Capturing Angels (3 page)

“Yes, yes,” I said, now feeling more impatient now than frightened.

“Have you noticed any strangers in your neighborhood lately who happened to be watching your house, your family? Have you noticed any stranger, the same stranger, who just happens to be in places you are? Something like that?”

“No.”

“You didn’t notice anyone lurking near your home?”

“No, of course not. I would have mentioned something like that to my husband immediately, and he certainly would have warned me. We live on a cul-de-sac, so someone loitering would be very obvious.”

“Do you usually go shopping alone with your daughter? Any friends go along?”

“Sometimes, yes. I just . . . what difference does that make?”

“I don’t know,” he said, almost smiling. “I have to be as thorough as I can here. What about other relatives? Anyone you’re not getting along with, anyone who is critical of how you bring up your daughter, maybe?”

“No,” I said. “Both my husband and I are only children. My parents are retired. My mother had me late in life. They live in Rancho Mirage in a development. My father’s addicted to golf,” I added. He widened his eyes and smiled, but I wasn’t trying to be funny. John repeated it so often that it became attached to any description of my parents whenever anyone asked about them.

“How do you get along with your in-laws?”

“Fine,” I said.

“Like tolerable fine or . . .”

“We get along,” I said. “I don’t understand these questions. This has nothing to do with family. In fact, we’re a perfect family.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” he said. If he was bothered by my attitude, he didn’t show it. “I had a case recently, though, where a woman’s mother-in-law did something like this to teach her son’s wife a lesson. She thought she was too careless with their child. Most missing children are actually family-related abductions.”

“Well, that’s not us. Neither John nor his mother has ever been critical of the way I take care of our daughter. No one has, especially not my in-laws or parents. If anything, they’re always accusing me of doting on her too much.”

“Do you have a regular babysitter?”

“Yes. She’s a neighbor, actually, Margaret Sullivan. She’s a widow in her fifties and like another member of our family now. My husband is very comfortable, as I am, with her watching our daughter. She’s a religious woman and often goes with us to our church or with John and Mary when I don’t attend.”

“No children of her own?”

“No. I think that is another reason she took to Mary so quickly, why she became a member of our family so quickly.”

“Why didn’t she have any children of her own?”

“She’s never been fond of talking about it, but from what she did tell us, her husband couldn’t get her pregnant, and Margaret would never agree to try any of the scientific alternatives, nor would she adopt.”

He nodded and asked for her address.

“It’s the house right next to ours on the right when you face our house,” I explained.

“Does she only babysit at your home, or does she take Mary into her own house?”

“Mary feels comfortable in her home, but she babysits in our home only. I have never let Mary sleep in Margaret’s house, not that she would have felt uncomfortable doing so. It’s just the way I am with her. John usually accuses me of smothering her with attention, which is what makes all of this even more bizarre.”

“So, Margaret has never taken your daughter places without you?”

“Why are you asking me all this about Margaret?” I asked, losing my patience. “Margaret is like another grandmother to Mary. She’s been there to help nurse her when she’s been sick. She’s been at every birthday. It’s debatable who dotes on my daughter more, me or Margaret.”

“Things could have happened around her that she was not aware of. Did she take her somewhere without you recently?”

“No.” I shook my head and brought my hands to my face.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to upset you any more than you already are. I’m just trying to get a full picture,” he said, and then turned to the door when a security guard entered the office. I saw him jerk his head to indicate that Lieutenant Abraham should come to him.

“Excuse me a moment,” Lieutenant Abraham said, walking over to the guard.

They moved to the side and talked. Then the security guard left, and Lieutenant Abraham returned, walking very slowly, a new and more concerned expression on his face. My heart raced. He knew something more, something significant.

“Was that the man looking at the videotape?” I asked hopefully.

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“When you approached the counter in the jewelry department, you didn’t have a little girl with you on the videotape,” he said.

2

Strangers

Numbness tingled in my fingertips, perhaps because I had my fingers locked so tightly together. I shook my head like someone trying to shake the words she had just heard out of her ears.

“How could I think I had my daughter with me in the store if I didn’t?” I asked Lieutenant Abraham.

Actually, I was asking myself, but I looked at him, hoping that he would pluck an answer from his investigative experience. From the expression in his face, I thought he was struggling for one because he really wanted to help me. The pained look in his eyes told me he couldn’t explain it, either, however.

“I guess I must have let go of her just outside the entrance and thought she had come in right behind me. She always hangs on to me or stays right beside me, so I just assumed . . .”

He nodded. “Very likely. Obviously, something must have distracted her long enough for the door to close between you. Maybe she didn’t even realize you had gone in,” he said.

“She knew I was going into the store, though. She wouldn’t just stand out there dumbly. She knows how to open a department-store door and follow her mother in through it.”

I could see the point settle firmly in Lieutenant Abraham’s mind. Any innocuous reason for Mary’s disappearance disappeared as quickly as she had.

