Pursuit (18 page)

“You think all of this is connected?” Todd tapped the spoon in his cup.

“Yeah, I do. How? No idea.”

“Preston has to be eliminated as a suspect. No car, I doubt she can drive, and she's not capable of any of this. Maybe connected unwittingly through circumstance. Your preacher man could be the fellow, but unlikely.” He looked at Julie.

“Yeah, right. Doesn't have the balls. Our factory guy seems an unlikely candidate, but he's surrounded by a lot of working types. Pickup truck potentials. How in piss sakes does the guy who forced me off the road have anything to do with this abduction?” She stopped, the word having come from her mouth so easily.
Abduction
: the act of taking someone against her will—or in this case, two someones. “Then there's that angry bitch I've only spoken to on the phone. Probably should visit her. But she seems to be just another victim's relative.” Julie gazed out the kitchen window. “We have to assume it's a guy. After all, how would a woman handle both Billie and Cheryl through that rain-drenched forest?”

Setting words to the event cast a realistic pall on the conversation.

“Hold on. We're going to prevail here, trust me. Go see Pastor Garthwait again.” Todd paused. “Also, why don't we call the lab in Chicago, have them take pictures of the ring from all angles, see if the good reverend recognizes it as his grandmother's?”

“How will that help us?”

“If we can establish a connection between what's going on with you and what happened to these other girls years
ago, maybe there's a way to put this guy in the picture. Some sort of coupling, a nexus.”

“I hate that word, but I get where you're going.” Julie looked at the still-darkened sky. “It's early. I hope my Cheryl's all right.” She covered her eyes. “Sorry.” Her mind worked on the possibilities. “I still don't get it. What's my link to this guy? It has to be me, Todd. He took her because of me.” She paused. “You're right about talking to Garthwait. I look into these cold cases, and suddenly my life gets dangerous.”

Todd phoned dispatch and got the number for the lab in Chicago. “We still can't do anything for a couple hours. Let me ask you—who might be the most relevant?”

Julie had no response.

“Okay, let's concentrate on Garthwait. We've seen Preston recently, and what's your factory guy's name?”

“Drew. William Drew. As I said before, I don't think he knows more than what he's already told me. But today we'll probably find out who has been there since Drew's niece went missing.”

Todd looked surprised.

“I'm sorry, maybe I didn't tell you. We asked for a list of people who were around when the kidnapping occurred. If, in fact, that's what it was.”

Julie took her cup to the sink. She put her hands on the edge of the counter and stretched. The pain in her upper body was still intense, but she welcomed it. It put her in touch with her baby. That smiling cherub years ago. Pigtails waving as she sang, “You are my thunshine. My only thunshine.”

A
ngie Hogar, here.”

Cheryl pulled the cot away from the wall. It looked like someone had lain facedown on the cot and with an outstretched arm over the edge scratched the words into the concrete floor. The woman must have carved the message with a piece of metal, something hard. She peeled off the dirty sheet and stuffed it between the wall and the faucet. She vowed to wash it, but later. Cheryl curled up on the flimsy mattress, a mere token of protection from the wire stretched across the frame of the cot. She didn't know how long she had been there or why.

In all of the trekking through the rain, stumbling falls, and angry man retorts, Cheryl never got the idea that this had anything to do with her. Or Billie, either. She wondered what happened to Aunt Billie. The man's attitude echoed that of a workman going about his chores, doing what he had to do. His initial sense of excitement gave way to a dogged firmness.

She wrapped the blanket around her like a cocoon. The light stayed on, as there wasn't any way to turn it off. The fan hummed, once in a while going off center and
creating a metal-on-metal screech, mixing the cool basement air into her cell.

Cheryl stared at the opposite wall. In the corner, a piece of the children's nursery wallpaper buckled slightly, forming a rectangular protrusion. She eased off her bed and moved her hand along the length of the bubbled wallpaper. Then she felt the short side of the wall. There was a difference. Was it just the texture, the sense on her fingertips of the rough, thick paper? She felt it again. No, the temperature. The area where the paper bulged was cooler. She shut her eyes and did it again, this time going in the opposite direction. She lay back on the cot and looked at the wallpaper's shape. It began high in the corner of the room, stretched two feet across, and a foot and a half down. It looked like the size of a picture frame, maybe an earlier installation of the fan that was now over the door. Or perhaps a window.

She continued to look at the swollen wallpaper, and she was sure that it covered a window. Basement windows were placed in that way, under heavy beams that held up the floor above. Whoever made the room—probably “the voice”—covered the window. It made sense. Why build this prison cell and have a window through which one could escape?

She eased into a light nap, thinking about what her mother used to say about adversity, “Don't bellow until you're out of the woods.”

A man's muted voice awakened her. “Hey you, move over here, close to the door.”

