The Abduction (17 page)

“What about it?”

“And now you’re out buying her favorite cereal.”

“She’s gotta eat.”

Tony laid his hand on Repo’s shoulder. His voice had a paternal yet threatening tone, like the Godfather. “You disappoint me, Repo. I always told everybody that Repo was the kid to watch. Young but dependable. Lots of promise. I brought you in on this job because I thought of you like Johnny, my own brother—like family. We’re like a little family, the three of us. Except that Johnny and me, we’re the only ones in this family who committed murder. That means we got more at stake than you do. And now you’re getting chummy with the girl. That makes me very ner
vous. It makes me wonder, you know, if maybe Repo is going to sell the rest of the family down the river.”

“I’m not going to sell anybody out.”

Tony shook his head. “You’ve lost our trust.”

Repo shifted nervously. “What are you saying?”

“You gotta earn it back.”

“How?”

Tony’s expression changed. The jaw tightened. The eyes became dark, menacing slits. “As soon as we get the money, the girl dies. And you’ll be the one who kills her.”

Downtown Washington seemed awash in shades of gray. Overcast skies were a perfect match for the old limestone buildings and marble monuments. Trees stood leafless in Lafayette Square, the impeccably landscaped park north of the White House, directly across Pennsylvania Avenue. As the black limousine pulled from the White House driveway, Lincoln Howe glanced at the circle of protesters in the square. Their signs and slogans decried American exploitation of child labor in foreign countries. He thought of the way President Sires had just obsessed over his legacy, then thought of his own televised speech last night against child abduction. Suddenly it clicked. He had yet to be elected, but he’d already settled on a legacy of his own: Lincoln Howe, the children’s president.

The thought pleased him.

“How did the meeting go?” asked LaBelle. He was seated in the rear, across from the general.

“Just fine.” The clipped tone made it clear he didn’t want to talk about it.

The limo stopped to allow the protesters to cross Pennsylvania Avenue. General Howe’s gaze turned toward Lafayette Square, fixing on the huge bronze of Andrew Jackson on horseback in the center. “The Battle of New Orleans,” he muttered in a hollow voice.

“Excuse me?” said LaBelle.

“One of General Jackson’s most famous military victories.” He shot a look of disapproval. “Don’t you know anything about the war of eighteen-twelve?”

“Only the year in which it was fought, sir.” He checked his watch, mindful of the general’s tight schedule.

“Buck?” he said pointedly. “Did you know that black soldiers fought in the Battle of New Orleans?”

He paused, sensing a purpose for the digression. “No, sir. I didn’t.”

“General Andrew Jackson himself promised to give a tract of land to every black man who would join his army of irregulars and fight the British. They signed up in droves. They fought bravely. Many of them died.” His eyes narrowed. “Do you know what they got for their sacrifice?”

“Land, is what I thought you said.”

“They got
nothing.
Those courageous black soldiers got nothing but lies and empty promises—straight from the lips of a distinguished general in the United States Army who went on to become one of this nation’s most respected presidents.” He shook his head, steaming yet again over his meeting with the self-proclaimed education president. “Legacies,” he scoffed. “They’re all such bullshit anyway.”

For once, LaBelle could think of nothing to say.

The telephone rang. It was General Howe’s personal line, limited to a handful of callers. He swallowed the bitterness in his throat, then answered on the second piercing ring.

“Sweetheart, it’s me,” his wife said.

The general glanced up. LaBelle busied himself in his papers, pretending not to listen. Howe spoke
softly into the phone. “Where are you, Nat?”

“Still in Nashville. Tanya and I have been talking. She’s very upset.”

“Can’t the doctor prescribe something?”

The line crackled with her sigh of frustration. “That’s not the issue.”

“I’m sorry. Tell me.”

“Well,” she struggled, “it seems Tanya wants to pay the ransom.” She paused, then added, “And I do, too.”

He went rigid, gripping the phone. “Let me get something straight. Does Tanya have a million dollars?”

