Helpless (10 page)

“Why shouldn’t he be what he seems?” she said to
Laura. “There are genuinely sweet people out there. And anyway, I’m lucky. I get these huge strokes of luck.”

“Like what?”

“My mother’s money. Rachel.”

“Just don’t let your guard down.”

Six years later Celia remembers this: how Laura had looked at Rachel as though she were surrounded by a host of demons. She remembers John Paulsen and writes his name on her list of suspicious men.

T
HERE’S A CUSTOMER
picking up his Black & Decker hedge trimmer when Nancy returns. She shoulders her way through the door, already talking. “It’s on the radio. They’ve got a—” Seeing the man, she stops. The box she’s holding begins to slip from her grasp.

“Just put it over there,” Ron says to her. He nods at the cleared space to her left. “So that’ll be fourteen dollars and thirty-nine cents,” he says to the man, who already knows this. He has repeated it for Nancy’s sake, to impress upon her that the man isn’t from the police.

Nancy sets the box down. Her face has broken out into red splotches. The man glances at her, then gives her another look. “Hey,” he says. “Frank’s Homestyle, right?”

Nancy shakes her head.

Ron says, “She used to work there but I lured her away.”

“That’s too bad,” the man says. “For Frank, I mean. So it’s…Annie, right?”

“Nancy,” Nancy murmurs.

“Nancy. Sorry. Remember my daughter? She drew your picture on her placemat?”

“Oh, yeah,” Nancy says. She does remember. She wipes her hands on her jeans.

“She really liked you, she thought you were great.”

“Huh.”

He seems finally to register her agitation. He quickly signs the Visa receipt and grabs his trimmer. “Well,” he says, “good to see you again.”

When he’s gone, she sits on a humidifier. Ron goes to the door. Her car is parked at an angle, taking up two spaces. “You’ve got to pull yourself together,” he says.

“I’m not used to this,” she says.

“What happened?”

“What
happened
?”

“Are you all right?”

“It’s on every radio station!”

“I know.”

“I was like
this close
to phoning the number they gave and turning you in. This close!” She indicates with her thumb and forefinger. Her red nail polish is chipped down to the cuticles.

A calmness spreads through him, a calm thrill. What if she had turned him in? It would be all over with by now: the arrest, his confession. “What stopped you?” he asks.

“What do you think? I love you! How could I send you to jail? They murder guys like you in jail.”

“Guys like what?”

“Child abductors!”

“We haven’t abducted her, we’ve rescued her. All right? You’re doing a brave thing. The bravest thing you’ll ever do in your life.” He believes this. She looks up at him with her
big, hopeless eyes, and he wonders if what he feels for her is love or pity or gratitude. “Let’s get those boxes in.”

Walking to her car, he remembers Rachel’s underpants, and when he comes in again, while her back is turned, he slips them out of his pocket and tucks them under the laundered skirt.

N
ANCY BOILS
up a pot of oatmeal and stirs in butter and lots of brown sugar. If Rachel doesn’t like oatmeal there’s also a peanut-butter-and-jam sandwich and some gingersnap cookies. The important thing is to get her to eat. “Even a chocolate bar would be better than nothing,” she tells Ron.

“I could run out and get one,” he says.

“Let’s see how this goes.”

With her leg still shaky she needs to hold on to the railing, so Ron carries the tray. Tasha is whining behind the basement door, and she thinks, alarmed, Now he’s locked up my dog. But instead of running out into the hall, Tasha runs over to the far side of the bed, where Rachel must be lying.

“It’s just me, sweetie,” Nancy says. Behind her, Ron pulls the door shut and turns the key.

Nancy waits. After a moment Rachel comes to her feet. She holds the towel around her waist.

The sight of her, so dainty and afraid, gives Nancy a shock. In her mind she had made her bigger, calmed her down. She limps to the bed and sets the tray on it. “I brought your clothes and a bite of food,” she says.

“Am I going home now?”

“No. Not now.”

“But the ambulances won’t be there.”

Nancy pretends not to hear. “You’ll want to put these on,” she says, handing her the skirt and underpants. “I’m going out later to buy you some more stuff. You’ll have to tell me what you’d like. Shoes and socks, right?”

