The Girl in the White Van Read online

  Which meant there were 999 possible vehicles. A thousand, because there must have also been a SVT 000. But the next digit had looked like it had a straight line at the top. Tracing numbers in the air, I realized that only a five and a seven had that line.

  That left only two hundred possibilities. Maybe even a lot less. First of all, how many vehicles were white vans? And second, a plate that started with SVT had to be really old. My mom’s car was seven years old, and even it started with three numbers and ended with three letters. It had been a long time since plates had started with letters. So how many white vans were still on the road after fifteen or twenty years?

  A couple of hours later, when I heard my dad’s car pull into the driveway, I pushed myself off the bed. Part of me was afraid to hear whatever he would say. I started toward the living room, but he met me in the hall. His face was etched with weariness.

  “What happened?” I asked before he said anything. “Did you find Savannah?”

  He raised one hand. “If I tell you, it’s for your ears only. Not to be shared with anyone.”

  I nodded. “I understand. I won’t.” Did my dad think I was a little kid?

  “Myself and another officer went to speak to Hixon at work. He claimed he didn’t know what happened to Savannah and that he didn’t have a white van. He also became belligerent and threw a wild punch.” My dad pinched the bridge of his nose. “But the most important thing is that he was wearing coveralls and work boots.”

  Just like the guy in the video. “What happened to him?”

  “He’s been charged with assault. He was previously arrested for domestic violence, but the charges were dropped after the victim moved away. After he was taken to jail, I showed Ms. Taylor the video. She was pretty sure it was Tim. Then she gave us permission to search the house.” My dad paused, then looked me straight in the eye. “We found three guns he’d hidden.”

  A picture of Savannah shot to death sprang into my head, but I pushed it away.

  “Did you find the Taser?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Maybe if we could figure out where Savannah was for that hour-long gap on the surveillance footage, it would help us figure out what happened to her,” I suggested.

  He waved a hand. “Oh, it’s not really a gap. I checked. It’s just that the camera was still set on daylight savings time.”

  Why hadn’t I thought of that? “So that white van in the video was his?” I asked.

  “Hixon’s only car is a 1968 Camaro, which is currently out of commission. So he doesn’t own a white van, but he does have access to any vehicle left at the shop overnight or longer. We’re checking the shop’s records, but it’s going to take some time. It’s even possible that he’s secretly had keys made for vehicles. But if that’s his MO, it explains why Courtney and Sara reported being followed by different cars.”

  I held out my phone. “I’ve been texting people today. It’s happened to more than just Courtney and Sara. There were a couple of girls at the middle school, too. There’s, like, a total of five. But the cars sound like they’re all different. They only had one thing in common. They were all old beaters.”

  “Old beaters have to get fixed, too,” my dad said. “And eyewitness testimony is notoriously wrong. I’ve had people swear up and down that white is black. Literally.”

  “But what if this Tim guy is telling the truth? What if it was a different person in that van? Either way, couldn’t you figure out who it belongs to if you worked from the license plate backward through the DMV’s records? It started with either SVT five or SVT seven. How many white vans could there be with that plate sequence still on the road? Can’t you look it up?”

  My dad shrugged. “Color’s a nonissue, Daniel. Records never include the color of the vehicle, since cars can get repainted and there isn’t even a standard set of colors. One manufacturer’s ‘beige’ is another’s ‘champagne.’ A license plate is associated with both an owner and a vehicle, and either one of those could change. The car could be sold and the license plate transferred to a new owner. Or, as I believe happened in this case, the plate itself could be transferred to a different vehicle. Because I did do some checking. And way back when, there was a ninety-eight Chevy van that had a plate that started with Sierra Victor Tango seven.”

  “Really?” I felt a spark of hope.

  He shook his head. “But it was salvaged six years ago.”

  “Salvaged?” I echoed. “What does that mean?”

