Sufficient Ransom

by Sylvia Sarno

  “Travis, I asked you to brush your teeth three times, already. We need to leave for the dentist in ten minutes.”

  They had just finished breakfast. Ann was in her home office putting the finishing touches on her PowerPoint presentation. Travis stood in the doorway holding a Lego structure he had built. Colorful gilt prints of the Madonna and Child paintings that Mr. Stark coveted were laid across her desk. Her client had asked her to research several Renaissance pieces that were going up for auction in New York in the middle of October. A former colleague from the Boston Museum of Fine Art, where Ann had worked as a junior curator after Smith College, had generously gifted to her these high quality prints, knowing how important it was to Ann that Ann’s client be pleased with her work.

  “Mom, can you help me get this piece off?”

  At the doorway, she placed her hands on her son’s shoulders and pointed him toward the bathroom. “Go brush your teeth, Travis.”

  “What about my Legos?”

  Ann’s phone rang. She nudged Travis. “Go!” She had no time for any more of his nonsense. If he didn’t move they would be late for their appointment. If they were late for that, they would probably have to wait at least another thirty minutes before they could be seen. Afterwards, she would have to get Travis to school. Then she’d have to drive all the way downtown San Diego from La Jolla—a good twenty-five minutes—park her car, have lunch with Mr. Stark, and present him with her findings. Which at two hundred dollars an hour—her fee—was costing him a fair bit.

  Douglas Stark’s number appeared on her phone’s screen. She couldn’t afford for Travis to interrupt this call. She unlocked the front door and stepped outside. A few minutes later, after reassuring her client she would be at the restaurant at 11:30 sharp, she re-entered the house. “Travis?” she called. “Come on, honey. We have to leave.”

  Ann heard a noise in her office. Travis was behind her desk with a black marker in his hand and a guilty grin on his face. “What’re you doing?”

  She walked over to her desk and looked down. The gilt prints she had painstakingly acquired for her client were marked up. The Madonna’s face on one of them was traced round in heavy black, her beneficent smile made ridiculous with a curving grin. The other prints too were worked over in childish ways. In one of them, baby Jesus sported a sign that read, “Give me candy.”

  Blood rose to her face. “How could you do this?”

  Fear crept into Travis’s eyes. “I was just... I was only…”

  That her son would try to justify his actions with some lame excuse after the trouble she went through to get this presentation ready, enflamed her anger. “You were just what?”

  Travis’s voice was petulant. “What’s the big deal? It’s just pictures.”

  At that point, everything was a big deal to Ann. Her headache was worsening by the second. If they were late for the dentist, she’d be late to her meeting. This client had his eye on several expensive paintings in her gallery; his patronage could be a major boon to her business. If she failed to impress him he could just as easily take his business elsewhere.

  She tried to calm herself with soothing thoughts. Mr. Stark didn’t know she had these prints. She would just give him the PowerPoint presentation on her laptop. Everything would be fine. She guided Travis away from her desk. “If you’re not ready in two minutes, no dessert tonight.”

  Travis turned around and slapped her arm. Boy, did he know how to push her buttons! Her anger spiking a notch, Ann took a deep breath. No use getting worked up. Everything would be fine. Her voice was calm. “Behaving this way won’t get you any favors today, Travis.”

  His parting look was sullen.

  She glanced at her watch. It was 8:35. If they hurried, they might just make Travis’s 8:45 appointment. She scooped up the desecrated prints and dropped them into the garbage bin. Reaching for her cup of tea, she stopped. She noticed that her wrist was wet. She lifted her mug. It was half full. She touched it all the way round. It was dry. What could possibly be wet? Her eyes locked on her laptop. The machine was sitting in a shiny pool of water, the screen blank.

  Travis’s plastic Legoland cup caught her eye; it was upright on the other side of the desk. She picked it up. An inch of water sloshed around its bottom. Mechanically, Ann dropped the cup in the bin and turned her attention back to the laptop. She jabbed her fingers at the keyboard trying to get it to come on. When that didn’t work she carefully lifted it onto her lap. The cord attaching it to the wall outlet was wet. She jerked the cord out of the machine and let it fall to the floor. Her fear rising, she pressed the power button and tried to re-boot the laptop via the battery. Her every effort failing, panic took over.