“My mom…” Rachel says. She starts gasping. She presses the clothes to her stomach. “My mom…”

“Okay,” Nancy says, “let me help you.” She tugs the clothes and the towel out of Rachel’s grip, then holds the underpants open for her to step into. When nothing happens she takes a leg and puts it in. She puts in the other and pulls the underpants up. Rachel continues to gasp but she steps into the skirt and pulls it up herself. “That a girl,” Nancy says. “Okay, now I’ve brought you oatmeal with brown sugar. Or there’s—”

“You told me…you…”

“Take deep breaths,” Nancy says. She presses her hand to Rachel’s quaking chest. The heartbeat flutters against her palm. “Deep breaths. That’s it. There you go.”

“You told me…I…I…could go home today.”

“Did I?” She can’t remember, but it’s possible, the way she was babbling on last night. “Jeez, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. Ron, he’s the nice man who brought you here, he thinks you won’t be safe at home. So this is where you’re going to be staying for a while.” She picks up the bowl and spoon. “Will you eat a bit?”

“Why won’t I be safe?”

Nancy briskly stirs the oatmeal. How much is she supposed to tell? She wishes she hadn’t got so stoned; she can’t think. “Your mother…” No, better not bring the mother
into it. She starts again: “There’s a man, and he wants to…he might hurt you.”

“What man?”

“The man in your house. I guess he isn’t your father.”

“My father lives in New York City.”

“Okay.”

“He doesn’t even know about me.”

“Is that right?”

“What man do you mean?”

“Well, isn’t there a man who lives in your house?”

“Mika?”

“I guess that’s him.”

“Mika wouldn’t hurt me. Are you crazy?”

“Well, sweetie…”

“You’re crazy!”

Nancy puts down the bowl. “Sweetie, we’re only trying—”

Rachel runs past her to the door. “Let me out!” she screams, shaking the handle. At her feet Tasha jumps around barking.

Don’t come in, Nancy thinks to Ron. Her leg buckles and she falls to her knees in the same instant that Rachel falls to hers. She crawls over to the child and takes her in her arms. “I know,” she says. And she does. She knows this helpless fury.

“I want to go home,” Rachel sobs. Tasha frantically licks her face and hands, whatever bare skin she can get at.

“Quit that,” Nancy scolds, pushing at the dog, who goes still and then squats and pees.

“Oh,” Rachel says.

“Tasha hates rejection,” Nancy explains. “Well,” she says, “that’ll leave a stain.”

Rachel sits up. She has stopped crying. “Here, Tasha,” she says, holding out her hand. The dog comes wagging over. “Poor Tasha,” she coos. “Poor little puppy.”

It’s a tricky moment. If Nancy doesn’t play her cards right, she can see the whole uproar starting again. She goes over to the food and brings back the plate of cookies. “Watch this,” she says, breaking a piece of cookie off. “Tasha, sit.” The dog sits. Nancy places the cookie on Tasha’s nose. “Stay, stay, stay…Okay!” Tasha jerks her muzzle and catches the cookie in her mouth.

“Good girl,” Rachel says. She pats Tasha’s head.

“You try,” Nancy suggests.

Rachel breaks off a piece and puts it on the dog’s nose. Tasha does her trick. Meanwhile Nancy nibbles at the cookie in her hand. “These are delicious,” she says. “You should try one.”

Rachel looks at her. “If I eat, will you let me phone my mom?”

“Oh, Rachel.” She feeds Tasha the rest of her cookie. She’s tired of telling half-truths: she’s no good at it, and this girl is too smart. “The police are looking for you, right? And they can trace phone calls and then Ron and me, we’ll be arrested.”

“But you can block the number.”

“They can trace it no matter what you do.”

“If somebody doesn’t call her, she won’t know I’m alive.” Her eyes are filling again.

Nancy is aware of Ron listening out in the hall. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she says. But she nods and holds a finger to her lips. “It’s too risky.”

Rachel’s face has gone blank.

“Do you want to brush your teeth?” Nancy says. “I think you should brush your teeth.”

“Okay,” Rachel says quietly.

When they’re both inside the bathroom, Nancy shuts the door.

“So you’ll phone?” Rachel whispers.

