The Captive (19 page)

He waited for the operator on the phone, jiggling the hook so that she reprimanded him when she came on the line. He asked for Frank Rossi's number and got his editor after several rings.

"Frank, my wife and little girl are gone. They've left, and some of their clothes are gone. Do you know, did Renee call the office today while I was out?"

"Not that I heard," Frank's voice said. "Wait a min, Barry," and he heard the other man talking to his wife. "Judy says she didn't get a call either, and she's been home all day."

"Frank, they're gone!" Barry shouted into the phone. "Their clothes, and Mina's teddy bear." Barry stopped, realizing he was weeping. "Goddammit, where are they?"

"Now hold on, Barry," Frank said, his voice becoming tinny and distant as Barry let the receiver dangle from the edge of the table. He heard Frank saying something more, but he had turned away in a daze, walking toward the back door to look out into the darkness. Frogs were tuning up along the irrigation ditch, and the heavy scent of the  oleanders hung in the air like a noxious gas. Could it be an  emergency back home? Her mother had a heart attack? Vaire? But she would never go without leaving him a note, something.  He wandered around in the kitchen, snapping the overhead light on. He stood looking down at the catsup smeared plates, so unlike her to leave a mess, and one of the plates was smeared with a finger into crosses,
X
's in the plate, drawn in catsup, three distinct
X
's, as if the person had been playing, painting with the catsup. When it hit him, it came so suddenly that everything happened at once: the scene came back to him, talking to Renee in that cafe in Grand Rapids after she had gotten the divorce and she had said Bill drank so much that his middle initial ought to be three
X
's like on the comic strip booze bottles, three
X
's. Bill! And as the knowledge hit his mind, before the scene had faded from his memory, before the spoken words had been said in his mind, the Beast snapped him out of the way like a paper cutout.

I shift.

I have not come into being so suddenly since the last time I met my enemy, but I come out roaring, so filled with hate am I that this evil human whom I have allowed to live has now thrust himself into my life again. This time he has asked for death. I drop to all fours and trot through the house. His scent is here. I find in the living room a chair where he sat, the wooden arm of the chair where his hand rested, and here where he walked, the smell of new leather mixed with his scent, and here into the bedroom. I find a strong stain of scent on the floor beside the bed. Here the man and woman had sex on the floor. I push Barry back as he tries to come forward, screaming at me, push him back so hard his  consciousness disappears inside my mind. I sniff about, figuring his movements, getting the clothes, great haste since there is only the one set of tracks. He came in, sat down, got up, went to the bedroom, went to the kitchen, back out the front door with the woman and girl. I cast about outside in front of the house but find the scent ends where they entered an automobile. No way for my nose to trace an automobile, they are so deadly smelling with that gas they emit. I cast about in the side yard, finding a fresh scent of Mina,  following it to the cottonwood where I find she put her hands on the tree trunk, and there a strong stink of cheap perfume covers everything. I sniff it out. Here in a raised knot that the insects have hollowed out, forming a little tube in the tree trunk, is a piece of lilac scented notepaper Renee got from her niece and gave to Mina. I slip one claw down into the narrow opening, snag the paper, pull it out, but it is too dark out here to read. I take the paper into the kitchen and unfold it. In childish print:

Dere Big Pusy Catt

Reel Daddy is heer. Com gett us plees.

Mina Golden

I growl again, want to break things, kill something, but I go back to the front yard again, trying to find something but learning only that the tires were fairly new and of a larger size than Barry's car has, and there is a scent of something else, a mechanical smell that I rouse Barry inside to ask about. "It's hydraulic brake fluid," he says from far back inside. At that point car lights turn around the corner coming from town and I leap back into the bushes of the empty lot next to the house. The car slides to a stop in front of Barry's house and I stiffen to attack position, my body trembling with eagerness, hackles erect, mouth dry, hoping that he has forgotten something and come back. Just one chance, I say to myself very slowly and smoothly, all my senses directed at the opening car door. I am ready.

