A Face at the Window (7 page)

A note on the kitchen counter said milk, bread, margarine. Jake pressed the blinking red button on the phone machine.

"Helen? Hi, it's eleven o'clock and I just wanted to confirm you can take Madison this afternoon. At one o'clock and I'll need you to keep her until four, so call me, okay?"

No other messages. But this one had come in…Jake glanced at the black cartoon-cat clock whose pendulum tail ticked off the seconds, over the stove. Twenty minutes ago, right after Helen had called Jake back.

Don't panic. There are plenty of explanations for…

But there weren't. One reason everyone loved leaving their kids with Helen was her reliability. Other girls, even women, could be dicey: have a boyfriend over to your place while caring for your kid. Or worse, take your kid to their boyfriend's.

Helen, though…Safe as houses, everyone always said. So why wasn't she here with Lee? Where was her car? Had there been some sudden medical emergency? Or…

Jake entered the family room. Blue shag rug, woodstove on a brick hearth. A granny quilt lay on the oversized recliner sofa, in front of the big TV.

A
TV Guide
and a pair of reading glasses lay on the cherry-veneer end table. A family portrait—Helen, Jerrilyn, and a man Jake recognized as Jody Pierce, Jerrilyn's second husband and Helen's stepfather—hung over a bookcase containing textbooks for the adult reading lessons Jerrilyn taught.

On the wall over the TV hung a 1960s-era clock in a gold-plated metal sun-ray frame. Eleven twenty-one, only nine minutes until the time Jake had promised she'd pick Lee up from Helen, and neither of them was around.

Okay, Jake thought, still trying to quell her fright. A good look at the place just to be sure they weren't playing hide-and-seek in the closets, or something. And then she'd summon her old pal, Bob Arnold, again.…

Yet another cry-wolf call this morning would kill her credibility
with him for weeks, not that it was all that great in the first place. And her sweaty palms notwithstanding, it was still a fair bet she was getting all nervous for something that would turn out to be a false alarm, she tried convincing herself.

So two guys in the hardware store had been asking about her. Big deal. And Campbell had called. But that didn't mean there was any connection to this situation, or that Campbell was nearby. So why was she still standing here uncertainly in the family room, frowning at the hallway that led to the two bedrooms, spare room, and bath at the rear of the house?

Taking a deep breath, she padded down the hall on the soft, silent, green wall-to-wall shag carpet. Bathroom: pink tile. She snapped back the plastic shower curtain, finding nothing behind it but a worn soap on a rope.

The first bedroom held a queen-sized bed, neatly made up with a white chenille bedspread and matching throw pillows. The curtains, like the ones in the family room, were heavy brocade with fringed tie-backs, only in here they were blue.

No one behind them; she let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. The louvered closet door opened with a creak.

Packed full of clothes, some zippered into garment bags; Helen's mom and stepdad obviously shared this one closet. A pair of plain dressers, one with a mirror hung on the wall above it, made up the rest of the furniture in the small bedchamber.

In the hall again, Jake paused. So far she'd found nothing amiss in the house, except that Helen and Lee weren't anywhere in it. Just a few more places to check: Helen's room, which took but a glance—its tiny dimensions and single, miniature louvered window would've made it more suitable for a sewing room, or in a pinch maybe a baby's bedroom—and the spare room Jody worked in, plus an added-on room that was more like a glorified sunporch.

Jody's room was windowless, closetless, and full of the kind of gear he repaired. A police-band scanner sat on a small workbench, its case off and its insides out. Plain wooden shelves held other jobs with paper tags bearing the owners’ names. A very pretty old Crosley radio in a silver Bakelite case stood on a low shelf of its own with a bill of sale and packing material stuffed in next to it.

But nothing more. She was hurrying toward the screened porch when she heard the crash. Glass breaking…

A quick glance outside showed no other car in the turnaround except hers. But intruders didn't necessarily come in cars, or if they did they might not leave them nearby, in plain sight.

She hesitated again in the family room. A glass-fronted gun case in the corner, built of fine tiger maple and holding half a dozen rifles plus an over-and-under pump shotgun, offered a next move. Having a gun-expert husband came in handy sometimes, she reflected as she approached the case.

But its door was locked, and the weapons were probably all trigger-locked and unloaded, the shells kept securely somewhere else. A fellow whose stepdaughter did child care for a living would take special precautions, unless he was a complete idiot.

And nothing about this place—neat, clean, comfortable and beautifully maintained, with not a single needed repair anywhere to be seen—suggested that anyone who lived here was an idiot or anything like one.

No sound from the sunporch. Helen kept the kids she sat for out there in good weather; Jake tiptoed toward it. The crash had been like a drinking glass breaking, not the bigger shattering of a window or door.

She swallowed past the hard lump of fear in her throat, well
aware that she'd left the door open coming in here, wishing hard for a pair of eyes in the back of her head. Then:

Oh, screw it. There's no one there.
No more strange sounds, no small betraying eddies disturbed the silent air, no alien smells of sweat or cigarettes floated warningly Steeling herself, on the count of three she lunged through the door to the sunroom.

As she'd thought, no one was in it. But the room itself…Jake gave herself a mental shake, trying to make sense of it.

A small easeled chalkboard, overturned and with its colored chalks scattered across the floor. Child-sized plastic chairs all scattered around, a giant beanbag seat flung against a wall.

A china coffee cup—Helen's, Jake thought distantly; she'd never have let Lee drink from anything that might break—lay in shards, a few drops of tan milky liquid spilled around it. It had stood on a shelf, gotten bumped maybe, then teetered and set-tled. Until a breeze toppled it…but what shoved it to the edge of the shelf in the first place?