“Yeah, I will. From a phone booth, I guess.” She sits on the toilet seat. What’s the harm in letting the mother know her daughter isn’t dead? Not that she intends to take this up with Ron.

“Promise?” Rachel whispers.

“I promise.”

“When?”

“When I go out to buy the clothes. You’ll have to give me the number.”

“Four-one-six—”

“Not yet. Wait till I get a pen and paper from upstairs. But hold on—how will she know I’m not, like, some crank? Anybody could call and say they’ve got you.”

“No, they couldn’t,” Rachel says excitedly, “because we have this secret word that if a stranger ever had to pick me up from school? Like in an emergency? They would have to say the word or I wouldn’t go with them.”

“What is it?”

“Pablito.”

“Pablito?”

“It’s the name of a mouse puppet I had when I was little.”

“Okay. Pablito. That’s good. And listen, sweetie.” She tugs free the elastic band that is about to fall out of Rachel’s hair. “Ron isn’t a bad man. He’s kind and gentle, he really is. There’s no way he would ever hurt you. It’s just, he has
a plan for everybody’s own good, and we have to make like we’re following it.”

“Did you have another girl before?”

“Before when?”

“Was there a girl down here? Was this her bedroom?”

“Oh. No, no, there wasn’t anybody. We were thinking of adopting, and Ron did some renovating.” Her misgivings about the room and her puzzlement—why is it again that Ron didn’t renovate the spare bedroom?—come back, and she stands and turns off the tap. “We’d better get out there.”

W
ITH THE
tail of his shirt Ron wipes his forehead. He hates it that Rachel is still so distraught. He had hoped that the room and the dog would have had a soothing effect by now. Compared to what she’s used to—a cot on a concrete cellar floor, the threat of that Mika guy coming down—she’s in paradise. She just doesn’t know it yet. He wouldn’t be surprised if she was waiting for him to take up where Mika left off. Well, she’ll find out that not all men are molesters. The promise he has made to himself is that any physical contact will be instigated by her. He won’t invite her to climb onto his lap, but if she wants to, if she wants to kiss him good night, he isn’t going to deny her the expression of her natural feelings.

Patience and self-control—these are his strengths as he sees them. Also a certain ruthlessness, which isn’t inherently his but which he finds he is able to muster when the situation calls for a clear head. He thinks of how the zoologists and conservationists you see on TV are sometimes forced to finish off a wounded animal or airlift a rogue male to new territory. What good would these people be if they
gave in to the screams of protest? Under pressure, a person of character resorts to what he has judged, in less traumatic moments, to be the most humane course of action.

Rachel crying for her mother, though…it’s hard to take, hard to listen to. Little girls want their mothers. His father once told him (they were talking about Jenny and Mrs. Lawson) that the bond between daughters and mothers is the strongest there is. Provided the mother isn’t abusive or neglectful, Ron took him to mean. He had expected Rachel to be frightened, at least for the first day or two, but he hadn’t thought she’d be as desperate as she is to get back to that pathetic woman who calls herself her mother.

Thank God for Nancy. If she can get Rachel to eat, it’ll be a big step. He’s going to try to keep his distance until she’s eating and feeling more at home. He should ask Nancy to find out if there’s a particular book or author she likes. The books he got her were all recommended by a clerk at Indigo, a young girl who struck him as being unsure of herself, and also he made the mistake of saying the child he was buying for was eight. He has seen Rachel reading on her porch, he knows she’s a reader. His hope is that she’ll let him read to her sometimes, at night after her bath, the two of them lying on the bed together. Father and daughter. Interesting to hear her say her father doesn’t even know she’s alive. Mika must have been one happy man when he learned
that.

What’s going on in there? He gets up and presses his ear to the door. Silence. He sits back on the step.

He wonders if Rachel might like to read his pamphlets. They aren’t complicated; he wrote them for the general public, and a lot of the information is entertaining. For instance, when you turn off the motor of the Electrolux LX the front
cover pops open and a spring-loaded lever ejects the bag right across the floor, sometimes as far as six feet. He wishes he had an LX so he could give her a demonstration. He’ll show her the machines he does have, in any case. They’ll be hers eventually, the ones he isn’t forced to sell. Everything will be hers.

