“Leave me alone!” Karen cried. “Stop it! You’re hurting me!”
In a desperate attempt to break his grip, she swung around to face him, clawing at his fingers with her free left hand and kicking out frantically with her feet. As she struggled, she drew in her breath in preparation to scream.
Before she could get the sound out of her throat, however, her assailant realized her intention and clamped his other hand across her mouth with so much force that her upper teeth sliced into her lip. Stunned by the shock of pain and gagging on the sudden rush of blood that filled her mouth, Karen found herself being hauled bodily out of her seat. An instant later, she was being propelled through the open back door and into the kitchen of one of the apartments.
Betty seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Following them in, she threw the door closed and locked it, and then leaned back against it, breathing hard.
The jarring slam was followed by a long, strange moment of silence.
The man was the first to recover.
“The girl’s a damned wildcat!”
“Surprise, surprise!” Betty seemed amused by his statement. “She doesn’t look much like one, does she? Appearances can be deceiving. She even tried to jump out of the car while I was driving!”
“Great,” the man said sarcastically. “That would’ve been just great. People screaming, police cars, ambulances—!”
“Get over it, Joe,” Betty said. “There was no danger of that; I had the doors locked. Tie our little friend up, and let’s get going. You did get gas, didn’t you, and the road map?”
“You don’t have to worry about things on my end,” the man told her. “You just concentrate on taking care of your own job. It’s time to make that phone call. We don’t want the director calling the girl’s home to check on why she hasn’t come in yet.”
“That’s what I’m going to do right now,” said Betty. “The minute I’m off that phone, though, I want us out of here.”
The entire time they had been talking, the man’s hand had been pressed down firmly upon Karen’s mouth. Now, he removed it, grimacing in disgust when he found that his palm was sticky with blood.
“Lie down,” he ordered.
“No,” Karen told him. She winced with the painful effort of forming the word with her injured lips.
“That’s up to you, baby. Stand up, if you want; I couldn’t care less. I’ll tell you one thing, though; you give me a hard time, and you’re going to lose those pretty white teeth. The mouth they come out of won’t be in such good shape either.”
They had things well organized. A ball of twine, a pair of scissors, and a dish towel had been laid out in advance on the kitchen table. The man ripped the plastic scarf off her head and tossed it on the stove before taking the towel and tying it tightly across her mouth, knotting it firmly behind her head.
While he was securing her wrists and ankles, Karen could hear Betty’s voice chattering away on the telephone in the adjoining room.
“This is Mrs. Connors, Karen’s mother,” she was saying in the easy, conversational tone that she seemed able to manufacture with so much facility. “Karen’s down with some sort of flu bug. She’s running a fever. She’s very upset about having to leave you in the lurch today, but there’s just no way—”
There was a pause.
“Of course she can’t help it,” Betty continued with a little laugh. “I keep trying to tell her that, but you know Karen, she’s worried to death because you’re understaffed. My younger sister—I’m sure Karen’s mentioned her Aunt Nancy, hasn’t she?—has offered to substitute for her. Nancy loves children; she has two of her own, and she’s especially good with little babies.”
There was another pause, a shorter one this time.
“Oh, but she wants to!” Betty said. “She really does! She and Karen are more like good friends than like aunt and niece…. Yes, really. She’s happy to help…. Oh, great, that’s wonderful! Karen will be so relieved…. Yes, I will. I’ll certainly tell her that. Good-bye.”
There was the sharp, clicking sound of the receiver being placed back on the hook.
A moment later, Betty appeared in the kitchen doorway. She was smiling.
“Mrs. Dunn sends her love,” she said pleasantly to Karen. “She says to tell you to get lots of rest and get well fast.”
“That might be easier if she stays off her feet for a while,” the man said cryptically.
He bent quickly and took hold of Karen’s ankles. With one hard jerk, he yanked them out from under her. She fell amazingly slowly, or so it seemed. As if she were suspended in space, Karen witnessed in slow motion the corner of the stove rising in a graceful, swooping arc to make contact with her fore-head. She saw the grease-spattered linoleum that lay beyond it and knew that, if she survived the blow that was to come, this patch of floor was the spot on which she would next know consciousness.
There was time, an unbelievable amount of time, in which to comprehend it all. There was time to think of the day care center, and of dear, trusting Mrs. Dunn, with her arms stretched wide in gratitude to welcome Karen’s “Aunt Nancy” into the fold. To think of her mother—but why of her? That was surprising, yet there she was, stopped short in the middle of folding laundry. In her hands she gripped the corners of a bedsheet. Her eyes were wide and startled, and her face was contorted as though in sudden fear.
Karen fell slowly, so slowly that there was time for everything. There was even time in that one final instant before her head struck hard metal for her to envision the flickering image of a small blond child.
CHAPTER 13
The awareness of the pain came as slowly as the fall itself had. At first it was dull and far, like a memory of something that had not really occurred. Numbed and safe in her padded prison of semiconsciousness, Karen heard the sound of it humming away in the distance like a huge bumblebee, unable to find its way out of the thickets and into the garden of her mind.
