The Disappearance (6 page)

“I am speaking to you tonight for a very personal reason.”

It took an entire day to write this speech. Joe Allison and Jane Bluestine helped him, and Fred Hampshire vetted it to make sure Doug didn’t say anything of a legal nature that could come back to haunt him later. He practiced reading the speech off the TelePrompTer several times, to make sure it would go smoothly.

Off to the side he can see himself in the monitor. Forcing himself not to look, so he won’t be more self-conscious than he already is, he draws a calming breath and launches into it.

“Two nights ago my daughter, Emma Lancaster, was taken from her bedroom in our home. By now, many of you have heard about that, on this station and others, as well as in the newspapers. Several of you have called in to the station with condolences, sent letters and faxes, and e-mailed us. My wife and I are extremely grateful for that support.

“To this moment, however, we have had no communication whatsoever with the person or persons who took her. While the police, sheriff’s department, state police, and FBI have all been working around the clock to try to find her, they have not come up with any clues.”

He straightens himself in his chair—here comes the punch line.

“Tonight, here and now, I am taking the special step of using this public forum to offer a reward of two hundred fifty thousand dollars for Emma’s safe return. I will pay that reward to anyone who can give us evidence that will enable us to find her alive and unharmed. If anyone out there watching knows anything about Emma, and you don’t want to reveal who you are, we can arrange a way to get you the money without anyone knowing about it. I have discussed this with the police, and they have assured me that they will not interfere with this in any way.”

A photo of Emma, taken at their resort home at Telluride over the Christmas holidays, comes up on the monitor. Doug glances at it out of the corner of his eye before proceeding. “This is what Emma looks like. She is fourteen years old, five feet four, weighs one hundred and ten pounds, and has light brown shoulder-length hair and hazel eyes.”

Seeing her picture up there causes the words scrolling down the TelePrompTer to begin looking fuzzy to him. He forces himself to concentrate, to get through this without losing it.

“Most importantly,” he says, fixing the lens with the firmest look he can muster, “if you are the person who took my daughter, I am asking that you return her safely. That’s all. I give you my word that I won’t try to pursue you in any way. I will do whatever you want me to do. I will pay you any way you want. I can even transfer money into an untraceable foreign bank account if that would make you feel more secure.”

He’s losing it—he needs to get this over before he breaks down.

“Please,” he says, hearing the begging in his voice and not caring, “if you know anything about my daughter Emma’s whereabouts, call us at this toll-free number.” He glances at the monitor again as the 800 number comes up on the screen, and he reads it aloud. “If you are the man that took her and are afraid of how to get yourself out of this, call us. We are not monitoring this line. I repeat, the police are not monitoring this line. Your call will not be traced. Just call us, please. We’ll do anything you want. Anything.”

He comes to the end of his speech. He feels his voice beginning to crack, but that’s all right. He can’t hold his emotions in check any longer.

“Emma,” he says. “If you’re watching this, sweetheart, don’t give up. Your mom and I and everyone we know are doing everything we can to find you.” His eyes begin to tear. He has to get off.

“And we will.”

A
MASSIVE MANHUNT IS SET
in motion, all up and down the Pacific Coast. Dozens of suspects are brought in for interrogation, not only from California, but from all over the West—Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Nevada. Every man with a history of sexual deviance, assault, or abduction is rounded up and questioned fiercely. Boys from all the local high schools she might have known, men who in any way had an association with her, even the choirmaster at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church where she sang in the Sunday choir, are talked to.

Tens of thousands of flyers are distributed. People from the community, all kinds of people, people the Lancasters have never met in their lives, volunteer their time to hunt for Emma. In Goleta alone, at least a hundred people show up at the search command headquarters at the sheriff’s substation to team up and go out looking. People search the hills, the beaches, every crack in every sidewalk from Los Angeles to Monterey.

While this is going on, the police lab finishes analyzing all the stuff they took from the gazebo, the footprint that was found outside Emma’s room, the pictures taken of her room and the immediate surroundings.

“We didn’t get any prints we can’t account for,” the sheriff tells Doug the day after the televised appeal. He has come to the house to present the bad news. “If this was a premeditated snatch, he was probably wearing gloves.”

