Under Abduction Read online

  There was a woman two rows down in the parking lot just getting out of a car with her little girl—hardly anyone to come to the rescue, Anna thought—and the people in front of the supermarket were too far away and too distracted to be of any assistance either.

  “Last chance,” the baby-faced man said, and pushed the barrel of the pistol into her stomach. His lips writhed and his eyes were full of purpose. There was no bluff to call here. “Get in,” he ordered and pulled the front of her coat. The loose button popped off.

  Terrified, Anna obeyed and got into the car. He slammed the door closed and got into the front. The female driver accelerated and they pulled out of the parking lot quickly, shooting up the street toward the main highway, New York Route 17.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “Put your hands up here,” he ordered in response. He indicated the back of the seat. “Do it!” he shouted.

  She did so and he quickly wrapped fishing line around her wrists to bind her. It was so tight that if she moved one hand an eighth of an inch, the fishing line cut into her skin. She grimaced and complained.

  “It hurts!”

  “Just for a little while,” he said, smiling.

  Who were these people? What did they want with her?

  She gazed back at the fast-fading sight of the parking lot. The trunk of her leased automobile was still open, and most of her groceries were still in the cart.

  A chill of terror tightened around her waist. It resembled the labor pains she anticipated would come. Her throat tightened, and tears came to her eyes.

  The man turned around.

  “Thank you for being cooperative, Anna,” he said.

  “Yes, thank you,” the female driver parroted.

  As they drove on, Anna was unable to see that they were looking forward with the same ecstatic smile on their faces, each reflecting the other’s overwhelming sense of happiness.

  1

  The abortion clinic was under siege, surrounded. It looked like a scene from a B cowboy-and-Indian movie because it had been constructed about three miles out of the village and back a good five hundred yards from the highway. It resembled a wagon train, isolated, vulnerable, under attack.

  There was a nicely maintained lawn in front of it, a small parking lot behind the wood building, and behind that was a field and woods. The building itself looked nothing like a medical structure. It seemed more like someone’s home, a two-story Colonial revival with a simple entry porch, the whole building in a soft, Wedgwood blue, the windows with curtains and flower boxes. There were two wide redwood chairs and a small redwood settee on the front lawn.

  It was at least a half mile to the next structure in any direction. The clinic had been deliberately placed where there would be a sense of privacy. The patients who came didn’t feel under surveillance. Not until today, that is. Today the clinic was under attack.

  Upwards of fifty members of the militant Shepherds of God surrounded the building and moved in a circle. They wore no special uniforms. Most of them looked like ordinary people, housewives, gentlemen. A few of the men even wore shirts and ties. Some of them waved welded iron crosses, a number of them ominously sharpened at all ends. About a dozen beat on tin drums. Most of the women carried dolls streaked with blood. All chanted, “Murder, murder, murder.”

  Dr. Carla Williams stood inside the front entrance, facing the closed front doors like the palace guard, her arms folded over her bosom. Her two patients, both women in their early twenties, hovered behind her in the lobby. Millie Whittaker, the fifty-two-year-old receptionist, was on the telephone, screaming hysterically at the state police dispatcher. Two nurses lingered in the examination-room doorway. All eyes were on Dr. Williams.

  One of those porcelain dolls streaked with blood came through the front window and shattered on the tile floor, the shards of glass falling in and around it. Everyone except Dr. Williams screamed.

  “Bastards,” she muttered. She was thirty-eight, divorced, the mother of two girls, one ten, the other twelve. Despite her five feet six inches of height and 128 pounds, she presented a formidable appearance: determined, unmoved, resourcefully independent. She had become one of the area’s most well known advocates of women’s rights, appearing at many panel discussions and debates, and often as the guest speaker at dinners. She took on all opponents without discrimination: priests, rabbis, archconservatives, wishy-washy politicians.

  Without warning the fanatical right-to-lifers had descended on her clinic. Usually a demonstration like this came only after bitter charges made in the media, well publicized so they would get more media coverage and attract an audience of sympathizers.

  This morning, however, their cars just suddenly lined the highway and it appeared that more were coming. Carla saw them as moralistic locusts, religious demagogues who would have their way or else.

  Suddenly a storm of rocks penetrated every window in the clinic.

  “Back away!” Carla shouted.

  Her two patients rushed out of the lobby and into the corridor, screaming. The nurses guided them to safer quarters.

  “Where are the police?” Carla shouted.

  “On their way,” Millie cried. She lowered herself as a rock bounced off the counter.

  “Murder, murder, murder…”

  The circle was tightening. Their chanting grew louder. More rocks were thrown. It had the effect of an earthquake shaking the very foundations of the building.

  “They can’t do this to me,” Carla muttered. “This is America.”

  She had defeated a womanizing, degenerate of a husband in court despite his high-priced legal representation; she had built a lucrative practice, and she was successfully raising two children while maintaining an active medical career. A bunch of religious fanatics would not make her back away another inch. She had faced down these people many times before; she would do it again.

  With a surge of courage, she seized the doorknob.

  “Doctor Williams!” one of the nurses called.

