Taken

by Chris Jordan

  “That’s not possible. You’re bluffing.”

  “Am I? How about this—you like to joke about a ‘perfect ten’ being ten years old. Your pedophile pals find it very amusing. In fact one of your many screen names is P–10.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “God has nothing to do with it, Dr. Monk. Blame it on the Child Pornography Task Force. That’s where I come in. I’m the agent-in-charge of the Child Pornography Task Force, New York. Which gives me access to all the hi-tech goodies, including some rather amazing spyware that’s going to put your nuts in a blender.”

  “Spyware?” blusters Munk, who clearly understands the terminology and grasps what it implies. “But the firewalls—I thought…”

  His voice trails off, unable to complete the sentence, as it all sinks in. “You know the amazing thing?” Cutter says, training the pistol on Munk’s jean-clad scrotum. “Sickos like you always manage to convince themselves that a thirty-nine-dollar piece of firewall software can protect them. What a joke. It’s like using a piece of cheap cardboard to stop a speeding bullet. Our task force uses a spyware program developed by the NSA, on loan to Treasury. You know what the program is called? Creepster. Because it finds creeps like you, Dr. Munk. It finds you and lives in your computer and every time you go on the Internet, Creepster reports directly to me, and makes a record of everything you’ve done and said, everywhere you’ve gone on the Internet, every image you’ve looked at. Every keystroke, every downloaded file. I know your screen names, your passwords. I know every dirty, sick thing about you.”

  That isn’t strictly true, about the NSA developing the program, but Cutter figures the doctor has heard of the National Security Agency, and that it will impress him. In actual fact, the spyware had been liberated from a counterterrorist intelligence unit assigned to Delta Force. Payment for the shaft job he’d gotten from the Army Special Operations Force, their ever-so-polite suggestion that he’d be more comfortable as a civilian. In that desperate hour he’d offered to take a drop in rank, or even return to the enlisted ranks, but the offer was declined “without prejudice.” Meaning shut up about what you did and please go away. So he’d burned the very useful spyware program onto a CD and smuggled it out, with the intention of selling it on the black market. Good thing he hadn’t, as it had made everything else possible. No spyware, no mission, simple as that. Spyware that had allowed him to explore every digitized aspect of Stanley Munk’s complicated life and find a way to make him malleable.

  The good doctor—and he’s a very good doctor, as far as that goes—is the founder of one of the most exclusive and successful surgical clinics on the East Coast. The clinic rakes in millions in fees, enough to support himself and his five partners in high style—much, much more than any of them could have commanded in the public hospital sector.

  Near as Cutter can determine, none of the medical partners is aware of or share in Munk’s sexual proclivities. His trophy wife—third in a line of trim, tiny-breasted little blondes—has no clue. He’s never been arrested, never been reported, never been caught, and when he seeks actual flesh-and-blood victims, he apparently ventures to safe foreign locales like Thailand and Bangkok and the Philippines, where his anonymity can be assured.

  Sick bastard is careful but not, as it happens, careful enough.

  “What do you want?” Munk asks, managing to sound both plaintive and angry. “Money?”

  Cutter leans in, using his killer smile, and is gratified to see the good doctor wince, pressing himself against the wall. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.

  “What I want,” Cutter says, “is for you to understand what is at stake. I have in my possession, and duplicated on agency files, evidence that links you to possession and exchange of illegal child pornography. If this evidence is introduced into normal channels, you will certainly be arrested. If convicted, you may or may not serve time, depending on the deal your lawyer cuts, but you will be registered as a sex offender. No way to avoid it.”

  “Oh, my God,” Munk blubbers. “Oh, my God.” Panting like he’s about to be physically ill, as if he can taste the gorge rising in his throat.

  “Luckily, you have a rare skill. One that’s going to make things right for both of us.”

  For the first time in the most terrifying five minutes of his life, Dr. Stanley Munk looks hopeful. “What do you want?” he asks.

  “An exchange of value,” Cutter says. “We’re going to help each other.”

  “I’m listening,” Munk says.

