by Lois Duncan
There were shrieks and giggles.
A shrill voice cried, “Hey, guys, wait for me!”
Then they were gone. Wearily, Karen let her legs collapse onto the floor. She had been sustaining herself on hope and hiding from reality. Help was there, all right. It was only a matter of yards away in all directions, but she was not going to be able to attract it unless a miracle occurred.
She closed her eyes tightly, forcing back tears. I won’t cry! she told herself. I won’t let myself go to pieces. I’ll keep thinking, keep trying to find some answer, as long as I possibly can.
Then something strange happened. Shut off from the world as she was by her own sealed eyelids, Karen experienced the sudden realization that she was no longer alone. It was not as though she heard or felt anything definite, yet she was aware of another presence in the kitchen.
She opened her eyes, and the child was there. It was the child, the elf from the garden. Although the little girl had her back turned toward her, Karen recognized her at once by the set of the small shoulders and the flood of corn-silk hair.
Help me! she tried to cry to her.
The only sound she could produce was a soft moaning deep in her throat.
The child did not acknowledge Karen’s presence directly, but she did seem aware that someone was observing her. Slowly, she tilted back her head and directed her gaze upward toward the top of the kitchen doorway. She held this position until Karen looked up also and saw something that she hadn’t really paid attention to before—the smoke alarm in the ceiling.
The smoke alarm! Why didn’t she think of this before? On the front of the stove there was a line of dials that activated the burners, and two of them were within reach of her feet.
Quite suddenly, her legs no longer felt tired. Clumsy as the process would be, she was certain that if she worked at it long enough she would be able to manipulate the two nearest dials with the tip of one of her shoes.
The doorway was empty now. The child had gone. But not too far.
Karen raised her feet and began to nudge at the dial that was situated closest to her. She had been kicking at it for several minutes when it occurred to her that what she was attempting to do might be dangerous. From her prone position, there was no way that she could determine with any certainty whether the stove was gas or electric. If it was gas, and she kicked the burners on, she would be releasing poisonous vapor into the room.
She assessed this possibility and then discarded it. Although she had nothing more than intuition upon which to base her assumption, she felt strangely confident that the stove was electric and that this escape scheme was going to work. She trusted the child; it was that simple. She felt a quiet sense of certainty that the little girl loved her and would do nothing that would hurt her.
Twisting her ankles, Karen struggled to work her feet into a better position to rotate the knob. She tried to recall if this was the burner across which her mom’s rain scarf had been thrown. She had been so frightened at the time that the scarf was ripped from her head that she hadn’t taken notice of exactly where it had fallen.
Please let this be it, she prayed. Let this be the one.
Time moved by slowly. The muted light in the kitchen grew even dimmer, and Karen became aware that in that outside world beyond the curtained window it had once again resumed raining. Dampness seeped into the room, calling up other musty odors from cabinets and walls and warped linoleum. Neighborhood children returned from school with a clatter of bikes and voices and went banging and shouting into their apartments. TV sets and stereos went on. The sound of rock music slid through the walls and meshed with the beeps and shrieks of voices on video games.
Karen continued to work at turning the dial. She never knew the exact moment she reached her goal. The room was so dim by then that she could no longer see what she was doing.
Her first indication of success was when she began to smell what she would afterward remember as the most beautiful fragrance in the world: the acrid odor of wet and melting plastic.
CHAPTER 14
It didn’t surprise Karen to learn that the children were gone. It was as though, during the course of that endless and unbelievable day, she had reached a point where nothing could ever surprise her again.
She listened stoically as a balding police officer named Sergeant Rice informed her of what had occurred.
“They took twelve children,” he told her, “all of them infants. They had a laundry truck parked in the alley behind the building. A couple of people in the neighborhood remember seeing it there, but they assumed it was making a delivery. The woman who was passing herself off as your aunt evidently let the man in through the back while her assistant was across the street getting a Coke. He carted those babies out like they were dirty laundry. Then she got into the van with him, and they took off.”
“There was another car besides the van,” Karen said.
“We know about that. It’s still parked in front of the day care center. We checked it out and found out that it’s a stolen vehicle. The owner lives in Dallas.”
They were talking in the Connors’ living room. Karen’s parents had refused to take her over to the center.
“That place is a madhouse,” her mother said. “The police are dusting for fingerprints, parents are screaming and crying, and Mrs. Dunn is having hysterics. The last thing you need right now is to be exposed to all that.”
“You’ve been over there?” Karen asked her.
“Of course, for hours! I tried calling you there around the middle of the morning and couldn’t get anyone on the phone. When it was still busy twenty minutes later, and you didn’t answer your cell phone, I got in the car and drove over to see what was going on. The police had just gotten there. It was pure chaos even then!”
Now, at seven thirty in the evening, Mrs. Connors looked almost as exhausted as Karen felt. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her face had a haggard, caved-in look.
“Are you finished with Karen now?” she asked the police sergeant. “If so, she needs to get some rest.”
