In the bathroom, she found the shower stall dry. She fingered the towels on the racks. They were dry, too.
Into the kitchen, where a few plates soaked in the kitchen sink under a lacy film of liquid soap. Dinner dishes, streaked with tomato sauce and spotted with the remnants of salad greens. No cereal bowl, no spoon.
Den, balcony, hall closet-nothing. No signs of intrusion or disturbance, no furniture or valuables missing, and no Erin anywhere.
She’d left no note, and the only messages on her answering machine were from Marie at the clinic, asking Erin where she was.
Still no answer to that question, and now Annie was finding it harder to shake the cold fear that clutched the base of her spine.
Erin had to be all right. Annie simply wouldn’t permit her to be injured or sick or-worse.
“It’s not allowed,” Annie said softly, as if in challenge to the empty rooms around her. “You hear me, Erin? You’re not allowed to be in any trouble.”
There was still the parking lot to check. Annie locked the apartment and descended to ground level.
At the side of the building, under one of the carports, she found Erin’s assigned parking space. Empty.
The Taurus was gone. Erin had left.
In the strong sunlight Annie stood unmoving, oblivious of heat and glare, thinking hard.
The bed had been slept in, and her purse taken. Presumably, Erin had gone to work as usual.
But why had she been in such a hurry? Why hadn’t she found time to shower, eat breakfast, make the bed, even switch off the radio?
There was another possibility. Suppose a patient had phoned her in the middle of the night with an urgent problem. It happened. Erin would have gone to her office for an unscheduled session. That scenario would fit the facts quite well.
But where was she now?
Had she been in an accident on the way to or from the office? Jumped by a mugger? Attacked by her own patient?
Crazy, she thought as she went back inside the building. Just crazy to think that way.
Mrs. Williams was off the phone by now. She rose from behind her desk, uttering the first syllable of a welcome. The greeting died when she saw Annie’s face.
“Miss Reilly. What’s the matter? Nothing’s wrong, is it?”
Reflexively, Annie smiled. She wondered why her mouth would do that when she knew of no reason to be cheerful.
“Oh, no,” she said in a light tone that matched her careless grin, “nothing’s wrong, except Erin’s sort of hard to find today.”
“Hard to find?”
“You haven’t seen her, have you?”
“Why, no.”
“Her car’s not around. She’s not at work. It’s funny, isn’t it?”
Annie knew it wasn’t funny, but she couldn’t erase the witless smile of denial from her face.
Mrs. Williams seemed to see beneath that smile. “Maybe you ought to telephone the police.”
“The police. What for?”
“See if there’s been any problem. A traffic problem. You know.”
Accident, she meant to say, but couldn’t. Annie nodded. “Yes. I guess I should do that.”
Mrs. Williams took out a phone book and found the number of the police department’s Traffic Enforcement Division. Annie was about to dial when she realized she couldn’t remember Erin’s license plate.
“We have it on file,” Mrs. Williams said, opening a cabinet drawer. “Have to ensure that our tenants park in their reserved spaces.”
Annie reached a traffic-division sergeant, who took down the car’s make, model, and license number, then put her on hold. She waited through an interval of silence, shifting her weight and wishing she could make her damn mouth shed its idiot grin.
You are no good in a crisis, Annie, no good at all.
If this was a crisis. But it wasn’t; it couldn’t be.
In her mind she heard the sergeant’s voice, oddly tentative. Ms. Reilly? I’m sorry, ma’am, but your sister was in a crash earlier today… Hit by an oncoming truck, a Mack truck, big one… She’s dead, ma ‘am.
She’s in a coma, ma’am.
She’s paralyzed, a quadriplegic.
She’s -
“Hello?” The sergeant again. The real sergeant, not her fantasy tormentor.
“Yes?” Fear throbbed in her chest, and she felt the spiraling onset of light-headedness.
“I’ve checked. There’s no report of any accident involving the vehicle you described.”
Annie put out her free hand to grip the edge of Mrs. Williams’s desk. “I see. Well… that’s good, isn’t it?”
“Ma’am?”
“But then-where is she?”
The sergeant cleared his throat. “Excuse me?”
Annie blinked. “Nothing. I just… nothing. Thank you very much for your help.”
Her fingers continued to grip the handset even after she had set it down in its cradle.
Mrs. Williams regarded her with worried eyes. “No traffic accident?”
“No.”
“I’m glad to hear that, at least.”
“Yes. So am I.”
“Do you have any idea… I mean… Has your sister ever disappeared before?”
“She hasn’t disappeared,” Annie snapped.
Mrs. Williams said nothing.
Annie lowered her head, bit her lip. Her knees were trembling.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “I guess… I guess she has.”
16
“Anybody there? Can anybody hear me?”
Fists hammering the cellar door. Shock waves of sound echoing in the room.
“If you hear me, please answer! Please! ”
Nothing.
Exhausted, Erin turned away from the door and slumped against the wall.
She had expected no response. Her abductor was too smart to hide her in a place frequented by other people. She doubted there was another habitation within a mile of this one.
Still, there was always a chance someone would pass by, near enough to hear her-a mailman on a rural route, a child playing in a forbidden yard, a gas-company meter reader. Anyone.
That was why, several times since waking, she had battered at the door and strained her voice in futile cries.
She assumed it was now noon or shortly after; without a wristwatch or other timepiece, she could judge time only by her schedule of meals. She’d already eaten breakfast-a banana and an orange, accompanied by her next-to- last Tegretol, washed down with lukewarm water from the sillcock-and she was beginning to think about lunch.
The rest of her morning had been spent keeping busy. The dirt and mildew in the room had offended her; she’d set to work with paper towels, scrubbing and cleaning, until the worst of the grime was gone. Next she’d organized the contents of her suitcase, straightened and smoothed the futon’s cotton blanket, dusted the chairs.