“Of course not.”

“Check our bank book. Do we have a million dollars?”

“No. But you can get it. Surely if you call in some favors we can raise the money.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“But, Lincoln. Please.”

“Nat, I went on national television last night telling the kidnappers I would never pay their ransom, even if I had the money. I can’t back off that position less than twenty-four hours later.”

“Is that all you’re concerned about? Looking tough to voters?” Her voice was shaking.

“This has nothing to do with votes. It’s simple negotiation strategy. We have to be firm. I told them no dealing, and I meant it. Trust me on this.”

“I’m scared. We’re both scared. I have this horrible feeling that they’ll really kill Kristen if we don’t pay the money.” Her voice trailed off. She was sobbing into the phone.

He swallowed hard, toughening his voice. “Natalie, get hold of yourself. I said no. Don’t fight me on this.”

She sniffled, then drew a deep breath. “I’m sorry. What do you want me to tell Tanya?”

“Tell Tanya—” He paused, unable to find words.

“That you’re doing it for Kristen?” she suggested.

“Yes,” he said flatly. “Tell her that.”

Allison had been so busy she’d actually forgotten to eat lunch. One of her first official acts as attorney general had been to shut down the private dining room with its personal staff that filled the north end of her office suite, reasoning that the Justice Building had a perfectly fine cafeteria right in the basement. She called down for soup and a salad, and at three o’clock her secretary plopped it on her desk with a can of Diet Pepsi. The phone rang just as she popped open the soda, causing her to start and spill it all over. A garden salad with raspberry-cola vinaigrette dressing was strangely tempting, but she pushed it aside, figuring she had about enough caffeine coursing through her veins anyway.

Her secretary popped back into the office. “It’s Harley Abrams on line three.”

Allison snatched up the phone. “What did you find out?”

“I just heard from our Miami field office. They can’t find O’Brien.”

“What do you mean they can’t find him? They’re the FBI.”

“They checked his condo. Nobody home. They went down to the marina. Apparently he has a boat rental place there.”

“Right. Mitch used to be a criminal defense lawyer in Chicago, but he burned out and took time off a few years ago to sail all over the world,
all by himself. When he came back, he just quit practicing, moved to Miami, and started renting out sailboats.”

“Well, he hasn’t rented one in over two weeks. It’s a little difficult to nail down specifics with a guy who lives alone and works for himself, but the last time anybody saw him was a few-days before Halloween.”

“Maybe he’s on another sailing trip.”

“Maybe. But the timing is somewhat suspicious.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I don’t know. But there’s one thing I’d like you to do. I know there’s at least one huge difference between the abduction of your daughter and this kidnapping—namely, you never got a ransom demand. But this O’Brien thing has me intrigued. I could have somebody else do this, but you know more than anyone about your daughter, and we’re running out of time.”

“I can do it. What?”

“I’d like you to get your hands on the files, the newspaper articles, everything you have on Emily’s abduction. And I want you to look—look real hard—for parallels with this case.”

“What kinds of things am I looking for?”

“I’ll make a checklist and fax it over.”

“Okay. I’m getting pressured to start campaigning again, but I can certainly put it off for this. I mean, if you really think—oh, forget it.”

“If I think what?”

Her heart swelled, but she was almost afraid to ask. “Harley, let’s just assume there is a connection. We both know the statistics on child abduction—how the passage of time affects recovery. But put the dismal data aside and just listen to
your gut. After all these years, do you think there’s a chance we could still find Emily?”

He paused, choosing his words carefully. “Let’s go one step at a time here, okay?”

She nodded wearily, glancing at an old photograph of her and Emily on the credenza. “Right. Just one step at a time.”

Tanya and her mother sat in silence in the family room. The drapes were drawn, and the television was off. A lamp on the end table provided the only lighting. The mantel clock ticked above the redbrick fireplace. Tanya stared nervously down at her hands. A neighbor’s dog barked across the street, making her jump.

