The Girl in the White Van Page 10

  And if she had lied about that, maybe she had lied about other things, the way Dad had implied.

  Lost in thought, I cut through the parking lot.

  But something nagged at me. Something out of place. Finally, I stopped, turned, and scanned the lot, which held a half dozen cars.

  Nothing jumped out at me. I was already turning back, already rehearsing what I would say to that jerk Tim if I saw him, when I spotted it.

  A gray beanie, tangled low in the blackberry bushes at the back of the lot.

  My stomach bottomed out. No, I thought. No, please, God, I’m not seeing this.

  I walked over. With a shaking hand, I reached out and pulled the hat free from the brambles. Dark strands of hair clung to it. Long dark hair, just like Savannah’s. In one spot, about a dozen hairs were clustered together.

  As if they had been pulled out during a struggle.

  In my mind’s eye, I replayed standing outside with Savannah after class. The way she looked at me as she pulled on her hat.

  This hat.

  Something bad had happened here.

  And I hadn’t heard a thing.

  SIR

  Carrying a wrench, I started back toward the RV that held Jenny and Savannah.

  I basically grew up with a wrench in my hand. Before I was born, my dad began this business on a stretch of land next to a country road. He’d been a shade tree mechanic who sometimes ended up with cars when his customers couldn’t pay. He dismantled them and sold the parts, and over time, that became his main line of business. He bought cars that weren’t worth fixing. At auctions, he bid on abandoned vehicles. Now there were acres of pasture covered with hundreds of cars and trucks. They lay in long, winding rows, many of them twisted and crumpled, as if made of paper and not steel. But they still contained so much that could be salvaged and sold. Head- and taillights, batteries, transmissions, radiators, catalytic converters. Engines. Rearview and sideview mirrors. Unbroken windshields if the car had been rear-ended. Bumpers if the car had been T-boned. My dad kept the high-demand parts in a cinderblock warehouse he built himself. The rest he pulled after a customer placed an order.

  My dad was real friendly to customers, but not to us, his family. We knew his friendliness was just for show. A mask. To us, he was always Sir. That Sir set the tone. Kept us in line.

  But we didn’t appreciate it. My brother moved out his senior year of high school. (He’s been dead for two years now. Cirrhosis of the liver.) My sister got married as soon as she graduated. And I joined the service when I was eighteen.

  Back then, I thought my dad was the bad guy, the way he bossed us around. He didn’t hesitate to whip off his belt at the first sign of back talk or even a certain look. Now I see that he just had high standards.

  I spent over twenty years working stateside in the auto pool. Thanks to my dad, I could fix anything. I understood cars in a way I’d never understood people. I tried dating, but it never went the way I wanted. Every woman would ultimately reveal who she was. A whore. A feminazi. A yapper who wanted to tell me what she thought about things.

  Two years ago, a lift failed and an engine block crushed my dad’s chest. My mom said he had died the way he would have wanted to. And then she asked me to come home and run this place.

  I left the service and stepped into my dad’s boots. Literally. It was strange to realize that I was now the same size as him. And I found out that it was good to be your own boss. You could set your own hours. Make your own rules. And if people didn’t like them, so what?

  Just as she had with my dad, my mom took care of me. She wasn’t like women now, who didn’t understand that a man was king of his castle. Women who wanted you to pay for dinner but didn’t think they owed you anything afterward.

  I checked out dating websites, but my mom was quick to figure out what was wrong with each potential date: hardened, trampy, mouthy, too old, raising another man’s brats.

  She said I needed someone like her. My dad had started dating her when he was in his twenties and she was still in middle school. He had shaped her into the woman she was. She didn’t see that wasn’t exactly possible nowadays, especially when you were forty-two.

  But then last year, Mom died. She was not a complainer. By the time she finally went to the doctor, it was too late. The cancer was everywhere. She passed in the hospital less than two weeks after her diagnosis.