T
HE CLOUDS HAVE
been building since eleven o’clock, and now there’s thunder and the first smatterings of rain. “Another hour, hour and a half!” Big Lynne calls from the porch.

She’s talking about the news conference, which was scheduled to be held out on the front lawn at two fifteen. As she predicted, it’s being postponed until the storm passes. “Rain won’t hamper the search one bit,” she says, coming in and giving Celia’s shoulders a squeeze. “Don’t you worry about that. If anything, it’ll spur it on.”

Celia’s dread amplifies. She doesn’t really think that Rachel is out in the open, but she doesn’t rule out the possibility, either. Not knowing where she is turns every place, every house and garage and abandoned store, every trunk of every car and now every ditch and field, into a place she might be.

The postponement, though…she needs it. Her statement, which is going to be a direct appeal to the abductor, doesn’t feel right yet. She rereads what she has just written:
You don’t have to go through police channels. A close family
friend has offered himself as a go-between. I have instructed him to help arrange for Rachel’s release under any terms you may set.

Will he understand what she’s getting at? She would rather come right out and say she’s open to blackmail but the deputy police chief asked her not to. He said it would put the message out there that money can be made from abducting children.

“That’s not my business,” she said. “I can’t care about that.” Except she does care about Mika’s being allowed the freedom to negotiate, and since he isn’t in the clear yet and could be detained at any time, she agreed to tone down her language.

What she’s counting on, of course, aside from the fact that the abductor will be listening, is that Rachel is still in the world. On TV a little while ago there was a guy saying how, when it comes to stranger abductions, a child has to be found within five or six hours to stand any real chance of being found alive. But Big Lynne snorted and told Celia not to listen.

“The time factor is only one element,” she said heatedly. “All sorts of variables come into play.”

“Like what?” Celia asked.

“The particular individuals involved, for starters. The logistics of the search. Premeditation, whether or not it played a part.” She waved her arms around. Her face had gone pink. Clearly the risk of Celia’s hearing just this kind of statistic was why she’d tried to dissuade her from turning on the TV in the first place.

“It doesn’t matter,” Celia said. “I know she’s alive.”

“Well, then she is,” Big Lynne declared, “I trust that,”
and whether or not she was being sincere was something else that didn’t matter.

Celia knows what she knows. Rachel is alive, and now her, Celia’s, job is to give the abductor reasons to want to keep Rachel alive. She writes:
You have in your care an amazing human being. She hopes to be a vet one day. She loves animals, especially dogs and cats, but she loves all animals, including snakes and lizards.

She’s thinking that he might own animals: guard dogs, rats. She imagines a paranoid loner who’s either out of work or in a minimum-wage job. Constable Bird believes he acted on impulse—he saw a pretty little girl looking for help, and he grabbed her, just as someone else might grab a wallet left on a park bench.

“But then why is Mika a suspect?” Celia asked. This was a couple of hours ago; she’d given up searching on foot, and Bird was driving her around again.

“Mika’s a person of interest,” Bird explained. “From our point of view, it didn’t look great, I have to tell you. We arrive on the scene, he’s bleeding, there’s blood at the bottom of the stairs. Is it only his blood? Also, the way he responded to questioning. Taking his time. Working out his answers.”

“Oh, no! That’s just how he talks! He’s trying not to stutter! Oh, God, I should have said!”

“Okay. Well, we weren’t aware of that.”

“Tell the investigators.”

“I will. You can tell them, too.”

“But I still don’t get why he’s even a…what did you call it…person…”

“Person of interest.”

“Why he’s even a person of interest if you think some guy grabbed her.”

“Listen, if forensics supports Mika’s story and he passes the polygraph, he moves to the back of the line.”

Celia’s heart lifted a little. “Do you know where he is?”

Bird knew how to find out. He radioed someone to call Mika and give him the number of Big Lynne’s cell, which Big Lynne had stuck in Celia’s purse.

As soon as Celia heard his voice she started to cry. She thought she’d finished crying and moved on to a more solid kind of agony, but now she sobbed while Mika said soothing things she could barely hear over her own noise, and Bird left the car to search an alleyway. When she calmed down she asked Mika to repeat what he’d said about being sure Rachel was alive.

