The Vanished Read online

  TIM KIZER

  THE VANISHED

  Also by Tim Kizer:

  Spellbound

  Mania

  The Mindbender

  Days of Vengeance

  Deception

  Copyright 2015 Tim Kizer

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  CONTENTS

  · The Vanished

  · Sample chapters from Mania

  · Other titles by Tim Kizer

  THE VANISHED

  Description

  On May 6, five-year-old Annie Miller goes missing in a park. On May 7, her father, David Miller, fails a lie detector test. On May 9, during a hypnosis session, David confesses to murdering his daughter and gives the police the location of the knife he used to kill her. The knife has traces of Annie's blood and David's fingerprints all over it.

  Two weeks later, a man named Ben calls David and tells him Annie's alive. The kidnapper is willing to let the girl go, but first David has to do something for him.

  Can David trust the kidnapper?

  Is Ben even real?

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 1

  1

  “Annie!” David Miller took off his sunglasses and looked up and down the drive aisle.

  He was in a great mood, but that was about to change. Today was the day he would report his daughter missing. And in seventy-two hours he would confess to killing her.

  “Annie!”

  Annie wasn’t in the second aisle, either.

  He crossed the parking lot and stepped onto the grass, his eyes sweeping the park. “Annie! Annie!” he shouted at the top of his lungs.

  His daughter was nowhere in sight. A stab of fear pierced him.

  Where was she?

  Perhaps she had wandered off after a stray cat or a butterfly or a squirrel.

  In the back of his mind, a voice whispered: Annie’s been kidnapped, and you’ll never see her again.

  David supposed it was normal. He was not in a panic. He was sure most, if not all, parents had thoughts like these when they lost sight of their young children in a public place.

  Absorbed in thought, he walked over to the path running parallel to the parking lot.

  How long had Annie been out of his sight before he got out of the car?

  She had stepped out of the car when he switched off the engine. After he pulled the key from the ignition, he checked his cellphone for messages. Then he opened the door, dropped the phone on the floor, picked it up, and got out of the car.

  About twenty seconds. How far could she have gone in twenty seconds? Fifteen, maybe twenty yards.

  He had spent about twenty seconds checking the parking lot aisles, so she could be as far as forty yards from his car.

  David wiped the sweat from his brow with his hand. His anxiety grew by the second.

  She was probably not too far away. She couldn’t hear him because she was having a convulsive seizure. What if she had been bitten by a snake? Were there poisonous snakes in Ardmore Park?

  To find a child one had to think like a child. Where would he go if he were Annie?

  The playground. That was her favorite place in the park.

  David rushed to the playground and searched it thoroughly, checking every structure and looking into every slide tube. When he was finished, his head throbbed with panic.

  Standing at the edge of the playground, he yelled his daughter’s name twice.

  She’s been kidnapped. She’s been kidnapped. She’s been kidnapped.

  The dreadful thought raced through his mind over and over.

  David ran over to the pavilion and walked through it from end to end, scanning the tables and the floor. Annie wasn’t there. Calling his daughter’s name, he circled the pavilion.

  No Annie.

  His stomach churned with sickness.

  David went to the pond, which was near the pavilion, and didn’t find Annie there, either. As he stood wondering where Annie could be, he saw a woman in pink leggings and a white T-shirt twenty yards away, who was strolling along the path, watching her Maltese playing on the grass. Cursing himself for not doing it earlier, David pulled his wallet from his jeans pocket, extracted Annie’s photo from it, and approached the woman.

  “Excuse me, have you seen this girl?” David showed Annie’s picture to the woman. “She’s wearing a white dress with strawberries on it. Red strawberries.”

  The woman studied the photo for a few seconds, and said, “No, I haven’t seen her. What happened? Is she your daughter?”

  David nodded. “Yes. I… I can’t find her.”

  “Oh my God! I’m sorry. I hope you find her.”

  “Thank you.”

  David slowly turned full circle, surveying the park.

  He would have been so happy to spot a white dress with strawberries on it. He would have been ecstatic.

  Maybe she was playing hide-and-seek with him?

  It was possible. Annie liked to play hide-and-seek. She had never played hide-and-seek with him in Ardmore Park before, but there was a first time for everything.

  He had searched the playground. He had searched the pavilion.

  He hadn’t checked the restrooms.

  David ran to the restrooms and called Annie’s name, standing at the entrance to the women’s room. Then he asked if there was anyone inside. Having received no response, David went into the room and checked the stalls. No one. He hurried outside and looked behind the building.

  Annie was not hiding behind the restrooms.

  David showed Annie’s photo to four more people—two young women, a middle-aged man, and a boy in his late teens—but none of them had seen his daughter.

