The Disappearance (2 page)

Lisa is scrunched up on a couch, pushing hard against it. If she could force herself into it, through it, she would.

She’s scared. She feels they’re all angry at her. Like it’s her fault Emma isn’t here.

Glenna Lancaster crosses over and sits next to Lisa, taking the girl’s fluttering hand. “It’s okay, Lisa,” she says soothingly, reassuringly. “What can you remember?” she asks the shaking girl.

Lisa shrugs, more of a wriggle. “I … it was really dark. Something was moving, I thought. I mean I thought I saw something. But it was pretty dark,” she ends lamely.

An hour later Doug Lancaster arrives at his home like a whirlwind, the tire-squeal of his turbo Bentley on the circular Italian-tile driveway announcing his arrival. Hair askew, still in his golf clothes, he charges into the house.

“What?” he asks Glenna, who has jumped up and runs towards the door, intercepting him in the front hallway. The entryway to their house is eighteen feet high; the massive front door was custom-built of imported Hawaiian koa wood, with floor-to-ceiling beveled windows on either side of the doorway refracting muted rainbow-colored light upon the marble floor.

The Lancasters had built the house a decade ago. They’d been painstaking in making sure everything was exactly as they desired. One example—Glenna and her designer had gone to Italy twice before they found a quarry that had the right marble for the entryway floor. She had supervised every detail of the construction, relentlessly pushing the architect and myriad contractors every day for a year and a half, seven days a week, driving everyone crazy. She went through the three best contractors in the country before she was done; but she got the house the way she wanted it, which is the only way she knows to do things.

“She’s missing,” she tells her husband. “Emma—”

“You already told me that on the phone,” he interrupts her impatiently. “What’s the deal? I mean how do you know—I mean what’s—” His tongue can’t keep up with the pace of his anxiety.

“Calm down,” she says forcefully. “Come in and talk.”

She steers him into the study, where the police detective, a man named Reuben Garcia, has been waiting for more than two hours. Contacting Doug in Santa Monica was no small feat—he hadn’t been in his hotel room and it took forever to get through to him on the back nine at Bel Air Country Club, where he was playing golf with some of the heavies from NBC.

Hillary is gone now. Her parents came and hustled her away. Lisa, the cause for this alarm, is still there: Garcia wouldn’t let her leave until Doug Lancaster could get home and hear her story, fragmentary as it is, firsthand. Garcia doesn’t want any problems later on down the line, such as an irate father with a ton of clout becoming upset because he didn’t hear the story himself from the mouth of this small, increasingly terrified fourteen-year-old girl.

Susan Jaffe, Lisa’s mother, is with her daughter. Lisa is her only child. They live alone in a small house in the affordable area of the lower Riviera, in Santa Barbara proper. Susan and Lisa’s father have been divorced for a long time. Susan’s raised her daughter on her own, and done it while going to Santa Barbara College of Law at night. She’s worked for the county for six years now; her salary is decent, enough that she can afford to send her daughter to Elgin, the best private middle school in the area, which is where Lisa met Emma.

Still, Susan makes less in a year than Doug Lancaster draws in salary per month. His salary is for show: he owns four television stations, including the local NBC affiliate, his flagship station. He has a lot of power and he isn’t shy about using it, generally for good reasons—he isn’t a bully. But the power is there, and everyone who knows what’s going on in this town knows it, including Susan Jaffe, a county employee, and Reuben Garcia, a local deputy.

“This is my husband, Doug Lancaster,” Glenna says to Susan and Garcia. “Susan is Lisa’s mother. You’ve met her, haven’t you?” she asks her husband, whose pulse rate is coming down slightly, now that he’s finished his frenzied drive up the coast and is in his own house.

“I don’t think so. Hello,” he says, offering his hand.

“We met at Elgin School,” Susan Jaffe corrects him. “Last parents’ night. Your daughter and mine were in the play together.”

“Of course,” he responds quickly, diplomatically. “You’ll have to forgive me. I’m kind of discombobulated right now, since I don’t know what’s going on.” He doesn’t remember the woman at all; she’s nice enough looking in a generic way. Much like her daughter, cowering next to her on the couch. “Your daughter was very good in the play, as I recall.”

“She had a small part, but she was good, I agree.”

