Eleven Hours Page 6

  Five minutes later the police arrived. There were two officers—Officer Charles, a man, and Officer Patterson, a woman. Patterson did not seem particularly sympathetic and Rich took an instant dislike to her. She reminded Rich of the disapproving older woman in the parking lot. Like, what’s the matter, your wife is away from you for a few hours and you panic? What about when you leave us to go on your business trips and we can’t get in touch with you? What about when you go out with the boys and say you’re coming home at midnight and it’s three and you’re still not home? Don’t worry, Officer Patterson’s casual expression read. Your wife is probably at the movies.

  Officer Charles was talking, but through the din in Rich’s head, he could barely hear him. Then he realized the din was there just so he couldn’t hear Charles speak, because Rich didn’t like what he was hearing. Something about not jumping to conclusions.

  Rich wasn’t sure if he needed to respond to that or just get in his car and go home. He said, “I thought you came to help me. If you can’t help me, then let me talk to someone who can.”

  The officers tried with little effect to be more helpful. “Could your wife have gone into labor?” said the woman officer. “Could she be in the hospital somewhere?”

  Shaking his head, Rich said, “We’re preregistered at Columbia Medical. If she was having a baby, that’s where she would go, and they have my number. Also she has it. She’s not there. I called them. And no one’s called me.”

  “Could she have been in an accident?” said Charles

  “Yes, yes, she could have,” Rich said impatiently, failing despite his best wishes to talk slowly, calmly, reasonably. “No, absolutely. You’re so right. She could have been in an accident.” He paused. “But not in her own car. Because our car is parked out—” and he flung his arm for emphasis—“there.”

  Officer Charles stared at him. “Perhaps she had an accident in someone else’s car?” he said.

  “Maybe she met a friend and decided to spend the afternoon with him or her,” Officer Patterson suggested.

  Rich rubbed his eyes, shaking with frustration, and other things. “Oh, dear Jesus! We had a lunch date at one. She didn’t show up. She has the cell phone with her—”

  “Maybe it ran out of power,” said Patterson.

  “You mean to tell me that my wife decided to stand me up after calling me and asking me to meet her early?” he said loudly. He may have even shouted. The officers asked him if he wanted to go upstairs and talk to them privately in the security offices. Rich refused.

  “Could she still be in the mall, maybe?” said Charles, while Patterson looked at Rich disapprovingly.

  “Okay,” said Rich. “She buys a pretzel from Alex at twelve twenty-five, at which point she’s accosted by a stranger who offers to carry her bags. She refuses. He follows her—”

  “He goes in the same direction she’s heading,” Officer Patterson corrected him.

  “Of course, excuse me. At twelve-thirty she calls my office and asks me to meet her a little early for lunch. That’s unique in my experience.”

  “Maybe you’re prejudging your wife,” said Officer Patterson. “There’s a first time for everything.”

  Rich faced the male officer. “She shops for a little while longer, and then Alex sees her heading that way.” Rich pointed. “Which is where her car is parked. I know because it’s still there. The man is walking in the same direction she is. I know you say it’s a coincidence, but how many can we have in one day?” Rich could not stop moving. “If my wife met me for lunch, then I’d say everything’s hunky-dory and isn’t it all so coincidental. But she didn’t meet me for lunch. No one’s heard from her. Her car is still parked outside. Which means that my pregnant wife with all her shopping bags is still in this mall, because the bags are not in the car. Except for this bag, the pretzel bag. I found it next to our minivan. Look, there’s a receipt in it, two pretzels, my wife’s smell on the bag, and what to me looks like her blood. Look!” He shoved the bag rudely into Officer Patterson’s face and then into Officer Charles’s. “What do you think it is?”

  “Listen, maybe her nose bled, and she decided to come back in,” said Officer Patterson, a little more sympathetically. “Then she met someone she knew, and decided to spend the afternoon with them. That’s likely, right?”

  “Then why hasn’t she called me?” Rich screamed.

  They looked frightened of him. Frightened and concerned. As if they didn’t understand what was driving him, what he was so upset about.

