Blackout (15 page)

I hauled out my cell phone and called Rick’s
own cell.

He didn’t answer. It wasn’t turned off; it
just went to a voice that said his voicemail was full.

DAMN! I didn’t feel like calling 911. These
guys hadn’t done anything. Yet. It wasn’t an emergency. Yet. I put
away my phone and told Evan, through my window that was still open,
“I’m saving my phone for future use, in case you’re wondering.”

“Yep. You might need it,” he said. “What
happened just now?”

“Nothing.” Then I realized he must have heard
it. “Voicemail’s all full up,” I said.

Then I asked, “What are you waiting for?
Don’t you have football practice or something?”

He turned and looked at Marsh and Casey. Then
suddenly, in a flash, he jammed his arm through my open window and
pressed on the door handle. Before I could scream, much less say or
do anything, he had me out of the car.

I heard Cree scream. They must have gotten
her, too. Marsh held my hands in back of me while Evan put a gag on
my mouth and a blindfold on my eyes.

They tied my hands. And my feet. They dumped
me in the back of a car. I couldn’t see which one. And off we
went.

I could hear the dogs barking. My dogs. They
must have heard me scream. The barking faded away. I couldn’t see
where we were going.

After a while, the car stopped. It wasn’t a
terribly long while. I figured it must have been somewhere near
Fremont Drive.

I didn’t know what was happening with Cree,
but I knew when they got me out of the car and expected me to
walk.

“Mm
mm,
” was all I could say.

They untied my feet and led me into a house.
I could tell it was a house, and air-conditioned.

“Downstairs,” I heard Evan say. He was right
next to me. He must have been the one guiding me.

We stopped. I heard a key turn. My hearing
was very acute, since I couldn’t see.

“Watch it, now.”

I couldn’t watch anything with the blindfold
on. I had to feel with my feet.

We were going down some stairs. I could smell
basement. What were they going to do down there, shoot me? And
Cree? I heard them bringing her down after me. I wished I could
see.

I almost stumbled when we reached the foot of
the stairs. There wasn’t any more down and I didn’t expect that.
Evan held me up.

“Right in here,” he said.

I didn’t know where “here” was, but the
basement smell got stronger.

Besides, I smelled wood. If this was his
house, which I had never seen, I was pretty sure it must have a
fireplace. This would be where they kept their firewood.

He pushed me down onto something that felt
like cloth. Not just thin cloth on the concrete floor. It had a bit
of depth, like a quilt.

“This is going to be your home now,” he said
in a soft, purring voice. “You be a good little girl. I’ll bring
you some food later on, maybe tonight.”

Then he left.

The quilt had a musty smell. I didn’t know
how long it had been in the basement, and whether it had spiders
and cockroaches or what all in it. I didn’t want to lie on it, but
it was hard getting up with my hands tied behind my back. So I lay
there.

Did he say tonight? It wasn’t even four
o’clock when we were captured.

Was Cree down here with me? I wished I could
talk. I wished I could see. I tried to work my hands free but could
already tell it was hopeless.

The first thing was to get the blindfold off.
If I could see, then I could at least orient myself. For whatever
good that would do. I rubbed my face against the quilt, but the
blindfold was tight.

If Cree was there, I wanted to talk to her.
All I could do was moan.

I got an answering moan.

“Cree?” I tried to say. The gag was tight,
too. It came out, “Mmm?”

“Mmm,” she answered.

Well, thank God I wasn’t alone. I
felt—what—happy?

I went back to scraping my face on the quilt.
What if I got the blindfold off and Evan came back?

He would put it back on, is what would
happen.

I scraped and scraped. I wanted to tell Cree
I was sorry I got her into this. But how could I have known what
would happen?

How could I know when I first started dating
Evan that he would be the way he was? I thought he would be like a
regular person. Not a psychopath. Especially not a
very
imaginative
psychopath.

Maybe my hands first. Then I could get
everything else off. I could pick up a piece of that firewood I
smelled and bop Evan with it when he came.

What if he never came? What if something
happened to him or he just left us here to rot? I let out a roar,
but it wasn’t my best with a gag on my mouth. Cree said, “Mm
mm.”