  Her entire business was on this machine. Her accounts, her contact list, two years of work, since she opened her gallery, all stored on this slender device. Her husband was always after her to do daily back-ups, but she never seemed to have the time. The last time she had backed her computer up more than a month ago, she had accidentally deleted some important files. It had taken her all morning to straighten out the mess. Now she would have to reconstruct the last month’s worth of work—it could take weeks. And then there was Mr. Stark’s lost PowerPoint presentation…

  She placed the laptop on the credenza behind her desk. “Travis! Get in here!”

  When he arrived, his head hanging, Ann knew he had done it on purpose. Her voice rose. “You ruined my business! How could you?”

  Travis tried to explain away his guilt.

  Something inside of Ann snapped. “We’ll talk about this later. Right now, Mommy needs a time-out.” She pushed past the desk and raced the stairs to her bedroom. Not caring that the windows were open, that her neighbors would probably hear her, she screamed and screamed.

  Hearing her screams, her next door neighbor called the police.

  11:45 P.M.

  Snuggled against Travis in the hotel bed, Ann checked her phone again. She had left Richard several messages and emails urging him to return home early from Hong Kong. Terrified Kika would make good on her promise to take Travis, she couldn’t stand the thought of the next days without her husband. It was nearly midnight and he still hadn’t responded. She imagined his days and nights were jam-packed with meetings, as usual.

  With Richard’s heavy travel schedule lately, she and Travis were alone much of the time. It seemed more so since the whole CPS thing started. Ann knew she had to find a new school for her son. She had interviewed a few prospective places, but she wasn’t in any hurry after the disaster of the last school. She cherished their leisurely meals together, their playtime, and visiting all their favorite places, like they used to do when Travis was very small.

  Travis had been born four weeks early—small and helpless. Nothing she had read in the books prepared Ann for the awe she felt in the presence of this perfect little person whom she and her husband had created. Terrified something would happen to him, she didn’t take Travis out of the house for the first two months of his life. On their inaugural outing, fearing an accident, she admonished her husband to drive slowly. When they arrived at their destination, an Italian restaurant in Del Mar, she had clutched Travis in his car seat as she ran for the door, afraid the hot sun would burn his delicate skin.

  When the waitress bent down to take a look at Travis, sleeping in his seat, Ann threw a blanket over him, fearful germs would somehow reach him. “I’m sorry,” she said to the startled woman. “I’m a little nervous. You see. It’s his first time out.” The waitress, a mother herself, understood, as did the many others whose eager hands Ann had gently turned away. The world, women especially, love to touch a baby. As Travis grew, she relaxed more. But that feeling of vulnerability remained.

  Ann’s own mother had divorced her father when Ann was twelve. Ann stayed with her father in the same house they had shared as a family, in that little town on the Hudson River, full of memories of what had been. Evenings, she would sit in her bedroom waiting for her mother’s phone call. H
omework hastily completed, teeth brushed, pajamas donned, Ann hoped her mother wouldn’t forget her promise to talk. And then, long past her normal bedtime, the terrible ache in her chest and the bewildering disappointment when it became clear that she had.

  Her mother had promised to bring Ann to her studio apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and show Ann her new life. Those promises, like the many she had made before, were soon broken. The dance recitals she promised to attend but never did. The little lies she told when she cancelled a lunch or a movie date. Ann soon learned that her mother was so absorbed with her new boyfriend and social-climbing life she no longer had time for her daughter. Ann’s introverted, awkward father had little to offer in the way of comfort. He had a hard enough time taking care of himself, let alone his twelve-year-old girl.

  Sadly, Ann’s parents died young: her mother from cancer when Ann was in college, her father from a heart attack when she was twenty-five. As flawed as they were, Ann loved her parents and would have wanted them in her son’s life.

  When she got over the shock of her own perceived abandonment as a child, a fierce determination took root in Ann’s soul to not repeat her parents’ mistakes, should she ever have her own children. Yet, for reasons that were unclear even to her, Ann couldn’t shake the feeling that she would end up betraying her family the way her mother had betrayed her and her father.

