My Lost Daughter (58 page)

Somewhere far away Lily heard voices. Alex was talking to an older woman who had walked up to the Dumpster carrying a heavy plastic garbage bag. “Let me do that for you,” he said, taking the bag out of her hand and placing it in the Dumpster.

“Thanks, that was very nice of you.” The woman glanced at Lily
and then returned her attention to Alex. “Oh, my, is something wrong? Is she hurt?”

“She's an addict,” Alex told her, speaking in a controlled voice. He reached inside his pants and pulled out a tin badge in a plastic case, flashing it at the woman. “I'm an undercover police detective. Maybe it's better if you move on now. We have a big narcotics bust about to go down and I wouldn't want you to get hurt.”

“These drug people,” she said, shooting Lily a disgusted look. “They're all over the place these days. Thank you, officer.”

“You have a nice day now,” Alex called out as the woman walked off.

Through the fog, Lily tried to focus, remain awake. The drug was pulling her down and she knew she would soon be unconscious. She forced out a pathetic plea, but it was only a whisper. “Help me . . . do something . . . please.”

As soon as the woman was out of sight, Alex pulled Lily to a standing position and tugged her along behind him like an errant child, her nightgown ripped and dirty, the sun streaking through the thin fabric of her gown and revealing her breasts, legs, and genitals. She stumbled and fell, but Alex jerked her back to her feet. He swept her up in his arms just as she lost consciousness.

 

When Chris finally reached the house, the sun was up and the door was standing wide open. “Good lord,” he said, rushing in and racing up the stairs to the bedroom.

Lily was gone and the bedding was tossed on the floor. He ran back downstairs and checked the guest room. He went to the garage to see if Lily had gone out looking for Shana, but the Volvo was still there. Chris was gripped with fear. As he passed the alarm panel, he knew it was his fault. Lily had tried to tell him about the alarm but he had refused to listen.

Picking up the phone in the kitchen, he called 911 and told the operator his fiancée and her daughter had been kidnapped. A few minutes later, he recalled Lily having lunch recently with an FBI agent named Mary Stevens, and that she had promised to check
Whitehall out. Like a wild man, he began opening drawers and throwing everything on the floor, trying to find Lily's address book. “Idiot,” he said, realizing that Lily kept all her contacts in her iPhone. Finding Stevens's number, he quickly dialed it.

“Special Agent Stevens,” a woman said in a husky voice. “This better be good.”

Chris told her what had transpired along with what he suspected.

“I hate to tell you this,” Mary said, “but Lily and Shana are in great danger. I just returned from Whitehall Psychiatric Hospital in San Francisco. We believe the man who called himself Alex is a serial killer. The only good news is that they don't fit the profile of his other victims. Give me your address and my partner and I will be there in five minutes.” Once she scribbled down the address, she added, “Don't leave the house. Stay there and work with the local police. I'll check to see if we got a match on the fingerprints Shana sent us. We need a picture of this guy ASAP.”

Chris braced himself against the door. “Tell me what to do. This is my fault. I didn't believe them. I left Lily alone in the house with the alarm off. I didn't think to check the front door when I went out looking for Shana.”

“Spare me,” Mary told him. “Talking isn't going to solve anything. I'll check in with you once I'm on the road.”

Chris hung up the phone, put his head in his hands, and sobbed. Once again, he had made a mistake. All he could pray for now was that his failure to take Lily and Shana seriously wouldn't lead to their deaths.

 

The response was overwhelming. The narrow block where Lily and Chris lived was now lined with black-and-whites, county vehicles, two K9 units, and three motorcycle officers.

Chris dumped out all the photos he could find of Shana and Lily on the dining room table. An officer made copies to hand out to the search team.

Coupled with information provided by Agent Stevens, the local PD determined they were dealing with a dangerous individual and
called in every officer they could find. The police helicopter was up and searching. They knocked on doors and questioned as many people as possible.

By nightfall, they had nothing.

 

Mary Stevens dropped by the house and was drinking coffee in the kitchen with Chris and one of the detectives from the Ventura PD named Hank Sawyer. She told him that Sawyer had been her supervisor before she transferred to the Bureau.

