Blind Pursuit (8 page)

15

The radio came on when her car started, a blast of Billy Ray Cyrus exploding from the speakers.

Annie punched the on-off button, silencing Billy Ray, and swung the red Miata out of its parking space. At the exit-ramp gatehouse, money and a receipt changed hands, and then she was on the street, hooking north on Church Avenue and east on Sixth Street, heading for Erin’s apartment complex at Broadway and Pantano.

The little sports car was fun to drive, but Annie was too agitated to have any fun now as she cut from lane to lane, bypassing slower traffic, running yellow lights. Normally she didn’t drive like a maniac—well, not this much of a maniac, anyway—but the apprehension that had been building in her for the past twelve hours had reached fever pitch. She had to know if Erin was all right.

Tension set her teeth on edge. She rolled down the window to feel the rush of air on her face.

At Campbell she cut over to Broadway. Vermilion blooms of mariposo lily and purple owl clover blurred past on the landscaped median strip. Despite worry and preoccupation, she greeted the spring blossoms with a smile.

The sight of flowers always pleased her. Flowers, she often thought, had saved her life.

For weeks after that night in 1973, she had been lost, disoriented, a seven-year-old girl with the face of a shell-shocked soldier. The flowers in Lydia’s garden had brought her back. Watering them, plucking weeds, tending to each bud as if it were her precious child, she had found a way to ground herself, to reconnect with reality.

Her sister had spent her teenage years educating herself in the mind’s darker recesses, struggling to understand madness and evil. Annie had never wanted to understand. She had wanted only to escape life’s horror. In gardens and nurseries and florists’ shops, she did.

It took her years to realize that she loved flowers less for their beauty than for the simple fact that they could not hurt her.

Even a tame dog could bite. A kitten could scratch. A loving father ...

But flowers were safe, always.

Almost in Erin’s neighborhood now. The older, more crowded part of town was receding, replaced by newer shopping plazas on larger lots. Developments of tract homes and condos occupied curving mazes of side streets with ersatz Spanish names. The mountains slouched on all horizons, their outlines sharp against a sky scudded with shredded-cotton clouds.

Pantano Fountains, Erin’s place, glided into view. Annie parked outside the lobby and walked briskly to the front door.

She fingered the intercom, buzzed Erin’s apartment. No reply.

Fumbling in her purse, she found the set of duplicate keys Erin had given her. Opened the door, entered the lobby.

The manager was on duty in her glass-walled office, talking on the phone, her words muted by the glass. A white-haired lady with a proud, lined face; Annie had met her several times when visiting Erin on weekends.

What was her name? Mrs. Williams. Right.

Might be necessary to talk with her later, but for now Annie simply sketched a wave through the glass as she hurried to the elevator. She pressed the call button, and the doors parted at once.

As she was traveling to the top floor, she realized suddenly that she should have checked the carport to see if Erin’s Taurus was in its reserved space. That way she would already know if Erin was home.

But of course Erin wasn’t home. She hadn’t answered the intercom, after all.

Unless she couldn’t answer.

A seizure would pass in a few minutes, Annie reminded herself. And it wouldn’t be fatal.

But suppose Erin had been in the shower when she collapsed—suppose her prone body had obstructed the drain, and she’d drowned in six inches of water. Suppose ...

The elevator let her off on the penthouse floor. She ran for Erin’s apartment, propelled by panic.

At the door she hesitated, then knocked loudly.

“Erin?”

No response.

She inserted the key—no, wrong, that was the lobby key, try the other one. Got the door open finally and peered in.

Again: “Erin?”

Still nothing.

Slowly she stepped inside.

The lights of the apartment were off, the windows darkened by drawn curtains with blackout liners to hold back the desert sun. She found the wall switch and brightened the living room. It looked orderly and normal, almost magically clean, as always—and Erin was nowhere in sight.

From the bedroom, a faint sound. Music. Some classical composition. Rippling piano keys and a weeping violin.

Annie darted into the bedroom, briefly thrilled by hope—a thrill that died when she found the room similarly unoccupied, the clock radio on the nightstand playing to no audience.

The alarm feature was set to switch on the radio at 7:15. Apparently there was no automatic shut-off. Strange, though, that Erin hadn’t turned it off herself before leaving.

The bed was unmade, another oddity. Erin, the neatness freak, invariably fluffed her pillows and smoothed the bedspread upon arising. Loose, tangled sheets were not part of her world.

Her purse was gone, but nothing else of value that Annie could see.

In the bathroom, she found the shower stall dry. She fingered the towels on the racks. They were dry, too.

Into the kitchen, where a few plates soaked in the kitchen sink under a lacy film of liquid soap. Dinner dishes, streaked with tomato sauce and spotted with the remnants of salad greens. No cereal bowl, no spoon.

