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“Are you able to find out the name of the doctor who delivered my child? I know it wasn’t you.”

  “Where did you give birth?”

  “Community Medical Center in Riverside.”

  Looking at the computer screen, Eugenia placed her hand on the mouse and clicked it a few times. Then she started typing on the keyboard.

  “What do you need the doctor’s name for?” Eugenia asked.

  “I want to ask her a few questions about my daughter.”

  “Is something wrong with her?” Eugenia stopped typing.

  “My daughter died an hour after she was born.”

  “I’m very sorry, Alice.”

  “I’m not saying it’s the doctor’s fault. It’s not about that.”

  “I found your record. Would you mind showing me your ID?”

  “Sure.” Alice took her wallet out of her purse, extracted her driver’s license, and handed it to Eugenia.

  “Thank you.” Eugenia looked at the driver’s license and then returned it to Alice.

  “So can you find out the doctor’s name?”

  “Yes, I think so. What do you want to ask her? Maybe I can answer your questions.”

  Alice drew a deep breath.

  She’s going to think I’m crazy.

  Alice clasped her hands in her lap and said, “It appears that my daughter’s alive.”

  There was no point in telling Eugenia about the murder.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They said my daughter died, but I think they made a mistake. She didn’t die. There’s a girl in San Diego. She’s thirteen. A DNA test showed that she’s my daughter. I believe she’s the girl I gave birth to thirteen years ago.”

  “You said they made a mistake. What do you think happened?”

  “My daughter was probably switched with another baby, and it was that baby who died.”

  “I suppose that’s possible. Was this girl in San Diego born at Community Medical Center the same day as your daughter?”

  “Yes, she was. Can you help me get to the bottom of this?”

  “Do you want to get custody of your daughter?”

  “Only if she wants to be with me. It’s all up to her. And I don’t plan to sue the doctor or the hospital.”

  Eugenia leaned back in her chair and said, “I’ll contact the hospital and get the doctor’s name.”

  “Thank you.”

  “If your daughter was switched with another child, I doubt it was the doctor’s fault.”

  “Then whose fault was it?”

  “Most likely it was one of the nurses who did it.”

  “Can you find out the names of the nurses who worked that night?”

  “It’s going to be hard to do. It’s been thirteen years.”

  “Can you find out the name of the doctor who pronounced my daughter dead?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Here’s my number.” Alice gave Eugenia a piece of paper with her name and phone number.

  “I’m very sorry about what happened, Alice. I hope you get your daughter back.”

  Maybe it was Ryan who had arranged the theft of Melissa? His family had had money and connections, so he certainly could have pulled it off.

  She had been lucky Ryan hadn’t had her killed: a number of women had been murdered by their boyfriends for refusing to get an abortion.

  Having no proof of his involvement, she couldn’t just ask Ryan if he had stolen Melissa: he would say he had nothing to do with this.

  Ryan might admit to stealing Melissa if she threatened to kill him if he didn’t confess.

  How was she going to force Ryan to confess? She didn’t even have a gun.

  David might own a gun. She could ask him to help her make Ryan talk.

  David Beckner was her boyfriend of two years, and he was a very smart guy. He was literally a rocket scientist: he worked as an engineer for an aerospace company in Pasadena.

  It had been thirteen years since she’d last spoken to Ryan. Was he even still alive? He might have died of an illness or in an accident.

  Alice checked the contact list on her phone and saw that it contained Ryan’s number, which she hadn’t updated since they had broken up. He probably had a different number now.

  She could try Ryan’s email address in her email contact list. He might still use it.

  Alice dialed Ryan’s number. A woman’s voice answered, “Yes?”

  “Hi, can I talk to Ryan Neumeyer?”

  “Wrong number.” The woman hung up.

  Alice went to the study, opened her laptop, and sent Ryan an email asking for his phone number.

  Two hours later, she checked her email and found a reply from Ryan. Ryan wrote that it was nice to hear from her and provided his phone number. He told Alice she could call him anytime.

  Alice updated Ryan’s number in her contacts and then sent him an email thanking him for his reply.

  Should I call him now?

  No. She’d call Ryan when she figured out how to get him to confess to abducting Melissa.

  Was Ryan a successful, happy man?

  She didn’t want him to be successful and happy. She hoped Ryan was a miserable alcoholic living from paycheck to paycheck, struggling to pay rent for his tiny room in a crappy house in a bad neighborhood. She wanted him to be single and lonely and childless.

  Unfortunately, chances were that Ryan was doing fine financially: his parents were rich.

  Well, they were rich thirteen years ago. They might have gone bankrupt since then.

  Ryan probably thought that she had asked for his number because she wanted to get back with him.

  He’s such a jerk. I wouldn’t get back with him even if he was the last man on earth.

  Alice’s gaze fell on the framed photograph of her mother that stood on the desk. She wished her mom were here so she would comfort her and give her advice on how to find Melissa’s abductors. Her mother was the only person who really loved and cared about her.

  “I miss you, Mom,” Alice whispered, looking at Rebecca’s picture.

