The Girl in the White Van Page 6

  If we followed the pattern laid down by Thanksgiving, my dad, allowed home only for the holiday, would talk too much and drink even more than that. Then he and my mom would end up in Jenny’s room, shouting at each other before he stormed out.

  My parents weren’t divorced yet, but my dad had moved to a ratty apartment building and spent all his free time searching for Jenny.

  By now she would have been away at college. Probably getting straight As.

  The night Jenny disappeared from Island Tan, my mom kept calling her cell after she didn’t come home, but my sister didn’t pick up. My dad’s the one who drove out there and found the place unlocked, all lit up, her car parked in front. Both the bank deposit and Jenny were gone. Later, the police checked the security footage from the bank, but the ATM camera didn’t reach far enough to show what happened to her. To show who had taken her, or if she had left with someone else.

  Our whole life turned upside down. Home became where the craziness was. For weeks, our house was full of people. Cops, neighbors, my parents’ friends, reporters.

  At first having cops at our house made me feel safe. But it wasn’t long before I got tired of them answering our landline, drinking out of our coffee cups, and never, ever leaving. I couldn’t walk around in my boxers anymore, because I might run into a police officer or even a reporter. Once I wandered out into the living room in my pajama bottoms and my parents were on the couch, lit up by bright lights on black metal stands, doing an interview for the evening news.

  Just like with the cops, initially it was kind of cool, having people I’d only ever seen on TV in my house. They acted like they just wanted to help. They were friendly. Sympathetic. But as time went on, the reporters asked awful questions, like did I think Jenny was being sexually abused. Or they ran stories that turned out way different than I’d thought. I learned there was no such thing as “off the record.” Eventually I figured out that their real priority wasn’t finding my sister, but getting people to watch their shows.

  After the first week came and went with no Jenny, my parents told me things had to get back to normal. That I had to go back to school. But things there weren’t back to normal either. Some kids acted like having a missing sister was contagious. And some acted like I was a celebrity. They even asked for my autograph.

  At home, I felt like a ghost. You would have thought my parents would have been all over me, putting tracking software on my phone, insisting that I call them whenever I went someplace new. Instead, they barely seemed to notice me. After Jenny disappeared, I started eating dinner at Ian’s house and slept there most nights. Eventually, it was Ian’s parents who started getting uncomfortable with how much time I spent there, who started encouraging me to go home.

  Instead, I just found other people to hang out with. All I wanted to do was drink beer and not talk about Jenny. When I was with my friends, it was easier not to think. Not to think about all the times I had yelled at Jenny, told her to get out of my room, out of my face, out of my life.

  And then all of a sudden, she was.

  The possession of anything begins in the mind.

  —BRUCE LEE

  SAVANNAH TAYLOR

  Outside, the dog was still barking furiously. Trembling, I surveyed the living/dining area. In addition to the couch, it also held two swivel chairs, one of which faced a built-in table with a fixed bench on the other side. At the back, a floor-to-ceiling curtain hid what was presumably the driving area. Everything was made of polyester and plastic in the exact same strange shade of flat brown.

  On the table sat a few magazines and books, as well as an old-fashioned silver boom box, with a half dozen CDs and cassette tapes stacked next to it. In my rush to get out, I hadn’t noticed the heaps of plastic boxes and bags mounded along the walls. They made the small space feel even more cramped.

  I tried to take slow, deep breaths, like Sifu had taught us in kung fu, but they didn’t go very far.

  Jenny stood with her arms wrapped around herself. “You just better hope that Sir doesn’t get mad and come back with the Taser.”

  “To use on us or the dog?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “What do you think?” Outside, the dog’s barks were gradually slowing down.

  I thought back to what had happened in the upper parking lot. “Before he took me, all of a sudden, it felt like all my muscles tightened up, and I fell over. Is that what happened?”

