Stolen Angel

Prolog

 

April, 2002, Oakdale. . . .

 

The girls had been playing on the swing hanging in the Taylor’s front yard but they soon tired of sharing one swing among the three of them and decided that a doll party would be more fun.

Lisa seated her Christmas Barbie astride a pink motor scooter while Carla and Susan pranced their own creations. The girls were busily weaving stories of magic and excitement when a dusty brown Buick made its way down Avery Road and pulled to a stop in front of Lisa’s house.

A man dressed in sneakers, jeans and a black T-shirt raced from the car and grabbed Carla. He had barely lifted her when he felt a stabbing pain in his shin as Lisa kicked him as hard as she could. She tried to kick him a second time but, muttering a startled “Ow!”, he swung his leg out of the way.

At almost the same instant Carla bit his hand. Startled, the kidnapper let go and Carla tumbled to the ground. The man spun to grab her again and spotted Lisa only two feet away. In a flash Carla was gone and with barely a split second’s hesitation, the kidnapper grabbed Lisa and ran back to the Buick which instantly sped away.

Five seconds later the car was around the corner and out of sight. Barely a minute and a half after that the Buick was hidden in the underbrush a hundred yards off the highway and the kidnappers had switched to an old Mustang and were heading for the county line.

The Mustang had already pulled onto the main highway by the time the first hysterical phone call reached the Oakdale Police Department, it having taken that long for an almost incoherent Susan and Carla to return to Mrs. Fisher’s house and make themselves understood.

It was too late. The roads were watched but no car matching the Buick’s description was seen. Posters were printed and distributed, announcements made hourly on the AM radio station but it was as if Lisa Taylor had been swallowed by the earth.

For the next two months Oakdale’s sole detective, Carlos Ramirez, spent almost every waking moment trying to turn up some trace of Lisa’s whereabouts. He failed. Every report was pursued but they all led nowhere. Still Carlos and Bill and Peggy Taylor persisted. Summer came and went. Then Halloween. Then Christmas. The phone calls dwindled, leads dried up and finally stopped.

How could a nine year old child be stolen from her own front yard and simply vanish? Hadn’t anyone seen her? If she was still alive wouldn’t someone notice her? Pictures had been printed, flyers distributed. She could talk. She could call for help. If she was still alive.

February came and went and with the approaching spring almost a year had passed since Lisa Taylor had been kidnapped, but she had disappeared as completely as if she had never existed.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter One

 

March, 2003, Thursday Evening

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

 

 

She was only about four feet tall, not big enough to clear the tops of the shelves filled with pretzels and bottles of taco sauce and bags of sourdough dinner rolls. I noticed her at the last instant and dodged just in time to avoid running into her. She was around nine or ten, blonde hair turning to brown, almost long enough to touch her shoulders. I looked down and smiled.

“Sorry, miss, I didn’t see you there. Are you okay?”

I don’t know what I expected, a grimace, a laugh, a polite “I’m fine.” Whatever it was, I didn’t get it. Instead her face bore the look of someone who has been hit so often and so regularly that nothing registers any more beyond the thin appearance of pain and hopelessness.

I stared at her, transfixed by her wide gray eyes. She wore faded blue jeans, red tennis shoes, and an oversize T-shirt imprinted with the name of a Mexican beer. Although it was about fifty degrees outside, she didn’t have a coat or a sweater. After a second she lowered her eyes and said dully, “You didn’t hit me.”

It was a voice that I would not have expected from a child, an even, emotionless monotone, not whispered, but set so low that the words barely reached me only a foot in front of her.

“What are you doin’, Alice?” a man called from behind me. I turned and saw a pudgy white man with heavy, black-rimmed glasses, about five feet ten, standing at the far end of the aisle that ran in front of the frozen foods .

“She’s okay,” I told him. “I didn’t see her. I almost knocked her down.”

“She’ll do that, sneak up on you. Won’t you, Alice?”

“I’m sorry, Ken” the girl piped from behind me.

“What?” the man snapped. His face was a puffy, refrigerator white. Maybe thirty-five or forty years old, he had very short hair which reflected the fluorescents as if it was coated with Vaseline.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” the little girl repeated.

“You’d best get your stuff and pay attention to business if you know what’s good for you.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“She won’t cause you no more trouble.”

“There’s no trouble. It was . . . .” but he had already turned away, back up the aisle toward the magazine rack at the front of the store. The little girl, Alice, wandered to the next aisle holding canned goods and bottles of cooking oil. I watched her for a moment and searched my memory trying to recall where I had encountered an expression like hers. I knew that I had seen it somewhere, in a photo or a movie. I stood there trying to remember, then peered over the shelves but her back was to me. After a moment’s hesitation I turned away. The day was ending, I thought, as badly as it had begun.

That Thursday had started as one of those bleak mid-March days when the sun is little more than a vague glow behind overcast clouds that neither dissipate nor bring the relief of rain. I had spent the last half of the morning and most of the afternoon meeting with Bill Mansell, the Oasis Project Supervisor. Finally, after nonstop arguing and no lunch I fought my way through the afternoon traffic in a vain attempt to reach the only available software genius who had a prayer of salvaging something from the project’s shattered development schedule.