  Chapter 3

  On Friday, Eugenia Rivera called Alice and told her that she had found out the name of the doctor who had delivered Melissa.

  “It’s Linda Corrigan. She still works at the Riverside Community Medical Center.”

  Alice grabbed a notepad and a pen and jotted down the doctor’s name. “Do you have her phone number?”

  “Yes.”

  Eugenia told her Linda Corrigan’s number, and Alice wrote it down.

  “Did they give you the names of the nurses who worked that night?” Alice asked.

  “No. Those records were discarded.”

  “Did you find out who pronounced my daughter dead?”

  “No. The hospital has no record of your daughter’s death.”

  “Did they forget to record it?”

  “That’s the only explanation I can think of.”

  What a bunch of incompetents! Perhaps she should sue the hospital after all.

  “Thank you very much, Eugenia,” Alice said. “Goodbye.”

  What was she going to say to Linda Corrigan when she met her?

  She could accuse Linda of abducting Melissa and watch her reaction. If Linda looked guilty, she would report her to the police.

  Alice called the Riverside Community Medical Center and made an appointment with Linda Corrigan for next Monday.

  Alice laid her hand on David’s chest. “I need your help.”

  They had just finished making love and were lying in Alice’s bed, naked.

  “With what?” David asked.

  “There’s a man who took something from me. I hoped you could help me make him admit that.”

  “What did he take from you?”

  “My child,” Alice said, running her fingers through David’s chest hair.

  David turned his head to look at her. “You have a child?”

  “I thought she died right after birth, but a few days ago I learned that she didn’t die.
”

  David sat up. “How old is she?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “Where is she now?”

  Alice sat up and then said, “She was murdered three days ago.”

  David frowned. “I’m very sorry.” He took her hand and squeezed it gently. “What’s this guy’s name?”

  “Ryan Neumeyer. He’s my daughter’s father.”

  “He took your daughter from the hospital without telling you?”

  “That’s what I think. I think he bribed a nurse to switch my daughter with another baby.”

  “Do you have any proof that he took your daughter?”

  Alice shook her head. “I need you to help me get the proof.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I was thinking of making Ryan confess to taking my daughter.”

  “How are you going to make him confess?”

  “We could force him to confess.”

  “Force him? How?”

  “We could beat him up.”

  “Beat him up?”

  “Yes. I can’t do it alone because he’s stronger than me. Will you help me?”

  “Do you have any other ideas?”

  “You could wear a mask so he wouldn’t know it was you.”

  David folded his arms across his chest. “It’s not going to end well.”

  “He’s a terrible man. He’s a criminal. He kidnapped my daughter.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “I’m almost sure he did it.”

  “What are you going to do if he confesses?”

  “I’ll report him to the police.”

  “Why not let the police investigate him?”

  “They won’t be able to do anything because there’s no evidence against him.”

  “Look, Alice, I want to help you, but beating this guy up is a terrible idea.”

  “Do you have a gun? We could threaten him with a gun instead of beating him up.”

  “I don’t have a gun.” David took her hands and looked in her eyes. “Alice, promise me you won’t shoot him. Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”

  She could pull the “you’d do it if you loved me” card, but she considered it an unfair tactic. Besides, it wouldn’t work on David: he was far from a pushover.

  “I promise I won’t shoot him.”

  On Saturday morning, a good idea came to Alice. She would meet Ryan at a coffee shop and while they were chatting, David would send Ryan a text message accusing him of abducting Melissa. Ryan would read the message, and she would watch his reaction to it. If Ryan looked guilty, she would buy a gun and interrogate him until he confessed.

  Alice told David her idea (she didn’t tell him what she was going to do if Ryan looked guilty) and asked if he would help her.

  “Okay, I’ll text him,” David said. “What if he calls me? Do you want me to talk to him?”

  “Yes. You’re going to use a disposable phone.”

  “Promise me you won’t assault him in the coffee shop.”

  “I won’t assault him, I promise. Thank you, honey.” She kissed him.

  “When do you want to do this?”

  “Tomorrow. Are you free tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Yes.”

  Alice picked up her phone and called Ryan.

  “Hello.”

  Alice cringed at the sound of Ryan’s voice.

  “Hi, Ryan. It’s Alice.”

  “How are you doing? I’m really glad you called, Alice.”

  “Did you miss me?”

  “A little. What’s new with you? Are you married?”

  “No. Are you?”

  “No. Where do you live?”

  “Pasadena.”

  “I live in Santa Monica. Would you like to hang out sometime?”

  “Sure. How about tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, I’m free tomorrow. What time do you want to meet?”

  “Let’s meet at the Coffee Bean on Third and Arizona at one.”

  “Okay.”

  “See you tomorrow. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Alice hung up and said to David, “We’re meeting tomorrow in Santa Monica at one.”

  They composed the text messages David would send to Ryan on Sunday, then went to a cell phone store in Glendale and purchased a disposable phone. When they got back to Alice’s house, they discussed what David would say to Ryan if Ryan called him. They decided that David would demand fifty thousand dollars for keeping his mouth shut about Ryan’s involvement in Melissa’s abduction.

