The Vanished (4 page)

Maybe they had planned to demand a ransom, but then something had gone wrong and they had decided not to do it.

Maybe Annie had died during transportation. The thought gave David goosebumps.

Barton picked David up at one o’clock. On the way to the hypnotist’s office, David told the detective that he might have seen the license plate of the kidnapper’s car.

“You should ask the hypnotist to help me remember it,” he said.

“That’s exactly what I’m planning to do,” Barton replied.

The hypnotist’s name was Robert Weil. He was a lean man in his fifties with salt-and-pepper hair. According to the diplomas on the wall behind his mahogany desk, he earned a medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and completed a psychiatry residency at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. While Barton was setting up a video camera, Weil told David he was very sorry about Annie. He said he had two daughters; one was twenty-two and the other twenty-six. After Barton explained what kind of information they wanted him to extract from David’s memory, Weil instructed David to lie down on the chaise lounge. The detective said he would wait in the reception area, and stepped out of the room.

“Are you comfortable, David?” Weil asked, looking at David attentively.

“Yes.”

“Are you ready to go into a trance?”

“Yes.”

“Please take a deep breath and relax.”

Then the hypnotist asked David to close his eyes.

5

When David woke, it took him a few seconds to collect his thoughts and remember what he was doing here. He sat up and looked at Detective Barton, who was standing by the camera, watching him, and asked, “Did I tell you anything useful?”

Barton nodded. “Yes, you did.”

“What is it?”

He checked his watch. He had been under hypnosis for about fifty minutes.

“I need some time to analyze this information. Can you meet me at the station tomorrow at four?”

“Yes.”

As they made their way to Barton’s car, David wondered what useful information the hypnotist had managed to pull from his memory. Was it the license plate of the kidnappers’ car? The description of the kidnappers?

“Did I remember any license plates?” David asked after Barton started the engine.

“I’ll tell you everything tomorrow.”

Barton didn’t say no, which David found encouraging.

“Is this information going to help you find Annie?”

The detective said he didn’t know yet.

David was intrigued by Barton’s secretiveness, but it didn’t bother him. He didn’t mind waiting one day.

That evening, during dinner, Carol told David that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children had received no calls about Annie so far.

“When did you talk to them?” David asked.

“This afternoon.”

David couldn’t think of anything to say, so he remained silent.

He should try to make Annie’s disappearance a national story so her picture would be shown on TV every day all over the country. He reckoned there were public relations firms that could help him with that.

There was a risk that they would be flooded with false and mistaken reports, but false and mistaken reports were better than no calls at all.

“Why aren’t the kidnappers calling?” Carol said. “It’s been over three days.”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe she was kidnapped by a sex maniac.”

“Maybe they’re waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“For things to calm down.”

Maybe the kidnappers had left their ransom note on the porch, but the wind had blown it away? It was not inconceivable, was it?

“Let’s raise the reward to half a million,” Carol said.

“Okay.”

Carol sighed. “David, have we done everything we can to find Annie?”

“Honey, we’re doing our best.”

Carol put her fork down and blotted her lips with the napkin. “By the way, did Barton tell you the results of your lie-detector test?”

“Yes.”

“Did you pass?”

David nodded silently.

Carol looked at him for a long moment and then said, “It’s not true. You failed the test.”

David finished chewing the piece of beef he had in his mouth, and replied, “Yes, I failed the test. I was very nervous when I took it. People who tell the truth sometimes fail lie detector tests.”

He didn’t feel embarrassed or ashamed: his mind was filled with fear for Annie, which left no room for other emotions.

“Why did you lie to me?”

“Because the test results were inaccurate. I know I told the truth.” David took a sip of water from his glass. “Who told you I failed the test?”

“Barton.”

Why had the detective done it? To turn Carol against him?

What an asshole!

“When did he do that?”

“Two hours ago. He called my cellphone. I passed my test, by the way.”

“That’s great.”

“Why did you fail the test?”

“I was nervous. Polygraph tests aren’t very reliable, you know. A lot of honest people fail them, and a lot of liars manage to pass.”

“I see.”

“What else did Barton tell you?”

“He asked me about Brian. He wanted to know how he died.”

“What did you say?”

“I said that Brian had drowned in our pool, that it was an accident.”

Why the hell had Barton asked Carol about Brian? Did the detective suspect he had killed his son?

Just before they left the dining room, Carol took David by the arm and said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Do you think you’re a suspect?”