  Jenny nodded. “It shoots out these two darts. If both of them hit you, it makes a circuit that sends electricity through you. That messes up your muscles and nerves so you can’t even stand. But he can also press the end of it against you for a direct shock. That way doesn’t lock up your muscles—it just hurts like hell. Even more than being hit by the darts. And the longer he holds it against you, the worse it is.” Wincing, she rubbed her neck. “You don’t ever want to make him mad.”

  “He must have used those darts on me. I got knocked out when I fell down.”

  “That’s why he wanted you to rest. He said you might have a concussion from hitting your head. But being conscious when he does it is not really an improvement. You can’t move, you can’t think.”

  She was clearly speaking from experience. With every word, it felt more and more like I was suffocating, like the walls of this tiny room were closing in. The air smelled of mold and dust, oil and cigarettes. It smelled like the man who had taken me.

  But did it also smell like Tim?

  “What’s this guy’s real name? Is it Tim? Tim Hixon?”

  Jenny shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. He doesn’t let me call him anything but Sir. And you’d better always call him Sir, or he’ll tase you too.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Blue eyes. Balding. Bigger than me. Older. Maybe forty?”

  Every word she said fit Tim. But my excitement dissipated even before it built. Because it was also kind of a generic description. If a guy shaved his head, you wouldn’t even know what color his hair was. And how many guys had blue eyes and were over forty?

  The description also fit Mr. Tae Kwan Do, the guy from class who thought he didn’t deserve to be last in line. I didn’t know much about him, other than his moods ranged from annoyed to angry, and that he punched way too hard whenever we sparred. Had he watched me leave, night after night, and then decided the upper lot would be a perfect place to take me?

  But Mr. Tae Kwan Do and Tim weren’t the only men I knew who resembled Jenny’s description. A couple of teachers at Wilson looked like that, as well as probably half a dozen random guys I crossed paths with each week. And what about Mr. Fryer, the dad whose five-year-old twins I babysat every couple of weeks? When he paid me, he always stood too close, and when he drove me home, he asked questions that made me uncomfortable. Once he had even asked if I had a boyfriend, which seemed a weird question for a married forty-year-old guy to ask a sixteen-year-old girl.

  “I’m just trying to figure out if I know him. He came up on me from behind. I never saw his face, and I only heard him swear. Is there anything else distinctive about him? Is he overweight or skinny, or does he have a scar or tattoos?”

  “He’s the kind of guy you wouldn’t look at twice.” Jenny’s laugh sounded rusty. “You certainly wouldn’t look at him and think he liked to kidnap girls and hold them hostage in motor homes.” She pressed her ruined lips together and then said, “So who’s Tim?”

  “My mom’s current boyfriend. He shaves his head, and he’s got blue eyes. And the way you’re describing Sir, it sounds like Tim.” I remembered the rage in his eyes when he had accused me of sassing him, of talking back. Maybe kidnapping a girl and forcing her to call him Sir was his dream come true.

  “Sir looks like a million guys.” Jenny waved one hand dismissively.

  Suddenly I remembered the conversation—had it only been yesterday?—at the cafeteria table about a girl who had been kidnapped. “Hey, were you working at a tanning salon when you got taken?”

  Her ey
es went wide. “Yeah. Island Tan. I think he thought we were going to play house. That I was going to be his perfect girl.” She smiled her torn smile. “But then I had to go and spoil everything.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  She took a deep breath. Her eyes filled with tears as she began to speak.

  JENNY DOWD

  My words came in fits and starts as I described that last night to Savannah. The last normal night of my life. I tried not to think about it very often. It wasn’t a night I wanted to relive.

  I’d been in Island Tan’s tiny office, getting ready to close up, when the front door buzzer sounded. I groaned in annoyance. I’d already cleaned all the tanning beds and the spray-tan station. I’d counted the money and put it with a deposit slip in the black zippered bank bag. When I left, I would drop it in the night deposit at the bank next door. But since it wasn’t quite nine o’clock, technically we were still open for business.

