Perfect Nightmare

Chapter Twenty-two

The sharp pain of Kara’s nails digging into the flesh of his upper arm jerked Steve out of the semistupor to which he’d finally succumbed after forty-eight nearly sleepless hours, but it still took a moment or two before his mind — and his vision — cleared enough for him to recognize the image on the television at the foot of the bed.

Lindsay’s face, smiling at him.

Her junior class photo.

“… search continues for missing seventeen-year-old Lindsay Marshall today,” the anchorwoman was saying. “She was last seen Sunday afternoon about four-thirty, walking home from Camden Green High. Lindsay is five feet six inches tall, one hundred twenty pounds, blond, with blue eyes, and her hair is shorter than in this picture. If you have any information regarding Lindsay’s whereabouts, we urge you to call the Camden Green police department or this station.” Two phone numbers were now superimposed over Lindsay’s photo, then her photograph was replaced with the face of the anchorwoman, flanked by the sportscaster and the weatherman, all three of them wearing the kind of empathetic expressions Steve had never seen anywhere but on TV. They clucked with sympathy for a moment, but their expressions shifted quickly back to bland smiles and the anchorwoman began speaking again. “On a national level—” Kara turned away from the television. “That wasn’t enough,” she said. “They had more! They had me telling them what happened, and they had…” Steve barely heard her, the memory of Lindsay’s face on the television screen still filling his mind. Somehow that image made the whole surreal experience all too crushingly real, and her absence from the house came crashing down on him like a blow from a sledgehammer.

Lindsay was not at camp.

She was not spending a few nights with Dawn’s family.

She had not gone out of town to a cheerleading competition.

None of those occurrences had ever made the house feel as empty of her presence as it felt now, for before, he always knew where his daughter was and when she’d be home.

But this time was different.

This time they didn’t know what had happened.

Had she left with a boyfriend — a boyfriend he knew nothing about — in a fit of pique?

Had she run away to spite him and her mother?

He didn’t know.

All he knew was that she was gone, and that he’d never felt so helpless.

“They should have shown videos of her,” Kara was saying, her voice taking on the edge of hysteria that Steve had grown all too familiar with over the last two days. “I gave them video footage from our trip to Disney World. And what about the reward? They should have said we’ve posted a reward!” She picked up the phone from the bedside table, pulled a phone book from the nightstand drawer and dialed, her fingers jabbing furiously at the buttons. Steve turned down the volume on the TV as she began to speak.

“This is Kara Marshall,” she said, her voice quavering. “I want to speak to someone at the news desk.” He watched as Kara drew dark arrows pointing to the telephone number in the book. “Hello?” she finally said after nearly two full minutes had gone by. “This is Kara Marshall. You just ran a short — really short — piece about my daughter who has been abducted? Yes, well, it was too short. I gave your people all kinds of pictures, and they talked to me on camera, and we’re offering a reward—” Abruptly, she fell silent, listening, and a moment later her shoulders sagged. “Yes, all right,” she said, her voice cold now. “I understand. Okay. I’ll call back in the morning.” She hung up the phone and set it back on the nightstand.

Steve’s stomach knotted as he watched her glare at the television screen, and he could almost see the wheels turning in her head.

“I’m going to have to call them every day,” she said. “Tomorrow morning we’ll have the police here and we’ll hold a press conference. I’ll need fresh flyers, ones with a different photo of Lindsay on them, and the reward information. And I’ll put them on bright yellow paper.” She turned to look at him, her eyes filled with desperation. “She’s somewhere, Steve. Someone has to have seen her! Someone has to have!” She got out of bed then, wrapped herself in her robe, and left the bedroom without a word. Steve knew where she was going — to the room next to the master bedroom, from which the sewing equipment had vanished on Monday so it could serve as a full-time office.

A moment later he heard her fingers tapping the computer keyboard, and he knew she was making lists of things to do in the morning.

He had nothing on his own list of things to do in the morning. There was no point in going to work — he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything. So someone else was shouldering his load, which wasn’t good. But what could he do? He was useless in the face of the possibility that someone had actually taken Lindsay, and though he’d been clinging to the hope that the police were right — that she’d just taken off and would be back within another day or so — there had been something about seeing Lindsay’s face on the television screen that told him Kara was right.

Lindsay hadn’t just run away.

Someone had taken her.

Ignoring the tiredness in his muscles and forcing his mind to overcome the numbness that had gripped it only a few minutes ago, Steve heaved himself to his feet and pulled on his own robe.

As the sound of Kara’s fingers tapping at the computer keyboard kept the silence of Lindsay’s absence at bay, Steve went down to put on a pot of coffee.

It would be another night without sleep.