Parents huddled in small groups and held their children close, evident on their faces that fear peculiar to parents, the fear that their children might be taken in the night. Ben had seen that fear before.
Making themselves at home on the sidewalks and lawns were grungy (a word Gracie had taught him) cameramen wearing sunglasses and baseball caps on backward. They lounged in lawn chairs, drank coffee, complained about the early morning assignment, and offered expert opinions: “It’ll be someone in the family. Always is.”
This was their kidnapping now. Gracie Ann Brice was news.
And the world waited for news outside her home where a dozen TV cameras sat fixed on tripods and aimed at Six Magnolia Lane, a three-story French chateau-style mansion that looked more like a hotel than a home. Gracie hadn’t exaggerated: it was a really big house.
Ben started up the long walkway leading to the front door but paused to listen to a lone reporter speaking into a camera: “Gracie played in a soccer game here in Post Oak late yesterday, went to the concession stand, and hasn’t been seen since. Her parents are praying that Gracie was taken for ransom, that money can save their daughter. Only fourteen hours since her abduction and a massive effort is already underway to find Gracie and the man who took her. The FBI is setting up a command post, local police are organizing search parties, and at the park where Gracie was taken, bloodhounds will soon be combing the woods…”
Ben continued to the porch. Written in colored chalk on the gray slate steps, in a child’s hand, were the words WE LOVE YOU, GRACIE. The words had the same physical effect on Ben as his morning run: he stepped to the side of the porch and puked behind a low bush. He wiped his mouth with a red handkerchief, and then he rang the doorbell.
Inside the residence the doorbell could not be heard over the ringing phones and blaring TVs and cops hustling about and FBI agents shouting into cell phones and a little boy running around in a Boston Red Sox baseball uniform, pointing a finger-gun at everyone, and yelling “Stick ‘em up!”
Walking calmly amid the chaos down the wide gallery that stretched the width of the mansion was a tall black man. FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux was wearing black cowboy boots, blue jeans, a gold badge clipped to a wide black belt, a semi-automatic pistol in a belt holster, a blue nylon jacket with FBI stenciled in gold letters across the back, and an FBI cap. Devereaux was the lead FBI agent on the Gracie Ann Brice abduction. Searching for abducted children had been his life for the past ten years.
The heels of his 14EE boots resounded under his considerable weight with each step on the immaculate hardwood floor as he passed fine art on the wainscoted walls and furniture that looked like it would break if you even leaned on the damn stuff. Walking beside him was Special Agent Floyd, an index finger pointing up like he was gauging the wind.
“Is that the damnedest thing you’ve ever seen?”
Painted on the high-arched ceiling over the gallery was a mural depicting an old-time French street scene with shops, pedestrians, horses, and carriages; the street continued to the foyer where it merged into a village square. A similar street scene entered from the gallery ceiling over the east wing of the residence. It was in fact the damnedest thing Eugene Devereaux had ever seen.
“You ever work an abduction where the victim lived in a place like this?” Floyd asked.
Devereaux’s line of work did not bring him into homes like this. The typical abduction victim’s home was on wheels or in a run-down apartment complex or a cheap rent house; it was not a mansion with fine art on the walls and French murals on the ceiling.
“Nope. Rich girls don’t get abducted by strangers.”
Devereaux was an abduction specialist with the Bureau based out of the Houston field office; he investigated only abductions of children by strangers. Gracie Ann Brice was his eleventh this year and it was only early April.
He stopped. On the wall hung a formal family portrait illuminated from above by a spotlight; the parents and the boy were dressed in black, the victim in white. Her blonde hair was a stark contrast to the others’ black hair. She looked like a sweet kid. On a small table below sat a copy of Fortune magazine with the father’s face on the cover under The Next Bill Gates? Devereaux picked up the magazine and flipped it open to the feature article about the father. The same family portrait filled an entire page of the magazine-for all the world to see. All the world knew that John Brice was about to be very rich and had a wife named Elizabeth, a son named Sam, and a young daughter named Gracie.
Devereaux replaced the magazine and said, “Maybe this really is a ransom grab.”
He hoped it was. A ransom grab was the only real chance the girl was still alive: you don’t ransom a dead girl.
“The father,” Floyd said, “he’s a basket case. I don’t think he’s up to taking the call, if there is a call. We may need to go with the mother… defense lawyer, white-collar perps.”
From down the hall, Devereaux heard a voice, female and firm: “Hilda, your only job is Sam.”
The victim’s mother-forty, slim build, intense expression-appeared at the far end of the gallery, marching toward them with an entourage trying to keep pace: the family nanny, a young Hispanic female; an older white female of Eastern European descent in a maid’s uniform; and a local cop, young, flattop, muscular, wearing an expression that said he would rather be in a shootout with a Mexican drug cartel than taking orders from the mother. She was dressed for the office, looking impeccable in a tailored suit and heels. Her hair was done, and her makeup was in place. She was a woman you would notice on the street. Her finger was punching holes in the air.
“Find him, feed him, follow him. Don’t let him out of this house or your sight. Comprende? ”
“ Si, senora.” The Hispanic woman exited the entourage.
The mother, to the maid: “Sylvia, call the caterer. They can’t find my daughter on empty stomachs.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She was off before the words had died.
To the officer: “Get those people off my front lawn.”
“I’ll try, Mrs. Brice, but-”
“No buts. Do it. Shoot them if you have to.”
“Uh, yes, ma’am.” The young officer was no match for the mother; he surrendered, shaking his head.
As the mother came closer, Devereaux noticed her eyes, alert and focused, not the vacant, lost eyes he was accustomed to seeing on mothers of abducted children. Devereaux gave her a sincere nod-“ma’am”-as she passed him in the foyer. The morning after her daughter’s abduction and she was dressed for court and in control, barking out orders. Devereaux knew that this was her way of coping, acting as if she were still in control of her life. Of course, she wasn’t; her daughter’s life-and so her life-was now controlled by the abductor.
“She’s one tough broad,” Floyd said.
“She’ll need to be,” Devereaux said, “if the girl wasn’t taken for ransom.”
God, please let it be ransom.
Alone for the moment, Elizabeth Brice paused, leaned her head against the gallery wall, and closed her eyes. Her adrenaline was pumping at a verdict’s-about-to-be-read velocity, but she had no place to go this day, no guilty defendant’s case to plead, no prosecution witness to brutally cross-examine, no closing argument about truth and justice to make to a jury of good and gullible citizens. Nothing to do but pace the house and hope and pray. That morning, in the shower, she had said her first prayer in thirty years.
God, please let it be ransom.
She inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. Her heart was beating like she had just put in an hour on the StairMaster. Her disciplined body had surrendered to fear, just as her equally disciplined mind had to anarchy, a mob of thoughts running wild through her head: Where was Grace? Was she dead? Was she alive? Who had her? What had he done to her? Did he want money? Why hadn’t a ransom call come yet? Did the FBI know what they were doing? Would she ever come home? Why me? Why my child? How could John have let someone take her? How?
Damn him!
She felt the rage rise within her, the rage that resided just below her surface, always ready to emerge and take control of any situation, the rage she fought to suppress every day of her life like a patient taking