  She checked her phone again. Richard still hadn’t emailed. What’s he doing?

  She leaned over and looked at Travis. His face was turned toward the window, his arms thrown over his head. He had insisted they sleep with the curtain open so when he woke up he would see the sunny sky. The moonlight imbued his skin with a soft glow. He looked so beautiful.

  Ann was thankful her son hadn’t picked up on her anxiety. Checking into the hotel, getting ready for bed—she had worked hard to seem upbeat and unconcerned. After Travis brushed his teeth and donned his pajamas he curled up beside her and fell asleep.

  She imagined what life would be like if Kika Garcia were successful: Travis taken from her and living with another family. How long would he remember her?

  Travis stirred.

  Her hand over her mouth to hold back her sobs, Ann thought of her husband. If only he would call back, she wouldn’t feel that their problems were hers alone to carry.

  CHAPTER 2

  Monday, October 1

  9:30 A.M.

  The next morning, Ann and Travis were in their hotel room having breakfast when her phone rang.

  “Hold on a minute, Stewart,” Ann said to her attorney, thankful he had gotten back to her so quickly. To Travis: “Honey, I’m going into the bathroom to talk to my friend. After you finish your pancakes you can read your book.” She patted his backpack. “Your things are in here.”

  The bathroom door locked, Ann said, “Last night was the third time Kika came to the house, Stewart. Remember how she crashed Travis’s birthday party last week? And how I saw her at the coffee shop on Prospect Street, and at the grocery store?”

  “She lives in La Jolla, Ann.”

  “I never see my neighbors around town. I’m telling you Stewart, she’s stalking us.”

  “I’ll talk to her supervisor and straighten everything out.”

  “What about the restraining order against her?”

  Stewart’s sigh was deep. “Judge Nolan denied it. I told you it was a long shot. Look. I’ll call you as soon as I know more.”

  It was that hippie throwback, Travis’s new teacher, Amanda White, who had called CPS. “Your son had bruises and scratches all over his lower body,” Amanda had said when Ann demanded to know why a stranger had interviewed her son at this private school without her knowledge.

  Four days after the police came to her house over her screaming incident Travis bruised himself by apparently jumping repeatedly off his new swing set, an early birthday present. An active, physical child, Travis’s exploits never seemed to pain him much. A babysitter—a junior at La Jolla High with stellar references whom Ann had hired to watch Travis while she and Richard attended his company party—had let it happen.

  When Ann confronted the sitter about the huge purple bruises and scratches on her son’s body, the girl denied having anything to do with it. Ann imagined a cell phone attached to the girl’s ear, a self-absorbed jerk of a boyfriend on the line distracting her from the job of watching Travis.

  After explaining the situation to the girl’s parents, Ann asked if they would get their daughter to describe to CPS her part in Travis’s injuries. The father had hung up on her.

  When Ann explained all this to Travis’s teacher, Amanda had tapped her foot impatiently.

  “Do you really think we beat our child?” Ann had asked, horrified that anyone would think that of her. “Do you have any idea how that feels? To be accused of child abuse when it’s the farthest thing from the truth?”

  Amanda’s long gray hair had quivered with each vehement shake of her head. “When I questioned Travis about those horrible marks on his body he said they were nothing. When I asked if there was trouble at home he said the police came to your house the week before because you, Mrs. Olson, had ‘freaked out.’ Things weren’t adding up. I had to call a social worker in to investigate the situation.”

  Feeling ashamed and misunderstood, Ann had tried to clarify what had happened that day. “I wasn’t shouting at Travis. Can’t you understand that it was one bad moment? How would you feel if someone thought you were an abusive mother?”

  The accusations had unleashed Ann’s insecurities. Her husband had never blamed her for anything—for the bad babysitter or her screaming fit. But somehow her husband’s approval of her wasn’t sufficient. The gnawing feeling that Ann was letting Travis down persisted. Ashamed and angry, her trust in the school violated, she withdrew her son.

  The situation escalated.

