A Person Could Disappear Here

by Terri George

  So, at some point he’s going to get rid of the evidence, i.e. me. What I don’t know is, when.

  Abductors never let their captives go willingly. It always ends one of three ways: the victims are discovered and rescued; their bodies are found years later buried under floorboards, in back gardens or under patios; or somehow, they escape.

  And kidnappers aren’t stupid. They rarely make mistakes. If they are found out it’s often a lucky fluke.

  Fred and Rosemary West’s sex-fuelled twenty-year murderous spree was only discovered by chance. A family joke the five youngest kids laughed about when they were taken into care. How their missing sister was buried under the patio. Police took it seriously and found not only Heather’s bones, but the hacked up remains of eight other young women interred in the garden, bathroom and under the concrete floor of the cellar. Although they were caught the year before I was born, like everyone else, I know all about the Wests. Still today, the killings are infamous.

  Fritzl was only caught when he took his daughter’s girl to hospital; the doctors and police disbelieving his story about a sect. It was only then that his daughter was rescued from her basement cell beneath the garden where her father had held her for twenty-four years.

  And there was that American family – somewhere in California I think. The parents who tortured their children; kept them chained to their beds when they ‘misbehaved’. They were only found out when one of the older kids escaped through a window in the small hours.

  Unlike the West’s victims, Fritzl’s daughter and the American couple’s thirteen kids hadn’t been abducted, but they were all held against their will and suffered incredible abuse. For years.

  The other thing they have in common is they all had neighbours; were held within yards of other houses. The West’s house was an end-terrace; their neighbours shared a party wall. Even as the girls suffered unspeakable abuse, were killed, their bodies chopped up and buried in the cellar, the neighbours watched TV mere feet away, oblivious to the horrors happening next door.

  If all those victims can be held undetected with other people so close by, what hope is there for me in such a remote spot?

  My only way out alive is to flee, but how?

  And how much time do I have left to escape?

  He’s going to tire of this, of me, and go back to his old life – his real life. What happens to me when he does?

  There’s a lot of back garden to bury me in.

  Will the end be quick?

  Maybe he wouldn’t kill me straight away. Just leave me here. Enjoying the thrill of keeping me hidden. Visiting now and then when the urge to inflict more pain and degradation takes him.

  Oh, dear God, the thought of being stuck in this house for years, decades even. Left alone, going slowly mad in my solitude, talking to myself to keep from losing my voice, dreading the sound of car tyres on the dirt track.

  Never seeing home again.

  It would be more than I could bear…

  No. I’d never let that happen. I’d have to get out somehow.

  I don’t care how long it would take, I’d saw off the metal screening from a window, blunt every knife in the house to do it.

  And if I couldn’t, I’d use one on myself. My life oozing away in a slowly spreading scarlet pool. An end by the blade preferable to living on the edge of it, never knowing which day will be my last. Let him do what he wanted to me then. I wouldn’t care. He couldn’t hurt me anymore.

  Or maybe I’d just burn the house down.

  Chapter Eighteen

  CRISTINA

  The difference a day makes. Or to be more precise, twelve hours. I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever find Abbey, but now sheriff Wetzler has promised to help I feel there’s real hope we will.

  Fed up with staring at the ceiling, I’m showered and dressed by six-thirty and leave a note for a still-snoring Alessandro. Even though I linger over a leisurely breakfast and my walk to sheriff Wetzler’s office is barely a stroll, it’s still half an hour before she turns up.

  “Car trouble,” she explains as she bustles in. “Battery was flat. Had to get Tom Flack to give me a tow. Coffee?”

  “No, you’re all right. Your deputy gave me a cup when I got here.”

  “And one was more than enough, right?”

  I’m not sure how to respond, my embarrassment at being stuck in the middle no doubt evident by the flushing I feel rising in my cheeks. The deputy ‘huh’s and sheriff Wetzler laughs.

  “It’s okay. Deputy Calvert wouldn’t know good coffee if I poured it down his throat. Would you, Jeb?”

  “Ha ha. My coffee’s just fine. Maybe you should petition Starbucks to open a store here.”

  “They wouldn’t come.”

  Despite slagging off deputy Calvert’s coffee making skills, sheriff Wetzler pours herself a cup. “Hold my calls, Jeb.”

  “Yeah, like we’ll be rushed off our feet at this hour. The drunks are sleeping it off and the joyriders are in bed.”

  “Jeb wishes he was in the big city, ‘where the action is’,” sheriff Wetzler tells me under her breath as we head into her office. “But then he’s never seen a dead body.”

  What must that be like? To see a dead body. To gaze upon someone who was once a living, breathing, walking, talking person who laughed, loved, had friends, family, hopes and dreams, now nothing more than a shell?

  I suppose it depends on how the person died. Natural causes, a stroke in bed, or just slipping away in their sleep is one thing. Murder, another. Brains splattered, deep gashes of knife wounds, the cloying coppery stickiness of congealing blood. Murder is often so very bloody. Disturbing if it’s an adult. Heart-breaking when it’s a child.

  How do you steel yourself to enter a crime scene? Or look upon the greying cadaver on the mortuary slab, re-stitched after the internal organs have been examined and put back in.