Just because I had sold Orayis Corporation to NowSoft for a pile of cash and stock options didn’t mean that I was going to sit on my butt and watch TV all day. I had started Orayis with a $25,000 loan from my dad, a BS from U.C. Berkeley, an MBA from Stanford, and about a million hours of my heart and soul. I was still the CEO, even though we were technically a division of NowSoft, nothing was going to keep the Oasis product from shipping on time and bug free. If it took a big check and personal plea to a reclusive software wizard ensconced in the wilds of eastern Contra Costa County, then that’s what I would do.

By the time I put the San Francisco Bay behind me and was heading east on Highway 24 through the Caldecott Tunnel the nagging headache that had begun almost two hours before was well on its way to becoming a real skull breaker.

There is something about men and driving, I don’t know what it is, but we hate to stop, as if pulling over is a personal failure, a signal of our inability to persevere until our goal is accomplished. Just a few more miles and we’ll be home; a little longer and we can stop for the night; just one more bend in the road and we’ll find the signpost we’ve been looking for.

I’ve been accused more than once of being stubborn to the point of intransigence. I like to think that I am just determined. I look upon perseverance as a virtue. I certainly hadn’t gotten to where I was by giving up when things got difficult. As they say in the military, “See the hill, take the hill.”

On that dreary Thursday afternoon the little voice inside me kept telling me: “You can make it. Only half an hour more and you’ll be there. Baumbach probably has a whole bottle of aspirin sitting there in his medicine cabinet. Besides, you’re already late. Tough it out,” and all the while my head was pounding and my shoulders felt as if the tendons were made of coiled steel.

Finally, when the vibrations from the seams in the road sent new jolts of pain through my skull, I reluctantly cut across the traffic and took the next exit, determined to find a drug store, a 7-11, a supermarket, any place that might sell me some pills.

It turned out that I had picked a particularly bad time to abandon the main road. The off-ramp ended at an intersection with a two-lane road. To the left it headed down a gray little valley and curved out of sight. To the right it climbed a low hill and disappeared over the top of the rise. Below and ahead of me was a small creek, clogged with bracken and manzanita. A few houses dotted the two-lane, all of them dark and deserted in the fading afternoon light. I mentally flipped a coin and turned right.

The road was edged with houses built in the 1950’s before the advent of strict building codes —  all two-by-fours and sheetrock and clapboard siding. After a mile or so with no sign of what passes for civilization I began to take random turnings at crossroads, peering toward the darkening horizon as I tried to detect the glow of a Safeway or an ARCO or a 7-11.

Finally, more through luck than planning, I came upon a dilapidated store set back from the road on a flat dirt oval whose gravel surface had long since disappeared into the adobe topsoil. At the first hint of rain the ground would puddle up and assume the consistency of overworked pie crust.

Luckily, the rain had not yet started. I would be here just long enough to get a traveler’s tin of Excedrin and a can of Coke to wash it down, and, I reminded myself, a map so I could find my way to Baumbach’s house. By now all I knew was that I was somewhere east of 680 and south of Concord.

There was only one other vehicle in the lot, a faded VW Van with a dent behind the driver’s door. The wheel covers were missing, which made the van seem especially aged and ill-treated. Inside the store I spotted the refrigerated soft drink case along the back wall and edged down a narrow aisle crowded with cans of soup, racks of Twinkies, bags of corn chips, and six-packs of beer.

My head was pounding when I reached the end of the row. I  took a quick step toward the refrigerator door and that’s when I almost knocked her down.

I grabbed a cold Pepsi and then went to the drugs and cosmetics section and picked up a small tin box of Excedrin. I downed two of the pills with a swallow of cola on the spot. Then, I thought about the little girl again.

Sometimes you do things that you can’t consciously justify, can’t explain, but you have a reason for doing them — you just don’t want to admit it to yourself. I could have walked past the allergy pills and the toothpaste and the hair spray, up to the cash register at the front of the store. But I didn’t. Maybe it was the look in Alice’s eyes. So, instead of leaving, I turned up the row holding the canned goods where she was diligently matching pictures of peaches and creamed corn with the items on her list.

When I got near her, I pretended to examine the prices on the jars of pickles. I had no conscious idea of what I was doing, but I knew, somewhere, what I was after, because just about the time that I was swallowing the Excedrin I remembered where I had seen the expression on Alice’s face before.

It was in a book in my high school civics class. A book the teacher, Mr. Ida, a Japanese-American who had been locked up in an American concentration camp during the first part of World War II, had shown us. He passed it around and tried to explain things that were unexplainable to fifteen-year-old middle-class children, events which we had not yet seen enough evil to be able to comprehend.

The book contained pictures taken at Dachau, pictures of people waiting to die, people not sure any more if dying was, for them, a bad thing. Their images had that same hollow-eyed hopelessness, that look of desolation beyond pain that I thought I had seen in Alice’s face. I knew that I should just mind my own business but I couldn’t turn my back on her and walk away.

“Are you all right?” I asked softly as I stood next to her. “Are you in trouble? Do you need help?”

Furtively, she looked over her shoulder. The top of the Ken’s head was visible at the front of the store.

“I’ll get in trouble if I talk to you,” she said softly without looking up.

“If you need help, tell me. I could call the police.”

