t know her address because she just moved there with my uncle and my cousins. They bought a new house. It has a pool with a slide.”
“That doesn’t help me, little one. What do your aunt and uncle do?”
“What do you mean?”
“What are their jobs?”
“My aunt works at a cupcake bakery in Beverly Hills. I always get a free cupcake when we see Aunt Grace at her work. I like the pink ones the best.”
“What’s the name of the place?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your uncle? Where does he work?”
“I dunno. He works in an office for the football players. But he doesn’t play. He has a computer in his office.” She rolled her eyes. “Mom said nobody knows what he does there. Not even him.”
He laughed. “I used to play football,” he said. “In college.”
“Boring,” Cassidy said, grumpily. Stubbornly, she sat down on the trail.
He walked a little ways to see if she would follow. She didn’t. He walked back and she was now lying in the middle of the trail, asleep or pretending to be, her face was dirty and scratched from walking through wilderness.
He picked her up and put the sleeping girl over his shoulder. She did not awake. Moreover, she seemed to have a slight fever. Her face was a bit hot. Hopefully, he would be able to make her an herbal tea and get her to drink it when they got to…where they were going.
The day was cool, much cooler than the girl was used to. She was from Southern California, with all its foul-smelling, polluted air. Hell, you could just see the smog hanging in the air, stinking up the place, contaminating young lungs.
How could you raise a precious, precocious child in such a place? How could you allow her lungs to inhale pollution and poison?
Bobby didn’t understand, couldn’t understand. No matter how hard he tried to wrap his brain around it, why would anyone choose to raise their child in a loathsome city that went on for miles, with concrete and smog and crime and education that was limited to a little box of textbooks.
Mothers fought for their children tooth and nail. They battled school boards and neighborhood bullies for their children. And yet, they would allow them to play on busy streets or alone in their front yards. Their children inhaled contaminated air, watched mind-numbing violence and commercialized television or spent hours on the Internet or in front of video games. They fed them trash from the local fast food joints and ordered pizza and soda delivered to their homes.
They were killing their children slowly, in the name of convenience, in the name of making a buck, or worse yet, saving a buck.
Bobby always believed that most mothers picked the wrong fights.
Instead of taking five to ten years off your child’s life by allowing them to slowly decompose in a big city, why not treat your child to a safe life in the country? Better yet, show them how to survive in the wilderness? Fill those young lungs with fresh, crisp air. Fill their stomachs with wholesome foods. Even the medications that they gave them for their allergies, asthma, or even just the sniffles, were only adding to the slow, torturous death that would take a lifetime before it became some sort of cancer that took them out for good.
Bobby was dressed in a blue knit sweater and baggy jeans. Tight jeans didn’t work in the wilderness. The little girl, Cassidy, was wearing the blue knit sweater and little boy jeans that his dad had saved from his own childhood. He thought it was cute that she was dressed like him. It made him feel like they were family. She sure looked like him. Same eyes, same hair.
A crisp wind found its way through the thick woods and she struggled wildly on his shoulder.
“Put me down! Gonna throw up!” she demanded.
He set her down immediately and she heaved up the fruit roll-up and started crying. He got the roll of toilet paper from his backpack and handed it to her. She wiped her face and mouth.
“How are you doing, Cassidy?” he asked.
“I’m cold. I feel sick. I want my mommy. Or Aunt Grace.”
“That’s not happening. Stop asking.”
She burst into loud, noisy tears. “You took me! I’m not a baby. I know what you did! You’re bad!”
Uh-oh. “I’m not bad.”
“Yes, you are! If something happened to my mom, Aunt Grace would have come for me. Not you.” Cassidy cried for a few minutes and when he handed her a tissue, she wiped her nose and asked, “Is my mommy really in the hospital?”
“Yes,” he lied. “She’s very sick.”
“How do you know that?”
“I talked to the hospital on the phone when you were asleep last night.”
“Oh.” She thought for a minute. “Why did a rattlesnake fly in my yard?”
He was startled. “What do you mean by that?”
“The snake in my yard. Just before I saw you in my yard, it flied over the wall.” She struggled to explain herself. “Snakes don’t fly. They crawl.”
“Maybe he fell from the tire swing tree,” he offered.
Her blonde eyebrows knit together. “I don’t know how he would have climbed up there.”
“I’ll show you a snake in a tree,” he offered.
“Where?” She looked all around them.
“No. I’ll show you a video of a snake in a tree. On my phone.” He turned on his phone and Googled “tree snake” and began to show her a video of a snake in a tree and then, suddenly, he realized what he had done. He had turned on his cell phone, the last thing a fugitive on the run should do.
He threw his phone down at his feet, cursing as he did so.
Cassidy screamed and ran. He sprinted after her and caught her by the collar.
“Lemme go! Please! I’m scared.”
“It’s okay.”
“I don’t like you. I want my mommy.” Cassidy shrieked and pitched a fit as he tried to clamp a hand over her mouth. She kicked and thrashed her arms.
“Stop that!�
�� he growled and let go of her. “You could hurt me!”
She began to cry anew and covered her face with her dirty hands. “I’m scared. I’m scared.”
“I know. Me, too,” he admitted.
“Are we lost?” Cassidy asked.
“We both are,” he said.
“There’s a map in your phone,” Cassidy said. “I don’t know how it works, but you can find the way to my mommy in the hospital. I want to see her. I’ll really, really tell her you were nice to me. Mm-kay?” she negotiated.
“No. And besides, my phone is broken now.”
“Why did you throw it and crack the screen?”
He groaned. “It’s complicated.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
How would he be able to help her to understand that she would never see her mother again?
“We’ll go home soon,” he lied.
“I don’t believe you. We’re not going back the way we came.”
He sighed. “I have to go water a tree. You have to go?”
“No!” she said, afraid to do that with him watching her.
“Okay, stay right here then.”
“I will,” she said, sniffling. She felt dizzy and sick. She looked around, but there was no one to help her. She already knew he could run faster than she could. As the big man moved away, she climbed on top of a big rock. Her heart beat faster when she saw a hiker farther up the mountain. She squinted her eyes and waved. She got excited when she saw him wave back. She was afraid to scream, so she used American Sign Language to sign: Help me. She knew some ASL because one of her cousins was deaf and she was learning how to talk to him.
The faraway man immediately signed back, What’s wrong?
She didn’t know the ASL sign for kidnapper, but she did know that was what had happened to her. She signed to the hiker: Man took me.
“Cassidy, what are you doing up there? You could fall,” said the big man from the clump of bushes.
“I’m waving to the squirrels,” she lied. If he could lie, so could she.
“Get down from there! Now!” he hollered and she heard him unzip his pants.
Her heart pounding, she climbed down off the rock so he couldn’t see her.
She would have to wait until he fell asleep. She had tried to wait him out last night, but had failed. She would try again tonight. She would try every night until she found her way back home.