  What does death smell like? According to Abbey it’s a bit like decaying fruit. A sickly-sweet complex cocktail of rotting apples, pineapples, raspberries and blackberries. Apart from editing a couple of crime books for work, she has a penchant for true crime stories, especially serial killers: what makes them tick and how they were caught. I’ve never understood the fascination, but ever since her parents’ death she’s had an unhealthy preoccupation with the macabre.

  “Have you? Seen a dead body. You implied your deputy would probably change his mind about working in a city because he hasn’t.”

  “One. And that was one too many… Anyway, you said you have photos?”

  Sheriff Wetzler peers at the screen as I scroll through the photos I saved to my phone.

  “They’re a bit small. Can you email them to me?” She opens a notepad on her desk and writes down the address.

  “Yes, sure. There are more on his Facebook timeline.”

  “You’re Facebook friends with this guy too?”

  “God, no.”

  “I don’t do social media, so correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t you have to be friends with someone to fully see their timeline?”

  “Yes. I’m not friends with him, but Abbey is. Obviously.”

  “So you hacked into her account?”

  Say ‘hacker’ to me and I think of three types of law breaker.

  Anti-globalisationists and risk-taking whistle blowers sneaking through an unguarded backdoor of government and corporate websites and uploading their secrets to WikiLeaks.

  A sad billy-no-mates in a Che Guevara tee shirt sitting in a messy rented room emailing random addresses, spreading a virus that completely buggers up the recipients’ computers and costs a bloody fortune to have put right again.

  Bastards who are out to steal your identity.

  “I wouldn’t say hacked. Accessed.”

  “If Abbey didn’t tell you her password it’s hacking. Over here that’ll get you a criminal record and maybe jail time.”

  It probably would at home too. But technically I’m not guilty of hacking, Nathan is.

&nb
sp; “But if anyone asks, we’ll say Abbey did share her password with you. And then you did with me.”

  Cover our arses you mean.

  “There could be some clues in the background of these photos we’re just not seeing. I have a friend in the Omaha PD’s crime lab. She could process them through their image enhancement software. If that’s okay with you.”

  “Absolutely. We need all the help we can get. Actually, I was wondering whether we should get the press involved.”

  “We could, but there could be consequences other than it turning into a media circus, not just from the press and TV here, but from Britain too. Are you prepared for that?”

  I know what she means. The media love nothing more than a human drama story they can run with, but if it helps us find Abbey how can publicity be a bad thing?

  “What do you mean, other consequences?”

  “Even if this guy doesn’t watch TV news, the story would be hard to miss. It would be all over the internet too.”

  “So?”

  “So, if he knows we’re onto him, there’s a possibility, a strong possibility, he could cover his tracks.”

  Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. But she’s right. We don’t want to spook him. What’s needed here isn’t going in all guns blazing, shooting first asking questions later, it’s guile. Like that old saying: softly, softly, catchy monkey.

  “Once we find out who he is and where he is, we’ll get the local law enforcement involved, but for now let’s keep it on the QT.”

  “Ah. It might be a bit late to keep it quiet. I forget what it was called, begins with a K I think, but in the first town we got to the sheriff said he’d send out the word to surrounding towns.”

  “Would that be sheriff Roebuck?”

  “Yes.”

  Sheriff Wetzler tilts her head back and calls through the open office door to her deputy. “Jeb. We had anything from sheriff Roebuck?”

  Deputy Calvert calls back that they haven’t.

  The sheriff looks back at me. “If you knew Noah Roebuck you wouldn’t look so surprised.”

  Call me too trusting, but when someone says they’ll do something I expect them to actually do it. “But he said he would.”

  “He says a lot of things, but whether or not he follows through... Well, let’s just say he’s not too worried about losing his job.”

  “Why not?”

  “Sheriffs are elected, and Noah doesn’t have much in the way of opposition.”

  “So you were elected too? Bit unusual isn’t it? Female sheriff. I’m not being funny, but from the outside looking in, this isn’t somewhere many women achieve positions of authority. No offence.”

  “None taken. You’re right, as a female sheriff I’m in a very small minority. About one percent at last count.”

  “So what made you want to be a sheriff?”

  “Would because I wanted to make a difference sound trite?”

  “You mean like a beauty contestant hoping for world peace?”

  “Something like that. Seriously, in the twenty-first century it’s hard to believe pageants are still going. Nothing changes I guess.”

  “Not much. But to answer your question, I think the world needs more people who do things for the common good, so no, I don’t think you sound trite. You could make a difference anywhere though, and in other ways. Why stay here?”

  “I’ve never felt the lure of the big city. I couldn’t spend my life working for a corporation that only cares about the bottom line.”

  I can relate, but some of us don’t have much of a choice.

  “And my folks have lived here for five generations. My great-great-grandfather worked for Union Pacific. The town’s in my blood.”

  “Must be hard, with what’s happening here. The company leaving town, people losing their jobs and homes. Like Dan last night.”

  “I won’t lie to you, it is tough, but the town will bounce back. It’s done it before. Just might take a bit longer this time.”

