Charley's Web (35 page)

Charley reached for it, her hand trembling, the delicate hairs on the backs of her arms standing at full alert.

Slowly and carefully, she removed the cassette from its carton and put it in the VCR, then pressed
PLAY
. Then she waited, her face only inches from the giant TV monitor. There followed several seconds of nothing but a blank, brilliant blue screen, and for a moment Charley thought whatever had been on that tape might have been erased. But in the next instant the blank screen was filled with Jill’s laughing face. The extreme close-up made a mockery of her normally delicate features, rendering her almost gargoyle-like, as if the camera had somehow managed to penetrate her soul. She was smoking a cigarette and blowing kisses at the lens. “What are you doing? That’s not my good side,” she was saying, her voice dissolving in a fit of girlish giggles. “I’ll show you my good side.” She lifted up her T-shirt to expose her naked breasts.

That was when Charley became aware of other sounds. A man’s whispered instructions, a child’s muffled cries. “Oh, no,” Charley moaned as the camera panned slowly to little Tammy Barnet tied to a cot, squirming and whimpering behind the blindfold that covered her eyes. “No. Oh, please, no.”

“Okay, Jill,” the male voice whispered seductively. “Now take the cigarette and press it against Tammy’s thighs.”

“Oh, God.” Charley covered her eyes.

“Make the brat shut up,” the man ordered sharply. “She’s starting to get on my nerves.”

“I want my mommy,” the little girl cried.

“You’ll never see your mommy again if you don’t stop blubbering.”

“Come on, Tammy,” Jill urged. “Be a good little girl. It’ll all be over soon.”

The little girl let out a sudden, bloodcurdling scream.

“That was just a love bite, silly,” Jill chastised, laughing.

“My turn,” the man said as Charley edged closer to the TV, the man’s voice drawing her in like a magnet. She watched Jill take the camera from his outstretched arms.

“Okay, big boy. It’s your turn to shine,” Jill said, aiming the camera at the man’s feet. The camera panned slowly up the man’s legs, resting a few seconds on the pronounced bulge at the crotch of his jeans. It then continued its languorous climb up his chest and neck until it reached his smiling face.

Alex.

Charley began rocking back and forth, unable to turn her eyes away as Alex proceeded to place a plastic bag over the child’s head. “This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.” She scrambled to her feet, switched off the VCR before she could see more, then removed the cassette from the machine, her fingernails digging into the plastic as she tried to wrap her mind around what she’d just seen. But there was no time for trying to put it all together, to add up the hows and the whys. None of that mattered now. Only one thing mattered: Alex had killed those children. He was Jill’s lover, her accomplice, her mentor.

He was Jack.

He’d killed those children, and now he was on his way to murder her son. “Move,” she commanded her legs. “Move.”

In the next instant she was on her feet and searching for her purse. She found it on the floor in the bedroom, and she tossed the cassette inside it, then fished around for her car keys. Except she wasn’t at home. Her car wasn’t here. And she was in no condition to drive, her stomach reminded her with a sudden surge of nausea. Clearly Alex had poisoned her. But when? Bram had made the pancakes; her mother had made the coffee.

Who wants orange juice?
she heard Alex ask brightly.

Okay, no time for that now, Charley admonished herself. She had to do something. Alex had obviously been faking when he pretended to call the state police, which meant there were no officers on their way to rescue James. She had to reach her mother, tell her to call the local police. She returned to the living room and grabbed the phone, pressing in the number of her cell.

This is Charley Webb. I’m sorry I can’t take your call right now…

“Shit!” What was going on? Charley pressed 911.

“What is the nature of your emergency?” an operator asked.

“I need to speak to the police in Kissimee. There’s a man on his way to Disney World to hurt my son.”

“I’m sorry. You’ll have to speak slower. Your son has been hurt?”

“Not yet. But there’s a man, his name is Alex Prescott….”

“Your name is Prescott?”

“No. My name is Charley Webb. Listen to me. My son is in danger. He’s in Disney World….”

“I’m sorry, but you really should be talking to the state police.”

“Fine. Can you connect me?”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m not equipped to do that.”

Charley disconnected the line, pressed the number for information.

For what city?
the recording asked sprightly.

“I can’t do this,” Charley muttered, her head starting to spin as once again, she disconnected the line. Somewhere in the back of her brain, a number kept circling. As soon as it settled, she pressed it in. Seconds later, a man answered.