  As he stood on the walkway, a young unshaven man with long unkempt hair waved to him and said, “Hey, man. I saw that girl.”

  Dressed in well-worn sneakers, ragged jeans, and a dirty faded sweatshirt, the guy seemed to be going through a rough patch.

  “Was she wearing a white dress with strawberries?” David asked as he approached the man.

  “Yeah. Four—five years old, brown hair.”

  “Was it her?” David showed the man Annie’s picture.

  The man nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Where did you see her?”

  “Here. She was with some chick.”

  David and his wife had warned Annie not to talk to strangers or get in their cars, but young children were bad at following rules.

  Had the woman promised Annie candy?

  “Where did they go?”

  The man shrugged. “I don’t know.” He held out his hand. “I’m Eddie.”

  David shook his hand. “When did you see them?”

  “A few minutes ago.”

  He might have made it all up.

  Why would he do that?

  Because he has nothing better to do.

  “Which direction were they going?” David asked.

  “This way.” Eddie pointed toward the volleyball court, which was located on the south side of the park.

  David pee
red toward the volleyball court and saw no little children near it.

  “Did you see the woman’s face?” he asked.

  “No. Well, kinda. She had huge sunglasses on.”

  She wore huge sunglasses so that no one would be able to identify her.

  “Thank you,” David said.

  “No problem, man.”

  David closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  It was time to admit the terrible truth: Annie had been abducted.

  He broke into a sweat; his heart dropped into his stomach.

  No, she just got lost.

  First she had gotten lost, and then she had been kidnapped.

  David sprinted to the parking lot. Chances were the kidnapper had already left, but he had to check anyway. He crisscrossed the parking lot several times, shouting Annie’s name and looking into cars. Annie was nowhere to be found.

  Intending to call his wife, David withdrew his cellphone from his pocket and pressed the Home button. His hand was trembling.

  Was it a good idea to tell Carol now that he’d lost Annie?

  No, not now. There was still a small chance his daughter would turn up in the next hour or so. He would tell Carol when he got home.

  David put the phone back in his pocket. Then he searched the parking lot for surveillance cameras and was disappointed to find none. He hoped he’d seen no cameras because they were inconspicuous and not because they weren’t there.

  Before he headed home, David combed the wooded part of the park for twenty minutes. The search proved fruitless.

  2

  When he arrived home, David went to his study, switched on his laptop, and printed three pictures of Annie, all of which had been taken in the last month. His heart cramped as he looked at his daughter’s photos. As he copied the electronic files of the pictures to a flash drive, he heard Carol’s voice: “Where’s Annie?”

  David turned his face to his wife, who was standing in the doorway, then rose and stepped out from behind his desk. “Annie…” His right eye twitched. “She’s gone missing.”

  Carol frowned. “What? Did you say Annie’s gone missing?”

  She started toward him.

  “Yes. I lost her in Ardmore Park.”

  “Oh. Oh my God! How did you lose her?”

  “I’m not sure how it happened. I think someone abducted her.” David took her hand in his.

  “Oh Jesus! Did you look for her?”

  “Yes, I did.” His eye twitched again. “I looked everywhere.”

  Suddenly David remembered telling Carol about the death of their son, Brian, two years ago, and a lump rose in his throat. He had done it over the phone, so he hadn’t seen her face when she heard the terrible news.

  “Have you called the police?” Carol’s voice was trembling.

  “I’m going to the police station now.”

  They went to the Plano Police Department together. During the initial interview, which took place after he filed a missing child report, David asked the interviewing officer when the police were going to contact the FBI. The officer, whose name was Victor Alvarado, said they would notify the Dallas FBI office shortly. After the interview, Alvarado told David that the Plano PD was going to send a K-9 unit to Ardmore Park to conduct a search. David wanted to say it would be a waste of time because Annie was not in the park, but decided against it. They went to the Millers’ house, where Alvarado collected a pair of Annie’s sneakers. The officer asked David not to remove anything from Annie’s room for the next several days.

  When David and Alvarado arrived at Ardmore Park, the K-9 unit was already there. David spotted four police officers canvassing the wooded area. After he showed the K-9 handlers where he had parked when he last visited Ardmore Park, David joined Carol. She had come half an hour earlier and had to leave their car on the street because the parking lot was cordoned off by police cruisers. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying, her mascara smeared all over her face. As they watched the police dogs move around the parking lot, sniffing the air and the ground, David said to Carol, “They’re wasting their time. Annie’s not here.”

  Carol said nothing.

  Twenty minutes after the search commenced, David began to wonder if the dogs, which had been in the parking lot the whole time, were unable to track Annie’s scent. A minute later Alvarado came up to him and asked, “When was the last time your daughter wore those sneakers?”