I went back to the struggle to free my hands.
The only good thing was, it was a rope that tied them and not
unyielding metal, like handcuffs.

If I could have talked to Cree, it might’ve
helped. All I could do was be glad she was there.

At the same time, I wasn’t glad, because I
got her into this and I didn’t know what was going to happen to
either of us. He wouldn’t kill us. Would he, really? He had tried
to kill me when he cut my brake line.

I lay there thinking about it and being
alternately terrified and disbelieving for I didn’t know how long.
I didn’t hear anything more from Cree. She might have fallen
asleep. Or maybe she just didn’t try to talk when she couldn’t.
Time passes so slowly when you want it to go fast.

Rick Falco left the hospital not knowing when
he would get his partner back. She was barely conscious. They’d had
to put her in a coma to keep her still. Besides the bullet that
barely missed her heart, another had entered her head. It hadn’t
killed her but he couldn’t be sure what it might have done.

He went out to his car and decided to call
Maddie. He really had been neglecting her. Not all of it was his
fault. He couldn’t help it about the hostage thing and he couldn’t
help it about Rosie.

He sat in his car and pressed a couple of
buttons.

He didn’t get her. He let it ring until it
went to voicemail. He left a message and drove back to
Southbridge.

He wanted to take her out to dinner. He
looked at his watch. Five-thirty. Instead of going home, he drove
to Maddie’s house. Good, her car was there.

The front door was locked. As he rang and
knocked and listened to the dogs barking, Rhoda Canfield came
home.

“Where is she?” Rick asked.

Rhoda looked puzzled. “I don’t know.” She
rapped on the door and called, “Maddie?”

If Maddie answered, she couldn’t be heard
over the dogs. Rhoda tried again. “Maddie?”

“Her car’s here,” Rick said helpfully. Rhoda
could see that for herself.

“There aren’t a lot of places she can get to
from here without her car,” Rhoda replied. “She said if anything
happens, to ask Evan Steffers.”

“Evan Steffers . . . would be at . . . he
might be at Lakeside.” Rick hurried off to the school, which wasn’t
far away.

He found the team still practicing on their
beautiful green athletic field.

Rick wasn’t in uniform, being off-duty. He
walked across the field to where Evan Steffers sat on the bleachers
with the whole team getting a lecture from their coach.

The coach stopped lecturing as Rick closed
in. “Police,” Rick explained, and showed his badge. He made it
sound official even though he was off-duty. He noticed a couple of
the guys looked uncomfortable. But not Evan, who only watched with
no expression as Rick approached.

Rick nodded to the coach and beckoned Evan.
He could have refused but he didn’t seem to know that. Rick took
him to the far end of the bleachers, away from everyone else. He
sat him down, stood over him, and said, “I’m looking for Madelyn
Canfield. Can you tell me where she is?”

Evan must have thought the issue was
something else, probably Kelsey Fritz. He didn’t flinch, but only
looked surprised. It lasted for an instant. Then he was back to his
non-expression.

“Madelyn? Canfield? How would I know where
she is?” He waited for Rick to say something. Rick said nothing,
only kept his eyes on Evan’s face.

Evan was good. Or a sociopath. He never
looked away.

Rick knew he was lying. He had to know
something. Somebody had to know and this guy seemed the
likeliest.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.” He
nodded again to the coach and walked away.

How could he get Evan to talk? By making him
think it didn’t matter. That was the only way.

He went back to Evan, who had gotten up to go
and join his teammates.

“She’s missing, you know,” Rick told him.
“Just let me know if you hear anything. Will you do that?”

It wasn’t what he meant to say, but it
sounded okay. As if it didn’t matter too much.

Evan did that thing again, where he looked
Rick straight in the eye. “Yup,” he said. “I can do that.”

“Thank you.” Rick turned away first and went
back to his car. He didn’t start it but sat listening to the radio.
He pretended to be engrossed, while the coach finished his lecture.
He stayed engrossed as the team was dismissed, but watched to see
where they went. He saw Evan’s pace slow on his way to the school
building. Evan stood still for a moment, then turned and walked
quickly to Rick’s car.