  Four days later, on September 18, Kika Garcia, the CPS investigator appointed to the case, came to the house to check on Travis. After questioning Ann and Richard, Kika made it clear she didn’t believe a word they said. When the social worker suggested they accept services to help them “manage their anger” Ann hired a lawyer. CPS responded by opening an investigation into child abuse against Ann and Richard.

  It was their attorney, Stewart Thompson, who enlightened Ann and her husband as to CPS’s real motives. “Since a few of the agency’s high profile failures hit the news recently,” he had said, “CPS has started cracking down on the slightest infractions. The old cover-your-ass principle in action. It’ll take them some time to work through their investigation. In the end, they’ll end up with nothing. In the meantime, don’t worry, Ann. Pigs will fly before they can take Travis.”

  That CPS had accused Ann of the very thing she secretly believed about herself—namely that she was a bad mother who didn’t deserve Travis—made her struggle with Kika Garcia all the more personal.

  4:00 P.M.

  With Ann and Travis holed up in their hotel room, the day seemed like it would never end. When her attorney finally called back, Ann jumped from bed where she had been reading to Travis. “I’ll be back in a minute, honey.” She flew into the bathroom.

  “Say that one more time, Stewart.”

  “Kika’s supervisor, Cathy Winckle, had no idea Kika came to your house last night. Apparently Kika acted on her own. And Winckle claimed not to know that Kika had requested a warrant to remove Travis to foster care. That, by the way, was denied.”

  It sounded too good to be true. “So you’re saying CPS can’t take Travis?”

  “They cannot. There’s more good news. When I threatened a huge lawsuit over this bungled job, Winckle assured me they would drop the abuse charges against you and Richard.”

  Ann felt vindicated, but she was still afraid. “I don’t trust Kika. She’s clearly unbalanced.”

  “Winckle said Ms. Garcia’s been assigned to another department. Don’t worry, Ann. You won’t be seeing her again.”

  Ann looked up
at the ceiling. “Thank God it’s all over.” She was so relieved she started to cry.

  Seconds after she hung up the phone, it rang again. She could see from the caller ID that it was her friend Nora March. Nora had left an earlier message inviting Ann and Travis to her house for lunch. She probably wanted an update on the new painting Ann had acquired for her. Ann debated whether to answer. Nora had an interest in the whole CPS business because she was Ann’s closest friend and because she also knew Kika.

  Before starting at CPS, Kika had worked as a volunteer at San Diego County Orphanage, where Nora was trustee. When Ann confided her recent troubles with CPS to Nora, Nora offered to talk to Kika. “She seemed like a nice person when she volunteered,” Nora had said. “I’ll call her and tell her you would never dream of hurting your child. Don’t worry, Ann. We’ll straighten everything out.”

  Kika had refused Nora’s calls. When Nora tried to see Kika in person at CPS to discuss Ann’s situation, she was told Kika wasn’t there, though Nora saw her car in the parking lot. Even Nora’s emails to Kika went unanswered.

  Ann’s phone had stopped ringing. She let out a sigh of relief. She really didn’t want to talk to Nora. All she wanted to do now was celebrate her son’s safety and her freedom from worry here at the hotel pool.

  Ann settled into her lawn chair at the edge of the children’s pool and watched Travis splash in the water. A cluster of spindly palms at the far edge of the grass-fringed area swayed in the light afternoon wind. It was warm for the first day of October. The sun on Ann’s face felt so good. Luckily the hotel gift shop was well equipped—a swimsuit, goggles, a dinosaur float for Travis. A prepackaged sandwich, diet soda, and a newspaper for her. She stretched her bare legs and wiggled her toes, happy for the first time in weeks.

  After finishing her food, Ann unfolded the newspaper. More on the Villarreal child. Apparently the child’s nanny had kidnapped her. Three children missing since the beginning of the year. Reading on, she noted that the Mexican-born Villarreals lived in an oceanfront home in Point Loma. The father managed a manufacturing company in Tijuana, a few miles south of the border. There was speculation that the missing children cases were related to the Mexican narcotics trade and that the cartels were targeting families in San Diego with drug affiliations.