Her mother looked on with concern. “Sweetheart, why don’t you try to get some sleep?”

She looked up, eyes glassy. She just shook her head.

The telephone rang, giving them both a jolt. Tanya rose and grabbed the phone on the end table.

“Hello,” she answered.

“General Howe broke the rules.” The voice was deep and garbled, altered by some kind of mechanical device, like the anonymous informants who appeared as silhouettes on television news shows.

Her eyes widened. “Who is this?”

“I’m national chairman of the Save Kristen Coalition. I’m calling for contributions.”

“Is this a crank?”

“Would a crank know that Kristen’s school ID was on the back of the ransom demand?”

Tanya shivered at the realization—it was
him.
On impulse, she hit the record button on her answering machine, taping the call. “Please”—her
voice shook—“don’t hurt my daughter. You can have whatever you want. Just let her go.”

“I told you what I want. A million dollars. By tomorrow morning. And no cops.”

“I want to give it to you. Really I do.”

“That’s not what your father said on TV last night.”

She winced, silently cursing her father. “Don’t listen to him. Just deal with me, all right? I’ll get you your money, and I’ll keep the cops out of it. I promise. Just don’t hurt Kristen.”

“What do you mean, you’ll get the money? Do you have it or don’t you?”

“I don’t have it, but I can get it. I just need a little time.”

“You’ve got until tomorrow morning.”

“I need more time.”

“Bullshit. No stalling.”

The harshness came through, even with the distortion. Her hand was suddenly trembling. “I’m not stalling. A million dollars is a lot of money.”

“I said tomorrow morning.”

“I—I don’t know.” She could hardly speak. “Okay. Tomorrow morning. I’ll have it.”

“You’re lying.”

She swallowed hard. “What?”

“You can’t raise the money by tomorrow morning. Not without your old man’s help.”

“No, I can do it. Really. I can.” She waited, but there was no reply. A surge of desperation erupted inside her. “Didn’t you hear me?” Her voice cracked. “I said I’ll do it. I will. God, yes, I
will
!”

“I don’t believe you can.” The reply was so calm it chilled her. “And you know what, Tanya? I don’t trust you, your father, or anyone in your
whole damn family. So why don’t you stingy black bastards just keep your million dollars. Truth is, the world is going to be a whole lot better place with one less Howe in it.”

“No, wait!”

The line clicked, and she heard only the dial tone.

Lincoln Howe summoned the key decision makers for a campaign strategy meeting that afternoon. Howe and his campaign director, Buck LaBelle, shared a limo to Washington National Airport. Some were flying in and others would be flying out, so the airport was a logical meeting spot. The refurbished 727 jet was at the gate when they arrived, its clean white fuselage emblazoned with the bright red and blue campaign message:
HOWE-ENDICOTT
2000.

Dwight Endicott was the first person Howe saw as he boarded the airplane. The vice presidential candidate had just flown in from Cleveland after two full days of campaigning in the key state of Ohio. Endicott had never served in the military, but he had the broad shoulders, imposing stature, and no-nonsense expression of an ex-Marine. He’d made his mark as the high-profile head of the Drug Enforcement Agency. A best-selling book and several years on the profitable lecture circuit had helped spin his anti-drug message into a larger theme of renewed morality. His campaign trademark was the flash of the V sign, like Churchill or FDR—only Endicott’s V stood not for
victory
but
values.
He was the right-wing component of the Republican ticket, an appeasement to the fundamentalists and pro-life advocates who
were concerned, if not alarmed, by General Howe’s moderate positions on social issues.

“Did you have a good trip?” Howe asked his running mate.

“Ohio’s in the bag,” Endicott said with a smile.