  Cutter leans back in the chair, lets the man think about it for a crucial minute or so. Tenderizing his enormous ego, an ego that won’t let him admit that despite being brilliant and successful, he’s allowed his sick sexual deviance to put him in peril.

  “I can make all of this evidence disappear,” Cutter tells him, nodding at the laptop. “In exchange, you will arrange for the admission of a new patient at your clinic. You will schedule a certain procedure for the day after tomorrow, and then let your famous hands do their magic. That’s it.”

  “New patient?” Munk’s eyes light up, convinced he’s figured it all out. “So that’s what this is all about! You’re the new patient.”

  Cutter smiles, shakes his head. “Not me,” he says. “My son.”

  32

  one thin dime

  Tomas has been walking the wall edge for an hour. Or maybe for ten minutes. Without a watch or a clock or window or a television there’s no good way to gauge the passage of time. He’s tried counting his pulse, but doesn’t know how fast his heart beats, so it tells him nothing useful. Not that knowing what time it is would make any difference to his present situation. Whatever time it is, time is running out.

  He must find a way to escape or he will die. Of this, Tomas is certain. Steve is going to kill him, or do something that’s even worse than death. Something so bad it can’t be imagined. Not that Steve threatened to hurt him. The man promised to take care of him, to make sure he wasn’t hurt again by the men he called the wild boys.

  “No more wild boys,” he had promised, holding Tomas so close against his chest that the boy could feel the thumping of his heart. “They’ve been taken care of, son. Fired, I mean.”

  The way he sometimes called Tomas “son” makes the boy shiver inside. Something is wrong with Steve, inside his head. At first he’d seemed better than the other two, who had cursed at him for wetting the bed. But when he’d taken off the black ski mask and made Tomas look at his face, the boy had sensed that something was terribly wrong with him. He had no experience with mental illness, so Tomas didn’t know if the man who called himself Steve was insane or just so deeply unhappy about something that it had made him sick in the head. Whatever it was, he was all twisted up inside. It made him smell, too. A stink of bone-deep anger that frightened Tomas even more than the sneering violence of the wild boys who had broken his nose and promised to kill him.

  The stinky smell made Tomas want to barf, it was that bad. Smell like that story in the book when he was little, about the Stinky Cheese Man. It was a funny story, really, but for a while it had been scary, just thinking about a stinky cheese man, a weird little guy with a round wheel of cheese for a head, and Tomas used to ask his mother to look under the bed and promise he wasn’t there. Which she always did, and in a way that never made fun of his being scared of the dark.

  Good old Mom. It was her voice he listened to now, in the white room. Telling him to get out.

  Use your brain, young man. Use your brain and find a way out RIGHT NOW.

  That’s why he was walking the edge of the room, looking for a way to escape. Because she’d want him to, because she’d insist he not give up. More than anything, Mom hates quitters. Quitters and complainers. Tomas learned that early, and it was confirmed when his father died. Mom never complained about Dad dying, she just got to work and tried to make things better. Worked so hard all day, cooking and baking and on the phone, that sometimes she’d fall asleep at the dinner table, waiting for him
to finish. When that happened he’d get his own special blanket from the bedroom and cover her. The blanket that kept him safe would keep her safe, too. That’s what he’d believed at the time, because he was too little to know any better. Part of him still believed it. Part of him wanted his blanket right now. Wanted to curl up and be four years old and not have to worry about the real stinky cheese man, the one who was sick in the head and sometimes called him “son,” as if he was confused, as if he didn’t quite know who Tomas really was.

  Has to be a way out, if only he can find it. He’s discovered that the walls are made of heavy plywood—he can feel the grain of it under the white paint—and the floor is concrete. Probably the ceiling is plywood, too, but he can’t tell for sure because he can’t reach that high. The dresser is gone and even if he stands on top of the stupid potty-chair he can’t touch the ceiling, can’t touch the bare bulb that lights the room. The door is made of metal and, if anything, it feels more solid than the heavy plywood walls. Even if he finds a way to get through the door, he knows there’s another door beyond it, equally heavy and impenetrable.

