The Disappearance Read online

  “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 recogniti
on.

  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.

  A team of forensic experts have been studying these various sets of footprints since they arrived. Almost all of the prints will be accounted for, they know from past experience; they’ve worked countless locations like this one. Some of the prints are from steel-toed work boots, others are from rubber-galosh types, and there are some running-shoe prints. All are the trackings of gardeners, pool men, other physical laborers. None of these shoe prints have unique enough markings to be able to single out the one that would have been worn by the abductor who entered Emma Lancaster’s bedroom in the darkest hour of the night. If, that is, she was abducted.

  “Here’s some fresher sets.” One of the forensic cops is pointing out to another detective, his partner, footprints that lead onto Emma’s bedroom patio from the lawn. The shoes the girls wore when they went out are strewn near the doorway.

  “Three sets,” the other cop observes quickly.

  “Three girls, three pairs of shoes, three sets of prints,” the lead cop agrees. “Stands to reason.”

  They follow the prints across the expanse of lawn, where they wind up at the stairs of the gazebo, the farthest point from the house. “Still just three girls,” the senior cop observes quickly. He’s a good tracker, he’s part of the county search-and-rescue team. He’s tracked and found lost children and hikers all over the Los Padres National Forest to the north. Compared to that kind of tracking, this is child’s play.

  “Let’s see what they were up to,” he says. Presciently, he adds, “Whatever they were doing, they didn’t want mommy or daddy to know about it.” He heads up the stairs, his partner following.

  The scuffed wooden floor of the gazebo is littered with cigarette butts. A stack of Coke, Pepsi, Dr Pepper, and Snapple bottles and cans have been haphazardly pushed into a corner. There are a few beer bottles and cans scattered among them as well.

  “My college dorm room wasn’t this grungy,” the lead cop observes.

  The other picks up one of the empty beer bottles. “Sierra Nevada. These kids have taste. Money, too.”

  “It’s what their parents drink,” his partner says. He stands at the gazebo railing, looking at the back of the sprawling house, the clusters of detectives combing it for clues. “A place this size has three or four big refrigerators. You could take a truckload of beer out and no one would ever miss it.”

  His partner spies something in a crack in the floor. “What have we here?” he asks aloud, bending down to pry the object from between two floorboards with the point of a key. “Check this out.” He holds the roach up to the other cop’s face.

  The lead man squints at the found object. “Big fucking deal.”

  “It isn’t licorice.”

  “Go by Santa Barbara Junior High any day during lunch break,” the forensic officer says. “This is the least of what they’re indulging in. Anyway, who says it’s one of the girls—or any of this shit, for that matter? It could be some of the servants, a gardener. Places like this have a gazillion people working at them.”

  The other man drops the roach into a plastic bag. “Worth checking out.”

  “Oh, yeah. We’ve got to.”

  While this is going on outside, Sheriff Williams is inside the house interviewing Doug and Glenna in a private study away from the working cops.

  “When was the last time either of you saw your daughter?” he starts out.

  “When she came home last night,” Glenna says straight away.

  “What time was that?”

  She thinks for a moment. “About a little before eleven, I guess. I wasn’t looking at the clock. I had people over. Her curfew’s eleven, she’s good about making it.”

  “Do you know how she got home? Did a friend bring her, one of the mothers of the other girls?”

  Glenna shakes her head. “She took a cab. They did. The girls.”

  “You know that for a fact? Maybe she told you that because they were with a boy? Or some boys? That you wouldn’t be happy about them being with? Or even if you didn’t mind who the boys were, but they wouldn’t want their mothers to know about it?”

  “Emma’s only in the eighth grade. She doesn’t date.” She takes a sip of wine. It’s her second glass. She needs it to keep her nerves under control, so she doesn’t all of a sudden start screaming. “Besides, she hit me up for the cab fare. Twenty-two dollars.”

  Williams makes a note. “Do you remember what cab company?”

  “No. I didn’t go out to pay them. She did.”

  “Does your daughter take cabs fairly often?”

  “No.” Glenna glances at Doug. “Normally one of the people who work here picks her up—if we can’t,” she adds hastily, not wanting to come off as a rich, uncaring parent.

