The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Case

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  But the point about King Tut was that having a chance to get acquainted with the Stanley kids might have more or less the same effect on the kidnappers. After all, it did seem that a bunch of little kids ought to be at least as appealing as a turkey.

  But then, of course, there was Janie. Getting better acquainted with Janie might have the opposite effect. David had to admit that there had been times when he’d wanted to wring her neck himself, and he was her own brother.

  The thing for him to do, he decided after thinking it over, was to do everything he could to get everyone to look and act as good as possible, so that the kidnappers couldn’t help noticing how cute and appealing and good they all were. Because if they really noticed, perhaps it would occur to them how much better they’d feel, when the kidnapping was all over, if the Stanley kids were all in more or less the same condition. But when David explained what he’d been thinking to Amanda, she wasn’t at all sure it would work that way.

  “They’re kidnappers,” she said. “What do they care about people.” But later on, when David started trying to make the kids look a little more appealing, she offered to help.

  It had been very dirty in the back of the kidnap truck, and it wasn’t exactly clean in the cellar, and everyone was looking pretty grungy, so it seemed as if the first step would be to clean everyone up as much as possible. The only water available was the drinking water in the wine jug. It was cold, but it would have to do. In the pile of debris in the corner, David found the bottom half of a big pottery wine jug, which made a pretty good wash basin. Using the end of his bathrobe belt as a washcloth, he and Amanda washed first their own hands and faces and then the little kids’. Fortunately, Amanda had a comb in her jeans’ pocket, so while David washed, she combed. When they had finished, everyone certainly looked a lot neater, and perhaps, David thought hopefully, cuter and more appealing. But the next time the kidnappers came in they didn’t seem to notice, and soon afterwards Janie started a game of building a fort out of stuff from the junk pile, and Blair and Esther got interested and joined in, and before long they were as dirty as ever. So David went back to trying to think of some other ways to keep the kidnappers from getting rid of the Stanleys in the way he didn’t even want to think about.

  There was, of course, escape. Red Mask had warned them about what he would do to anybody who tried to get away. David tried to remember exactly what Red Mask had said. If he remembered correctly, Janie had translated Red Mask’s threat only as “something terrible.” He thought of asking Janie just what Red Mask had threatened to do to an escaper, but he decided it wouldn’t be a good thing to remind her of. He’d just have to risk it, without knowing what the consequences would be if he got caught. Because he was definitely thinking about it.

  He was thinking about it early the next morning. He guessed it was morning, anyway, because the last meal had seemed to be a dinner, and then for a long time, several hours at least, it had been perfectly quiet on the floor above. There had been a motor noise going away into the distance shortly after the last meal, and it had been quiet ever since. What if everyone had gone away? And what if the lock on the cellar door could be picked? It was probably a very old lock without anything like a deadbolt or any other complicated mechanism. Getting out of bed, David rummaged around in the junk pile until he found an old rusty nail that he’d remembered seeing there. Everyone else seemed to be fast asleep.

  It was the first time he’d been on the stairs since he’d staggered down them blindfolded the night before. In the silence the old wood creaked under his feet alarmingly. Several times he stopped to listen, but except for the creak of the stairs when he shifted his weight, he heard nothing at all.

  At the top of the stairs, he reached up and very carefully turned the old handle-type door latch—just to be sure it hadn’t been left unlocked the night before by accident. But no such luck. The latch went down about half an inch and stopped. The door held. The keyhole was just below the latch. Biting his lip and holding his breath, David poked the nail into the keyhole and started prying, first in one direction and then in another. After a moment the nail caught, and the lock seemed to be starting to give. David pressed a little harder—and then something in the keyhole flipped over, the nail fell out of David’s hand, and the door was jerked wide open. Standing in the doorway, two steps above him, was a huge hairy man wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts—and a red mask.

  It was absolutely the most terrifying thing that could possibly happen—like jumping into a deep hole and finding it was full of cobras, or looking out your bedroom window and seeing a werewolf looking in at you. David stared up into the hooded face for what seemed like a lifetime before his shocked mind got the message to his feet. When he finally got turned around and started down the stairs, Red Mask grabbed him. Twisting his arm up behind his back until it seemed about to snap, Red Mask pushed him down the stairs and across the room. Near the cots, he turned David around to face him, took hold of his shoulders and squeezed so hard David thought he felt bones breaking. Then he shook him slowly back and forth, lifted him up and dropped him in a heap on the floor. David covered his head with his arms, thinking he was going to be hit or kicked, but nothing more happened. When he looked up, Red Mask was going back up the stairs.

  That was all. During the whole thing neither of them had said a word. No one else even woke up. Later, David had a bunch of purple bruises on his shoulders and a sore arm—and no more plans about escaping.

  fifteen

  In the cellar there was no way to tell day from night. The one dim bulb in the funnel-shaped shade shone continuously. The only clue to the time of day was when the kidnappers brought food, and the long periods when things got very quiet on the floor above and no one came into the cellar, as if the kidnappers had gone away or perhaps gone to sleep. During the periods that were probably daytime, there were frequent noises overhead, footsteps and other sounds. From time to time it sounded as if someone were approaching or going away in a very noisy car or truck. At times the motor noise grew gradually louder and stopped someplace nearby, and at others it started up suddenly with a loud roar and then diminished into the distance.

