Right to Life Page 2

  "Did you see a woman, five, maybe ten minutes ago, white short-sleeve blouse, blue skirt, early forties, long dark hair?" He pointed. "She'd have been coming this way toward the building. I dropped her off over there. She has an appointment at the clinic."

  The officer glanced at her partner. So did Greg, actually noticing him for the first time. The cop looked shockingly young. He was big and trim but to Greg he looked barely out of his teens. He guessed the woman would have a good ten years on him. The cop shook his head. "Sorry, sir," the woman said and glanced behind him.

  "Is there a problem?" Greg turned and saw a much smaller woman in a brown business suit and baggy trousers. Her tailored white shirt was unbuttoned at the collar so that the tie hung slightly off to one side. She wore no makeup as far as he could tell and the medium-length hair was a frizzy red.

  "I'm Lieutenant Primiano, 20th precinct." She produced a wallet and shield. "You said something about a woman?"

  "She's disappeared."

  "How so?"

  "I let her out on that corner. I went to park the car. I drove past her and around the block and parked on 67th. She had an appointment for ten forty-five and she was headed right here, walking right toward you when I left her but I went inside and the receptionist says she never showed. She suggested maybe the smokeshop or the pharmacy but I just looked in both places and she's not there. This isn't like her. Sara does what she says she'll do. She should be up there."

  "You folks have any kind of fight? Quarrel over anything?"

  "God, no. We're fine."

  He felt himself flush at the use of the word. They were not fine. Not today.

  But that was their own business.

  The woman studied him a moment and then nodded. "Ella, keep an eye on things here a minute, will you? Dean, ask around and see if any of these people noticed her. Your name, sir?"

  "Greg Glover."

  "This is Officer Kaltsas and Officer Spader. Mr. Glover, let's go on back inside."

  She questioned the receptionist and Weller's nurse and then the doctor himself. She was brisk and to the point. It took maybe ten minutes tops but to Greg it seemed forever. Weller volunteered the notion that it happened sometimes, that at the last minute people changed their minds. You really couldn't blame them.

  "Not Sara," he said. "She wouldn't do that. Not possible."

  When they were outside again she asked the young cop, Kaltsas, about the picketers.

  "Nothing," he said. "Nobody saw her. I got a small problem with one of them, though."

  "What kind of problem."

  "Maybe he's just weirdo, I dunno. Didn't answer me right away. Something not right, maybe."

  "Which one?"

  "Bald guy with the beard in the blue windbreaker. With the sign says PRO CHOICE IS NO CHOICE. Right there."

  Greg looked at him. Middle-age man with thinning hair, parading in a rough circle between two older women.

  "Okay. Talk to him again. Get his name, address, phone number. If you can, see that he sticks around a while but go easy. I'm going to take a walk with Mr. Glover, see if we can spot her on the street."

  "Will do."

  "Have you got a photo of her? Of Sara?"

  He dug it out of his wallet. It was his favorite shot, taken on summer vacation a year before on the streets of Jamaica, Vermont, the Jamaica Inn's garlanded white porch in the background. She always hated having her picture taken and was wearing a goofy smile because of that but to him both then and now she looked lovely, her long hair swirling around her face. He had snapped and snapped her that day out of pure, almost adolescent pleasure, until she practically had to scream to make him quit.

  She studied the photo and handed it back to him. "She's very pretty," she said. "We'll start with your car. Maybe she went looking for you for some reason. Where'd you park again?"

  "Down on 67th."

  She began walking slowly downtown. He matched her pace.

  "This is crazy," he said. "People don't vanish."

  "No, sir. They don't," she said. "I think we'll find her."

  Of course they would, he thought. There had to be some normal explanation. Maybe the doctor was right. Maybe Greg didn't know her as well as he thought he did. Maybe she was sitting in a restaurant a block or two away over coffee, wondering if she should go through with this after all, mulling it over on her own.

  She never breaks appointments at the last minute and she's never late. She's not secretive and she's never lied to me and she's not a coward.

  No. Something's wrong.

  You damn well know something's wrong.

  He felt the unreality of it all wash over him and for a moment he felt dizzy, almost as though he were about to faint. Twenty minutes ago he was looking for a place to park, an empty meter, pummeled by guilt at what they were about to do. Now he was walking along peering into storefronts, at people coming out of doorways, pedestrians passing, the pour and turmoil of New York. Srching for a glimpse of her. Walking at what seemed to him a crawl when what he wanted to do was run, look everywhere at once. Police in his life all of a sudden while he'd never had pvious occasion to say ten words to a cop. And this cop, this brisk and nonsense young woman like a lifeline to him now, his only potential link to Sara. He felt a sudden incredible dependency, as though his life had just spun out of his hands and landed into hers, a stranger's.

  His heart was pounding.

  People don't just vanish. Not unless they want to. Or unless somebody helps them.

  Whether they wanted to or not.

  TWO

  Sussex, New Jersey

  12:30 p.m.

  She woke in dark and panic.

  Her first thought was that they had buried her alive.

  That she was in a coffin.

