Lulling the Kidnapper

by O. L. Gregory

  “She said you looked familiar to her, but that she had never seen you with Sam before. She also said that you shook your head when she was about to greet you.”

  “I didn’t want her to do anything to make him think I had any connection to the area.”

  “Good thinking, but let’s go back a step. How do you know he would have stashed you somewhere?”

  “Because this isn’t the first time I’ve tried to get away. I tried to escape from the other house after he’d left for work. But I didn’t know where I could go, or who I could trust. I didn’t know if I should take my chances in the woods, or hope someone nice found me along the road. I didn’t know which direction would lead me to a town and which would lead me farther away from help. I was so… young, so naive in my way of thinking about the situation.” I shook my head at the memory, “He found me, and I paid a price for my disobedience. He shot me in the leg and threw me back in the basement. He shut the electricity off down there and left me to think about what I had done… I may have been dumb enough to get recaptured, but I’m not stupid enough to make that same mistake twice.”

  “Did you see the Coast Guard boats driving past?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you try to escape while he was at work? You could have come out and waved the boat down. They would have had you safely away in much less than fifteen minutes.”

  “Because he would have gotten away. I want him caught. I want him rotting in a jail cell somewhere and he can become some prison gang’s boy toy. I didn’t want him taking one of his many IDs, and a wad of cash, and running.”

  “What if he gets away now?”

  “Then I’ll continue to live in fear. I don’t think he’s just trying to delude me into thinking we belong together, I think he actually believes it. He’ll come back for me, and try to take me again. If I just up and disappear out of thin air, he might think that you found me and took me away from him. Or, he could come after me for deceiving him, for lulling him into believing he could trust me.”

  “Well, we’ll be able to get his prints from the house, plus whatever evidence he’s got hiding in that office.”

  I smiled, “If you’ll help me get the duct tape off, I have some of his hair in a baggie taped to my back. I cleaned out his comb before he packed it for the trip.”

  Robles’ eyes brightened, “Do they still have the roots?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good girl.” He gave me a little wince of apology, “I have to ask. Is there any other genetic evidence available?”

  I gave him a dull look and shook my head, “A few showers and a long swim later, no. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. The hair is excellent…” He winced again, and it occurred to me that he probably wasn’t used to handling cases like this, “You were missing for a year and a half, any pregnancies?”

  “No. I already had an IUD in place, and he left it be.”

  “Is it still good, or has it expired?”

  I raised an eyebrow at him, “Those things are good for five years and I’m only eighteen. Exactly how old do you think I was when I had it placed?”

  Robles raised a hand to fend off my defensiveness, and I almost laughed at the reversal of body language roles that I was experiencing. “I’m just going down a mental list of standard questions. I assume absolutely nothing about a given situation. I’m just trying to make sure I have all the facts.”

  I let my eyebrow fall back to its natural position and vowed to not let that become a new habit for me. Just as much as I wanted his influence to leave my speech patterns, I didn’t want it showing up in my facial features. Even if I was amused by the reaction it evoked. “It’s still plenty good.”

  “Do you have any injuries now?”

  I shook my head, “No, I’m good to go straight to the station.”

  He smiled and shifted in his chair to get up, “I’m going to go make a phone call. I’ll be right back.”

  I nodded. “All right.” I didn’t move as he walked around the table and passed me on his way to the door out front. But as soon as I heard the swoosh of the door closing, I put my head down on the table. I rested my upper arms on the surface, on either side of my head, and used my hands to cup the back of my neck. A tired groan escaped from my lips.

  Keith sat down in the chair next to me as Jared stepped behind me to try and rub the tension out of my shoulders. Grandpa and Uncle Mike drifted forward into the kitchen, too. But the four men around me all held their silence. No one knew what to say after everything they’d just heard.

  I was glad for the reprieve. I allowed myself a few more seconds of trying to block the world out, while I transitioned back into the present. I knew I’d have to rehash every moment of everything in the coming days and I would have to be ready to tackle every question. But in between those sessions, I was going to have to reintegrate back into my family, my life. If everyone would just allow me a moment to hide my face, so that I could mentally transition between my present and my recent past, I think it might go so much easier on me.

  Once I refocused my mind and sat back up, Jared stopped massaging and stepped back to lean against the wall, at my side. I looked around at their downcast eyes. Each man was inside his own thoughts, trying to process everything that I had said. Each of them was trying to decide what to say or do next. I bet they all wish the women had gathered this weekend. I think they’ve heard more than they ever wanted to know.

  By now, the silence had grown into awkwardness. I would have said something, but there wasn’t anything appropriate that I could think of. I might have tried to comfort them, to say something to make it sound not so bad. But the thing was that it had been that bad. They might have been trying to come up with something to comfort me, but there really wasn’t anything they could say that would do it.

  Keith was the first to start caving under the pressure of the silence. First his knee started bouncing, then he sighed as he looked around at everyone. Everyone’s downcast stares drifted over to him, watching him with creased brows. He fidgeted in his seat a little before he finally looked up at me with a hint of a smile, “So, is an IUD what I think it is?”