“How does your daughter get along with strangers?” he followed.

“Strangers? We don’t have any strangers in our life,” I replied, not fully understanding.

“No, I mean people she would see on the street or in a store, somewhere when she was with you. Didn’t strangers ever try to talk to her?”

“Oh, yes. She’s very special, very pretty. People often stop us to remark about her, talk to her.”

“Exactly,” he said. “What was usually her reaction to that sort of thing?”

“She always responds correctly and with respect.”

“Is there any particular sort of person she favors?”

“Particular sort?” I asked. “You mean elderly or young, someone in uniform or not?”

“Yes, exactly,” he replied, looking and sounding grateful for my intelligent response.

“No, I don’t think so. Except maybe a priest.”

“A priest?”

“Anyone in any religious garb.”

“Okay. That’s helpful.” He made some note in his pad.

Another thought occurred to me. “Maybe there’s a security guard here with some sort of negative history.”

“We’ll check that, but they do screen people they hire for security, Mrs. Clark.”

“People fall through the cracks. Pedophiles have even been hired to work in grade schools and preschools.”

“Right. Okay. I’ll get this picture of Mary duplicated and up all over this place,” he said. “We’ll also put out an APB and an Amber Alert with a detailed description. We’re still interviewing other salespeople in other stores, the parking-lot staff, anyone and everyone who might have seen something.”

I nodded. Was I crying, or were my tears falling inside my eyes and raining down over my heart?

“I should get you home, Mrs. Clark,” he said. “There’s nothing else you can do here. I’ll have one of the patrolmen take you.”

“No. I can’t leave. I can’t leave without Mary,” I said.

He looked as if he was having trouble swallowing.

“What?” I practically screamed at him.

“I really don’t think she’s here, Mrs. Clark,” he said.

“I can’t believe I let that department-store door close between Mary and me,” I said. “I can’t.”

“You were probably rushing in and, as you said, assumed she was right behind you.”

“But why wouldn’t she just open the door herself and follow me into the store? Someone’s definitely taken her. But if someone did that, why didn’t she scream?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Once that part of the puzzle is solved, it will all be solved.”

“I’m sure she expected that I would notice she wasn’t with me and rush out looking for her. If I had seen her with someone, some stranger, I would have rescued her. But I didn’t notice she was gone in time. What is wrong with me?”

“It won’t do any good to blame yourself, Mrs. Clark. Look, we’ve pretty much covered this place. There’s no sign of her here now, or anyone’s having seen her, but we will have those pictures up in a few hours. I just made contact with the FBI. I have a good friend in the Bureau’s office here, Special Agent David Joseph, and he said he would take personal interest in and control of this situation.”

“The FBI,” I repeated, the idea driving home how serious it all had become.

“We have to look at the possibility that this kidnapping is to extract money from you, a ransom.”

“We live in Brentwood, but we’re not ostentatious. We’re not anywhere near what would be considered very wealthy people today,” I said.

“They might not ask for that much. There’s good reason for people like this to go after moderately well-off families. There’s less media attention, and they’d believe there would be less police involvement than there would be with a high-profile family. So,” he continued, “let’s get you home. Dave and his agents will meet us there. They’ll get your phones tapped. We’ll wait to see what these people have in mind.”

He stood up and reached for my hand. I started to rise but felt my whole body tremble and sat again, shaking my head.

“Can you get me some water first? I’ll take a pill.”

“Sure,” he said. He hurried out and came back in with a cup of water.

I opened my purse and found the pill bottle.

“What is that?” he asked when I plucked out a capsule.

“Just a tranquilizer. A mild one,” I said.

“You didn’t take one before you came here today, did you, Mrs. Clark?”

“No. You shouldn’t drive after taking one of these. I’m careful about it.”

“How long have you been taking them?”

“A while,” I said, and swallowed the pill.

“Might I ask why?”

I shook my head. “I don’t feel like going into all that right now.”

“Okay, let’s get you home. Your husband should be on his way. He was leaving immediately.”

I took a deep breath and stood up. Now I did feel as if I would faint. I started to cry, my sobs coming in small, tight gasps that tightened my body and closed my lungs, freezing my arms, my legs. This was really happening. I was going to leave without Mary, get into the car and go home to an empty house, look at her things, smell the scent of her hair, and not hear the sound of her voice. Every part of me said no. It was as if there was a great scream being sounded inside me. My legs wobbled.

Lieutenant Abraham put his arm around me. “Lean on me,” he said. “I’ll get you home myself.”

I closed my eyes and practically let him carry me out of the mall security office. On the street just outside the mall, he helped me into his automobile. He spoke quickly with some patrolman and then got in to drive me home. I lay back, my eyes closed. My pill had put me in a state of limbo, numbness. It was as though I were drifting in some dream. I embraced it.

