The Devil_s Garden

EIGHTEEN

He stood about ten feet away, in the hallway leading to the first-floor office. He was half in shadow, but seemed to fill up the entire door jamb.

Abby watched him. She tried to think of how much cash she could get together. The man had said nothing yet about money, but it was coming. What else could this be about? The man who called himself Aleksander, along with his partner, had probably done this before, stalking a suburban family, holding them for ransom. She’d read about it.

How long had they been watching? How much did they want? Why had they been selected? They weren’t rich. Far from it. Hell, all you had to do was check out the cars in the driveways along the street. The Murrays had a Lexus and a BMW. The Rinaldis had a Porsche Cayenne.

Abby did the math. There was less than a thousand dollars in the house. She had very little jewelry. They owned no valuable paintings or sculpture. If you added up all the gadgets – digital camera, camcorder, computers, stereo system – it didn’t add up to much. Was this going to work against them?

The initial shock of seeing a stranger standing in her home had begun to fade, turning instead into something else, the slow-crawling fear one feels when things slide completely beyond one’s control.

Keep it together Abby, she thought. The girls. The girls. The -

– cellphone rang. Abby jumped. The sound of the ringtone – a silly song she and the girls had downloaded online – sounded sardonically comic now, as if they were all in an abandoned amusement park.

The phone was on the counter, halfway across the kitchen. The man who called himself Aleksander picked up the phone, looked at it. He beckoned Abby toward him, showed her the screen.

It was Michael calling.

Abby noticed for the first time that the man was wearing latex gloves. The sight made her heart sink even lower. It added all kinds of possibilities, any number of futures to this scenario. All dark. Perhaps this was not a kidnapping after all. Perhaps this was not about money.

“I want you to speak to him,” he said. “I want you to sound normal. I want you to tell him whatever it is you tell him on a beautiful day such as this. He will soon enough know his role. But not now.” Aleks pointed out the window. The man he called Kolya was pushing the girls on their swings. “Do you understand this?”

“Yes.”

“Please put this on speakerphone.”

Abby took the phone. Despite her trembling hands, she flipped it open, pressed SPEAKER. She did her best to keep the fear from her voice. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“What’s up?” Abby asked. “You at the office?”

“Yeah,” Michael said. “I’m going to be stuck here for a while. The voir dire is taking longer than I thought.”

If there was one thing Abby Roman and her husband excelled at in their marriage, it was a nightly recap of their days. Abby was certain that the Colin Harris case – a case Abby knew was close to the bone for Michael – had wrapped its jury selection days earlier. The voir dire was complete, the panel was set, and here was her husband telling her it was not.

“You’re inside your office?” Abby asked.

A pause, then: “Yeah.”

Michael was lying. She heard street sounds in the background, loud street sounds. He was outside.

Why was he lying?

“Something wrong?” Abby asked. She looked at Aleks as she said this, feeling he knew that she was trying to communicate something. He now stood in the shadows of the hallway, listening intently to the conversation. She could not see his eyes. He was impenetrable. “Are you worried about the case?”

“Not really,” Michael replied. “Just a few last-minute details. No big deal.”

“The block sale went pretty well,” Abby said, trying to sound chatty. “We sold the toreador painting. It went for high one-figures.”

The toreador painting was a running joke. Michael, whose taste in oils and acrylics ranged from A Bachelor’s Dog to New Year’s Eve in Dog Ville, bought it at a flea market while he was in college. It had sat in their garage for their entire marriage – Abby refused to hang it in the house – the unsold veteran of five straight block sales, in two different counties.

“Babe?” Abby said. “The painting?”

A long pause. Abby wondered if the call had been dropped. Then: “I’m sorry,” Michael said. “Let me… let me call you back.”

“Good luck.”

Another long pause. “Thanks.”

Something was wrong. Abby glanced at Aleks. He nodded. He meant for her to hang up.

“Okay. I love you.” Abby barely got the words out. She wondered if this was the last time she’d ever speak to her husband. “And I -”

Dead air.

She pressed END CALL. The screen reverted to the photograph Abby used as wallpaper, a picture of herself, Michael, and the twins sitting on a bench near the beach in Cape May. Charlotte and Emily wore floppy straw sun hats. The sun was high, the water blue, the sand golden. Her heart ached.

Aleks held out his hands, indicating he wanted Abby to toss him the phone. She did. He caught it, put it in a pocket. “I appreciate your discretion. I am sure Anna and Marya do as well.”

Anna and Marya. It was the second time he had used these names.

Abby slipped onto one of the stools at the breakfast counter. She remembered shopping for the stools in White Plains, trying to decide on color, fabric, finish. It seemed so important at the time. It seemed to matter. It seemed like a million years ago.

“What are you going to do with us?” she asked.

For a moment, the man looked amused at her choice of words. “We are going to do nothing. We are going to wait.”

For how long? Abby wanted to ask. For whom? For what? She remained silent. She eyed the drawer on the kitchen island, the drawer containing the knives. Her glance was not lost on her captor.

He turned, glanced out the back window, then back to Abby.

“And now, if you would honor me with an introduction.”

He crossed the kitchen, stopping just a few feet away from Abby, and for the first time she saw his face in the bright afternoon sunlight streaming through the large window overlooking the backyard, saw his pale eyes, his sharp cheekbones, the way his widow’s peak met at his brow. The nausea suddenly became a violent, thrashing thing inside her. She knew this face almost as well as she knew her own. She tried to speak, but the words felt parched on her lips. “An introduction?”

Aleks smoothed his hair with his hands, straightened his clothing, as if he were a shy Victorian suitor meeting his betrothed for the first time. “Yes,” he said. “It is time I met Anna and Marya.”

“Why do you keep saying those names?” Abby asked, although she feared the answer. “Who are Anna and Marya?”

Aleks glanced out the window at the twins running around the yard. His profile was now unmistakable. He looked back at Abby.

His words took her legs away.

“They are my daughters.”