Under Abduction Read online

  All of it accumulated until one day she turned on him and read off the bill of complaint.

  “If I wanted to be a spinster,” she concluded, “I wouldn’t have gotten married.”

  He admitted to the errors and promised to reform, but after a week of reliability, he fell into his old habits. One night she was waiting up for him when he returned from his spontaneously arranged poker game at the firehouse. Before he could begin to apologize, she gave him a choice: You move out or I move out.

  He pleaded again, making essentially the same promises, and the next day she moved out.

  Feeling guilty about that, he moved out too, and she moved back in. Now he either got the answering machine or was told to speak to her attorney.

  His mother-in-law and his mother said the same thing: “At least there are no children to suffer through this, as there are with so many couples who break up.”

  Some compensation, he thought.

  He felt like someone who had just stepped off a merry-go-round: He was still spinning and finding it impossible to understand how he got so dizzy. How did this happen? he wondered. How does it happen that you fall in love with someone, want to spend the rest of your life with her, and then mess up the relationship so badly, she can’t take the idea of spending one more day in the same house with you? How do you hold someone and tell her how much you love her and do everything intimate two people can do with each other and then become strangers?

  It was a puzzle too hard to solve right now, and anyway, once again, he was being distracted and finding a reason not to deal with the problem.

  As he started down the fieldstone walkway toward the front steps, he thought he saw a curtain move in one of the front windows. The steps of the short stairway creaked under his weight, and the floorboards on the porch sounded loose beneath his feet. There was a screen door peppered with small holes. He opened that door first, found no buzzer, and knocked softly with his closed fist. He was greeted with silence, waited, and then knocked again, harder, using his knuckles. A moment later the door was opened by a tall woman who looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. She had long ebony hair that lay a few inches below her shoulders. She wore a very plain-looking blue-and-white pattern one-piece dress, no jewelry, not even a watch. When she drew closer, he saw she had almond-shaped gray eyes, a dark complexion, and a soft mouth with the lower lip just a bit puffy. Her chin was small and graceful, and her nose was straight but just a trifle pointed.

  But it was her eyes that held McShane’s attention. It was like looking into the tips of two candles, mesmerizing, warm and yet somehow sad.

  “Yes?” she said. He held up his ID. Without a porch light or a light inside the house, he imagined it was difficult if not impossible for her to read.

  “My name’s McShane. I’m a police detective with the sheriff’s department. Is this the home of”—he checked his notepad quickly—“Harry Gold?”

  “Yes. What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice filling with anxiety.

  “Do you have a relative named Anna Gold?”

  “She’s my…she’s my sister,” she said, and lowered her eyes quickly. “What’s wrong?”

  “Can I talk to you and your father about her?” he asked.

  “What did she do?”

  “I’d like to come in and talk about her,” he replied.

  “Who is it?” a deep voice called from a room behind her.

  “It’s a policeman, Papa.”

  “A policeman?”

  McShane inched forward as a man in a wheelchair rolled himself into the hallway. A small flicker of illumination cast a yellow glow over his white shirt and graying black beard. Even in a wheelchair, Harry Gold looked formidable. He had shoulders as wide and as thick as McShane’s and was obviously close in height. He rolled himself beside his daughter.

  “What is it you want?” he asked.

  “I’ve come to talk about an Anna Gold. She’s apparently missing, perhaps abducted,” McShane blurted. Sometimes, hitting people with the hard news quickly was the best way, he thought, especially when there is some reluctance on their part to speak with you.

  The tall woman gasped and brought her closed right hand to her lips, but Harry Gold barely blinked.

  “She was abducted some time ago,” he said, nodding.

  “What?”

  “She was taken almost a year ago.”

  “I don’t understand,” McShane said, directing himself more to the woman.

  “She left us—left our faith and our ways,” she explained.

  “Has she called here during the last five or six hours?” he asked.

  “She doesn’t call here anymore,” Harry replied quickly, firmly.

  “Well, her car was found open in a supermarket parking lot with her cart of groceries beside it. No one’s been able to locate her. She hasn’t returned to her apartment, nor has she been taken to the hospital. I’m afraid it looks very suspicious,” McShane explained.

  The tall, dark-haired young woman gasped.

  “I need information,” McShane followed.

  “It’s time for Havdalah,” Harry Gold said.

  “Pardon?”

  “The conclusion of the Sabbath,” the tall woman explained.

  “Invite him,” Harry said, turning his wheelchair.

  “Would you like to come in?”

  “Sure,” McShane said. She stepped back and he entered.

  “My name is Miriam,” she said, closing the door. He walked beside her as they followed the wheelchair down the corridor to a room on the right in which a large candle with several braided wicks burned in a silver candleholder. It was placed at the center of the dining room table.

  “What’s this all about?” McShane asked as Harry Gold wheeled himself to the head of the table. She smiled.

  “We’re ending the Sabbath with this ceremony. During the Sabbath, we do not turn on any lights or burn any candles. This is the Havdalah candle. It symbolizes, as the first act of the new week, the first act of creation which marked the first day of the week when God said, ‘Let there be light.’”