  “Maybe the town needs to think outside the company box, rather than hope another big corporation relocates its headquarters here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why not make it a holiday destination? You have warm summers and I’m betting you get snow in the winter.”

  “We do, but we don’t exactly have the landscape for skiing.”

  “Not downhill, but it’s perfect for cross-country and snow mobiles. And there’s the hunting, shooting, fishing crowd. You’ve got the landscape for them, plus lakes for water skiing. You could make the town the place to come for all sorts of year-round outdoor fun.”

  “Sounds like maybe we should tempt you to relocate here and run our tourism industry.”

  “I don’t know about that. Besides, I’m just here to find Abbey.”

  “She’s lucky to have a friend like you. There aren’t many who’d travel thousands of miles to do what you’re doing.”

  “How could I not? She’s my best friend.”

  “Tell me about her. What’s Abbey like?”

  “She’s quieter than me. I’m the gobby one, that’s for sure. Speak before I think. And I’m too loud, especially after a drink. Usually on Friday nights, out with the lads from work. But the way I look at it is, if you can remember your youth you did it wrong. I’ll probably grow up when I hit thirty.”

  So that gives me another five years. I’m determined to make the most of them. I just want to be able to do that with my best friend.

  “We’re sort of like the odd couple. Not clean and messy, shy and outgoing. Abbey’s the introvert to my extrovert, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t fun, because she is. We have a right laugh.”

  She’s just quieter about it.

  “She loves books. Well she got her degree in English literature, so she would. And even though she works as an editor, she still reads at home. She’ll read the book while I’d rather wait for the film.”

  Sometimes I think it’s easier for Abbey to deal with what happened by escaping into the pages of a book.

  “And trains. Apart from the obvious link to her dad I don’t really get it, but she loves trains. She still plays with his set up in attic. I have to admit it is pretty cool. I mean it’s huge. There are stations, villages, countryside and everything. Abbey can spend hours up there.”

  “So, she’s close with her parents, goes home a lot? How are they holding up?”

  “Oh, no. We live in Abbey’s childhood home. Her parents left it to her. They died when she was seventeen. Hit and run.”

  “Oh God, that’s awful. Did they catch who did it?”

  “No. She puts on a brave face, but I don’t think she’s got over it.”

  “Is that something you can ever get over?”

  “Probably not.” I can’t imagine life without mum and dad. Oh I know I have to face it one day, but not for years. Decades, hopefully.

  “Mostly Abbey’s kind. Wants to save everything. She’d give every stray animal a home if she could. Makes an extra sandwich every morning for the homeless bloke who sleeps in a doorway near her office. And makes me volunteer with her for Crisis at Christmas.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Feeding the homeless on Christmas day. Mum isn’t too pleased at having to delay our lunch, but she applauds the good-doing.”

  “Abbey sounds nice.”

  “She is. That’s why I’m so relieved someone’s finally taking her disappearance seriously. But I have to ask. Why are you helping us?”

  Sheriff Wetzler stares at an indeterminate point somewhere over my shoulder. It’s several seconds before she speaks.

  “It was when I was a deputy. I’d only been in the job a few months. Hailey Kittinger was seventeen. Those who were being kind called her wayward. Those who weren’t so kind… Well.”

  “Small town, small minds?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Maybe it was because I was only seven years older, but I thought she was just a typical teenager, stuck at that awkward age, pushing her
over-cautious parents’ envelope. Anyway, it wasn’t unusual for her to stay out late, sometimes all night, but she always came home. One day she didn’t. Sheriff Hamby was due to retire in a few months and was just kicking his heels until then, so he didn’t take it all that seriously when her friends reported her missing.”

  “Her friends? Not her parents?”

  “They thought what most folks did, that Hailey had just run away. It’s not unheard of.”

  “But I’m guessing she hadn’t.”

  “No. There was a boy she had an on-again-off-again thing with, and his alibi for around the last time anyone saw Hailey wasn’t what you’d call rock solid, but it wasn’t followed through.”

  “So that was it? No one did anything?”

  “Not right away. But I didn’t buy that Hailey had simply run away. We didn’t have GPS back then, but even twelve years ago we could still track phones, and Hailey hadn’t used her since she went missing.”

  “And you were the only one who thought that was suspicious?”

  “I was the only one who bothered to check. And make the connection between Hailey’s disappearance and reports of a pickup that had been seen driving up and down roads in the area.”

  “The connection being the driver had abducted her?”

  “Yes. It took a lot of searching through DMV records because I only had a partial plate, but eventually I tracked the owner down to a farmhouse ten miles north-east of Oshkosh.”

  I have a bad feeling about where this story is going. “Oh God, please tell me Hailey wasn’t the one dead body.”

  “What? Oh, no. That was a suicide. Mary Drewes. Her husband used to beat her, everyone knew, but she was too terrified of him to ever press charges. Not even when she ended up in hospital with a ruptured spleen. One day she just couldn’t take it anymore and hanged herself from an old apple tree in their back yard.”

  “Oh, that’s awful. Poor woman.”

  “I know. It was just so sad. But Hailey was found; abused, sexually and physically, but alive. Thank God.”