  I missed her, of course. But she had also been a brake on me. I had started thinking about a way to get what I wanted. What I needed. What I deserved. But I hadn’t been sure my mother would agree with my plans. Once she was gone, it was time to come into my own.

  Driving a variety of cars I coaxed back to life, I started searching, keeping my eyes open for the right girl. The girl I had always dreamed of. Slender, pale skin, long dark hair, something vulnerable in her expression.

  Once I found the right one, I planned to control everything about her. She would dress in the clothes I gave her. She would be demure and feminine. She would address me only as Sir, and she would never talk back.

  I would create the perfect girl.

  If Jenny had stayed pretty, maybe she could have been the one. Even so, I had learned a lot from her. It wasn’t totally her fault that things had gone so wrong, but at the same time, you had to know when to cut your losses.

  Then I spotted Savannah. I had first seen her when she came in with her mom and stepdad, dragged along while he picked up some parts for his 1968 Camaro. The whole time I had been talking to him, she had her face in her phone. Looking at her sulky expression, I thought how disrespectful she was being, not even bothering to hide her boredom.

  She needed to be taught a lesson. And I was just the person to do it.

  Since I had her address, it hadn’t been hard to find her again. I followed her as she walked to her kung fu school, cutting away and then back a couple of times in case she turned around. But she never did.

  That night I parked down the street and picked up my binoculars. Sitting in the darkness, I watched her through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Even though Savannah was the youngest in the class, she held her own.

  I came back night after night, figuring out her schedule. Figuring out the best place to take her. I wanted a girl with a little more spunk than Jenny. A spark. Who wouldn’t just hang her head and say yes sir, no sir. Someone who was more of a challenge. Taming Jenny had been like taming a dog. She was already hardwired to be loyal.

  But this girl, this Savannah, she was a fighter. That was why I had picked her. But didn’t they say the thing that drew you to someone would ultimately be the thing that pushed you away? Like if you were attracted to a person who was always the life of the party, by the time the relationship ended, you would be sick of their partying ways.

  So I had picked a fighter, and that was exactly what I had gotten. Savannah had fought me in the parking lot. She had jumped out of the van when it was moving. And though she was injured now, as soon as she healed up, she would probably be plotting my demise.

  This morning, looking down at her, wondering if she was really as unconscious as Jenny claimed, I realized that I’d made a huge mistake.

  I just had to figure out how to fix it. Without making too much of a mess. Sewing up Jenny’s face had been disgusting. Trying to kill two girls who did not want to die would surely be even more difficult and bloody.

  Now as Rex barked and ran in circles around me, I crawled underneath the RV and found the white drain plug for the fresh water tank. It had no valve. It was easy to undo.

  And then all the water poured out onto the ground. I didn’t even mind when it soaked the knees of my pants. Sometimes you had to do things that you didn’t want to. That were a little bit unpleasant. That might even seem, from an outsider’s perspective, wrong.

  In four or five days, the girls would be past causing anyone any trouble. Past doing anything at all.

  And I already had the RV I had originally prepared for Savannah.

  Just wait
ing for a new girl.

  DANIEL DIAZ

  “Diaz,” my dad barked, even though with caller ID he must have seen it was me. He hadn’t answered the first time I called, just sent it to voice mail. So I’d hung up and called back.

  “Hey, Dad, sorry to bother you.” My hand was sweating so much that it was hard to hold my phone. My other hand still held Savannah’s beanie.

  “Daniel, remember, I have Shop with a Cop today.” His faux-patient tone sounded like it came through gritted teeth. Shop with a Cop gave kids from underprivileged backgrounds gift cards and assigned them a cop buddy so they could Christmas shop for themselves and their families.

  I’d never been Christmas shopping with my dad.

  “I know, and I’m sorry,” I said. “Only I’m at the dojo, and I just found Savannah’s hat in the upper parking lot.”

  His tone changed. “Tell me more.” After I explained, he said, “I’ll be there in twenty.”