  “But not last night?”

  “They were busy with other things,” she says, feeling apologetic and not liking it.

  “How large a staff do you have?” the sheriff asks. “That live here?”

  “We have four people who live with us, and staff is too formal a word. There are two that drive her. I gave both of them the evening off. Emma knew to catch a cab ride home if she couldn’t get a lift from one of her friends.”

  “That doesn’t count the gardeners,” Doug Lancaster interjects.

  “The gardeners don’t live here,” his wife answers. She feels defensive about all the people who work for them, although she knows she shouldn’t; she pays them well, people love working for her. Everyone gets a bonus at Christmas, even if the revenue from the stations is down.

  “How many gardeners are there on a steady basis?”

  “Two,” Glenna answers.

  “How many times a week do they come?”

  “Every day during the week,” she says, beginning to feel annoyed. “They don’t work weekends unless it’s a special occasion, a party for charity, things like that.”

  Another note. “I’ll get their names later. Could you tell me what you yourself were doing?” he asks her.

  “I was hosting my monthly women’s consciousness group,” she informs him.

  Williams waits for her to go on.

  “A dozen or so women. We pick a different topic each month and we talk about our experiences on that topic. Personal stuff—feelings, emotions, things that matter to us. It’s normally Tuesday nights, but this month worked out better for Saturday.”

  “The other women in the group were here when the girls got back from downtown?”

  “Yes, they were here.”

  The women’s group broke up around twelve-thirty. Glenna called good-night to Emma and her friends, volubly chattering away in Emma’s room behind the closed door. Glenna doesn’t intrude on her daughter’s space. It’s important to Glenna that Emma have her own space and her mother’s confidence in her, with no prying or spying.

  Glenna did her bedtime preparations and was asleep by one.

  “And you didn’t hear anything later on?” Williams asks. “No out-of-the-ordinary sounds?”

  “No. I slept straight through until seven-thirty. I’m usually a light sleeper. If there had been anything loud, I’m sure I would’ve heard it. The master bedroom is on the opposite side of the house from the other bedrooms.”

  Williams starts to say something, then decides not to. “If you could give me the names of those women,” he asks her. “It might be helpful.”

/>   Glenna nods. “I’ll make a list for you before you leave.”

  “Appreciate that.” He turns to Doug, who’s sitting immobile, cracking his knuckles, looking impatient. That’s okay, Williams thinks, let him stew a bit. “And you, Mr. Lancaster?”

  “The last time I saw Emma?” Doug isn’t drinking. He feels like one, a stiff one, but he doesn’t want to drink with the police here.

  “Yes.”

  Doug thinks for a minute. “Yesterday morning? Did I see her then? You know, I don’t remember now. I think so, but maybe I didn’t.”

  “When was the last time you could definitely say you saw her?”

  “Friday night,” Glenna answers for him. “Two nights ago. We all had dinner together, the three of us.”

  “That sounds right,” Doug agrees.

  Williams scribbles in his notebook again. Looking up, he asks, “And you were where last night, Mr. Lancaster?”

  “L.A. Beverly Hills, to be specific, until pretty late, then I was in my hotel in Santa Monica.”

  “L.A.?”

  “I had a business meeting,” Doug explains. “Some of my affiliate associates from the network were out for the weekend from New York and Atlanta. We worked Saturday, had dinner Saturday night, then some of us played golf this morning.” He paused. “That’s where my wife finally tracked me down, on the golf course.”

  “Right,” Williams responds, his face betraying no interest. “You’ll give us the names?”

  “I don’t carry a cell phone on the course,” Doug adds apologetically. Then he rattles off the names of the men and women he had dinner with last night, the name of the hotel he stayed at, the names of the others in his golf foursome.

  Williams writes it down. “That’s all we need for now. We’ll be looking around for a while. If we find anything, we’ll come and tell you.”

  As the sheriff is leaving the room, Doug stands in the doorway, blocking his exit. “That was some pretty inquisitive questioning just now,” Doug says, not bothering to conceal his displeasure. “I almost felt we were under suspicion of something, the way you were probing.” The intensity of his voice forces Williams to look at him. “I understand you have to find out what’s going on, but what was that? Or am I misreading you?”