The Abduction (6 page)

His head ached.

Ben continued down the sidewalk, deep into the circus, and past a reporter talking to a camera: “Gracie was last seen at Briarwyck Farms Park wearing blue soccer shorts and a gold jersey, the team name, Tornadoes, across the front and a number nine on the back.”

Kids rode bikes and rollerbladed in the street, media technicians set up their equipment, and photographers snapped shots of the mansions. Another reporter addressed another camera: “She was abducted at a soccer game last night in this upscale suburb forty miles north of downtown Dallas.”

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?
”

“
Sí, señora
.” 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 chemotherapy to force the cancer into remission. The battle was proving particularly difficult today because it was completely incomprehensible to Elizabeth Brice how her daughter could have been abducted right from under her husband’s goddamn nose at a goddamn public park!

She had cursed her husband last night at the park, after panic had given way to rage. But first she had panicked and lost complete control, screaming, yelling, grabbing kids and parents—“Have you seen Grace? Have you seen Grace?”—running around in circles and shouting Grace’s name until her voice was hoarse. Then rage had taken its turn in the driver’s seat, and she had lashed out, first at John and then at Grace’s coach: “You pointed Grace out to the abductor? What kind of fucking idiot are you?”

Parents and police had searched the park until late in the night. When the FBI had arrived and assessed the chaotic search efforts, they declared the park a crime scene and ordered everyone out. The search had to be organized, they said. Evidence could be trampled. The park and woods were too vast and dense to thoroughly search at night, and if Grace hadn’t been found after eight hours of searching, she was no longer at the park. So Elizabeth had returned home, prayed in the shower, and dressed; she had been awake now for twenty-seven straight hours, wired on caffeine and adrenaline. She had trained her mind and body to function without sleep; it would catch up with her around the thirty-sixth hour when her mind would give way to her body’s physical exhaustion, and she would sleep. But not now. Not yet. Her body was tiring but her mind remained alert and angry:
Damnit, how could John have let someone take her!
She clenched her fist and hit the wall.

“Uh, you okay, Mrs. Brice?”

The doorbell rang again, and Elizabeth opened her eyes to a young cop holding a cup of coffee and a donut; he had white powder on his mouth and an indolent expression on his face, as if this were the start of another routine day of donuts and traffic stops. He was a fine example of small-town law enforcement and the reason she had demanded the FBI be called in immediately.

“Yes. But my daughter’s not. Go find her!”

The cop choked on his donut then turned and hurried away. She took several deep breaths to compose herself and then marched down the gallery, resolved thereafter not to act in public like other mothers of abducted children, slobbering pitifully on television and begging for the safe return of her child. Elizabeth Brice, Attorney-at-Law, would go on TV, but not to beg.

She arrived at the formal dining room for the third time that morning. Leaning over the dining table and studying a large map illuminated by the chandelier above were the Post Oak police chief and four uniformed officers. They didn’t notice her.

“A line search,” Chief Ryan was saying. “Start at the south end, proceed due north. Instruct your searchers to walk at arm’s length, slow, this ain’t no goddamn race. They see something, tell ’em to hold up their hands, don’t touch a fuckin’ thing. FBI boys’ll tag it and bag it.” Chief Ryan was stocky but paunchy, like an aging athlete. When he finally noticed Elizabeth standing in the door, he grimaced. “Pardon my French, Mrs. Brice.”

She held up an open palm. “Just find her.”

“Yes, ma’am. Oh, Mrs. Brice, we need clothing Gracie wore recently, something that’s not been washed. For the bloodhounds.” Elizabeth nodded. The chief again addressed his men: “Be in position at nine-thirty sharp. Bobby Joe’ll run the dogs in the woods first, while we walk the playing fields. Then we’ll search the woods again—maybe we’ll have better luck in daylight.”

Elizabeth turned to resume her pacing and came face to face with an earnest young woman wearing a blue nylon FBI jacket and holding a pen to a notepad. They had been introduced earlier, but Elizabeth could not recall the agent’s name.

“Mrs. Brice, what color, size, and brand of underwear was Gracie wearing?”

The agent asked the question as if asking whether she wanted cream in her coffee. Elizabeth clenched back her emotions.

“I don’t know. I left yesterday before she got up. I had a trial. My husband might know, ask him. He let someone take her.”

FBI Special Agent (on probation) Jan Jorgenson watched the victim’s mother march off down the fancy hallway; they called it a gallery. They don’t have galleries in Minnesota farmhouses.

Jan ducked into the kitchen, made sure she was alone, and pulled a protein bar from her waist pack; she hadn’t eaten since last night when the call had come and she didn’t do donuts. She had survived this long without food only because she had carbo loaded the past week for the marathon she was supposed to be running at that very moment. She took a big bite then jumped—someone had jabbed her hard in the back.