“No one can help me,” she whispered and moved a few feet toward the front counter.

I put down the pickles and grabbed a jar of olives from the shelf next to her.

“Is he hurting you? Does he hit you?” She made no answer. “What’s your name?” I asked, thinking that if I had her full name I could call Child Protective Services. Maybe that and the license number from the van would be enough to have someone start an investigation.

“Please,” I whispered, “tell me your name.”

“My real name?” she asked softly.

Real name? I turned to stare at her. For a moment longer she looked at the shelf, then peered up at me.

“My real name is Lisa, Lisa—”

“Are you bothering this man, Alice? Are you telling stories again?” Ken, I couldn’t think of him as her father, had crept around the end of the aisle and now approached us with long strides.

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to smile but not succeeding very well. “I was telling your daughter about my goddaughter, Kristen. I’m afraid that I distracted her,” I said making the story up as I went along.

I would pay for my aspirin, I decided, leave the store  and call the police. They would sort it all out. Something was wrong here, but what? Her real name? What if she was just telling stories? This was a situation for the police. I nodded to Ken and headed for the counter.

Nicotine stains yellowed the tips of the clerk’s fingers. Her eyes held the half-vacant, half-bored expression of someone who is waiting for each minute to slip by in hopes that the next one will be better and knowing that it won’t.

I hurried outside, took out a ballpoint pen and wrote the VW’s license number on the back of one of my business cards, then pulled out my cell. No signal. I noticed a battered payphone at the side of the store and shoved a quarter into the slot. It made one dull clank, then bounced through the mechanism and into the coin return. I tapped the hook twice and fished it out. A splash of light illuminated the booth as the front door opened and Ken and Alice, no, Lisa, came out. It started to rain.

Ken walked with his heavy right hand pinching the back of her neck.

“What’d I tell you about talking to people? What’d I tell you!” At first, she didn’t answer, just looked straight ahead. Angrily, he spun her around, grabbed her shoulders in his pudgy fists and began to shake her, all the time shouting: “What’d I tell you? What’d I tell you?” Suddenly, he slapped and pushed her to the ground. Lisa’s shoulder splashed in a shallow puddle.

“I’m sorry,” she said and cautiously crawled to her feet. “He just asked me stuff. I didn’t talk to him. I didn’t!” She was frightened, but trying, I could tell, not to cry.

“I’ll show you to mind me! Just wait till we get home.”

I stood there next to the dead phone and watched him drag her into the van. I wanted to run over and punch him in the face. I had been a boxer in college. I mentally rehearsed the combination of blows. But that was insanity. Thoughts whirled in my head, none of them coalescing into any plan or decision. There had to be a phone in the store. I could still call the police, give them the license number.

But what if it wasn’t his van? Maybe he had borrowed or had not given the DMV his right address. Jesus, he could have stolen it for all I knew.

It was now about five-thirty and almost fully dark. A car passed and, for a moment, its headlights illuminated the VW. I glimpsed Lisa’s face pressed against the passenger window, and was struck again by how much she looked like those black-and-white images staring out from the pages of Mr. Ida’s book.

But now there was terror in her eyes. And I had caused it. God only knew what he was going to do to her and it was my fault. I had said that I would help her, but when it came time for me to do something, I had just stood there. I dropped the phone and sprinted to my car. In the few minutes that I had been inside the rain had formed a patchwork of puddles on the lot. The van was already a hundred yards down the road, its taillights beginning to fade into the rain-soaked night.

I pulled out after them and my tires slipped on the slick ground. A minute or two later I caught up. I decided to follow them home, then knock on some neighbor’s door and use their phone to call the police. Once the cops were on their way I would ring Ken’s bell and tell him to leave the little girl alone, warn him that the police were coming and that there would be serious consequences if he hurt her.

With the dark and the rain, God knew where we were. All I saw was the occasional house set back from the road, a closed gas station, then empty stretches of highway bordered by the silhouettes of live oak and eucalyptus. Ken seemed to know where he was going as he stopped, then turned, first onto one road, then another. I followed, making sure not to lose his taillights around some blind curve. I knew that if he got away from me I would never find him again.

Ken’s brake lights flashed suddenly, then disappeared around a sharp right turn. I turned after them, and almost smashed into the van parked a few feet down a narrow driveway. I saw a torn, partially legible decal on the bumper’s right side: “____n City Police Reserve.” Was he a cop? Maybe the decal was a relic from one of the van’s prior owners. What was I getting myself into?

I had barely come to a stop when my door was yanked open. The rain had slackened to little more than a heavy drizzle. Ken’s skin glistened like wax in the glow of my headlights. I released my seatbelt and lurched from the car.

“What are you doin’ following me?” he demanded.

“I was worried about the little girl.” Already the adrenalin was singing in my blood and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.

“She’s none of your business. You stay out of my family’s affairs.”

“I’m not going to let you hurt her.”

“Who says I’m going to hurt her?”

“I heard you when you came out of the store. I saw you slap her. You told her you were going to teach her a lesson. That sounds threatening to me.”

“You’ve been watching too much television or reading too many books, or something. I’m her daddy and she’s got to learn to mind.”

