The Abducted Book 0 (7 page)

Karen laughed. “That’s not true. Your father
is a very exciting man.”

Emily rolled her eyes as they placed the
last of the groceries in the trunk. “Yeah… sure,” she said with a
laugh. She then placed her hands on cart and began to push it
toward the car return. “I’ll take it.”

“
Thanks, honey,” Karen said, shutting
the trunk.

Suddenly, the mysterious person in the
polka-dot dress grabbed the end of the cart, blocking it from
moving. Emily looked up as Karen turned around, shocked. She felt a
chill and pulled Emily away immediately.

“
Excuse me, miss?” The person asked,
beehive perfectly still. In one hand she held a tote bag full of
groceries. “I can’t seem to find my car around here. Do you think
you could help?”

Karen pulled Emily closer and inched toward
the front of the car. “Sorry, no. We’ve got to get going.”

“
Please,” she pleaded. “I’m not
feeling too well. Eyesight is not what it used to be.” Her voice
sounded too deep to be a woman’s. The makeup was unconvincing. At a
little over six feet tall, the “woman” was about the tallest Karen
had ever seen.

With Emily at her side, she looked around
and inched backward toward the car. There were people in the
distance going to their cars, and their presence was
reassuring.

“
Have you been following us?” Karen
asked.

“
What do you mean?” the person asked
in a surprised tone.

“
I saw you in there. Multiple times.
What do you want—”

At the tail end of Karen’s sentence, a big,
meaty fist pummeled her right between her eyes. A pop sounded, and
she collapsed to the ground like dead weight. It happened so fast
that Emily wasn’t even sure what had happened. She turned to see
her mother lying on the pavement next to the car, unconscious. And
the same woman was now moving toward her as Emily backed away,
ready to run.

She opened her mouth and breathed in,
prepared to scream, when a cloth came down over her face, followed
by a hand on the back of her head, pushing her nose and mouth into
the noxious fumes. She kicked and swung, desperately trying to
break free, but the woman was much too powerful. She tried to
scream but only panicked, and muffled wheezes came out. The sounds
of the parking lot—the cars, the carts, and the chatter—began to
fade.

She managed to grab the thick, hairy arms
holding her and dig her nails into the flesh as deep as they would
go. The woman winced in pain and pushed her against the car in a
fit of anger, knocking her out.

Emily fell to the ground next to her mother.
The woman bent down, picked up the cloth, and then grabbed Emily,
pulling her up, lifted her easily, and carried her away. No one, it
seemed, noticed anything amiss. Several minutes passed before a car
drove by and stopped abruptly when the driver apparently noticed a
woman lying next to her car, motionless, and an empty cart wheeling
away.

***

O’Leary got the call around six thirty p.m.,
soon after leaving Miriam’s. Another abduction. A mother
assaulted—punched in the face and left stone cold in the asphalt
parking lot. Her daughter, Emily: nowhere to be found.

He was on the road when he got the call.
“When did it happen?” he asked, holding his cell phone to his ear
in disbelief.

“
A little after
five,”
said his partner, Lou.

“
I don’t understand,” O’Leary
continued. “In the middle of a Safeway parking lot? In broad
daylight?” He was beside himself.

“
So far, that looks to be
the case,”
Lou answered.

O’Leary pressed the gas, trying to get to
the crime scene as fast as he could. He was about an hour away and
bound to hit traffic the closer he got to Palm Dale. He felt angry
and defeated—like getting a punch to the gut. He was certain that
the Snatcher had struck again and infuriated that the bastard had
gotten away with it. His head throbbed. He couldn’t think clearly.
It had to be some kind of sick joke.

Lou told him,
“We knew that he was going to strike again. It was just a
matter of time. Until we catch this guy, that’s all there is to
it.”

“
Not good enough,” O’Leary said. “This
girl.”

“
Emily?”

“
Yes, Emily. We have to find her, Lou.
There’s no excuses. Tell them to call the damn FBI. I don’t care.”
He could barely see straight. Panic had seized his heart, almost as
though his own child had been abducted. There would be significant
fallout over another abduction; that much he knew. There had to be
an answer—some way to catch the Snatcher before he disappeared once
again into obscurity.

“
The feds have already
been called in,”
Lou said.
“Just get here as soon as you can, or we’re going to lose
this one. We’ll be put on backbencher status before you know
it.”

“
Don’t let that happen,” O’Leary said.
“Damn it, Lou. Hold out, whatever it takes. Where’s the
mother?”

“
She’s in the
hospital,”
Lou said.
“Got
banged up pretty bad. Broken nose. Ruptured disc in her back from
the fall. She didn’t take the news about her daughter too
well.”

“
Of course not,” O’Leary said. “Who
would?”

“
Tried to run out of the
hospital. Started hitting walls, kicking and screaming. Her husband
just showed up, and he’s trying to calm her down.”

“
Listen, Lou. We don’t have a lot of
time. Make sure they cordon the hell out of that parking lot. I
want witness statements, DNA, anything we can find.”

“
Sure thing,”
Lou said.
“What the hell you doing
out there in the first place?”

O’Leary glanced into his rearview mirror
then at a flashing road sign off to the side that read, “Congested
traffic ahead: Five miles.”

“
I had some business to take care of.
But I…” O’Leary paused, lost in his own thoughts.

“
You still there,
Dwight?”

O’Leary slowed down and pulled over to the
shoulder of the road as his tires kicked up dirt and pebbles. He
braked and stopped the car. Vehicles rushed past him. Then
everything went still and quiet.

“
Dwight?”
Lou
asked.

“
Yeah… I’m still here. Listen, I have
to bring someone in on this. That’s why I came out
here.”