“If this was premeditated,” Doug retorts, “why haven’t we been contacted?”

“To mess with your head,” the sheriff answers succinctly. “So that when he finally does get in touch, you won’t be thinking of any retaliation.”

“Well, it’s working. My wife is on tranquilizers around the clock, and I’m wiped out.”

“Hang in there, Mr. Lancaster. You’ve got to keep yourself together.”

“Why? Why do I have to keep myself together? Why should I have to?” Fuck this presenting-a-calm-face-to-the-world shit. This is his child they’re talking about.

“Because he might be watching you. Or having you watched.”

Whoa!
That’s heavy. He never thought about that at all.

“If someone took your daughter because of some slight in the past, whether it’s real or not, they could be playing all kinds of games with you.”

Doug buries his head in his hands. “That’s insane! What kind of bastard would do something like that? I can’t think that way. It’ll drive me crazy trying to figure out who would do something like that.”

“Don’t let it,” the sheriff admonishes him. “And
do
start thinking that way. Because right now, we don’t have a thing. Not one clue. Believe me, this is driving all of us up the wall.”

Doug forces himself to calm down. “All right,” he agrees. “I’ll start putting together an enemies list.”

There is a noteworthy detail that has come out of the evidence analysis. “There were condoms in that debris we found in the gazebo,” Williams tells Doug. “Somebody was using the place as a love pad.”

Doug is incredulous. “Are you serious?”

Williams nods. “All the same brand. The lab’s going to do an analysis of the semen. I’ll give odds they’re all from the same person.” He gives Doug an inquiring look. “Any guesses on who it might be?”

“No, but I’m damned pissed off about it. If there was one rubber, I guess it could’ve been from someone who was here for a party or something and snuck off, but several means someone who’s here on a steady basis.” He thinks for a moment. “Should we get semen samples from all my male employees?”

“That might be helpful,” Williams says, “but not legal. Anyway, what connection would that have with Emma’s disappearance? We have to keep our focus.”

Doug shakes his head in frustration. “Where does this all lead us?”

“Hoping for a break” is the only answer the sheriff has to give him.

A
NOTHER DAY GOES BY
. Still no word.

The story is covered by every media outlet in the country. Doug patiently sits and gives interviews—he abhors the notoriety, but he’ll do anything that might help. Maybe someone has seen Emma but wasn’t watching television or reading the papers the first couple of days, or has seen her but, for whatever reason, is reluctant to come forward. More pressure from the media might do the trick.

There is some solace in going to work. It keeps him from sinking into self-pity. There is a world out there and he is a part of it, regardless of anything. And by getting out of his house he sees how much sympathy for him and his family this has engendered. Sometimes, coming home at night when it’s dark, he will see groups of people standing near his house holding candles, conducting a silent vigil. He doesn’t know these people, has never met them. Yet here they stand, mute support for his family and his daughter’s safe return from whatever hell she’s living in.

And there are ribbons. Yellow ribbons, thousands of them. Tied to trees all over the city. Every palm tree along Cabrillo Boulevard, the street that parallels the beach, has a yellow ribbon tied to it. He feels incredibly grateful and thankful to all the people who have done this work. And who are out there every day in search parties, looking for Emma.

E
IGHT DAYS AFTER EMMA
Lancaster’s abduction from her Montecito bedroom in the dead of night, two UCSB college students, one male, one female, intrepid hikers, are making their way up the trailhead of Hot Springs Canyon. It’s a tough climb; the trail is still muddy from the winter’s rains and hasn’t been cut back by the Forest Service since the fall. But they’ve wanted to get out for over a month, and they’re experienced, so they plunge along, breaking trail if they have to. Moose, their black Lab, races ahead of them, then behind them, then ahead of them again.

They keep to one side of the stream. It’s running full, and has been since before Christmas—too full and fast to cross. The rocks you’d normally use as stepping stones are either submerged or too slippery to step on. A fall and you’d be wet, cold, and likely injured.