"Hey Barry?" the tall, skinny man calls out as he jumps from the car. A short, heavy woman climbs down from the other side. It is Frank and Judy Rossi. I slip through the dark lot to the ditch bank, make my way to the corner of the house, pull my consciousness into a fine point.

I shift.

"Out here, Frank," Barry called, stepping through the tumbleweeds and brush to come around the side of the house. The Rossis each put an arm around Barry and helped him back into the kitchen.

"You're sure they aren't just at somebody's house?" Frank said, looking around. "Everything looks OK in here."

"It was her ex-husband," Barry said dully, sinking down at the counter and feeling the day's fatigue drop onto him suddenly.

"How do you know that, Barry?" said Judy Rossi. She stood with her hand on his shoulder, patting him lightly, unconscious that her hand was moving. "Did she leave a note?"

"Mina did," he said, pointing to the crumpled lilac paper on the counter in front of him.

"Why she can write," Judy said, looking at the note, "and she's only seven, isn't she?"

"What does she mean, Dear Big Pussy Cat?" Frank said, looking over his wife's shoulder, his long, solemn face  hanging in the light of the kitchen like a question mark. "She has an imaginary friend she calls the Big Pussy Cat, and I guess she left the note for him."

"Funny she had time to write a note and Renee didn't," Frank said, and then said "Ouch" as his wife stepped on his foot.

Barry sat looking at the back of the stove that stood against the counter, reading the name of the company and the number over and over. She wouldn't have gone with him like that. But what they did in the bedroom? And his mind stalled, unable to get past that imagined scene.

Judy returned from a look around the house and pulled her husband into the living room for a short conference. Barry heard them talking in low tones, but for the moment his mind seemed numb, thoughtless.

"We've got to call the police on this, I think," Frank said from somewhere behind Barry.

When Barry did not respond, he said again, somewhat louder, "I suppose the divorce and everything is all final and legal, and things like that," he finished lamely,  embarrassed.

"Sure," Barry said.

"Well then," Frank went on, "if her ex-husband has taken her from her legal home against her will, then he's guilty of kidnapping, a Federal offense now, you know."

"What if she went with him?" Barry said, his face haggard.

Judy stood with her hands on her hips and looked angry and exasperated. "You men," she said. "You haven't got the sense of a yearling calf. Can't you see, Barry, that your wife loves you more than anything in this world, that she would die rather than leave with that drunk she got away from to marry you? - Oh, yes she told me a little about it, and she's not a gossipy woman. You think she went off with him? Shame on you, Barry." And she found that she was shaking her finger at him.

Barry felt suddenly foolish and self pitying. He stood up, almost smiling at Judy. "You're right," he said. "I'm just feeling sorry for myself, I'm going to call the police now."

The next day, Saturday, the police came thumping loudly into the house, asking questions, some of them pointing toward foul play by the husband, making Barry first mildly amused and then angry. If they were going to mess around with a murder hypothesis, he thought, it would take them years to find his family. He explained that the governor of Isleta Pueblo could vouch for his being there all day Friday, directed them to the Gutierrez family, the widow Ahern, the Ochoa family, in short, did what he could do while the laboratory people looked for fingerprints in the most unlikely places and found only one suspicious print that was too blurred to be of any use. The neighbors assured the police that the Goldens did not fight, at least so they could be heard, that Barry had never been seen drunk or disorderly, that they seemed a happy couple but kept rather to themselves  and had only been in the neighborhood for two months. The lab man packed their gear and left, deaf to Barry's questions, nodding wisely but saying nothing. And he was left with a mild looking detective, thin and in his fifties, his forehead sloping back and back into a fringe of brown hair at the back of his head. He had an ingratiating air about him at first, requesting each item of information with care until Barry understood that each question was really a covert command and that the detective, with his slight smile and comfortable aspect, was really treating him like a murder suspect.

They sat in the living room, making Barry feel the detective  was a guest and entitled to at least formal courtesy, but he was getting restive under the questions and what seemed to him innuendos of guilt.

"Let's see, you say you were at Isleta all day, that's about, what? thirty miles south of here?" The detective smiled with a peculiar lifting of his upper lip, as if he were showing off his yellow teeth. "And you say you were gone all day, what did you say, from eight o'clock in the morning until, what? eight or so in the evening? That's a long day, isn't it?" He lifted his lip again.