The candidates moved to the working area of the airplane, a small room just forward of the galley. Bolted-down couches, leather chairs, and a Formica worktable replaced the usual rows of airline seats. Howe and Endicott sat on the couch with their backs to the portal windows. Buck LaBelle sat across the table with John Eaton, a brilliant but sometimes absent-minded pollster who could work miracles with a notebook computer, provided he hadn’t inadvertently left it behind in the airport men’s room. Seated beside him was Evan Fitzgerald, the media consultant Endicott had insisted be in charge of developing and testing all television ads. Howe respected Fitzgerald’s work, even though he was one of those self-important Ivy League snobs whom Howe hated, the kind of guy who would never come right out and tell you he was a Harvard man, but who somehow managed to weave into every conversation a sentence that began with “When I lived in Cambridge…”

The plane wasn’t scheduled to leave Washington for an hour, and it would be at least thirty minutes before the crew, the campaign staffers, and the traveling media would board. For the moment, the brain trust had the desired privacy. Howe took the opening few minutes telling them about his Oval Office meeting with President Sires.

“The bottom line,” he concluded, “is that the president doesn’t want me to say another word
about calling out the troops to fight child abductors. If I don’t put a lid on it, we’ll have to contend with a nasty White House leak to the effect that the FBI’s investigation is now focusing on someone from my own campaign staff who orchestrated Kristen’s abduction to swing the election.”

“I say let them leak it.” It was Eaton, the pollster, speaking with the open computer in his lap. “My numbers show that people just won’t buy it. Men, women, black, white, old, young. It doesn’t matter. Ninety percent of the American public believes that your speech last night was made purely out of love for your granddaughter. The mere suggestion that you or anyone around you is behind the kidnapping will be Leahy’s political death knell.”

LaBelle chomped on his unlit cigar. “I agree with Eaton, but let’s take it a step further. First rule of politics: If you’ve got bad news, out it yourself. Let’s not wait for the White House to leak it. Let’s do it ourselves, up front. Call a press conference and tell the American people that it’s come to our attention that the FBI is focusing on Howe’s campaign, and that it’s politically motivated propaganda orchestrated by the attorney general’s office.”

“Wait a minute,” said Endicott. The vice presidential candidate extended his arms like a preacher on his pulpit, reeling in everyone. “First of all, do we know for a fact that it
isn’t
one of our supporters who’s behind the kidnapping?”

An uncomfortable silence shrouded the group. Endicott waited, but no one spoke. “Second of all,” he continued, “who said Attorney General Leahy is behind the FBI’s investigation of our campaign? Do we know that to be true?”

The silence thickened. The men exchanged glances, saying nothing. Finally Howe spoke.

“It’s true,” he said, harking back to his conversation with the president, “because it can’t be proven false.”

LaBelle smiled wryly. “Well, General, I see you’ve transitioned very well from the rules of war to the rules of politics.”

“This
is
war,” he said somberly.

Allison reached her home in Georgetown within twenty minutes of her phone call with Harley Abrams, having left the Federal Triangle just before rush hour. With Peter’s help, she pulled down more than a dozen dust-covered boxes from the attic.

She flipped through several boxes at random, and chills went down her spine. Inside were yellowed newspaper clippings, a copy of the police report, cards and letters from friends and strangers alike, videotapes of television coverage, flyers and posters offering rewards, and reams of other materials—some relevant, some not so relevant to Emily’s abduction. The boxes made it all seem so organized, deceptively so. Much of it was a blur to her, not because of the passage of time, but because at the time it all happened her senses were numb. She knew that she’d attended the Crime Stopper meetings, that she’d personally thanked the hundreds of volunteers who searched the neighborhood. Yet she had little memory of it. The notes of phone calls were definitely hers. She logged every phone call. Reporters who wanted the personal touch to their stories. Well-meaning strangers and their false sightings. The false confessors—sickos who just wanted attention, and the genuinely depraved who had hurt
someone else’s child and cleansed themselves by confessing to crimes they hadn’t committed. There was even a business card from the psychic she’d turned to in utter desperation, an old gypsy woman who held Emily’s blanket and picked Allison’s wallet, sending her on fruitless and frantic searches in places as far away as Canada.

