Right across the street from the athletic field was Eaton’s dinky sized golf course. And across from where the street curved past the swimming pool was the lot for all the city’s trucks, recycling and garbage and the combo sand/plow truck.
In the immediate area, the residential houses were few.
In other words, a good spot to drop someone off if you didn’t want any witnesses.
The cops figured I’d been dropped off near the swimming pool.
My heels were on the ground near the pool’s fence. Either tossed out of a vehicle or handed to me and I’d dropped them at some point in my zombie like forward motion.
While the cops were slowly, tenderly asking me questions, the trackwalker stood away from us down on the track. A cop stood with her. She started crying. She apologized. Said she didn’t know why she was crying.
The way she looked at me and then away from me, it was like she knew I was going to die.
Chapter 30
Dad, a nurse, and a female doctor – Dr. Hunt – were in my hospital room. Dad looked like he hadn’t slept in a while.
The nurse and the doctor both had these practiced looks on their faces that Mom said they must teach at medical school. Calm, reassuring, hiding something. That’s what those practiced looks said. Something awful has happened and we’re going to tiptoe around it for as long as possible.
First they told me that I’d been drugged.
But I was going to be ok. I should just take it easy for a few days. They’d taken some blood and were running tests on it just to be sure I hadn’t contracted anything via the hypodermic needle.
Second, Dr. Hunt told me that they’d checked me out for signs of sexual assault. The tests had come back negative.
“Why did you check for that?”
Dr. Hunt looked at Dad. He nodded.
The doctor said, “You’d been abducted and drugged and your father and the police had reason to believe there was a chance some sexual assault might have occurred.”
She paused for a moment before saying, “But it didn’t. Ok, Lucy? It didn’t. If it had we would have found some evidence. We didn’t. We found nothing to suggest any sexual assault. The thing you should focus on is rest. You were given a tranquilizer and then pumped full of sedatives over a short course of time. You’re going to be fine. But you need to take it easy. Ok?”
When I nodded I could feel the purpled bruise the size of a half dollar lurking above my left eyebrow. It was tender. About the only good thing come from its presence was touching it woke me up. I felt groggy. I felt like I might feel groggy for the rest of my life. When I pressed the bruise I could feel a charge radiate up into my scalp and down into the back of my eyeball. My left elbow and both knees felt like the nerve endings were more or less exposed. Plenty of places letting me know I was still alive.
They’d checked me for signs of sexual assault.
I didn’t remember being assaulted. Of course I didn’t even remember being checked for evidence of it here in the hospital.
“We’d advise you to stay for observation, but that decision is up to you.”
After the doctor and the nurse and their reassuring looks left the room, Dad sat down in the chair next to the bed.
The last time he’d looked this drained had been right at the end of Mom’s battle with cancer. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought he looked worse right now.
“Where’s Sherman?” I asked.
“He’s fine.”
“Is Maddy still here? It’s Sunday. I know that. I know she was leaving Saturday.”
Dad nodded.
“Dad.”
No response.
“Dad. What’s going on?”
“Maddy…”
“Is she ok?”
He exhaled and sat forward, put his elbows on his knees.
“Dad,” I whispered. “Tell me she’s ok.”
He looked up at me from beneath his brow line.
“They took her, Lucy. First they kidnapped you, and then they took her. We don’t know…”
He shook his head and put a hand up to cover his eyes, trapping those tears to the inside of his eyelids before they dared drip out.
Chapter 31
SUVs rented and driven by the Lucentologist security detail had exploded outside the Ashmond Country Club Friday night.
2 initially exploded. Eventually it would be determined that those 2 had been driven to Eaton Middle and High School earlier Friday. No one had kept an eye on them while Maddy and Jack were inside at the assembly.
The explosions were powerful enough they consumed the 2 SUVs parked next to them and damaged another half dozen vehicles parked in proximity.
Given the property damage – miraculously - no one was killed or injured by the blasts with the exception of a couple smokers standing outside the front of the country club. One got hit by burning fragments of metal.
Attention drawn to that violent event, no one out on the country club patio noticed really when Sherman and I were attacked. I got hit with tranquilizers. Sherman was Tasered. Sherman was left at poolside. I was grabbed and ferried into the dark.
Tire tracks on the golf course led the police to the gate between the grounds and Silver Ridge. A golf cart belonging to the country club had been abandoned on the Silver Ridge side of the gate. A garage on the country club property had been broken into. The cart used to transport my unconscious body taken from the stable of golf carts.
They didn’t know who had taken me. Or why.
The reason came to light when a ransom demand was made early Saturday morning, right after midnight.
The call was made to Dad’s cell phone.
The voice was distorted digitally. The distorted voice informed Dad the signal was being rerouted to several cell towers. In other words - untraceable.
Everyone was still at the country club. The kidnappers told Dad to find someplace he could talk in private. Away from the cops. Maddy noticed Dad’s look and followed him.