  When I opened the office door, I was surprised to find a middle-aged guy at the counter. Most of our clientele were teenage girls.

  But Sir looked boring and safe. That was, if you even noticed him. He was easy to ignore.

  Later, after he took me and I had nothing to do but think, I remembered that I’d actually seen him several times before that last day. Seen him, but never paid attention. In the car next to mine at Safeway. Parked along a route I ran almost every day. I even realized he’d come into the tanning salon on a busy evening a week earlier, disappearing before I had a chance to wait on him.

  He was scanning the walls. I thought he was looking at the posters listing our prices and specials. Maybe getting ready to buy our ten-tans-for-the-price-of-eight package for his wife or daughter. So they’d be ready for winter formal or a beach vacation.

  Now I knew he was really looking one last time for a camera.

  There wasn’t one.

  Without saying a word, he took something from behind his back and pointed it at me. It looked like a gun from a science fiction movie. Plastic, chunky, black and yellow. I didn’t know whether to be afraid of it.

  Still I lifted my hands in the air, feeling like I was playacting. Like this couldn’t be real. “I already cleaned out the till. You can have the bank deposit. It’s in the office.”

  “That’s not what I want,” he said.

  As I realized what he meant, my blood turned to ice. Could I scramble back into the office and slam the door closed? Did it even lock? In my panic, I couldn’t remember. Could I get to my cell phone and call 9-1-1 before he hurt me?

  And then he pulled the gun’s trigger. Immediately, I felt two stings, one in my chest and the other in my left arm.

  My head jerked back, and my legs stiffened. I didn’t remember falling, just being on the flat gray carpet, the current scrambling my thoughts and nerves.

  He slipped behind the counter, leaned down, and hit me twice on the head with the side of the gun, which was just as hard and unyielding as a real gun. Later I learned it was actually a Taser. He yanked up my wrists and duct taped them together. Despite his claim that he didn’t want the money, he darted into the office and came back with the black deposit bag as well as my purse. Then he yanked me to my feet. Half supporting me, he marched me into the cold night.

  Only Muchos Tacos, on the far side of the strip mall, was still open. But when I managed to loll my head in its direction, I didn’t see a single patron inside. The only cars on this side of the lot were my old Mazda 323 and a dirty, windowless white van. When I realized that was where he was taking me, I tried to drag my feet.

  “Come on,” he growled. When I still resisted, he pressed the end of the Taser against the side of my neck. My muscles didn’t spasm, but the pain sucked every other thought from my head. I couldn’t even scream, only whimper. But God help me, after that I willingly crawled into the back of the van. Anything to make it stop.

  As I did, he slapped another piece of duct tape over my mouth. A second later, the rear door closed. And then he got in the front and drove me away.

  I lay in the back, screaming into the sealed space of my mouth. I was in no way ready to die, but I feared I would smother because it was harder and harder to breathe through my nose, stuffy from crying. The thought began to loop through my mind that that might be for the best. Because it was clear that nothing good was going to happen to me whenever he opened the van door again.

  I wasn’t sure how long he drove. The last bit was slow and rough, like he was maneuvering over broken ground, not a road.

  Finally, the van stopped. I heard him get out. He was yelling at someone in a hard language I couldn’t understand. He sounded angry. Then he opened the van’s back door. My eyes had adjusted to the blackness. It was a clear night. The stars were like holes punched in the sky. A full moon, like a closed eye, hung over a wall of compacted cars.

  The wall of crushed cars wasn’t a straight line, but rather a ring surrounding a muddy open space. The space held me, him, the van, a ramshackle house, and an old tan motor home. The RV’s windows were covered by giant silver tarps.

  There was also a dog. A huge black dog that whispered a growl, low in its chest. Sir flung a guttural Bleib! over his shoulder, and the dog quieted. But its eyes never left me.

  Holding my arm, he marched me forward toward the motor home. I turned my head. There was a narrow gap in the wall of smashed cars, a gap he had driven through. Past the gap were rows and rows of junked cars. Some so old trees were growing through them. And past all the cars, I caught a glimpse of a chain-wire fence.