  Has to be the walls. Once a couple years ago a squirrel got trapped in the attic because Tomas must have left a window open. Then Mom closed the window and that night the squirrel chewed right through the attic roof and escaped. Tomas had been amazed by the tooth marks, and by the frantic will of the squirrel, grinding through solid wood to get out. Like he’d read where wolves and coyotes sometimes chewed off their own feet to get out of a trap. Or that guy out in the wilderness who hacked off his leg to get out from under a boulder, and then crawled ten miles to the nearest town.

  Tomas isn’t ready to cut off his own limbs, but he feels like that mad squirrel, ready to chew through solid wood. Only, his teeth aren’t sharp enough. If he had a jackknife he could whittle a hole and then make it bigger, but the only knife he owns is in his top drawer at home, along with his albums of baseball cards and the ball recovered after his first home run. He had three home runs so far, but had decided to keep only the first ball, because keeping all of them was like bragging about it, and Major Leaguers like A-Rod never bragged.

  Unable to find a workable seam on the wall—nothing his fingernails can get at—he veers for the pile of food and water left by Stinky Steve. Enough granola bars and breakfast cereal for more than a dozen meals, along with a half gallon of milk, a case of bottled water and a plastic Tupperware bowl for the cereal. There’s no way to keep the milk cool and it’s already going sour, so Tomas had tried eating Frosted Flakes with water instead of milk. That was disgusting, so he eats the cereal right out of the box, like Mom won’t let him do at home.

  A dozen meals was enough for at least four days, if he doesn’t pig out. Does that mean Stinky Steve won’t be back for four days? Maybe, maybe not. But Tomas figures this may be his only chance to escape, if he can only find a way.

  Munching on a handful of Frosted Flakes, he returns to the room perimeter, looking for something, anything. And that’s when he sees it, stuck where the plywood meets the concrete floor.

  A dime.

  Tomas gets down on his knees, puts his clotted-up nose to the floor and eyeballs the dime. Pries at it with his nubby fingers and almost dies when the dime starts to disappear under the bottom edge of the plywood, like a bug slinking out of sight.

  Fighting tears, he stops what he’s doing and thinks about it. Has to be a way to get the dime out. Can’t push it. Needs something flat, like a knife blade, to pry it from the side. But if he had a knife he wouldn’t need the dime, would he? Stupid. Use your brain, dirtball. Think of a way to pry it out from under the plywood.

  What he does, he empties the sour milk into the potty-chair—truly disgusting—and tears the plastic jug with his teeth. Harder than he thought it would be, tearing the milk jug, but he finally gets it started and then the whole thing rips apart in his hands and he has a strip of flimsy plastic thin enough to fit under the bottom edge of the plywood.

  A minute later, triumphant, he has a dime in his hands. Remaining on his knees, he uses the edge of the dime to scrape along the butted seams of the plywood wall. Finding the dimple of filler that hides a screw head.

  He scrapes away the filler, exposing the screw head. Uses his fingernails to clean out the slots. Sets the edge of the dime into the slot and tries to turn the screw.

  The dimes slips, falls from his hands. Rolls around. He tracks it with the same sharp eyes that can focus on a moving ground ball, and when the dime lies still he picks it up and tries again. Putting more weight into it this time, gripping the coin with all his might. The screw moves a quarter turn and stops and the dime jumps out of his hands again.

  Takes forever to find the dime where it rolled up against the foam mattress. This time, before setting the dime into the slot, he studies the screw and realizes he’s been turning it the wrong way, tightening the screw rather than loosening it.

  Left to right tightens, right to left loosens. Good to know.

  Fearful that the slots on the screw head are getting worn, he scrapes away the dimple of filler from another screw and tries that, remembering to turn the other way.

  Three minutes later, his whole body shaking with excitement, he has removed the first screw from the wall.

  33

  good night, irene

  Jackals with blue eyes. That’s what Maria Savalo calls our friends in the media. Mostly local TV-news folks, with satellite trucks and boom antennas and big hair, but I recognize at least one print reporter from the Fairfax Weekly. Frankly, the poor woman looks a little frightened by the violent enthusiasm of her TV colleagues, who appear ready to stampede at a sudden noise or, as it happens, the sight of me emerging from the police station in handcuffs.