  “It was in an accident, and insurance declared it a total loss. It ended up at All Autos junkyard. People have probably been picking it clean ever since. Ms. Taylor said Mr. Hixon went to junkyards looking for parts for his Camaro. He must have taken the plates at the same time. And then he switched them out on a customer’s van. He was probably worried about what did end up happening—the plates being caught by a random surveillance camera.” He sighed. “Maybe Hixon will fill us in on how it all worked. But first we need him to tell us what he did with Savannah. And right now, he’s refusing to even admit he’s involved.”

  The attitude, “You can win if you want to badly enough,” means that the will to win is constant. No amount of punishment, no amount of effort, no condition is too tough to take in order to win.

  —BRUCE LEE

  SAVANNAH TAYLOR

  Jenny and I were sitting on the edge of the rectangle we had opened up. The lights from the other rooms did not reach very far into the area we had just uncovered under the hall floor. I leaned down and squinted into the shadows. The space between the main floor and the bottom of the RV was about two feet tall. It seemed mostly empty, holding just a few scattered boxes as well as some wiring and pipes.

  “I’m going to see if we can get out through there,” I told Jenny.

  “Be careful! What if you open up a luggage door and Rex is on the other side?”

  I got up and took a wooden spoon from the junk drawer. “Then I’ll poke him in the eye with this.” I tucked it into the back of my pants, stuck my legs over the side of the hole, and wriggled underneath the floor, which was now my ceiling. There wasn’t even enough room to get to my hands and knees. Ignoring the grating of my broken wrist and the ceiling scraping along my back, I started to army crawl on my forearms toward the side of the RV.

  The air was stale and fusty. I suppressed a sneeze, wondering how it was possible for dust to accumulate in an enclosed space. A second later, all the familiar horrible feelings of claustrophobia began to cascade over me. My palms started to sweat. A zapping sensation ran down my spine. My chest was getting tighter and tighter.

  Before I’d been locked in this RV, my claustrophobia had been caused by an irrational fear. Now I truly was trapped in a small space, possibly forever.

  All the other times, something inside me had frozen as soon as I felt the panic begin. I had felt so desperate, mentally begging it to go away. But now instead of being paralyzed by fear, I was somehow able to realize that the sensations flooding my body were just that—sensations.

  Instead of focusing on taking deep breaths or telling myself it was okay, I decided to stop trying to change the subject. To stop running away from my fears. Come on, I mentally taunted the fear. Is that all you’ve got? Because I know now that there are way worse things. A picture came into my head of my claustrophobia as a little yapping dog, ineffectually trying to sound the alarm. I don’t have all day, I told it. I mean, you’re trying and everything, but can’t you make my heart pound even faster? Can’t you make my chest feel even tighter?

  And instead of it gripping me harder, the fear begin to ease off. I imagined the little dog falling silent, confused. My claustrophobia might be done with me, but I wasn’t done with it. Don’t stop now, I told it. Don’t waste my time like that. But instead I felt it retreat even further.

  I realized that claustrophobia was like one of those woven Chinese finger traps. In order to get out, you had to push in.

  Inch after inch, I pulled myself forward. Eventu
ally, I located the side of the RV by painfully banging it with the top of my head. Had the sound alerted Rex? I held my breath but didn’t hear anything. Running my good hand along the panel, I eventually found a metal bar that moved when I pressed on it. I heard a snick and then felt the compartment door unlatch and begin to swing out as fresh air flowed in.

  Thank God. We would be able to get out.

  I exhaled in relief. I was sandwiched between levels, barely able to move, but the panic that should have gripped me had turned tail and run, no match for reality.

  The space was too tight to turn around in, so I had to crawl backward to return to where Jenny was waiting for me, sitting on the edge of the hole.

  “There’s a door to the outside, and it opens. Let’s get ready and go.”

  I kept the wooden spoon. If Rex attacked us, I could poke his eye or maybe stick it between his jaws. I shrugged on my backpack that held my wallet and sash. Jenny had the boom box with Sir’s voice. She also tucked the spork into her back pocket.