  David slept very little, and then for only short periods. Most of the time he spent worrying. He thought a lot about Dad and Molly and how sad and frightened they must be; and of course he worried about himself and the rest of the kids and what was going to happen to all of them.

  By the second day the novelty of the cellar had really worn off, and Blair and Esther had several crying spells about wanting to go home. Even Janie cried once or twice before David thought of asking her to help, especially with Blair and Esther. After that she switched from being the poor, hysterical kidnap victim to being the brave, resourceful underground organizer.

  What David wanted her to do was keep the twins occupied and cheerful—a natural for Janie. She was always able to make a game out of anything, and even in the cellar, where there wasn’t much to play with, she did a great job. First she and the twins rowed down jungle rivers in a packing crate and burrowed through the junk pile pretending they were the rabbits from Watership Down. Then the next day they built a hideout in the corner, out of crates and boxes, and from then on they had some kind of game going back there nearly all the time. After that the little kids almost stopped crying for home, except at night.

  But the other thing Janie insisted on organizing wasn’t all that helpful—and that was escape schemes. After his experience, David had no use for them. But she kept coming up with a new idea several times a day, and they were all pretty wild. Like digging a pit trap at the foot of the steps for the kidnappers to fall into, or breaking the light bulb and then clobbering them when they came downstairs in the dark. Every time David talked her out of one of her ideas, she was very disappointed for a while; and then, before very long, she’d come up with another one.

  Although David had quit thinking about escape plans, he couldn’t stop thinking about what the kidnappers were goin
g to do when they found out there wasn’t going to be any money. He thought about it most of the time until about the fourth day after the kidnapping, when something happened that gave him something else to think about.

  It began with the motor noise starting up outside and fading away—apparently someone had left the hideout. David noticed particularly because it was between lunch and dinner, and usually the sounds of people arriving and departing happened before breakfast and after dinner. In fact, he and Amanda had been developing a theory about the schedule. The theory was that Gino and Pietro were in charge of the hideout and the captives during the day, and when the motor noises started after dinner it meant that they were going away for the night and Red Mask was arriving. There were some definite clues. For one thing Gino and Pietro were always the ones who served the meals and did other chores around the cellar, such as emptying the toilet. And David certainly had good reason to suspect that Red Mask slept at the hideout during the night. Of course there had been times when all three of them had been there at once, but that seemed to happen only on special occasions, like when the ransom note was written.

  David was still thinking about the out-of-phase motor noise when the door of the cellar opened and one of the black masks came in alone. It was Gino, the smallest one. Closing and locking the door behind him, he sat down on the top step and stayed there, just watching as if he were looking at animals at the zoo. Hunched over up there near the ceiling, black and shiny and faceless, he looked like some kind of weird bird of prey, and for a while his presence made David uneasy.

  Amanda hardly noticed him, however, and after the first few minutes, the little kids seemed to get used to being watched and went back to playing with some ants they’d found crawling up the wall in the corner. David remembered then about the King Tut theory and wished he’d insisted on cleaning everyone up more recently. He was beginning to think about what the kids might do to look more cute and appealing, when suddenly Gino said, “Janie, venite qui.”

  David didn’t dare tell her not to, so Janie climbed up the stairs and for a long time she perched up there beside the kidnapper and chatted away as if he were an old friend. Hoping desperately she was being appealing, and that she wasn’t saying things she wasn’t supposed to, David listened intently, picking up a few words and phrases now and then that meant something to him, but not enough to really get the drift of the conversation—and kicking himself mentally for not working harder at his Italian.

  Then the motor sound began again, in the distance at first and then getting closer, and Gino got up quickly and went out. As soon as he had gone, David pounced on Janie and demanded that she tell him everything that had been said.

  “Well,” Janie said. “We were mostly talking about movies. Gino likes movies a lot. He wanted to know about movies I’ve seen, and if I’d seen Guerra Stellare, you know, Star Wars, and if I liked it. And if I’d ever seen any movie stars, and then Gino asked me if—”

  David interrupted. “You didn’t call him Gino, did you?”

  “No, of course not. I remembered what you said about not knowing who they are so we can’t tell on them after they let us loose.”

  “But if you think of him as Gino, you might forget and call him that when you’re talking to him.”

  Janie looked offended. “I won’t forget. A person with an IQ of one hundred and forty-five doesn’t forget about things like not calling kidnappers by their names. When a person with an IQ of one hundred and forty-five talks to a kidnapper, she simply asks him a lot of questions so he’ll make a mistake and tell her some clues that give away secrets, like where their hideout is, or what they’re planning to do next.”

  “Janie, no! That’s just what we don’t want to do. We don’t want to know their names or who they are or anything else about them. And we don’t want any clues. Because if they should make a mistake and let something slip out, they’ll probably realize it afterwards; and then they’ll never let us go—at least not alive. Is that what you want to have happen?”

  “No.” Janie finally looked as if she might really be beginning to take what David was saying seriously.

