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“Stay still and don’t move. Don’t speak.”
He left.
When he returned only three sets of sixty later, he brought with him The Doctor and Mr. Obvious. This time a woman accompanied them. She spoke first.
“This is her?” she asked.
Yes, “this is her.” Was it the massive belly or the gigantic boobs giving away my gender, genius? I labeled her “Mrs. Obvious,” even though it was hasty of me to so quickly conclude she was married to Mr. Obvious. Regardless, had these miscreants not kidnapped me and intended to steal my baby, my mother still would have hated these people and their stupid, meaningless questions. I hated them for my own reasons.
“Let’s see it,” she said.
My heart fluttered, the hummingbird returned, but I steadied myself in practiced tai chi breathing. And then I heard the most awful sound. The floor beyond the door creaked as if breaking, and metal wheels rolling on the wide pine boards announced the approach of something heavy. No one spoke. The object slammed into the door jamb, and after shaking through the doorframe and rolling more, it came to rest at the head of my bed. The slither of a cord or rope scraped past me on the floor.
The song on the radio lost its momentum. A quick silence followed. Next came a scratching sound near the outlet at my feet. They must need the outlet. With a whoosh, whatever they’d brought in began to hum. Must be a machine.
“Let’s give it a few minutes to warm up,” The Doctor said.
They left my prison-cum-hospital to whisper in the hallway. It was so hard to hear through the bag and above the drone of the mysterious machine, I got only fragments of what they said: “…about seven-and-a-half months…too soon…blue…yes, blue…”
They spilled back into the clink. Footsteps approached the side and end of the bed. Masculine hands fished around my ankles and untied them, and, before this group of strangers to which I was blinded, my pants were removed, my underwear discarded, and my legs ripped apart. I fought with all my strength, kicking whoever was at my feet in his soft body. I can only hope I hit his groin.
“Relax those legs, young lady, or I’ll have to sedate you. Ronald, come here, hold her legs down,” The Doctor said.
He can’t sedate me. I need evidence. I loosened my grip, slightly. As soon as I did, without ceremony, warning, or apology, a hard plastic wand with a warm gel was inserted. It moved inside me.
The Doctor kept icicle spider fingers on my belly, pressing for movement and parts, just like I did all day in that cell, but for wholly different reasons. Black malice vs. pure love.
“Right here, this little curve, that’s the penis. A boy for sure,” The Doctor instructed.
An ultrasound. I wanted to see my baby so badly, tears swelled up and wet the case on my face.
“Here is the heart. Very strong. Very, very strong. The boy is healthy. He’s about three pounds now,” The Doctor said.
But the Obvious couple didn’t seem to care about those details.
“And you’re sure her parents also have blue eyes and blond hair?” Mr. Obvious asked.
“Positive.”
“And, the father of this baby, him too?”
“We don’t know who the father is for sure—but we believe the boyfriend is the father. If he’s the one we saw her walking with a couple days before we took her, he, too, is blond, with blue eyes.”
“I’m taking it only if it comes out with blond hair and blue eyes. I don’t want some ethnic-looking baby in my house,” Mrs. Obvious said and laughed, although she most definitely was not joking.
“Your choice. We have a waiting list of customers, but you’ll have the right of first refusal, especially given what happened with the last girl.”
“Just get me a blond baby with blue eyes,” Mrs. Obvious said upon a hiss and a chortle.
Since my love switch was most certainly “on” for my child, my heart broke. He is healthy. He is strong. He weighs three pounds. They want to take him. Someone else will take him if they don’t. His heartbeat is strong. He weighs three pounds. She doesn’t want an ethnic baby. His heartbeat is strong.
Hearing this conversation only gave me more resolution, more resolution I did not need. My fury was bolstered, solidified, garrisoned, and fortified. I believe God Himself would have lifted his heavenly palms in defeat upon meeting up with my otherworldly veneer of absolute hate. My commitment to escape and exact murderous revenge became a force unstoppable. With rage, I burned the tears from my eyes and set a course on these unsuspecting cretins that only the devil might have the audacity to attempt to rival, but he’d lose. I became the devil. If Satan were a mother, he, indeed, would be just like me.