  Jared shifted against the wall, “Keith, shut up.”

  “No, seriously, does your dad know you have an IUD? Or is this whole thing going to blow your cover?”

  I cracked an amused smile, Keith was still so Keith. “You think he’ll try and ground me?”

  “He might.”

  “I’m over eighteen now.”

  “Yeah, but you weren’t when you got it.”

  I looked up at Uncle Mike, “Can he do that? Can a parent retroactively ground an adult for past offenses?”

  Mike was openly gawking at our conversation. But after I’d addressed him directly, he blew out a breath and relaxed back on his heels. “I’ll have to check the official handbook to see what the statute of limitations is on… that.”

  “Well,” Grandpa said as he sat down in the chair opposite me. “I don’t think he’ll… He won’t care…” He reached up and scratched his bald spot before he looked around at all of us. “Just what the hell is an IUD?”

  The rest of us broke into quiet laughter as the tension all but disintegrated.

  Officer Robles came back inside. “All right, Erica, we need to get you over to the station. We have a wonderful officer, her name is Mary Beth, and she’s been specially trained to handle cases like this. She’s going to ask you a ton of questions. She’ll want you to take her through your captivity. I know it’s late, and I know it’s going to be hard and uncomfortable, but any and all information you can give us can help us put him away and keep him there.”

  “Sure, I’ll go. But I’ll want to wait for my mom before I do the walk-through with the officer.”

  “We usually ask that you speak to the officer one-on-one. Sometimes people try and spare their parent’s feelings and leave some things out.”

  I shook my head, “I won’t leave anything out. My
mom’s going to want to know what all went down, too. It’ll be easier to tell her if I can direct my attention on the officer.”

  “Are you sure your mother can handle hearing everything?”

  I had to think about that one for a moment. The mother I’d left behind could have, but I didn’t know how… broken my disappearance may have left her. “I’ll just have to make sure she knows she has the option to get up and leave the room if she can’t handle it.”

  “All right.”

  At least twenty people were gathered outside when Jared took me by the hand and led me - he pretended not to notice that I hesitated before my feet moved to follow him - to the police cruiser. All smiled, some waved, others whispered, a few clapped. Friends of the family, kids I had grown up with, people who cared and just wanted to see that I was okay with their own curious eyes.

  “You can ride up front,” Officer Robles offered.

  “No, I’ll ride in the back with Jared.” I shifted my eyes to Jared, “You are riding with me, right?”

  “I’ll be by your side until you tell me to go away,” he answered.

  We got settled into the back of the car and buckled in. I moved as if to lean against him, and he extended his arm to accept me. I snuggled against his side as much as the seat belt would allow. Robles started the engine and slowly drove around the lingering well wishers.

  “Jared?” I whispered.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you here just to see how all this ends, or are you really still a permanent fixture?”

  He sighed into my hair, “Do you want the truth?”

  “Yes, please, whatever it is, I’d rather know now.”

  He placed a kiss on the top of my head, “After about three months, I was convinced you weren’t coming back. I thought you were dead. After six months, I started dating. A couple months after that, I started a relationship that lasted about another six months. I broke up with her, basically, because she wasn’t you. Right after that, we got word that you had been spotted in town. I’ve spent every free moment here ever since.”

  I was silent as I processed that. I hadn’t expected him to live like a hermit. I had expected that he would move on. But still, assuming was one thing, hearing it as fact was another.

  “Do you want names?”

  I swiped a hand over my face, “No, not right now, thanks.”

  He gave me a squeeze, “When you’re ready.”

  “Was there a funeral? Did everyone assume I was dead?”

  “Nope, no funeral. People were split on what they thought happened to you. Your boss saw the guy grab you. He spotted it happening through the window, but he couldn’t get to you quick enough to stop it. So everybody knew you had been kidnapped, and that you hadn’t left on your own. And your parents refused to accept the idea that you were, in all likelihood, dead.

  “That’s what everyone kept saying, the longer you were gone the more likely it was. I think your dad had just begun to accept the possibility, to face the reality of the statistics. Your mom though, man, she was having none of that kind of talk. She said that she knew deep down in her soul that you were still alive. She said that you would find your way back.

  “Keith and I were at their house when the phone call came in. We were helping your dad work on his riding mower. Your mom got off the phone, stormed outside, and kicked your dad in the shin while he was lying on the ground, trying to take apart the motor. She starts yelling, ‘They saw her, they saw her! She left her fingerprints for them, and they have her on video! Don’t you ever try and tell me that our daughter is dead again!’ The three of us just sat there, staring up at her like idiots.”

  “How are they doing with each other? Did this whole mess put a wedge between them, or draw them closer together?” This was a question that had been bugging me from the start of it all. I was an only child, they were all each other had, and if they chose to handle it in different ways… I didn’t want what had happened to me to be the downfall of their marriage. I didn’t want to come home to a broken family when it had been happily intact when I’d disappeared.”