Rick looked up, casually turning down the
radio. He didn’t think Evan noticed.

“You’re going to arrest me, aren’t you?” Evan
said.

“Why, are you planning to leave town?”

“If I have to. But I didn’t do anything. I
mean, there’s no law against it, is there?”

“If you didn’t do anything, there’s no law
against that,” Rick assured him.

“Um—”

Rick waited, not saying anything. He had all
day, if it was needed.

That time, Evan couldn’t meet his eyes. He
stared at the ground. He kicked it. He twisted and turned, and then
he said, “I sold her.”

“You . . . sold . . . her?”

“Yeah. I sold her. To this guy. Dominican or
something. I—I—”

Rick waited. Tried to urge him along. Evan
clammed up, so Rick waited. It was hard to do.

“To this guy,” Evan said. “This Dominican
guy. He wanted a virgin, and she was, last time I had anything to
do with her. Hey.” He looked hard at Rick, who looked back at him
with—he hoped—nothing showing on his face.

“What did he want a virgin for?” he
asked.

“For, you know, guys who— you know.”

“You sold her into prostitution?”

“Yeah. That.” Evan kicked hard at the
grass.

“That’s interesting,” said Rick. “But you
know, it doesn’t last. One time and that’s it. She’s not a virgin
anymore. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I know. But she’s—she’s not the hooker
type. That’s what he wanted.”

“I see.” Rick got sicker by the minute. His
Maddie. He hadn’t realized how much he loved her. He thought he
did, but he hadn’t fully realized it until now.

“Is there any way I can get in touch with
this Dominican?” he asked.

“I can’t think of any.”

“How did you do it?”

“I—got contacts. Hey, I gotta change and,
like, go home.”

“I don’t think so.” Rick was out of the car
and had a hand on Evan’s shoulder.

Evan stared at him. “Huh?”

“I don’t think you’re going inside. I think
you have some explaining to do. Down at the station.” He wished he
had Rosie. He had never transported a prisoner by himself.

Backup. That was what he needed. He
handcuffed Evan, put him into the back seat, and phoned for backup.
He didn’t have a police radio because it was his own car, not the
department’s.

* * * *

Evan wouldn’t talk. He stuck to his story
about selling Maddie and refused to say anything about the night of
the party.

“I don’t remember,” was his refrain, over and
over again. “I was so drunk, I don’t remember.”

It was possible, Rick thought. But he didn’t
think that it was really what happened.

“I think you do remember,” he said. “You just
don’t want to talk about it.”

“I want a lawyer.”

“Do you have anybody in mind you’d like us to
call?”

“You! I want to call him myself. Am I under
arrest?”

Rick had already done the Miranda thing.
“Yes. You are. For rape.”

“I didn’t rape anybody!”

“Witnesses say you did. And there are
photos.”

That shut Evan up. He refused to say any more
until he had a lawyer.

* * * *

Dammit, I wished I could talk to Cree. And
she could talk to me. I tried scraping the gag off my face. It,
too, was tight. Of all the things Evan did to me, this was the
worst.

Okay, maybe not quite. Maybe cutting my brake
line was the worst. That would have been a quicker and more certain
death. Except it wasn’t quick and certain because it made itself
known on level ground, before I ever got to that steep hill.

I thought about all those things and tried to
relax, but I couldn’t with my wrists tied in back of me. I couldn’t
lie on either side, or on my back, or even my front without
something hurting.

“Mmm?” I said.

She didn’t answer. She must have been asleep.
Lucky her.

I set to work with even more determination,
trying to get the rope off my hands. If only I could see, I could
look around for some kind of tool. But for all I knew, Evan was
sitting on the stairs watching everything I did. Probably chuckling
to himself at my feeble efforts.

Time marched on, very slowly. Now I had to
pee. Poor Cree, she couldn’t wait to get into my house and relieve
herself and instead we got stuck here. I couldn’t blame her if she
just let loose. But then she’d be all wet and even more
uncomfortable.

I might have to do that myself if this kept
up much longer.