“It’s not allowed,” Annie said softly, as if in challenge to the empty rooms around her. “You hear me, Erin? You’re not allowed to be in any trouble.”
There was still the parking lot to check. Annie locked the apartment and descended to ground level.
At the side of the building, under one of the carports, she found Erin’s assigned parking space. Empty.
The Taurus was gone. Erin had left.
In the strong sunlight Annie stood unmoving, oblivious of heat and glare, thinking hard.
The bed had been slept in, and her purse taken. Presumably, Erin had gone to work as usual.
But why had she been in such a hurry? Why hadn’t she found time to shower, eat breakfast, make the bed, even switch off the radio?
There was another possibility. Suppose a patient had phoned her in the middle of the night with an urgent problem. It happened. Erin would have gone to her office for an unscheduled session. That scenario would fit the facts quite well.
But where was she now?
Had she been in an accident on the way to or from the office? Jumped by a mugger? Attacked by her own patient?
Crazy, she thought as she went back inside the building. Just crazy to think that way.
Mrs. Williams was off the phone by now. She rose from behind her desk, uttering the first syllable of a welcome. The greeting died when she saw Annie’s face.
“Miss Reilly. What’s the matter? Nothing’s wrong, is it?”
Reflexively, Annie smiled. She wondered why her mouth would do that when she knew of no reason to be cheerful.
“Oh, no,” she said in a light tone that matched her careless grin, “nothing’s wrong, except Erin’s sort of hard to find today.”
“Hard to find?”
“You haven’t seen her, have you?”
“Why, no.”
“Her car’s not around. She’s not at work. It’s funny, isn’t it?”
Annie knew it wasn’t funny, but she couldn’t erase the witless smile of denial from her face.
Mrs. Williams seemed to see beneath that smile. “Maybe you ought to telephone the police.”
“The police. What for?”
“See if there’s been any problem. A traffic problem. You know.”
Accident, she meant to say, but couldn’t. Annie nodded. “Yes. I guess I should do that.”
Mrs. Williams took out a phone book and found the number of the police department’s Traffic Enforcement Division. Annie was about to dial when she realized she couldn’t remember Erin’s license plate.
“We have it on file,” Mrs. Williams said, opening a cabinet drawer. “Have to ensure that our tenants park in their reserved spaces.”
Annie reached a traffic-division sergeant, who took down the car’s make, model, and license number, then put her on hold. She waited through an interval of silence, shifting her weight and wishing she could make her damn mouth shed its idiot grin.
You are no good in a crisis, Annie, no good at all.
If this was a crisis. But it wasn’t; it couldn’t be.
In her mind she heard the sergeant’s voice, oddly tentative. Ms. Reilly? I’m sorry, ma’am, but your sister was in a crash earlier today.... Hit by an oncoming truck, a Mack truck, big one ... She’s dead, ma ‘am.
She’s in a coma, ma’am.
She’s paralyzed, a quadriplegic.
She’s—
“Hello?” The sergeant again. The real sergeant, not her fantasy tormentor.
“Yes?” Fear throbbed in her chest, and she felt the spiraling onset of light-headedness.
“I’ve checked. There’s no report of any accident involving the vehicle you described.”
Annie put out her free hand to grip the edge of Mrs. Williams’s desk. “I see. Well ... that’s good, isn’t it?”
“Ma’am?”
“But then—where is she?”
The sergeant cleared his throat. “Excuse me?”
Annie blinked. “Nothing. I just ... nothing. Thank you very much for your help.”
Her fingers continued to grip the handset even after she had set it down in its cradle.
Mrs. Williams regarded her with worried eyes. “No traffic accident?”
“No.”
“I’m glad to hear that, at least.”
“Yes. So am I.”
“Do you have any idea ... I mean ... Has your sister ever disappeared before?”
“She hasn’t disappeared,” Annie snapped.
Mrs. Williams said nothing.
Annie lowered her head, bit her lip. Her knees were trembling.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “I guess ... I guess she has.”
16
“Anybody there? Can anybody hear me?”
Fists hammering the cellar door. Shock waves of sound echoing in the room.
“If you hear me, please answer! Please!”
Nothing.
Exhausted, Erin turned away from the door and slumped against the wall.
She had expected no response. Her abductor was too smart to hide her in a place frequented by other people. She doubted there was another habitation within a mile of this one.
Still, there was always a chance someone would pass by, near enough to hear her—a mailman on a rural route, a child playing in a forbidden yard, a gas-company meter reader. Anyone.
That was why, several times since waking, she had battered at the door and strained her voice in futile cries.
She assumed it was now noon or shortly after; without a wristwatch or other timepiece, she could judge time only by her schedule of meals. She’d already eaten breakfast—a banana and an orange, accompanied by her next-to-last Tegretol, washed down with lukewarm water from the sillcock—and she was beginning to think about lunch.
The rest of her morning had been spent keeping busy. The dirt and mildew in the room had offended her; she’d set to work with paper towels, scrubbing and cleaning, until the worst of the grime was gone. Next she’d organized the contents of her suitcase, straightened and smoothed the futon’s cotton blanket, dusted the chairs.
