The Attraction, page 22
He put his hand in front of her so she could see it. He was holding a gun.
“Do you understand?” he asked.
Lisa nodded. She still hadn’t clearly seen the face of the man who was threatening to kill her.
“If you cause any trouble, I’ll shoot the box full of holes. I’ll kill you. And then I’ll kill your mother, too. Do you understand?”
Again, Lisa nodded.
“I know where to find your mother. It would be real easy to use this gun on her. But there’s no reason for anything like that to happen. Not if you’re good.”
Lisa stared at the box. She wanted to run, to dash into the trees that looked like bushes and get away from this man. Then she could warn her mother, and the police would protect them, and …
But the man would shoot her before she got more than ten feet away. And even if he missed, she had no idea which way to run. She had no idea where she was.
“Into the box,” the man said.
“Can’t,” Lisa said, and then she realized she had spoken the word only in her mind.
“Get in,” the man said, giving her a shove.
But Lisa was terrified of that box. Nothing was going to convince her to get into it. It was a cardboard coffin, and once she was enclosed within it, she would never see her mother or her friends or anything again.
Savagely, the man grabbed her and put her into the box on her side. “Remember what I said,” he warned.
He flipped one of the cardboard flaps closed, then another, and another. Looking down at her through the narrow rectangle that remained open, he said, “Look at me.”
Obediently, Lisa turned her head and looked into the face of her captor.
“If you’re quiet, you and your mother will be all right. It’s up to you.” And then he closed the last flap, shutting out the light.
As Lisa lay in the darkness, smelling the cardboard, the box was lifted, then set down. There was a thunk. She was in the trunk. A moment later, the car’s doors were opened and closed, the engine started, and Lisa was being gently rocked and shaken as the car made its way along a dirt road. The rocks thrown up by the tires sounded like bullets hitting the bottom of the car.
But Lisa was only vaguely aware of these things, because she kept seeing the face that had peered into the box before the fourth flap had been closed. It was a face she’d seen before. In Illinois.
It was the bad man.
Her face was wet with tears. Afraid that the wetness would seep through the cardboard and damage it, causing the bad man to kill her and her mother, Lisa tried to stop. But the harder she tried, the more she cried.
In the Chicago suburbs, ten-year-old Nicole Koneczny was standing over the kitchen garbage can into which the peelings were dropping as she pared potatoes. A few feet away, her mother was readying the meat for a pot roast.
“Is this enough?” Nicole asked, indicating the three peeled potatoes on the counter.
“For the Hulk,” Grace Koneczny said. “Now you’d better peel some for the rest of us.”
Getting another potato from the bag on the counter, Nicole began scraping off its skin with the peeler. She had known three potatoes weren’t enough, but her thoughts were not on what she was doing. She was thinking about the promise she had made to the policeman.
Time had diminished its force somewhat; she no longer felt as bound by a pledge made to a stranger—even if the stranger was a police officer—as she did to the commitment she’d made to her parents. She had promised them that she would always be honest and open, that she would keep no secrets from them. That she had told them nothing about her encounter with the detective was a constant source of guilt.
Had she told them immediately there would be no problem. But if she did so now, she would have to explain why she had broken her promise to them. Her mom and dad would think she didn’t trust them. And yet only telling them could make the guilt go away. Nicole didn’t know what to do.
“Hey,” her mom said, “you’ve scraped away half that potato. You’re just supposed to get rid of the skin. We eat the other part.”
“I’m sorry,” Nicole said, and she found herself hoping that her mother would realize that something was wrong, that she’d look into her eyes and make her tell.
But her mom had shifted her attention back to the pot roast she was preparing.
And then it all rushed to the surface. Suddenly, Nicole was tingling with the desire to tell. She had to tell.
“Mom.”
“Mmmm.”
“I—” The words she’d been so anxious to speak only a second ago wouldn’t come.
“What is it, honey?” her mother asked, turning to face her. And when Nicole didn’t respond, her mom stopped preparing the pot roast and dropped to the girl’s eye level. “Come on,” she said gently. “Out with it.”
“There’s something I haven’t told you about.”
“What?” Grace Koneczny smiled. “You can tell me. You know that.”
Nicole told her, and when she was finished, the guilt was gone. She should have done it much sooner; she knew that now. Still, there was one nagging doubt.
“Should I have done what the policeman said?” Nicole asked. “Was it okay that I told you?”
Her mother, who was frowning, didn’t seem to have heard her.
“Mom?”
“What, honey?”
“Was it okay that I didn’t do what the policeman said?”
“Yes. You did the right thing, Nicole. I’m glad you told me.” She smiled, but it was a thing done mechanically, for she was still absorbed in her thoughts.
“Are you sure you’re not mad at me?”
“I’m sure. You go ahead and finish peeling your potatoes. I’m going to make a phone call.”
“Who are you going to call?”
“The police. I want to make sure that man was really a police officer.”
Nicole watched as her mother looked up the number, then picked up the wall-mounted telephone’s receiver and dialed. Now, she thought unhappily, the policeman will know I didn’t keep my promise.