Den, balcony, hall closet—nothing. No signs of intrusion or disturbance, no furniture or valuables missing, and no Erin anywhere.

She’d left no note, and the only messages on her answering machine were from Marie at the clinic, asking Erin where she was.

Still no answer to that question, and now Annie was finding it harder to shake the cold fear that clutched the base of her spine.

Erin had to be all right. Annie simply wouldn’t permit her to be injured or sick or—worse.

“It’s not allowed,” Annie said softly, as if in challenge to the empty rooms around her. “You hear me, Erin? You’re not allowed to be in any trouble.”

There was still the parking lot to check. Annie locked the apartment and descended to ground level.

At the side of the building, under one of the carports, she found Erin’s assigned parking space. Empty.

The Taurus was gone. Erin
had
left.

In the strong sunlight Annie stood unmoving, oblivious of heat and glare, thinking hard.

The bed had been slept in, and her purse taken. Presumably, Erin had gone to work as usual.

But why had she been in such a hurry? Why hadn’t she found time to shower, eat breakfast, make the bed, even switch off the radio?

There was another possibility. Suppose a patient had phoned her in the middle of the night with an urgent problem. It happened. Erin would have gone to her office for an unscheduled session. That scenario would fit the facts quite well.

But where was she now?

Had she been in an accident on the way to or from the office? Jumped by a mugger? Attacked by her own patient?

Crazy, she thought as she went back inside the building. Just crazy to think that way.

Mrs. Williams was off the phone by now. She rose from behind her desk, uttering the first syllable of a welcome. The greeting died when she saw Annie’s face.

“Miss Reilly. What’s the matter? Nothing’s wrong, is it?”

Reflexively, Annie smiled. She wondered why her mouth would do that when she knew of no reason to be cheerful.

“Oh, no,” she said in a light tone that matched her careless grin, “nothing’s wrong, except Erin’s sort of hard to find today.”

“Hard to find?”

“You haven’t seen her, have you?”

“Why, no.”

“Her car’s not around. She’s not at work. It’s funny, isn’t it?”

Annie knew it wasn’t funny, but she couldn’t erase the witless smile of denial from her face.

Mrs. Williams seemed to see beneath that smile. “Maybe you ought to telephone the police.”

“The police. What for?”

“See if there’s been any problem. A traffic problem. You know.”

Accident
, she meant to say, but couldn’t. Annie nodded. “Yes. I guess I should do that.”

Mrs. Williams took out a phone book and found the number of the police department’s Traffic Enforcement Division. Annie was about to dial when she realized she couldn’t remember Erin’s license plate.

“We have it on file,” Mrs. Williams said, opening a cabinet drawer. “Have to ensure that our tenants park in their reserved spaces.”

Annie reached a traffic-division sergeant, who took down the car’s make, model, and license number, then put her on hold. She waited through an interval of silence, shifting her weight and wishing she could make her damn mouth shed its idiot grin.

You are no good in a crisis, Annie, no good at all.

If this was a crisis. But it wasn’t; it couldn’t be.

In her mind she heard the sergeant’s voice, oddly tentative.
Ms. Reilly? I’m sorry, ma’am, but your sister was in a crash earlier today.... Hit by an oncoming truck, a Mack truck, big one ... She’s dead, ma ‘am.

She’s in a coma, ma’am.

She’s paralyzed, a quadriplegic.

She’s
—

“Hello?” The sergeant again. The real sergeant, not her fantasy tormentor.

“Yes?” Fear throbbed in her chest, and she felt the spiraling onset of light-headedness.

“I’ve checked. There’s no report of any accident involving the vehicle you described.”

Annie put out her free hand to grip the edge of Mrs. Williams’s desk. “I see. Well ... that’s good, isn’t it?”

“Ma’am?”

“But then—where
is
she?”

The sergeant cleared his throat. “Excuse me?”

Annie blinked. “Nothing. I just ... nothing. Thank you very much for your help.”

Her fingers continued to grip the handset even after she had set it down in its cradle.

Mrs. Williams regarded her with worried eyes. “No traffic accident?”

“No.”

“I’m glad to hear that, at least.”

“Yes. So am I.”

“Do you have any idea ... I mean ... Has your sister ever disappeared before?”

“She
hasn’t
disappeared,” Annie snapped.

Mrs. Williams said nothing.

Annie lowered her head, bit her lip. Her knees were trembling.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I guess ... I guess she has.”

16

“Anybody there? Can anybody hear me?”

Fists hammering the cellar door. Shock waves of sound echoing in the room.

“If you hear me, please answer!
Please!
”

Nothing.

Exhausted, Erin turned away from the door and slumped against the wall.