Those chores done, she’d stripped off her pajamas and robe, given herself a sponge bath, washed and combed her hair, subjected herself to the humiliating exercise of urination with the help of one of the empty milk jugs left for that purpose, and finally dressed.
She’d started with underpants and a bra, slipping them on with distaste bordering on revulsion. He had handled these items, these most personal garments. Feeling them against her skin had been almost like ... like feeling his hands on her body.
Mustn’t think about it, she’d told herself. Anyway, he had probably worn gloves while packing the suitcase.
Looking through the other clothes he’d brought her, she had selected a cotton shirt, denim shorts, and boots.
The shirt was beige—an optimistic choice. It would blend in with the sere tones of the desert should she find a way to escape.
Escape. Sure.
She might as well have put on a bright red shirt with a target painted on it for all the difference it made. She wasn’t getting out of here.
With that thought, they began to prick at her again—vague and tentative manifestations of claustrophobia, which had been teasing her all morning. She paced the room, fighting to dispel the groundless fear.
Well, of course it was groundless. Utterly irrational. She ought to know; she treated phobias all the time.
The walls were awfully close, though. She could cross from one end of the room to the other in four strides.
Back and forth, back and forth, her perambulations ticking like the strokes of a pendulum.
Low ceiling—she had to dodge the hundred-watt bulb on the chain. The room’s only source of light—if the bulb failed, she would be sealed up in darkness.
Don’t think about it.
She didn’t want to, but the awareness of confinement was getting to her, accelerating her heartbeat, clenching the muscles of her abdomen.
Trapped he
re in this underground chamber—it was like being buried alive.
Suppose her abductor never returned. No one would know where she was.
The meager provisions he’d left would soon run out. The bulb would flicker and fail. In the dark she would starve slowly; deprived of her medicine, she would suffer seizures. Eventually she would die.
But first she would surely go insane.
“Don’t,” she snapped at herself, but the ugly thoughts would not leave her alone.
She sat in her chair and closed her eyes. Willed herself to relax, to go limp. She had done it last night when she was being carried to an unknown fate; she could do it now.
But the stiffness in her neck and shoulders wouldn’t abate, and her breathing still came fast and shallow. She was starting to hyperventilate.
Go away, Erin. Go away to some peaceful spot far from here.
She had visited San Francisco last year. Muir Woods, northwest of the city, had fascinated her. She hadn’t seen such dense stands of trees since her early childhood in California.
Now she pictured herself among the dizzying redwoods, in a place of birdsong and cool shadows and rustling greenery, misty in early morning, the air pregnant with droplets that tingled on her face.
So different from the heat and aridity, the vast spaciousness of the desert. Here in the forest she could see no more than a few yards into the tangled groves. The sun, low over the horizon, was hidden behind thick walls of foliage. Canopied branches shut out the sky, locking the woods in perpetual shade.
Colonnades of tree trunks, scrims of leaves ... all of it close—too close—hemming her in. The moist air, clogging her lungs. Hard to breathe—
Damn.
She stood, her heart hammering against her ribs.
So much for visualization exercises. What was another strategy to control phobic panic?
Distraction.
She had tried that already, when she cleaned her cell. Hopeful of spotting something else to tidy up, she scanned the floor, but the place was immaculate save for two small rectangular cards lying near her suitcase.
Her driver’s license and MasterCard. She’d pocketed them in her robe last night after failing to slip the latch on the door; they must have fallen out when she folded the robe this morning. She picked them up and put them in the side pocket of her shorts.
No other litter to collect, no mess to deal with. No TV or radio to offer a diversion. No reading matter save the file of newspaper clippings, and she hardly expected those to ease her mind.
Nothing, then. Nothing for her to do, except pace and worry, until her abductor returned.
If he ever did.
When she lifted her head to survey the room again, the walls seemed closer than before.
17
“I’d like to report a missing person.” Annie sat rigid at her desk in the office at the back of her shop, clutching the telephone handset, fighting for calm.
“Adult or juvenile?” the T.P.D. desk sergeant asked with mechanical perfunctoriness.
“Adult. My sister. She—”
“Please hold.”
Silence. She stared at a green spray of rhododendron, blooming pink, and hoped she could keep her voice dry of tears.
What time was it, anyway? After three o’clock. Three hours had passed since she’d learned Erin was missing.
Should have called her last night, Annie thought. Should have trusted my intuition. Now it may be too late.
A murmur of voices bled through the door. Someone in the front room—customer or supplier or delivery person—talking with her assistant. She hoped nothing had come up that required her supervision. There had been enough interruptions as it was.
Since returning from her abortive lunch date, all she had wanted to do was pursue her strategy for finding Erin, carrying out a desperate quest via telephone, but there had been constant distractions.
First, she’d had to sign for a delivery of flowers and greens from a local grower; she made such purchases every day to keep her inventory fresh. Then an importer had called to inquire about her need for exotics. Precious minutes had been wasted talking to him.