We stood there for a heartbeat, staring at each other. My mind was whirling. I couldn’t leave and I didn’t want to stay. The night was leaden. The sound of the water dripping from the leaves was soft and distant as if heard through cotton wool. Maybe it was sheer stubbornness, I don’t know, but I realized I couldn’t leave her there with him.

“We’re going to call the police and they’re going to straighten this all out,” I told him almost as if someone else were speaking with my voice.

“Mister, are you crazy? You get back in your car and get the hell out of here while you still can.”

“Not without the little girl. Both of you can get in my car and I’ll stop at the next house and call the police. I’m not leaving until they arrive.”

“This is the last time I’m going to tell you,” he said and then reached into the pocket of his windbreaker. “Stop interfering in my business.” When Ken’s hand emerged his fingers were wrapped around the butt of a revolver that seemed so small in his pudgy fist as to be almost a toy. But it wasn’t a toy. It was a .25-caliber pistol, about the same type as the gun that had killed Senator Robert Kennedy.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“You’ve got five seconds to get back in your fancy car and get out of here. I’m not telling you again.” For a heartbeat I stood there frozen. Against that silence the click of the van’s door was unnaturally loud. The little girl’s tennis shoes squeaked against the wet asphalt.

The glare from my headlights caught her almost in profile, her eye sockets dark hollows against the flat white of her face, a face that seemed, simultaneously, to have lost all fear and all hope. Ken and I both turned toward her.

“Lisa, go back,” I shouted and knew, instantly, that with the use of her real name a boundary had been crossed. Ken knew I had discovered his secret. His face passed through several stages, like the movie special effect in which an animal shape-shifts from one form to another in the blink of an eye, first surprise, then fear, then anger, then determination, all in the space of a heartbeat.

“You messed in where you don’t belong one time too many, mister. I can’t have you spreading lies about me and Alice here.”

“The police—”

“—Ain’t gonna do nothing, even if they believed you, which they wouldn’t, but I ain’t gonna take that chance.” For an instant he turned back to Lisa, glared at her and shouted: “Alice, you see! You see what you’ve gone and made me do!” Then he turned back to me and his finger tightened on the trigger. It was mostly reflex, that and my old boxing training. I shifted my shoulders, faking a move to my left. He flinched and jerked the gun to follow.

In a split second he recognized his mistake but in that instant I lunged forward. The gun made a small “pop” followed by a crash as the bullet smashed into my fender. Then I kicked him right in the balls, as hard as I could.

He groaned and leaned forward, still holding the gun but not trying to aim it anymore. I kicked him again in the solar plexus, then I kicked him one last time, with the sole of my shoe flat in his face.

He collapsed, groaning, blood pouring from his broken nose and on down onto the asphalt. I stomped on his hand hard enough to break bones, and the gun slipped free. I caught it with the side of my foot like a soccer-style kicker and sent it flying off into the dark.

For a moment I stared at him bleeding and retching on the ground, then shouted:  “Lisa! Get in the car. We’re getting out of here. Hurry!”

For a moment she hesitated there in the glare of my headlights, then, as if recovering from a trance, she ran to my passenger door and tugged on the handle. As soon as she was inside, I backed onto the highway and took off. It didn’t matter where I drove, just so long as it was away from there.

It was surreal, a scene out of nightmare. As soon as the adrenalin stopped pumping I began to shake. I had almost been shot. I turned at the first crossroad, then turned again at the next one. After a mile or two more I pulled over and doused the lights.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Is he going to find us?”

“No, Lisa, he won’t find us. Don’t worry, I promise, I’ll take care of you. I won’t let him hurt you.” She said nothing, just sat there, a dark form next to me, her silhouette barely visible in the glow from the instrument panel.

“Let’s get our seat belts on,” I said as if that was the most important thing in the world. I heard her belt unroll and then click as the buckle slid into the connector. I waited a moment, not wanting to ask too many questions, not wanting to upset her, but I knew that I couldn’t pretend that nothing had happened.

“He called you ‘Alice’,” I began, “but you said your name was ‘Lisa.’ Is Lisa your real name?”

“He told me that now my name was Alice but it’s not!”

“Is he your father?” She was quiet for a moment, then a soft whimper escaped her lips. “Is ‘Lisa’ the first name you ever had?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said after a moment.

“Did your real father, your first father, give you that name?”

“Uh-uh,” she whispered, paused for a second, then said: “My Mommy.”

“Your mother gave you that name?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What was her name?”

“Peggy. Daddy called her ‘Peggy.’ I called her ‘Mommy.’“

“What about your daddy, your real daddy? What’s his name?”

“‘Bill. Mommy and Uncle Jack called him ‘Bill.’“

“What’s your last name? Everyone has two names. My name is Peter Howard. Your name is Lisa . . . ?”

For a moment it seemed that all her strength had evaporated. She hunched down in the corner between the seat and the door and hugged herself as if she believed that if she could make herself small enough all her problems would disappear and that when she opened her eyes she would find herself at home and safe and that all this would be just a bad dream. The rain had let up and the only sound now was the low throbbing of the engine. Finally, she opened her eyes and turned toward me.

“He said that if I told, if I told that he wasn’t really my daddy . . . .” Not since my father had died had I seen anyone grieve that way, silently, as if the sound of their tears would make the pain real, as if they might be able to turn back time if only they didn’t cry out loud.

