Dead River (6 page)

“Now if the caller is someone who has Sara Ann, try to keep them talking as long as you can. The same way you just did with your neighbor.”

“I don’t know if I could do that. You know, talk the same way to someone who’s abducted my daughter.”

“I know, but it’s important to stay calm.”

“I’ll try, but it won’t be easy.”

Averly gave Adam a half-smile. “That’s about it. Are there any questions?”

“I can’t think of any right now.”

“Detective Carillo will be staying here around the clock. So if you have any questions, just ask him. Okay?

“Yes,” Adam replied.

He was sure there would be many things to ask once he had time to think straight again. But right now the only question he had was about the search party. Why hasn’t Detective Wilkerson called?

 6 

Adam checked the grandfather clock in the foyer. It was seven-forty. Detective Wilkerson should have called by now. He slid the detective’s card from his wallet and settled on a barstool in the kitchen.

“Wilkerson.”

“This is Adam Riley.”

“I was about to call you.”

Adam thumped his fingers on the counter. “What’s going on with the search party?”

“That’s why I was going to call. I’ve organized about seventy-five civilian volunteers. They started combing the woods around your house about an hour ago.”

“Where else are they searching?”

“In your backyard.”

“Why there?”

“Actually they’re walking the shoreline along the river in the back.”

Adam’s heart raced. “Okay,” he whispered. “Please call me if you find out anything.”

“I will. Better get off the phone.”

Adam slowly pushed the bedroom door open. Valerie was sleeping. The blanket was on the floor beside her, in a pile. He gently walked to the bathroom and flipped the light on, then slowly closed the door, leaving it cracked. When he turned toward the bed he saw the narrow beam of light illuminating Val’s face. He stood motionless for several moments. He still marveled at how Sara Ann resembled her mother.

His thoughts drifted to their days together at Florida State. Valerie was an Alabama girl, a Baptist. She’d have to become a Catholic if they were to ever marry.

“You’d do that?” Adam asked. “Really?”

Each word she spoke was protracted, but smooth and sensuous to his ear. “I said I would, didn’t I?” Valerie answered, with a soft smile.

“What would your parents think?”

“I love you. That’s all that matters.”

“It’ll matter to them if they don’t want you to convert.”

Valerie gently poked Adam’s ribs. “Silly man. They don’t mind at all.”

Valerie rolled over. The rustling on the mattress swept Adam back.

“Detective,” Adam said, as he entered the living room.

Carillo was sunk into the couch. He looked up from his Louis L’Amour paperback. “Yes?”

“Have you heard anything?”

“Nothing.”

Adam paced the room, glancing at the equipment on the table at each pass. “I need to do something.” He massaged his forehead with both palms and stared at the ceiling. “Goddamn it, something!”

“Mr. Riley, there are a lot of people on this. You need to calm down.”

“Calm down? How the hell do you think I can do that?”

“This isn’t helping.”

Adam stopped and faced Carillo. “You remember my daughter’s diabetic, right?”

“Yes, I know that.”

“Do you know how severe her diabetes is?”

“No, I don’t. But if you’re going to make a point, please make it.”

Adam dropped on the couch, taking a deep breath. He looked over at Carillo. “I don’t know how much insulin she has with her.”

Carillo didn’t say anything.

“She must have her waist pack with her because it wasn’t in the car. So she has some syringes, but I don’t know how many.”

“How many does she usually take with her?” Carillo asked.

“Two or three, maybe four. I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

 7 

TWENTY YEARS EARLIER in a small Mississippi town, a boy sat at the edge of his bed in an aging two-story house. The house was built in 1939, and years of neglect gave way to mostly exposed, weathered wood on the exterior. What paint that remained had faded to a chalky gray. The house had no air-conditioning, and inside, the heavy air had a crumbling, musty smell.

In the sweltering heat of a July evening the boy on the bed read his Bible. David Allen Sikes was twelve years old.

Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.

His mother had assigned 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 and 7:1-2 for him to read and explain during dinner. He continued reading.

What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.

She had once told him that fornication meant sex between a man and woman who weren’t married. So the first part said man should not engage in fornication. But what about the second part?

David sighed hard. He would be going back to school in a few weeks. He looked forward to it, even though he was larger than most everyone in his class and they called him Chubby Sikes.

Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.

He closed his Bible and carefully placed it on the ramshackle wooden dresser in front of a cracked mirror with black spots covering most of its surface.

The second part must mean that if you are married, then sex is okay. He was fairly certain he understood the passages, and a sense of pride swept over him, feeling he would get them right at dinner.

“David, come down here for dinner right now,” his mother yelled up the stairs.

“Yes, Mother. I will wash my hands.”

“You’d better.”