At two o’clock a local restaurant, one of her regular customers, had faxed an order for a grand arrangement to serve as a centerpiece at a private dinner party tonight. Though it had been hard to concentrate, she’d had to design the bouquet herself, a complex mingling of spring flowers—azaleas, star magnolias, grape hyacinth, Passionale daffodils, and the quintessential seasonal bloom, the primrose.
Through it all a stream of customers had flowed into the shop, many with requests requiring her personal attention. Ordinarily she would have been happy to hear the cash register ring with such exuberance. Today she had other things on her mind.
“Walker, Detective Division.”
The male voice, quietly authoritative, matched her preconception of how a cop should sound.
“Detective? My name is Anne Reilly. I want to report a missing person. My sister, Erin.”
“How long has she been missing?”
“Since this morning, at least.”
“This morning? That’s not a great deal of time. Normally we wait twenty-four hours—”
“No, you can’t wait that long. She’s in trouble. I ... I know she is.”
Oh, good, Annie. Very composed. Why not just burst into sobs and throw yourself on his mercy?
“Take it easy, Ms. Reilly.”
She was grateful for his understanding tone. “Call me Annie.”
“All right, Annie. I’m Michael. Michael Walker. Now tell me, how old is your sister?”
“My age. Thirty. We’re twins.”
“Identical twins?”
“No, not identical. We don’t even look that much alike. She’s tall, I’m short, she’s beautiful, I’m not—we’re opposites.” She realized she was babbling and shut up.
“Is Erin dealing with any personal difficulties that you know of? Depression? Dissatisfaction with her job, her social life?”
“She was feeling fine. I talked to her just yesterday. We made a date for lunch. She never showed up. And she’s not in her apartment or her office—”
“What sort of work does she do?”
“She’s a psychologist. She’s missed all her appointments today. Her car is gone, and nobody knows where she is.”
“Have you been to her home?”
“Yes. She’s not there.”
“Perhaps you could try contacting some of her friends—”
“I’ve done that. I’ve been doing it all afternoon. I took her Rolodex with me when I left her apartment building. For three hours I’ve been on the phone. I called all her friends, her doctor, her dentist, her ophthalmologist, the service station that works on her car, her travel agent, the shelter where she does pro bono work on the weekends, the clinic where she interned, the U. of A. professors she’s kept in touch with, the president of the local branch of the American Psychotherapy Association—”
“What about relatives?”
“We don’t have any.”
“No family at all? Not even out of state?”
“None anyplace.”
“I see.” Walker sounded uncomfortable, as if sensing he’d raised a painful issue. “Her patients, then?”
“One of her associates at work has been making those calls. It has to be handled delicately—you know, not to alarm these people. They depend on Erin.”
“Of course. You realize it’s possible she’s tried to reach you by phone and couldn’t get through. It sounds as if the line has been tied up for hours.”
“I’m using my private office line. If she wanted to talk to me, she could call my shop’s listed number. Or my message machine at home. She hasn’t. I’ve been checking my messages every fifteen minutes.”
“Does Erin have any medical problems?”
“Epilepsy.”
“Frequent seizures?”
“No. She takes medication. She hasn’t had a seizure since we wer
e teenagers.”
Walker hesitated. “There are other possibilities—”
“Like a car accident? I thought of that. Called the Tucson P.D. traffic division right away. Later I tried the highway patrol, the sheriff’s department, even the tribal police on the reservations. Nothing.”
“Hospitals—”
“Phoned every one in the county. Gave them Erin’s name and description. She’s not there. She’s not anywhere.”
“All right, Annie. It sounds as if you’ve been very thorough, but there are a few avenues I can explore before we proceed any further. Give me a description of your sister and the car she was driving. Then let me have ten or fifteen minutes, and I’ll get back to you.”
Annie supplied the information, left her number with him, and hung up. Immediately she called Erin’s apartment again. The message machine answered. She thumbed the phone’s reset button, waited for a dial tone, then used the memory feature to call her own home number.
An irritatingly chipper voice—her voice on tape—greeted her.
“Hi, this is Annie. I’m not home right now, so if you’re a burglar, I’m in trouble. If you need to leave a message, please wait for the tone and then talk. Bye.”
She punched in a two-digit code that activated the playback mechanism. Three beeps answered. No messages.
Annie cradled the phone, then paced the office. Out front, a customer—it sounded like Mrs. Garcia—was saying something about forsythia. Annie thought she really ought to go out and help; Mrs. Garcia was notoriously demanding and it seemed unfair to let her assistant handle the order alone. But she was unwilling to leave the telephone unattended for even a minute, afraid of missing Walker’s call ... or Erin’s.
Ten or fifteen minutes, Walker had said. She flipped through Erin’s Rolodex, hunting for any likely name she might have overlooked. No, she’d called them all.
It didn’t make sense. A car accident, a seizure—horrible though it was, an explanation of that kind was comprehensible. But for Erin to simply vanish, car and all, without a word or a trace—
The phone rang. Instantly she snatched it up. “Yes?”
“Walker here. I’m afraid the couple of things I tried didn’t pan out either.”
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