The crowd dispersed in a trailing departure. The Doctor said, “Ronald, leave this thing in here. Doesn’t make any sense bringing it back and forth. This is the last you’ll see of us for this patient—until her water breaks. Call only if there are problems.”
The room emptied, except for my jailer, Ronald.
There was an instant quiet, a moment of dead calm, until he lurched toward me and removed the case from my head.
Ronald, who I will try not to refer to in my re-telling by name out of disrespect, untied my bindings. For a split second, a boring familiarity tricked me, the kind like when Nana leaves after a visit and I’m left with only my parents again. The same-old. The blasé. But not to worry, the second passed quick enough, and unfathomable hate returned, just as I intended—the emotion necessary for me to plan, to plot, to escape, to seek revenge. I grabbed my underwear and pants and put them on.
He gathered the cord to the ultrasound machine, as I sat on the bed and stared at him, my arms crossed at the chest. When he met my eyes, I did not blink. You are going to suffer, Ronald. That’s right, I have your name now, motherfucker. My pupils were not blue, but were red—crimson, bloody, rageful red.
“Don’t fucking look at me like that, you crazy bitch.”
“Yes, sir.” I lowered my chin, but did not change the color of my eyes.
He left.
I went back to work. Ultrasound machine (Asset #21), extension cord to ultrasound machine (Asset #22), scarf with tassels (Asset #23)…
CHAPTER FOUR
SPECIAL AGENT ROGER LUI
I was in the drama club while attending St. John’s University in Queens, New York, and I acted for pennies at midnight showings of Off-Off-Off-Broadway-across-Soho-and-down-some-alley plays, which were written and directed by NYU grad students, who toiled in poorly lit theaters for the chance to present their work and the hope that someone, anyone, any late-night critic might stumble upon their masterpieces.
Amateur producers liked to cast me since I’m half-n-half: father’s Vietnamese; mother’s pure-bred Rochester, New Yorkean. I’m a perfect physical blend of the Asian and the American, although inside I’m 99 percent American—the 1 percent devoted to my father’s insistence that we eat Pho once a month.
This is how I met my wife, Sandra. She was also in St. John’s drama club, and she did stand-up in Manhattan, also past midnight. We’d share a tuna fish sandwich after classes and club and then ride the rattler into the city. We were pretty happy, and we were in love. My major was criminal justice, which I picked only to please my parents. Or, maybe I subconsciously relented to a path set for me long ago.
On a lark or upon Sandra’s dare or, perhaps, upon the realization that I’d need a job to support myself and my college-girlfriend-turned-fiancée, I applied to the FBI. Sure, let’s go with that. Let’s have this be the reason, and let’s not pry further.
If only I hadn’t scored so damn high on my SATs or inherited the burden of “exceptional memory”—if anything, I may have a slight case of hyperthymesia—basically, really good memory, which the senior agents sensed from a mile away. If only my vision wasn’t better than a fighter pilot’s. If only I had half-assed my studies like other night entertainers and dramatists, maybe the Feds would have forgotten me. Maybe I wouldn’t be so miserable. Maybe Sandra and I would have b
een happier living in comic, dramatic squalor.
So there I found myself, in the FBI, fifteen-sucked-away years later, as if on the day of admittance, I was placed into a time warp chamber. Laughter all but completely drained away.
When the lens through which you view the world invites the surreal perspective, you may see life as is: undoubtedly amusing. Sandra still had her surreal lens, and, God love her, she neither pitied nor cursed my loss of humorous sight. Instead, she’d try in vain to draw me from black moods by re-painting what I could no longer see. “Actually, sweetheart, look closer, don’t you see…” Nevertheless, fifteen years into the thicket and once again I found myself holed up in a remote field office, scraping through miniscule leads about a kidnapped, pregnant teen. And Sandra wasn’t the only woman in my life. I had a partner, who I’ll refer to as “Lola” to protect her identity for reasons I will later reveal.
