Finding Claire Fletcher (10 page)

Minutes later drowsiness, heavy like a winter coat, seeped into every limb and finally into my center. My heartbeat slowed. I tried to keep my eyes open, but my eyelids too felt heavy, weighted. Sleep came. I dreamed of my mother.

What seemed like days later—and for all I know it could have been—I woke disoriented to find that I was no longer in that room. The weight of sleep hung on me. I had to think about my arms and legs to get them to move. My eyelids were pasted together, my mouth parched.

When I opened my eyes, I was temporarily blinded by the daylight streaming through a single window in the room. It had been so long since I saw natural light that I wanted to open my mouth and drink it in.

The room was barren except for an empty closet which stood open. I was lying on the hardwood floor, both hands bound together above my head. I was still wearing the clothes he had given me, and now I had a blanket, although it lay beneath my body.

I looked up over my head to see what I was tied to. It was an old cast-iron radiator, and my hands were tied to one of its claw feet with heavy rope. I squirmed and rolled side to side, using my feet to pull the blanket from beneath me and cover myself as best I could. I watched the daylight filter through the curtained window.

He came later, closing the wooden door behind him. He smiled at me benevolently.

“You’re up,” he said softly. “Well, I hope you’ll like it here. I haven’t got all the furniture yet but don’t worry, Lynn. I’ll have your room fixed up in no time at all.”

“My name is not Lynn,” I said. “Where am I?”

“You’re home, darling.”

“This is not my home.”

“Oh, Lynn,” he scoffed, the painted smile never leaving his face. “Your home is with me now.”

“Let me go,” I tried, although I knew he would not.

He made a
tsk tsk
noise and shook his head. “Now I can’t untie you until I know you’re going to be a good girl.”

“That’s not what I meant. I want to go home.”

“Oh, I know it doesn’t look like a home now, but once I get some furniture—”

I cut him off, shouting, “I don’t care about furniture. This is not my home. My name is not Lynn, and I want out of here.”

He looked at me for several minutes, silent. Then he arched his eyebrows and his smile grew. “I know what you need,” he said.

“I need you to let me go.”

He went on as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “You just need some attention.”

I began to squirm, and my shouts were so loud they bounced off the walls and ceilings, echoing back to me. When he knelt beside me, I began kicking at him.

My legs worked furiously, hitting his chest like a drum roll and knocking him back onto his behind. I kept kicking. He got back on his knees and grabbed for my legs, catching my feet after several tries.

We struggled wordlessly until he had straddled me. His hands closed around my throat. I tried to stave off the pain, cling to consciousness, but blackness descended on me and I slid gratefully into the dark oblivion.

When I woke, my feet were bound. When he came in again, I heard only his voice.

“
I know what’s best for you, Lynn. I’m sorry you can’t understand that right now. I don’t like being hard on you. I wish you wouldn’t make me do such things. I want us to make a home here.”

He untied my legs and left my hands bound together but untied me from the radiator. He pulled me up, but my legs still didn’t work properly. Just like a baby deer trying to walk for the first time, my legs folded beneath me. I stumbled along as he half-carried me out of the room. Everything was dark and fuzzy.

When I felt the cold, hardness of porcelain on the backs of my legs, I realized we were in a bathroom. After I relieved myself, he took off the ropes, and my clothes, and showered me. The water scalded my face. I did not fight him.

He dressed me again and returned me to my new room, tying me to the same place and securing my legs together tightly. That is where I remained. I began to count the days by the waning and waxing of the delicious daylight. When the count reached one hundred two, I began weeping each day in time with the sunrise.

Surely I could not have been his captive for so long. I was disoriented. My defiance of him and entreaties for freedom earned me beatings, but I could not stop. I no longer cared about the fists flying at me or the feet heavy in my sides. I just did not want to go willingly.

Dinah Strakowski lived in the same house from which she had witnessed Claire Fletcher being abducted. In ten years, she had had no desire to move, although she had put on a new roof and cut back the foliage around the house. She had also replaced one hot water heater and all of the tiles on her kitchen floor. So she told Connor when he visited her.

She was forty-six now. Her two children had recently left for college and she lived alone, which she liked because it was quieter and there was less laundry to do, but which she did not like because she missed the sounds of her children moving around the house at all hours.

Her hair was badly dyed a coppery red. She was round and pudgy, which she attributed to the effects of aging. She was so pleased to have a guest, even if he was there to talk about the awful thing that happened to that poor little girl so long ago, that she made cookies and lemonade just for Connor’s arrival.

Dinah chattered while Connor sat on her couch and fished a notepad and pen from his pocket. He tasted the cookies and lemonade to be polite, and in spite of the fact that he had already been there ten minutes and found out nothing useful, he discovered that he liked Dinah. She had a lovely, off-center charm about her that had mostly to do with her open, gracious manner and her effusive offerings.

“Mrs. Strakowski,” Connor said when he could finally snatch a moment of silence. “As I said on the phone, I’m investigating the abduction of Claire Fletcher as a cold case. What I’d like to do is take you through that morning again, and I’d like you to tell me everything you remember. I know it’s been ten years, but I’d like you to try to recall every detail, no matter how insignificant it may seem.”

Mrs. Strakowski nodded solemnly. “Oh Detective, I haven’t forgotten that day at all. Something like that is hard to put out of your mind. Why, I’ve thought about that poor girl and her family quite a bit. I even kept one of those missing fliers on my fridge for a couple of years because I felt so bad about it. I still second-guess myself today. Maybe if I had run out there with my broom or my son’s baseball bat instead of calling 911, I could have saved her.”

“You did the right thing, Mrs. Strakowski,” Connor assured her. “You can’t blame yourself. You did exactly what anyone would have done. You called the police and reported it immediately.”