I waited until her little gasps had subsided. “Everything he said was a lie. Don’t believe anything he told you. I said I would help you and I will. I promise I’ll get you home. But you have to help me. I can’t get you home if I don’t know where you live. You want to go back to your real mommy and daddy, don’t you?”

“Yes, but he said that if I told, they would kill mommy and daddy. That I could never tell.”

“Lisa, he’s a very bad man, and bad people lie to get their way. No one will hurt your parents. I’m sure they’re looking for you and that they want you to come home more than anything. Your mommy and daddy would do anything to have you back. That man doesn’t scare them or me. You saw how I knocked him down and got you away from him, didn’t you?”

I was rewarded by a sniffle and a nod.

“So don’t give a thought to what he said. You leave him to me. What’s your second name?”

I held my breath. Lisa twisted the fabric of her T-shirt and finally said “Taylor.”

“That’s great! Your name is Lisa Taylor. Now, we need your address. I bet your parents taught you your whole address. I know you’re a smart girl and I bet you memorized it, didn’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”

I already had my ballpoint poised above the back of one of my two remaining business cards. “So, your full name and address is: Lisa Taylor . . . ?”

There was another long pause, then she completed the sentence: “Lisa Taylor, 749 Avery Road, Oakdale.”

“Do you know your phone number?”

“8647, I think.”

“Do you know the rest of it?”

“I forget....I’ll never get home.”

“Don’t worry. I promise, I’ll get you home. I just have to find a police station,” I paused and glanced at my instrument panel, “And get us some gas.” Lisa stared at me, unsure whether or not to believe me. I reached out to caress her face, then pulled my hand back and slipped the car into gear.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Two

 

 

I formulated a simple plan for getting my bearings: keep driving west until I ran into Highway 680, then use the map in my glove compartment to plan things from there. I didn’t know what to say to Lisa, or if I should say anything at all.  For a while I just drove. As it turned out, I didn’t need the map after all.

A few minutes later I encountered one of those strip shopping centers with seven or eight stores, a taco stand, and a gas station on the corner.

“Do you have to go to the bathroom?” I asked as soon as I had pulled up to the pumps.

“No, I’m fine,” she said softly in a half-dead voice.

“Are you hungry?”

“I’m fine,” she said quietly without turning her head.

“When was the last time you had something to eat? Did you have lunch?”

“I had cereal, Rice Krispies.”

She hadn’t eaten all day. I knew she was upset, had to be upset, but enough to have no appetite at all? Then I thought about it for a moment. If every time you asked for something you were hit, you learned not to ask. If every time you said you were hungry, you were hit, you learned not to say you were hungry. If everything you said or did was wrong, then you learned not to say anything or do anything except what you were told to say and do, when you were told to do it.

Her bladder could be bursting and she wouldn’t volunteer that she had to go to the bathroom. She could be starving and she wouldn’t admit to being hungry.

“Well, I’m hungry. I think we should get something to eat before we go to the police.” Lisa just glanced at me, then looked away. “Is that all right with you? You’ll eat something, won’t you?”

“Okay.”

“Okay, you wait here. I’ll be right back and we’ll get some dinner.”

I glanced back at Lisa then walked over to the office. A weathered Toyota was hoisted on the lube rack. The Corolla’s right rear wheel and brake drum had been removed.

The mechanic’s back was to me but when he turned around I revised his job description. Mechanics were technicians trained in the intricacies of complicated mechanisms. This was just a kid, about twenty years old, hatchet-faced and holding a pair of pliers. I looked past him and saw bright metal where the pliers had rounded the edges from one of the nuts, turning its original hexagonal shape into something resembling a Cheerio.

“I need some gas,” I said as he looked me over. “The pump has to be reset.”

“Sure, give me a second.” The boy, the name “Charlie” was monogrammed on his coveralls in red thread, turned back to the wheel and clamped the pliers down in a two-handed grip. As the pliers slowly rotated a metal shaving fell to the floor.

“Shoot!” Charlie swore, dropped the pliers, and rummaged through his toolbox, finally emerging with a pair of Vice Grips that he clamped to the recalcitrant nut. Next he wrapped a foot of electrical tape around the Vice Grips’ handle. One final trip to the tool chest produced a hammer which he whacked against the Vice Grips with great energy. On the fourth blow the nut broke loose and the pliers flew off, smashing down only inches from my foot.

“Always works,” Charlie said proudly. “Okay, let’s get that gas for you. You want anything else? Check your oil? Need any anti-freeze?”

“No, just the gas.”

We walked back to the island and Charlie inserted his key. The old fashioned pump’s tumblers spun around to zero. As I maneuvered the nozzle into the tank I asked Charlie over my shoulder, “Any restaurants around here?”

“What you looking for?”

“I don’t care. McDonald’s would be fine.”

“One of them a couple of miles north up the freeway. There’s a nice place just down the road and a couple of blocks over, Marty’s Rib Pit. Steaks, salads. Real nice place. Little girl ought to like it.” Charlie stared at me expectantly. What did he expect me to say?

“How do I get there?”

“Huh?—Oh yeah, sure. Okay, first you go down here about a quarter of a mile, then turn right on Slawson . . . .”

“What a minute. I better write this down. Do you have a piece of paper?” I asked, nodding toward the office next to the bay and hoist.

