Set Free (4 page)

Hunger is a strange thing. At first it's pure agony as your body is denied and demands food. Physically, this is excruciating; psychologically, the game is even harder. All you can think about is food: your last meal, how it tasted, the food you’d want to eat if you could have it, your favorite food, food, food, food, FOOD.

Then all of it goes away.

I’d heard of a peculiar phenomenon reported during famines, where starving children will sometimes refuse to eat even when finally offered food. Now I understood. It’s as if the body throws up its hands and gives up on ever getting sustenance. Then, as a kind of defense mechanism, it decides it doesn’t even want it anymore.

But the absence of hunger pangs doesn’t mean the physical effects disappear with them. Ever since I’d been taken from the airport and imprisoned, the sum total of my daily dietary intake consisted of a cup of water and what amounted to less than a slice of bread, twice a day. I began each morning feeling remarkably energized and alert. By midday, a sagging weakness would overtake me. My brain felt dull and my body shook with cold. I would sleep for longer and longer periods. I don’t know if it was because I didn’t have the energy to stay awake, or if I mentally craved escape from what was happening.

What
was
happening to me?

I had no idea. After being kidnapped, beaten, thrown into this room, forced to defecate and urinate in a hole that was nowhere near deep enough to disguise its purpose, and screamed at in a language I didn’t understand, I still had no idea why all of this was happening. What did these men want? And from whom?

Other than Hun—who visited only to yell at me, hurt me, or both—and young Hun, I’d had zero contact with other people. The only improvement to my situation had been having my hands freed and the gag removed. Despite our inability to communicate with words, I clearly understood the threat of what would happen to me if I dared scream for help.

Most days, the only departure from the terrorizing stagnancy of nothing happening was the stealthy hand that slipped my twice-daily dose of bread and water through the door of the cell. A sick part of my brain began to yearn for Hun and young Hun’s return, just to have some kind of human interaction, something other than inactivity. Because, I’d found, inside those endless hours of quiet and utter solitude lived something far worse: fear of the unknown. Of what was coming next. And, worst of all, memories of what had led me here.

It was a pitiful, agonizing existence.

Even so, I would come to wish things had stayed exactly as they were.

I thought constantly about the moment, the exact second, when Jenn would know something had gone wrong. How would it have happened? Did the kidnappers contact her directly? Did she hear about it through the media? Some other intermediary? Or had they contacted someone else first? My agent? Publisher? Who broke the news to my parents? What were they thinking this very second? Were they trying to scrape together an impossible sum of money to get me back? Was that why it was taking so long?

Too many days had passed. I couldn’t understand a word of what Hun or young Hun said in my presence, but their demeanor told me everything I needed to know. With every visit, I could see their frustration grow. They became increasingly nervous and short-tempered with me and with one another. Something wasn’t going according to plan.

The first proof-of-life photographs obviously hadn’t done the trick. They needed to step up the threat. That’s when the beatings began. The day before yesterday was the second one. Worse than the first. This time Hun didn’t stop at the face. He’d pummeled my entire body. When his hands grew sore, he yanked me out of the chair, threw me to the ground, and began kicking me. This time, young Hun stripped me bare before taking the photograph, to better show the growing extent and seriousness of my injuries. My body was a map of their brutality: red and black squiggles for tears in my skin, green blotches for old bruises, blue for new.

Someone was holding out, not giving them what they wanted.

Was it because they couldn’t?

Or was it because they didn’t want to?

Was Jenn holding all the cards? Was my wife acting out her anger towards me? Was she punishing me for the horrible thing I’d done?

On the worst day of our lives, I came to know something about my wife that I’d never imagined could be true. It rocked me then; it rocked me now. I’d been with this woman for almost twenty years. In that time, we’d had our share of fights. Our fuses burned fast, but not particularly bright. Shouting wasn’t our thing, nor was passive aggressiveness. We just got over things. We loved each other. Life was too short to be unhappy. Things were too good the other way.

That night, neither of us was supposed to be home on time.