“No.” David shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’m a witness. That’s why Barton asked me to go under hypnosis.”

Because he didn’t want to be alone, he followed Carol to the great room. After about fifteen minutes Carol’s cellphone rang. She tapped the Answer button, put the phone to her ear, and said, “Hello.”

The conversation was short. Thinking the call was about Annie, David watched Carol intently as she talked. When she hung up, he asked her who had called.

“Detective Barton.” Holding her cell in her hand, Carol stood up. “He needs a sample of Annie’s DNA. He asked if I could find a strand of her hair.”

She headed for the hallway. David rose to his feet and followed her.

“Did he tell you why he needs the sample?” he asked.

“No.”

They went to Annie’s room, where Carol picked up Annie’s hairbrush from the vanity table and examined its bristles. David saw there was hair in the brush.

At the moment, he could think of only two reasons Barton would need Annie’s DNA sample: the police had found either Annie’s blood or a piece of her body. David broke into a cold sweat when it occurred to him that his daughter might have been dismembered.

Had they made this find thanks to the information he had provided while under hypnosis?

Carol called Barton and told him she had found Annie’s hair with follicles.

“What did he say?” David asked as they walked out of the room.

“He’s going to come take the hair in an hour.”

Barton arrived fifty minutes after Carol’s phone call. He pulled two strands of hair from Annie’s brush and placed them in a small paper evidence envelope. He also collected Annie’s toothbrush, which he put in a separate evidence envelope. He left without explaining why he needed Annie’s DNA sample.

David wondered if he should tell Carol it was possible that the police had discovered Annie’s body parts. He decided against it: those body parts might belong to someone else, so it was better to wait until more information was available.

6

“Do you think she’s dead?” Carol said, staring at the television, when the 10 pm newscast ended.

“No,” David said. “I think she’s alive, and we’re going to find her.”

“Why do they need her DNA sample?”

“Maybe it’s a standard procedure.”

Carol turned her face to David. “If it was a standard procedure, they would have collected the sample yesterday.”

“I’ll ask the detective about it tomorrow.”

“I know why they need Annie’s DNA sample. They found her body parts.”

“Honey, stop scaring yourself.”

“Half a year ago, they found a suitcase with body parts in Florida. The police used DNA to identify the victim. Do you remember that story?”

David shook his head. He didn’t remember this story, but he knew that more than a few suitcases containing human remains were discovered every year.

He pictured Annie’s dismembered body stuffed in a suitcase, and his hands reflexively curled into fists. He would break the kidnapper’s neck when he met him.

“There’s no point in speculating,” he said. Then he told Carol that he was considering turning Annie’s disappearance into a national story. She said it was an idea worth trying.

Chapter
3

1

Unable to sleep, David stayed up all night, wandering the house, pacing the rooms, gazing blankly at the television screen. He finally dozed off on the couch in the great room soon after sunrise. He was awakened by his cellphone at 10.42 am. It was Detective Barton. He asked if David could come to the Plano Police Department at three instead of four o’clock. David said yes.

“Who was it?” Carol asked when he hung up. She looked haggard and sick; her eyes were bloodshot.

“Barton. He wants me to come at three.”

“Did he tell you what they found?”

“No.”

Annie was dead. David was all but sure of it. Barton would have canceled the meeting if the body parts didn’t belong to Annie.

Terrifying thoughts raced through his mind. Had the kidnapper raped Annie? Had he tortured her? Had she still been alive when he began to dismember her?

His head began to ache while he was waiting for Barton in the lobby of the police department.

Maybe the kidnapper hadn’t chopped Annie into pieces. Maybe he had only cut off her head. Was Barton going to take him to the morgue and show him Annie’s headless body?

Barton took him to Interview Room #2. As they went, the detective asked David how he was holding up.

“Not so good,” David said.

When he entered the room, David saw a man with a shaved head in a gray suit sitting at the interview table. Barton introduced the man as Ivan Fonseca. There was a black aluminum case with a handle on the table in front of Fonseca.

“Did you find Annie’s body?” David asked Barton.

Barton looked at him for a long moment and then said, “Do you have something to tell me?”

“You took her hair for DNA testing. It means you found her blood or her body.”

“I’ll tell you what we found in a few minutes. But first I want you to do me a favor. We need to take your fingerprints.”

“All right,” David said.

Fonseca popped the latches and opened the case, revealing a fingerprint station kit. As Fonseca placed a fingerprint card into the holder, David noticed that his name was written on it.