“Uh, sure.” Charlie trotted off and I followed him. He gave me a three-part form that said “We Care About Your Car” at the top and “Payment Due Before Release Of Vehicle” at the bottom. I turned it over and took down Charlie’s directions.

“Thanks, we’ll give it a try,” I said after an awkward silence, and then handed him my credit card.

“Where you from?” he asked as he set the digits on the imprinter.

“Los Altos Hills, near Palo Alto.”

“That’s a ways off. How’d you hear about this place?”

“What do you mean?”

“Uhhh, nothing, just an expression,” he said quickly. Then he paused and tapped the card machine nervously. “Look, nothing personal, but we’ve had some problems with these cards. If the boss gets one more fraud claim they’re going to shut us down, you know what I mean?”

“What? Look that card is fine. You can . . . .”

“No, I mean, I have to write down your license number and see some ID. Sorry, but, you know how it is.”

Something should have clicked right then but I was tired and I’d been in business long enough to know that credit card companies have a rule that if a merchant reports more than a certain percentage of fraudulent transactions in any month they yank his credit card privileges. Since credit transactions are anywhere from thirty percent to eighty percent of a small business’s sales that can be a sentence of instant bankruptcy. I showed him my driver’s license and he wrote down my name and plate number.

I had just returned to the pump when a black and white patrol car passed the station and pulled up in front the taco stand about fifty yards away. A neon cactus reflected from the cruiser’s windshield. A seven pointed star above the gold and black words, “Crown City Police” were painted on the driver’s door. I remembered the Police Reserve sticker on Ken’s bumper. Had it been ‘Crown City Police Reserve’? I gave my head a little shake and decided that paranoia was getting the better of me. With a brief glance back at Lisa, now almost invisible in the front sear of my car, I jogged down the slight incline to the cruiser. The cops had just gotten out when I reached them.

“Excuse me, but . . . .”

The cops definitely weren’t happy to see me. I guess they hadn’t eaten either.

“Is this an emergency?”

“Well, I . . . .”

“Because if it’s not, the station’s only about six blocks that way.” The cop pointed across the highway and to my left. “The officer on duty can take your report.”

These guys didn’t want to hear my story. They were beat cops who were looking forward to dinner. Ten to one, they’d just send me back to the station anyway. “Uhh, to the left, down there?”

The cop smiled, pleased that he was going to get rid of me so easily. “Okay, you go back that way, to the light, then turn left—”

Suddenly, the cruiser’s radio came to life and both cops turned toward the sound. “All units, we have a 207 on Wanderly Road near Jackson. Suspect is a Caucasian male, thirty-five to forty years old, driving a dark blue or black new four door sedan, no make, no license number. The victim is Alice O’Neill, the Chief’s niece. Unit 10, see the man, Kenneth O’Neill at the scene.”

The cops jumped into the car. “Gotta go,” the driver shouted as he slipped it into reverse. “The Chief’s niece’s been kidnapped! Just take a left at the light and you’ll find the station all right.”

Red lights flashing, the cruiser backed up, slammed into drive, then tore off down the highway. I glanced at my car then followed the path of the cruiser as it disappeared into the night. I thought about the Police Reserve decal on Ken’s bumper and remembered what he had told me:

The police ain’t gonna do nuthin’, even if they believed you, which they wouldn’t . . . .

Maybe the cops were in it with him, maybe his brother, the Chief, was a pedophile too. At the very least they would believe him and not me. I had a vision of  us walking into the Chief’s office.

“She’s been kidnapped,” I would tell him.

“She sure has, but she’s safe now.”

“Not me! I took her away from the kidnapper.”

“You think I don’t know my own niece?”

Suddenly I’m pressed against the wall and handcuffs are slapped on my wrists.

“He pulled a gun on me!”

“If somebody jumped me on a back road I’d pull my gun too.”

“We’ve got to get Lisa back to her real parents . . . .”

“Don’t you worry about her. Her daddy’ll be here in a few minutes. . . . . This must be pretty frightening to you, Alice, but don’t worry. We’ll get you back home with your daddy real soon now.”

I began to shake. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that had happened. The police gave one of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims back to him. I had heard the tape of the 911 call. The cops thought it was a big joke. They grabbed the kid, he was fifteen years old and naked when they found him on a public street, and just gave him back to Dahmer.

If the police in a major city could do that, what would some small town cop do with Lisa? How could I take that chance? On the other hand, I had found Oakdale on my map. It was a small town near the edge of the Central Valley, maybe a two or three hour drive east of here. I had made her a promise, taken on a responsibility. Start a job, finish a job. I had promised that I’d see to it that Lisa was safely returned to her parents. I could get her home tonight, home where Ken and his Police Chief brother would never get their hands on her again. All I had to do was put the car into Drive and find the freeway. By nine or ten o’clock tonight she would be home, safe and sound.

I went back to the car. Lisa was still sitting there quietly, thinking about God knows what. When I pulled into the street I checked the rear view mirror and noticed Charlie standing by the pump and watching me drive away. Did I look that much like a crook?

“The man at the gas station said there’s a good restaurant just down the road. We’re going to stop there for some dinner and then I’m going to take you home.”

“I don’t like him.”