A few years earlier, we’d scraped together enough money to move from our two-bedroom apartment in downtown Boston to a bigger place in the suburbs—close to schools, a park, public transportation. Normally, when Mikki got home from school at 4:00 p.m., I’d be there. Jenn typically got in by six-thirty, in time for us to eat dinner together. But that day I had a book signing in the city, and Jenn was going out for drinks after work with her friend Katie. Both irregular occurrences, both important. I was feeding a burgeoning career, and Jenn—who rarely managed enough personal time to tie her own shoelaces, never mind have a friend—needed whatever outlets she could find to unwind. 

We discussed it and decided that, at thirteen, Mikki was finally old enough to be alone in the house. I promised to be home by seven at the latest, so at most she’d be by herself for three hours. I’d bring home pizza, so she’d still have dinner with one of us. Jenn would be back by ten.

I screwed up.

Weeks had passed since we’d made the decision. Life had been its regular hectic self in the days leading up to that one. When a colleague who’d stopped by my signing asked me out for a beer, I mindlessly left a phone message at home to tell the girls I’d be late, and accepted.

When I stepped through the front door of the house sometime after ten-thirty that night, Jenn, unusually wan, was right there in my face. Katie’s car was in the driveway, so I knew she was somewhere in the house.

“Do you have her?” Jenn asked in a way that immediately put me on alert.

“Who?” I asked, my face already draining of color, my heart thumping.

“Mikki! Is she with you? Why the hell didn’t you answer my texts?”

I glanced about wildly, as if that would help. “My phone died…I…didn’t you get my phone message from earlier? What are you saying…where’s Mikki?” I saw Katie’s face peek out from around the corner that led to our front room.

“You don’t have her?” Jenn’s voice moved to pleading.

“I…I don’t…”

“You were supposed to be here!” Now she was screeching.

What the hell is happening
? my brain screamed back.

And then she did it. The force of the blow nearly sent me to the floor. My hand rose to meet the burning outline of my wife’s hand on my cheek.

“Jenn!” Katie shouted, rushing to her friend’s side as if she was the one who’d just been slapped.

“What’s going on?” I demanded to know.

Words dripping with acid, eyes blazing through tears, Jenn turned on me with pure hatred and ripped my world apart forever. “Mikki is gone!”

When he stepped into the room, I knew something bad must have happened. Not that Hun’s arrival ever signaled good times.

Today his voice wasn’t loud or demanding or harsh. His eyes didn’t burn with fever fueled by righteous intent. Instead, they fell on me with something closer to despair. Everything was about to come to an abrupt end.

He said something to me, a lifeless, exacting statement of fact which I was helpless to comprehend.

Our eyes met and held.

He spoke again.

Something in the words told me my ordeal was done, except for one last, unpleasant act about to be played out.

“No,” I whispered. “Don’t…please, don’t.”

More words.

He was telling me what happened. About the plan they’d had, about how it had come to a fruitless end. We’d been on a speeding, runaway train, hurtling out of control, about to fly off the tracks unless someone pulled on the brakes. Their bluff had been called. They’d promised to kill me unless they got what they wanted. The look on his defeated face told me that they’d ended up empty-handed. And now their promise would have to be fulfilled.

The kidnapped American had to die.

Young Hun shuffled through the doorway, no doubt in preparation for one last photo shoot. Thanks to the miracle of technology, in a few short seconds young Hun would press a button and broadcast to the world a final image. Jenn would be sitting on our couch, feet tucked up beneath her, laptop perched on her thigh. She’d hear the familiar ‘ting’ telling her a message had arrived. She’d click on the attachment to access the picture. And then she’d know once and for all: the man who’d failed her was finally dead.

As horrible as it was, I felt relieved. Relieved to finally know
something
. Mikki had been gone for more than forty-eight hours when the letter appeared in our mailbox. During those long, torturous, sleepless hours, through arguments that morphed into shared agony, interviews and interrogations by police, countless pots of coffee brewed by Katie and other well-meaning friends and family, every horrible thought imaginable had crossed our minds about what might have happened to our little girl. At least now we knew: she was alive.

The note was old-school in every way. It wasn’t texted or emailed or even faxed or thrown through our window tied to a rock. It was mailed. The slowest delivery system there is. The kidnappers had cut out letters and words from a variety of sources—newspapers, magazines—and meticulously pasted them onto a blank sheet of paper. The message was short and simple: We have Michelle. We’ll trade for $10 million.

That was it. No instructions on what to do next. No warning not to involve the police. No specific threat of harm to come to Mikki if we didn’t comply.

