The Vanished Read online

  “I suppose it’s possible.”

  “I want to tell you something important. If you’re contacted by the kidnappers, don’t negotiate with them without informing us first. Call me as soon as you hear from them, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “We’re going to monitor your phones in case the kidnappers call you. We’ll monitor your landline and your and Mrs. Miller’s cellphones.”

  “Okay.”

  “I need the names and contact information of all the people you employ in your house.”

  David gave the detective the requested information and then asked, “Do you know if they have surveillance cameras in Ardmore Park?”

  “I was told there are no surveillance cameras in that park.”

  David clenched his teeth in disappointment.

  “What’s the name of your daughter’s dentist?” Barton asked.

  “Mark Goldberg.”

  “What’s his phone number?”

  David gave the detective Mark Goldberg’s office number. He knew why Barton wanted Annie’s dentist’s contact information: the police might need Annie’s dental records to identify her body.

  “Do you mind taking a lie detector test?”

  “I’ll take it.”

  David wasn’t offended by the detective’s request: asking the parents of a missing child to undergo a polygraph examination was standard practice.

  “Are you available tomorrow at one pm?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about you, Mrs. Miller? Will you take a lie detector test?”

  “Yes.” Carol nodded.

  “Can I schedule your test for tomorrow at three pm?”

  “Okay.”

  To David, the detective said, “Is your daughter insured?”

  “Yes,” David replied.

  “How much is she insured for?”

  “I believe it’s five hundred thousand.”

  “Why do you ask?” Carol said. “Do you think we killed Annie for the insurance money?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m just gathering information.” Barton looked at his notes for a few seconds and then said to David, “If you don’t mind me asking, what do you do for a living?”

  “I’m retired.”

  “What did you do before you retired?”

  “I worked in the Pima County Attorney’s office.”

  “Pima County? Where is it?”

  “Arizona. Tucson is in Pima County.”

  “You were a prosecutor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you win a lottery?”

  “No. I inherited quite a bit of money.”

  “I see.”

  “Detective, I’d like to offer a reward of one hundred thousand dollars for finding my daughter. No questions asked. Can you put this information on your posters?”

  “Sure.” Barton reached into the inner pocket of his jacket, withdrew a card, and handed it to David. “Here’s my card. Please call me if you have any new information. If the kidnapper contacts you, call me immediately.”

  “I will,” David promised.

  Before leaving, Detective Barton asked for a copy of the surveillance footage for the last week, and David gave it to him.

  4

  They showed Annie’s picture on the 10 pm news, and when David saw it, his head began to throb with pain. After the news ended, David went to the website of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and searched for Annie’s name. His daughter’s name was not in the Center’s database. He called the Center and learned that Annie’s poster would be added to the database by midnight.

  Then David phoned his friend Noah Hallford, who was the president of a small bank headquartered in Dallas, and asked if he knew the Plano police chief or the head of the Dallas FBI office. Noah said he was friends with the Plano police chief. He had never met the head of the Dallas FBI office.

  David told Noah about Annie’s disappearance and then said, “Can you ask the chief to give Annie’s case special attention?”

  “No problem,” Noah said. “I’ll talk to him tonight. I’m very sorry about your daughter.”

  David spent an hour reading online articles about missing children. He found out that in forty percent of stereotypical kidnappings—that was what they called abductions perpetrated by a stranger or slight acquaintance with the intent to exact a ransom, rape, murder, or permanently keep the child—the victim was killed. And in four percent of these kidnappings the child was never found.

  At one o’clock in the morning, David went to the dining room and poured a glass of whiskey. He was tired, but he didn’t feel sleepy. He drank some whiskey, then picked up the receiver and brought it to his ear. The phone was working.

  Why wasn’t the kidnapper calling?

  Maybe it wasn’t about ransom? Maybe Annie had been abducted by a sex predator? If that was the case, she was probably dead already.

  David drew a deep breath.

  The abductor might be an organ harvester. David had read that the body parts of one person were worth about a million dollars on the black market.

  David began to pace the room.

  He needed to be hopeful. He needed to think of a scenario under which Annie wasn’t harmed.

  A childless couple. Annie’s life isn’t in danger if she was abducted by, or sold to, a childless couple.

  What would a childless couple do when they discovered that Annie had epilepsy?

  They might kill her. She had seen their faces, so it would be too risky to let her live, wouldn’t it?

  He drank the rest of his whiskey.

  He had failed Annie.

  And Brian—he had failed Brian, too.

  David’s chest tightened at the thought of his son, who had drowned in the pool two years ago at the age of four.

  Would he have been more watchful if Annie were his biological daughter? Would he have let her out of his sight in the park that day if she were his flesh and blood?

