Perfect Nightmare

Chapter Eighteen

The house was ablaze with light as Steve and Kara pulled into the drive. “See?” Steve said. “She’s home.”

Kara remembered turning all the lights on in the house when she had been a nervous teen left home alone for the first time, but also knew that it didn’t mean anything.

Lights on didn’t mean anyone was at home.

She jumped out of the car before Steve even turned the engine off. “Lindsay?” she yelled as she burst through the door from the garage into the kitchen.

In the living room, the television was blaring, and she switched it off, then went through every room, turning off half the lights even though she was barely aware she was doing it. “Lindsay?” she called out again when she came to the bottom of the stairs.

Now Steve was in the house, too, standing in the dining room holding the note Mark Acton had left on the table. “Well, this looks good,” he said. “Seems like there were a couple of dozen people here today, and this guy Acton seems to think he might have an offer by tomorrow!”

Kara ignored him, heading upstairs, but even as she approached Lindsay’s room, and heard no music drifting from her daughter’s open door, she was all but certain what she would find.

Something was wrong — she could feel it. And the feeling hadn’t started in the car when Lindsay didn’t answer the phone. No, she’d first felt it at dinner, but told herself it was nothing — that there was no reason to think Lindsay wasn’t exactly where she’d said she’d be — first at cheerleading practice, then at Dawn's. She should have called then — she should have excused herself from the Bennetts’ less than scintillating company, gone to the ladies’ lounge and called her daughter.

Instead she’d ignored her feeling and finished her meal.

And now, if Lindsay really was in trouble, Kara knew she would never forgive herself.

“Lindsay?” she called yet again.

No answer.

Feeling her panic rising, Kara stepped into Lindsay’s room, found it as empty as she’d known it would be, then quickly searched the rest of the upstairs — her own bedroom, the bathrooms, the guest room, even the office that doubled as a sewing room, which Lindsay had always hated because it meant mending clothes she’d rather replace.

No Lindsay.

“She’s not here,” she called down to Steve. “I’m going to call the police.”

“The police?” Steve echoed, emerging from the kitchen with a drink in his hand to peer up the stairs at his wife, whose face looked ashen. “Why? What’s going on?” He hurried up to Kara’s side.

“I’m telling you,” she said, her voice trembling, “she’s not here, and something’s wrong.”

With Kara behind him, Steve went into Lindsay’s room. To his eye, everything looked perfectly normal, but when he turned back to Kara, she was biting at a fingernail, something she only did when she was extremely upset.

“Honey, what’s going on?” Steve asked. “She probably just went over to Dawn's, like she said—”

“I’m telling you,” Kara cut in, “something’s wrong.” She opened the laundry hamper and pulled out shorts and a T-shirt. “Look! These are what she wore to practice today.”

Steve shrugged. “So she came home — it’s obvious she came home. She turned on the TV and every light in the house. And there’s her cell phone.”

“So where is she?” Kara demanded. “If she came home, where is she?”

“Call Dawn,” Steve sighed, wishing now he’d let her do it from the car. “That’s where she’s got to be.”

They went back to the kitchen, where Kara pulled the address book from the drawer. But even as she looked for the number, she knew Lindsay wasn’t at Dawn's.

No, something had happened.

Something bad.

And every second they delayed in calling the police was only going to worsen whatever danger Lindsay was in. Now Kara was furious at herself for having ignored Lindsay’s fears about coming home after the open house.

As she dialed Dawn’s number, Steve moved quickly through the house, intending to check the doors and windows, more to put Kara’s mind at ease than because he expected to find anything amiss.

And nothing was.

All the doors and windows were locked.

Going back to the kitchen, he turned on the patio lights and looked out into the yard.

No Lindsay, but nothing else, either.

Everything was perfectly normal.

“She’s not at Dawn's,” Kara said as she hung up. “Phyllis said that Dawn told her Lindsay was upset after practice today, but that she came home because Dawn was going to her father’s house.”

“Upset about what?” Steve asked. He picked up his drink, started to take a sip, then thought better of it. After they found out exactly where Lindsay was, there’d be plenty of time for a drink.

For him, and for Kara, too.

“Upset about the move, of course,” Kara said as she picked up the phone again. “And probably about coming home alone after an open house.” She looked away from Steve as someone answered at Dawn’s father’s house. “This is Kara Marshall. May I speak with Dawn, please?” She talked for a moment, then hung up and faced Steve again. “She was here. Dawn talked to her, but only for a minute.” Kara’s voice began to rise. “But she did come home, and now she’s not here! I’m telling you, something’s wrong!”

“Settle down,” Steve said. “Let’s reason this out.”

“We need to call the police,” Kara said, reaching for the phone once more. “Something has happened.”

“Nothing has happened,” Steve said, trying to stop her hand before she could pick up the receiver.