The trail switches back, and they climb up single file, the actual width no more than two feet, barely wide enough to traverse. The dog, running ahead, is barking loudly, racing up and down in a small circle near where a piece of the trail has recently collapsed under the pressure of the water. Old tree roots protrude under the caved-in ground, and water from the stream has diverted to cut a new stream running parallel with the main one.

“How are we going to get around this?” the girl asks. She’s a healthy outdoors lady, freckle-faced even in winter.

“Ford it, I guess,” the guy says. “It doesn’t look too deep.” He looks down. “Go ahead, lead the way. It’s only knee high.”

“
You
lead the way. I don’t want to get soaked if it’s too deep.” She peers into the dark, muddy water. “It looks deeper than that to me. Up to my thigh, anyway.” She sticks one leg in. Immediately her leg is wet all the way to the bottom of her shorts. “Too high,” she declares.

“Damn. I wanted to get to the top,” he says, disappointed.

“Can’t today,” she consoles him. “We’ll come back next week.”

She turns to head back down the trail, shifting to one side to avoid their dog, who is running in a tight circle, barking at something off to the side, slightly up the hill. “Moose,” she calls to him, “leave the rabbits alone. Or whatever it is. If it’s a skunk, boy, you’re riding home in the trunk. Come on, now, move your ass.”

The dog keeps barking, going out of his doggie mind.

“What?” she exclaims with some annoyance. She wanted to go to the top too. Now they have to walk back, and they’ve got a stupid barking dog who doesn’t want to come with them.

“Come on, dammit,” she says, reaching for Moose’s collar to pull him, and as she reaches out, she slips on the soft mud that’s collapsing under her feet. Instinctively she puts her hand out to break her fall.

Her hand hits something hard, like a tree root or a rock. Except it has soft covering on top of it, like moss. But it isn’t moss. She knows the feeling of moss.

She gropes into the underbrush. It’s long, whatever she’s put her hand on, and …

She screams.

Sheriff’s vehicles, the coroner’s wagon, paramedic trucks, all converge on the scene as soon as word goes out over the police scanner that a girl’s body has been found. The police set up a cordon around the scene, keeping everyone out, including the press.

Sheriff Williams doesn’t have to look at the body. He knows.

Emma has been dead for days. The coroner ascertains that immediately. Probably within twenty-four hours of when she was abducted. The body is already in an advanced state of decomposition due to the weather.

The crime scene has been polluted due to all the people that have converged on it. Even so, there are footprints, not fresh ones, that scream out as soon as they’re discovered by one of Williams’s men.

The left shoe print with the gouge in the treads. The same shoe print that had been found outside Emma Lancaster’s bedroom.

Whoever had left that print at the Lancaster house had left it here, as well. Which means that whoever had been there had almost certainly brought the body of Emma Lancaster here.

Her abductor. Her killer.

Williams drives to the Lancasters’ home to tell Doug and Glenna, dreading what’s coming. He isn’t going to tell them this over the telephone. He’s barely out of his car before they rush outside to meet him.

“Is she—?” Glenna starts to ask, then she sees the expression of grief on the lawman’s face.

“Emma’s body has been found,” Williams tells them immediately, before they can have any hope. Better not to arouse hope, even if only for a microsecond, he knows from past, distressing experience.

“Aaaaahhhh!” Glenna starts keening, a low animal moan, eyes rolling back into her head, her body swaying, then collapsing in sections, a slow free-fall. Doug lunges, grabbing her and preventing her from hitting the ground. He lifts her in his arms. Her body is shaking uncontrollably now.

He carries her into the house and lays her on a couch in the dark living room. (The house has gotten progressively darker every day, as Glenna has been closing curtains against the life outside.) He spreads an afghan over her supine form. She’ll sleep for a while, he thinks, a defense against a reality that is too much for her to handle.

N
EWS OF THE DISCOVERY
of Emma’s body spreads like wildfire. Within an hour the house is surrounded by television crews and teams of reporters. Doug has called the station and told them. Now he stands in front of his house facing a barrage of reporters. He looks into the bright lights of the television cameras, a platoon of microphones held out towards him to catch his words.