She had expected no response. Her abductor was too smart to hide her in a place frequented by other people. She doubted there was another habitation within a mile of this one.

Still, there was always a chance someone would pass by, near enough to hear her—a mailman on a rural route, a child playing in a forbidden yard, a gas-company meter reader. Anyone.

That was why, several times since waking, she had battered at the door and strained her voice in futile cries.

She assumed it was now noon or shortly after; without a wristwatch or other timepiece, she could judge time only by her schedule of meals. She’d already eaten breakfast—a banana and an orange, accompanied by her next-to-last Tegretol, washed down with lukewarm water from the sillcock—and she was beginning to think about lunch.

The rest of her morning had been spent keeping busy. The dirt and mildew in the room had offended her; she’d set to work with paper towels, scrubbing and cleaning, until the worst of the grime was gone. Next she’d organized the contents of her suitcase, straightened and smoothed the futon’s cotton blanket, dusted the chairs.

Those chores done, she’d stripped off her pajamas and robe, given herself a sponge bath, washed and combed her hair, subjected herself to the humiliating exercise of urination with the help of one of the empty milk jugs left for that purpose, and finally dressed.

She’d started with underpants and a bra, slipping them on with distaste bordering on revulsion.
He
had handled these items, these most personal garments. Feeling them against her skin had been almost like ... like feeling his hands on her body.

Mustn’t think about it, she’d told herself. Anyway, he had probably worn gloves while packing the suitcase.

Looking through the other clothes he’d brought her, she had selected a cotton shirt, denim shorts, and boots.

The shirt was beige—an optimistic choice. It would blend in with the sere tones of the desert should she find a way to escape.

Escape. Sure.

She might as well have put on a bright red shirt with a target painted on it for all the difference it made. She wasn’t getting out of here.

With that thought, they began to prick at her again—vague and tentative manifestations of claustrophobia, which had been teasing her all morning. She paced the room, fighting to dispel the groundless fear.

Well, of course it was groundless. Utterly irrational. She ought to know; she treated phobias all the time.

The walls were awfully close, though. She could cross from one end of the room to the other in four strides.

Back and forth, back and forth, her perambulations ticking like the strokes of a pendulum.

Low ceiling—she had to dodge the hundred-watt bulb on the chain. The room’s only source of light—if the bulb failed, she would be sealed up in darkness.

Don’t think about it.

She didn’t want to, but the awareness of confinement was getting to her, accelerating her heartbeat, clenching the muscles of her abdomen.

Trapped here in this underground chamber—it was like being buried alive.

Suppose her abductor never returned. No one would know where she was.

The meager provisions he’d left would soon run out. The bulb would flicker and fail. In the dark she would starve slowly; deprived of her medicine, she would suffer seizures. Eventually she would die.

But first she would surely go insane.

“Don’t,” she snapped at herself, but the ugly thoughts would not leave her alone.

She sat in her chair and closed her eyes. Willed herself to relax, to go limp. She had done it last night when she was being carried to an unknown fate; she could do it now.

But the stiffness in her neck and shoulders wouldn’t abate, and her breathing still came fast and shallow. She was starting to hyperventilate.

Go away, Erin. Go away to some peaceful spot far from here.

She had visited San Francisco last year. Muir Woods, northwest of the city, had fascinated her. She hadn’t seen such dense stands of trees since her early childhood in California.

Now she pictured herself among the dizzying redwoods, in a place of birdsong and cool shadows and rustling greenery, misty in early morning, the air pregnant with droplets that tingled on her face.

So different from the heat and aridity, the vast spaciousness of the desert. Here in the forest she could see no more than a few yards into the tangled groves. The sun, low over the horizon, was hidden behind thick walls of foliage. Canopied branches shut out the sky, locking the woods in perpetual shade.

Colonnades of tree trunks, scrims of leaves ... all of it close—too close—hemming her in. The moist air, clogging her lungs. Hard to breathe—

Damn.

She stood, her heart hammering against her ribs.

So much for visualization exercises. What was another strategy to control phobic panic?

Distraction.

She had tried that already, when she cleaned her cell. Hopeful of spotting something else to tidy up, she scanned the floor, but the place was immaculate save for two small rectangular cards lying near her suitcase.

Her driver’s license and MasterCard. She’d pocketed them in her robe last night after failing to slip the latch on the door; they must have fallen out when she folded the robe this morning. She picked them up and put them in the side pocket of her shorts.

No other litter to collect, no mess to deal with. No TV or radio to offer a diversion. No reading matter save the file of newspaper clippings, and she hardly expected those to ease her mind.

Nothing, then. Nothing for her to do, except pace and worry, until her abductor returned.

If he ever did.

When she lifted her head to survey the room again, the walls seemed closer than before.