“Glen,” Charley cried gratefully. “This is Charley. I need your help.”

O
kay, Charley. Take deep breaths. Try to calm down.”

Charley gulped at the air as if she were drowning and about to go down for the third and last time. Her eyes shot to the road ahead, the cars in the surrounding lanes quickly reduced to a series of colorful streaks as Glen’s silver Mercedes sped past them. The way James would have painted them, Charley thought, swallowing a scream. “Can’t you go any faster?”

“I’m doing a hundred and twenty,” Glen told her. “I want to get us there in one piece.”

“Just get us there,” Charley pleaded, a fresh onslaught of tears cascading down her cheeks, causing Glen’s handsome features to slide up against one another, until they too were transformed into a series of intersecting lines and free-floating shapes, like an abstract work of art. “Tell me again what the police said when you spoke to them.” Charley fought to remember what Glen had told her, but her brain was like Teflon, and the words refused to stick. She vaguely remembered him saying that the police wanted them to sit tight until they could interview them, but there’d been no way she was prepared to do that. She remembered the frustration in Glen’s voice as he’d repeatedly tried to persuade the state police of the urgency of the situation. She recalled the sudden silence on the other end of the line when Glen had mentioned the name Jill Rohmer. “Do you think they believed you?” she asked, as she was sure she’d asked several times already.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’m sure they get a lot of crank calls. Obviously it would have been better to talk to them in person, show them the tape.”

“We’ll show it to them in Kissimee. You told them that, didn’t you?” Charley fought through the fog in her head to remember the precise words Glen had used when describing the videotape.

“I told them.”

“And they’ll meet us at the motel?”

“They said to call when we got there. Why don’t you try calling your mother again?”

Charley grabbed the phone in her lap, placed the call to her mother.

This is Charley Webb. I’m sorry I can’t take your call right now….

“Why isn’t anyone picking up? Oh, my God,” Charley gasped in the next breath.

“What’s the matter?”

“What if Alex is already there? What if he’s not letting her answer the phone? What if…?”

“Call the front desk,” Glen said, taking control.

“The front desk?” Of course, the front desk! Why hadn’t she thought of that earlier? What was the matter with her? “I don’t know the number,” she wailed, panicking as even the name of the motel eluded her.
The Seven Dwarfs…The Sleeping Beauty…?
What was the name of the damn place? “I can’t think. I can’t think.”

“Charley, calm down. You need to be calm.”

“I’m so dizzy. My head is spinning. I can’t…”

“You can,” Glen told her steadily. Then again, “You can.”

Charley took another deep breath, then closed her eyes, tried conjuring up the picture of the motel as it appeared on its website. The image appeared slowly, like a photograph in developing fluid, revealing itself gradually, faint shadows growing into colorful shapes, the shapes shifting, becoming concrete. “Beautiful Dreamers,” Charley said out loud, as a sprawling, white, two-storey building appeared fully formed on her memory screen, its logo floating across the bright blue skyline in cherry-red capital letters. She pressed in 411, retrieved the motel’s phone number from information, impatiently agreeing to the additional charge of fifty cents to be automatically connected. “Hurry up. Hurry up.”

“Beautiful Dreamers Motel,” purred a mellifluous male voice seconds later, as if Charley had aroused the speaker from a deep sleep.

“I need to speak to Elizabeth Webb,” Charley directed, as beads of perspiration broke out along her hairline. She leaned back against her headrest, struggling to control her dizziness and stay conscious as, all around her, palm trees spun out of control along the side of the turnpike, as if caught in the eye of a hurricane.

A slight pause, the sound of a keyboard clacking, then, “I’m sorry. We have no one by that name registered here.”

“What? Of course you do. What are you talking about?”

Another silence, more clacking. Then, “No. I’m sorry. I’m not showing anyone by that name.”

“Wait. Wait,” Charley urged, more to herself than to the sleepy young man on the other end of the line. “Try Alex Prescott,” she said, almost gagging on the name. To think that just a few short hours ago, she’d been seriously contemplating a lifetime with this man.

Another round of clacking. Then, “Yes, that’s better. I’m showing two rooms reserved under that name. Only one is occupied at the moment. Would you like me to connect you?”

“Yes!”
Are you an idiot?
Charley almost shouted as he was transferring her call. The phone rang twice before being picked up.

“Hello?” the child’s voice answered.