“I have a sense of her,” he said. “It’s strong.”

“Do you see her face?” Celia asked. “Because I do, when I close my eyes. Not all the time. It comes and goes. I can’t hear her voice for some reason. I mean, you’d think I would.”

“But you see her.”

“Just her face. I see her blinking and breathing. Breathing with her mouth open. And it doesn’t feel like something I’m making happen. It did at first, but now it feels like something outside of me, something coming in.”

“I don’t see her,” Mika said. “I’m aware of her. In that way that you are when someone is behind you, or in the next room. I can feel her fear. She’s…frightened but she isn’t hurt.”

“That’s what I’m getting. But, Mika, you don’t even believe in this stuff.”

“I do now.”

She pressed her forehead against the passenger window. “The thing is,” she said. “I felt it coming.” Only now was she allowing herself to remember.

“Like a premonition?”

“More a feeling like I was supposed to be alert, you know? Everything was jumping out at me. Little things. And I was having these dreams where people, my mother, they were saying, ‘Pay attention! Look around!’ But I didn’t…”

“You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Oh, I’ve done plenty wrong.” Bird, who was back in the car, glanced over. “But, Mika, I street-proofed her. Right? I mean, she
knew
never to talk to strangers, no matter what. Right?”

“We don’t know that she talked to anyone, Celia. We don’t…know that.”

She listened to him breathe. “Anyway,” she said, “Constable Bird says you’re not a suspect, you’re a person of interest. And, oh! You have to tell them about your stutter. Why you sometimes don’t speak right away. Bird said they thought you were working out your answers.”

“I see.”

“So tell them.”

“I will.”

“When will they let you come home?”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“Have you had the polygraph test?”

“Not yet. They’ve taken a DNA swab, though.”

“They took one from me, too.”

“They’re being thorough. That’s what we want. We should be grateful.”

She watched Bird leaf through his notepad. When she’d
decided she wanted to be driven around some more, she’d asked for him especially. That he might have a wife and kids waiting at home never crossed her mind. Now, really looking at him for the first time, she saw the wedding band. She saw his thick wrists and arms and the creases at the edges of his eyes. A horizontal scar sliced through his mat of black hair just above his ear, like a mark of swiftness. She wondered if he’d been stabbed. To Mika she said, “I’m being treated like a diva. Everybody’s tiptoeing around me. I ask for something and everybody snaps to.”

Bird smiled over at her. “We should be heading back,” he said.

He meant so that she’d have time to work on her statement for the news conference. She told Mika about her plan to appeal to the abductor. “Should I beg?” she asked him. “Will he give a shit?”

“No,” Mika said after a pause. “I don’t think begging will work. I think you have to put yourself in this person’s shoes.”

“How the fuck do I do that?” She felt herself crumbling again.

“He has kept her alive,” Mika said. “We both feel it. To me it says he wants something in exchange for…letting her go. Probably money.”

“What money?”

“I have money. Don’t worry about that. He isn’t likely to call the police…or Crime Stoppers. So first of all you have to tell him he can call you directly, on your cell. No, you don’t have a cell. I’ll give you mine.”

“Okay.” If he actually called, would she be able to talk to him? Would she stay coolheaded enough to hear what he had to say?

“Or maybe he should phone me,” Mika said, picking up on her anxiety. “Yes, that’s better. A family friend. He phones me. It’s a new number, I don’t think I gave it to you.”

She repeated the number out loud while motioning for Bird to write it down.

“Tell him he can call at any time,” Mika said, “day or night. Assure him that our dealings will be kept confidential.”

“Will he believe that?”

“He might. He’ll
want
to believe it. Tell him you have no interest in seeing him captured or punished, you only want your daughter back. And then I think…”

“Yes?”

“Tell him who she is. Make him know her.”

R
ACHEL ALMOST
blows the whole thing. As soon as Nancy comes into the room she runs over with the phone number and says, “I found some paper and Magic Markers!” and Nancy has to think fast.

“So now you can draw pictures!” she says.

“What?” Rachel says.