Chris's hands were shaking and dark circles were etched under his eyes. “She's dead, isn't she? They're never going to find them. They're both dead.” He knew people sometimes waited months, even years, only to find out their loved ones had been murdered. He had already lost his wife and daughter. How could it happen again?

Stevens was leaning back against the kitchen counter. “Lily's tough. She'll make it. I know it's no consolation right now, but these things take time.”

Chris watched as a team of technicians began stringing cable and wires to set up a command post in the dining room. “Do they think he's going to ask for a ransom?”

“We're covering all the bases,” Mary said, taking a slug of her coffee.

“Do they know anything, anything at all?”

“We know Shana wasn't imagining things. We matched the prints from the items she gave us. Let me tell you, this is one scary fucker.” Mary tossed the Styrofoam cup in the trash and then went to the sink to splash water on her face. “His real name is Adam Pounder, but he has three aliases in addition to Alex Purcell, the name he used at Whitehall. For clarity, we're referring to him as Alex. He did his first stint in a mental institution for throwing acid in a girl's face.” She stopped speaking and dried her face with a paper towel. “He murdered another young girl a day after he was released from Camarillo State Hospital. He's allegedly involved in a suicide club that the Bureau and numerous PDs have been investigating. Five people have died and we believe Alex may have killed them. We decided a suicide
club was the perfect place for a serial killer to solicit victims. These people want to die and Alex is more than happy to oblige them. He's also a suspect in a homicide in Oklahoma.”

“A serial killer?” Chris said, collapsing in a chair. “Are you seriously saying the man who kidnapped Shana and Lily is a serial killer?”

Mary walked out the door without answering, stepping over the wires and cables. Chris watched through the windows until she got in her car and drove off.

 

The small room was dark, illuminated only from the light in the bathroom. With the shutters closed, it felt as if there was no air in the room. Shana heard a key turn in the lock and stiffened.

Alex's appearance sent shockwaves of fear through her. His navy blue blazer was now wrinkled and stained, and the white T-shirt he had been wearing had disappeared. His face was agitated and his eyes sunken in his head. He didn't look like the same man. The last injection had been hours ago, maybe days. Shana was beginning to lose track of time. The room was littered with fast-food sacks and ashtrays were overflowing with cigarette butts. The stench alone was unbearable.

“It didn't have to be this way. Now it's all wrong. Look at this place, it's disgusting.” Alex was spitting out his words in a rapid manic fashion. “I have your mother in another apartment, but they're out there now . . . the police. They're everywhere. They have helicopters and dogs. We have to get to the pond.” He was pacing and suddenly stopped, turning and facing Shana. His eyes softened somewhat but he was so out of control he couldn't stand still.

“It's almost time,” Alex said, walking to one side of the room and slapping the walls. “Morrow said the planets would be aligned perfectly for us now. The universe is ready. We have to go now, damn it.” He looked accusingly at Shana. “This is your fault. If you'd stayed in the hospital, everything would have been great. We could have gone with Norman.”

“Listen, Alex . . .”

“Shut the fuck up. Alex is dead. We're all dead. Life is an illusion.
My mother didn't have to tell Jennifer's parents to take her away. We loved each other. She was like me. We're a different species. People don't understand us. When she killed our baby, I had to help her escape.”

“Alex, please listen to me,” Shana pleaded. “You've got to get out of this room. You're going stir-crazy. Let's go out. We'll get something to eat, maybe go somewhere.”

Alex stopped walking and sat down in the chair.

“We can go on a roller-coaster ride if you want,” Shana continued, making up things as she spoke, trying to determine what he would react to in a positive way. “You said you'd never been on a roller coaster. We could go to Disneyland or Knott's Berry Farm. We're not that far from those places, Alex. We could have fun.”

“We're going soon,” Alex said, standing and untying the canvas tarp. “We don't have time for amusement parks.”

Shana sat up in the bed, rubbing her hands and then reaching down and massaging her legs. Her legs were so numb, she wasn't sure she could walk.