“So what’s the deal?” Doug says now, having dealt with as much of the amenities as he’s going to. “Are we sure Emma couldn’t have gone out earlier, with a friend or something? You’re positive she hasn’t called, and in the rush no one picked up the phone?”

Glenna, biting her lip, shakes her head impatiently. “There were no calls. I’m sure.”

Garcia answers the other question. “We’ve had calls out to everyone we can think of who knows your daughter, Mr. Lancaster. We’re concerned.”

Doug rocks back on his heels. “What do you mean?” he asks slowly, sounding dumb to himself as the words come out of his mouth.

Garcia extends his hand towards the mother and daughter sitting on the sofa. “Lisa here might have seen something.”

Doug looks at Lisa. “Seen something?”

“Sit down,” Glenna tells him. She steers him to an armchair across from the sofa where the girl sits.

He folds himself into the chair, his eyes fixed on the small girl eight feet across from him, who is shrinking into herself as he stares at her.

“Tell Mr. Lancaster what you saw,” Garcia instructs Lisa. “What you think you might have seen,” he corrects himself. He isn’t committing to anything, not yet.

The sound of the bump brought Lisa out of a deep sleep, the deepest part of sleep that comes about two hours after you first lose consciousness, where whatever primitive sensors are working make you feel like you’re a hundred feet under the ocean, all murky and indefinable.

It took her a few seconds to realize where she was. Then she knew. She was in Emma Lancaster’s bedroom, sleeping on a futon.

She was groggy. Her mouth was dry. She wished she’d brought a glass of water to bed with her, but this was only her second sleep-over and she wouldn’t know how to get to the kitchen from here in the dark, she’d probably trip an alarm and freak everyone out.

She could make her way to Emma’s bathroom. She could drink out of the faucet. She rolled over on her side, started to push her quilt down off her body.

Someone was in the room.

The door leading to the outside patio was open. Someone was standing in the room, at the foot of the twin beds. Light was coming in the door from outside, moonlight. Like a dull spotlight shining into the room.

Whoever was standing in the middle of the floor had a bundle in his arms. A large bundle, like a person wrapped up in a blanket.

The person was tall. He seemed tall, anyway, from her position on the floor, looking up. She couldn’t tell what he was wearing, but maybe a windbreaker, a dark thigh-length jacket.

She lay as still as she could.

The man carrying the bundle moved towards the open door. As he reached it he turned for a moment and looked back at the room, not a full turn, not enough for her to see a face. She could only see a fragment of an outline.

The figure turned away and walked out the door. He closed the door behind him and was gone.

She was suddenly exhausted. Her limbs felt like they were bound in cement, and she was scared, too, scared of the unknown, whatever it was. She was too tired to move, and even though her mouth was hot and dry she didn’t get up, not even after there was no one standing in the room anymore.

She rolled over again and fell back asleep, almost instantly.

When she woke up hours later she vaguely remembered it, but she thought it had been a dream.

Garcia prompts her. “What did the intruder look like?” He has already heard it, all she knows or can remember, but he wants Doug Lancaster to hear it himself, from the witness directly. He wants to protect his ass from whatever might come down later.

“Tall.”

“Right. Tall. What else?”

“He was—”

“It was a man? You’re sure of that?” Doug Lancaster interrupts her. He’s sitting on the edge of his chair, fidgeting, his knee involuntarily dancing.

“I … I’m pretty sure. I’d say almost sure.” She’s scared of Emma’s father. He is staring at her like he could look right through her.

“Let her finish,” Glenna admonishes her husband, putting a restraining hand on his shoulder. “This has been terrible for Lisa. And terrifying.”

He nods, taking a deep breath to calm himself. “I’m sorry, Lisa. Go ahead, please.”

“Was there anything else he was wearing you can remember?” Garcia prompts the girl again.

“A baseball kind of hat,” she says.

“Could you see his face at all?” the detective asks, getting excited.

“Not really. I could see some of his hair sticking out the back.”

His enthusiasm drops. “Dark hair or light?”

She squirms in her place. Her mother has a protective arm around her shoulder. “I couldn’t tell. It was dark.”

“Someone, probably tall, probably carrying a bundle that might have been someone wrapped up in a blanket. Hair long enough to be sticking out the back of his hat. Anything else?” Garcia continues his probing. “Could you tell how old this intruder might be? A teenager? Or someone older, like my age, or Mr. Lancaster’s?”

