Mark Gimenez - The Abduction

So John R. Brice would unplug from his virtual world of cyberspace and computers and code that defined and protected him and venture forth into the real world, untethered to his technology like an astronaut untethered to the mother ship, chasing Ben’s dream and his daughter. And hoping.

For the first time in his life, John Brice would follow his father.

The mansion sat dark and silent, as if in mourning. The FBI had packed up and moved out. Everyone had retired to their respective rooms to consider life without Grace. Everyone except Elizabeth.

She was in the media room watching the late news. A child abductor was dead. He would be buried tomorrow. Life would go on as before. But not Grace’s life. Or her mother’s life.

Her daughter was dead.

Evil had won again.

Mark Gimenez

The Abduction

Ben was lying in bed; the only light was coming from outside. His hands were clasped behind his head and his mind was filled with questions: Why couldn’t Clayton Lee Tucker identify Gracie or the men or the tattoo? Was he really a nutcase? And why was his phone line busy all day and night? Why had the two men taken Gracie to Idaho? And the most troubling question of all for Ben Brice: Had his past come back to haunt Gracie?

The door to the pool house opened, and Kate’s head appeared.

“Ben?”

“Yeah.”

Kate came over and sat on the edge of the bed; she stared at her hands and fiddled with the belt to her bathrobe. He gave her time to work up to what she wanted to say.

“Ben, has there been another woman?”

“No, Kate, just another drink.”

Kate stood, untied her robe, and let it fall to the floor. She pulled back the blanket and lay beside him, resting her head on his chest. Where she would be when he woke the next morning.

Ben Brice opened his eyes not to a dog needing to pee but to his wife sleeping next to him for the first time in five years. The warmth of her skin against his brought a sense of regret to his mind: all the years he had lost with her.

Dawn was near and he needed to leave, but he lay still; he was not yet ready to let go of the moment. When he was young and life hadn’t yet had its way with him, he had let go of such moments freely, assured there would be many more to come; now he held onto each moment for as long as possible. He wrapped his arms around his wife one last time.

Ben recalled the first time Katherine McCullough had lain with him, on 6 June 1968, their wedding night. He was twenty-two and a second lieutenant; she was twenty and a virgin. When she came to him that night and let her gown slip off her shoulders and fall to the floor and stood before him, he knew he would never want another woman.

But life soon had its way with Ben Brice.

She had left him and now he must leave her. He released her and rolled out of bed slowly so as not to wake her. He was dressed and packed when she stirred. He went to her, sat on the edge of the bed, and brushed stray strands of red hair from her face. She opened her eyes and stared into his as if trying to read his mind. Finally, she said, “She really is alive.”

He nodded.

“Why? Why’d they take her?”

Ben broke eye contact. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t you?”

Kate got out of bed, slipped into her robe, and pulled the belt snug around her waist.

“Does this have something to do with that tattoo?”

“You mean with the war?”

“Yes, with that damn war.”

Ben stood and grabbed his duffel bag. “Kate, everything has something to do with that war.”

Elizabeth spat the last of the bile into the toilet and flushed again. The taste burned her throat; the lining was raw from her morning vomits. Still kneeling, she grabbed the bottle of green mouthwash that she now kept by the toilet, took a mouthful, swished it around, and spat it into the toilet. She sank to the floor; the marble was cool on her bare legs. She rested her head on the toilet seat.

When she had woken, her mind had immediately taken advantage of the early morning, when she was most vulnerable, and tortured her again with more gruesome images of her daughter: Grace’s body, dead and decomposing and dumped in a ditch, maggots crawling out of her silent open mouth and over her pale lips, vultures pecking at her blue eyes and rats gnawing on her beautiful face, fighting over her flesh…

She felt her body’s regurgitation process gearing up again.

Seven mornings ago, Elizabeth had gotten dressed in this bathroom in her best closing argument outfit; that day had begun like any other day but had ended with Grace gone from her life. How can that be? How can life turn on us in a split second? How can life be so unfair? Harsh? Cruel? Evil? She had asked herself those same questions ten years ago. She had no answers then; she had no answers now. But back then, she had Grace. Now Grace was gone.

“I’m going.”

John was standing in the doorway. She knew he wanted her to go to him and embrace him and say “I love you” to him. He needed her to, and she wanted to. She tried to push herself up from the floor, but she hadn’t the strength. He started to walk away.

“John, I…”

He turned back. She had never been able to give voice to those words. And she could not now. Evil had taken that kind of love from her life. John walked out of sight.

She leaned over the toilet and vomited again.

Ben and Kate walked out of the pool house to find John standing next to a shiny red Range Rover. He was wearing sneakers, jeans, and an MIT sweatshirt. He appeared not a day older than the day he had left for college.

“I’m going with you, Ben.”

Ben reached out and squeezed his son’s shoulder. “I understand your wanting to, son, but this isn’t your kind of work.”

Ben turned away, but John grabbed his arm. “I know that, Ben. This is man’s work, and I’m not much of a man. But Gracie’s my daughter. And if she is alive, I want her back.”

Ben started to order John to stay home, but he saw in John’s eyes the same truth he felt in his heart: finding Gracie was life or death, for her and for him.

“All right, son. We’ll do this together.”

Ben walked around to the passenger side of the vehicle. Kate went to John and embraced him. “Be careful,” she said. Then, in a lower voice she must have thought Ben couldn’t hear, she said, “Do exactly what Ben tells you to do, and we might get Gracie back. This is what he knows.”

The landscape below was bleak and endless. It was Thursday and they were somewhere over West Texas. The plan was to fly to Albuquerque, drive to Ben’s cabin outside Taos, pick up his gear-the kind you can’t take on a plane, he had said-and drive nonstop to Idaho Falls to talk to Clayton Lee Tucker, the last person who had seen Gracie alive.

Ben’s hands were folded in his lap, his eyes were closed, and his breathing was steady and slow. The flight attendant raised her eyebrows at John when Ben failed to respond to her offer of coffee, tea, or juice.

“Coffee, black, for both of us,” John said to her.

He lowered Ben’s tray then his. The flight attendant placed cups of coffee on their trays. John drank his coffee, assuming they would fly in silence; but Ben opened his eyes and spoke.

“Thanks for letting Gracie visit me. She told me Elizabeth was against it but you stood up to her.”

It was, in fact, the only time John R. Brice had ever stood up to his wife.

“Last time I saw her,” Ben said, “we drove down to Santa Fe to deliver a table. When we got there, I took the table into the gallery. She stayed outside to check out the Indians selling their products on the Plaza. When I came back out, she was on the other side standing next to this old Navajo like they’re best friends.” A slight smile. “She was wearing a tribal headdress. She smiled and waved at me. I’ll never forget her face that day.” Ben turned to John; his eyes were wet. “Do you remember the last time you saw her face?”