The Girl Who Was Taken

by Charlie Donlea

  Livia nodded. “Okay. Where is that?”

  “I work at the courthouse.” Megan pointed at the building behind them. “If you want to look for a connection between my case—and Nicole’s—and the girl in Virginia, I can get us access to my case file. I know right where to look for it. I’ve looked through it myself out of curiosity. I didn’t find anything, but you’ll be looking with fresh eyes. We’ll take that route first and see what we find. If we come across anything relevant that connects the case to Nancy Dee, then I’ll ask my dad for help.”

  “Okay,” Livia said. “How exactly does one look at a case file and evidence?”

  “I was able to find my case initially because I’m a snoop and everyone’s very awkward around me. I’m the sheriff’s daughter and ever since the abduction people are afraid to talk to me. Before, this would have offended me. Now, I prefer it. I wander around the dark corners of that building and people divert their eyes. But I won’t get that same treatment if I walk down to evidence with you next to me. To smuggle you in, we’ll have to do it when the supervisor is gone and I’ll have to ask for a favor. But I know an evidence tech who owes me one. I’ll try for this Friday. Does that work?”

  Livia nodded. “I’ll make it work. What time?”

  “Meet me here at noon? If I can’t pull strings by then, we’ll reschedule.”

  Livia stood from the bench. “Thanks, Megan. I appreciate the help.”

  “I’m glad someone’s asking for it.”

  Livia turned to leave.

  “Sorry I never got in touch with you or your parents after all this,” Megan said.

  “You’ve been through a lot. You’ve got to take care of yourself before you can be expected to reach out to others.” Livia turned again to leave.

  “Livia?”

  Livia looked back.

  “I know you think everyone has forgotten about Nicole. But I never have.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Megan spread her cards onto the table. “Fifteen for two, four separate ways. That’s eight. Plus two runs for three each. That’s fourteen. The Knobs gives me fifteen total.”

  Mr. Steinman dropped his cards onto the table. “Fifteen, and the game.”

  Megan smiled. “Gotcha!” She moved her peg to the end of the cribbage board. “That’s my first victory against you.”

  “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and again.”

  “Don’t! I played great! Everything you taught me, I did during that game. No leading with face cards, no pairs into the crib, all that stuff.”

  “I’d lose every game if it made you smile like that.”

  Megan blushed and shielded her teeth with her hand.

  “How’s the book doing?”

  Megan shrugged, pulled her hand down. The smile was gone. “Climbing.”

  “You’re a regular celebrity.”

  “Yeah, to people who love sick stories.”

  Mr. Steinman collected the cards. “I know you well enough now. There’s a reason for that book. Something you won’t admit.”

  “I’ll admit it. The book gets my parents off my back.”

  “And allows you to do what?”

  “Breathe.” Megan pulled the pegs from the cribbage board and stored them. “And maybe find some answers for myself.”

  “I thought you were doing that in therapy.”

  “I am. I just need, I don’t know, different answers than the ones everyone around me wants to give.”

  Mr. Steinman took the cribbage board and placed it with the cards on the end table. “I can’t tell you what to do. A young, independent girl like yourself is not going to listen to an old man like me. Just remember, sometimes finding those answers comes with a new set of questions.”

  Megan nodded as though she understood perfectly.

  There was a noise that came from another room. It sounded as though it came from the walls, perhaps the groan of a faucet being started. But there was something else that caused Megan to stiffen. If asked, she’d describe it as a moan but the whine of the faucet was enough to hide the exact origin.

  Mr. Steinman, too, sat up straight when he heard it. “That’s it for me, my lovely lady. Will I see you next week?”

  Megan stood, feeling as though she’d overstayed her welcome. “Of course. Have a good night,” she said.

  Mr. Steinman hurried her to the door, his key chain chiming as it hung from his belt loop. “Good game,” he said quickly. “I’ve never felt better after losing at cribbage.”

  “Need help?” Megan asked. “With, you know, whatever it is. Or company?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t mind helping. I’m not scared.”