  Waiting in the parking lot, shivering in the chilly air, I felt hollowed out. The hat was proof that Savannah hadn’t run away. That something bad must have happened to her here, with no one around to help her. With all the businesses closed and me pedaling away.

  I kicked a pebble. When it landed, something black and round above it caught my eye. It was attached to the overhang sheltering the entrances of the four businesses that shared the lot.

  A surveillance camera.

  If I could see it, it could see me.

  And if it could see me, had it seen Savannah?

  I walked over. The camera was mounted directly over a dentist’s office. The hours were listed on the door, including ten to one on Saturdays. Inside, a half dozen people were sitting in the waiting room. A mom and a boy of about ten were talking to a middle-aged woman in scrubs seated behind the reception desk.

  I went inside and waited impatiently while the mom consulted her phone, rejecting date after date for a follow-up appointment for her kid. Finally they settled on one, and it was my turn.

  “Checking in?” the woman asked. Her name tag read MACY. She clicked a key on her keyboard.

  “Actually, I wanted to ask if that’s your security camera outside?”

  Macy’s attention was still on her screen. “Yeah. We were having a problem with thefts. Drug addicts looking for painkillers, and then they’d steal anything that wasn’t nailed down.”

  “I take classes at that kung fu school downstairs. A student went missing after class Thursday night. Her name’s Savannah. I saw her go up those stairs, but she never made it home.”

  Macy’s eyes flashed up to mine. A blue light started blinking on her desk, but she ignored it.

  I raised Savannah’s beanie. “This is her hat. I just found it caught in the blackberry bushes outside. I think something happened to her in your parking lot.”

  Before Macy could say anything, a man wearing scrubs and latex gloves appeared behind her.

  “Macy! I need you back in room three to explain Mrs. Olsen’s options to her.” Without waiting for an answer, he turned on his heel.

  “Yes, Dr. Yee,” Macy said, getting up. She looked at me. “That camera just films the sidewalk in front of the door. Nothing else.”

  “Wait,” I said as she started to leave. “Just tell me, does it run all the time?”

  “Yes, but the memory only holds forty-eight hours’ worth of video. After that, it records over it.” She went down the hall.

  Maybe Macy was hoping I would disappear while she was gone. Just like that footage would disappear tonight.

  While I was waiting for her to return, my dad pulled up in his unmarked Ford Explorer. I went outside and told him what was going on.

  “This is Savannah’s hat.” I held it out. “I saw her putting it on right after class Thursday. So how did it end up in those bushes?” I pointed.

  “How can you be sure it’s hers?” He looked skeptical. “Everyone’s got one of those.”

  “Maybe so, but this one has a clump of long, dark hair. Just like Savannah’s. It looks like it was pulled out.” Thinking about it made me feel like I’d gotten a side kick to the ribs.

  Instead of directly taking the hat, Dad opened his trunk and got out a brown paper bag with EVIDENCE printed on the top in black block letters. He filled out the form on the front, then pouched it open and had me drop the hat inside.

  After he put the bag in his trunk, we walked back into the dentist’s office together. Before, I’d been practically invisible because I was a teenager. I still was invisible, but now it was because I was standing next to a man in a dark uniform with a badge on his chest, a Glock on one hip, and a Taser on the other. The waiting patients did not bother to hide their stares as they tried to figure out why he was there.

  And my dad’s presence changed everything for both Macy and Dr. Yee. After a brief whispered consultation, we were allowed into a small file room to view the video feed from the security camera. Well, initially my dad suggested that I head home while he watched it, but I refused, and he didn’t argue.

  But when Macy pulled up Thursday night’s video on a computer monitor, I saw that she was right. It showed just the space directly in front of the door. Only the very edge of the frame captured a slice of the darkened parking lot. It didn’t even reach as far back as the blackberry bushes.

  After showing my dad how to move the video forward and backward, how to speed it up and slow it down, Macy left.

  “Okay, what time did class end Thursday?” Dad asked.