Lou sighed into the phone.
“You still wasting your time with that Castillo
chick? She’s done, Dwight. She quit the force a year ago, and
you’re not gonna get anything outta her now.”

“
I beg to differ,” O’Leary said. “I’ll
be there soon. Get the feds on this thing, but don’t let them take
it over.”

Lou scoffed.
“That’s a hell of a contradiction, Kojak. You know that’s
what they do.”

“
I need time!” O’Leary said,
frustrated.

“
We don’t have any time,
pal. The media are gonna have a field day with this
one.”

There was no sense in arguing. O’Leary told
his partner that he’d be there as fast as he could and said
goodbye. He hung up the phone and sat there in silence, torn
between two entirely different options. He still believed in
bringing Miriam in on the case, for whatever reason. It just made
sense to him, and he didn’t see the harm in it. The department
frustrated him. He didn’t know who he could trust. There had to be
a reason that he had come up cold a year later following Jenny
Dawson’s disappearance. Would things be any different after
Emily’s?

He held his cell phone in his hand,
hesitant. Before he could even make his decision, his phone rang,
buzzing loudly. He didn’t recognize the number, but he hoped it was
who he thought it was.

“
Hello?”

There was silence on the other end.

“
Detective O’Leary?” A faint female
voice.

“
Sergeant Castillo? Is that
you?”

“
It’s me,”
she said.

“
There’s been another
kidnapping.”

“
I know. I just
heard.”

“
But how’d you—”

“
Never mind that. I still
talk to people on the force. Another girl. Right in front of her
mother…”
She paused as if holding back her
emotions
. “I don’t know what I could do to
help you at this point, but I know that I have to do
something.”

O’Leary fumbled through his pockets, looking
for his notepad. It was an instinct. “I-I’d love to have you on
board. What can you do?”

“
I’ll give you a
week.”

O’Leary paused. “A week?”

“
I’ll take the rest of the
week off and help you find this girl.”

A sense of relief rushed over him. He
couldn’t explain it. Miriam had a gift. The gift of a skilled
outsider. He felt ten times more confident with her on board, but
he still couldn’t explain why. “A week would be great.”

“
After that, I’m done with
police work, no matter the outcome.”

“
Of course, no problem. Thank you.
Should I pick you up now?” He looked at his watch. “I’m about
twenty minutes away.”

“
I have to get a sitter
for Ana and talk to my job.”

“
I realize that, but I just want you
to know why we need to get on this thing fast. They’re calling in
the feds,” he said.

“
I can’t leave my daughter
on the drop of a dime. I understand that time’s critical. Just let
me do what I need to do,”
she said.

“
Of course. When do you want to meet
up?”

“
Give me an hour or
two,”
she said.

O’Leary considered the gamble. The first
forty-eight hours of any missing persons case were the most
critical. He needed to get back to the station fast. But he was
seldom one to deviate from an initial plan.

“
Sounds good,” he said. “I’ll be over
soon.”

Miriam said a quick goodbye and hung up.
O’Leary sat in his car trying to think. There was a way to solve
the case, he was sure of it. But he didn’t think he could do it
without Miriam. She meant something. She had encountered the
Snatcher, saw her partner get shot right in front of her, and quit
the force soon afterward. She needed justice every bit as much as
he did. That was the only answer he could come up with to explain
why he was parked on the side of the interstate while a crime scene
festered one hundred miles away.

***

Miriam set her cell phone down on the
counter. Ana had not yet been dropped off by Jessica’s mom, and
while she waited, her mind was swimming, sorting through all the
obstacles the case presented. O’Leary had called her only twenty
minutes before—a courtesy call—to let her know that another girl
had been abducted. A girl who fit the same profile as the others:
ten to twelve years old, pure, and innocent.

Things were different for Miriam after the
call. She not only wanted to catch the Snatcher, she also wanted to
kill him. That was her purpose.

Her mind raced with questions, mainly: Who
could take care of Ana in her absence? Freddy, Ana’s father,
entered her mind. It wasn’t the most appealing choice, but it was
reasonable, given the short notice. She walked to the stove and
stirred the Hamburger Helper, not sure exactly what she had just
agreed to.

Another girl had been taken, and Miriam knew
she could not let her fade away into obscurity. Her anger, sadness,
and shame resurfaced from the year before, though she felt ready.
She was going to find the monster who had haunted her dreams and
end his reign of terror once and for all.

On the Case

O
’Leary stopped at a
diner, waiting as patiently as possible to give Miriam the time she
needed. He was anxious and unrelenting but had made his mind up and
decided to stick with it, waiting. Miriam would be an asset to the
investigation. That was what he believed, no matter how impractical
it appeared. He took a corner booth and placed his satchel next to
him, full of files from the case.

He pulled one file out and examined it
carefully—the criminal profile for the Snatcher that he’d initially
devised. His suspect was thought to be a Caucasian male in his late
thirties to early fifties, average height and build, and someone
who could blend into the community without being noticed. He was
believed to be an intelligent, cautious man who rarely took
chances. A family man, perhaps. Someone who kept his activities as
private as possible. Someone who didn
’t arouse
suspicion. And ultimately a psychopath who would never
stop.

In her report, Miriam claimed that the
driver who shot her partner had long blonde hair. She assumed the
driver to be Betsy Cole, the owner of the vehicle. And no one at
the department could blame her for making that assumption.

O
’Leary believed that
they were dealing with a suspect who frequently changed
appearances, even wearing disguises and wigs. The subject fit the
profile of a potential sociopath—charming and charismatic. Someone
who could manipulate and earn the trust of his captives. Judging by
the intervals between the crimes, the lack of evidence, and the
baffling disappearance of his victims, O’Leary believed they were
dealing with someone who knew exactly what he was doing.