  “One of these days,” he said, grabbing the keys from his hip, “I’ll take you up on your offer.” He pulled the screen door closed as Megan walked onto the patio. “Good night.”

  Megan smiled with her lips together, nodded, and headed for her car.

  * * *

  Livia danced around the ring, thick headgear covering her jawline. Randy, six inches taller and twice as broad, stalked her carefully as they sparred. He’d been on the receiving end of a Livia Cutty side kick, an unpleasant place to be, and she’d kept him at bay with stiff left jabs. Everything considered, her technique was flawless and Randy was impressed.

  He tried again to close the distance and get his hands on her, but the jabs were too straight. Then he saw it, the transfer of weight to her left leg. A side kick was on its way. The telegraph was her first mistake in nine minutes of sparring. When the kick came, he caught it in his left armpit, absorbing the impact and trapping her shin. In a flash, he knocked her left leg from underneath her and they both crashed to the ground. It was where Randy wanted the sparring session to be all along.

  “Time!” the referee yelled just as they both crashed to the floor.

  “Dammit!” Livia said.

  Randy rolled off her. “Two-ninety vs. one-thirty. Physics are not on your side, Doc.”

  Livia sat up on the mat and leaned against the ropes, unsnapped her headgear. Her chest expanding with giant breaths.

  “On a larger opponent, stick with those jabs. I couldn’t get close until you announced that side kick. When they land, they’re lethal. But I told you, they get stale after a while.”

  “Stupid,” Livia said.

  “Nothing wrong with being aggressive. Just don’t go to the well so often.”

  Randy pushed himself up, offered his hand to Livia, and pulled her to her feet. They exited the ring as the next pair jumped in and started their session. Livia took a seat and pulled her gloves off. Randy handed her a water bottle.

  “You seem like you’re doing better than when you had your tantrum.”

  Livia smiled. “Can’t get rid of regret by punching a bag. Isn’t that what you said?”

  “Something like that.” Randy sat next to her. “All this frustration have to do with your sister?”

  Livia shrugged. Randy listened more carefully than she thought.

  “I sat around for a year doing nothing,” Livia said. “At least now I feel like I’m doing something.”

  “Feels good to take some action, right?”

  Livia nodded and took a sip of water. “I just don’t know how hard to push.”

  “Because you’re afraid of what you’re gonna find?”

  “Because I’m afraid I won’t be able to do anything when I find it.”

  “Well,” Randy said, wiping his face. “You go at it like that and you ain’t gonna find shit. I’ll tell you that much.”

  “Go at it like what?”

  “With no heart. You want something, you gotta commit to it and go after it. Don’t slow down, don’t stop to think. Just keep moving forward.”

  Livia stood up. “And stop throwing my side kicks so often.”

  “That too.”

  Livia screwed the top onto her water bottle. “I’ve got to run, Randy. Thanks for the spar.”

  “Sorry I
tossed you like a rag doll.”

  “Sorry I flattened your nose with those jabs.”

  Randy lifted his chin. “Hope you find what you’re looking for, Doc. With your sister.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You know, when I was trying to get straight my daddy used to tell me a story about how life works in the Serengeti. Do you know?”

  “The African Serengeti?”

  “That’s the one. You know how life works there?”

  Livia shook her head.

  “Each morning when the sun comes up, cresting the horizon and stretching shadows across the sand, every gazelle and every lion opens their eyes. They all understand something. Every gazelle wakes knowing that to survive the day they gotta run faster than the slowest gazelle in the herd. And every lion wakes knowing that to survive the day they gotta run faster than the fastest lion in the pack. That’s life, young lady.”

  Livia stared at him. “So the fastest lion gets the slowest gazelle? That’s the point?”

  “No.” Randy stood and headed for the showers. “The point is that no matter who you are, you gotta wake up runnin’.”

