Dark Lie (9781101607084) (11 page)

Some woman behind him said, “I'll get it.”

“Thank you. Mr. White, please make yourself comfortable.”

These people had manners the way he did, the way some people had bad habits. Sam sat in a wingback chair facing Don Phillips, who had resumed his seat close beside his wife. Glancing at the book in Pearl Phillips's lap, Sam suddenly knew. He just knew.

He knew what shameful secret had happened in Appletree.

But Sam seldom if ever spoke on impulse. Success required caution before courage. Sam asked, “Could I take another look at that?”

Pearl passed him the Juliet book with both hands, as if putting a baby into his arms. Sam opened the scrapbook again to the most recent photo of Juliet Phillips.

Once again it was as if a young Dorrie, younger even than the Dorrie he remembered from college, smiled at him from the flowered pastel page.

This girl was Dorrie's daughter. Had to be. Sam knew it the way he knew floor under his feet.

Not that he didn't feel floor, earth, et cetera, quaking a bit, having had no idea Dorrie had ever borne a child. He barely heard a woman's voice asking him something. Repeating. A question, whether he wanted cream and sugar in his coffee, and never having drunk coffee, he didn't know the answer. He couldn't think what to say.

He looked up to find Pearl holding his coffee. He said, “Thank you,” took it carefully by the saucer, lifted the cup to his mouth, and drank. The dark stuff was unpleasantly hot and tasted bitter. Like medicine. Sam couldn't imagine how anyone enjoyed drinking this stuff, yet he swallowed it down, almost emptying the cup before he set it aside and looked at Don and Pearl Phillips.

Both watching him. But also, he thought, to some extent watching over him. In them Sam sensed both caution and sympathy.

Sam said, “Dorrie never told me she had a baby.”

Pearl said earnestly, “We're very grateful to her for giving us Juliet. Or not giving
us
, exactly, because she didn't know us—”

“And she wasn't ever supposed to know,” Don Phillips interrupted with some edge. “Mr. and Mrs. Birch were supposed to tell her the baby had been put up for adoption. Period.”

“She was very young,” Pearl murmured. “The mother, I mean. Dorrie.”

“We assumed she'd go off to college the way most kids do, marry some guy from California or someplace, move out of state.” Now Don Phillips spoke softly, as if others in the room—family, servants, police standing by to trace telephone calls—were not supposed to hear. “We never figured she'd end up living right here in Fulcrum.”

Struggling with an increasing sense of unreality, his comprehension lagging, Sam said nothing.

Don Phillips asked him, “Do you know how she found out?”

Sam shook his head.

“Or when? How long ago? Did her behavior change?”

Sam cleared his throat, then said rather hoarsely, “You think she took off with your daughter.”

“The police are checking out that possibility, yes.”

Sam clutched the arms of his chair. He just barely managed to keep from lunging to his feet, or shouting, or otherwise reacting on impulse. Instead he shook his head. “No,” he said almost calmly as he kept shaking his head no, no, no. “No, Dorrie wouldn't do that.”

“We're not accusing her.” Pearl Phillips reached toward him. “We have every sympathy for her.”

“Thank you. But you don't know her. Dorrie is a churchgoing, law-abiding, good . . .” Good woman who had a secret past? Sam fell silent, wondering how well he himself knew his wife.

“Sam, we just want Juliet back,” Pearl Phillips said, her soft voice clotted with emotion. “We won't care who did what—”

Sam interrupted. “You're wrong about Dorrie.”

“I'm just going with a gut feeling,” Don Phillips said, leaning toward him, “and my feeling is, you and us, we're in this together.” The guy was starting to sound like a politician. “You just want your wife back, and we just want our daughter back safe and unharmed—”

“Dorrie would never hurt anyone!” Realizing that he was beginning to yell, Sam stood up. “I'd better leave.”

“No, please.” Don Phillips stood also, with a hand out to stop him. “I understand how you feel, but—”

Someone tapped Sam on the elbow. He turned.

There stood the baby-faced black policewoman. “Word just came in on your wife's car, sir,” the young officer blurted with unprofessional excitement. “A caller reports the Kia apparently abandoned in a damaged condition. The odd circumstance—”

“Where?” Sam demanded.