Some cases have no leads at all, some cases have lots of leads, some cases have a couple of good leads upon which you can develop more leads, other cases have one good lead that requires tremendous effort to develop into anything else. The case of Dorothy M. Salucci had one good lead, the van, which required tremendous effort to develop into anything else. The black, low-top Converse sneaker was not evidence at all. How could I find a girl by having her missing shoe? There were no fingerprints or blood splatter on it from her assailant. The shoe was worthless to me. I devoted all of my efforts on finding a glimpse of the van, pouring over, obsessing over, scouring each second of every last videotape from every last camera in her town and the surrounding towns and any tollbooth leading from ground zero.
On the eighth day of this effort, I finally caught the image of a 1989 maroon Chevy TransVista with Indiana plates, edging like a snake through a toll. The Hoosier woman confirmed my find: “Exactly. This is definitely the one,” she said. I rummaged a two-person team back at headquarters to track the van’s route from any highway videos they could acquire. Meanwhile, in checking Indiana motor vehicle records, my partner, who was two grades below me and therefore reported to me, uncovered fourteen registrations for late-eighties to early-nineties Chevy TransVistas fitting our lead.
I mention my seniority over my partner only for comic value, for she considered my rank un-considerable; she promoted herself above me and above the rank of God, I swear. As I mentioned, we’ll call her “Lola.”
Whether the registrations were cancelled or current, revoked, or expired, we set out to visit each address associated with each registration. This effort took us around the entire state of Indiana, parts of Illinois and Milwaukee, and a sliver of Ohio, where people were either on vacation or to where they had moved to or sold the vehicle altogether. Each one of these registrants and current owners had to be cleared, which meant interviewing them, profiling them, checking their property, reading their body language, and verifying alibis.
One registrant had died.
One registrant had wrecked his van the month before when he collided head-on with a car carrier full of Porsche 911s. He showed us the newspaper clippings of the event and all, chuckling, “Damn Porsches. I hate those little bugs. How can you make any dump runs or buy gravel for your driveway in one of those dinky things anyway?”
One registrant would not submit to a voluntary inspection of his ranch home, but who, upon better reasoning and advice of counsel, complied. He scurried to move a couple of pot plants as we walked through his house. I don’t give a shit about your Mary Jane. I’m here to find a kidnapped girl, idiot.
Eight registrants were fairly normal, run-of-the-mill Chevy TransVista van owners, and by this I mean they were wholly unsuspicious and actually, were almost clones of each other. I suppose they each had their important distinctions, but in my investigator’s mind, I lumped them all in one group: innocent, married retirees. Kind, too, nearly every one of the wives wept upon explanation of our mission, spanking or kicking the side of their van as if punishing it for being the brother of a kidnapper. During these interviews, Lola, who hung behind me and on the fringe, received sideways glances, which I took to mean, “Does she really have to glare at us?”
As is the case in most instances, we could not find one registrant. He didn’t appear to have a formal job anywhere, and not one of his neighbors knew where he’d gone off to. Small town, outside Notre Dame, that’s where he was supposed to be. He lived in a fairly large, white Cape at the end of a two-hundred-foot, pine-lined, dirt driveway. A towering red barn loomed behind his home in a flat, grassy field, a spot hidden from roadside inspection. Naturally, this guy peaked my interest. Neighbors confirmed they’d seen him with a maroon van at one point, but they couldn’t remember when. “Takes off a lot. We don’t know where he goes.”
I gave the neighbors my card and asked them to call me if he were to show up. Lola hunted down a local judge, knuckle-knocking on his country door while he ate his scrambled eggs. Although I wasn’t with her, I can picture the scene. She hulked over His Honor as he signed the search warrant, and then she grabbed a piece of his buttered toast as retribution for having to go to the trouble of seeking permissions from persons she felt were below Her Law. “We should be able to storm into whatever we damn well please to find these babies,” she said, and with this, I did agree. Right to privacy and due process of laws, my ass. Slowed us down. But leave the poor Judge’s toast alone.
And, wouldn’t you know it, as soon as we got our warrant, a neighbor called. “He’s back. But he has a black pickup. No van as far as I can tell.”