“I think we’ve covered everything.” Sergeant Rice consulted his notebook. “Your daughter’s description of the woman, ‘Betty,’ matches the one that was given to us by the people at the center. Nobody else seems to have seen the man, ‘Joe,’ so in his case Karen’s description is all we have to go on. Maybe somebody at the Tumbleweed can add something. We’ll be interviewing the other tenants later this evening.”
“Let us know if there’s anything we can do,” Mr. Connors said. “We’re so grateful to have our own daughter home safe. I can imagine the hell those other poor parents are going through.”
“The van was blue,” Karen volunteered. “It had ‘Sanicare Laundry’ printed on the side.”
“We’ll get that out on the radio,” Sergeant Rice said. “I would guess, though, that they’ve long since gotten rid of the lettering. It was probably put on with something that could be peeled right off.”
“I wish I’d thought to memorize the license plate,” Karen said. “Everything happened so fast. I realize now that I didn’t do any of the things I should have.”
“You got yourself out,” the police sergeant reminded her. “If you hadn’t gotten the manager’s attention by setting off that smoke alarm, you’d still be lying there in that kitchen two months from now. That’s how far in advance those people paid their rent.”
“She was incredibly lucky,” Mr. Connors said.
“She made her own luck.” Sergeant Rice heaved himself up out of the depths of the armchair in which he had been sitting and got heavily to his feet. “Karen, if you think of anything you haven’t already told us, call immediately. Keep going back over things in your mind. Details that didn’t seem important at the time may turn out to be something that helps us find them.”
They exchanged good nights, and Karen’s father accompanied the police officer to the door.
The moment the two men were out of the room, Mrs. Connors turned accus
ingly to her daughter. “Since you were a little girl, I’ve warned you against accepting rides from strangers. How could you have done such a stupid and dangerous thing?”
“It seemed so harmless,” Karen said. “The woman looked nice and so… sort of… ordinary. She said she was trying to find the center, and that was where I was going. It seemed natural to try to help her.”
“You could have died in that apartment,” her mother said. “Did you hear what that policeman just said? It would have been months before anybody went in there and found you! It’s a miracle that you’re here and alive right now.”
“Yes, I know,” Karen agreed.
“And those poor little children!”
“Mom, I know I was responsible for this awful thing happening. You don’t have to keep reminding me; I feel terrible enough already.” She regarded her mother miserably. “I can’t keep talking about it. I’m going upstairs.”
“Don’t you want some dinner?” Mrs. Connors asked her.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You need to eat something. I’ll heat up some soup. None of us have eaten since breakfast.”
“All right,” Karen said, giving in, because it was easier than arguing. “First, though, I want to take a shower.”
She left the room quickly, in hopes of avoiding further discussion. When she reached the foot of the stairs, however, something made her pause.
For a long moment she stood there, frozen, her hand already on the banister and one foot half-raised to place on the lowest step. Then, slowly, she lowered her foot, turned, and retraced her steps back down the hall to the living room.
Her mother was still seated on the sofa. Her shoulders were slumped, and she looked older than Karen could ever remember having seen her.
“Why did you try to call me?” Karen asked her.
Her mother’s eyes sharpened. “What do you mean?”
“You said that you tried my cell phone and called me at the center,” Karen said. “You don’t usually do that. What did you want?”
“I don’t recall,” Mrs. Connors said. “It couldn’t have been about anything important.”
“What were you doing when you decided to call me?” When her mother didn’t answer, Karen asked, “Were you folding laundry?”
“Why do you ask a thing like that?”
“I saw you,” Karen said. “Just as I fell, I saw you. You were standing in front of the dryer, folding a sheet. You looked as though you’d just seen a ghost.”
“You and your visions!” Mrs. Connors exclaimed in exasperation. “Haven’t they caused us enough unhappiness? I don’t want to discuss it any further, not now or ever.” She changed the subject. “What kind of soup do you want, chicken noodle or split pea?”
There was a moment of silence.
“Which kind?”
“Chicken,” Karen said wearily.
“I’m going to go ahead and start cooking,” her mother told her. “Hurry up with your shower, or the food will be ready before you are.”
With a sigh of defeat, Karen reentered the hall and climbed the stairs. Ensconced in the second-floor bathroom, she pulled off her top and skirt and let them drop to the tile floor. The smell of smoke and the sour stench of nervous perspiration almost overwhelmed her. Trying not to gag at the combination of odors, she gathered up the soiled clothes and stuffed them hastily into the laundry hamper. When she slammed down the lid, she told herself determinedly that she was sealing away the whole horrible day.
She reached into the shower and turned on the water full volume, adjusting the temperature so that it ran as hot as she could stand it. Then she stepped into the steaming stall and stood beneath the torrent of water, rotating slowly so that the thin, fierce needles could stab at every pore of her skin.
The raw areas that the twine had scraped around her wrists and ankles felt as though they were being seared with acid. Glancing down at her upper right arm, she could see four purple bruises forming an even line against the pale skin. Directly opposite, and already turning an ugly yellow around the edges, there was a fifth bruise, slightly larger and darker than the others.
