Trapped (13 page)

into their own brains as punctuation to their defiled lives.

“Wait,” says Ricky, cocking an ear. “You hear that?”

Strange noises emanating from the bunker. Sounds like

children keening. In his mind it feels like the transmission

has slipped, can’t get in gear to the next thought. Stuck on

children keening,
eee eee eee.

“That’s the ventilation pipe,” Roy reminds him. “Wind

goes across the top, makes a weird noise.”

Keening becomes wind and his mind moves on.

“Open the door,” he says.

Out comes the nasty smell. To Ricky a white smell. “Need

to empty the bucket,” he points out.

“He kicked it over.”

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“Then mop it up. Use Pine-Sol.”

Roy gives him a little look, like
are you serious?
gets it

that Ricky is deadly serious, and looks away. “Okay, sure.

Pine-Sol it is.”

Inside the fetid bunker Ricky clicks on his lantern flash-

light. The beam finds a frightened face, hollow eyes, a hand-

some mouth distorted by a gag.

“Hey, Seth, I talked to your dad. He sends his love.”

Ricky jams a tranquilizer dart into the white boy’s thigh,

sees his eyes registering a higher level of fear.

“Nothing to worry about,” Ricky says soothingly, watch-

ing the tranks hit him hard, making the eyes dull, the rigid

limbs relax. “Won’t take anything you’re gonna miss.”

21. We All Scream

As young moms go, I was clueless. For instance, I’d never

seen an infant nursed until Kelly started playing patty-cake

on my left nipple. Never, for that matter, held a newborn baby.

Worse, I had no concept of what really happens to the female

body during pregnancy and after. Not to be gross, but for a

couple of weeks we both wore diapers to bed, me and Kelly.

I was a child raising a baby. That’s one of my secrets.

Kelly can do the math, but she has no idea how young I

really was at seventeen, mentally and emotionally, or how

much she frightened me. It’s true. I was scared of my own

baby. Terrified I’d do something stupid and she’d either be

taken from me, or die. All that stuff about maternal instincts,

it wasn’t working for me. Yes, I loved the little bean from the

very first moment, but that didn’t stop the fear or ease the

anxiety.

My mother, bless her soul, carried little white paper bags

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in her purse, unfurled whenever I hyperventilated. Passed

them to me like you might offer a Kleenex. Later she told me

the bags came from the candy store, which somehow seems

fitting. What’ll you have today, Janey, a quarter pound of non-

pareils or a panic attack? Baby Ruth or a real baby?

Poor Mom. To this day I’ve no idea how she managed it.

Somehow she worked full-time, taught me how to care for a

baby, dealt with my father’s terrifying temper, navigated the

divorce minefield, and made plans for my future. When Kelly

was six months old she assumed the baby-care duties and

more or less forced me to get my GED and then take design

courses at Nassau Community College, where I eventually dis-

covered my inner seamstress. Looking back, it may have been

that she actually thought being a single mom was a good thing

for me. One less complication, not having to deal with a man.

No doubt a result of her own failed marriage, but at the time I

appreciated that she never once made me feel ashamed for the

strange circumstances of Kelly’s conception. The big secret we

never spoke of. Whereas it poured through my father like acid,

corroding whatever love he’d had for either one of us.

Why is Mom so much on my mind? Because I’m won-

dering what she’d make of Randall Shane. For that matter,

what do I make of him? The big guy has been in my life for

less than a day, but already I’m letting him influence deci-

sions that could determine whether my daughter lives or dies.

For instance, his decision to stop for breakfast.

“It’s two in the morning!” I rant. “Are you crazy? Are you

insane? We should be notifying the FBI or the media or both,

not eating waffles!”

“I’m more of a scrambled eggs person,” Shane says, very

calm and matter-of-fact. “Can’t notify my friends at the

agency without protein. Preferably in the form of bacon.”

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I know what he’s doing. He’s using gentle humor to calm

me down. Just like he’d gently but firmly discouraged me

from throwing rocks at Edwin Manning’s big glass house.

Like he’d prevented me from grabbing the rich little weasel

by the throat and shaking the truth out of him.

“If I thought that would work I’d do it myself,” he

explains, coaxing me out of the place, back into the Town Car

and away from the Manning estate. “The man believes his

silence will keep his son alive. He’s clinging to that hope.

Physical intimidation won’t change his mind. You could hook

him up to a battery, he still wouldn’t talk.”

“You’d do that?”

Shane shrugs his big shoulders. “Whatever a given situa-

tion requires. As a rule I try to avoid torture.”

I’m pretty sure he’s kidding about torture. He’s not kidding

about scrambled eggs. Shane heads for this all-night diner in

Wantagh, gets us there with a minimum of fuss. Says you’re

never more than ten miles from a diner in Long Island and he

knows them all. The place in Wantagh is the real thing, the

shiny metal kind, with a gum-chewing waitress in a starched

uniform, a tattooed short-order cook in a white undershirt,

overhead lights bright enough to dissolve your eyelids, the

whole bit.

When we’re seated with thick white china mugs of steaming

coffee, Shane explains, “I can’t start making calls until seven

a.m. Call in the middle of the night, you need a situation.”

“My daughter missing, that’s not a situation?”

“Not without further information, no. Nothing we can

give them tonight requires an immediate response. If for

instance we knew she was being held against her will in a

certain location, that’s a call can be made at any time.”

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“But we tell the FBI, right? Once they’re up and showered,

had their coffee, whatever.”

He ignores my sarcasm, sips his coffee. “Yes,” he says.

“We’ll tell them what we know, what we suspect.”

“And they’ll take over? Get Manning to talk?”