She twisted her hands in her lap. “I felt so bad,” she repeated.

“Now, could you just take me through what happened? What you saw?”

Strakowski looked upward, as if the contents of her memory were visible on the ceiling. “Well, I had just got the kids off to school maybe twenty minutes before. I was in here in my bathrobe just straightening up. The phone rang so I went into the kitchen to get it. It was a cordless so I came back in here and was talking to my sister—she had one bastard of a husband back then. She was always crying to me over that one. Almost every morning she called like clockwork. ‘What’d he do now?’ I’d say as soon as I picked up.”

Connor caught her eye, and she smiled sheepishly. “Well anyway, I was on the phone, just puttering around in here. It was a real nice day so I went to the window and pulled the curtains. I was listening to my sister go on and on and standing at the window just looking out at the day. There was a man parked in his car right out front. Just sitting there in the driver’s seat. Looked like he was reading something. He had brown hair, but I couldn’t see him too good from here. I didn’t pay him no mind cause this is a busy street. Lots of people park out front. Sometimes they block the driveway though.”

“Did you leave the window?” Connor prompted, so as not to lose her again.

“Well, yes, I went back into the kitchen for something, my coffee cup I think. I wasn’t in there for more than a minute or two. My sister was just jabbering away, and I went back to the window because I was thinking I’d like to get out there and work on my garden seeing as it was so sunny.

“By that time, the man had got out of the car, but his back was to me. He was kind of squatting down next to the car, and the back door was hanging open. I still didn’t pay him any mind. I thought maybe he was just fixing something. Maybe he had been sitting in there reading a repair manual or something and had just got out to fix something, even though it was a strange place to be working on your car in front of someone else’s house.”

“Did he turn around at all? Did you ever see his face?” Connor asked.

Dinah shook her head. “No. He never did turn around. I only ever saw the side of his face, even after, when he got back into the car. But I did notice he didn’t have any facial hair.”

“That’s good,” Connor said, jotting on his notepad. “Can you describe what he was wearing?”

“Mmm-hmmm. He had on khaki pants with a belt and a navy blue collar shirt—short sleeves,” she said.

“Good. Was he tall, short, fat, skinny?”

“He was tall but not as tall as you. And he was real skinny. I mean he didn’t look like a weakling, but he was kind of wiry, you know?”

Connor nodded. “Okay, you saw him squatting next to the car and then what did you see?”

“I saw this girl coming down the street toward him. She wasn’t really looking at him. I didn’t even realize that they were talking until she stopped because he didn’t turn around or anything. He didn’t stand up or approach her. She stood there looking at him for a minute, and then she got down next to him on her hands and knees and was looking under the car.

“I thought maybe he dropped something but couldn’t get under there far enough to get it and that’s why he asked a young girl cause she was kind of small. But then the next thing I know, he puts a hand on the back of her head and just bam! Smashes her head right off the car, you know where the door was opened, right where you’d go to step into the car. I couldn’t hardly believe what I was seeing.

“I froze for a minute cause it was just so unexpected to see. Then he smashed her head again and again, and he kind of scooped her up from behind and rolled her into the backseat. Just like that.”

“Approximately how long did that take from the time he assaulted her to the time he pushed her into the vehicle?” Connor asked.

Dinah cocked her head to the side. “Oh, not more than ten seconds, for sure. That’s what was so shocking. It was so fast. Before I had an idea what was happening, it was over. I hung right up on my sister and dialed 911, but my hands were shaking pretty bad and I had to dial twice. By the time they answered, he was back in the car and then he just drove off.”

“Did you go outside when he drove away?”

Dinah nodded. “Yep. I took the phone right with me and ran out there to the sidewalk in my robe. I was hollering at him and trying to talk to the police dispatcher all at the same time.”

“You didn’t see the license plate?” Connor asked.

Dinah’s mouth drooped. “I’m sorry, Detective, but no, I didn’t. He was too far down the street by then. I couldn’t think what to do, I was so shocked. If I had thought about it, I would have chased the car and tried to see the plate.”

“That’s okay. You did just fine, Mrs. Strakowski.” Connor smiled at her. “I’m just required to ask. Now, in your earlier statements you said the car was a station wagon and that it was blue, is that correct?”

“Yes, sir. That’s right,” Dinah said.

“You could not identify the make or model of the car?” Connor asked.

At this, she became agitated. Her thick brows came together over pained eyes. “Oh I just felt awful about that, you know? And they were so good about that particular thing. The police were so thorough. They took me around in the car that day. They drove me to dealerships and showed me photos. I looked and looked and looked, but I couldn’t find one that looked like it. They came back a few times, too, to show me pictures. I think they narrowed it down to three makes it could have been, but I don’t think they ever did find it.”

“Was this a vehicle you had seen around the neighborhood a lot?” Connor asked.

“Well, I saw some blue station wagons around, what with the school so close and everything, but I don’t ever recall seeing a man who looked like him driving one like that before. Plus, they all looked the same to me. I was never so good with telling makes or models of cars. I just knew station wagon, van, that kind of thing. Although last year I was flipping through this magazine, just some trendy housewife magazine, you know, and I saw this picture of one that looked just like it.”

Connor felt his heartbeat rise steadily. He tried to tamp down his excitement and keep his voice calm and controlled. “What kind of picture?” he asked.

Dinah waved a hand, gold bracelets tinkling on her wrist. “Oh, it was some human interest story about a girl surviving some terrible disease. There was a picture of her standing next to a car, and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the exact same kind that awful man had that day. The thing that struck me is that it had that little thing sticking up right on the front of the hood that the Chevy model didn’t. Exactly the same car but for the hood ornament. I wish I had seen it nine years earlier.”