  “Stay back,” she said. Carla stepped out on the small porch and the maddening circle slowed its tightening and shrinking. Rocks pelted the sides of the building and some kicked out the jagged pieces of glass that lingered in window frames, but even that came to an end in the face of this unexpected appearance.

  “How dare you do this?” Carla screamed at the distorted faces of rage that faced her. They all looked like they wore the same mask. “There are people in here with families, just like the rest of you, and you are terrifying them and harming them. Where’s your Christianity? You are violating laws, destroying property.”

  Some of the crowd wilted, but others simply stared. Carla walked down the steps and paused on the sidewalk to glare back at the protesters.

  “I want you all off my property this moment, do you hear? Get off!”

  She waved her fist at them.

  “Move away!”

  No one moved. Then the chanting started again, low at first, but building and building in volume and intensity: “Murder, murder, murder…”

  Another rock was thrown and then another pounded the side of the building. One hit the porch floor.

  Deep down in her gut, Carla felt a surge of fear that she hadn’t felt since she was a little girl who had found herself alone on a dark night. All that was primeval in her being, her instinctive alarms, rang. Her organs cringed, her heart contracted, and her blood pounded and rushed from her head.

  She was going to turn, back up, wait for the police, but without warning, seeming coming from the ground itself, one of those sharpened crosses flew into her chest, cracking the bone like brittle candy and slicing her heart in two. The last thing she heard was the distant, far-too-late sound of sirens before crumpling to the walkway, lowering the flag of life on her thirty-eight years, her medical education, her love for her children, her promising future.

  Someone shouted, “Death to Satan!” and the crowd cheered.

  Undaunted, they stood their groun
d and continued to chant, “Murder, murder, murder…” as the police began to arrive and rush from their vehicles: a cavalry that had come far too late to save this wagon train.

  2

  On the muted television screen, the Giants’ offensive line took their positions on the five-yard line. It was third and goal. McShane leaned forward in his desk chair, hovering like some prehistoric man over the campfire. His shoulders were tense, firm, the lines in his face as etched and still as lines cut in granite. Although there was no sound on his nine-inch set because the sheriff didn’t like it, McShane could hear the roar of the crowd in his memory, the excited voices of the commentators, and the recitation of the quarterback before the snap.

  Just as the ball was flicked into the quarterback’s hands, the phone rang. It pierced the moment and the quarterback was sacked.

  McShane groaned. He believed in luck, and especially in the whimsy of chance. If that phone hadn’t started ringing, the quarterback would have gotten off a goal-scoring pass. No question. Now they would probably go for the field goal.

  He seized the telephone receiver, squeezing the neck of it as if he could choke the voice out of the earpiece.

  “McShane,” he growled. Why wasn’t the rest of the world watching the ball game? Why weren’t criminals on a break?

  “This is Harvey Nelson, manager of Van’s Supermarket on Cranshaw.”

  “What can I do for you?” McShane asked, his eyes still glued to the silent set.

  “We got a situation here. Someone left her Honda in the lot with the trunk open and the groceries still in the cart, exposed. One of my clerks found it when he helped someone else with her groceries. I went out there and we found the woman’s pocketbook in the open trunk.”

  “Yeah?” McShane was only half-listening.

  “We searched the pocketbook and found her wallet with her license. I’ve made announcements in the store and no one has responded.”

  “What’s the name on the license?”

  “Anna Gold. From her picture on the license, the clerk recalls her leaving. He didn’t see her reenter the store and no one’s seen her outside. Doesn’t it look like something happened to her?” the manager whined when McShane didn’t react to the news as dramatically as the manager had anticipated. “Why would she leave her car trunk wide open, her pocketbook visible, and groceries still in the cart like that, especially the refrigerated and frozen-food items?”

  “Maybe there was an emergency and someone came to get her and she went home with them,” he guessed. “Or she fainted and someone took her to the hospital.”

  Anything but a reason for him to have to leave, he pleaded with the gods.

  “I didn’t think about the hospital, but I’ve already called her home. We found her checkbook and her telephone number was on the check. All we got is an answering machine.”

  McShane groaned.

  “What’s the address on the license?”

  “It’s different from the address on her checkbook.”

  “You’ve really been looking into that pocketbook,” McShane quipped.

  “Well, it’s…it’s strange, just leaving all your things like that.”

  “All right. Give me the telephone number that’s on the checks.”

  “I said I’ve already tried calling her home.”

  “Just give me the number anyway,” McShane said. “Maybe she wasn’t home yet. Maybe someone else is there by now.”

  There were at least a dozen maybe s that would keep him in his seat in front of the television set. This was an important game and he had put money on the outcome.

  “555-2121.”

  “Okay. I’ll check it out and get back to you,” he said, and cradled the phone just as the kicked ball sailed through the goalposts. They were still behind by four points. “I would have gone for it,” he mumbled. “Everyone plays it safe.”

  For a moment he forgot what he was going to do. Then he dialed the number the supermarket manager had given him.