“Who?”

“The man at the gas station.”

“Why not?”

“He looked at me, you know.”

“How did he look at you?”

“He looked at me, you know, the way they do. Not like you look at me.”

“How do I look at you?”

“You look at me the way daddy did. Not like them. I don’t like it when they look at me that way. I don’t like the man at the gas station.”

“Lisa,—” I began, then caught myself. What was I going to say? Tell her that she was wrong? That she was being silly?

“I don’t blame you, Lisa,” I said finally. “I don’t like him much either. I’ll tell you what: I’ll buy a big steak and some French fries and a big salad. I’ll give you part of it and if you’re not hungry, you don’t have to eat it. Sometimes we think we’re not hungry until the food comes, then we find out that we are. What do you say? Is that okay with you?”

“Sure, I mean, yes.”

Behind us, Charlie picked up the phone and made a hurried call.

 

*    *     *

 

From the outside, Marty’s Rib Pit would not have excited Julia Child. The building was wood, single-story with fake brick trim. Spelled out in neon to the left of the front door was the motto: “Just Good Eats.”

Inside, it was dark. Fake kerosene lanterns were mounted on the rims of wagon-wheel light fixtures and tuned to a dull orange glow. Vinyl booths lined the front with the kitchen straight back and the bar to the left behind a small dance floor. The tables were about half filled and a waitress carrying a tray stacked with white platters of beef and baked potatoes called out, “Sit anywhere, Hon.” I picked a booth along the front wall next to a window. Through the smeared glass I could see a few feet of the parking lot illuminated by the flickering glow of a neon sign mounted on the roof.

Lisa stared nervously around the room, her eyes briefly focusing on the shadowed tables and the vague shapes outlined by the light spilling from behind the bar, then she quickly lowered her head, afraid that her glances might draw attention. Once or twice I started to talk to her, but each time stopped, fearing that my questions would only upset her.

“Are you cold?” I asked when I thought I noticed her shiver.

“I’m fine,” she answered quietly, her eyes still lowered. I was convinced that she had been taught, through methods that I did not want to imagine, never to ask for anything, never to complain.

A moment later the waitress’s jeans made a scratchy, rustling sound as they rubbed against the burgundy apron that seemed to be the extent of Marty’s employees’ uniform.

“What can I get you folks?” she asked brightly. It was still early. In an hour or two, her eyes glazed and the thousandth step on the uncarpeted floor ringing against the soles of her feet, her welcome would become perfunctory, her attention diverted to the ache in her shoulders as the assistant manager of the Wash-N-Spin and his spandex-clad wife pored over the menu and tried to decide between the baked potato and the French fries.

Maybe I’m too jaded, too single-minded someone had once said . Maybe before Janet left me . . . . At the end when I, foolishly, wanted reasons from her, explanations, a blueprint for a quick fix, Janet told me that I was stubborn, obsessive, rigid, and unemotional, and that I should get professional help.

There it was, the final insult, “You’re no fun. You need a shrink.” Sure, I was working eighteen-hour days. I was building a business so that when we were ready to start a family we could afford to spend time with our kids, send them to college, do everything right. I wasn’t unemotional, just organized. You have to plan ahead in life if you want things to work out. I did my best for her. I wanted kids. She was the one who—, damn, I was doing it again, thinking about a failure that was long over. You can’t argue someone into loving you. They always have a reason why they don’t love you any more, and they never have a reason. Damn, let it go. I pushed Janet’s image from my mind.

“Would you like a drink while you look over the menu?” the waitress, Candace, according to her name tag, asked as she handed us huge cardboard menus with strings down the centers and a tassel at the top.

“Bring us a New York steak, medium; green salad with blue cheese; baked potato; side order of fries; side order of Salisbury steak; lots of bread and butter; a Sprite and a glass of milk.” For a moment I thought about asking Lisa if that was all right with her, but I knew that she would just say that it was “fine.”

“Bring an extra plate and we’ll share everything.”

“Sure thing,” Candace said, her mind already on her next customers who were coming through the door. As she hurried off I looked at Lisa. For a moment her eyes brushed my face then she looked down and pushed herself into the corner between the wall and the end of the booth.

When our food arrived, I carefully divided it between us. After a bit of prompting Lisa ate the fries and bread and butter but didn’t seem to like the beef. And she would eat only those portions of the salad that were untouched by the dressing. I finished before she did and put the remaining food on her plate.

“I’ve eaten all I want, Lisa. Please try to finish as much as you can. It’s a sin for food to go to waste.”

“A sin?”

“That’s an expression. It means something that’s wrong.”

“I know what sin is,” she said with a hint of determination in her voice. “Sin is when you break God’s laws.” Lisa paused for a breath, then continued with a catechism that she had obviously labored hard to memorize: “God’s laws are written in the Bible,” she said in a singsong voice, “and those who break them are sinners who will be cast down into Hell.” When she ended her recital, she smiled, fleetingly, displaying a flicker of pride that she had successfully completed her lesson.

I hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to say. I realized the horror that lay behind that recitation, what Ken must have put her through to learn it. Confronted with my silence the smile fled from her face.

“That’s very good, Lisa,” I said hurriedly. “I bet you worked hard to learn your lessons, didn’t you?”