She looks from one man to the other. “It didn’t look to me like a teenager.”

“Can you be any more specific? Twenties, thirties, forties, whatever?”

She shakes her head, eyes averted to the floor. “I hardly saw him. His back was to me. It was dark, and I was asleep, and I was really groggy, you know?” The words are coming out in a scared, scrambled rush. “I don’t … I wish I …” She stumbles to a halt.

“And whoever it was that was wrapped up in this blanket, if it was a person,” Garcia goes on. “Was it struggling? Did it look like it was moving or fighting?”

Lisa shakes her head. “It was still. It wasn’t fighting. She,” she adds, then catches herself. “I mean …”

Doug Lancaster stands up. “I think that’s enough for now,” he says, coming over and putting a hand on Lisa’s shoulder. “There’s nothing more you can remember, is there?” he says soothingly, a father who has a daughter this girl’s age.

“I just have one other question,” Garcia says, almost apologetically, now that Doug Lancaster has flexed a little muscle on this girl’s behalf. Which is a hell of a nice gesture, considering the man’s daughter is missing and may have been kidnapped.

Lisa turns to him, her face a scared-to-death open book.

“What he had in his arms. That looked like it was in a blanket.” He doesn’t want to ask this question, but he has to. “You think it might have been Emma?”

“It might have been,” she answers. “I wasn’t thinking anything like that. Not till later,” she adds, glancing over at Mr. and Mrs. Lancaster, who look like they’ve been whacked really hard on their heads with a baseball bat. “But it looked pretty big, the way he had it kind of over his shoulder. So it could have been.” She turns her look away, half to her mother, half to the floor. “It was big enough to be a girl.”

The clothes Emma wore last night are scattered teen-fashion on the floor. Emma’s purse is on top of her bureau.

“Is there anything missing of your daughter’s that’s obvious?” Detective Garcia asks.

“Her keys,” Glenna answers. “She always kept them in her purse. They aren’t there.”

“You checked?” he asks.

She nods. “I thought maybe it was a robbery,” she says. “But her wallet’s still there. There’s money in it. The only thing I can see missing is her keys.” Her eyes mist. “Her key ring was a miniature Maltese cross. We bought it in Greece last year, when we were there on vacation.”

It’s late in the afternoon. Darkness is approaching, the sun dropping fast in the sky. The Lancaster house, high in the hills off Santa Ynez Road, has views to the city and ocean below, a sweeping vista extending from Port Hueneme, fifty miles to the southeast, to beyond the Goleta wharf thirty miles up the coast.

Half a dozen sheriff’s deputies, specialists in this type of work, have converged on the property. Bob Williams, the sheriff, arrived an hour ago, when Detective Garcia made the determination there was a strong probability that Emma Lancaster had been taken forcibly from her home by a person unknown.

Williams will oversee this investigation personally. Montecito has no police force of its own; investigations such as this one fall under the jurisdiction of the county sheriff. Williams will coordinate with other local law enforcement agencies, but it’s his show to run. He’s an acquaintance of the Lancasters—not socially, of course, but professionally. It’s a small county, so everyone who’s important knows everyone else who’s important. And Doug Lancaster isn’t merely another wealthy, important person, he’s the leading media heavyweight in the area. Every politician in the state, from the governor on down to the local level, wants to be—
has
to be—on his good side. The alternative could be a quick return to the private sector.

If this turns out to be a real kidnapping, as opposed to something else, some rebellious juvenile action, for example, it will be a high-profile one: the daughter of a wealthy family that has high public recognition.

The sheriff’s deputies, some uniformed, some in plainclothes, are clustered in small groups in the backyard. There is a gazebo anchoring one corner of the property, with a duck pond at the other end. The pool and poolhouse complex, which has a sauna, jacuzzi, weight room, and party area, are tucked away against the eastern property line. Although it hasn’t rained in a week now, the grounds are still oversaturated from all the water they had to absorb. Because of the dampness, there are muddy footprints crisscrossing the back patios, including the one outside Emma’s bedroom, the various flagstone walkways around the trees under which Smith & Hawken Adirondack-style wooden benches are tastefully deployed.