  “Yesterday,” David replied.

  Alvarado looked at Carol and then back at David. “It appears that she never left the parking lot.”

  If Annie had never left the parking lot, why hadn’t he seen her there?

  She must have been hiding behind a car. Or maybe she’d been snatched before he started looking for her.

  At a quarter past seven the search was called off, and David and Carol went home. As he drove, David thought about how hard it was going to be to find Annie. They had no leads or clues except for the useless—and questionable—information provided by that Eddie fellow.

  It would be hard but not impossible. Criminals make mistakes all the time. Annie’s abductor was going to slip up at some point. Maybe he or she already had.

  David realized that Annie might be dead. Most kidnapped children who were killed were dead within three hours of the abduction, and it was over four hours since Annie’s disappearance. Was the kidnapper going to kill Annie?

  If his daughter had really been snatched a few seconds after she got out of the car, her abduction had to have been a planned rather than a random act. The kidnapper must have followed him and Annie from their house to the park. David supposed that most planned kidnappings were committed for the sake of ransom. If it was a ransom kidnapping, the perpetrator would try to keep Annie alive at least until his demands were satisfied. And there was a good chance David would get Annie back after he paid the ransom.

  3

  Half an hour after they came home, David received a call from Detective Ray Barton, the investigator assigned to Annie’s case. The detective said that he would like to meet David.

  “Are you home?” he asked.

  “Yes,” David replied.

  “Let’s meet at your place in forty-five minutes. Does that work for you?”

  “Yes. I’ll see you in forty-five minutes.”

  Detective Barton was a tall man in his forties with a small belly, bushy eyebrows, and thick fingers. He was clean-shaven, and his dark hair was smoothly combed back. The little finger on his right hand was adorned with an onyx ring. When David let him in, Barton asked if he should take off his shoes. David said he could keep them on.

  “You have a beautiful home,” the detective said as they went to the great room.

  “Thank you,” David said.

  “Can I have a tour of the house?”

  “Sure.”

  David suspected Barton asked for a tour not because he was curious about how rich people lived, but because the police were supposed to search a missing child’s home even if the child was last seen elsewhere. They visited every room in the mansion and the garage. The way Barton surveyed the rooms—methodically and carefully—indicated that David’s guess was correct. As they passed through the billiards room, David asked Barton if he had contacted the FBI.

  “Yes, I have,” the detective said.

  “Are you going to issue an AMBER alert for Annie?”

  “We’ve already done it. And we’ve already entered her information into the National Crime Information Center’s database.”

  “Have you contacted the National Center for Missing Children?”

  “Yes, we have.”

  David thought about the missing children posters at the grocery store. Two weeks ago he had stopped to look at them and had been pained to see that some of those children had been missing for over ten years. Soon Annie’s poster would be on that wall, too.

  They were in the master bedroom when it occurred to David that Annie might have drowned in Ardmore Park’s pond. It didn�
�t matter that the police dogs hadn’t found Annie’s scent outside the parking lot because dogs were not infallible.

  “Are you going to search the pond in the park?” he asked.

  “We’re searching it now.”

  After David showed Barton the garage, they went to the great room, where the detective opened his notebook and asked, “Does your daughter have a cellphone?”

  “No,” David said. Alvarado had asked this question during the initial interview at the police department. Had Barton read Alvarado’s report?

  “Was Annie upset with you today or yesterday?”

  “No, she wasn’t.”

  “What about you, Mrs. Miller?” Barton looked at Carol, who was sitting on the sofa next to David. “Was Annie upset with you?”

  “No.” Carol shook her head.

  “Has Annie ever threatened to run away?”

  “No,” David said. “Do you think a five-year-old girl could run away?”

  “I can’t rule that out.”

  “Annie’s a very happy girl,” Carol said. “She’d never run away.”

  “What do you think happened to Annie?” Barton asked.

  “I believe she was kidnapped,” David said. “I think the kidnapper followed us to the park and took Annie when she got out of the car.”

  “Where were you when she got out of the car?”

  “I was behind the wheel. I was checking my phone.”

  “Was Annie in the backseat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see her get kidnapped?”

  “No.”

  “Do you suspect anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any enemies?”

  “No, I don’t think we do.”

  “You told Officer Alvarado that Annie has epilepsy. Is she taking any medication for it?”

  “Yes. She’s taking Dilantin and Tegretol.”

  “What will happen if she stops taking them?”

  “Her seizures will become more frequent and more severe.”

  Barton thought for a moment and then asked, “Do you own this house?”

  “Yes,” David said.

  “You’re a wealthy man, aren’t you?”

  “I guess you could say so.”

  “Do you think your daughter was kidnapped for ransom?”