“On the sidewalk, sir, not the street, that's what's peculiar—”

“Where!” Sam nearly shouted. “Fulcrum?”

“Oh. No, sir. Quite a ways from here, actually. Little town called Appletree.”

SEVEN

S
itting on the backseat of the van, I sucked another cherry candy, feeling ill, while I clutched Juliet's little blue blinking doodad in one hand to hide it from the man—Him, the one I could scarcely bear to think about—in the driver's seat. To avoid looking at Him, I studied the side of Juliet's head. My beautiful daughter. He'd hit her on the cheek. I didn't see a bruise. If she ever got lupus, she'd bruise easily.

I hoped she'd never get lupus.

I hoped she'd live long enough to never get lupus.

He had
hit
her. And He planned to do worse than that to her. To both of us.

He and Pandora.

Shifting the van into first gear, He began to turn it around.

Simultaneously, as if we had just sashayed into an automotive square dance, around a corner and onto Main Street slewed another vehicle, this one flashing a blue light a good bit brighter than the one I hid in my hand. I turned to look: A police car was pulling up by my Kia. And just before the van swung into the shadow of the library, I glimpsed the silhouetted form of a woman standing on that corner. An actual human being, far too late.

Where did this madman at the wheel of the van plan to take us?

His U-turn completed, He gunned it toward the street.

But before He got there, the van stalled.

Cursing, He turned the key to start it again.

The starter cranked, but the engine didn't respond. My heart revved instead, racing with hope for—something, a stay of execution, a spanner in the abductor's plans, maybe even a rescue—as the van drifted to a stop behind the erstwhile library. In the shadow of the building. Out of sight of the people on the corner.

Three more times, swearing, He tried to get the van started.

No go.

He pounded the steering wheel with His fist. Then He swiveled in His seat to confront me, His face a looming mask of shadows in the night. “You!” His left hand shot toward me. “Bitch, what did you do to my van?”

My entire oversized body somehow relocated out of His reach without my consciously moving. I squeaked, “Nothing!”

“You tell me or I'll kill you.”

“I didn't do a thing!” I cried quite sincerely. We were talking about engine trouble, and I hadn't touched His engine. Certainly, I had meant to, but His alarm system had stopped me. Bless my muddled mind, I had completely forgotten about the wad of Kleenex I'd stuffed up His tailpipe.

He must have accepted my genuine stupidity in this regard, because He slewed away from me, cursing, and slammed out of the van.

A few long strides took Him around the hood. I stayed where I was, not about to go anywhere without Juliet. There wasn't time to say anything to her, but the instant He opened my door, I decided, I would scream like a steam whistle. If the cop was still at the corner, he couldn't see the van back here, but with any luck he, or the woman who had been standing by my car, might hear—

As if He had heard me thinking, He opened Juliet's door instead, and with a lurch in my gut I saw the glint of steel as He pressed that fearsome knife to her neck.

“Not a sound from either of you,” He warned in a low but very convincing voice from the shadows, “or I'll slice her head off.”

With His left hand He slid my door open. Then He yanked my coat off Juliet, but she kept hold of it with her fingertips as He hauled her out of the van.

Sometime, somehow, He'd released her seat belt. With a remote control in His pocket, maybe. He jostled her into the captive position, her back to Him and His knife poised to slit her throat. She stood there very still with my coat trailing from both hands. From my seat I could see it dragging on the dark ground like a shroud.

I heard Him say, “You, freak face, get out.”

Presumably He was talking to me. Quite slowly I began to bestir my large self to obey. The more time I took, the longer I stretched out the faint possibility of a rescue.

“Move, Goddamn you!”

Obligingly I scooted toward Him, having made a quick but very counterinstinctive decision: I left my purse where it was, on the floor in the shadow of the seat. He seemed not to have noticed it there or realized its significance, but I felt most of my mind clamoring: leave my
purse
? Leave behind my money, my keys, my pills, my charge cards, my driver's license, my identity, my selfhood?