Kara pulled her hand away. “She never leaves the house without letting us know where she’s going. Never! She’d leave a note or a message on the machine—”

Steve shook his head. “Maybe she left in a hurry — she left all the lights on, the television on. Maybe one of her friends came by and she took off with them.”

Kara nodded and took a deep breath, telling herself that what he said could be true. She stood, opened the address book again, and began to call Lindsay’s friends. Steve watched her, feeling helpless and almost more worried about Kara than Lindsay, and already rehearsing the speech Lindsay would get when she finally showed up.

Kara might ground her for the rest of her life.

But by the sixth call that yielded nothing, Kara was crying, and now Steve, too, was beginning to worry.

“I knew it,” Kara said, struggling against a sob that was threatening to strangle her. “I knew it at the restaurant, Steve. I had a feeling something was wrong.” She glanced around, shivering though there wasn’t the slightest chill in the room. “Someone was in the house, Steve. We should have listened to her. Somebody has her.” Her voice rose. “Someone has her! And it’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”

“Now just take it easy,” Steve began. “Let’s—”

“No!” She grabbed Steve’s wrists. “Will you listen to me?” Suddenly, Kara was rigid with a rage born out of the terror that had seized her. “Someone has her! Someone has been in here! We have to call the police!”

“I’m not going to call the police,” Steve insisted, making one last attempt to reason with her. “What are they going to do? She’s not even missing — she’s just not home. And it’s barely even ten-thirty!”

“Then I’m calling them,” Kara said, brushing his words aside and picking up the phone again. But now she was trembling so badly she wasn’t sure she could dial, and she couldn’t even read the numbers on the phone through the tears flooding her eyes.

Steve tried to take the phone from her hand. “I’ll do it.”

Kara steeled herself and refused to give it up. “No,” she said. “You don’t believe anything’s wrong, so you won’t be able to make them understand.” She wiped the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse, focused her mind, and dialed 911.

Sergeant Andrew Grant sat on the Marshalls’ sofa, a clipboard on his knee. His partner, younger and even bigger than Grant, sat next to him. Kara wasn’t sure if it was their no-nonsense, just-the-facts-ma'am attitude or their navy blue uniforms, handcuffs, and guns that had imbued the house more with an aura of danger than of comfort from the moment they walked in. Nor had she taken any comfort from their search, which hadn’t taken more than fifteen minutes, both inside and out.

Then, for fifteen more minutes, Steve — all his lawyerly training coming into play at the moment the officers arrived — had made Grant read every note he made out loud, as if afraid that the officer, if left to his own devices, might skew his report to make Lindsay herself look like a criminal. Now Steve was perched on the arm of Kara’s chair, one arm around her, the other holding one of her hands while the fingers of her other hand twisted a damp handkerchief into a shapeless wad. Every one of her nerves felt as raw as those in her nervously working fingers, and she thought the muted but constant squawk from the officers’ radios might very well elicit a scream of frustration and annoyance from her before their questioning was over.

Seemingly oblivious of Kara’s state of mind, Sergeant Grant glanced over his notes, then shifted his attention back to her. “Does Lindsay have a boyfriend?”

“No,” Steve said before Kara could reply.

Grant’s brow arched skeptically. “She’s a cheerleader and she’s not dating anybody?”

Kara shook her head.

“Could she be dating someone you don’t know about?” Grant pressed.

“No,” Steve said, forcefully enough that Grant’s partner — whose name Kara couldn’t remember — recoiled slightly. “Lindsay’s not the kind of girl who keeps secrets from her parents.” Then, as if to underscore his words: “She’s not the kind who has to.”

“Bad breakup with an old boyfriend?” Grant went on, utterly unfazed by Steve’s words. “Maybe dumped someone recently, or vice versa?”

Kara shook her head, but even as she denied the suggestion implicit in the policeman’s question, she realized that she didn’t know for certain. Lindsay never talked about boys; was it possible she could have a boyfriend, or an ex-boyfriend, whom she knew nothing about?

“Internet chat? Does she engage in a lot of that?”

Kara shrugged helplessly, realizing that she had no idea whether Lindsay chatted on the Internet or not, at least with anybody but Dawn D'Angelo, with whom she seemed always to be exchanging instant messages. “I guess I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “She spends a lot of time on the computer, but she gets straight A's, so I’ve always assumed she was doing her homework.”

“Straight A's?” Sergeant Grant said. “That’s a good sign — not consistent with drug use.”

As Grant made a note, Kara’s nervousness morphed into indignation. “Drug use?” she began. “Lindsay would nev—” Before she could finish, Steve squeezed her shoulder gently and she lapsed into silence.

“Anything been bothering her lately?”