Instantly, the authorities we’d been dealing with to this point began to take the situation a whole lot more seriously. Our house was besieged—inside by criminal justice professionals, outside by media. Not only was the kidnapping of a thirteen-year-old girl big news, but when the father of the child is a public figure, suddenly it was circus time.

“Tell me exactly what happened that day,” Agent Bukowski asked the question we’d answered about two dozen times since Tuesday, the night Mikki didn’t come home. We didn’t care. We’d have happily repeated the story two thousand times if we thought it would help.

“Mikki was supposed to come directly home from school, like she did every day,” Jenn began.

“Did she usually walk? Get a ride? Would she have been alone?”

“She always walks. Even in winter. Unless the weather is really bad. Her school is only a few blocks away. It’s one of the reasons we bought this house.”

“Did she walk alone? Did she have friends she might have been with?”

“Mikki has a lot of friends. She’s, I guess, what you’d call one of the popular girls at her school.”

Jenn’s eyes alighted briefly on mine. Our daughter’s popularity was one of the things we often joked about when discussing her. Neither of us had been a member of the in-crowd growing up. We’d actually had mild disdain for the kids who were—an attitude we now knew, as adults, was born of petty jealousy. We certainly never imagined a child of ours would be “one of those kids.” But there she was, as sweet and as popular as a frozen slushie on a hot day. Usually the topic brought smiles to our faces. Now it hurt like hell.

“She usually walks home with her friend Delores. She lives on the next block. But I talked to Delores’ dad and she was sick that day and hadn’t been in school.”

“So Mikki was alone?”

“Yes,” Jenn replied. Then, ever the lawyer, she added, “As far as we know.”

“What time was she supposed to be home?”

“Usually no later than four.”

“Usually?” Bukowski questioned, his deep-set eyes making a tour of our faces. “Was something different on Tuesday? What time were you expecting her home that day?”

“Same time,” Jenn said quickly. “We just don’t know…I mean, we didn’t expect her…I mean…”

I took over. “What Jenn means to say is that neither of us were going to be here when Mikki got home that day. Usually I was,” I hastily added as if I needed to apologize—which I probably did. “That day, both my wife and I had appointments in the city. I was supposed to have been home by seven, but I didn’t get here until around ten-thirty. Jenn got home at ten.” With every word that came out of my mouth, I kept thinking to myself:
This is bad, this sounds really bad, this sounds fishy even to me
.

“I’m sure it’s been covered, but can you confirm that both of you have provided officers with exact details of where you were on Tuesday night? And contact information for the people you were with?”

Bukowski was being straightforward and unapologetic. He was basically saying we needed to prove we didn’t do something bad to our own daughter. Fine by me. Do your job and find my kid. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.

Our heads bobbed up and down in unison, looking at the investigator like two penitent children caught near an empty cookie jar, and then at each other. Jenn’s hatred, which had roared over me like a tsunami on Tuesday night, had since receded. She’d made accusations and stripped me bare and lashed me raw with indictments of guilt. That night, I’d slept on the couch. But eventually her logical lawyer’s mind wrested back control from the distraught mother she also was. She knew my mistake had been stupid, but not intentional. We both knew our energies were best spent on solving the problem rather than laying blame.   

“When I realized Mikki wasn’t with my husband,” Jenn said, “that’s when we called the police.”

“What time was that?”

“Ten thirty-seven, when he came home. I know exactly because I looked at my watch when he opened the front door.”

Bukowski referred to his notes, then stated: “Since the last witness to see Mikki observed her leaving school shortly after three-thirty, that means she was missing for a maximum of seven hours before you contacted police.”

I swallowed hard. It was a long time. I couldn’t bear to think of what my daughter was going through while her mother and I were at separate downtown bars having drinks and laughing it up with friends.

Bukowski was studying the ransom note through a clear plastic evidence bag, deposited there by one of his officers.

“What now?” Jenn wondered aloud. “What do we do now?”

The agent’s eyes shifted up to take me in. “Do you have ten million dollars, Mr. Wills?” He’d obviously heard about the book and movie deal.

“No,” I told him. “Nowhere near it. This is impossible. I can’t raise that kind of money.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Then I guess we negotiate.”

“You mean for a smaller amount?”

“No, Mr. Wills. For your daughter’s life.”