  Am I crazy? Am I mad? Have I lost my sanity? Rich looked around him. There was the Disney Store, there was Dillard’s, there was FAO Schwarz. He could see, he could comprehend. He wasn’t insane yet. Rich concluded that police officers were trained to deal with robberies and homicides and rapes, but not trained to deal with fear.

  “Tell you what,” Officer Patterson said. “If she’s in this mall, let’s alert mall security. They’ll call for her on the PA.”

  Rich threw up his hands. He paced furiously near the fountain in the middle of the mall, peering into strange faces walking past him while the officers went to talk to security upstairs. Rich was still hoping that somehow Didi would miraculously appear before him with a new hairdo. Within five minutes there was an announcement over the public address system: “Will Didi Wood please come to the security office on the second floor as soon as possible?” It was repeated twice.

  Rich sat down, leaned his elbows on his knees, and held his head in his hands. Seconds later he was up and pacing again. Five minutes later—which seemed an eternity—there was another announcement: “Will anyone with any information about the whereabouts of a nine-month-pregnant woman with long brown hair and wearing a yellow dress notify the management or the security personnel as soon as possible.” That message was also repeated twice.

  The officers came back to Rich and flanked him as he walked back and forth. “Let’s wait and see. Okay? Let’s wait and see what happens,” said Officer Charles.

  They didn’t have to wait long.

  Rich saw two women walking alongside a security officer, and he immediately moved toward them. Charles and Patterson followed.

  The young security officer said, “These ladies here said they might have seen a pregnant woman in the parking lot earlier today.”

  “What time was that?” Rich snapped.

  Officer Charles put up his hand as if to stop Rich. “Wait a second,” he said gently to Rich. He turned to the women. “What time was that?”

  The ladies shrugged. They were short and chubby. The taller of the short women—bleached, heavy, and middle-aged—said, “I don’t know. Maybe around one. We were just coming into the mall.”

  “And what happened?”

  “We parked our car and started walking to the entrance. Then all of a sudden a lady started screaming.”

  An uncontrolled groan left Rich’s throat. For a few seconds no one spoke. Rich couldn’t even look up from the floor. He could barely stand.

  “Go on,” Officer Charles said quietly.

  There were tears in the woman’s eyes. “I feel so bad now, you know, because then we looked over at her, and she had a guy with her, and he smiled at us, wrapped an arm around her, and started kissing her—”

  “Started what?” Rich said, horrified.

  “Started kissing her.”

  He briefly felt relief. “Well, then, that couldn’t have been my wife.”

  “Maybe not,” she said. “But this woman was very pregnant and she had long brown hair. She was screaming, ‘Help me, help me,’ and then the guy kissed her and we just thought they were fooling around, you know? Didn’t we, Debbie?”

  Trembling, Rich clenched and unclenched his fists.

  “This guy, what did he look like?”

  Officer Charles extended his hand again. “Mr. Wood, wait.” He turned to the woman. “What did this guy look like?”

  “We didn’t see him so good,” she said. “We just saw them from the
side, you know. She was wearing a white dress—”

  “White?” Rich exclaimed, his heart pounding.

  “Not white, Nancy,” said Debbie. “It was yellow. Remember I said it was a cheerful color?”

  “Oh yeah,” Nancy said. “Yellow. And the guy, he was, I don’t know—a little taller than her. Kind of thin, I think. Right, Deb?”

  “Yeah, he was taller than her. He was wearing jeans and a jacket, that’s all I remember. He was kind of nondescript, and we couldn’t see them well.”

  Rich nodded in anxious agreement. “Nondescript—that’s exactly how Alex described the guy who was hanging around Didi when she bought the pretzels.”

  Officer Patterson looked at Rich. He couldn’t place the peculiar expression and thought maybe it was guilt for her earlier reluctance to believe that Didi was in trouble, but then Patterson asked, “Does the man sound like anyone you know?”