  THE END OF THE SAMPLE

  Buy The Girl Who Didn’t Die for $0.99 on Amazon

  Other titles by Tim Kizer

  The Girl Who Didn’t Die

  An Evil Mind

  Days of Vengeance

  The Vanished

  Mania

  Spellbound

  The Mindbender

  SIXTUS

  After becoming friends with a mysterious entity named Jeremy, Zack, a skinny fifteen-year-old nerd suffering from polydactyly, acquires a taste for killing.

  1.

  “Are you going to just lie there and waste the precious time?” Jeremy asked. “Get up and get the fuck out of here, man.”

  And Zack did get up and jump off the gurney and walk out of the room, which meant that this was not the end of his life’s voyage. That’s right, it was not his time to fade away and his best days were still ahead of him.

  Right now, Zack was in the middle of his journey to greatness. He suspected he was the youngest serial killer in American history, but he didn’t really care if this record belonged to someone else.

  When did he make the first step? How did it all happen? How in the world did a fifteen-year-old boy end up killing half a dozen people, which included his own parents? And mind you, they were his biological mother and father, not some stepparent bullshit.

  It was a unique story. Unique and amazing.

  2.

  If you look into the root of things, Zack’s journey to glory probably began the day he was born as that was the time when he first got to know Jeremy. You see, the whole reason he murdered his parents was their desire to take Jeremy, his best friend forever, away from him. They wanted Jeremy to disappear from Zack’s life just because they didn’t like the way he looked, which Zack found outrageous. He had tried to get his folks to change their minds, but they wouldn’t listen, perhaps because a kid’s opinion didn’t matter. And the fact that he allegedly talked to himself didn’t help at all.

  Zack cherished his best buddy since he didn’t have that many friends to begin with. Unpopular kids tend to suffer from lack of friends, you know, and Zack, unfortunately, was one of those kids. In addition, he was a peculiar kid: he had six fingers on his right hand, which didn’t help things at all.

  The extra digit was located on Zack’s right hand between the pinkie and the ring finger and would probably prove useful to a person with a penchant for jewelry. The good news was the finger blended pretty smoothly with the rest of the gang and didn’t look repulsive unlike most cases of polydactyly—yes, they have a scientific term for this—in which additional fingers are misshapen and stick out from the sides of the hand at weird angles. Speaking of congenital disorders, a sixth toe would have definitely been more tolerable since no one would have seen it most of the time, but Mother Nature didn’t let you choose when she set out to play a joke on you. Interestingly, had he been born in some backwater village in India, he would have probably been considered sacred, just like that girl with four legs and four arms he had read about on the internet.

  Zack’s parents were not big fans of the sixth finger and had started talking about corrective surgery the day they had first seen it. They must have realized that such a defect would surely turn their son into a social outcast, a target of mockery and, possibly, abuse. Or maybe they simply didn’t want to be known as parents of a six-fingered freak. Anyway, his folks were so motivated that they went through with the plan without dragging the
ir feet.

  3.

  Zack remembered very well the day he had finally given up on Mom and Dad. He was chatting with Jeremy about the upcoming surgery when his mother dropped by his room to check on him.

  “Are you talking to your imaginary friend, honey?” she asked after realizing she had again caught her son speaking to himself (it must have been the fifth or sixth time it had happened in the preceding two months).

  “I’m talking to Jeremy. And he’s not imaginary, I’ve already told you that.”

  “Oh, okay,” she replied, stretching the words out. There was a tinge of panic in her voice, as if she was afraid she would cause him to explode by saying something insensitive. Yeah, you didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that his mother took him for a mentally unstable lunatic who heard voices: you see, for some reason, Zack was the only person Jeremy could—or would—communicate with, so he had no way of proving Jeremy’s existence to her (or anyone else for that matter). But Zack didn’t care what she or Dad thought of him as long as they left him alone.

  A week later, he woke up at five in the morning, sweaty, tired, and extremely thirsty, and headed to the kitchen to grab a soda from the fridge. As he walked to the door, it suddenly occurred to him that he had somehow fallen asleep in his parents’ bedroom. Then he glanced at the bed and saw his mother: her stomach appeared to have been ripped open and there was no chance in hell the woman could have survived a wound like this. His father was lying on the floor between the bed and the window, with a slit throat—also dead.

  With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Zack looked at his hands and froze: they were both covered in blood. For a moment, he considered the possibility that he had stained his hands while trying to staunch the bleeding from his parents’ wounds. Then he heard Jeremy’s voice, “Are you going to stand there like a pole and waste the precious time? You have to get rid of the evidence ASAP.”

  “What evidence?” Zack asked.

  “Evidence of you murdering your parents, silly. You need to clean it up unless you want to end up in jail or, God forbid, on the death row. They still have death penalty in Connecticut, you know.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Well, you could move the bodies out of the house and dump them on the other side of the town. However, it’s going to be really tough to get rid of all the blood in the room, and chances are the cops will figure out that something fishy is going on.”