Grant looked expectantly at Kara, as if certain she would give him at least three or four things to add to his notes, and though Lindsay’s resistance to the prospect of moving instantly occurred to Kara, she wasn’t about to admit it. Instead, nervousness and frustration welled up inside her and she abruptly brushed Steve’s hand from her shoulder and leaned forward, her eyes fixed on the officer.

“Listen to me,” she began, her voice low and under total control. “I know my daughter. She is a perfect student, has dozens of friends and no enemies — male or female — and has no secret life involving drugs or anything else. She shares things with us — she talks to us. I’d know if she was sneaking around doing things, but she isn’t, hasn’t, wouldn’t! Then, last Wednesday, she thought someone had been in her room. Not just going through it the way people do at an open house, but going through her things. And today she’s missing. I didn’t believe her at the time, but now I do, and I’m telling you, someone was in this house, and now he’s taken her.”

As a great wave of emotion began to rise up inside her, her voice trembled, but she steeled herself, and went on. “Someone has taken her,” she said, enunciating her words carefully, lest they begin spilling hysterically from her lips. “And the longer we sit here, the—” Her voice cracked, and she couldn’t bring herself to utter the thought of what might be happening to Lindsay as they sat there talking. She looked at Steve, then took a deep breath. “We need to stop talking and start looking for her!”

The policeman offered Kara what she knew was supposed to be a reassuring smile, but it struck her as patronizing. “I’m not discounting any of what you’ve said,” he said in a tone that clearly told her he wasn’t counting it for much, either. “I understand exactly how you feel.” He turned to Steve. “But I still have to ask: has something upset her lately?”

As Kara glared at him, willing him not to respond, Steve nodded. “We’re moving to the city,” he said. “That’s where we were all day, apartment hunting. She was at cheerleading practice.”

Now Grant’s brows rose as if he understood everything, and he closed the metal lid on his report. “And she’s just finishing her junior year,” he said, and, when Steve nodded, leaned forward. “I think we’ve just figured out what’s going on here. You’ve got a seventeen-year-old daughter who wants to graduate with her class. Which means she’s pretty upset right now. And when kids that age get upset, they do all kinds of things. Some of them turn to drugs, but, frankly, it doesn’t sound like yours is that kind of kid.” As he began listing all the possible things Lindsay could be doing or places she could have gone, Kara saw what he was leading up to.

He wasn’t going to do anything.

Nothing.

Nothing at all!

And sure enough, just as her fury grew to the point where she was about to demand that he get to the point, he did just that.

“… that’s why we don’t consider them missing for twenty-four hours,” he was saying as she tuned back in to his words. “Mostly, nothing’s happened to them at all — they’ve just taken off for a while.”

“Not Lindsay,” Kara said coldly. “She would have left a note and taken her cell phone.”

“Not necessarily,” Sergeant Grant argued. “Not if she’s feeling like she wants to punish you. It’s the only power they have — get their parents as upset as they are.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s not even midnight, and the odds are good she’ll be home in an hour or two, but frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t hear from her until tomorrow.”

As Kara opened her mouth to object to what she knew was coming next, Grant spoke again, quickly enough to cut her off.

“Tell you what — I’ll call you in the morning.” He handed Steve a card. “If she shows up, give me a call at this number, no matter what time it is.”

“That’s it?” Kara said, staring at the officer. “My daughter’s been abducted and all you do is take a quick look around the house and ask us questions for half an hour?” Though his partner had the decency to redden at Kara’s words — presumably in embarrassment — Sergeant Grant only took a deep breath.

“I’m afraid there’s not much more we can do right now, Mrs. Marshall,” he said. “Given that there aren’t any signs of a forced entry or a struggle — or anything else that would suggest she was taken against her will — I’m afraid we have no choice but to wait twenty-four hours. And I have to tell you, the odds are overwhelming that she’ll come home, or at least call you.” As Kara started to interrupt him, he held up a hand — as if no matter what she was going to say, he’d heard it all before. “Look, I know what you read in the papers and see on TV about how many perverts there are out there, but I have to tell you, it’s not nearly as bad as everyone thinks. If we went chasing after every kid that took off for a night or two, we wouldn’t have time to do anything else.”

“But she said—” Kara began, and once again Grant didn’t let her finish.

“I know. There was an open house, and she thought someone was going through her stuff.”

“And there was another open house today,” Kara insisted. “Which is why I don’t understand why you’re so interested in looking for signs that someone broke in. Anyone could have just walked into the house, hidden, and waited for Lindsay to come home!”

Grant and his partner exchanged a glance, and then Grant frowned and reopened the clipboard he’d closed as he stood up. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to talk to the agent,” he said. “Do you have his home phone number?”

As the two officers left the house a minute or two later, Kara wondered if they were going to talk to Mark Acton or whether they’d just taken his number to appease her.

She strongly suspected it was the latter.

And she hated it.