When Sunday came, or I should say, the Sunday paper, I looked for my article.
It was there! I read it over and over. I saw all the things I could have said differently. All the things I should have left out and the things I should have put in.
By golly, I would write another article. It would have to be different and say new things, or they wouldn’t bother to print it. Now, what could I say differently?
I was still thinking about it on Monday. By now, we had a full week of school. We were back in the groove. My last year of high school!
Three days and a weekend had gone by without any sign of Evan or his friends. Maybe they’d forgotten me. Or school would keep them busy. School and football. I never was a big football fan, but I blessed it now that it was keeping Evan away from me.
At lunch on Monday, I asked Cree for ideas for my next article. She didn’t have any, but promised to think about it.
I asked her again after school, as we got into my car to take her home.
She said, “I really have been thinking. Really. I just haven’t come up with anything.”
We reached her house but she didn’t get out of the car. Instead, she grabbed my arm.
“Can I go home with you? You wouldn’t have to take me back here. I’ll call my grandma. But I’d really—it would make me feel closer to him.”
“To Ben?” I had been so thinking of other guys, that Ben just slipped my mind.
“Yes. To Ben. Who else would I want to feel close to?”
“Who knows?” I said, mostly to myself.
She peered into my face. “What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything. Did you know Rosie got shot?”
“Who’s Rosie?”
“Rick’s partner. That hostage thing. It ended in gunfire and Rosie took a bullet. It just missed her heart. She’s in the hospital.”
“Oh.” She pulled herself together and said, “I’m sorry to hear it.”
“Well—she’s alive. He’s confident she’ll pull through. But he’s all busy with her. I don’t—I can’t—I can’t figure out where I fit in. Anymore.”
“It’s just temporary.” Now it was Cree’s turn to cheer me up. “It’s only till she gets better.”
“I hope you’re right.” I backed out of my space and started home. “I really thought—” No, I couldn’t tell her that.
“Really thought what?” she asked.
“That Rick and I—oh, never mind.”
“That you what? Come on, Maddie, you can tell me. We’re best buds, aren’t we?”
“I’m not ready to talk about it yet.” I really didn’t want to discuss it. I don’t know why I even started. About my dream of someday marrying Rick.
We had just turned in at my driveway when two cars came in after me and a third one blocked the drive.
“Oh, no!” I said.
“Is it them?” Cree asked.
“It’s them. And that car blocking the drive is Evan.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I would say—offhand—we’re not getting out of this car.”
“I have to pee. I should have done it before we left school but I like private bathrooms better.”
“Cree, I just don’t know. I think they were fixing to grab me the last time this happened, but then they heard a siren and scrammed.”
They got out of their cars and came over to mine. And stood there.
I couldn’t lower my window without turning on the engine. If we were going to be there any length of time, we would definitely want the window lowered, so I turned the engine back on.
“What do you guys want?” I asked. Hadn’t we done all this before?
They just stood there, not answering.
I said, “My friend has to pee. Can she go in the house if she comes right back out?”
“Nope,” said Evan.
“I can stand it,” Cree whispered so that only I could hear.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered back.
“Not your fault,” she said.
By then we were talking in normal voices. I said, “He’s always been this way. It’s why I broke off with him. I think he thinks it’s a game.”
“I think it has to do with Kelsey.”
Maybe. But I still maintained I couldn’t testify. So why did they keep coming back to me?
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.