“Franny. Thank God.”

“Mommy! Where are you?”

“I’m almost there, sweetie. Let me speak to Grandma.”

“She’s asleep. She’s so sick, Mommy. I’m really scared.”

“Okay, listen to me….” Charley heard a faint knocking in the distance.

“Somebody’s at the door,” Franny announced.

“What?” Charley lurched forward in her seat, so that her head almost smashed against the car’s front windshield. Her seat belt snapped tightly against her chest, securing her firmly in place. “Wait! Don’t answer it. Franny, do you hear me? Don’t answer it.”

“Why not?”

Charley took a deep breath. Maybe it was Bram. Or the police. “Okay, listen, sweetheart. I want you to look out the window and see who it is. Can you do that?”

“Okay.”

Charley felt her daughter put down the phone. She watched her in her mind’s eye as the child approached the motel room’s large front window and parted the curtains. In the next second, Franny was back on the line. “It’s okay, Mommy,” she said, a smile in her voice. “It’s Alex.”

“What?! No! Don’t let him in! Franny? Franny?”

But Franny was already on her way to the door.

“Don’t open the door! Franny, do you hear me? Don’t open the door!”

The sound of a door opening. “Hi, Alex,” she heard her daughter say.

Then silence.

The blood froze in Charley’s veins. She turned to Glen, whose normally healthy complexion had turned a sickly shade of beige. “He’s got Franny,” she said.

“Okay, listen to me. This is not a crank call,” Glen was shouting into his phone at the state police seconds later. “The man’s name is Alex Prescott and he’s kidnapped a little girl named Franny Webb. She’s eight years old.”

Charley grabbed the phone from Glen’s hand, and quickly provided the officer on the other end of the line with a detailed description of her daughter, then of her son. “Alex is probably on his way to Disney World right now,” Charley told the officer, pushing the words out between sobs. “Please stop him before he hurts my children.”

The officer offered his sympathies and asked her to repeat the story again for his superior. Once again, Charley recounted the whole horrifying tale. How many times had she said the same thing in the last hour? To how many people? Why were the police so reluctant to believe her? “What if it’s too late?” she asked as she was put on hold.

“It isn’t,” Glen said, although he sounded less than convinced.

“I couldn’t bear it if he does anything to hurt them.”

“Try not to think that way, Charley.”

“You didn’t see the tape,” Charley cried. “You didn’t see the awful things he did to those children.” She looked at the purse in her lap, felt the tape burning a hole in its lining, like acid on flesh. “Yes, I’m still here,” she said suddenly into the receiver. “What kind of car does Alex drive,” she said, repeating aloud the question she’d just been asked. She described the old, mustard-colored Malibu convertible in as much detail as she could remember. “It’s about ten years old. No, I’m sorry. I don’t know the license plate number. But how many can there be?” She started to shake. Glen took the phone from her hands, spoke softly to the officer on the other end.

“They’re issuing an Amber Alert,” he told her seconds later.

“Thank God.”

“And they’re sending an ambulance to the motel. They’ll meet us there.”

Charley pushed away her tears with the back of her hand, tried to sit up straight. “How much longer till we get there?”

“Maybe half an hour.”

“I’ve been such a fool.”

“Just because you were fooled doesn’t make you a fool,” Glen told her. He reached over, took her hand in his. “We’ll get him, Charley. I promise you. We’ll get him.”

“Before he hurts my children?”

Glen squeezed her hand gently but said nothing.

Twenty-five minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot of the Beautiful Dreamers Motel. Four police cars were already there, as was an ambulance. Charley teetered on wobbly legs toward the entrance, almost colliding with an elderly couple lingering beside the front door. “Where can I find the police?” she demanded of the young man behind the front desk of the ornate gold-and-white lobby. “What room?”

“You are…?” He lifted a nearby phone to his ear. Charley noted a spray of freckles across the bridge of his nose, and small, light brown eyes behind a pair of square-framed designer glasses.

She all but screamed her name at the young man, who took an involuntary step back and raised his right hand. “Room 221, second floor, to your right. Just follow the pool around back until…”

But Charley was no longer listening. She was out of the lobby and down the hall, following the smell of chlorine as she turned one corner and then another, tripping over her feet as she tore down the red-and-gold carpeting, Glen steadying her before she could fall. How long until she started feeling better? How long until she started feeling human again?

When I get my children back, she thought.