Lying motionless with her eyes squeezed closed, she waited for the inevitable moment at which sensation would come flooding in. The buzzing drew nearer, and the pain sharpened and began to find its focus in her left temple. Somewhere in her mind’s garden, a child was playing—the airy, spindrift, butterfly child whom she had met in dreams.
I must protect her! Karen told herself. I must keep the bee away!
She could hear the terrible flapping of the wide, sweeping wings now, as pain came closer, pounding the thick air with a sound like drumrolls. Then it was upon her! It exploded into her consciousness with a stinging siren shriek that seemed to shatter her brain.
She tried to scream, but she couldn’t. The unuttered cry backed up in her throat and threatened to strangle her. The pain’s force swept her to the brink of consciousness, and she teetered there precariously. Reluctant to face the realities that lay before her, she reached frantically behind her to clutch at the last slim hope of oblivion.
If you don’t wake up, the child will not live!
There was no one there to speak the words, and yet she heard them clearly. If she had not known better, she might even have thought that the voice was her mother’s. Whatever its source, she accepted the validity of the statement; if she gave way to the temptation to slide back into comforting darkness, the little girl would be lost.
There was no choice.
With a wrenching effort, Karen forced open her eyes. She was lying, as she had known she would be, on the floor of the kitchen of one of the units in the Tumbleweed Apartments. Her first impression was of a soot-streaked ceiling swaying uncertainly above her. An unadorned lightbulb was suspended at its center, and beyond that, positioned over the doorway, there was a smoke alarm. The ceiling kept dipping and rippling like a wind-tossed awning, and the bulb lurched drunkenly. The smoke alarm looked like a straining black eye that could not quite seem to get itself into focus.
Karen closed her own eyes and then reopened them, willing the world to stabilize around her. Her head was throbbing with pain. Mercifully, the light in the ro
om was dim; the only source of illumination was a window above the sink, and over that someone had pulled a curtain. The daylight that did seep in was so diffused by the gauzy material that it was difficult to ascertain the color of the kitchen walls. Eventually, as her eyes became better adjusted, Karen decided that they must be yellow and that the slick, dark areas were grease. The odd-shaped spots that studded the woodwork around the door appeared to be handprints. Because she was lying on her back, she could not see the floor, but from the odor that assaulted her nostrils, there seemed to be little doubt that the apartment’s tenants, either current or previous, had owned a cat.
There was no cat here now, and there were no people. The place sang with emptiness. In the world beyond, Karen could hear sounds of activity. A rush of water and the groan of belching pipes proclaimed the fact that someone in an adjoining apartment was taking a shower. Doors were being opened and slammed shut; voices were calling back and forth. She could hear car engines revving up, and in the alley on the far side of the kitchen wall there was the clatter of garbage cans.
It was hard to know for certain how long it had taken her to regain consciousness, but since the complex had not yet settled into midmorning quiet, Karen guessed that not too much time had elapsed. The sounds she was hearing were those of people leaving. It was evidently still early enough that people were heading off to work and to school.
The first of the morning rush hours would be over by now at the day care center. The working parents already would have dropped off their children, and the afternoon drop-ins would not yet be rolling in.
What is Betty Smith doing now? Karen wondered. The drive to the center was a short one; the couple must have gotten there by now. Perhaps, at this very moment, Betty was being led on a grand tour of the building by Mrs. Dunn or by Deedee.
This is the kitchen, one or the other of them would be telling her. There’s bottled water and milk; help yourself whenever you’d like.
That pan over there is the one we use for warming bottles for the babies.
Here’s the kindergarten room where Jane teaches.
This is the room we call the Baby Room. It’s where your niece works. You’re such a lifesaver, Nancy, filling in for poor Karen today!
Filling in for poor Karen, who was lying, bound and gagged, on the floor of a deserted apartment.
This can’t be happening, Karen thought incredulously. This is impossible!
Though her head still throbbed from its violent encounter with the stove corner, the intensity of the pain seemed to be lessening. As this occurred, Karen found herself becoming aware of other areas of discomfort. The twine that Betty’s companion had tied around her wrists and ankles was cutting into her badly, and her hands, which had been secured behind her back, were numb from the weight of her body. The rough dish towel pressed cruelly against her injured mouth, and her bones ached from her fall to the kitchen floor.
How long were they planning to leave her here? Karen wondered. What could the purpose behind all this be? If it was to rob the center, it was unlikely that Betty and her friend would be returning before evening. The parents paid when they picked up their children, not when they brought them in, and there was never much money in the cash drawer in the mornings. When it came to that, there was little money there at any time; most of the center’s clients were regulars who paid monthly by check or credit card.
It just didn’t make sense. If this couple had decided to rob a business, there were plenty of other, more promising, prospects. A bank or a store or even a fast-food restaurant would have more cash on hand. They had managed to learn everything else about the center—who was employed there, who the director was—even the schedule of the bus that Karen rode to work in the mornings. It was inconceivable that they could be stupid enough to believe that there would be enough money at a day care center to be worth the risk involved in robbing it.
