AS ERICA GETS OFF HER flight from New York to Boston and walks into the terminal, she gets the text from the limousine company:
Your driver is waiting outside in Car 17
She goes out to the curb and there’s the car. The driver, a middle-aged white man wearing a chauffeur’s cap and dark glasses, opens the door for her with a smile.
It’s a lovely summer day in New England, and as they drive from Logan toward Cambridge, she looks out the window at the graceful Boston skyline and the Charles River with its scullers and bankside amblers. It’s such a pleasant place. But appearances can be deceiving. Boston has a dark, even nasty and brutish side—the Irish Mafia is no myth and its tactics are no fun. Plus, the town is staid and judgmental and classist and insular.
Erica has such mixed feelings about the place. It’s where she had her first big success. She was hired by WBZ as a writer pretty much straight out of Yale. Soon thereafter her boss asked her if she’d ever considered going on camera. Of course she had. She started as a substitute for sick or vacationing anchors and she just leapt off the screen, the station was flooded with e-mails from fans. Four months later she was named anchor of the 6:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. news, and quickly became the most popular newscaster in New England.
Moira Connelly was an amazing mentor and hand-holder during Erica’s first year, but it was still too much too soon for a kid who’d left a big chunk of her psyche back in that moldy, rage-filled trailer up in Maine. She was wracked by self-doubt and felt as if she were carrying a sick secret. To the world she was one person, to herself another. At first the drinking was fun, a lark, she was the new kid in town, invited to all the best parties and benefits—the wine and then champagne and then vodka helped ease her nerves and ignite her wit.
Then one Saturday when she and Moira were on a guided tour of a Cezanne show at the MFA, she met Dirk Loudon. He was so attractive, funny, smart, and idealistic, a high school history teacher who didn’t care about her fame and success, someone with whom she felt she could let her hair down. Marriage ensued and Jenny came along a year later. And then . . . and then the stresses of balancing work, baby, husband, all started to get to her and her drinking escalated. Slowly but steadily.
Finally, she and Dirk separated, she was fired for on-air intoxication, and then it all went south in a big snowball, culminating in that awful night when—after downing six of those darling little nips of vodka—she spirited Jenny out of Dirk’s house under a babysitter’s nose and drove her to some anonymous motel in Framingham, where she left Jenny alone in the room while she went out to pick up some “ice cream.” Ha-ha. She was headed to the nearest liquor store when she rear-ended the pickup in front of her, sending herself first to the hospital, then to the courtroom, and finally to rehab.
Now they’re on Storrow Drive right along the river and Erica feels a moment of trepidation, a sense of inadequacy. A symposium at the Kennedy School is something Leslie Burke Wilson should be doing. Yeah, Erica’s a good journalist, she cares about the truth, but she’s not an intellectual, not particularly articulate; she’s going to be out of her league, make a fool of herself. And it all might happen in front of Jenny.
The driver approaches the JFK Street exit, which will take them right across the bridge to the Kennedy School. But he keeps going, he doesn’t turn off; in fact, he speeds up.
“Excuse me, that was our exit.”
The driver says nothing, is completely impassive as he speeds down Storrow. Erica gets a text from Shirley:
Are you at the airport? The driver can’t find you.
Panic sweeps over her.
“Turn around now, that was our exit!!” No response. She reaches for the door handle. There is none. “Let me out, let me out of this car!”
A tiny smile plays at the corners of the driver’s mouth. Erica makes a move to climb into the front seat and at just that second the other half of the backseat flies down and a man in a ski mask slithers out from the trunk. Erica cries out in shock. He has something in his hand, fabric, black fabric, and his arms come up and then everything goes black. Erica grabs at the blindfold but then her arms are twisted behind her and her wrists are bound together. She screams and the man slaps her hard across the face. “Shut up!”
“No marks!” the driver says.
Erica swings her body sideways and starts to kick wildly, blindly. Both men laugh as she kicks at air and then one foot connects and the man yelps in pain and grabs both her legs and he’s strong, very strong, and he twists her body around and shoves her headfirst through the hole and into the trunk.
Now she’s in the trunk and she hears the seat click back into place and she’s alone in the hollow blackness. The car takes a sharp turn and she’s tossed around and she struggles to break her wrists free but the binds are so tight, so tight and strong, and she gulps air and fights her growing claustrophobia. She’d scream but what’s the use? Is she going to die? Are these men going to take her somewhere and kill her? Slit her throat the way Joan Marcus was murdered? Put a bullet through the back of her head the way George Lundy died? Run her over? Strangle her?
Oh, Jenny, your mother loves you, I love you so much.
Stop! Think! Erica wills herself to breathe, in and out, in and out. Try and make sense of what’s happening. You’re in the trunk of a car. Two men are taking you somewhere. They’re going to open the trunk and pull you out. That’s your chance. Erica wriggles her body into position and pulls her legs up to her chest, ready to kick. She holds the position as the minutes tick by and then suddenly the car is bouncing, it’s on a rutted road, and she tenses, coils her whole body, waiting.
And then the car stops. Two doors slam. The trunk pops open and Erica senses where the man is and then she lets loose a hard, fast kick and connects with his torso. “AHHH!” followed by a thudding fall and spitting curses. And Erica steels herself and clenches her teeth and knows this might be her last breath and . . . Jenny, my Jenny . . .
“Haven’t you ever heard of standing back?” one of the men says.
“I want to rough her up,” the other man says, wincing in pain.
“No, no damage.” Then the voice is closer, he’s leaning into the trunk. “Listen, Erica, we’re nice guys. Just playin’ with you a little.”
“Who do you work for?”
“We may not be Harvard professors, but we’re not that dumb. I can tell you this—you’re just one more gig for us. Come on now, take it easy.” The man reaches into the trunk and lifts Erica up. She doesn’t struggle. He stands her up on her feet and leans into her, so close that she can feel his hot breath, and runs his hand down her cheek. “I’m putting your purse down next to you. See, perfect gentleman.”
“We do have a message for you—consider it friendly advice,” the other one says. “You can’t bring the dead back to life. So why die trying?”
And then there are footfalls and the car doors slam and the car drives away. Silence. Then a slight breeze and leaves rustle. And Erica realizes she’s alive and in one piece and then she starts to shake, to shake all over, uncontrollably, almost violently, and then she heaves and bends over and a thin stream of bile pours out of her mouth. She struggles with her wrists but they’re bound with plastic cuffs. Then she walks slowly, slowly, sliding one foot and then the other out in front of her. Her left foot bumps into a tree and she slowly, slowly lowers her head and leans into the tree with her scalp until it bumps gently against the trunk and she moves it around slowly until she feels a knot on the trunk. Then she so slowly, so carefully brings her head up until . . . until . . . the bottom of her blindfold catches on the knot. Then she moves her head down and the blindfold slowly peels back—and she can see!
Erica looks around. She’s in the woods. She listens. It’s so quiet. Then traffic, faint but steady. There’s her purse. She stands with her back to it, squats down, grabs the handle with her right hand, and picks it up. Then she begins to walk down the dirt track toward the sounds of civilization.