  “KATE!” they roar. “KAAAAAATE!”

  As if they know me. As if we’re old friends. Lunging with microphones on poles. One of the padded microphones clobbers Deputy Sheriff Crebbins in the side of the head, and I’m not so secretly pleased to see him wince with surprise, if not pain. Back in the station the smug little man sounded so certain of my guilt. That self-satisfied glint in his eye as they took fingerprints, snapped mug shots. As if he, too, knows me intimately, has so deeply communed with my soul that he can discern the impulse to kill.

  Mug shots. It won’t take long for the tabloids to obtain copies of the very unflattering photographs of Mrs. Katherine Ann Bickford looking stunned as she is compelled to hold up a slate with her name and arrest numbers. Crebbin will probably be handing them out as party favors.

  I never thought about how unfair mug shots are, how they make anyone look like a criminal. Put name and numbers under a harshly lit head shot and Mother Teresa herself would look like a felon. And I, obviously, am no Mother Teresa. I’m the killer mom who hid a body in the freezer with the frozen cookie dough and the lobster-stuffed ravioli, the she-devil who kidnapped her own son, the monster with the minivan.

  A couple of Fairfax’s finest deputies have me firmly by the arms, hands cuffed behind my back. They’re leading me from the police station to the police van that will transport me to the county courthouse. All part of the elaborate arraignment dance choreographed by my attorney, after hurried negotiations with the state prosecutor. With me in the lead role, however reluctantly.

  “You’ll be fine!” Maria shouts beside me. My little cheerleader, all five feet of her almost disappearing beneath the surging crowd. “Everything will be okay!”

  Maybe, maybe not. If all goes well, I will be booked, arraigned and released on bond. Out by noon, possibly. Fingers crossed. The prosecutor will not oppose bail, but as Maria reminds me, final determination will be up to the court. There’s always the chance that an unsympathetic judge, or one who plays to the media, will deny bail and order me held over for trial. I’ve been informed that we will be appearing before Judge Irene “Good Night” Mendez, rated as moderate-to-conservative, so it could go either way.

  The nickname comes from the song, apparently, and has n
othing to do with putting the lights out on felons. Or so Maria wants me to believe. As if concerned about how I’ll react. Wanting to avoid a client meltdown, especially in public.

  How do I react? With numbness, shock, disbelief. Several days of being told an arrest is probably imminent failed to prepare me for the reality. For the humiliation of a felony-arrest booking, the full-bore assault by the media, the knee-knocking realization that mere innocence does not guarantee exoneration.

  Shane is nowhere to be seen. Camera shy. Last thing I’d said to him, before leaving for the station was “Find my son.”

  He’d promised to do his best. I believe him, but will his best be good enough? I can’t bear the thought of being locked up while Tommy is still out there, at the mercy of the man in the mask. But it’s out of my hands. All I can do, all that lies within my limited power, is to trust my attorney.

  Just before we arrive at the police van, a grinning, anorexic blonde with an outstretched microphone manages to worm her way to the front.

  “Mrs. Bickford, were you having an affair with the victim?” she demands breathlessly.

  Victim? For a moment I don’t know who she’s referring to. Probably because I feel like the victim here. But of course she means Fred Corso. Savalo has warned me not to answer any question. To keep, as she says, my lips firmly zipped. But I can’t let that one stand. What would Fred’s poor wife think if I refused to answer?

  “No, of course not,” I say. “He was a good friend.”

  “A good friend? Then why did you kill him?”

  The cops pull me away before I can formulate an answer, and no doubt my startled expression—and my silence—will be featured on the local broadcasts.

  Guilt all over me. I never harmed Fred Corso, but I feel guilty anyhow, and it shows.

  Another few yards of struggle and I’m being pushed into the van, one of the officers keeping my head down, and then we’re under way. Padded microphones bumping against the windows like malignant palm fronds, a fading roar of questions from my newfound friends.