When his colleague finished taking David’s fingerprints, Barton asked David, “Are you in a hurry?”

“No,” David said, wiping the ink off his fingers.

“Do you mind waiting here for an hour? We have to check something.”

When the hell are you going to tell me what you found?

“Okay.”

The cops stood up and left the room. David propped his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his hands.

Had they found something that had his fingerprints on it?

They found the cleaver used to cut up Annie’s body, and it has my fingerprints on it.

Strangely, this idea seemed very plausible to him.

David had a feeling that Barton had duped him. He didn’t know how he had been duped, but he supposed he would find that out very soon.

How did the saying go? If you can’t spot the sucker at the poker table, then the sucker is you.

Barton came back an hour and ten minutes later with a computer tablet and a manila folder in his hand. He put the tablet and the folder on the table in front of him and then said, “Thank you for waiting, David.”

“So what did you find?” David asked.

“I want to show you something first.” Barton pressed the Home button on the tablet, and the device came to life. There was a paused video on the screen, and David quickly realized that it was the video of his hypnosis session with Dr. Weil. The detective tapped the Play button and leaned the tablet against the wall.

“Now I’m going to ask you a few questions, and I want you to be completely honest with me,” Robert Weil said off-camera. “Your daughter Annie went missing last Friday. Do you know what happened to her?”

“Yes,” the hypnotized David Miller said.

“Tell me what happened to your daughter?”

“I… She’s dead.”

“How did she die?”

“I killed her.”

“You killed Annie?”

“Yes. I killed her.”

“How did you kill her?”

“I stabbed her with a knife.”

“Where’s Annie’s body?”

“It’s buried in the forest.”

“What forest?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Where’s the knife you stabbed Annie with?”

“It’s in the bushes behind the restrooms in Ardmore Park.”

Barton tapped the Pause button. David leaned back in his chair and folded his arms on his chest, his eyes fixed on the door.

He had been right: the detective had indeed duped him.

“What do you think about that, David?” Barton asked.

David licked his lips and said, “You lied to me, Detective. You said you were going to use hypnosis to help me remember what I saw in the park.”

“The plan changed, sorry.”

“Do you believe it? Do you believe what I said under hypnosis?”

“I’d be less inclined to believe it if there were no evidence that it’s true. And the thing is, we have such evidence. Yesterday we went to Ardmore Park and searched the bushes behind the restrooms. Guess what we found? We found a knife with traces of Annie’s blood on it. And here’s the interesting part: the fingerprints on the knife belong to you.”

“What?”

“There are your fingerprints on the knife.”

“Are you sure it’s Annie’s blood?”

“Yes. A DNA test confirmed that it’s your daughter’s blood.”

David frowned and dropped his gaze to the table. He had a terrible sinking feeling in his stomach.

“Do you think this knife was used to kill Annie?” he asked.

“Yes, I do.”

“Are there any other fingerprints on the knife besides mine?”

“No. Only yours.”

It was impossible. He had never tossed any knives in the bushes in Ardmore Park.

And he had not killed Annie.

“Can I see the knife?”

“I can show you its photo.” Barton leafed through the contents of the folder, found the picture of the knife, and gave it to David.

It was a regular carving knife with a black handle. David did not recognize it. He returned the photo to the detective and asked, “When I was under hypnosis, did Dr. Weil ask me about the license plates?”

“Yes. You said you didn’t remember.”

Do you still think you have nothing to worry about? the voice in his head said.

“Can I see that?”

Why did I say I killed Annie while under hypnosis?

That was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.

“Sure. You can watch the whole thing at home.” Barton took a CD from his jacket pocket and handed it to David.

“Do you think I killed Annie?”

How had Annie’s blood gotten on that knife? Had the kidnapper slashed Annie’s hand with it? Had he stabbed her with it?

“Yes, I do.”

“Why would I kill my daughter? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s a great question, David. Here’s my theory: you wanted to get rid of Annie because she had epilepsy. You got a defective child, and you refused to accept it. I suppose you thought that returning her to the orphanage would make you look bad.”

“Are you serious? Do you understand how ridiculous it sounds?”

“You think it’s ridiculous because it concerns you. I’m sure if you were a prosecutor in this case, you’d have no problem with this motive and you’d find convincing arguments for its legitimacy.”

“You’re wrong.”