But then he might not have been a policeman. Although she was uncertain why a man would come around pretending to be a cop and asking questions about Mrs. Jennings, it was plain that her mother found that prospect very disturbing.
Forgetting about the potatoes she was supposed to be peeling, Nicole listened as her mom began talking to the police.
Cassandra was watching television in the den when the phone rang. Moving the recliner to the upright position, she got out of the chair and quickly moved to the table on which the phone had been placed. Its long cord was a messy tangle that Cassandra kept forgetting to straighten out. She lifted the receiver.
“Cassandra, it’s me, Grace. I got your number from your sister.”
“Grace, I’m sorry I haven’t called you, but—”
Grace cut her off. “Is everything okay there?”
“Yes, everything’s fine,” Cassandra answered, an uneasy feeling settling over her. “Why?”
Grace was silent a moment, as if she were searching for the right words; then she said, “I, uh, I think there’s a chance that man who was bothering you knows where you are.”
“Clark?” A sudden emptiness seemed to hit Cassandra’s stomach, then spread outward.
“Yes,” Grace said. “I can’t be sure, of course, but—but Nicole may have told him where you are. It wasn’t her fault,” Grace added quickly. “She thought he was a policeman.”
“What—what happened?” Cassandra asked. Her legs felt weak, and she sat down in the small upholstered chair that stood by the table.
When Grace had finished telling her about the man who’d pretended to be a police officer and how Nicole had given him the information he sought, Cassandra said, “When was this?”
“Right after you left. Everything’s okay there, isn’t it? I mean, nothing’s happened, has it?”
“We’re fine. Lisa’s playing with her new friends, and I’m sitting around the house, waiting for someone to call and offer me a job at one of the jillion places I’ve applied.” And why was she saying these things? What good would it do her to have a job and what good would it do Lisa to have friends if Clark had found them? He’d ruin it. He’d ruin everything.
“Cassandra,” Grace said slowly, “do you think that maybe he’s watching your sister’s house, that he doesn’t know where you are?”
“He might not be here at all,” Cassandra said. “Once he found out how far away we were, he might have given up.” But she didn’t believe that. Clark would follow her to China, to the North Pole, anywhere.
“That makes sense. It’s possible that the guy wasn’t even Clark.” But the tone of her voice made it clear that Grace didn’t believe that any more than Cassandra did.
When the conversation ended, Cassandra hung up the phone, and then she simply sat there, feeling numb. Her world, all her hopes and plans, had just been smashed. Instead of a paradise where she would find a job and Lisa would go to school and they’d live happily in the perpetual sunshine, New Mexico was just another place where a madman could torment her.
And then, with a terrifying jolt, she realized that Clark had done more than just torment her. He’d threatened to kill her daughter.
Lisa was at the Murphys’ house, playing with her friends— playing TV cooking show with the Murphys’ home-video equipment. Instantly, Cassandra was on her feet, scurrying toward the garage. She had to make sure Lisa was all right. In the garage, she pushed the button on the wall that operated the automatic door. A motor came to life, and the door began rising, letting the afternoon’s glare into the dimness of the garage.
Cassandra was behind the wheel before she realized that she hadn’t brought her purse, which meant she didn’t have the car keys. And why was she going to drive, anyway, when the Murphys’ house was only half a block away? Getting out of the car, she hurried into the brightness outside. And then she was racing toward the Murphys’ house.
Reaching the end of the block, she dashed across the street and into the path of a van. The driver hit the brakes, then the horn, then swore at her. As she ran across the Murphys’ front lawn, Cassandra realized she could have phoned to check on Lisa, but it was too late to worry about that now. Stepping onto the porch, she pressed the button that rang the doorbell. The door opened almost immediately.
“Yes?” a woman said. She was tall and thin, with long dark hair.
“Hi, uh, I’m Cassandra Jennings, Lisa’s mother. Can I see my daughter a moment?”
“But …” the woman looked confused. “But Lisa never showed up. The other girls were wondering where she was. They tried to call her, but Mrs. Sellers’s number is unlisted.”
For a moment, Cassandra simply stared at the woman; then she turned and rushed away from the house. The only other place Lisa could be was Susan’s house. And as she ran along the sidewalk, she tried to convince herself that Lisa was there, that she had decided to visit her aunt instead of playing with her friends today.
But she wouldn’t have missed playing TV cooking show today for anything, something inside Cassandra said. But she didn’t listen, because Lisa had to be at Susan’s. The alternative was unthinkable.
Cassandra was out of breath when she reached her sister’s door. She pushed in the doorbell button with all her strength, as if by doing so she could make it convey the urgency of the situation. To Cassandra, the few moments it took Susan to come to the door seemed like a lifetime.
“Susan,” she said desperately as her sister opened the door, “tell me Lisa’s here. Please tell me she’s here.”
But she could tell by the look in her sister’s eyes that Lisa wasn’t inside. The color drained from Susan’s face.
“She was supposed to be at Kelly Murphy’s,” Cassandra said. “But she’s not there, and there’s nowhere else she could be except—except here.”
“Cassandra,” Susan said, “I talked to Grace before she called you, so I know what she told you. You don’t think …” She let her words trail off.
