Christopher Sorrentino - Trance

Letters and cards arrive daily sacks of correspondence expressing condolences wishing the family well.

The girl who one year ago on February 4 was taken violently from her home the home she shared with her fiancé.

Now she stands accused she has been accused of participating in numerous unlawful activities with these same captors the same people who violently wrenched her from her home she shared with her fiancè. Who would have predicted these this turn of events a year a long year ago.

She was to have been married in June.

And we can only speculate as to the reason why Mr. Thomas Polhaus has arrived here in the beautiful town of Hillsborough¬ at Galton Manor¬ as he has countless times before¬ since this tragedy began to unfold, a little under a year ago¬ special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation¬ which has devoted countless man-hours to investigating this one single case. Special Agent Polhaus heading up this case, the investigation of this case, he himself has put in countless hours sifting through leads and whatever this breaking news is that he may be bringing he is keeping to himself, now entering the elegant home that few of few members of the press have seen the inside of¬ despite our grim vigil here on the lawn the green lawn¬ so well groomed it would seem nigh impossible that such a lawn¬ not to mention the elegant manor house it surrounds, could be touched by terrible tragedy¬ tragedy that goes to the heart of the fears of the parents of every youngster in these confusing times, keeping the news to himself at this time, until he shares it with the anxious parents¬ Mr. and Mrs. Galton Lydia Galton quite a beauty in her day¬ but now under visible visibly under strain.

Gracious folks¬ very gracious¬ tolerating the presence of the members of the press here on the great lawn before Galton Castle, as they keep we keep our vigil a job to do and we do it as Mr. and Mrs. Galton well understand what with given their historic connection to the newspaper business among other among vast among many other holdings, including television and radio stations¬ magazines¬ mines, real estate including working farms and ranches, and stock in many of our nation’s largest corporations. One of the wealthiest families among the wealthiest one of the first families of the United States. And Mr. and Mrs. Galton will as they always have share whatever news Mr. Thomas Polhaus brings in their own at whatever time they deem appropriate which is the least which is the most which is all we can ask of them at this difficult and tragic time.

ACHILLY GRAY MORNING, not much sunlight at all, and the young woman fumbles as she affixes a flashbar to the bulky Polaroid camera she holds in her left hand. She is here, alone, outside a coffee shop at the Arden Plaza shopping center, in an unincorporated area of North Sacramento, preparing to photograph the Guild Savings and Loan Association, which sits bland and blameless across a painted grid of empty parking spaces. A sheriff’s department cruiser glides slowly through the lot. A good time to put the camera away and study the newspaper headlines framed in the vending machines lined up outside the coffee shop.

Lies come to her, arrive smoothly and without delay, and she selects one about waiting to meet a girlfriend here, about not wanting to go inside and start eating without her. It strikes her as the most unverifiably credible. But the cruiser, one of a total of five on patrol at any given time, exits the shopping center without stopping and drives away. She pulls a memo pad and pen out of her shoulder bag and notes the time.

Several newspapers mention her name in their headlines. It seems it’s been a year to the day since she was kidnapped. She gazes at a picture of herself in blank astonishment. Like, she can’t relate. In it, she is captured midstride as she approaches the photographer, feathered hair bouncing and haloed bright in the sun. She wears a clingy knit wraparound dress — the sort of thing her mother would have bought her — that hangs funny on her and makes her look fat, she thinks. Her full face is creased in a phony smile that makes her cringe now. The picture has been cropped so that her left arm extends, unseen, beyond its right margin, and she remembers that in the vanished portion of the photograph Eric Stump had walked at her side, gripping her hand, looking goofy and uncomfortable in blazer and loud patterned tie. The newspaper has apparently decided that he is of no importance; on that point she and it are in agreement.

That was the day they’d had their engagement photos taken, suffering through eight or ten rolls of film as the photographer, a fussy little man who’d driven up the hill from Burlingame, bitchily exhorted her to stop slumping and hunching. Their dead eyes above those castor-oil smiles. Eric laid his hands on her tentatively, and even now she could feel herself pulling away, caving into herself at his unsure touch. In the library she posed sitting on a straight chair while he stood behind her, his crotch, unfamiliarly sleek in pressed gray flannels, pushing hotly into her upper arm. But his hand gripped her shoulder as if it were a dirty diaper. And his face, don’t even ask. Sit up straight, honey. And smile.

Her dad holding the toothbrush to his upper lip. Her mother peering up from the books of silverware patterns she studied at the dining table. “Knock it off, Hank. You’re not a bit funny.” As far as her mother was concerned, she literally could not be bothered. If this unfortunate union had any chance of being transformed into something plausible, it would require her fullest attention to these crucial details.

Through the plate glass window, she sees the same cropped photo repeated inside the coffee shop, where several patrons gaze at copies of the paper as they eat breakfast, but she feels little concern that she will be recognized. She is well disguised today, in a red wig and blue-framed eyeglasses, with freckles dotted carefully on her nose and cheeks. In her purse is a valid driver’s license in the name of Sue Louise Gold and a Sacramento City College ID in the name of Sue Louise Hendricks, her “married name,” though Teko had urged her to select the name Anderson. For the initials, ha. Also, there’s a Colt Python, a weapon she disfavors because of its uncomfortably flared wooden grips. She feels loose-limbed, springy, ready for work. She moves out from under the overhang that shelters the shopping center walkway, standing beneath a decorative Tudor arch of tan stucco as she removes the Polaroid from the shoulder bag and lifts it to her face to snap photos of the bank, GUILD SAVINGS / G/S / INSURED SAVINGS, can’t miss it. Then she strolls over to have a look through the windows. It’s dark inside, a little over an hour to go before the place opens.

In the dimness, she sees the usual long wooden counter with several open tellers’ stations, the usual freestanding metal posts, velour ropes suspended between them, set at intervals on the carpet, the usual desks off to the side, and the usual carrels, or whatever you call them, with chained ballpoints and pigeonholes for deposit and withdrawal slips and a little placard indicating the date, which she notices has already been set to February 4, 1975. In the memo pad she makes a rough sketch of the bank’s interior: a rectangle, three circles, and a squiggly line.

Also, there’s an arrowed sign in the rear, softly glowing red in the darkness high up on the wall. Somewhere back thataway is the exit Yolanda spoke of, the “perfect” exit letting out into an alley behind the shopping center, from which a pedestrian walkway doglegs over to Venus Drive. She notes the location of the sign on her crude floor plan and the direction in which the arrow points. She walks around the periphery of the center, taking her time, trying to look as if she were just the sort of person who might want to take pictures of the ass end of a shopping center, for artistic purposes.