Allison stepped back from the table, overwhelmed by the memories. In hindsight, it all seemed like a huge hole in her life. The size of the hole was measured in boxes, each bearing a printed date on the outside, starting with March 1992. Allison had never really focused on it before, but at first she’d filled a box a week, then a box a month, then a box a year. The last one had almost nothing in it, as if the boxes themselves were a sign of a lost trail and fading hope.

The boxes were stacked on the dining room table, end to end, in a mound that nearly reached the chandelier. Allison shuddered as she returned to the first box for a more careful review. At worst, it was like opening a grave, but she hated that thought. At best, it was opening old wounds.

“What exactly prompted all this?” asked Peter.

He was standing in the doorway between the dining and living rooms, wiping the attic dust from his trousers. Allison looked up from her seat at the head of the dining room table, peering over the box.

“It’s kind of a long story.” Her voice strained with dread at the thought of having to tell him about Mitch O’Brien.

“Maybe I can help,” he said as he pulled up a chair beside her. “I was there for you then. Why shut me out now?”

“I’m not shutting you out, Peter. Believe it or
not, it’s even more complicated now than it was eight years ago.”

“It can’t be that complicated. Just tell me.”

She hesitated, then resigned herself and faced him. “Harley Abrams thinks there’s a possible connection between this kidnapping and Emily’s abduction.”

“Why?”

“Lots of reasons. But I think he’s suddenly very suspicious of my ex-fiancé, Mitch O’Brien.”

Peter winced. “O’Brien? What does he have to do with this?”

“I don’t know. But to be honest, in the back of my mind I’ve sometimes wondered about Mitch. Was it purely coincidence that I happened to be talking on the phone with him when someone sneaked into my house and stole Emily from right under my nose? Or was Mitch purposely distracting me?”

His eyes widened, as if surprised by the accusation. “But what does that have to do with Kristen Howe’s kidnapping?”

“Nothing. But we just found out today that Mitch is missing. Has been missing since some time before the kidnapping.”

“You think he’s in hiding?”

“I don’t know. But there’s more. He’d been acting strange a few months before the kidnapping. Before he disappeared.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw him a couple of months ago. A couple of times, actually.”

Peter went rigid, then swallowed with trepidation. “What are you telling me?”

The phone rang. Allison paused, as if waiting for Peter to say it was okay to answer. He didn’t flinch.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That could be Abrams. I really should get it.” She grabbed the phone.

“Hello,” she answered.

“Howe won’t pay.”

Allison bristled. It was a garbled, mechanically disguised voice. “Who is this?”

“Kristen’s guardian angel.”

Her pulse quickened. “What do you want?”

“I want my money. But like I said, Lincoln Howe won’t pay.”

“That’s his decision.”

“Maybe. But what about you?”

“What about me?”

“You saw the general’s speech last night. Howe says you’re rich, you and your husband. You want to let the girl die and watch your hopes of becoming president die right along with her? Or you want to save the day, hotshot?”

The words caught in her throat. “You’re getting in way over your head. This is a very dangerous game.”

“It’s just simple economics. Supply and demand. I supply the girl. Now here’s my demand. A million bucks, cash. By Monday. Pay it, or the girl dies. Be by the phone at eight
A.M
. We’ll talk.”

The line clicked.

Allison lowered the phone, momentarily stunned. This was a turn she hadn’t seen coming. She turned to face Peter, but his chair was empty.

“Peter?” she called out.

The front door slammed. She ran to the foyer and peered out the window. He was already in his Jaguar. She blinked with confusion, then realized that the telephone interruption must have left him with the wrong idea about her and Mitch O’Brien. When she said she’d seen Mitch a couple of times,
Peter must have thought she’d
seen
him. She flung open the door and ran outside.

“Peter!” she shouted, but it was too late. The car squealed away. Peter was gone.

She felt an impulse to give chase, but there was something even more pressing. She hurried back inside and picked up the telephone, then punched out the number.

“Harley,” she said, completely out of breath. “They just called. It’s a whole new ball game.”