What’s worrying, though, is the sign on the kitchen window that says that the house is protected by Atomic Alarms. If she does open the back door, she might have thirty seconds to find the alarm’s code box, and if she doesn’t put the code in fast enough, all hell will break loose, won’t it? The Atomic Alarms sign, however, looks very old. It was once a bright blue and it has now faded to a light gray. Will the alarm still work with the electricity turned off?
There’s one other huge problem with the house. The Appenzellers are right next to one of the many paths cutting through the dunes that lead to the Plum Island beach. At this time of day no one is using the path, but in the mornings she imagines that it’s busy with dog-walkers and residents taking their daily constitutionals. If a kid is screaming his head off, he will be heard unless she can soundproof the basement. A big board over the basement window might do the trick, but it won’t be foolproof. Hmmm. She remembers Voltaire’s warning about the perfect being the enemy of the good. She could spend a week looking for the best available empty house, a week in which Kylie will be suffering in a homemade dungeon. Apart from the alarm sticker and the dune path, the Appenzeller house is pretty close to ideal. It’s a little removed from the other dwellings on this strip and partially isolated by dunes. It’s off the road by about fifteen yards and the Appenzellers have planted cypress trees as further shielding from the setting western sun.
She sits in one of the Adirondack chairs on the Appenzellers’ back porch and dials the number for Newbury Home Security.
“NHS, this is Jackson, how can I help you?” a man answers in a Revere accent so strong it could strip paint.
“Oh, hi. Can you help me with an alarm question?”
“I’ll try.”
“My name’s Peggy Monroe. I live out on the island. My daughter’s supposed to walk Elsie Tanner’s Neapolitan mastiff while she’s away, and Elsie gave her the key but there’s an old Atomic Alarms sticker in the window and my daughter’s worried that if she opens the door, the alarm will go off. Any suggestions?”
Rachel’s new to the lying game. She isn’t sure if it’s better to say as little as possible or to be chatty and give names and details in order to assuage suspicion. She went with the latter plan, and now she worries that she’s messed up.
Jackson yawns. “Well, ma’am, I guess I could come out there and take a look if you want, but it’s a fifty-dollar minimum.”
“Fifty dollars? That’s more than she’s getting paid to walk the dog.”
“Yeah, I figured. Look, I think your daughter should be OK. Atomic Alarms went out of business in the nineties. Breeze Security took over most of their operation, but the Breeze guys made sure they took all the old Atomic signs off the windowpanes, so chances are if there’s an old Atomic Alarms sign up there, the alarm isn’t connected to anything. Did she see any newer alarm signs?”
“No.”
“I’d say she’s going to be OK. If she does get in trouble, call me back and I’ll come out there and see if there’s anything I can do.”
“Thank you very much.”
She walks back to her house on the other side of Plum Island and finds a chisel and hammer in Marty’s old toolbox. A toolbox he had never really used for anything. His brother, Pete, was the engineer, car expert, and fixer, not Marty. When they’d first moved up here, it had been Pete who had made the house livable when he was home from one of his tours.
Her heart drops. If anything happens to Kylie, it will kill Pete. Uncle and niece dote on each other. Rachel feels the tears welling up again and forces them back down. Sobbing won’t get Kylie back.
She puts the hammer and chisel in a gym bag and grabs a flashlight. In case of trouble, she gets the shotgun too. It just about fits in the bag.
It begins to drizzle as she walks along the basin trail. The sky is gray now and there are ominous black clouds to the west. Rain would be good. It’d deter dog-walkers and busybodies.
She wonders if the kidnappers have Kylie somewhere warm and safe. She’s a sensitive girl. She needs looking after. Rachel makes a fist and slams it into her thigh. I’m coming, Kylie, I’m coming, I’m coming. She puts her hood up and walks along Northern Boulevard to the Appenzellers’. Yeah, those cypress trees out front will do a pretty decent job at hiding nefarious goings-on inside. She cuts down the sandy path and hops the fence again. She examines the rectangular basement window that’s six inches above the ground. It’s three feet long and a foot tall. She taps the glass—it doesn’t look too thick but if you covered the glass with an acrylic sheet or a thick wooden board, you could, perhaps, effectively muffle sounds.
She walks to the back porch and opens the screen door. Her heart is beating fast. It seems nuts to be doing this in broad daylight, but she has to get a move on.
She takes the chisel out of the bag and positions it in the center of the lock at the keyhole. Then she raises the hammer and hits the chisel hard. There’s a metallic thud but when she tries the handle, it doesn’t turn. She positions the chisel again and hits much harder. This time it’s a swing and a miss, and the hammer plows into the wooden door.
Jesus, Rachel.
She lifts the hammer back and strikes a third time. The entire center mechanism collapses and bits come flying out. Rachel puts down the chisel and hammer and gingerly tries the door.
The handle turns, and when she pushes, the door creaks open.
She takes out the shotgun and the flashlight and, shaking all over, goes inside.
15
Thursday, 1:24 p.m.
She stands in the house she’s just broken into. Thirty seconds of fear.
No dogs come at her. No alarm sounds. No one yells.
It isn’t just luck. She has scouted it well.
The house is musty and empty. A thin layer of dust coats the kitchen surfaces. No one has been in here since early September. She closes the kitchen door behind her and explores the home.
Three uninteresting levels and a very interesting basement with brick walls and a concrete floor and nothing in it but a washing machine, a dryer, and a boiler. The house is held up by a series of concrete pillars and she could, she thinks in disgust, chain someone to one of those pillars. She checks out the little window above the dryer. She’ll cover that with a board she’ll get from the hardware store in town.
Rachel shivers with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. How can she think about this sort of thing so glibly? Is that what trauma does to you?
Yes.
It reminds her again of the chemo days. The numbness. The feeling of plunging into the abyss and falling, falling, falling forever.
She goes upstairs, leaves through the back door, closes it, shuts the screen door, and makes sure the coast is completely clear before going down the back steps onto the beach.
She walks home again through the sea spray and drizzle.
She opens her MacBook at the living-room table and begins checking the Facebook feeds on her list of potential targets.
Selecting the right target is very important. You have to choose the right kind of victim with the right kind of family, people who won’t lose their shit and go to the cops and who have both the money to pay the ransom and the emotional wherewithal to carry out a kidnapping to get their child back.