They both felt they were missing something.
But they didn’t know what.
4
THE FIRST THINGKellie saw when she took the padlock off the closet door, and then opened the door itself, was a pair of big brown eyes glaring out at her. She slammed the door shut at once.
“Oh, shit!” she said, and fumbled the padlock into the hasp, and snapped it shut again. “Ave,” she yelled, “she saw me! Oh, Jesus, Ave, she saw me!” and went running into the kitchen.
The two men were sitting at a small round table near the window, eating the pizza Cal had brought back from the local Pizza Hut.
“What do you mean?” Avery asked.
“I opened the door, she was looking out at me.”
“So what’d you do?”
“Slammed the door shut.”
“So it was just a glimpse, right?”
“But she saw me,” Kellie said, more softly now, like a child trying to explain to her parents that the monster under the bed actually did exist. “She’ll be able to identify me. Later. When we let her go.”
“She won’t remember what you looked like. It was just a glimpse, am I right?”
“Yes, but…”
“We’ll put on the masks. Don’t worry, it’ll be okay. It was just a glimpse.”
“What’d she do?” Cal asked. “Get the blindfold off?”
“I opened the closet, she was looking at me with her eyes wide open,” Kellie said, nodding.
“We’ll wear the masks from now on,” Avery said. “You want some pizza?”
“Is it any good?”
“It’s delicious,” Cal said. “Did she look scared?”
“She looked angry.”
“She’s supposed to look scared. I’ll go scare her when I finish my pizza here. I’ll put on my mask and scare the shit out of her.”
“You keep away from her,” Avery said.
“Why’d you open the closet, anyway?” Cal asked.
“See if she wanted anything to eat. We’re not supposed to starve her to death, are we?”
“We’re supposed to get two hundred and fifty thousand bucks, is what we’re supposed to do,” Avery said. “And then we’re supposed to return her safe and sound, end of story.”
“That’s what I’m saying, safe and sound,” Kellie said. “That means feeding her, am I right?”
“We’ll feed her, don’t worry,” Avery said.
“Oh, we’ll take very good care of her, don’t worry,” Cal said, and bit into his pizza. Avery gave him a look. “What?” Cal asked.
“Just stay away from her.”
“Was Kellie went near her, not me.”
“I’ll talk to her later,” Avery said. “When I finish here. Make her understand nobody’s going to hurt her.”
“She sure looked mad.”
“Needs a little scare, is what she needs,” Cal said.
Avery looked at him again.
“Just kidding,” Cal said, and held up his hands defensively.
“Have some pizza,” Avery told Kellie.
He seemed very calm, she thought.
Maybe too calm.
The girl had seen her face.
CHANNEL FOUR’Soffices were in a skyscraper on Moody Street, just off Jefferson Avenue. Hawes approached the imposing glass and stainless steel structure through a small pocket park with a waterfall flowing over its rear granite wall. Sitting at round metal tables in bright Sunday afternoon sunshine, half a dozen elderly people drank their cappuccinos or munched on their sandwiches. Hawes wondered what it was like to be old like that, fifty, sixty years or so.
Security was tight here.
A square-shield uniformed guard was standing alongside another man checking names at a lectern-sized desk. Hawes had called ahead, and so Honey Blair was expecting him. But the guy behind the podium asked him to sign in, and then he opened the manila envelope to check the video inside (even though the envelope was imprinted with the wordsPOLICE DEPARTMENT —EVIDENCE) and then he called upstairs before allowing Hawes to proceed to the elevators.
Honey was waiting in the seventh-floor hallway for him.
She was wearing tan tailored slacks and a green cotton knit sweater. Apparently, she favored the short skirts and revealing tops only on camera. She took the evidence envelope from him, and unclasped it to check on the video inside, just the way the guard had. Satisfied, she nodded curtly, said, “Thanks, I appreciate it,” and was turning to go when Hawes said, “Hey.”
She stopped.
“We’re sorry,” he said. “We were doing our job.”
“By stopping me from doing mine,” she said. “You cost me…” She looked at her watch. “It’s three o’clock. This tape should’ve aired at eleven last night. Now it won’t go out till the Five O’Clock News. That’s seventeen hours you cost me. My scoop went right down the drain.”
“It’ll still…”
“Be old news by the time anybody sees it.”
“It’ll still get a lot of attention. It’s a very good tape.”
“Oh, you watched it, huh?”
“Evidence,” he said, and shrugged somewhat boyishly.
“You probably shouldn’t have done that.”
“I probably shouldn’t have told you I did that.”
Honey nodded. Looked at him.
“Want to watch it again?” she asked.
AVERY HANESknocked on the closet door.
“I’m going to open the door,” he said. “Don’t do anything foolish. No one’s going to hurt you. Okay? I know you can’t talk, but if you understand me, just kick the door, okay? We’re going to let you out of the closet, okay? So kick the door if you understand.”
There was a sharp kick on the door.
Then another one.
Then several in succession.
Sharp angry kicks.
“I’m not sure you’re ready for this,” Avery said.
Another series of kicks.
“I’m not sure at all,” he said.
And waited.
There were no further kicks.
He took the key Kellie had given him, inserted it into the hanging lock, twisted it, and then removed the lock