Dad used the library, the very same room Maddy and Horace had employed for the consult.
The kidnappers wanted cash. It would be in the neighborhood of a million. Maybe more. Maybe less. They were still crunching numbers, deciding my value.
The caller promised convincing evidence that I was being held.
Two photos had been sent to Dad’s e-mail.
He was fluent enough in using his cell phone he brought up the e-mail and looked.
They were pictures of me.
The first was a close up of my face, eyes shut, my hair still in the same style from when I’d been at the country club.
The second was a bird’s eye view, me on my back on a bed, still asleep or at least out of it. My green dress was pushed up around my throat, my bra undone, exposing my breasts, and my underwear pulled down around my thighs, exposing pubic hair.
A follow up call reinforced the initial call’s insistence that the cops be kept out of the situation. If not, I would not be coming home. The caller told Dad to imagine the sort of things that could be done to a young woman held hostage. They would be done if instructions weren’t followed. A record both visual and audio would be made while those things were done. Dad would have a permanent record of my painful last hours of life.
Maddy told Jack and Horace and Aster what was going on. Dad seemed too out of it to argue with her.
Jack thought ahead. Being one of the few people on the planet with a net worth in excess of $100 million, he had a personal banker available 24/7. He put in a call and had $2 million cash withdrawn from his account and packed and placed on a personal jet near Los Angeles. It would’ve been even more, but he’d topped the limit. 12 hours from now he could get a second $2 million, need be.
The jet was in the air and headed north before the kidnappers called Dad shortly before 1:30 a.m. Saturday and told him they??
?d decided they wanted half a million, cash.
First they wanted Dad to bring the money.
Minutes later they called and said instead Jack had to bring the ransom.
Five minutes after that, they called and said it had to be Maddy.
Maddy had to bring it, alone, or I’d suffer. First I’d suffer. Then I’d be killed.
At a certain point past Kitty Ferguson’s where East Jennings Road starts to loop and turn back towards town, one of the roads out to the woods begins.
About a half mile north of Kitty’s place, Old Man Road starts thickly graveled then as it straightens and starts to rise up into the hills, the gravel thins and it turns into a dirt road. The higher in elevation you go, the more ruts show up in the road. It gets very bumpy very fast. About 5 miles from our house, a side road off of Old Man cuts north into the trees and leads you to a cabin partially visible from the main road.
The cabin wasn’t used. Ownership was up in the air due to a contested will. An elderly rancher’s widowed wife, his second, 35 years his junior, was battling the dead man’s children for control of the estate, including the cabin.
This was the designated drop.
Maddy knew where it was. Back in high school she’d been out to the cabin for underage parties. At parties Tyler Verney had hit on her mercilessly, but usually by the time he worked up the courage to hit on the prettiest girl in his class he was only minutes from puking and passing out, sometimes in that order, sometimes not.
The kidnappers told Dad Maddy had to bring the money, alone. She couldn’t have a cell phone with her. The car couldn’t be outfitted with GPS. There could be no sort of radio transmitter enclosed with the cash. The bills could not be marked.
The kidnappers would know if their rules had been broken. If the rules were broken I’d die.
The local cops didn’t know about Dad’s contact with the kidnappers. Just like they’d insisted, he played dumb. He was in enough shock from my disappearance the cops bought it when he said he hadn’t heard anything. Told them all the incoming calls he was getting were from friends of the family. People concerned about my well-being.
During one of the phone calls to the house during that long dark Saturday morning, the kidnappers asked to speak to Horace Walton.
The voice told Horace they knew he had friends in high places.
Friends with airplanes and friends that might be able to track the movements of anyone picking up what Maddy was dropping off.
Any sign that those friends had been contacted by Horace and were setting up a sting of any sort, and Maddy’s sister’s spilled blood would be on Horace’s hands.
In fact, the voice promised, carved somewhere into my dead body would be the words ‘Horace Walton did this’. Photos of the grim carving would be made public.
There was little in life that threw the head of the church into a panic. Belief in the dictates of the church and the exercises believers performed eradicated the possibility of panic. Once you were Lucid, 100% Lucid, panic, fear, anger, all those common traps were impossible to fall into.
When Horace handed the phone back to Dad he didn’t look panicked unless panicked meant looking white as a sheet and incapable of blinking and incapable of acknowledging voices asking him if he was all right.
Maddy was late returning from the drop.
Then she was really late.
The kidnappers said they’d call once they had the money in hand. Instructions on my being handed over would follow.
Shadows elongated and the sun began to drop in the sky.
Incapable of standing the wait any longer, Dina and Trent and Jack and Dad loaded up into an SUV and sped out to the long unused cabin.
The rental car Maddy had driven out was parked at the cabin. There was no sign of Maddy or the money. The cabin was locked. They hollered Maddy’s name. There was no response.
There was no sound out in the woods, but for the wind and occasional groan from the tall hundreds of years old trees, tilting rhythmically, far outside the worry and pain and confusion of the intruders on the ground.