  It was a ridiculous question. He loved Annie as much as he’d loved Brian. He didn’t care that she didn’t carry his DNA.

  5

  The next morning, at Carol’s suggestion, David called a billboard advertising company and bought a spot on twenty digital billboards in the Dallas area. The company also agreed to design the ad, which was going to feature Annie’s photo, description, and last known whereabouts, as well as the reward amount and the contact number for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

  After a long debate with himself, David decided to wait a few days before telling his parents about Annie’s disappearance. They weren’t going to hear about it on the news because they lived in Florida.

  He arrived at the police department at a quarter to one. After they greeted each other, Detective Barton asked David if he had heard from the kidnappers. David said that he hadn’t.

  The detective looked calm and unconcerned. He surely wouldn’t have been so calm if it were his child who had been abducted. David wished he could grab Barton by the lapels and instill a sense of urgency in him.

  “Have you finished searching the pond in the park?” he asked.

  “Yes. We didn’t find your daughter there.”

  David felt a sense of relief.

  Barton took David to the polygraph room, introduced him to the examiner, and left. After David signed a Miranda rights waiver form and a polygraph consent form, the examiner inquired if he was taking any medication.

  “No.”

  “Are you under the care of a physician?”

  “No.”

  After each response, the examiner checked the appropriate box on the form in front of him.

  “Do you have any pain or discomfort right now?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “How many hours did you sleep last night?”

  “Five.”

  After the pre-test interview, the examiner explained the procedure and reviewed the test questions with David. Then he began to place sensors on David’s body.


  “Are you comfortable, Mister Miller?” the examiner asked when he attached the last sensor.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any questions?”

  “No.”

  “The test is about to begin. Answer only yes or no.”

  The first question was: Is your name David Miller?

  “Yes,” David replied.

  “Are you forty-two years old?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you completely convinced that I will not ask you a question on this test that has not already been reviewed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you deliberately cause your daughter Annie’s disappearance?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever lied to get out of trouble?”

  “No.”

  “Did you kill your daughter Annie?”

  “No.”

  “Do you live in Plano, Texas?”

  “Yes.”

  “During the first twenty-six years of your life, did you ever deliberately hurt another person?”

  When they reviewed the test questions, David had asked the examiner if hurting someone in self-defense counted as deliberately hurting another person, and the examiner said that it didn’t.

  “No.”

  “Did you have a plan to cause your daughter Annie’s disappearance?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever deliberately hurt another person?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who caused the disappearance of your daughter Annie?”

  “No.”

  “Can you drive a car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know where Annie is?”

  “No.”

  “Did you deliberately do anything to try and beat this test?"

  “No.”

  The examiner said that the test was over, and began to remove the sensors.

  6

  Carol was at the Plano Police Department when David came home. He changed clothes and then visited the websites of the local affiliate stations of ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox. He was pleased to see that all four of them had a story about the reward he was offering for finding Annie. David hoped they would mention the reward on the air. A few minutes after his closed his laptop, the phone rang, and David dashed to it, hoping it was the kidnapper.

  The caller was Susan Yasbeck, an assistant news producer at NBC’s Dallas-Fort Worth affiliate. She asked David if he would like to give an interview to her channel. David agreed to do an interview without hesitation.

  NBC’s TV crew arrived forty minutes later. David didn’t recognize the reporter, which was to be expected because he rarely watched the news. After they went over the questions he was going to ask, the reporter inquired if David’s wife was home. David said that she was taking care of some things.

  “When is she coming back?” the reporter asked.

  “Around five.”

  The reporter glanced at his watch. “We’ll do the interview without her, if you don’t mind.”

  “When are you going to air the interview?”

  “It will be on the six pm news.”

  The interview was shot in the backyard of David’s house and was eight minutes long. When the reporter asked the last question—Do you have anything to say to our viewers?—David cleared his throat and said, looking into the camera, “I’d like to say a few words to the person who has my daughter. If you bring Annie back to me, alive and unharmed, I’ll pay you two hundred thousand dollars, no questions asked. You will not be arrested or prosecuted, I give you my word. I don’t care how you came across my daughter. I just want to get her back, that’s all. I won’t ask Annie what happened to her and who was holding her. I’m not interested in revenge. Bring Annie back to me, and you’ll receive two hundred thousand in cash, or diamonds, or whatever you prefer.” He turned his face to the reporter. “That’s all I have to say.”

  “David, as I understand, you’ve just doubled the reward you’re offering for finding your daughter.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Thank you for the interview, David.” The reporter signaled the cameraman to stop filming.

  “You’re welcome,” David said. “Can I ask you for a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you aired what I said to the kidnapper in full. Can you do that?”

  “I think we can.”

  “That’s the reason I agreed to do this interview.”