Alex had moved to the back of the room. Shana didn't see him coming until she felt his hands around her throat and heard her own skull crack as it collided with the wood headboard. Then everything turned black and her body fell limp and lifeless to the floor.

 

Sunlight flooded the room. Lily opened her eyes to the light itself, the mystery, watching as the dust particles danced in the air. Her tongue felt thick and fuzzy and her back was throbbing. She didn't remember anything other than a vague sense of something amiss. Then she saw Shana and her heart almost jumped out of her chest.

Shana was stretched out on a small bed beside her, nude except for a white sheet draped over the lower section of her body. Her eyes were closed and her arms crossed over her chest. She looked as if she were on a slab in a morgue. Until a person saw their child with the pallor of death, they could never comprehend the meaning of the word heartbreak.

Alex was backed into a corner in the back of the room, a
large-caliber revolver dangling in his hand. Almost casually, he pointed it at Lily. “Don't move or I'll shoot.”

Lily didn't care if he killed her. Finding herself unrestrained, she stood up. “You murdered my daughter! Shoot me, you bastard. Go ahead. You're going to rot in Hell for what you did. I'd kill you myself if I could, and don't think for a minute that I wouldn't. I'll track you down and blow your fucking head off. I've done it before and I'll do it again.”

Instead of firing at her, Alex simply knocked her to the ground with his arm. Lily felt as if she'd been struck by a machine instead of a human. She hit the floor hard, losing consciousness. A few moments later, she got back on her feet and lunged at him again, this time raking her fingernails down his cheeks. This time he kicked her, then placed his foot in the center of her chest.

“Stop this,” he said, swiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. “I never thought you'd act this way. You're being foolish. Shana isn't dead. She's sleeping.” His eyes drifted downward as he removed a cigarette from his pocket.

Lily turned her head to Shana. She had to be dead. She was too still to be alive. Tears streamed down her face. In her mind, she saw Shana clucking at her from her playpen, an adorable smile on her round face. Then she saw her in her softball uniform sliding into first base. Only memories, she thought. Alex was going to leave her with nothing but memories. She couldn't live if her daughter was dead. She couldn't be a wife to Chris; she couldn't do her job as a judge. Her life was over.

“Kill me,” she told Alex, the look on her face almost as crazed as his. “Go ahead. I don't want to live. Shoot me. Do it.”

Something changed in his eyes. He bent down and picked Lily up in his arms, carrying her to the bed. She couldn't see the gun but she knew he had it in his hand. Kneeling down beside the bed, he placed his face close to hers.

“I'm insane,” he said, a pitiful testimony. “I can't control the things I do. I can't make the noises in my head go away.”

“I know,” Lily said, measuring her voice as she desperately tried
to formulate a plan. What if Shana was alive? If she was, Lily had to save her.

“I can't take the pain anymore. Don't you understand? I can't take the pain and the loneliness. If they catch me, they'll send me to prison this time. I can't survive in prison. I'm too weak, too insane. The inmates will kill me.”

“I know . . . I understand . . . Come to me, Alex. Let me hold you in my arms. I care about you. I really do.”

“No,” he said, the darkness leaping back into his eyes. “You're trying to trick me. I'm not an idiot.” A tentative hand reached out and touched a strand of her hair.

“I know, you're brilliant,” Lily told him. “And you're wrong, Alex. I would never try to trick you. What did you do to Shana? What's wrong with my daughter?”

“I told you, she's sleeping.”

Lily was praying, begging God to help her, believing against reason that Shana was still alive. She remembered the day she graduated from junior high and how beautiful she had looked, how she stood at least a head taller than her other classmates. It couldn't end this way, her young life, her future, stolen. “Alex,” she said, “come to me, baby. Get in the bed with me and hold me. I'm afraid.”

“I have to get ready now,” he said, reaching for her gown. “We have to go to the pond. If we can't get to the pond because of the police, we'll have to do it here.”

He pulled her gown over her head and placed it on the nightstand. She didn't move or struggle. Her eyes were glued to the gun, tracking it like a target, waiting for the right moment to appear. She had to wait, maintain control, not say or do anything that would upset him.