  “I think we’re in the back of a junkyard,” I told Savannah now. “Like a wrecking yard for old cars. And of course a junkyard needs a junkyard dog. Rex just roams around, probably to stop anyone who might be thinking about stealing parts. But he also stops us from getting out.”

  With her head, Savannah gestured at the door. Rex had finally stopped barking. “Is that the same dog who bit you? The one that just tried to get in?”

  I nodded, remembering how Sir had let go of me so that he could fit a key in a padlock. The lock held the ends of a metal chain he had bolted to either side of the door. Once he put me inside and fastened the lock, I would not be able to get out.

  “I tried to run before he even put me in here. But my wrists were duct taped together. I only made it about a hundred yards before Rex got me. He could have killed me. And he almost did.”

  I fell silent, remembering. Sprinting across the muddy ground toward that gap. Not really knowing where I was going, just that I was.

  And then ahead of me was the dog. He crouched, gathering himself to leap. Time slowed down. His jaws were wide open, aimed right at my throat. I tucked my chin.

  I protected my throat from Rex with the only other thing I had to offer him: my face.

  BOB DOWD

  The young woman curled up in the sleeping bag underneath the overpass, next to a brindled pit bull, had dark hair and pale skin. My breath caught.

  As it had dozens of times before.

  Still, I circled around to look at her face. She was young, probably still a teenager.

  But she wasn’t Jenny.

  She wasn’t my daughter.

  Even several feet away, I could smell her. There’s a certain smell of homelessness. It’s not pee. It’s just living in the same clothes. It’s not even an unpleasant smell.

  The girl’s eyes flew open, and she pushed herself up on one elbow. The dog bared its teeth at me.

  “I’m just looking for this girl.” I held out the flyer with three photos of Jenny. Two were real and one had been generated by a special software program that showed her with her hair chopped off and her face gaunt. The police had released it to the media on the six-month anniversary of her disappearance, figuring that if she was still alive, by now she might look nothing like the smiling, healthy Jenny in our original photos. For a few weeks, I got messages on the Facebook page I’d set up. Even though nothing panned out, it was still comforting. Our daughter hadn’t been
forgotten.

  “She’s about your age.” Would Jenny even recognize me now? I’d lost thirty pounds. How could I eat if I didn’t know if she was being fed? My hair was threaded with gray. How could I sleep if she might not be able to? Technically, I still wrote software manuals, but finding Jenny had become my real job.

  When the police stopped actively searching for her, it felt like my heart was being ripped out. What if she was still out there, hurting, in trouble? But in their eyes, she had probably been kidnapped and killed. A few people floated the theory that she had taken the bank deposit and run, but that didn’t explain why she had left her car behind, why her phone hadn’t pinged once since that night.

  But I couldn’t give up on her. What if some creep had taken her and then let her go when he got tired of her? Or if she had really stolen the money, she might have decided we had written her off. Either way, she could be too ashamed to contact us.

  So every weekend and most weeknights, I searched for her. Truck stops. The Greyhound station. Malls. Parks. Strip clubs. Homeless shelters. The Amtrak station. Under bridges. By the river. In front of convenience stores.

  I knew what people thought. That I was denying the reality Jenny was gone for good. More than likely dead. That it was just a way to stave off pain and grief.

  But it was far from a blessing to believe—to know—Jenny was alive. Because that meant she must be going through something that I couldn’t even imagine.

  At times I even wished that they would find Jenny’s body. Maybe then I could have worked toward the closure that the two therapists I’d seen talked about. I would have a grave where I could visit my beautiful daughter and mourn.

  Now the homeless girl covered the dog’s snout with one hand and took the piece of paper with the other. Missing: Jenny Dowd it said at the top. It listed the day she went missing, her birth date, her brown hair and blue eyes, the scar she had on one knee, her lack of tattoos.