Cheryl positioned herself where a waist-high slot in the wall had been opened. She glimpsed a man's belt looped through dark blue trousers, a white shirt, and the tip of a tie. “Are you listening?
Are you listening?
”

“Yes. Where's my aunt Billie?” Cheryl saw the man's waist and the back of his shirt as he paced.

It was a while before he spoke. “Mind your manners, and you won't end up like your auntie, you hear? I'm going to pass you food.” Five apples and a loaf of bread were squashed in the pass-through. Then three tins of sardines, a package of potato chips, and two sealed Styrofoam Cup Noodles soups. “My advice, make it last. I'm not going to wear myself out hiking up and down these stairs to feed you.”

In the past, he'd tried to gain favor by feeding his guests substantial meals. Now, let them eat cake. He flashed the lights off and on several times, working himself into a fever. “What do you expect of me? Lazy bitch, sitting on your butt, like a teenage pig! I'm telling you, I don't want to hear a peep out of you!” Once again he flashed the lights and cut the fan on and off. He stomped up the stairs, his voice high and angry. “If I hear a whisper, I'll come right back down and
beat the living hell out of you
! Got it?” His voice trailed off as he slammed the basement door.

Before the sound finished reverberating around the concrete block walls, he was back. “And, if there's anything you need, sweetie, just tap on the door.” His voice, coming from the top of the stairs, had changed to that of a gentle soul. “A light, pleasant knock will do.”

She thought he was more than strange.

He hummed a few notes. “By the way, you can call me ‘King,' or ‘the King.' A-wop-dah-a-doo-dah, a-wop-wop-wop!

“Should I avail our guest of the full spa treatment? Massage, pedicure, a refreshing cold shower under the tap? Naked, of course.” He laughed. Still in a fit of self-congratulatory
merriment, he forgot to close the food slot and once again slammed the door shut. Cheryl went to the wall and pressed her head against the slot, holding her left hand tightly to her ear. After several minutes, a car revved and drove off.

She waited five minutes. Her head and hands rested on the ledge of the food slot.
“Hey up there!”
She heard only the faint
whir
of the fan above the door. “Hey, King! If that's your name.” She pounded her clenched fist on the ledge. Nothing. She sat back down. He was gone. She made a pledge that she was going to get out.

“How?” She startled herself by speaking out loud.

She would use the tops of the sardine cans to cut through the wallboard, certain that there was a window up in the far corner, noting also a bulge in the wallpaper where it looked water-stained, as if there were something behind the paper. She would cut through to the window but try to preserve the wallpaper in case he came back and looked in the room. She wasn't even certain a window was back there, but she was going to find out.

Cheryl took the wrapper from the loaf of bread and emptied the can of sardines into it. She wasn't crazy about sardines, but maybe they would save her. She took the oily can and climbed on top of the fridge.

Once the paper had been pulled away, about twenty inches from the corner could be seen, with a couple nails perpendicular to each other. Tapping her knuckles on the wall, and then on the upper portion, it sounded different, more hollow. She scraped a line next to the nails and then a horizontal one at the bottom, where the wallpaper had been. Taking a dish towel from the top of the fridge and wrapping it around the empty sardine tin, leaving a sharp
edge exposed, she cut away. She created a long, horizontal line and worked for what seemed several hours, making a pitiful amount of progress against the wallboard. The sardine can began to distort, the constant sawing pulling it into a more elongated shape. Her hands cramped. Shifting positions, the tough-minded teenager worked on the vertical line next to the nails.

W
hile heading into
town for work, Charles thought about his life. He enjoyed his multiple-residence routine. A modest one-bedroom flat served him well from Monday night through Friday morning, and then he would be off once again to his “pied-à-terre.” A real estate lady used the expression once while giving a talk at the factory. French. He liked the idea of it. “A foot to the ground.”

He relished his acts of authority; they gave him great joy. The banal patter with his captives lifted him like nothing else.

Somewhere, others might say that what he was doing was wrong, but he reasoned that they would be the cowardly; the meek sisters of ho-humdrum. Those do-gooders who raise the prescribed number of children, attend church, and vote for the candidate with the biggest grin.

He vowed that his days would be filled with more worthwhile endeavors. A foot to the ground indeed. Or, closer to accurate, a whole body itself to the ground. Or how about a half dozen to the earth? But he had to admit
he'd lost count, now with quality being the essence of the work.

Laughing out loud, he wondered if motorists around him thought him to be at all exceptional or queer. No, not queer. That, he knew, would not be accurate. His relationship to women would no doubt deem him heterosexual. He might be thought of as different but not fairy-like or lame. He and his mighty stallion implement would prevail, with never a hint of light-footedness. He sang:

I have this grand opinion

that I'll always rule my dominion.

Women will beg to be incarcerated

in my basement room, inebriated.