That was the point, of course; I didn't want Him to find out who I was. Yet what if there was something in the purse I needed, or Juliet needed . . .

“Move!”
He visibly tightened His grip on Juliet, nudging the razor-edged knife blade closer to her throat. I couldn't seem to see anything farther away from me than her pale face. That other face—His—half-hidden by her frightened head, was just a pair of wild eyes glaring from shadow.

Limping, aching in my joints and muscles almost as much as in my heart, I clambered out of the van and turned to close the door as loudly as I could.

With His left hand He thrust me sprawling onto the gravel. If I lived to see daylight, I was going to find some truly impressive bruises on several parts of me. He slid the van door shut quite softly, closed the passenger door the same way.

His voice issued dark out of the night: “You think you're smart, don't you, bitch? Get up.”

I got up.

“Stay in front of me where I can see you. Walk.”

I walked. Slowly. Feeling my way with my sneakered feet on the gravel. How, in this gloom, could He see me? Or anything else? Was the man human, or some sort of jaguar black hunting cat?

I could only dimly sense the old library, a huge looming shadow at my left shoulder. I couldn't see the black letters spelling “CANDY GOT LAID HERE,” but I knew the stinging words were there. I knew I was walking close by them.

There was a metallic wrenching sound, the garage-door sound I'd heard twice before. Then He, our captor, said, “Down here.”

I opened my left hand, letting a little metal cylinder fall to the gravel, covering the sound with words. “Down where?” I couldn't see a thing.

He pushed me, and I fell hard and kept falling, down something that felt painfully like concrete steps. At the bottom, blackness awaited me.

* * *

Sam followed the young policewoman across the Phillipses' expansive foyer to a formal dining room where men in suits sat around a table strewn with papers and what appeared to be communications equipment. Extension wires ran across thick cream-colored carpeting to the fax, the computer, and some high-tech components Sam couldn't identify.

Among the suits sat a single bulky uniform. Sam strode to it and marginally introduced himself. “Sam White.” He felt conscious of his scruffy appearance, no tie, no shave, his shirt collar getting limp and sweaty, yet he found himself holding his head up straight and his shoulders hard. He realized his manners were getting shorter by the minute, and dictated himself a cautionary mental memo:
Stay cool.

The bulky man in uniform nodded without standing up or offering to shake hands. “Bud Angstrom here.”

Sam knew the name: Fulcrum chief of police. Big shot. Sam told him, “I want to see my wife's car.”

“And these other gentlemen are from the FBI,” said Bud Angstrom as if he hadn't heard him.

Sam gave them a glance and a nod. FBI meant nothing to him. The FBI was looking for the Phillips girl, not for Dorrie. “I want to see my wife's car,” he repeated.

“It's in Appletree. Out of my jurisdiction. But there's no reason the Appletree PD wouldn't let you check it out.” Angstrom swiveled in his chair to face Sam with a sort of public-relations affability, light catching on his bald head fit to give him a halo. “Maybe you'll spot something they missed.”

Humoring me,
Sam thought. He didn't like it. But knowing himself to be not in the very best of moods, he said only, “You'll inform the Appletree police I'm on my way?”

“Sure. No problem.” The chief became expansive. “They tell us they found a shopping bag in the vehicle,” he said agreeably, “with a credit-card receipt that places your wife at the Fulcrum mall on the day of, and near the time of, the Juliet Phillips abduction.”

Sam made himself take a long breath before replying. “Of course she was at the mall. She said she was going to the mall.”

“Yes, but now we can prove that she was there. We also have a witness who spoke with your wife at the mall and says she was acting nervous, making inappropriate conversation, looking around like she was watching for someone, asking the time for no reason.”

“Maybe she just wanted to know what time it was.”

“Just the same, it's an additional indication.”

“Indication of what?”

“That your wife, who had motive and opportunity, may have kidnapped the Phillips girl.”

Sam breathed in, held it, and mentally counted to ten. Then, after exhaling, he said almost calmly, “Wait a minute. I thought I heard on the news you guys had a description of an SUV or a van or something.”

“Oh, yeah. That.” Lazily the chief turned away from Sam and shifted his focus to the rookie cop. “Play it for him, Sissy.”