“This way,” Glen said, pulling on her arm and leading her down another corridor until they reached the large pool area. “Here,” he said, guiding her around a trio of youngsters sitting on the steps of the pool’s shallow end. “This way,” Glen said, guiding her toward the concrete stairs. “Can you manage?”

Charley pushed herself up the steps, then turned left at the landing, where she almost fell into the arms of a waiting policeman. “Charles Webb?” the officer asked, looking at Glen.

“I’m Charley Webb,” Charley said with as much authority as she could muster. “How’s my mother?”

“The paramedics are with her now. They’ve given her something to settle her stomach. She should be all right.”

Charley raced down the hall to where another officer stood guard in front of room 221. The normally spacious room was crowded with police officers and medical personnel. It reeked of vomit. Her mother sat on the end of one of two double beds, a red-and-white-flowered bedspread wrapped around her shoulders, her skin the color of ashes, her dark hair wet with perspiration and matted to her forehead. “I’m so sorry,” Elizabeth whispered when she saw Charley. “It hit me in the car soon after we left. I tried to ignore it. I didn’t want to spoil the trip. What happened?”

“You were drugged,” Charley told her, sitting on the side of the bed, and taking her mother in her arms as Glen conferred with the police. “Alex put something in our orange juice.”

Her mother’s face radiated confusion. “Alex? I don’t understand. Why would…?”

“Do you remember anything at all?” Charley interrupted.

Elizabeth shook her head. “I’m sorry. I just remember feeling worse and worse. I vaguely recall crawling out of the bathroom and into bed. I think I remember Franny covering me with the bedspread. And then, nothing. The next thing I knew, the police were bursting through the door, and I was trying to sit up, and everyone was asking a lot of questions and poking at me, and I couldn’t see Franny…. I’m sorry, darling. I’m so sorry.”

“Ms. Webb?” a man asked. He was tall and balding, about fifty years old, wearing a nondescript tan-colored suit and an olive-green tie. Charley assumed he was the person in charge. She pushed herself to her feet. “I’m Detective Ed Vickers with the Florida State Police. I need to ask you some questions.”

“What you need to do is find my children before that monster hurts them.”

“We’ll do the best we can, Ms. Webb. Do you have a picture of them with you?”

Charley reached inside her purse, retrieved her wallet, withdrew the latest school photos of Franny and James.

“Do you remember what they were wearing earlier?”

“Franny was wearing a pink T-shirt and matching pants….”

“And two pink barrettes in her hair, the shape of angels,” her mother added.

“Cupids,” Charley said softly. “James was wearing a blue Mickey Mouse T-shirt and navy-blue shorts.”

“I don’t suppose you have a picture of Alex Prescott,” the detective half-stated, half-asked, as he handed the photo of her children to one of the other officers, who in turn relayed their description to someone on the other end of his cell phone.

Once again Charley reached inside her purse, pulled out the cassette labeled
Jack and Jill,
handed it to Ed Vickers.

“What’s this?”

Charley told him, watching his brown eyes narrow and his bushy eyebrows sink toward the bridge of his wide nose.

“How did you get this?” Ed Vickers asked as the room grew silent.

“Please,” Charley began. “I’ll explain everything on the way to Disney World. We have to find my son before Alex does.” She braced herself for Detective Vickers’s outright refusal, coupled with his gruff assertion that she should stay put, but it never came.

“You can ride with me,” he told her. “The paramedics will take your mother to the hospital.”

“Not until I know my grandchildren are safe,” Elizabeth protested, standing up, and raising herself to her full height, which even slightly hunched forward with pain, was nothing less than impressive. “I’m coming with you.”

“Fine,” Detective Vickers stated, heading for the door while barking orders at his underlings.

Charley reached for her mother’s hand, and together the two women followed the officers outside.

Even without the drugs in her system, Charley suspected Disney World would have proved overwhelming: the crowds, the noise, the rides, the actors disguised as much-loved cartoon characters mingling with their adoring young fans throughout the vast amusement park. Thousands upon thousands of people, Charley realized, her eyes piercing the milling throngs, searching for a streak of pink, a dash of blue. It seemed as if every other little boy she saw was wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, and virtually every little girl was dressed in pink. “How will we ever find them?” she whispered hopelessly, watching as the spinning teacup ride slowed to a stop in front of her, disgorging its happy passengers as a new group of eager and squealing youngsters immediately surged forward to take their place.