We sped down single lanes with low ditches and long fields on each border to return to our suspect. Along the way, Lola and I kept the windows down, taking in the cleansing odor of dewed grass and bubbling spring water. Indiana. Indiana, Indiana, take me from her, leave me here, set me with the wheat and the moon and a wisp of a glimpse of her face. Indiana, Indiana. Several vacant swing sets squeaked out this haunt-rocking song to the rhythm of a lonely country breeze.
We greeted our mystery man in his driveway, where he was waiting for us. Tipped off. Tight community. Appearing as Paul Bunyan, he wore faded jean overalls, steel-toed work boots, and dangled a pipe from his crooked mouth. “Name’s Boyd,” he corrected when I asked if he was Robert McGuire. “Robert’s my Christian name, but Mama always calls me Boyd.” Boyd was a chicken farmer.
After introductions and the showing of badges, Boyd invited us inside. As we entered, he snuffed out his pipe and laid it on a birchwood card table on the porch. “Only guests kin smoke in the house, so light her up, Mr. Lui, if you got any, as I said, Mama always say, only guests kin smoke in your house.”
I noted, as did my square-jawed apprentice, that so far, Boyd had not once addressed her directly, nor had he suggested she too might smoke in his house. But Boyd wasn’t being sexist, at least I didn’t think so. I just think he was put off by Lola’s no-blink stare and her regular intervals of spitting chewing tobacco beyond his bed of hostas. I didn’t tell her to stop or even shoot her any incredulous looks; I had already tried so many times to get her to quit and failed. Her response was always the same: “With what I got to see in basements and crawl spaces, Liu, spare me pleas about my packy. Now shut up and buy me a Guinness, boss.” I suppose she had a point, but let’s add her wanting-to-get-mouth-cancer and her addiction to mud beers to the long list of reasons making my fifteenth year with the FBI pure hell. And also add this tidbit: Lola doused herself in Old Spice, which she reeked of morning, noon, and past midnight on all night stake-outs.
Boyd’s place was moderately uncluttered but very dusty. Pans and plates were in the sink, and by the curdled milk smell and the fat, roaming flies, I guessed they’d been dirty awhile. On top of an open aluminum trashcan in the kitchen, a pile of unopened mail spilled over the rim and onto the floor. A dozen or more wet rolls of newspapers littered the linoleum counter. On a rag rug in front of a blue refrigerator, a mammoth Old English Sheepdog lounged, lolling her lazy eyes when we entered.
“Don’t mind ol’ Nicky. Sh
e’s a farter, but a damn good dog to me,” Boyd informed, as he offered coffee by pantomiming drinking from a mug and pointing to a percolator. I declined. So did Lola.
Still within the kitchen, Boyd and I sat across from each other at a dandelion-yellow Formica table with thin chrome legs. Lola stood behind me like a sentry, staring Boyd into discomfort, her arms folded high atop the breasts she smashed down and in with who-knows-what—probably duct tape, I never asked.
Boyd bounced his furry eyebrows and pursed his lips, as if to say, please begin, Mr. Liu, you have my full attention now. And thus began the interview of Mr. Boyd L. McGuire. I memorized every word so as to later transcribe the exchange, which is what I did in motel rooms while Lola lurked around rural towns like a vampire, searching for loose-talking, drunk locals who “might have seen or heard something” or perhaps “suspect some pervert in town”; and so rumors and dark-alley whispers became her night-woman’s probable cause.
Actually, I admire Lola. She was, still is, a good detective for countless reasons, which is why we’ll have to obscure her identity. Many a child has been pulled from doom due to her questionable tactics. You never heard me ever once ask her to explain herself. Like a hungry dog, I took whatever intel she poured into my breakfast bowl. I had to feed a hole inside me, damage I’d carried within for decades.
“Boyd, you mind if my partner here looks around your barn while I ask you some questions?”
“Not at all. What ya’ll lookin for anyway?”
“Don’t know, Boyd. You got something to hide?”
“I ain’t got nothin’ to hide. Look evra-whar ya’ll want. I’m an open book.”
“Thanks, Boyd. We appreciate you helping us out.”
Lola had already banged back out through the front door, having turned and left upon the cue.
“I understand you had a maroon Chevy van?”
“Sure did. Sold her ‘bout three months ago.”
“That so? Who did you sell it to?”