Sissy?

Without comment the young black officer walked around the table and pressed a button on one of the more obscure items of electrical equipment. Sam heard a rapid, stressed female voice saying,
Juliet Phillips has been abducted from the mall parking lot by a man in a van.

“But that's Dorrie's voice!” Sam blurted.

Leaning back in his chair, the chief of police nodded without bothering to look at him. “We thought as much,” he said placidly.

. . . Caucasian, maybe in his thirties or forties, not fat or anything, kind of average . . .

Sam demanded, “Where'd she call from?”

“Cell phone. We could only trace it to a tower not far from the mall.”

“That's it! She saw the girl being snatched and she took off after them!”

The chief looked at Sam once more, and his voice turned pitying. “You really think your wife would do that, sir?”

Sam yelped, “Well, what do you think?”

“We think she made the call to put us on the wrong track. She doesn't give any make or model or license number—”

. . .
 
kind of beige, or silver. A light silver brown. Kind of taupe. Actually, it's the color of a Weimaraner.

“Dorrie's not observant of numbers,” Sam explained.

Studying his own stubby spatulate fingernails, the chief drawled, “Well, she seems god-awful observant of other details.”

. . .
 
a wheel cover on back with a design that looks kind of like one of those diagrams in a doctor's office of the female reproductive tract, you know, the ovaries and the uterus and—and stuff.

Sam felt his eyes start to tear up at the sound of his wife's earnest voice, and he had to blink hard. It was just like Dorrie to go after the exact color, the unique comparison.

“She could have called back if she was really in pursuit,” Chief Angstrom pointed out without bothering to look up, “but we didn't hear from her again.”

Sam had to count to twenty this time before he spoke. “You won't consider the possibility that she would take off after a criminal,” he argued slowly and clearly, “yet you will readily accept that she would plot and carry out a kidnapping?”

“Quite a coincidence, isn't it, that the missing girl is her illegitimate daughter?”

Sam clenched his fists. Took a deep breath. Let it out again. Then asked, “What did she buy?”

Chief Angstrom alerted sufficiently to raise his bald head and give Sam a puzzled glance. “Huh?”

“My wife,” Sam said, one measured word at a time. “You said she bought something at the mall. What was it?”

“Oh. Um, I've got that in a report here somewhere. . . .” Pawing at papers and manila folders on the table, the chief called, “Sissy . . .”

Still standing, Officer Chappell supplied, “Wire mesh desk baskets and a packet of graph paper, sir.”

Sam felt emotion grasp his throat and squeeze, making it difficult for him to speak a few words. “For my office.”

From his chair, the chief of police frowned up at him from underneath eyebrows like scrub brushes. No hair loss there. “Graph paper means something to you, Mr. White?”

Not the graph paper; it was the wire mesh baskets that had choked Sam up. But he passed over that point to make a far more important one. “Do you really think my wife would have bought office supplies for me if she was planning to kidnap the Phillips girl?”

An unexpected voice spoke in support. Sissy Chappell. “Sir,” she addressed her chief, “Mrs. White's computer shows that she has been aware of Juliet Phillips for more than a year without making any attempt at contact. Why would she suddenly approach her now?”

Chief Angstrom silenced Officer Chappell with a scowl, then peered at Sam to make his pronouncement, which took the form of a kind of verbal shrug. “The preponderance of the evidence points toward your wife's involvement in the disappearance of Juliet Phillips,” he told Sam blandly, “and that is the paradigm we're proceeding under at this point in time.”

* * *

If I was knocked out, it was only for a moment. I felt Juliet stumble over me, heard again the metallic clashing sound, and wondered momentarily whether I had been knocked blind; the darkness was so total. Then I felt a hard hand grasp my arm and lift. The guy was strong. Acted like He was going to pick me up by the arm. I don't think He could have, but I floundered to my feet so He wouldn't dislocate my shoulder. He pushed me in a direction, I stumbled forward so I wouldn't fall again, and then He shoved me again, this way, that way, hauled me around a corner, and I heard a door shut behind me.

Oh. No. Juliet. Where? Separated from me?

Electric light blazed on.