  CHAPTER 30

  In addition to two weeks of vacation, forensic fellows at the North Carolina Office of the Chief Medical Examiner were allowed four personal days. Livia used one on Friday. She made the two-hour drive from Raleigh to Emerson Bay and found Megan waiting for her on the same bench outside the courthouse where they met on Monday. Late October, the temperature was in the sixties. The sun was high, the sky blue, and the plaza in front of the county building busy with lunchtime foot traffic. Livia walked onto the cobblestone court and took a seat next to Megan.

  “You get everything set up?” Livia asked as she sat down.

  Megan nodded. “We’re good.” She checked her watch. “We’ve got twenty minutes before the evidence supervisor takes lunch. Then we’ll have about half an hour by ourselves.”

  Livia nodded and let a moment pass. “Megan, I want to ask you something about the night you were abducted.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Livia diverted her eyes momentarily, working up her courage.

  “Look,” Megan said. “I’m not going to fall to pieces if someone other than my shrink asks me about that night. All anyone has wanted for the past year is to see me back to normal. See me healed. You’re the first person who’s asked if I know anything about the night I was taken. You’re the first one who’s bothered to include me in any part of figuring out what happened that night. Ask whatever you want, Livia. And believe me when I tell you that I think of Nicole all the time.”

  “I’m realizing that. And before we met, I never considered that it might be hard for you that you made it home and Nicole did not.”

  Tears welled again on Megan’s eyelids, like they had Monday evening. “I’m not happy I escaped.” She shook her head and exhaled loudly. “That’s not true. I am happy. But part of me will always grieve for Nicole. The detectives haven’t talked to me in months about anything new. When you called the other day . . . I don’t know, a part of me woke up again. All this garbage about my book helping survivors of abduction is bullshit. But this. What you told me the other day. If we can find a connection between my abductor and the other girl who was taken . . . that will mean something.”

  Livia nodded. “In your book, you describe the night you were taken. How accurate is the description?”

  “Not very. I remember more now than when it was written.”

  “But you never saw the man who took you?”

  “Not his face, no.”

  Livia reached into her purse and pulled out the photo of Casey Delevan, his arm wrapped around Nicole’s shoulder.

  “You know this guy?”

  Megan studied the picture. “No. Who is he?”

  “He was dating Nicole that summer. His body showed up on my autopsy table a few weeks ago.”

  Megan squinted her eyes and waited for an explanation.

  “He was found in the bay. He was originally thought to be a jumper. At the morgue, we determined that he’d been killed. A little fieldwork suggests the last time anyone saw him was the weekend you and Nicole were taken.”

  Megan stayed quiet as she tried to figure out the implication.

  “So,” Livia said. “Besides a connection to Nancy Dee, I’m looking for anything that will help me figure out what might have happened to him.” Livia shrugged. “See if it has any connection to you or Nicole disappearing.”

  “I’ve never seen him before. And I didn’t know Nicole was dating anyone. She was . . . I mean, there were some rumors that summer that she and, uh, Matt Wellington were hooking up.”

  “The guy you were dating?”

  “We were just friends.”

  “Have you ever heard of a group called the Capture Club?”

  “No, what is it?”

  “A group of nuts who get off on abductions. Read about them, study them, discuss them, and even perform them. Mock abductions, anyway.”

  “That’s sickening.”

  “I agree. This guy,” Livia said, holding up the picture of Casey, “created the club. Nicole was part of it. I don’t know what any of it means. Maybe nothing. But I haven’t been able to calm my thoughts since he landed in my morgue.”

  Megan checked her watch. “Let’s see if this helps answer some questions.” She pointed to the courthouse. “We’re late.”

  * * *

  They both showed their IDs and passed through the metal detector without a hitch. They walked down the long hallways as justice was practiced beyond the heavy oak double doors of the courtrooms next to them. Lawyers counseled their clients on benches outside the courts, and a hundred defendants of DUI, littering, speeding, and alimony failure wandered the halls and searched for their destinations. Megan opened the door to a stairway and Livia followed her down to the lower level, where there were no windows and no foot traffic. They conquered another long hallway and came to locked double doors, above which read EVIDENCE AND PROPERTY.