  And then we both ducked beneath the floor. When we reached the compartment door, I put my lips against Jenny’s ear. This close, I could smell the sharp scent of her sweat.

  “Once we get out, we’ll make for that fence you saw. We’ll be as quiet as we can. If we hurry, Rex might not hear us until we’re on the other side.” I tried to remember if dogs were nocturnal. I hoped not. “If he does, then play the tape recorder and keep running. And if he attacks, we have to do everything to stay on our feet. Poke him with the spork. Even if it’s not that sharp, he’s not going to like it. Punch him in the nose. If there’s a tree you can climb, climb it. If we can get up over four or five feet, we’ll be out of his range.”

  “But then we’ll be stuck there.” Jenny’s whisper trembled. “And Sir will hear and come out.”

  “He smelled like he was pretty drunk. If he’s anything like my mom’s boyfriend, that means he’ll be hard to wake up.” I hoped Sir was totally wasted. “Things are not going to get any better tomorrow, so we have to get out of here tonight. And at least right now he’s probably asleep. Are you ready?”

  “I guess.” She took a deep breath. “But, Savannah, if I don’t make it, you have to tell my family that I love them.”

  My anger at Sir morphed into sadness for myself. “The same goes for me. If I don’t make it and you do, tell my mom that I love her.”

  JENNY DOWD

  Savannah opened the luggage compartment door. Cold, fresh air flooded in. Moving carefully and quietly, we crawled out. It felt like we were moving in slow motion, but at the same time, we couldn’t afford to make any noise. Every nerve ending vibrating, I waited to hear Rex or Sir. I didn’t know which would be worse. Once we were out, we lowered the cargo door back to its closed position with almost exaggerated care. Then I helped Savannah to her feet.

  As I did, I looked up. My breath caught. The night sky was even more amazing than I remembered, like diamonds sprinkled over black velvet, with a three-quarter opalescent moon.

  We were standing in the muddy clearing I’d last seen ten months before. Surrounded by the same fifteen-foot-high row of car carcasses that had been crushed into scrap metal and then piled on top of each other like oversized gray-and-rust-colored bricks. A narrow gravel road, just wide enough for a car, pierced the wall of metal. On it was parked the white van.

  The only thing that had changed from ten months earlier was that now the clearing held a second old RV. About a month ago, I had heard a loud engine outside, but the tiny gap over the window hadn’t revealed what was happening. Sir must have intended it for Savannah, at least before she broke her wrist.

  And past the second RV was the same run-down two-story house I’d seen during my abortive escape attempt. Sir must be in there. I thought of the knife and the Taser on his belt. If he woke up and heard us, he would surely kill us.

  As would Rex.

  Without any kind of signal between us, Savannah and I both started, madly, to run. The sound of every footfall made me wince. When a frozen puddle shattered into icy shards under my left foot, my heart leapt in my chest.

  The multiple layers of clothes made our run more of a waddle. Despite the slow pace, even before we reached the opening in the wall of cars, I was wheezing. I used to run almost every day, but I hadn’t had any kind of exercise for ten months. My lungs burned, and my wasted muscles protested. The boom box thumped against my thigh. The only forces powering me were adrenaline and fear.

  At first, Savannah was just a few feet ahead of me, but gradually, the distance between us lengthened.

  Where was Rex? He could be anywhere. My nerves were stretched to the breaking point as I swiveled my head and strained my ears, waiting for an explosion of barking. But the only sounds were our breathing and our feet on the graveled road.

  And then we were past the wall. Our horizons opened up. We were surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands, of old cars and trucks. They didn’t sit in neat, orderly rows, but in clumps and clusters. Hoods were up or gone. Doors missing. Some had no engine at all. Most had no tires.

  My steps were slower and slower, both from exhaustion and from having to watch where I stepped. Bits and pieces of cars were strewn everywhere: seats, fenders, bumpers, bed liners, lengths of black rubber tubing, and white plastic reservoirs that had once held fluids.