A slight smile touched the detective’s lips. “I’ve been a cop for twenty years, and nothing surprises me anymore. Hundreds of kids are killed by their parents every year, I’m sure you know it. And sometimes they’re killed for strange reasons. There was a woman in New York who slowly poisoned her son to get attention and sympathy. They call it Münchausen syndrome by proxy. Her son was five years old when he died.” Barton paused. “Maybe it was a mercy killing. Maybe you thought she would be better off dead.”

“Detective, epilepsy is a manageable condition. If Annie keeps taking medication, she’ll never have a major seizure again. Talk to her doctor if you don’t believe me. And I’m sure it’s obvious to you that I can afford her treatment.”

“It’s only been five months. Who knows what will happen a year from now? Sometimes medication stops working.”

“I did not kill my daughter! I did not kill her. I love Annie!” David clenched his hands into fists. “I want you to believe me.”

“You see, David, it would have been much easier for me to believe you if we hadn’t found that knife.”

“You have to believe me. You can’t close the case. You have to keep looking for the people who took Annie.”

“How do you explain the knife? You must realize that I can’t ignore this evidence.”

“They’re trying to set me up.”

“Who’s trying to set you up? The kidnappers?”

“Yes. They…” David scrambled for an answer—an answer that was somewhat credible. “They must have stolen that knife from my house.”

That was an excellent explanation. That was the only rational explanation.

“You understand that the jury isn’t going to buy it, don’t you?” Barton said.

“If I was guilty, I wouldn’t have agreed to go under hypnosis. Think about it. No killer in his right mind would do that. It’s too risky.”

“I guess you didn’t think we’d ask you if you’d killed Annie.”

David looked at the computer tablet and said, “Confessions made under hypnosis are inadmissible in court.”

“That’s true. We can’t use this confession in court, but we can use the knife.”

It appeared the district attorney’s office had made the decision to file charges against him, or was seriously considering filing them. When he was charged with Annie’s murder, the police would stop looking for her since she would be assumed to be dead.

Suddenly David remembered that there was a witness who could corroborate his story: Eddie. He hadn’t told the police about Eddie because Eddie couldn’t contribute any useful information.

“Listen, Detective. There’s a witness who saw Annie being kidnapped. His name’s Eddie. I spoke to him ten minutes after Annie went missing. He said he saw a woman take my daughter with her.”

“Do you have this guy’s contact information?”

“No.”

“Bring him to me when you find him, okay?” The detective opened the manila folder and lifted the top sheet of paper. “Here’s a search warrant for your residence and your vehicles.” Barton showed the document to David. “Did you come here in your car?”

“Yes.”

“We’re going to impound it. Do you want to take a cab or do you want an officer to take you home?”

Scowling, David said, “I’ll take a cab.”

2

He had been an idiot. He shouldn’t have trusted Barton. He shouldn’t have agreed to undergo hypnosis.

When David was in high school, his best friend’s dad, who was a self-proclaimed civil-rights fighter, had shared with him the rules he followed when dealing with the police. The main rule was: never invite the police into your life unless there's absolutely no other alternative. The second rule was: don’t trust the cops. The third was: deny, deny, deny. And the last rule was that you should never volunteer information to the police. One of the man’s favorite sayings was ‘You can indict a ham sandwich,’ which he viewed as an indication of the unfairness of the criminal justice system.

Don’t trust the cops.

He would probably have followed this rule if he hadn’t worked as a prosecutor for nine years.

Perhaps it had been a mistake to move to Plano. If they had stayed in Tucson, none of this would have happened.

They moved to Texas seven years ago, shortly after the death of David’s uncle Leonard Miller, who left his entire fortune to David. They had been married for half a year at that time. Leonard had made most of his money in the fertilizer and insecticide business, and after taxes his estate was worth twenty-eight million dollars. The house David and Carol lived in, a six-bedroom Mediterranean villa currently valued at three million dollars, had been Leonard’s last home. They had considered selling the mansion but changed their minds after falling in love with it.

David supposed Uncle Leonard, who had been widowed and childless, had made him his sole heir because they had been very close since his childhood and because he was not a spendthrift.

Although David loved his job at the Pima County Attorney’s office, he didn’t hesitate to quit: he enjoyed spending time with his family more than bringing criminals to justice.

If they had stayed in Tucson, Brian would still be alive. 

3

When David arrived home, there were four police cruisers and a crime scene unit van parked in front of his house. He found Carol in the dining room, sitting alone at the table with a look of panic on her face. As soon as she saw him, she jumped to her feet and said worriedly, “David, what happened? Why are they searching our house?”