“He’s right outside!” Nancy whispers, taking the phone number and sticking it in her back pocket, where she’s hiding the pencil stub and the piece of paper she brought down. She sees that the cookies and sandwiches are gone, and she says, her gladness genuine now, “And you found your appetite, too, eh? What else can I get you? How about a cheeseburger?”

Rachel pulls her eyes from the door. “I’m a vegetarian,” she says.

“Oh,” Nancy says. “Well, it’s healthier, I know that.”

“It’s not because it’s healthy. It’s because eating meat is cruel.”

“You’re right. I’ve got to stop.” She’s serious. She sits on the sofa.

Rachel sits beside her. “When are you going to phone?” she whispers. Her breath smells like peanut butter.

“Soon,” Nancy whispers. At normal volume she says, “How about pancakes?”

“Why can’t you go right now?” Rachel whispers.

“I’ll go as soon as I can.” She doesn’t feel ready is the reason, she hasn’t worked up her nerve. “With lots of butter,” she exclaims, “and maple syrup!”

Rachel sighs. “I should have a salad or something.”

“A salad! Sure. What kind? Caesar? Mixed greens?”

“Whatever.”

The sound of Ron thumping up the stairs has Rachel sitting straighter.

“Okay, he’s gone,” Nancy says. “You’ve got to watch what you say.”

“Why does he stay out there?”

“He doesn’t want to scare you.”

“But why does he stay there when you come in?”

“Oh. Well, he’s got the key. He’s the only one who can open and close the door.”

“He’s spying on us.”

“No, no. He’s just…he’s worried about you.”

“Why?”

“He cares about you a lot.”

Rachel screws up her face. “He doesn’t even know me.”

Nancy can feel the conversation moving toward dangerous ground. She looks at the ceiling. “There must be a customer,” she says.

“Is this a store?”

“Sort of. It’s a house. Ron and me, we live in the upstairs part, and then on the first floor he has a shop. He fixes small appliances. You know, lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners.”

“Can I see?”

“It’s not safe.”

“Not safe for who?”

“For any of us.”

“You’re kidnappers,” Rachel says, getting off the sofa. “You think you’re being so nice but you’re nothing but kidnappers.” Her voice is rising. “What do you want? Money?”

“No—”

“Well, for your information we don’t have money! We’re poor!”

“Nobody wants your money.”

“What do you want? Why are there all those Barbie dolls?” She swipes at her tears.

“They’re for you. Sweetie—”

“Quit calling me sweetie!”

Nancy closes her eyes. Don’t cry, she commands herself. The throb of a car stereo bounds through the room. Out in the yard, Tasha barks once.

“What’s the matter with your leg?”

Nancy opens her eyes. Her leg has gone into a small spasm. “It does that sometimes,” she says. “Kind of creepy, eh?”

“Do you take a prescription drug?”

“When I remember. It gives me headaches.”

Rachel covers her mouth with her hands. “You’re that lady! From Angie’s Nails!”

“That’s right,” Nancy says. She’s incredibly tired. She lets herself sink back against the cushions.

“My mom caught you when you fell.”

“I know.”

“She saved you.”

“She did. It was really nice of her.”

“So how can you be so mean?”

“I’m going to phone. I promised and I will.”

“Do you remember the secret word?”

Nancy has to think. “Palomino.”

“No!
Pablito!”

“Right. Pablito.”

“You forgot it!”

“Pablito.” Nancy sits up and tries to look more alert. “Rhymes with burrito.”

Rachel stares at her.

“Sort of,” Nancy says.

“You have to do it now,” Rachel says. “Right
now.”

Upstairs, the customer left. “She ate all the cookies?” Ron says, noticing the empty plate. He lowers the volume on the radio.

“And the sandwich,” Nancy says. She watches the customer—a short, wiry woman who from the back could have been her oldest sister, Libby—climb into an SUV. Libby has six kids under the age of ten. All Nancy’s sisters have more kids than they can handle. “What time is it?” she asks.

“Ten to two.”

Nancy seems to snap out of a dream. “Jeez, you’re kidding! It’s like night out there.”

“We’re in for a storm.”

She turns to face him so that he won’t see the pencil and piece of wadded-up paper in her back pocket. “What are they saying about the search?”

“It’s the usual drill. Nothing to worry about. They haven’t a clue. Literally.”