  She was lying on her back against rough unfinished wood, thick wood planks to the left of her, to the right of her, so close that she could barely raise her arms to feel that - yes, there was more rough wood above, she could smell it. Pine. There was a pillow beneath her head and that was all. Panic raced through her like a breath of fire. She had never been aware of being afraid of tight spaces but she was very afraid of this one.

  She balled her hands into fists and pounded. She heard the pounding echo and knew she was in a room then, in some kind of box, some kind of room and not underground - at least not buried underground thank god - because there would be no echo if that were so but the panic didn't recede any. She could hear her own fear in the wildness of her heartbeat. She screamed for help. She pounded and kicked at the lid of the thing and side to side at firm unyielding wood and it hurt, they'd removed her shoes and stockings, she was barefoot and it was only then that she realized that her skirt and blouse were gone too, she was wearing only her slip and panties. And that fact too was terrifying.

  Why? she thought. What am I doing here?

  What do they want with me?

  It was cold.

  She was not underground but it must have been some kind of basement she was in because it was summer, the day was warm and yet in here it was cold.

  Where was she?

  She was crying. The tears went cold on her face the moment she shed them. Gooseflesh all over her body.

  She kicked harder. Kicked until her feet were sore and maybe bleeding and then kicked and pounded again. Her breath came in gasps through the sobbing.

  Calm down, she thought. This isn't doing any good. Think. Control yourself, dammit. Concentrate.

  Look for weaknesses.

  She had maybe two feet between her chest and the lid above. Maybe she could press the lid off. She raised her arms, took a deep breath and pushed with all her might until her neck was straining, the muscles of her arms and shoulders spasming.

  It didn't budge.

  She let go of the breath and rested. Then took another and tried again.

  She brought her knees up under her as best she could until they pressed tight against the lid, trying to get more leverage, took a third deep breath and pu
shed until finally all her strength leeched out of her. She lay back, exhausted.

  The footboard and headboard, she thought. Maybe there. She slid down until the soles of her feet touched wood, the slip riding up her thighs and then drew her arms up over her head, the palms of her hands against the headboard. She was sweating now despite the cold, as in clammy film, all over her. She pushed and felt the headboard give a quarter inch and then stop. She relaxed immediately and used her fingers to explore it on either side.

  She touched metal. The headboard was hinged to the left. That meant there was probably some kind of lock on the outside. Which also meant the headboard was the entrance. How had they gotten her in here?

  She lowered her arms and felt around the base of the box opposite her thighs and found a half-inch space between the base and sideboards on either side. On a hunch she pushed off with the soles of her feet and felt the base slide minutely toward the headboard and then stop.

  She was on rollers, casters.

  They'd rolled her in.

  Then locked the headboard behind her.

  Somebody had gone to a whole lot of trouble planning this, constructing this. Building this trap for me.

  It didn't change anything knowing that except to scare her further.

  Who were these people? Suddenly she was desperate to know.

  There was a woman involved. The woman with the needle. She'd been driving. Why would a woman do this to another woman? How could somebody do that?

  She willed herself to stop thinking, to go back to the original plan. The lock might give. It was possible.

  It didn't.

  She pushed until every muscle in her body was shaking with the strain and that was when the fear set in deep and final so that she lay still, trembling wide-eyed in the dark. Because she had no choice then but to accept the fact that there was no way out until they decided to let her out to whatever purpose they had in mind, which could be to no good purpose because here she was. Half naked. In a hand-built coffin. Alone in the swimming dark.

  Or maybe not alone.

  She heard scratching, light raspings, like claws, something working at the top of the box and growing more and more determined-sounding as she lay there helpless, frozen, listening.

  Something wanted in.

  A rat?

  She took a deep breath and shouted. "HEY!" Why that word she didn't know. The word simply burst out of her, angry and scared, unnaturally loud in that closed space. Hey! She listened. Waited.

  The sounds had stopped.

  The trembling didn't.

  What do they want with me? she thought.

  Am I going to die here?

  Why me?

  There was no answer she could think of to any of these questions that wasn't frightening and nothing to do but ask them over and over again while she waited for whatever deliverance would come in whatever form, in however vast and slow an eternity.

  The scratching sounds did not return. The cold did not relent.

  Greg, she thought. Somebody. Find me.

  I'm here.

  THREE

  1:05 p.m.

  Was it day or night?

  She was so cold. Colder every minute. She was thirsty. Her throat was sore from screaming, her hands and knuckles raw from pounding.

  What time was it? How long had she been here?

  Inside the box there was no benchmark for time, nothing to do but wait and think, thoughts turning in on themselves like the track on a model railroad, like the double-ring symbol for eternity, the snake swallowing its tail.

  Why me? bled seamlessly into what do they want from me, which dovetailed into is anyone looking for me, searching or when will I get same water or see some light or a thousand other questions which all line down to one question, how will I get out of here? Alive. Sane.