  I heard Rex before I saw him. It wasn’t a bark but a continuous growl, low in his throat. The emotion that filled me wasn’t fear. It was a hot eruption of terror. Every strategy we’d plotted flew out of my head.

  He was galloping straight toward Savannah. His dark eyes were as big as chestnuts. His mouth was filled with teeth and foam.

  And then he was on her, leaping the last six feet. Rex’s jaws closed on her thigh, and then he started violently shaking his head. He seemed determined to tear her apart. Somehow, probably thanks to kung fu, she was managing to stay on her feet, her free leg dancing back and forth as she tried to stay balanced.

  Finally, I remembered the boom box. I stabbed at the button to play the tape of Sir’s commands. Before we left the RV, I had turned the volume to its highest level.

  Sir’s voice suddenly boomed out. “Platz! Hier! Hier! Fuss!” Even though I knew it was just a recording, the sound of him so close caused another wave of terror to crash over me.

  Rex abruptly released Savannah’s leg. My knees went weak with relief. Her plan was actually working.

  He raised his head. He looked from me to Savannah and back again.

  Too late, I realized what the word in the middle of our recording of Sir was. Hier. Pronounced slightly differently, probably spelled differently, but it must have meant “here.” As in “Come here.”

  And then Rex abandoned Savannah for me.

  Cease negative mental chattering. If you think a thing is impossible, you’ll make it impossible.

  —BRUCE LEE

  SAVANNAH TAYLOR

  After Jenny broadcast his owner’s voice through the tape player, Rex let me go. Relief flooded my veins, but it was short-lived. He had abandoned me for Jenny. Her eyes went wide as I think we both understood one of the words Sir had meant.

  Frantically, she rewound the few seconds of tape and hit the play button again before throwing the recorder a dozen feet away. She must have hoped he would run to it, rather than her.

  But Rex didn’t swerve, didn’t even hesitate, as he hurtled toward her. When he was still six feet away, he leapt.

  Jenny screamed then, a wordless sound of utter terror. Rex barreled into her chest, knocking her onto her back. I staggered as fast as I could toward them.

  My blood chilled when I saw that he had Jenny’s wrist in his mouth. Growling, he shook it back and forth. I was on them now. I hit his nose with a right hammer fist as hard as I could. It was wet with his spittle, and I felt it give under my blow. But it was as if I had done nothing.

  Jenny looked like she had fainted, loose and boneless. Her head lolled back, exposing the top half of her throat, which w
asn’t protected by the Bruce Lee book.

  I needed to try something else. Frantic, I broke off a car antenna and brought it down on the dog’s back like a whip. It didn’t even give him pause.

  It was hopeless. I would never get him off her. Soon Rex would drop Jenny’s wrist and go for her throat. And she would die here in the frozen mud, only a few hundred yards from freedom.

  I couldn’t let that happen.

  The wooden spoon was still in my back pocket. I pulled it out and tried to poke Rex in the eye with the handle. But it just landed on his cheek.

  Still, it was enough to make him pay attention to me. Letting go of Jenny, he turned and nipped at the spoon, catching it in his powerful jaws. There was a cracking sound. In a single bite, he reduced it to splinters.

  Then he turned back to Jenny, his open jaws dripping spit on her slack white face.

  I slapped the dog’s butt. “Come get me! Come on!” I stuck my face close to his.

  He lunged at me. I smelled his rotting breath. His jaws snapped closed a few centimeters from my face. I took a step back. As I had hoped, he followed. Weren’t predators hardwired to scan for movement and then chase it? An unmoving Jenny wasn’t as much fun as a person who screeched and ran and leapt.

  So I did, running away from Jenny as far and as fast as I could.

  But Rex’s four legs were faster than my two. And my path had led me into a tangle of cars from which there was no other exit. I turned to face the dog, my back against the rear end of a big green sedan so old it had fins. If he tried to knock me over, maybe the car would hold me up. I held my arms between him and my face. When he attacked, I would try to give his jaws the splint.

  I knew all those moves would only buy me time. In the end, they wouldn’t save me.