  “Don’t worry, David. I’ll make it happen.”

  His interview was aired in the first half of the 6 pm newscast. It had been cut down to a little over a minute, but fortunately his message to Annie’s abductor had been left intact. When the segment about Annie was over, David asked Carol what she thought about it.

  “I think it’s a good idea,” she said.

  “Did I sound trustworthy?”

  Carol nodded. “Yes, you did.”

  That was the crucial part: David needed Annie’s abductor to trust him.

  Since their phones were tapped by the police, he and the kidnapper would have to use email to arrange the exchange. He would give the kidnapper his email address when the kidnapper called him.

  Chapter 2

  1

  “Is there a more private place where we can talk?” Barton asked when they went into the great room.

  He did not bring good news, David thought as he led the detective to the study.

  The detective had called at ten in the morning and said that there was something he wanted to show David. They had agreed to meet at David’s house in an hour.

  It was Sunday, and David wondered if Barton was working on his day off.

  In the study, Barton shut the door before sitting down on the settee, which stood against the wall to the right of the desk.

  “I saw you on the news last night.” The detective took out his notebook. “Has anyone contacted you?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve got to be very careful. There are a lot of scammers out there, who would do anything for two hundred grand.” Barton opened his notebook. “Here’s what I want to talk to you about, David. Yesterday you took a polygraph test. According to the examiner, you gave deceptive responses to the following questions: ‘Did you deliberately cause your daughter Annie’s disappearance?’, ‘Did you have a plan to cause your daughter Annie’s disappearance?’, ‘Do you know who caused the disappearance of your daughter Annie?’, and ‘Did you kill your daughter Annie?’” He raised his eyes from his notebook and looked at David. “This means that you lied when you said no to all these questions.”

  David’s heart skipped a beat. Although he knew that a significant number of people telling the truth failed lie detector tests (because of nervousness, a medical condition, or other factors), this news stunned him.

  “It doesn’t mean that I lied,” David said. “It only means I failed the test.”

  Why had he failed the test?

  Had he been nervous when he underwent it? Yes, he supposed he had been nervous. He’d been on edge since Annie’s abduction.

  Had Carol passed her test?

  “Well, you’re right. I apologize,” Barton said.

  A long silence followed, during which the detective looked at David curiously, waiting for him to say something.

  “Is there anything else you want to tell me?” David asked at last.

  “Why do you think you failed the test?”

  “I was nervous when I took it.”

  David had a hunch that the detective wouldn’t buy this explanation.

  Was he a suspect now? He might very well be. There could be no doubt he had become a person of interest.

  “You were nervous?”

  “I didn’t fail it because I lied, I assure you.”

  Barton glanced at his notes and said, “I’ve been told that Annie’s adopted.”

  “Yes, she’s adopted.”

  He thinks that, because she’s adopted, I don’t care about Annie.

 
Cops had no trouble assuming that the person in front of them was a scumbag. Barton probably thought that the reward would have been a million dollars if Annie were David’s biological child.

  “When did Annie start having seizures?”

  Had the police chief spoken to Barton about Annie’s case? Was the detective pissed off that David had used his connections to get special treatment?

  “Five months ago.”

  “When did you adopt her?”

  “She started living with us in April of last year.”

  “So you didn’t know she had epilepsy when you adopted her?”

  “No, we didn’t.”

  Barton leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and asked, “Were you upset when you found out that Annie has epilepsy?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Would you say it’s hard to be a parent of a child with epilepsy?”

  “It’s not easy to be a parent, whether a child has epilepsy or not.”

  “Is it more stressful than being a parent of a healthy child?”

  “I’d say it is. But the stress Carol and I experience is nothing compared to what Annie has to go through.”

  “How often does Annie have seizures?”

  “Before she started treatment she had three to four seizures a week. Now she has one seizure a month on the average. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m trying to learn more about your relationship with your daughter.”

  He’s setting up a trap.

  “We love Annie more than anything in the world,” David said firmly.

  “Of course. Annie’s an adorable child. It’s a shame she has this terrible, incurable illness.” The detective was silent for a while, and then continued, “Do any of your friends have children with disabilities?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think parents of healthy children are happier than parents of children with disabilities?”

  “It’s an odd question. What does it have to do with Annie’s abduction?”

  David was irked that he hadn’t yet figured out what kind of trap Barton was setting up for him.

  “Okay, let me ask you this: would you have adopted Annie if you had known she’d develop epilepsy?”

  “Yes.”

  The detective seemed to be trying to prove David had stopped loving Annie because of her epilepsy.

  Did Barton think that he had murdered Annie because she had epilepsy? What an idiot! Police detectives were known to concoct bizarre theories, but there was a limit to everything.