I was confident that by the time we arrived at my home, I would wake up and find myself sitting in the living room, thumbing through one of my fashion magazines. All that had happened wouldn’t even be a bad dream, much less any sort of memory. Mary would appear in the doorway to tell me that John was almost home. It was remarkable how she could sense that, but she was remarkable in so many ways that I had stopped being amazed.

I felt us stop at a traffic light and opened my eyes.

“You okay?” Lieutenant Abraham asked.

I looked at him as if we had never met. Then it all came rushing back at me. I turned and looked back toward the mall. What if I was leaving forever without Mary? I envisioned John and me at the dinner table days, weeks, and months from now without her. During our meal, both of us would avoid looking at Mary’s chair. Whenever John would speak, he would sound like someone afraid of silence. No matter how hard he would try, for me, his words would fall like iron pebbles from his lips. He could try everything, talk about his day at work. He could run on and on with descriptions of the stock market and the economy that I was sure would be welcomed on CNBC or Bloomberg. None of it would work.

But he wouldn’t be able to stop talking, and for that matter, neither would I. At these once-precious dinners, now without Mary, we would become two people housed together in some prison cell who spoke different languages but needed the sound of their voices to keep their sanity.

Afterward, I would welcome the kitchen cleanup. I would avoid using the dishwasher. Scrubbing and drying pots, pans, plates, glasses, cups, and silverware would feel like penance. In fact, all of my housework would become an act of contrition. Not to mention how deeply dependent I would become on pills to get me through the day. Too often, that was already happening.

I thought that John might not blame me for losing my focus, failing to pay attention to Mary, and instead concentrating on material gifts with such intensity that I didn’t see my little girl led off and out of our lives that dreadful day, but I would always blame myself. I would always carry the cross down my own Via Dolorosa and dream of myself crucified in our backyard, moaning, “Why hast thou forsaken me?”

I sat up in Lieutenant Abraham’s car. “I’m so frightened,” I said.

He nodded and drove faster.

“Somehow, you read about these things in the papers or see them on television but never feel vulnerable, never think it can happen to you,” I said.

“I know.”

“Will I get her back?”

“I’m on it. Special Agent Dave Joseph will be on it. We’ll get her back,” he said firmly.

I closed my eyes and leaned back again.

I’ll be home soon—home—and John will be home soon, too. Surely he’ll know exactly what to do.
I couldn’t wait to get home now.

We had a two-story, three-bedroom Tudor house on Westgate in that area of Brentwood that seemed more like city suburbs than city. Although Brentwood had more than its share of celebrities from Hollywood and well-known businesspeople living there, its national infamy had come with the O. J. Simpson case. Everyone we knew and everyone we met who learned that we lived in Brentwood always managed to ask how close we were to the murders. John hated that.

But there was no denying that we lived in a rather upscale community. Even the smaller houses and condos in Brentwood had drifted into the sea sailed by millionaires. Of course, every resident’s initial cost depended on when his home was built and sold. John said there were old homeowners sitting on millions in capital gains. There was a rapidly diminishing number of building lots and square feet still available, which kept the prices up.

John wasn’t a very wealthy man when we first met. He had a good salary, but his parents had signed over some significant stock assets to him. Some of them poured out significant additional income, and some he sold at an opportune time. In fact, he had doubled his portfolio before we were married.

When my parents learned that John and I were getting serious, they were pleased, because it was easy to see that he was very intelligent when it came to financial planning. After all, this was his career, his life’s work and interest. A girl’s parents are almost more interested in their future son-in-law’s economic prospects than they are in his personality, even his passion for their daughter.

Here was this man, John Clark, handsome to the point where he could be compared with movie stars or classic statues and paintings, who also had a stability most parents fantasized about when it came to a daughter’s future. Why shouldn’t my father and mother gush over him to the point where I would be embarrassed? While we were dating, I was always making excuses for them, and John was always understanding.

“If and when I’m like your father, I’ll think along the same lines, especially if I have a daughter,” he said.

“But you won’t behave like he does when your daughter brings home a boyfriend you approve of.”

He just gave me that knowing, self-confident smile and gently jerked his head to the left, a small gesture that made me smile, too. When you first find yourself falling in love with someone, you are so tuned in to his or her every gesture. I loved the way John poured my glass of wine at dinner, for example. He would never reach over to do it but would first take my glass, pour the wine, whirl it in the glass, and then hand it to me. Little things like that made me feel special. I couldn’t help lavishing compliments on him, subtly or otherwise. Rather than thank me, he would kiss me, almost like a royal stamp of approval. But our relationship was far from one-sided.

John never picked me up for a date without telling me how beautiful I looked. They weren’t simply appropriate comments or words of praise that one of my girlfriends could call “good come-ons.” I knew he was sincere because of what he appreciated. He was truly impressed with my attention to style, to choosing clothes that flattered my figure and favoring colors that heightened the beauty of my complexion and my eyes, a shade of blue he swore he had never seen. Those sorts of things were important to him, and he would no sooner be attracted to a ravishing, sexy beauty who paid no attention to them than he would to a female ape.