Sheila knew she was in serious trouble. Unless she kept her wits about her, she would be dead. Had she given any thought to the dangers involved? She recalled her early teenage years when she had run away from home. That was one thing, but hitchhiking her way into the car of a complete stranger was another—at night, no less. And the stranger turned out to be the one in a thousand who made the news!
Of course, he had told her not to panic, to stay quiet, and she would not be harmed. And now, here she was, her ankles and wrists tied with cord so tightly they hurt, trapped in a dark car trunk. Sheila knew she would have a big bruise on her thigh from where the kidnapper threw her backpack. To make matters worse, she had to go to the bathroom.
Sheila had not started out in the trunk. For the first ten minutes, she had been in the front seat.
* * *
“You look a little young to be hitchhiking, particularly this time of night. What grade are you in?” The stern, unforgiving voice reminded Sheila of her father and made her nervous. The long, dark hair and mustache accented a long, narrow face, one you wouldn’t forget.
“I’m twenty, and I can’t wait to make enough money to leave home for good. Everyone’s always on my case. ‘Do this, don’t do that.’”
“You don’t look twenty. You look like you’re in high school.”
“That’s what everyone says! My father never cuts me any slack, no matter how old I am. He’s a cop, you know, strict and domineering. We fight all the time.”
“I hate cops.”
At those words, Sheila realized that it might be a good idea not to discuss her family any more. She had been babbling away to a complete stranger. She imagined her father’s reaction if he had heard the same words. Sheila looked out the side window into the darkness and smiled.
Sheila reminisced about earlier fights with her father, how they had gotten worse and worse, to the point where she could no longer stand it. Even though she had graduated in the top 5 percent of her high school class, that hadn’t been enough to please him. Sheila recalled sadly her decision to leave and the note she left that told him so. She could imagine his anger after he finished reading it. “Do not let the door hit you in the ass,” he would have said.
* * *
The road had been smooth for the first ten minutes out of Monterey, California, on Route 68. That was where he had first picked her up, and later on a private turnout, forced her into the trunk at gunpoint. Sheila felt trapped and scared. Dad always said to be wary of strangers.
Although Sheila worried that she might have done irreparable harm to her teeth, she used them to untie her hands and then her feet. How stupid could he be to tie my hands in front of me? Sheila pushed the tiny button to activate the light on her watch. Eleven o’clock.
Sheila shivered and pulled her legs tight to her chest. She commended herself for having had the good sense to wear her big, bulky jacket, the one with the big buttons. She felt around in her backpack to make sure nothing had fallen out and surprised herself by finding a Snickers bar.
Their steady speed for the last forty minutes meant they had switched to Highway 101, a four-lane highway that extended most of the way through California: from Los Angeles in the south to the Oregon border to the north. Sheila’s best guess was that they were traveling south.
The car slowed, as if turning off an exit. Sheila felt the car brake, followed by a quick turn to the right, causing her head to hit the opposite-side trunk hinge. Their slower speed and more bumps suggested a secondary road. They drove for another ten minutes or so before the car came to a halt.
Sheila listened as the car door opened and slammed shut. She strained to hear footsteps. Following a disquieting pause, she heard the key in the trunk. Up popped the lid.
“Okay. It’s time to get out,” he growled.
But the form behind the voice stepped back slightly when he saw Sheila stretched out perpendicular to the bumper, legs spread to the side, with a Glock automatic raised and pointed.
The light from the full moon illuminated the kidnapper in detail—unusually well, since the rods in Sheila’s eyes had had almost two hours to adjust to the darkness in the trunk.
He laughed. “What is this? Did you bring along your toy gun in your backpack?”
“You can surrender now, and I promise you will be treated fairly. You have the right to remain silent and all that shit. Since I’m sure the GPS locator in my coat button is working just fine, I’d say my buddies are no more than a few minutes away. What do you say? You picked the wrong hitchhiker this time, bud. Keep your hands where I can see them at all times.”
The confusion on the face of the perp almost made Sheila laugh.
“I told you not to move, goddamn it.” In the fraction of a second in which the kidnapper reached behind his back, Sheila squeezed off two rounds in succession.
As her quarry collapsed to the ground, Sheila saw lights from the police cars in the distance. “If only he hadn’t moved,” Sheila said aloud, only partially dismayed over the thought that she hadn’t taken him alive. Even though the light had been dim inside the car earlier, Sheila had recognized the face that matched the composite sketch generated by a survivor of an earlier abduction.
As her fellow officers helped her from the trunk, Sheila felt thankful that her earlier high school fights with her father represented an almost-forgotten memory, long since replaced by mutual respect. Her partner, Larry, said it first. “No question about it. We got the jail bait killer for sure. The chief will be real proud of you.”
How ironic, after all of those years of thinking of her father, the police chief, as being too stern and dictatorial, she had ended up not only following in his footsteps but also working for him.
Sheila couldn’t wait to hear her father say that she had done good. That was all she had ever wanted to hear.