  Rich wished Patterson was a man and not a police officer, because he wanted to hit her. “What the hell are you saying to me?” he said and didn’t care how he sounded., “What the hell do you think you’re saying? Does the guy sound like someone I might know? The guy who kisses my wife as she’s screaming for help? You know, no one like that springs to mind at the moment.” Rich glared at her. “You’re saying, do I know if my pregnant wife has been fooling around behind my back?”

  The officers looked ashamed, and the two women were downright embarrassed. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” Rich said to Patterson. “You just can’t help saying the wrong thing.”

  “I apologize,” Patterson started to say, but Rich cut her off. “Obviously you have a problem dealing with people, and I see that as a real detriment in your line of work, considering you pretty much have to deal with people all day long.”

  Disgusted with her, he turned away and spoke to Officer Charles. “Why are you looking for every possible explanation except the obvious? Her nose bled, she met a friend, the cell phone’s dead, she forgot about our lunch date, blah, blah, blah. Everything. God, can’t you see what must have happened?” He was choking on his words. “My wife is missing. My pregnant wife—she’s probably been taken by force—” The words were larger than his throat. “What can we do now?” He looked around and walked back a few steps to sink into the wooden bench. “What do we do now?” he said and buried his face in his hands.

  4:00 P.M.

  The man kept a steady pace on the road. They had just passed Midlothian, twenty miles south of Dallas.

  “What are the rules of our game?” Didi asked.

  “Rules?” Pleasure showed on his face. “Okay, how about this? We do it in three guesses and I give you three clues.”

  “Sounds good,” said Didi, licking her lips. She liked it better when he wasn’t sullen.

  “My name,” said the man, “is the name of a great country singer.” She said, “Kenny?”

  “Kenny?” he exclaimed. “Gosh, no! I said great, didn’t I? Not a hack. No, a great, incredible country singer. Two more guesses left.”

  “Well, then,” said Didi, “I need two more clues, don’t I?”

  He thought about it, saying nothing for a while. He drove. The sun beat hot on the car. Didi was panting. She needed cool air.

  “Okay, how about this—he’s tall.”

  Shaking her head, Didi said, “They’re all tall, tall is not a good clue. Sort of like, they’re all men.” She thought she’d gone too far. Like she was insulting his clues or something.

  It was clear he thought the same thing, because he said to her, “Are you trying to get smart with me?”

  “No, no,” she quickly said. “I mean, maybe something a tiny bit more specific.”

  “I was married recently,” he said, and Didi couldn’t be sure if he was in character or talking about his own life. “And now I’m not anymore.”

  “Why not?” said Didi.

  “Because my wife was a hopeless slut and wouldn’t settle down,” he said harshly.

  She guessed he was in character. “Lyle Lovett,” Didi said. “Lyle.”

  He looked at her sideways with amazement and maybe even admiration. “Wow. Two guesses. My name is Lyle. That’s incredible. Very fast. Lovett is not my last name, though.”

  “No, of course not,” Didi said. And then, “Lyle is a nice name.” Sucker-upper, she thought. You’ll say anything to save your life, won’t you?

  She must have looked stricken, because he said solicitously, “What’s the matter?” and placed his right hand on her knee.

  It was difficult not to cringe and pull away from him. Wiping her face quickly, she said, “Can I have that drink now? I’m really very thirsty.”

  “Well, hold on, hold on,” said the man named Lyle. “I have to guess your name now, too, don’t I?”

  “I can just tell you my name,” Didi offered.

  “No!” He stuck out his hand. “I want to guess. Please. I was having so much fun with this at Dillard’s. Let me see … what do I get if I guess in three?” And he leered at her, smiling suggestively and pursing his lips. She wanted to open the door and fall out of the car onto the embankment. She would have done so if she hadn’t had a baby inside her.

  “I don’t know,” she said helplessly. She did not add, what do you want?

  “How about a little kiss?” he said, reaching out and placing his hand on her leg, just below her dress line. His hand on her bare leg made her emit a retching sound.

  Lyle took his hand away. “Yes,” he said, not smiling. “Maybe we’ll start with a little kiss. Now give me the first clue.”