  “Seven thirty, and then Savannah and I mopped the floor. We probably left the dojo at seven forty-five.”

  “I’ll start at seven thirty just to be sure.” He set it to run at high speed, which meant that every ten seconds was collapsed into one. While it played, his finger hovered over the pause button, ready to hit it as soon as we saw something.

  Only we didn’t. The image never changed. A dark empty space. Not even a leaf or a piece of litter blew through.

  As we watched and waited, I knew I had to bring up what I’d heard after I left his office. “I was asking around at school yesterday. Somebody said that earlier this week Courtney Schmitz thought a guy was driving real slow behind her on the way home from school. And about six weeks ago, Sara Ratliff was talking about something similar.”

  “What?” My dad hit the pause button and turned toward me. “And you didn’t think to tell me until now? Don’t you understand, Daniel? I am responsible for students’ safety. And now you’re saying that you were aware students were in danger and you did not inform me?” He wasn’t raising his voice, but it still sounded like he was yelling.

  “But I didn’t really know, not until now. I only heard about Sara secondhand, and I didn’t learn about what happened to Courtney until yesterday. And you know Sara. Courtney’s just the same. They both like to be the center of attention, even if that means exaggerating things. I’d figured Sara was probably imagining it. Besides, the two cars weren’t even the same.”

  “You’re sitting there saying that when an actual girl has gone missing?” He made a frustrated growl. “That’s not for you to say, Daniel. You let me be the judge of things like this. What about the driver? What did Courtney and Sara say he looked like?”

  “I guess they said the windows were all steamed up so they couldn’t see inside. About all they could tell was that the driver was a man.”

  Shaking his head, my dad turned away and pressed the button again. “If you’d told me back when it happened to Sara, we might have had a lead now. We might have had a name. But we’ve got nothing.”

  Was my dad right? Should I have run to him with second- or thirdhand information about Sara? “Even if some guys have been slowing down and looking at girls walking to school, creeping them out—I know that’s not a crime.” I threw my memory of past conversations back at him. “You’re always talking about how you need to have something that will be prosecutable in a court of law.”

  He swore. “Well, now we’ve got nothing. Nothin
g about those cars, and nothing on this tape.” I looked where he was—at the clock on the video: 8:30. A full forty-five minutes after Savannah should have come up the stairs.

  Whatever had happened must have been out of reach of the camera. In the dark. No witnesses, not even a digital one.

  Macy stuck her head in the door. “Any luck?”

  “No.” My dad turned back to the computer, ready to turn the video off.

  And that was when we saw it.

  Two feet entered the top corner of the frame. Savannah’s. I didn’t just recognize her shoes but the graceful way she moved.

  Then behind her feet, two more appeared. Wearing what looked like work boots, although that was just a guess, because the lower legs were covered by dark coveralls. And suddenly the big feet were right behind Savannah’s, so close the tips of his boots must have been hitting the heels of her worn Vans.

  Savannah pivoted, broke away, and ran out of the frame. I gasped when she suddenly fell back into view, her body unnaturally stiff, toppling over like an axed tree.

  “Taser,” my dad muttered to himself.

  For a moment, I saw Savannah’s pale face as she landed hard, her head bouncing. Her hat was already gone. Then she went limp. A man’s hands entered the frame and grabbed underneath her arms. And then they dragged Savannah away from the camera’s view.

  A few seconds later, a white van drove past the camera and out of the lot. It must have been parked in the far corner, where the security camera didn’t reach. And I realized that Savannah had to be in the back of that van.

  My dad slowed down the video, moving the footage back and forth, until he found the spot where the license plate was the most visible. Even then, the van was at an angle, so that only part of the plate showed, and it wasn’t in focus.

  My dad finally spoke. “Yesterday I interviewed Tim Hixon, Savannah’s mother’s boyfriend.” He ran his tongue over his front teeth, his face scrunching up as if he were tasting something disgusting. “He’s a mechanic. He dresses like that guy on this tape. Coveralls, boots.”