Karen shuddered and twisted her arm so that it was positioned directly under the stream of pounding water. In her mind, she saw a blue van filled with babies. It wasn’t a vision; it was simply a mental picture, and she refused to look at it.
I will not obsess about the children, she told herself. It’s not as if I can do anything to help them. The police are out there searching. It’s their responsibility. They’re the ones with the authority and the manpower. They can radio out descriptions and set up roadblocks. Finding people is what they’ve been trained to do.
Finding people… the way they found Carla Sanchez? No! Karen screamed silently in response to the monstrous question that rose from the teeming shadows at the back of her brain. Nothing terrible is going to happen to those children. People don’t kidnap babies in order to kill them. They’re alive and safe, and once a ransom has been paid, they’ll be returned to their parents.
Desperate for another subject to think about, she focused on the latest confrontation with her mother. It had been confusing. It was true that her mother had been under a great deal of stress that day. That alone, however, could not have accounted for the way she had reacted when Karen had questioned her about her attempted phone calls. Mrs. Connors was not a person who did things on impulse. She had to have had a reason for calling both Karen’s cell phone and then the center, and Karen was sure that it had been triggered by whatever it was that had happened that morning in the laundry room. The expression of shock that she had seen on her mother’s face in the vision she had experienced at the apartment had not been imagined. It had been very real.
What does it mean? Karen asked herself. What could her mother have witnessed alone there that had frightened her so much that it had caused her to drop the sheet she was folding and rush to the phone? And why wouldn’t she talk about it?
By this time, the water had been running so long that it was barely tepid, and Karen’s skin had begun to wrinkle. She was trying to decide whether or not to get out of the shower when the decision was made for her by a rap on the bathroom door and the muffled sound of her mother’s voice attempting to call something to her over the noise of the running water.
Karen twisted the faucet dial to the off position and opened the door of the shower stall.
“Yes? What is it?” she called back.
“You’d better dry off and get dressed,” her mother told her. “A police officer’s here, and he wants to talk with you.”
“I thought we were finished,” said Karen. “I told him everything I could think of.”
“This isn’t Sergeant Rice,” said her mother. “It’s that other one—what was his name?—Officer Wilson. It’s the man who drove you out to the Valley to look for the Sanchez girl. He says there’s something he needs to discuss with you in private.”
“I can’t imagine what it could be,” Karen said. “I’ve already given all the information I have to Sergeant Rice.”
“I told him that,” said Mrs. Connors. “I also told him you were exhausted and not up to seeing anybody unless it was absolutely necessary. He won’t go away. He says this is important.”
Karen drew a deep breath.
“Okay,” she said reluctantly. “Tell him I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
The silence that followed was so prolonged that she was beginning to think that her mother had left to go back downstairs, but then Mrs. Connors spoke again.
“You probably do have to talk with him. He is a police officer. There’s no reason, though, that I can see why any police officer needs to speak with a young girl in private. I think it’s your right to have your parents with you.”
If the statement had been put in the form of a question—such as “Do you want Dad and me to be with you when you talk with him?”—Karen’s response would have been immediate and positive. She had no desire to see Rob Wilson again at
all, much less to be alone with him.
As usual, however, her mother’s presumptive attitude aroused automatic obstinacy.
“I’ll see him alone, if that’s what he wants,” Karen told her.
“I don’t think he has the right—”
“I told you, Mom, it’s okay,” Karen said, interrupting the protest. “I’ll be down in a couple of minutes.”
She stepped out of the shower stall and instantly started shivering. It was as though all the warmth in her body had been drained away in the course of the short conversation.
She dried herself hurriedly, toweling the water from her hair, but not taking the time to use the dryer. The lank strands still hung damp upon her shoulders as she went into the bedroom and hastily dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. When she went downstairs to the living room, Rob Wilson was waiting for her. Her parents were nowhere to be seen. One look at the young officer’s face brought fear sweeping over her.
“What happened?” Karen asked in panic. “Did you find the children? Are they all right?”
“No, they haven’t been found, so I don’t know if they’re all right or not.” The pain in his eyes belied the crispness of the statement. “How are you feeling? Did they hurt you?”
“Not really,” Karen said. “I have a few bruises and a headache.”
“The report that came into the station said a young woman was missing as well as the children. I didn’t know at first that it was you. Then somebody mentioned the name ‘Connors’ and I remembered that you’d mentioned working at a day care center.” He paused, and then said accusingly, “You never returned my phone calls.”
“I didn’t want to talk about Carla Sanchez,” Karen told him. “I wanted to be able to forget her.”
“I can understand how you’d feel that way,” Rob said. “The thing is, it’s not going to be that easy. You can’t get away from an experience like that one. It’s bound to follow you. Today, those kids—”
“I didn’t make this happen!” Karen broke in defensively. “The kidnapping wasn’t planned around me personally. Those people had it all set up. They would have gone through with it anyway, no matter who was in charge of the Baby Room.”