  An answering machine picked up on the third ring and a sweet little voice asked him to leave name, time of the call, and number. He left nothing and instead pressed the button on his phone for the dispatcher.

  “Mark, get me the Community General Hospital emergency room,” he demanded.

  There was a commercial break as the teams set up for the new kickoff. He drummed his fingers on his knee, impatient. The phone rang.

  “Go ahead,” Mark said.

  “This is Detective McShane with the sheriff’s office. Did you have a recent admittance by the name of Anna Gold by any chance?”

  “No,” the nurse replied. “We’re actually having a quiet day, which everyone around here thinks is ominous.”

  “Right. Okay, thanks,” he said, then replaced the phone and reluctantly got up and turned off the television set.

  “Shit,” he complained to no one in particular, and started out of the sheriff’s station. With the cutbacks in personnel and everyone else out in the field on one assignment or the other, he was the only one available to answer the call. The sheriff was at some meeting at the county office building. He was really the only one manning the fort.

  As he passed Mark Ganner, the dispatcher, McShane lifted his hands in surrender.

  “What’s up, Jimmy?”

  “I’m going over to Van’s Supermarket to check out a deserted bag of groceries.”

  “Sounds like a convenient excuse to run away from an embarrassing loss on the football field,” Mark quipped. “Didn’t you have the Giants and six today?”

  “Don’t remind me,” McShane said, and walked into the dreary overcast early afternoon.

  Despite the gray skies, he slapped on his Ray-Bans before he crunched his six-foot-four-inch, 240-pound body behind the wheel. His sunglasses were tinted and made the dull world around him brighter. Before he put the transmission into drive, he fiddled with the radio dial. Unfortunately, the game was only on an AM station, so the commentator’s remarks were surrounded with static and, at times, were buried in a gruesome interfering hum.

  Just like his whole life, he thought, and accelerated through Main Street toward the shopping market just outside the village.

  Just ahead of him, an ambulance burst out of the building near the firehouse and turned up the street, its siren blaring.

  “I wonder if that has anything to do with this,” McShane mumbled and went faster, but the ambulance turned up the highway toward Port Jervis.

  He shrugged, turned up the game, and continued toward the supermarket, thinking that emergency-room nurse would probably soon be sorry she had opened her mouth.

  3

  When they reached the Quickway entrance, they pulled to the side of the road and came to a stop.

  Anna cringed in anticipation. What now? Other vehicles passed them, the drivers barely glancing their way. Suddenly a state police car rushed by, another right behind it. She thought about screaming but doubted they would hear, and besides, this man might just shoot her. He looked ready to do so back at the supermarket.

  The young man stepped out after the second state police vehicle whipped past. He opened the rear door to slide in beside her. Then he plucked a black bandanna from his jacket pocket and dangled it in front of her.

  “Sorry, but I have to put this on you now, Anna,” he said, and wrapped the blindfold around her eyes, tying it snugly behind her head. She cringed and whimpered and then she sensed him leaning closer and closer until his lips were nearly caressing her earlobe. His hot breath was on her cheek.

  “Nothing to worry about,” he whispered. “God’s in His heaven and all’s well with the world.”

  His lips clicked against her cheek. It felt like he had snapped a rubber band. She pulled away with a gasp and he laughed.

  “Ready?” the woman driver asked.

  “Yes. We’re all set here, aren’t we, Anna?”

  “Please,” she said.

  “It’s all right. Try to relax.”

  His calm ton
e was more unnerving.

  “I know,” he followed. “We’ll sing to pass the time.”

  “Good idea,” the driver said.

  “Ninety-nine baby bottles of milk on the wall, ninety-nine baby bottles of milk. If one of the bottles should happen to fall, ninety-eight baby bottles of milk on the wall.”

  The woman laughed.

  “Come on, Anna,” he urged. “Sing with us. It will pass the time. We have a little distance to go.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “We’re taking you to where you will be safe, and where the baby will be safe and be born,” he replied.

  How did they know she was pregnant? Her mind reeled. There must be a spy or some sort of informer at the clinic. Anna’s sense of betrayal was superseded only by her sense of dread as the strange couple continued their singing.

  “Ninety-eight baby bottles of milk on the wall, ninety-eight baby bottles of milk. If one of the bottles should happen to fall…”

  He poked her in the ribs and she jumped.

  “How many are left, Anna? How many bottles?” He poked her again. It hurt. She started to cry. “Anna?”

  “Ninety-eight,” she said quickly. Anything to get him away from her.

  “No, Anna. Two have fallen. We started with ninety-nine. That leaves ninety-seven,” he said. “If you sing along with us, you’ll get it right the next time.”

  “That’s right,” the driver said.

  “Come on, Anna, sing,” he urged. He put his hand on her knee and squeezed. She tried to move away, but his grip was tight.

  “You’re hurting me,” she complained.

  “Don’t hurt her,” the driver ordered. “If you can help it,” she added. “You know the condition she’s in.”

  “I know.”

  He released Anna’s knee.

  “Sing along, Anna,” he said.

  Anna whimpered.

  What’s happening to me? Who are these people? Did anyone see them take me? she wondered.