  Megan used her ID card to unlock the doors. Inside was a vestibule with another locked door and a glass partition next to it, the window slid open. A thirtysomething man in an ugly brown uniform sat on a high stool behind the glass, paging through an auto magazine.

  “Hi, Greg,” Megan said.

  “You’re late.”

  “Sorry.”

  Greg looked behind him to make sure he was alone. “My supervisor takes an hour for lunch.” He checked his watch. “Forty-five minutes, now. I’ll give you half an hour to be safe.”

  Greg pressed a button from his perch behind the partition and the door buzzed.

  “Thanks, Greg. I owe you one,” Megan said.

  Livia followed as Megan pulled open the buzzing door and entered the Evidence and Property storage area, where just about every piece of evidence collected from a Montgomery County case was located. In the back corner were rows of metal shelves stacked with cardboard boxes. Megan walked with efficiency to the M’s and pulled a box off the shelf. She’d been here before, Livia determined. Within the isles were waist-high tables. Megan deposited her case box onto one of them and lifted the lid.

  “So, what exactly are we looking for?” Megan asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  They spent ten minutes looking through the contents of the “McDonald, Megan” evidence box, which contained several photos of Megan from the night she climbed into Mr. Steinman’s car on Highway 57. From the hospital bed, Megan had been photographed from every angle. The camera isolated and highlighted her injuries—contusions on her ankles from two weeks in shackles. Friction burns on her wrists from the duct tape. Scratches on her face from her frantic run through the forest, and a gaping wound on her heel that required sixteen sutures to close. There were medical records and notes from the emergency-room doctors who initially cared for her. Livia read with interest until she found the toxicology screening, seeing that ketamine was indeed in her system the night Megan had escaped
her captor.

  Livia, standing within the quiet row of shelves, paged through pictures of the bunker from which Megan had escaped. There were photos of footprint impressions and random items found in the vicinity of the bunker. They included candy bar wrappers and beer bottles, an old rancid belt and a single Converse All Star shoe. The owner of either of the items unknown. Random fingerprints were sequestered from the door handle and from the objects found on the forest floor, but none matched each other or led to anyone in particular.

  Stored in plastic evidence bags was the duct tape that bound Megan’s wrists the night she journeyed through the forest. Other bags contained her blood-soaked shirt and shorts. The items retrieved from the forest were also sealed in plastic—the wrappers and bottles and a few other random items Livia pawed at on the bottom of the box.

  She pulled out the file that contained the detectives’ analysis and findings in the weeks after Megan had escaped. Livia had seen many such reports in her three months at the OCME. Mostly, the file contained dictated interviews conducted by the two investigators assigned to the case. Livia skimmed through Megan’s interview, where she recalled for the detectives her movements on the day she was abducted and everything she remembered about the night she was taken. Livia read briefly about Megan’s time in captivity and about the night she escaped from the bunker. Most was redundant. She’d read all of this in Megan’s book. There were other interviews of Emerson Bay High School kids, including Matt Wellington, but they were boring and mundane and led the detectives nowhere important.

  Megan read Livia’s expression. “I’ve been through it before and there’s nothing in there that’s useful.”

  Livia restacked everything back into the box and closed the lid. “You ever look at Nicole’s case?”

  Megan nodded, embarrassed to admit she had.

  “Let me have a look,” Livia said.

  They walked two rows down to the C’s and Megan pointed. Livia read the label on the box: CUTTY, NICOLE.

  She pulled the box and placed it on one of the tables. She slowly opened the lid and pulled out a file that contained interviews and notes similar to those in Megan’s box. More than a year before, Livia had given her statement to the two detectives who had come to her house and talked with Livia and her parents. She and her parents had received updates from these two detectives for the first few weeks of the investigation, but after a while the calls slowed and the updates became more random. Eventually, they stopped altogether. No one ever came out to the house to tell Livia and her parents that the case was stalled. But today, Nicole’s case, sitting quietly on the shelf in the basement of the Federal Building, felt as cold as a body kept overnight in the morgue’s cooler.