Cassandra just stood there, unable to think, unable to move.
“We’d better call the police,” Susan said.
And that snapped Cassandra out of her daze. There was something she could do, some action she could take that might help. She dashed into the house and dialed 911.
20
Noises, like buses and motorcycles and horns honking, were penetrating the car’s trunk and the cardboard carton in which Lisa lay on her side with her legs pulled up.
The box was uncomfortable. It was too short for her to stretch out in, and her legs were beginning to ache. Also, every time the car hit a bump, she bounced. The floor of the trunk on which her box rested was hard; her only cushion was a single thickness of cardboard.
She didn’t know why the bad man was doing this to her. When she tried to figure it out, the only conclusion she could come to was that the bad man did bad things and that this was a bad thing. She wasn’t even sure there was a reason. Maybe bad men didn’t need reasons; they just naturally did bad things.
Such thoughts were just confusing her. She was accustomed to having only minimal control of her life. All she had to do was be alive, the world would take care of the rest. Her mom or a teacher or someone would always be there to guide her, to see that she was okay. In a way, that was still her situation, but with one big difference. Instead of her mom or a teacher, the bad man would decide what was going to happen to her. The bad man or the woman helping him.
Shifting her position, Lisa realized that the bottom of the box was damp. For a few moments, she was unable to figure out where the wetness had come from, but then she realized that her panties were moist as well. She had wet her pants. Not much, probably not enough to seep through the box. Still, it seemed absolutely horrible to have wet her pants without even knowing it, and she began to cry, her body shaking as she sobbed.
Mommy, she thought, please help me. Please. Oh, please. But her thoughts weren’t reaching her mother. They were trapped with her in the big cardboard box.
Abruptly, Lisa stopped crying, because the car had just stopped, and so had its motor. The doors opened, then slammed closed, the car shifting as the man and woman got out. Lisa heard the trunk being opened. Bright light shined in through the narrow cracks between the flaps at the top of her box.
“Remember what I said,” the man whispered. “If you yell or try to get out of the box, I’ll kill you. And then I’ll kill your mother.”
The box was lifted from the trunk, and Lisa was being carried. She heard car sounds—engines, doors slamming, brakes squeaking—and then the box was bumped against something, and the noises changed. There were people sounds now, footsteps, a man talking, other people talking, and from somewhere rock music. And there were odors here, too—popcorn giving way to cookies, then something sweet like candy or bubble gum.
“I wonder what the hell they bought,” a man’s voice said, “an assemble-it-yourself piano? The box is big enough.”
Lisa wanted desperately to kick her way out of the box, to tell these people that she was being kidnapped, that they had to save her from the bad man. But she didn’t do it, for she believed the bad man when he said he’d shoot her, even with all these people around. He’d shoot her; then he and the blonde woman would escape and kill her mom.
The sounds and smells of this place were familiar. She was pretty sure that she was in a shopping center, a mall. Which meant that the real world, the normal world, people who could help her, were separated from her by only the thickness of the cardboard. She could tear it with her hands.
Lisa wished the man would accidentally drop the box or that someone would trip him. She’d be thrown out, and it wouldn’t be her fault. The man would have no reason to shoot her or kill her mom. It would be just an accident, not something she did on purpose.
The man stopped and said, “There’s no chance anyone will be down there, is there?”
“I told you, it’s the women’s locker room, and I’m the only woman left on the security staff, and only security guards have lockers.”
A door was opened, and Lisa had to brace herself as the box tilted in one direction, then another. Because the man had used the words “down there,” Lisa knew she was being carried down some stairs. At the bottom, the box was set down a moment; then another door was opened, and the carton was moved again, but only a few feet this time. It was put down again, a door closed, and then the flaps were suddenly opened. The bad man and the woman were looking down at her.
“You can get out of the box,” the man said.
Lisa did so. She was in a large room with cement walls and floor. In places, things like big screws were sticking out of the floor. There were a lot of pipes. Some ran along the ceiling; others stuck up from the floor along the wall. While Lisa had been taking in her surroundings, the woman had left the room. Now she returned with a big wrench in her hand. The man took it from her and began doing something to one of the pipes that stuck out of the floor.
“Okay, that’s got it,” he said after a moment. “When the time comes, all we’ll have to do is turn on the valve.”
The two of them looked at Lisa for a moment; then the woman said, “You’re going to have to stay here. Later on, I’ll bring you something to eat.”
With that, they opened the door and left. Lisa could hear the door being locked from the other side, and then there was only silence. If they were saying anything, the words didn’t penetrate the cement walls or the thick door.
For quite a while, Lisa simply stood there, staring at the cement on which she stood. Although she felt tears welling up, she didn’t cry. She supposed that you could only cry so much, even in a situation like this. After a while, you ran out of tears.
Finally, she began to explore her prison. The door was metal, but when she tapped on it, there was almost no noise, as if the inside of it were made of feathers or something like that. To the left of the door were two light switches. One was already pushed up. She hesitated, knowing switches didn’t always do what you expected them to, but then she flipped up the other one. Above her, more lights came on.