  “It was weird. They didn’t really grow closer or farther apart. They sort of went silent with each other, kinda like they were frozen in time. I mean, two weeks into it they went back to work. They kept functioning and all. But there was no life in either of them.

  “And then when the call came in, it was like when your mom came out and kicked your dad, she was actually kick-starting their lives again. It’s been killing them to stay away from here, knowing that you were probably still close by.” He gave me another gentle squeeze as he finished his answer.

  Robles was now pulling into the parking lot of the station. I sat up when I saw Robles glance at me through the rear-view mirror. I was grateful for his silence as he let me receive the information. But I understood that it was now time for me to switch back to being the one to give information. I closed my eyes for a second, to make the mental transition. There was so much to take in because so much had happened to everyone.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Caught Red-Handed

  When we got to the station, my family members and I were escorted into a semi-private room. I say ‘semi-private’ because I was darn sure that long mirror on the far wall was one of those two-way mirrors you always see on TV.

  A kind looking woman popped her head in and scanned the room, her eyes settling on me. “Hello, Erica, I’m Mary Beth. I hear that you want to wait for your mom?”

  I found it hilarious that they thought letting me call an officer by her first name would somehow make me feel more comfortable in laying everything out for them, but I had to wonder how many women that little courtesy did help. The only thing that was going to make me feel better was getting Asshole caught. “Yes,” I answered.

  My grandfather looked at his watch, “They should only be about another ten minutes, or so. We called them on the drive over and told her parents to meet us here at the station.”

  She smiled at me for a moment, “Are you sure you can recount everything in front of her? Some women are uncomfortable letting their loved ones hear everything that has happened to them.”

  “She’s either going to find out now, or during the trial.”

  Mary Beth clamped her lips together and drew them into a tight line.

  “My mom won’t let me shy away from the truth. She’ll want to hear it all so that she knows he’s being brought up on all the charges possible. It won’t be easy for either of us, but it’ll save me from reliving it again, because she’d only make me go over it all with her later.”

  She nodded, realizing that she wasn’t going to get me to budge on this. “Are you opposed to being video recorded? It would be given to the Pennsylvania team that will be handling the case on their side.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Sure, go ahead and set it up. It’s not like I’m not used to having my every move documented, already.”

  Mary Beth nodded and left the room.

  “This is going to drag on for you,” Mike said to me. “There’ll be charges here in Maryland, and back home.”

  I shook my head, “It’ll be three states if they can locate that other house. If I’m judging drive time and environmental clues correctly, I was held in a state way north of us, first.”

  “A fourth will be involved if they track him down to wherever he is now,” Grandpa added.

  “I don’t think they can charge him with anything just for being captured in another state,” Mike said.

  “I’m sure wherever he is, he’s doing something illegal,” Grandpa grumbled.

  I chuckled at him.

  A soft knock sounded on the door just before Robles opened it and my parents bustled inside, ahead of him.

  There are no words to adequately describe the next few moments. I stood and flew to them, catching one in either arm so I could cling to them both. The last puzzle piece that I’d spent eighteen months looking for had finally clicked into place. I’d finally felt that one
last feeling that I’d been missing for so long. I finally felt safe, truly safe, like I could breathe again safe. I didn’t know for how long the feeling would last, but it was mine for the moment. And as that feeling fell over me, wrapped around me, I let go of my tight reign of control and let a year and a half’s worth of tears come gushing out. And as soon as my tears fell, so did theirs.

  Over the next few hours, several things took place. The officer named Mary Beth came back into the room and cleared everyone out but me and my mom. Then she took the lead in starting the story from the beginning. The very beginning.

  “Okay, so, there’s a seventy-year-old man in Rhode Island who’d had his license revoked because he had a stroke. He believed that he would recover enough to drive, so he kept his car in his garage. His wife, who kept her car parked in the driveway, agreed because she thought it would encourage him to work harder at his physical therapy sessions.”

  “And this has something to do with me?” I asked.

  “This has everything to do with you.”

  “All right.” I slumped back in my chair. I’d been trying to mentally gear myself up to start telling my story, but Mary Beth seemed to have other plans.

  “His wife drives him to his therapy every day, and he does well. The doctor says that he just might be able to recover enough to drive. So the wife calls their son to update him on the old man’s progress.

  “The phone conversation goes on a bit, and the son asks his mom if she’s been running the man’s car every week, to keep everything in tune. The mother says no, that with everything happening so quickly and getting his father to so many appointments, she hasn’t even thought about it. The son tells her not to worry. He says he’ll stop by and take it on a short drive to make sure everything is still working. The mother agrees.

  “So the son gets to his parent’s house and opens the garage. He lifts the door up, and there’s no car inside. He calls his mom, and she says that someone must have stolen it. He asks when the last time she was in the garage was. She says that she hasn’t been in the garage in months, only his father ever spent any time in there.