  “Oh,” McShane said, nodding.

  “Miriam,” Harry said.

  “Please, have a seat,” she told McShane, and she moved to take the candle from the holder. McShane went to the chair beside her and sat.

  “Pour him a glass of wine, Miriam.”

  “Oh. Yes,” she said, and from a silver wine bottle she poured another glass of wine and gave it to McShane.

  Harry raised his cup of wine in his right hand. McShane followed suit and watched as Harry Gold recited the prayer.

  “For our guest, I will translate,” he added.“Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who creates the fruit of the vine.”

  He sipped and so did McShane. Then Harry picked up a small silver box. Harry recited another prayer in Hebrew and translated.

  “Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who creates diverse spices.”

  He sniffed it and passed it to Miriam, who sniffed it and passed it to McShane. His eyes widened.

  “This is known as a b’samim box. It contains sweet spices that we regard as a delight for the soul, rather than for the body. In some small way it makes up for the loss of the additional soul which takes leave at the end of the Sabbath, and for the loss of spiritual strength,” she explained.

  McShane nodded and sniffed.

  Harry then turned back to the candle and recited another blessing, after which he picked up the cup of wine and recited a longer prayer.

  After he concluded, Miriam went to the wall switch and turned on the small chandelier.

  “Thank you for being patient,” Harry Gold said.

  “No problem,” McShane said. “Kind of interesting too.”

  Harry smiled and nodded.

  “God said, ‘A precious jewel have I in My possession, which I wish to give to Israel, and Sabbath is its name.’”

  “Yeah, I understand,” McShane said q
uickly.

  “Do you?” Harry followed. He smiled again. “Now, that is kind of interesting. My daughter Anna didn’t.”

  McShane nodded.

  “It does look like something might have happened to your daughter, Mr. Gold.”

  “I have no doubt in my mind that something happened to my daughter, Mr. McShane. I have already spent nearly a year in mourning.”

  “Mourning?”

  “She left us—died to us.”

  “You mean you haven’t spoken to her since she left?” McShane asked, looking at Miriam. She lowered her eyes again.

  “Not a word,” Harry replied. He looked at Miriam. “Isn’t that right, Miriam?”

  “Yes, Papa,” she said, but McShane had an instinctive sense that she was lying.

  “So you can’t tell me who her friends are, who she might be seeing, if she has any enemies, voiced any fears…?”

  “No, nothing,” Harry said. “Right after my wife died, Anna became rebellious. She stopped her prayers, refused to follow the kosher laws, neglected the Sabbath, and spent more and more time with people outside of our faith. One day she came to tell me she had gotten a job with the government and would be moving out of our home. We had words and she left.”

  McShane nodded.

  “What is your health problem, if I might ask?”

  “I had an operation on my foot last week. It isn’t anything terribly serious. I was in and out in two days, but I have to stay off the foot for six weeks.”

  “What do you do, Mr. Gold?”

  “Now I don’t do much. I was a busy mason once. I built many of the walls and fireplaces in the area. My work is well known,” he said.

  McShane looked at Miriam.

  “Miriam keeps my home and waits for the right man to come along,” he added.

  “Stop, Papa.”

  “She’s shy, but you know what, Mr. McShane? Shy is good. Look at Anna: She was far from shy, and now you’ve come to tell me something might have happened to her. The day she left, I felt the Angel of Death fly over my house. I saw his shadow behind her.”

  “Papa!”

  “I’ve said it before,” he snapped. “She delivered herself into some evil.”

  “You have no idea what?”

  “Nothing specific,” Harry said. His voice was full of bitterness. “Don’t criticize me for being angry about it,” he added quickly, his eyes fixed on McShane. “Anger keeps me from crying.”

  McShane nodded and rose.

  “Thank you for including me in your Sabbath service,” he said. “If I learn anything, I’ll call. I’d like to call if I have any questions whose answers might help.”

  Harry nodded but looked away. McShane turned to Miriam, who quickly shifted her eyes from her father to him.

  “I’ll see you out, Detective,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  He walked out with Miriam just a step behind him. She flipped on the porch light. At the door he turned.

  “You’ve spoken to her since, haven’t you?”

  She looked back and stepped out on the porch, closing the door softly behind her. He hadn’t noticed it as much before because of the darkness and the shadows, but he thought she was very attractive and, despite the simple, loosely fitted dress, a woman with a full figure. She had a rich, soft complexion, and those gray eyes put a tingle in his blood and made his heart beat just a little faster. He tried not to look obvious about it, and she did indeed seem oblivious to the signals she unintentionally sent and was just as oblivious to his response. He felt an almost childish simplicity about her, an innocence that was as refreshing and surprising as a cold glass of spring water.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “We’ve spoken. She told me she had a boyfriend, but he was married. She said he was seriously considering leaving his wife for her. I told her men make false promises sometimes to get what they want.”

  McShane widened his eyes and Miriam blushed.

  “It’s something my mother always told me and something I have read. It’s not something I’ve learned from personal experience.”

  “You’re right. It happens,” McShane said.