He shakes his head, smiling faintly. “That’s not how it

works. Agents can only be assigned to a specific case upon

request of the local authorities. Mr. Manning would have to

call in the police, the police would in turn notify the FBI, and

then the wheels would start to turn.”

“So we tell your old friends what we know and they do

nothing?
”

There are about six people in the diner, including the

waitress, and they’re all staring at me. Apparently I raised my

voice.

“Order something,” Shane suggests quietly. “You need

fuel, Mrs. Garner. Keep running on empty and you’ll crash.”

“Can’t handle eggs. Not hungry. Answer my question,

please.”

“I’ll have the Wake-up Special with whole wheat,” he says

to the waitress, who has ambled over to take the order and also,

from her eagle eyes, to check me out. Shane points his thumb

at me and says, “She’ll have the same thing, hold the eggs.”

The gum-snapper likes his style. “Coming right up.” She

smiles at him, flutters her false eyelashes and marches away

on sturdy legs.

When she’s gone, Shane quietly continues where he left

off. “I’m sure my, um, old friends in the agency will be as

helpful as the law allows.”

“Helpful? Great. And we just wait until I get a ransom note?”

Shane leans across the table, more or less forces the cup

of coffee into my hands. “Mrs. Garner? There may never be

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a ransom note. Ransom notes are actually quite rare. At this

point, we don’t know what happened, or why your daughter

hasn’t contacted you again. All of our efforts must be directed

toward locating her. We concentrate on that. Finding her.

The law can sort out the rest.”

The only reason I’m not crying is because I’m too ex-

hausted for tears.

“What do we do?” I ask, feeling faint.

The tray arrives, loaded.

“Eat,” he says.

Home fries, sausage, cinnamon toast, applesauce, I’m

gorging like a lumberjack. Instinct taking over, making me eat.

And as Shane promised, the calories start to have a calming

effect. When I’ve become more or less human, he explains that

his next move—and our best shot—involves Kelly’s cell phone.

“She’s a minor, so the account will be in your name, correct?”

I nod.

“As the account holder, you have a right to know where

and when the phone has been used. If you know the approxi-

mate time when you received her last call, we can find out

where she was when the call originated, roughly.”

“Roughly?”

“What cell tower was accessed to route the call. Narrows

it down to about twenty square miles or so. Again, not like

on TV. But it could be very helpful.”

“But we have to wait until morning?”

He nods. “Afraid so. And even then it usually requires

several hours to get through channels. We’ll be lucky to have

the location by noon.”

“Noon?” Seems like a century away, a future hard to fathom.

“Here’s what I suggest,” he says, as if ticking off a list.

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“We get you home. You shower, put your head on a pillow,

get some rest. Meanwhile I’ll be riding my laptop, see what

I can find out about Edwin Manning. I’ll bring the Nassau

County Police Department up to speed. At the appropriate

hour I’ll contact my friend in the FBI, report what we suspect,

and initiate the cell phone search.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Take a pill,” he suggests. “Later in the day I need you

fully cognizant, Mrs. Garner. Firing on all cylinders.”

“What about you?”

He squints, genuinely puzzled by the question. “What

about me?”

“Don’t you need to sleep, too?”

“No,” he says, as if taken aback. “Oddly enough, I don’t.

Not when a case is active.”

I stare at the guy, forcing him to look at me with his pale

blue eyes. And notice, for the first time, evidence of some-

thing he’s hiding. Something he keeps dark and deep and

does not want to share.

“It’s a form of stress-induced insomnia,” he explains,

studying the saltshaker. “I’ve been the subject of at least two

papers on sleep disorder.”

“You’re serious,” I say, astonished.

He shrugs his big shoulders, trying to make light of it.

“I’ve learned to live with it. To use it to my advantage.”

By way of ending the conversation, obviously very un-

comfortable for him, he waves the waitress over. She’s been

hovering at a polite range, waiting for him to beckon.

“Yes?” she asks brightly, basking in his presence. “Any-

thing else? More coffee?”

“Ice cream,” he says. “Vanilla, one scoop.”

“Apple pie under that? It’s good here.”

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105

“I’ll try it next time,” he promises.

“Dessert for you, miss?”

I shake my head, staring at him. “At this hour? Ice cream?”

“We all scream for ice cream,” Shane says without a

trace of irony.

22. Her Own Personal Black Hole

A liter water bottle, a bucket, a lamp. These items have

become the center of her universe. The bottle for hoarding

and drinking. The bucket for bathroom business. And most

precious, a small, battery-operated lamp that she also hoards,

not wanting to run it down. That’s the only power she has

now, the ability to click the little switch, push the darkness

back for a few moments. Not that there’s much to see. Four

walls, floor, ceiling, all made of thick sheet metal. She’s

being held in some sort of walk-in cooler, she surmises,

although the cooler part is clearly not functioning. The air is

hot as hell, syrupy thick, getting staler with every breath.

Using the lamp, Kelly has located an air vent. Unlike in

the movies, this particular vent can’t be utilized as an escape

hatch. It measures no more than four inches by twelve

inches—too small for a human, although there are signs of

a rodent infestation. She’s hoping squirrel or chipmunk, but

it’s not like mice or even rats would really freak her out.

Kelly’s personal gross factor is more attuned to slimy crea-

tures like worms or snakes. Her friends think
Snakes on a

Plane
is a laugh riot, especially the scrotum-chomping

vipers, but Kelly has to avert her eyes whenever they crank

up the DVD.

Funny how fear works. Until what, yesterday—has it been

that long?—she’d thought of herself as basically fearless.

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Death defying. She’d faced down the black monster when she

was a little girl, so aside from shrieky-fun things like wiggly