  She felt permanently stunned to find herself here. The feeling colored all reality. As though suddenly she were not even who and what she thought herself to be anymore. The Sara Foster she knew had come unstuck, uprooted from everything that grounded her. The Sara Foster who taught English and drama to LD kids at the Winthrop School on 74th Street, who was daughter to Charles and Evelyn Schap of Harrison, New York, lover to Greg Glover and pregnant with his child, who was once the mother of a wonderful beautiful boy drowned in a lake, who was ex-wife to Samuel Bell Foster and best friends with Annie Graham since childhood - all these people who had cradled her identity in embraces loving and not so loving for as long as she could remember meant nothing here. Were now almost irrelevant. What mattered was not the known world but the unknown world beyond the box.

  These people.

  They mattered.

  What the dark held mattered. The meaning of the box.

  And when she heard the footsteps on the wooden stairs they mattered. So that her heart began to race and the air seemed to thicken so she couldn't seem to get her breath, worse as she heard them on the landing and then move toward her, shoeleather scraping concrete and she began to twist and turn inside the box in a frenzy to get out of there to whatever freedom or whatever fate those footsteps might imply, clawing at the box, slapping at the box, her voice a shrill high-pitched squeal in her ears and while still she gulped for breath. And when she heard the man's laughter at the sounds of her fear and struggle and heard his fingers rattle the lock outside the headboard, rattling it again and again, playing with her, her body betrayed her utterly and she saw a sudden burst of red and fainted away.

  ***

  He lifted her out and placed her on the bare stained mattress. Studied her a moment.

  She didn't move. She wasn't faking.

  He lifted her head and set it carefully into the headbox.

  Then he clamped it shut.

  The headbox was half-inch plywood about the size of a hatbox, split in two and hinged at the top, with semicircular neck-holes carved into its base on either side and a padlock to secure the halves together. It was insulated and carpeted inside. It muffled all sound, shut out nearly all light.

  He'd tried it on himself.

  It was scary.

  The red plush carpeting pressed close to your face, sending your breath right back at you no matter how shallow your breathing. It was hot and claustrophobic. About ten pounds of weight sitting on your shoulders. And once it was on there was no way in hell you could get it off again. It was sturdy. You could bang it against a concrete wall all day long and do nothing but buy yourself a concussion.

  He'd done a good job on this one.

  The first two tries were failures. The problem was mostly weight, too much or too little. He'd built the first out of quarter-inch ply and when Kath tried it on she pointed out to him that if you pressed your face into the carpeting and held it that way, making space between your head and the back of the box so you didn't bash your brains in, one good slam against a wall could crack the plywood.

  She proved this by demonstrating.

  Back to the drawing board.

  He built the second box of three-quarter-inch ply and it was tough as nails. But the damn thing also weighed about twenty pounds. You fell with that on, it could snap your neck.

  The new box halved the weight. Ten pounds was still a lot and he'd have to watch for that but he felt satisfied it was manageable.

  Kath had worn it all day long once just to see. She hadn't wanted to but he explained to her that a trial run was a necessity. He knew she hated the thing from the minute he put it on her. Knew it scared her, made her dizzy and sick to her stomach and later she said it pinched her neck all the time she was in there but that was just too damn bad in the long view, somebody had to try it and it wasn't going to be him. Besides the point was could a woman wear it all day long, not a man. Could a woman stand it.

  When he let her out at dinnertime her collarbone and shoulders were chafed red and sore and she complained about a stiff neck for nearly a week. Nothing that wasn't going to go away. The point was that yes, it was manageable.

  He smiled. If Miss
Sara Foster here thought the Long Box was scary - and she obviously did - wait till she woke up again and found herself in this one. He'd have put her in the thing in the first place but he was afraid she might vomit from the pentothol. And vomit was easier to clean off the base panel of a pinewood box than to get out of carpeting.

  He'd have to keep an eye on that too. On the vomiting. Kath had said the headbox was stifling and made her queasy in and of itself, never mind the pentothol.

  He slipped her wrists through the black leather manacles and pulled each of the straps tight and threaded the ropes through the silver rings attached. The ropes depended from the a pair of pulleys at the top of each arm of the brand-new X-frame he'd constructed for her. Taking the two ropes together he slowly and carefully hauled her up until only her feet rested on the floor, legs slightly bent beneath her. Her head lolled forward heavily so that the box now rested on her breastbone. That probably hurt but as yet, not enough to wake her. He tied the ropes off quickly to the the climbers' pitons hammered into the concrete floor and then stepped forward and slipped a small brass hook screwed into the headrest he'd attached to the X-frame through the corresponding eye at the back of the box so that her head would stay upright and take the weight off the back of her neck.

  He'd thought of everything.

  He stood back and looked at her. All his creation.

  You couldn't see her face and that was good. Control was important. And she was very pretty.

  He needed to control himself now.

  The only thing that remained at this initial stage was to finish undressing her but he'd wait until she woke for that and was able t fel the cold blade of the knife cutting away her slip and panties. That kind of control was very important too.

  Afterwards he and Kath could come down and have some dinner and watch her, see how she took it all and he could go over again with Kath what the next step was supposed to be so there'd be no fuck-ups, no misunderstandings. This he'd do daily. There was a progression of events to this that he needed to be sure Kath would follow. They could speak as freely down here in front of her as they could upstairs. Sound not only didn't get out of the box it didn't get in much either.