David sat at the kitchen table waiting for his mother to take her seat and say the prayer. He often thought of his father at meal times, with his empty chair there. He recalled his father and mother arguing in their bedroom, and the sounds of slaps and crying. His father came home drunk many times. He’d go straight from the sawmill to Percy’s Place for a night of drinking beer with his friends. The troubles came when he finally stumbled home.

His father had died when David was young, barely four years old. David wasn’t sure what happened; his mother would only say that God had taken his father. She didn’t talk about her husband much, except occasionally to say: “Thank God he left us something.”

Clara Sikes was a slender, almost stick-like, woman in her early forties. She had a plain face that was drawn and tired, and she never wore makeup. Her clothes were simple, and she always wore an apron in the kitchen. She worked days as a custodian at the county courthouse, a job she took shortly after her husband died.

When Clara finished the prayer, they ate the over-cooked liver, mashed potatoes, and green beans she had prepared. David liked the mashed potatoes, but not the green beans or the liver. Still, everything had to be eaten. Leaving food on your plate was not tolerated, no exceptions. Resistance to a clean plate would result in long sessions sitting wearily at the kitchen table.

After their plates were clean, his mother asked, “So, David, can you tell me what you read tonight from the book of Corinthians?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Then begin.”

As always when he talked to his mother, David chose his words very carefully. “In the first part, the Bible said that you are not supposed to, for—ni—cate.”

“That’s right. What else?”

I got it right! “I think the next part,” he said in an upbeat tone, “meant that if you marry someone, it’s all right to have sex.”

Suddenly David’s mother reached under the kitchen table and pulled out the thick brown leather belt she kept there. She quickly doubled it in half and brought it whistling down on David’s back.

“Mama! What did I—”

With a crazed look she lifted the belt high and brought it down again, harder, on the same spot.

“I’m sorry, Mama, I’m sorry.” He sat cowering in his chair fighting back tears, his back on fire. “What did I say?”

“It’s not all right for you to have sexual intercourse with anybody. You will never be married; your place is here in this house with me. Understand?”

“I think so—I mean, yes, I understand.”

“You’d better. Now go to your room. I don’t want to see your sinful face the rest of the night.”

David picked up his plate, tableware, and drinking glass and took them to the kitchen sink. He hurried to rinse them but made sure he did it right.

Alone in his room, he peeled his shirt off and twisted his shoulders to see the red welts in the mirror. His eyes filled with tears. Why does she do this? He pulled his shirt back on and stared at his reflection in the mirror. A single tear ran down his cheek and dropped to the floor. Why does she beat me? Suddenly, he whipped off his belt, reared back, and slapped the top of his dresser, only inches from his Bible. Why?

 8 

THE ROOM HAD a peculiar odor, a mixture of sandalwood, cheap aftershave, and sex. He had raped and sodomized her three times, and the smell of him—and herself—hung heavy in the room.

Through it all, he hadn’t removed the black kerchief covering her eyes or the nylon ropes binding her wrists and ankles to the bed. The only other piece of clothing he’d left on her was the white Lycra top, now pulled up over her small breasts. Her head throbbed from the chloroform. And the ropes were too tight, digging into her flesh, the slightest movement of her body made them burn. On top of it all, her mouth was parched. I need insulin.

“Sara Ann?”

His voice was barely a whisper, but it echoed inside her head.

“I said Sara Ann!” Loud now, his voice was like a whip.

He was close, so close she could feel the heat of his body. Oh God! He’s naked!

“When I speak, you answer. Understand?”

“Yes—yes,” she whimpered.

“Yes, who?”

He demanded that she call him Gabriel, like the angel. “Yes, Ga—Gabriel.”

“That’s better, my dear.”

“Please let me go, please” she pleaded, as her tears soaked the black cloth covering her eyes.

“Listen to you beg.”

“I won’t tell anyone, I promise! I—I don’t even know who you are! I haven’t seen your face so you could let me go and—”

“Shut up! Stop screaming or you’ll get the duct tape on your mouth again.” He leaned against the mattress, making the springs of the old bed creak. “You aren’t going anywhere. Besides this should be seventh heaven for you. Don’t you like me inside you, Sara Ann?”

She twisted away from his words, but the hot pain of the ropes digging deeper into her skin forced her to cry out. She stopped thrashing and sobbed.

“Can you loosen the ropes, please?” She was barely able to utter the words between her sobbing and dry mouth.

“Of course not,” Gabriel laughed.

Gabriel placed his meaty hand on the inside of her thigh. Her entire body involuntarily jerked away from the contact, the ropes once again cutting into her flesh. “Please, oh, God, please don’t hurt me again.”

“Hurt you?”

His hand moved up slightly on her thigh, and her body jerked again. No, please no!

Suddenly Gabriel removed his hand from her leg. She could hear a rustling sound, and then objects hitting a hard surface.