There was no further word from the kidnappers.
There was no sign of Maddy or me the rest of Saturday, not until early the following morning when I appeared next to the bleachers, interrupting the trackwalker’s morning exercise routine.
Chapter 32
Dad stood up from his chair.
“What are you doing up, honey?”
I shrugged and walked past the living room towards the kitchen. I’d put on pants and sneakers before coming downstairs.
If I was in a robe or pajamas, especially in front of guests, I felt near naked. Given the description of the one photo taken of me while kidnapped, I wanted to feel as far from naked as possible for a long time. I’d already showered once since being discharged from the hospital. If I pondered the circumstance of the photo, wondering after being still and unconscious while some stranger disrobed me, partially or wholly, a second shower didn’t seem out the realm of possibility.
I’d already talked to the cops. Told them as much as I could remember about everything since Friday night. The deputy was nice and a young guy, too. Deputy Llewellyn. Warmed me up to the awful questions by stating his younger sister was still in school – some 7th grader. I’d lied and told him I’d seen her in the halls at least a couple times.
I was careful in my answers, not giving hint that I’d turned up, but now Maddy was gone.
No one knew but us. None of us wanted to take the chance that involving the cops would get Maddy killed.
It wasn’t like we were without resources. The security personnel were all ex-military or ex-law enforcement. They were looking for Maddy.
Dad asked, “Do you need anything?”
“I got it,” I said.
“You sure?”
“Yep.”
Dad sat back down into the aged living room armchair. It possessed an identifiable squeak at this late point in its existence. Aster remained on the couch, her tablet in her lap. She’d looked up from it briefly. She seemed to have leapt from having a librarian with a bug up her ass mode to full out brittle old lady in just a couple days time. The shock of Maddy’s disappearance couldn’t help but effect different people different ways, none of them good.
Aster’s eyes and cheeks looked pink and sore.
I didn’t drink much coffee. Or pop. Our long distance coach drummed into our heads that caffeine and sugar could be the enemy if we didn’t walk a fine line. Your body was an engine. You poured in too much crud, that engine would perform poorly. I wasn’t up for walking fine lines. I was in stumble mode, pure and simple.
While the coffee started to percolate I stared out the window over the sink towards the backyard. A column of clouds marched across the sky, none too close to the one in front or behind, like a great big sky cowboy was herding fluffy formless cows on over eastern Washington.
Jack stood out there alone. One SUV remained parked in the backyard in case he needed it. Dina and Trent were elsewhere. There was no sign of Horace and Nawzat. Neither Dad nor Aster had offered up an explanation of where they were or what Horace might be doing to get Maddy back. It could just be they were waiting for me to wake up a little so I could comprehend anything they were saying.
I’d looked at my reflection before coming down. I looked like my Aunt Beverly in the mornings. Her excuse was being on the brink of 60. Post-breakfast and 10 minutes in the bathroom she shed about a decade and a half.
For me, it’d been a busy Sunday.
Found at the track.
Checked up on at the hospital.
Checked out of the hospital.
Promised at the hospital that I’d have no trouble getting plenty of rest once I got home.
The doctor didn’t know about Maddy though.
After that it was home, and an attempt at rest, an
d then the deputy showed up.
Our story was this – Maddy, glad that I was ok, was gone back to LA for shooting on a movie and seeking some high powered PI to help look into the whole kidnapping of her little sister issue. Jack was hanging out doing some location scouting and would leave sometime soon.
It kept the questions at bay. We hoped.
The deputy met Jack, and was pleasant enough, but didn’t seem overwhelmed. Jack turned on the charm. If he had worry it didn’t show. Jack told the deputy how much he enjoyed meeting law enforcement. He sometimes thought he’d have ended up a cop if the acting thing hadn’t worked out.
The deputy told us not to worry about any news vans coming out to bother us. Sheriff Younger had made it known they’d need public assembly permits if they wanted to park on the county roads like that. Fun time was over. Fun time was last week, pre-kidnappings and cars blowing up at country clubs. Moving forward, a permit would be needed. It was awful hard getting a permit on a Sunday.
Once Deputy Llewellyn was gone I went back up to my room. There was e-mail and Facebook messages to check, but I ignored them. Dad said Sherman had called numerous times. Kitty, too.
It was too much.
It was like Rip Van Winkle. I’d been hit by tranquilizers and fallen out of consciousness in one world and woken up in another.
It was possible I’d fall asleep and wake-up and in that world Maddy would never have even existed. Or was living that life she said she’d gladly settle for, schlepping shifts at the Orange Julius, content.
I’d lain in bed and finally given up after a whole 15 minutes of trying to rest. With thoughts of Maddy running rampant, there was little chance I’d get to sleep anytime soon.
Outside, Jack walked a few steps and stopped. Looked out over the field. Walked a few more steps and stopped. Repeat.
When the beat up truck drove into view a chill coursed through my bones.