by K. T. Tomb
“An accessory after the fact! Come on, she hit me! She tied me up. She threatened me.”
“Did you threaten him?” Zack gave her a hard look.
“I may have said a few things that could be considered threats.”
“See, she’s a psycho,” Ira complained.
“Dr. Rabb, her daughter’s been kidnapped. I think that gives her a little leeway when the kidnapper’s father shows up and tries to avoid involving law enforcement agencies.”
“Let me go, you son of—”
“Wait, Ira. And you can call me Special Agent Donovan because I just love the sound of it.”
“Special Agent Donovan, I am not an accessory after the fact.”
“Oh, I think you are. If, indeed, your son is the kidnapper, and you withheld critical information from the FBI and showed up at the victim’s mother’s house with a gun, you are in a hell of a pickle. I hope you like prison food.”
“I can explain the gun,” he said nervously.
“Please do.”
“I have a gun, Special Agent Donovan, because I came here to get Mary and then, I was going to take her to where I think Bobby is holding Cassidy. If necessary, I was going to shoot my son if he wouldn’t give the little girl back to her mom. I thought she and I could handle it, though.”
“That sounds far-fetched, foolish, and pardon me, but fucked up,” Zack said.
“You must understand I didn’t want my son, Bobby, to go to prison again.”
“Again?”
“Yeah. Again. So, I thought we could handle this without police. Anytime police or the FBI are involved, the child gets killed.”
“Oh my God, how many?” Mary said and then covered her mouth. She shot Zack an apologetic look.
“Shhh, Mary. Hang on. Let me run his name on the computer.” Zack went to his laptop, logged in and ran Robert Rabb. When he saw the man’s record, and Ira’s connection to the previous cases, he swore softly.
He came back to the table and sat across from the old man. “Ira, Ira, Ira. Okay, let me think. You haven’t heard what’s behind door number two.”
Ira gulped. “What was door number one again?”
“Door number one. You press charges against Mary for taking you down with a punch to your glass jaw—my, you’re a big fella, too, and she’s just a bitty little thing—and for tying you up and keeping you prisoner for about twenty minutes. And, if you choose to press charges against her and tangle up the courts with your self-entitlement, you shall thereby earn my wrath and my decision to arrest you as an accessory after the fact to kidnapping. Keep up, Ira. I know you were just an economics professor, but this isn’t that hard.”
“I’m old. He’s my only family. It’s hard.” He gulped. “What’s behind door number two?”
“You get in that FBI vehicle with me and don’t be an asshole. Lead me straight to Cassidy and do not hold back any piece of information. If we get her back, alive, I will turn you into a damn hero. But your son will go to prison. Actually, either way, he will go to prison. If he did it. Did he?”
Ira nodded. “Yes. And I’ll take door number two.”
“Wise choice. I thought you’d say that.”
Mary fought back an urge to laugh, even as she struggled to get her tears under control. She took a deep breath, held it in a moment, calmed herself, and then spoke, “You said you don’t have Cassidy, but you know where she is.”
He shook his head, his red nose shifting like a traffic light in a high wind.
“Where she might be,” he corrected her.
“Hang on. Bathroom break,” Zack said. “Don’t talk while I’m gone. Either of you.”
The previous days had been astronomically hard on Mary. More than she could endure. Her story, unlike other high-profile missing children stories, did not make the national news. The Amber Alert had been issued, her story had been written up, the press had been there and a diligent group of neighbors and friends had been combing the streets for her little girl. The FBI had added her to their list of abduction cases and plenty of good people had offered their services, but so had a few nuts including two self-purported psychics who turned out to be scammers.
Mary did not believe in psychics, but she was willing to give them a chance. Both had proved to be heartbreaking failures. She suspected that they only wanted to take advantage of the publicity, although there was precious little of that in this case.
Was this guy another nut? Was he another publicity seeker, looking to benefit from her heartache and Cassidy’s pain?
Mary pulled a cigarette from a pack of her sister’s Carltons sitting on her table. Ira Rabb watched her closely. His eyes were bloodshot. He stank even worse indoors. He was so big, so overwhelming, as if her house and furniture were not made for the likes of him. He watched her closely as she removed the cigarette, flipped it between her fingers, and tapped one end. He frowned when she snapped her old Zippo lighter to life and touched the flame to the tobacco end. He crossed his arms over his considerable chest when she exhaled a puff of smoke toward the ceiling.
He smelled of cigarette smoke, yet, he appeared to disapprove of her smoking? Perhaps he wanted a smoke.
Maybe. Mary didn’t ask. She didn’t care. “Then where might she be, Mr. Rabb?”
“It’s Dr. Rabb. I think she might be with my son camping in the wilderness.”
Outside, the Santa Anas, Southern California’s hot windstorms, were blowing intermittently. Gusts ranging from five miles to twenty-five miles per hour howled and rattled her kitchen window. The half-dozen wind chimes danced erratically for a few moments, slamming into the stucco walls, barely given a chance to chime as a gust intensified and then died down. The wind worried her. Cassidy often had earaches, brought on by the wind, earaches, allergies, and asthma. The thought suddenly struck her that she didn’t have any of her medication. She would be miserable. The thought angered her and she looked for an excuse to strike out and punish someone. She had the perfect person sitting right in front of her.