"I'm gathering material for a feature in next week's  
Journal
," Barry said. "On the abandoned children at Isleta  and elsewhere."

"Ah yes, I see," the detective said, writing in his tiny notebook. "I have notes here from the neighbors that they did not see a vehicle stop here during the day." He looked up with a flat gaze at Barry who sat trying to be quiet and cooperate while he wanted to get out and run down the road, any road, looking for them.

"A car stopped here," Barry said. "You can see tire marks in front."

"I have notes from my lab men here that no unusual marks appear in front of the house that would indicate a car stopped here." He looked up innocently at Barry. "Except for your own car, of course."

Barry felt his rage rising in him and held it down, feeling his face flush in what must have looked like a guilty blush. "Nevertheless," he said calmly, holding to the arms of the chair, "a car did stop here, and it had a hydraulic line leak." He stopped, aware that this could not be proven by human senses, and he could hardly expect the detective to go with him, sniffing in the dirt of the road in front of his house for the tiny spot of hydraulic fluid that had certainly evaporated by now in the hot sun. He shook his head and sat still, waiting for the next move. It did not come.

The detective closed the tiny notebook, put it in his shirt pocket and stood up to leave. "Mr. Golden," he said, lifting his lip, "we are certainly going to do everything we can to locate your family."

Barry stood up too and almost offered his hand, but the detective did not make the gesture, walking toward the front door instead.

"In the meantime, Mr. Golden," he said, turning so quickly that Barry almost ran into him, "we ask that you stay home, so we can contact you if necessary. In any case, we ask that you remain in town, is that clear?" He said the last question as a command.

"Yes," Barry said. "But I might be able to help by -"

"Your best efforts, Mr. Golden, will be here at the telephone,  in this house, where we can find you if we need you," the detective said, and reaching out he delicately plucked at Barry's shirt sleeve, as if he were feeling the quality of the fabric.

***

"Hello, Walter?" The connection was terrible, screeching noises alternated with buzzings and fade out. He heard something that sounded like a man's voice, then nothing but static.

"Walter? This is Barry."

"Hello Barry, what's happening out ..." and the voice faded out again amidst a welter of noise.

Barry waited until he thought he could hear something on the other end and said, "Walter, let me speak to Vaire." And he shouted, "It's important!" He waited for the noise to subside.

"Why are you calling?" came Walter's imperturbable voice as clear as if he were in the next room.

"Walter, Renee's been kidnapped, I think," Barry said desperately, hearing the static well again on the line.

"I say, Barry, why are you calling? Can you speak up, I ..."

"Goddammit to hell!" Barry shouted. "Let me speak to your wife!"

And then suddenly, as if by magic command, there was Vaire's voice, serene and unruffled as it always was. "Barry, is that you?"

"Vaire, thank God. Listen, Renee and Mina have been kidnapped, I think by Bill. At least I have some reason to think it was him." He waited to see if that was getting through and was rewarded by Vaire's gasp of surprise, clear and close.

"Kidnapped? Barry, did I hear you right?"

"I think Bill came while I was down at Isleta, an Indian pueblo south of here, I'm doing a feature. And he took them away. There are a few clothes missing, but no note or  anything. Do you know anything that might help me find them?"

The line became crystal clear: "Oh Barry, I got a letter from Renee just last week and when I got it I knew I shouldn't have given Bill your address. He said he wanted to write you about some land that was still in dispute. And I didn't think it was important. He seemed so rational and he wasn't drunk. Barry? Are they gone, aren't they really there?" Her voice had climbed an octave as she spoke until now it was a wail of distress.

"I came home yesterday, late, and they were gone," he said, feeling the woman's panic touch him and make him tone down his own fear. "There was a little note from Mina in a secret place she and I know about that said her real daddy was going to take them away and would I come and get them." But at that point he heard the static beginning again. There was a long period of noise and a few words garbled up with it, then he heard "... to go with him, you know."