Helen wouldn't have left it there. One thing was for sure: either a fight-to-the-death struggle had happened here recently, or someone had gone to a lot of trouble to fake one.

Then she spotted the worst thing: a pair of miniature six-guns in holsters, part of a child's toy cowboy outfit, lay tossed into a corner along with a matching hat, neckerchief, and fringed black-and-white imitation cowhide vest.

Lee
… It was the outfit Jake had dressed the little girl in that morning at the child's stubborn insistence, atop a turquoise sweatshirt, navy blue overalls, and nylon anklets with ruffles.

Plus cowboy boots. The morning had been warm; Lee would've shed the extra clothing once she reached Helen's place. Probably she was still wearing the boots.

"Where are you?" Jake whispered. Scared, now.

Really
scared. She dug her cell phone from her bag to call Bob Arnold, but before she could, it rang in her hand.

"Hello?" Her voice was shaking. "Listen, whoever this is, I can't talk now. I've got to—"

Then something about the silence on the line alerted her. A waiting silence…

"Who is this?" she demanded.

"You know who it is. I want something. Now you do, too. So let's make a deal, Jacobia. I'll call back."

Click.

Ozzie Campbell had hung up.

"You didn't have
to hit her that hard," said the guy in the passenger seat sulkily.

He was young, twenty or so, with dark hair and a big nose, spotty skin just starting to clear up. Bound hand and foot with harsh rope in the backseat with an oily-tasting rag stuck in her mouth, Helen Nevelson tried to memorize her abductors’ features. But her left eye was already swollen shut, and her head ached so badly she could barely see out of the right one. Struggling to breathe, she fought back the impulse to gag on the filthy cloth.

"Hey," snapped the driver in reply. "What do you think, I should maybe just've let her win? Oh, sorry, honey, you fight so good I guess I'll just give up my whole plan, here?"

He made a sound of disgust. "How the hell was I supposed to know the chick'd turn out to be a freakin’ Amazon?"

He glanced in the rearview at her, his annoyance turning to humor. "Man, they really feed ‘em here, though, don't they? Outta my weight class, for sure," he added.

Helen felt her face flush with humiliation even through her pain. The younger one was a bastard, but this guy with his gold chains, manicured nails, and strutting attitude—

This one was mean. A surge of fear went through her, so bad that she almost couldn't feel her body. The way they'd come in so suddenly, rushing into the house without a word, the young one grabbing her and holding her while the other one snatched Lee—

Lee.
The child lay motionless on the seat beside her. Once they were out of town they had given her something to drink, forcing it down her throat by holding her nose, yanking away the Raggedy Ann doll the child tried swatting them with and pouring the stuff into her mouth while she kicked and struggled.

Minutes later, the little girl had fallen asleep. With tears streaming on her cheeks, Helen managed painfully to turn her head enough to see that Lee was at least still breathing, her bowl-cut blond hair fallen over her flushed, feverish-looking face.

But the doll was gone. A sob rose painfully into Helen's throat. They'd left the island, speeding over the causeway into Pleasant Point, where the Passamaquoddy tribal land spread out on both sides of the road.

As they did so she'd had a moment of hope that since neither of the men was from around here—that much had been clear to her right away, from their accents—they might just keep on speeding through the reservation. If they had, they'd have been caught by one of the reservation's black-and-white squad car's radar guns.

But her captors had slowed obediently for the speed limit sign, and although she'd tried raising herself up high enough to be seen through the car window, nobody had spotted her.

"So now what?" the passenger-seat guy wanted to know.

The driver looked in the rearview mirror at Helen again, then glanced at his partner significantly, patting something in the inside pocket of his black leather jacket.

Gun,
Helen thought, another bolt of terror running through her. Beside her Lee muttered fretfully and slept again.

"She saw your face. And my face," the driver said as if trying to explain something to a not-quite-bright person. "Now, I suppose if we want to, we could just let her go."

"We could've covered our faces," said the passenger guy. "We could've waited, gotten the kid out of there somehow without the baby-sitter getting a look."

Helen could still feel his hands gripping her, smell his breath and the reek of his clothes. When she'd screamed, kicking viciously backward in hopes of getting his shin, the short one had turned curiously, like a scientist observing a new species, then punched her hard in the side of the head with his fist.

She didn't remember anything else until they were out of town, when they'd pulled over briefly to give Lee the drug-laced drink. But she had the strong feeling that more time had passed than she knew about, and when she craned her neck again to squint sideways at the Timex she wore, she saw that it was true.

Quarter after twelve…she'd been out cold for an hour. "But we didn't, did we?" the driver said reasonably to his buddy. "We didn't screw around with masks and so on."

Her clothes weren't disarranged, nor were Lee's. So in the missing time at least they hadn't been doing anything disgusting.

Yet.
Why?
her brain screamed at them.
Why are you doing this to us?
But the slightest movement of her throat sent waves of nausea sweeping over her once more. Then the driver's eyes found her in the rearview again.

"We got on with it," their owner said flatly, and from the remark
and his expression she understood that, from his point of view, anyway, omitting the masks had been deliberate.

That if she hadn't seen their faces, then they wouldn't have to do what he was hinting about doing. And driver-guy, his gaze chilly and unblinking like that of a snake identifying its prey-

She didn't know yet what passenger-guy thought about killing her, she realized as she fought back panic. But the driver guy-

Slyly he eyed her, his tongue flickering out over his thin lips in anticipation.

Driver-guy wanted to.

I
don't understand," said Jerrilyn Pierce, gazing around
at the assembled Washington County Sheriff's Department officers and Maine State Police investigators.

It had taken only about an hour to gather them here. Her own house had been designated a crime scene, so they'd taken Helen's mother to a room at the Motel East where they'd set up a sort of preliminary command center.