May 3
9822 Watchung Road
Essex County
Short Hills, New Jersey
8:17 A.M. EDT
Not quite the dank dungeon you’d expect with a kidnapping, Katie Casey told herself. More like the nice little basement guest room where you put your daughter’s college-aged roommate on a weekend visit.
Katie surveyed her surroundings, not for the first time.
Only one teensy ground-level window. No table lamps, just a little dust ring on that empty, Godzilla-sized dresser where one was; must have stripped the place of anything to use like a baseball bat. Looks like there used to be a mirror too; gone now, and the way I must look that’s a blessing. I guess the florescent lighting makes it bright enough to read, if I had anything to read. No closet either; hence, no hefty little clothes rod to smash up against a skull … any other bright ideas, Ms. MacGyver?
The single window—under which the queen-sized, floral-quilt-covered, not-quite-movable bed was centered—was covered by a small rectangle of half-inch plywood, secured tight into the framing by what looked like substantial screws closely placed.
But the room’s only door was open, and through it she caught passing glimpses of Denim Man as he circled the billiards table, cue in hand. Occasionally, the clack of balls punctuated what otherwise was a room sufficiently sound-buffered by the outside soil and overhead main floors so that no hint of ambient noise—from traffic, say, or passing pedestrians—penetrated within.
Katie had assumed the soundproofing effect was reciprocal from inside out; at least, when Denim Man had thrust her into the room upon their arrival, he had shown nothing but annoyance at her initial screams for help.
“Sit. Sleep. Be silent,” he had growled, and Katie had noted yet another accent: this one Slavic or something close to it. Given the remembered intonations of her other sidewalk assailant, she told herself that her abduction might well have been carried out by a rogue delegation from the United Nations.
She had not slept, though she had seated herself where indicated; but this, only after her guard had left her alone and only after a careful examination of her pseudo-cell for either potential escape routes or potential implements of improvised violence.
She found neither.
And so she had waited, thinking, long enough so that much of her earlier fear had faded by the time—as she assumed, with no external evidence to confirm it—the night too had faded into daylight.
Katie again assessed her condition: Her neck still hurt, a slight headache lingered, but otherwise she was unharmed.
Not rapists then, she thought, and turned it into a macabre humor. Maybe I’ve been taken by a bilingual band of marauding outlaw eunuchs? An international order of celibate monks? Whatever, doesn’t look like they’ve taken any vow of poverty. The other man’s suit wasn’t off-the-rack from WalMart. That’s a Horchow Original on the bed, and Martha Stewart pillowcases. And when they hustled me in, what I could see of the neighborhood looked pretty affluent too…
Street-corner kidnappers might have been overwhelmingly terrifying. Somehow, kidnappers with apparent wealth and a tasteful sense of style seemed much less so.
She again studied her dorm-cell; again, found nothing suitable for a weapon. Smothering Denim Man with a designer quilt seemed a less-than-plausible solution, and neither her purse nor her high-heeled shoes were anywhere in evidence. Hand-to-hand combat was a ludicrous prospect; Denim Man outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds, and most of that was muscle.
Another ball-on-ball clack, followed immediately by the chipper tones of a cellphone.
Katie stepped to the open door, listened.
“Yes,” her captor said. A pause. Then: “Will they accept her as zamena…” he hesitated, searching for the English word “… as substitute for the father?”
Katie stiffened; wealth and style suddenly felt far less comforting.
“Da,” Denim Man said, then corrected himself. “Yes. I will await your arrival here in this quite comfortable cellar; here, my companionship is more pleasing. She at least does not babble religious nonsense. We will then go up to visit your dikari together, with the woman.”
It was only one side of the conversation, but Katie had no difficulty in guessing at the other half.
Especially now, when Denim Man laughed—a low, scornful bark—and replied to the obvious question he had just been asked.
“It is a Russian word,” Denim Man told his caller. “It means ‘savages.’”
A few seconds later, the sound of colliding ivory balls again resumed.
Katie quietly retreated back to the tasteful bed, quietly sat on the stylish quilt.
Quietly, began to plan.