The apartment complex had by now grown quiet. Those who had early morning commitments had apparently gone to meet them, and the remaining tenants were probably still sleeping.
The one person who could reasonably be expected still to be there, and to be awake, was the manager. She tried to visualize the apartment building with the vacancy sign in front of it. Betty had driven past it so quickly that she could not remember exactly where it had been located. It seemed to her that it had been near the east end of the complex. They had then turned right twice and had gone only a short way up the alley before they had pulled to a stop behind the laundry van.
That meant that the manager’s apartment was close to this one. It might even be positioned directly next door. The manager would have keys to all the units. Was there a chance that he might go into them while the tenants were out?
It was a happy thought to contemplate, but, much as she longed to believe it might happen, Karen had to admit to herself that it was not likely. Betty had commented on the privacy that the complex afforded.
“The neighbors don’t bother you,” she had said, “and neither does the manager. If you pay your rent in advance, you can expect to go indefinitely without being bothered.”
What else had she said in the time they had spent together? Again, Karen found herself experiencing the feeling that she had missed something. Carefully, she reviewed every word she could remember. First, she and Betty had talked in the car. Then, the man, Joe, had entered the picture. He had dragged Karen into the apartment and called her a “wildcat.”
“Surprise, surprise!” Betty had said. “She doesn’t look much like one, does she?”
What else had she told him? “Tie our little friend up, and let’s get going. You did get gas, didn’t you?”
Hold it a minute! What was that about the gas?
Karen slowed the pace of her mind and centered it upon that item.
“You did get gas?” Betty had asked, but she had been the one who had been out that morning. If gas for the car had been needed, she would have bought it. The gas she was referring to must have been for the van. Did that mean that she had expected to drive the van to the center? That didn’t seem reasonable. It would have looked strange for Karen’s “Aunt Nancy” to arrive in a laundry truck. What was it, then, that the van would be used for?
As she reviewed the conversation, Karen remembered that there had been a second part of it. After asking about gas, Betty had mentioned needing a road map. That had to mean that after the robbery, the pair was planning to head immediately for someplace far enough away so that, if they didn’t have GPS in the van, they would need a map in order to plan their route.
And that must mean…
Oh my god, Karen realized with sudden horror, they’re not coming back here!
They were not going to release her—and why on earth should they? A return trip to the apartment would gain them nothing.
I’m going to be left here! I won’t be discovered until next month’s rent is due! Karen shuddered convulsively. How long can I stay alive?
She had read articles about people who had been marooned in wilderness areas, set adrift in lifeboats, or stranded in the desert. Some of them had survived for weeks without food, but in all those cases they at least had water. Food was important, but water was more so. No one could live very long without liquid.
I’ve got to get out of here—but how?
Wincing with the pain the effort caused her, she tried to move her legs. Although she could lift them, it became quickly apparent that it would be hopeless to attempt to break the twine. It was looped several times around her ankles and knotted tightly.
Using her legs for balance, Karen raised her right shoulder and managed to roll partway over onto her left side.
With the weight of her body now off her hands, she tried to restore the circulation in her fingers. They were so numb that it was impossible for her to tell if they were responding when she tried to wiggle them. The twine that bound her wrists was as tight as that around her ankles. She would never be able to slide it off, and there was nothing within
reach that offered a sharp enough edge to cut it.
With a moan of defeat, she rolled back into her former position. It was obvious that she wouldn’t be able to free herself. Her only hope was to attract the attention of someone in another apartment. Sound seemed to travel easily through the thin walls. If only she could find a way to create some really disturbing noise, there was a chance that one of the neighbors would complain to the manager.
The dish towel sealed her mouth as effectively as the twine held her ankles and wrists. The sole mobility she had was in her legs, and they could be lifted and lowered only as a unit. She tried raising them as high as possible and slamming them down against the floor. The warped linoleum soaked up the impact, and the resulting sound was only a muffled thud. Striking her feet against the stove front created a louder noise, but it was one that might easily be mistaken for the rattle of defective plumbing.
Still, doing anything had to be more constructive than doing nothing. Karen continued to kick the oven door, keeping up a steady, monotonous rhythm and praying that if she continued this effort long enough someone might begin to wonder about the repeated clanging.
Time passed; she couldn’t gauge how much. Sounds in the alley changed as the morning moved onward. Several trucks pulled through, and one of them stopped for a few minutes to pick up garbage. There was a cat fight, and then some dogs staged a barking match. Some women strolled past, chatting idly, and Karen could hear the creak of the wheels of baby strollers.
Eventually, there came a burst of voices, accompanied by laughter, and the doors of some of the apartments banged open and shut again. It was noon, Karen realized, and someone must have come home for lunch.
By now her legs were exhausted, but she relentlessly continued to flail them against the stove. No one seemed to notice or question the noise that resulted.
After what seemed like hours, she again heard the sound of doors and voices. Lunch hour was apparently over. One boy shouted directly outside the kitchen window, his voice so loud and immediate that he might as well have been in the room with her. Somebody else jangled a bicycle bell.