She lashed out, grabbed the man’s dirty hand and pulled it across the table. He started from the sudden action but didn’t resist her. She brought her burning cigarette inches above the man’s dry palm. His fingernails were short, bitten far below the curve of his fingertips.
He didn’t fight her. He could have. He outweighed her by nearly two and a half times her weight.
Instead, he brought his sad eyes up from his hand and the burning cigarette, rested them on her face, and looked into her eyes. He blinked slowly. He seemed not to care.
Mary was shaking with fury. It had overcome her quickly and she had become reckless. This crazy son-of-a-bitch had come into her home and dared to screw with her mind and take advantage of her vulnerability. He was about to feel the full wrath of a protective mother’s fury.
“You know the motherfucker who kidnapped my baby?” she spat.
He nodded slowly.
She snapped. Mary thrust the burning cigarette tip into his palm.
He cried out, recoiling his hand.
Mary could hardly believe what she’d done. She stared dumbly at the crumpled cigarette in her hand, which was still burning. She dropped it as if it were cursed. It smoked on her dining table, burning the wood.
The sweet smell of burning flesh reached her nostrils. It sickened her and she felt the bile rise up in her throat. What the hell had she just done? What had happened to her normally kind demeanor? She was shocked, though part of her was totally unconcerned.
Rabb held his hand and stared at her. He didn’t appear to be angry. If anything, he looked even sadder.
“Then who is he?” she asked quietly.
“Bobby.”
She did not apologize for her actions. At the moment, she really didn’t care about his hand.
“Where is your son, Bobby, Dr. Rabb?”
He took a deep breath, and Mary saw that his eyes began to moisten. “I think he took her to Plumas National Forest. To kill her.”
She said, “That’s probably your grandchild, Ira, a product of rape, so you better be one hundred percent honest with me.”
“Oh, Mary, I’m so sorry,” Ira said. “I didn’t know! I swear.”
She bit her lip and said, “Now, you do know.”
Zack came back from the bathroom. “I told you two not to talk while I was gone. What did I miss?”
Ira held up his hand with the cigarette burn in it.
“Mary!” he said, shocked. “What in the hell are you thinking?”
He uncuffed Ira Rabb and led him to the sink. He held the man’s hand under cold, running water.
“Get your shit together, Mary. I mean it,” Zack said, looking over his shoulder. “This cannot happen ever again.”
“I just want my daughter back.”
“We all do, even Ira. You should know something about me, Mary,” Zack said. “I detest violence. This is not a foreign spy. This is not Guantanamo. This is an American citizen, in America, and he has rights.”
Mary grimaced. “I guess I went too far?”
“Way too far. You better suck up to Ira and suck up good. He knows where your daughter is, right?” Zack said, looking at Ira.
“Probably,” Ira said and dried off his hand with a dishtowel.
“I’ll get you some burn ointment,” Mary said, contrite.
When she left the room, Ira said, “If Cassidy isn’t there when we get there, please don’t let Mary kill me.”
Chapter Eleven
As the days flew past, he rarely thought about killing her anymore.
Bobby looked at the sleeping, angelic face in the log bed and noted how peaceful and happy she seemed to be. The adjustment hadn’t been easy for her at first, but as time passed, she had begun to depend upon him to take care of her.
Even though his original plan had been to find and kill Mary for permanently scarring his face, when he saw she had a child, he had figured out a way to hurt Mary even worse than killing her. He had planned to kidnap and kill her child. Yes, Mary would live, but she would suffer every day for the rest of her life.
As the days passed when he had observed Mary and her daughter, a slow realization came over him about the little girl she called “Cassie.” She was a child who looked almost like he had looked as a child, and in fact, he believed she was his child. After all, blue-green eyes—almost a teal color—were pretty rare.
He never hurt her, never even raised his voice at her. He hated whenever she cried and he didn’t want to make her cry. And he just hated crying in general. It was an annoying sound.
They sometimes had the very simplest discussions that seven-year-olds often seem to be able to handle—they even took down some of the board games that he had brought to the old cabin and played checkers and Candyland.
Over the past week, she had stopped mentioning her mother and had begun to enjoy the sights and sounds of nature around them. Only a dozen yards in front of the door of the cabin, there was a stream that trickled merrily. Cassidy especially enjoyed “floating boats,” a game where she tossed a stick in the water and then, following it downstream, invented the conversations of the imaginary people aboard it.
The cabin was a remnant from the gold rush days in the mountains between Sacramento and Reno, Nevada. It was well hidden beside an old prospect hole. He had ditched the pickup at the trailhead parking lot and opted to walk with her back into the cabin on an old game trail, hoping that no one would be able to track them or even care to. He could give Cassidy a fighting chance to live a healthy life and a much better future than she would have had if she continued to live in the toxic-filled air of L.A.
But he knew that deep down, if the authorities came, he would kill her and then, himself. It was the only way he ever wanted to leave this earth. By his own choosing, the time and the place.