  “Look, Janie. If he makes you talk to him again, don’t ask him any questions at all. Just talk to him about—about us. Tell him about what a great family we have and how our parents must be worried to death, and how bad it is for little kids like Blair and Esther to be away from their parents for so long. Talk a lot about Blair and Esther. You know, about how young they are, and how everyone thinks they’re so cute, and how some people think Blair looks like an angel.”

  “Okay. But I guess I’d better not tell him about how Blair has things like ESP sometimes, because then he might guess that Blair knows who they are.”

  “Blair knows who who are?” David asked.

  Janie giggled. “You sound like an owl,” she said. “You said who who,” and she giggled some more.

  “Knock it off, Janie. This is serious. Blair knows who—I mean, who is it that Blair knows who they are?”

  “The kidnappers. But don’t worry. You don’t have to know. I’m not going to tell who they are. And you know how Blair is. He won’t tell you either unless you ask him.”

  David was beginning to feel as if something in his head was flying into pieces. Grabbing Janie he shook her and said, “Tell me! Who are they?” in a frantic-sounding whisper.

  Janie pulled away from him, looking indignant. “You just said you didn’t want to know who they were.”

  “I said we shouldn’t try to find out who they are,” David said. “Who are they?”

  Janie’s face took on her maddening “I-can’t-believe-how-dumb-ordinary-people-can-be” expression. “David, for someone who’s twelve years old, you aren’t very logical sometimes. You just said—”

  “Look, Janie. I don’t want to know what I just said. I want to know who they are.”

  “Well, okay, but remember, it’s your fault. You made me tell you. Blair says they’re Marzia’s brothers. At least two of them are. I don’t think Blair knows about that other one—the one in the red mask.

  “Marzia’s brothers. How does Blair know that?”

  “How do I know how Blair knows things? But after he told me, I remembered that Marzia said one of her brothers was named Gino. And I’m not sure but I think she mentioned a Pietro, too.”

  David felt absolutely stunned. He and Amanda had fooled around with the idea that Marzia had been responsible for giving information to the kidnappers—perhaps by accident—but it had never occurred to him that they might be her brothers. He’d known that Marzia had brothers—several of them—but he’d thought of them as being kids. He remembered now that two of them were older than she was, but he was sure they were only a little older. Like maybe around fifteen or sixteen. And the kidnappers were men—or were they. With the hoods it was hard to tell.

  Other clues began to pop into his head. If two of the kidnappers were Marzia’s brothers, that would certainly explain how they knew so much about the Stanley family—like the fact that Dad and Molly were away, and that Amanda would probably go out to meet Hilary if he asked her to.

  Then there were other things. There were the small trucks that had been parked near the house where Marzia’s family lived—the kind of truck that had been used in the kidnapping. And the motorcycles. Now that he thought about it, he realized that the loud motor noises they’d been hearing just outside the hideout were more like motorcycles than like cars, or even trucks. And hadn’t Olivia said something about Marzia’s brothers having motorcycles?

  When you put it all together, it did seem to fall into a pattern. There was even what Olivia had said about the Lino family being very poor since their father had died, and how they all hated living with their uncle and depending on his charity. So that was one more reason to believe the brothers might be willing to do almost anything to get some money—like maybe even a kidnapping.

  “You stay here,” David said to Janie, and he went over to where Blair was sitting o
n a box on the other side of the cellar. He was still playing with the ants, making a little bridge out of sticks for them to get up on the box where he’d put a little pile of bread crumbs.

  “Blair,” David said, “what makes you think the kidnappers are Marzia’s brothers?”

  Blair looked up and smiled. He put another stick on the bridge and then stood up slowly. Looking very thoughtful he nodded. “They are,” he said. “Didn’t you know?”

  “No, I don’t know who they are. How do you know?”

  Blair’s face puckered into a puzzled expression. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just know.”

  “And how about the big one? Who is he?”

  Blair hardly ever frowned, but this time he did something that was definitely a frown. “I don’t like him,” he said. “I don’t like that one.” And that was all. David went on asking questions, but he wasn’t able to find out anything more from Blair.

  Although, to David, it seemed terribly important to find out if the two kidnappers really were Marzia’s brothers, Amanda didn’t agree at all. When David told her, she listened without making any comments until he was all finished, and then she said, “I told you Marzia didn’t like me.”

  “I don’t think this proves anything about Marzia,” David said. “In fact, if they are her brothers, it just proves that they could easily have gotten all the information they needed without anyone really telling them anything. They probably overheard Ghita and Marzia talking about all of us lots of times.”

  Sitting hunched over on the end of her cot, Amanda barely seemed to hear what David was saying.

  “Don’t you think so?” David asked.

  She shrugged. “What difference does it make who they are? Whoever they are, they’re kidnappers, aren’t they?”

  Now that he knew, David couldn’t see why he hadn’t noticed a lot sooner that both Gino and Pietro were very young. Of course, the hoods made it difficult to tell, and they were as tall as some grown men, but there were other things he could have noticed—their hands and wrists, for instance, the pitch of their voices, and even the way they moved. It seemed very obvious now, especially when you compared them to Red Mask, who was not only taller, but thicker, louder, angrier, and a whole lot more frightening.