  “Anyway, Anna assured me it wasn’t a false promise. She was so certain. I kept asking her, How do you know? What makes you think it will happen? Why are you so sure? She was quiet and then she said…”

  “What?”

  Miriam took a deep breath.

  “If my father knew, he would say Kaddish again,” she replied.

  “Kaddish?”

  “The prayer for the dead.”

  “Knew what?”

  “She told me she was pregnant with his child. I was shocked, of course, and then I told her it was wrong to break up someone’s marriage that way, and she became angry at me. That was why we haven’t spoken since, I think. She knew I wasn’t sympathetic.”

  “Did she give you any names?”

  “No, but I thought it was someone she saw often. She seemed to be seeing him every day.”

  “Pregnant, huh? How pregnant was she?”

  “When I spoke last to her, she had just found out. I don’t think she was quite two months.”

  He thought a moment.

  “When was the last conversation?”

  “Seven, maybe eight days ago. She would call the house. If my father was home, I would pretend it was the wrong number and then I would go shopping and call her from a pay phone. What do you think has happened to her?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I first have to establish she is truly missing.”

  “Even with her car and groceries left like that in the parking lot?” Miriam asked.

  “Yeah, it suggests trouble, of course, but people do strange things. Some guy recently got out of his car in the middle of Main Street in Liberty and walked away, leaving the car running. He just lost it. Maybe all that was happening to her just got to her and she ran off. She ran from here,” he added, looking at the house.

  Miriam bit down on her lower lip. There were tears in her eyes as she nodded her head gently. He felt like taking her into his arms to comfort her.

  “I’m not saying that’s definitely it. I’ve got to get into this more.”

  She nodded.

  He thought again for a moment and then reached into his jacket pocket to take out the button he had found near Anna Gold’s car in the supermarket parking lot.

  “Does this look familiar?”

  Miriam took it and studied it.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ve sewn buttons back on her clothing ever since…our mother passed away. This looks like a button on her blue overcoat.”

  He took it back.

  “All right.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I found it by her car.”

  “Someone ripped it off?” she asked, her eyes wide with fear.

  “I don’t know. Could be,” he admitted. “It does make it look more like she was forcibly abducted.”

  “My God, what happened to her?”

  “I’m going to do my best to find out,” he said. “If you hear from her or remember anything else that might help, call me,” McShane added and handed her one of his cards. “I’ll call you as soon as I learn anything concrete.”

  “Thank you.” She raised her eyes and they looked at each other quietly for a moment. “Have a good week,” she said. He understood it was what was always said at the conclusion of the Sabbath.

  “You too.”

  She nodded and went back into the house, closing the door softly behind her. He stood there a moment and then hurried down the steps and to his car.

  Another light went on in the house. Miriam went to a window to close the curtain. He watched her. She paused to look out at him and then the curtain closed.

  Her eyes continued to burn in his mind like two Sabbath candles.

  What the hell am I doing, sitting here and thinking about another woman? he wondered. I’ve been separated only a few weeks.

  Or maybe Cookie was right. May
be they had been separated longer than he had realized.

  Life was too complicated for the living, he concluded, and drove off to ponder the things he had learned.

  9

  The door was unlocked again and the young man who called himself Daddy entered. He wore only a bathrobe and a pair of slippers himself. His hair was wet, suggesting he had just come from a shower. He glanced at the television set, which was now a screen of snow, the audio just static since the tape had ended. Then he looked at Anna and smiled because she was sitting on the bed, staring at the set as if something were still being played.

  He didn’t realize it, but like a small, terrified animal, Anna had burrowed deeply within herself and had shrunken into a tiny, tight ball. Her body had become merely a shell, so that her eyes no longer saw, her ears no longer heard. She had anesthetized herself to shut off the pain.

  The young man stared at her a moment longer and then turned off the television set.

  Anna blinked but said nothing.

  “I don’t think you’re ready to take the test yet, are you, Anna?” he asked her.

  She blinked, but said nothing.

  The young man shook his head.

  “Mommy sent me down with it,” he said, waving a paper. Anna stared blankly and made no response. He shook his head. “She’s not going to like this. She has no patience for this sort of behavior, Anna. Mommy thinks you’re being cooperative. I would hate to go up and tell her you weren’t. Anna?”

  Anna blinked a bit faster but said nothing.

  He approached her and looked into her face as if he were looking through a small window at the outside world. Then he went to the door and locked it. He stood there a moment.

  “I’ll help you answer the questions this time, Anna, but I won’t next time,” he warned in a loud whisper. “If Mommy knew I was helping you, she would be madder at me than she would be at you, and one thing I can’t stand is Mommy being mad at me.”

  He put the paper on her lap. When he smoothed it out, the palm of his hand lingered between her legs. Her blinking increased. He smiled and produced a pen. Tilting his head to read, he recited the first question.

  “Number one, once the egg is fertilized with the sperm, how long does it take before the egg begins to divide into cells and embeds itself in the wall of the uterus?” He paused and waited. Then he smiled as if he had heard her reply. “That’s right, Anna. Good,” he said, and made a mark on the paper. He tilted his head and read again.