  She tried to swallow. Her throat was dry. She needed to swallow to ease her anxiety, but there was nothing to swallow with. The need, though, was great. She wiped her sweaty forehead and, panting, put her hand in her mouth. Unsatisfying, but better than the tightness that overwhelmed and paralyzed her. “Okay, first clue,” she said huskily. “I was a major female character in an old, very famous play.”

  Lyle’s brow furrowed. Suddenly he didn’t seem to be enjoying himself. He obviously realized it was going to be harder than he had thought. “Play?” he said grumpily. “I don’t know any plays. What do you mean?”

  “Well, that’s my first clue. If you want another clue, I’ll give it to you, but then it will be two clues.”

  “No, wait. Let me guess.” He looked pensive. “An old play?”

  She was quiet, rubbing her sore right ear. “Yes, an old play.”

  There was an echo in her ear, and the ringing would pass through the canyon of her eardrum, bounce off, and ring in both ears. She was getting a terrific headache. Lowering her hands to the Belly, Didi felt the baby kick. In the first second it gave her comfort, in the second, anguish. The baby.

  “I’ve never seen a play in my life,” said Lyle.

  “What about in high school?”

  “Yeah,” he drew out. “Maybe in high school. Guys and Dolls, maybe. Sound of Music. Yes! Your name is Maria.”

  “No,” she said, and thought, idiot. Didn’t I say an old play?

  “No?” He seemed disappointed. He had looked so proud of himself when he said Maria. The baby kicked again. She closed her eyes.

  “Another clue,” he said.

  “I was very much loved by one man,” Didi said. “But another man hated him and wanted to do him and me harm.”

  “Loved by one man,” Lyle muttered. “Another man hated me, wanted to do me harm.” And then louder, “The clues aren’t very good. They’re too mysterious.”

  Didi watched the speedometer as the car slowed to forty. “Have a guess, and I’ll give you another one.” Didi was hoping he would continue to drive slowly and be stopped by traffic control for endangering public safety. Wouldn’t that be a joke.

  “Okay, lessee.” Lyle’s eyes brightened. Didi watched him carefully. “Maybe Charles Dickens, one man loved me, another—yes, yes, A Tale of Two Cities. Yes, but what was her name? What was the girl’s name who was married to one of the twins?”


  Didi wanted to say A Tale of Two Cities was not a play, but again she held her swollen tongue.

  “Lucie!” Lyle shouted happily. “Lucie is your name!”

  Didi shook her head. “Nice guess, though.”

  He snapped his fingers and clucked. He seemed extremely disappointed. “But the clue you gave, that was right. She is loved by one man, and the other wants to do her and him harm.”

  “No,” she said. “Sydney Carton didn’t want to do Lucie harm at all. He loved Lucie. He switched places with her husband so he could die instead of him. He died for her.”

  Lyle was frowning deeply. Now he was going over ninety.

  Oh, to have the window opened, Didi thought. Oh, to have the police pull us over.

  “I don’t remember that about A Tale of Two Cities. I just remember she was deeply loved by one man, Miss Smarty Pants,” Lyle added bitterly.

  They were both silent for a few moments. Didi was recalculating her options.

  He was still at ninety.

  Didi was praying.

  Dear God. Whatever I’ve done in my life, forgive me, good Lord, and in Your infinite mercy, send an officer my way. At the very least, some water.

  He said, “Let’s have the third clue.”

  Lord, please guide Your servant Lyle out of the darkness he is in, guide him out, help him find the way, Lord, help him find the gate that leads into life.

  “Let’s have it,” Lyle said.

  “Okay, third clue.” Didi had hoped for more time. “How about if I give you the first initial? Would that be a good clue?”

  “If I guess it, yes,” he said, unsmiling. “If I don’t guess it, no.”

  The words struck at her heart.

  “Okay, here goes. Remember the other clues too, though. The initial is D.”

  “D,” he said. “D. A famous character in an old play, loved by one man, harmed by another—was she harmed?”

  “Yes,” Didi said. “She was harmed.”

  Lyle scratched his head. He was still at ninety. Didi was still thirsty. Please, she was praying. A police officer or water.