He could already tell that she was healthier. Her skin tone was healthier and she seemed to be breathing better, too. At first, he had worried about some of her ailments, remembering how he had found Jeremy dead, a victim of an epileptic seizure when he wasn’t watching him.
He had never left Cassidy alone, except during the night when she was asleep or to relieve herself, which she insisted on and he did respect the need for such privacy, even for a seven-year-old. He would slip into his bed and fall asleep after her and typically awakened with the sun. He would spend his early morning hours watching her sleep and dreaming of what she would become when she grew up.
She would be a beautiful, healthy, and well-adjusted young woman who understood her place in the environment and the importance of keeping it clean for future generations. More importantly, she wouldn’t be poisoned by L.A. and the thousands of bad influences, foods, and illnesses that would assault her body as she grew up in a big city.
As she grew older and was able to help him more, they would bring other children there and save them, too. Well, if things lasted that long. Good things never did.
His thoughts of the healthy and happy family were interrupted by her sweet, sleepy voice.
“Good morning, Uncle Bobby.”
“When are you going to call me Daddy?”
“Never,” she said stubbornly.
“Why won’t you believe me that I am your real dad?”
“A real dad is the one who takes care of you and loves you forever, even if he’s dead. And a real dad would never take you away from your mom and your aunt and your cousins. And a real dad would let you make a phone call.”
“My phone was broken and I left it somewhere on the trail.”
She lowered her eyes. She knew exactly where that phone was, but she knew the battery was dead by now. She sure didn’t want him to see that the last call on it was to 9-1-1.
“Haven’t I been nice to you, Cassidy?”
“Yeah, but not as nice as a real dad. Because you lie, lie, lie,” she said bravely.
“Ouch. Someday, you’ll come around.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so, Uncle Bobby.”
“Well, now, good morning to you, too. What do you want for breakfast?”
“Captain Crunch, please.”
“We don’t have any Captain Crunch.”
“Okay, Rice Krispies, please.”
It was a passive-aggressive game they played every morning. It continued until she had exhausted her repertoire of naming highly processed breakfast cereals, especially the ones packed with sugar and chemical additives.
“I have something better than you ever dreamed,” he promised.
“Better than Cocoa Puffs?”
“Yep.”
“What is it?”
“Have you ever eaten cattail pancakes?”
“You can’t make pancakes out of cat’s tails.”
“Sure you can, silly goose.”
“I’m not a silly goose. You’re the silly goose.”
“Why am I the silly goose?”
“Because you can’t make pancakes out of cat’s tails.”
“Hop out of bed and I’ll show you.”
Cassidy slipped out of bed and hurried over to the small countertop where Bobby was beginning to prepare breakfast. He pulled the head of a cattail off of the counter and showed it to her.
“This is a cattail.”
“I thought that was a decoration, like in a big vase. Not food.”
“It’s food.” He handed one to her and then began twisting the fine grain from the head into a bowl.
Cassidy’s eyes lit up as she watched him. She had no idea that you could make pancakes from a cattail. Her mother had never done it. She pushed a small stool that Uncle Bobby had said was just for her over next to the counter and climbed up onto it so that she could get a closer look while he mixed the batter.
When the batter was well mixed, Bobby heated the griddle on the old woodstove in the corner and then scooped the batter onto the griddle to make a half dozen, medium-sized pancakes. When they were finished, he served them on plates with honey drizzled over the top. Cassidy hopped off
of her stool and took her seat at the table.
At first, she wasn’t sure about the flavor, but she dug in eagerly enough and ate most of the two pancakes before she hopped down and went over to make her bed and get dressed for the day. She had learned the routine quickly and she was usually ready to walk out the door by the time that Bobby was finished washing the dishes.
“What are we going to do today?” he asked.
“I wanna play boats.”
“Do you remember how far down the stream you can go?”
“Yes.”
“How far?”
“To the old tree that looks like it has a monkey’s face.”
“Right. Don’t go any further and don’t get in the water because you could drown.”
“I know. I know. Can I go now?”
“Yes. Scoot, you little stinker.”
“I’m not the stinker, you’re the stinker.”
“You’re the stinker.”
“No, you are.”
“No, you.”
“We both stink and that’s the truth,” she said. “I miss my bathtub and my mom washing my hair with real shampoo that smells like flowers. I miss her.”
“Maybe she’ll be out of the hospital soon.” He quickly changed the subject. “You want to take a bath in the stream? I can arrange that.”
“It’s too cold. I’d rather be stinky,” she said. “I want to play outside. It’s boring in here.”
“Go outside. Enjoy.”
Bobby opened the door and watched the bouncing hair of the tiny blonde head as she searched for a “boat” to float and then headed for the stream.
He watched her as the boat made its first journey and then she took it out of the stream near the tree with the monkey’s face. She danced happily back up to the place where she put it into the stream again.
Delighted that she was healthy and seemingly happy, Bobby eyed the pile of wood that needed to be split and stacked. He took down the ax from where it hung on two pegs above the door, set up the first log on the chopping block and began his work.
It greatly upset him that she wouldn’t call him Daddy. Even though he was pretty damn sure that he was hers.