She raised her head briefly, then nodded. “I’m impressed,” I continued. “I didn’t realize what a smart little girl you are.” I paused for a moment, then, more to change the subject than anything else, asked: “Can you eat any more?”

For the next few minutes Lisa picked at the remnants of our dinner, then announced, “I’m full.”

“Okay, you ate a good dinner. Let’s go wash up then we’ll get out of here and I’ll get you home.”

I left a pile of bills on the table and helped Lisa from the booth. The restrooms were at the end of a hallway that ran between the kitchen and the bar. I walked Lisa to the door marked “Gals.”

“Go to the bathroom and wash your hands. Stay inside until I knock on the door. Okay?” Taking her silence for assent, I waited until she had closed the door, then, for a moment or two I stared at the pay phone at the end of the corridor. I thought about calling information and getting Lisa’s parents’ phone number, but what would I say?

“Hi, you don’t know me, but I’m out here in the middle of nowhere and I have your kidnapped daughter. I’ll bring her home in a few hours. Trust me.”

And after they had recovered from their hysterics or accused me of being the worst kind of crank, I would be right back to turning her over to the local police. No, in a few hours I would have her home, safe and sound, another three hours wouldn’t make any difference. I went into the men’s room. The door had a plastic “Guys” plaque in the shape of a cowboy hat.

When I came out a tall man with long gray-black hair was waiting in the hallway. “You all wait for me in the van,” he called to two men just leaving the bar, then he pushed past me and into the men’s room. I gave Lisa an extra minute then knocked on the door. She emerged just as the tall man left the men’s room. He paused for a moment and looked down at her.

“Did you wash your hands?” I asked her and was rewarded with a nod. “With soap?” This time no reply. “Why don’t you go on back in and wash them again real good with soap, okay?” Lisa looked up at the man, paused for a moment, then hurried back into the rest room.

“Cute kid,” the gray-haired man said. “Are you a friend of Ken’s?”

Confused, I just stared at him. Was this gray-haired guy part of some molestation ring or had he just seen Lisa around town? I had to get her away from this place as fast as I could. I looked at the stranger carefully. His hair was like a net of black and gray threads twisted tight and pulled into a cue. Though in his late-forties his frame was spare and his skin looked like old leather stretched over wrought-iron bones.

I just stared at him, afraid that whatever I said would make things worse. The door opened and Lisa slipped out, hugging the wall. I nodded to the man then hustled her out the front door. Once in the car, I got Lisa buckled up and we headed for the freeway. She was as animated as a rag doll.

“Do you know that man?” I asked her. “The one in the hallway. Have you ever seen him before?” Other than a soft noise like a sniffle she made no response. “Is he one of the bad men? Is he one of the men who came to Ken’s house?” I asked her in a rush.

“He’s bad!” Lisa said suddenly, her words already mingled with silent tears. Who was bad, Ken or the gray-haired man, I wondered.

“He did bad things. He told me God said he was supposed to do those things but it’s a lie! He hurt me,” she said, her voice cracking then her words dissolved into low sobs but without tears. “I’m not supposed to cry,” she said sniffling again and wiping her face with the ragged sleeve of her T-shirt.

“It’s okay to cry, Lisa. Sometimes it’s good for you. I’m sorry, but I have to ask you, it’s important. Are you talking about Ken?”

“He said to call him daddy.” She paused for a long moment, then added, “The other man, the one who took me, Ken, called him ‘Eric.’“ This last sentence was uttered with a vehemence that I would not have thought her capable.

“Did Eric hurt you?”

“He told me that he had friends who would kill mommy and daddy. I saw them. They’re bad men. They scared me.”

“It’s going to be all right. I’ll have you home soon where he won’t be able to hurt you. Was the man in the restaurant Eric?”

Lisa shook her head. “I don’t know him,” she said finally. “What if they come back again, like the last time?” Lisa asked struggling to hold back her tears.

“The last time? What about the last time?”

“I was in my front yard. We were playing with our dolls. The car stopped and a man got out, Eric, and then he grabbed me and pulled me inside. Then he hit me. Maybe he’s a friend of that man with the gray hair. Now he’s seen me and he’ll just come and get me again.”

Was the gray-haired man  one of the kidnappers? Lisa didn’t recognize him but he acted like he knew something. Ever since Ken had tried to shoot me, my brain seemed to have stopped working. If they caught Ken he probably could lead the police to the rest of them. Tomorrow, after she had had a good night’s sleep, her parents and I would call the FBI and they would track these guys down. I still had Ken’s license number. I could identify both Ken and the guy from the restaurant.

Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe if I stopped, turned around, found a phone . . . . But then in front of me I saw the on-ramp for 680 south. Hell, the guy must be gone by now. Anyway, it was too late to turn around and go back, and those cops were still looking for me. If they found me, they would give Lisa back to Ken who, I suddenly realized, couldn’t afford to leave any witnesses. Once Ken got his hands on her no one would ever see Lisa alive again. Hell, they’d probably frame me for her murder. Whatever mess I’d gotten myself into, lives were at stake.

Almost of its own volition my car turned right and I accelerated up the grade and into the thinning evening traffic. I pressed harder on the gas. Trees slid past on either side, gray-black humps in the darkness as we headed toward Lisa’s home.