But Mitchell’s face filled my mind like a monster in a dream. I heard his voice. It was the devil. I had heard it so many times before: I will kill your brothers and your little sister. I will kill your mom and dad. I will plunge my knife in and I will turn it! I will kill them all!
The officer waited, then leaned toward me, looking me right in the eyes again. When he spoke, his voice was soft and assuring. “Are you Elizabeth Smart? Because if you are, your family has missed you so much since you were gone! They want you back. They love you. They want you to come home.”
For a moment, my world seemed to absolutely stop. I looked at him. He looked at me. I felt calm. I felt assured. Months of fear and pain seemed to melt before the sun. I felt a sweet assurance.
“I am Elizabeth,” I finally said.
37.
Mom and Dad
The officer turned me around and handcuffed me, then put me in the back of his car. This wasn’t what I had expected, and I wondered what was going on. Staring through the window, I saw the other officers surrounding Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee. I watched as they were cuffed, but then the officer started talking to me and I had to look away.
By the time I turned back, Mitchell and Barzee were gone.
It would be many years before I would see them again.
The policeman told me they were taking me down to the station. The police car started moving. I had never been inside a police car and I had to crane my neck to see out of the divider that separated me from the front seat. The cuffs were uncomfortable and it scared me, not being able to move my arms. I was feeling just as fearful as I had felt before. Why had they handcuffed me? What had I done wrong? Did they think it was my fault? Did they think I was a criminal like Mitchell?
We rode along in silence. “What’s going to happen to them?” I finally asked.
I could tell by the look on the policeman’s face that he thought that I was worried about them, like maybe I wanted to be with them, or that I wanted to make sure they’d be okay. Nothing could have been further from the truth. I was scared to death that they might put me in the same cell as Mitchell. I was certain he would kill me if they did. That was the only reason that I asked. I just wanted to know if they were going to keep me safe.
The officer didn’t answer. So I stared out the window and wondered what was going to happen to me as we rode along in silence.
I was nearly overcome by everything that had just happened. I had gone from being a hopeless prisoner to being someone who would soon be free. But it hadn’t hit me yet and I wasn’t sure that it was real. I wasn’t sure that something wasn’t going to happen that would take it all away.
We drove to the police station, where I was uncuffed and led into a small room. There were no windows, only a shabby sofa, and all of the walls were bare. My heart was still racing. I had no idea what to expect.
“You can take off your disguise,” a policeman told me before he left the room. I immediately pulled off the dark glasses and the nasty wig and dropped them on the floor.
I sat alone. No one came to me. Were they going to let me call my mom and dad? Were they going to send me to prison? Surely they’d let me talk to someone before they sent me away! Maybe they were going to let me go? But if they were going to set me free, wouldn’t they have done it already? I wanted to stand and test the door to see if it was locked, but I didn’t dare. I was terrified that I would open it and see Mitchell standing there.
I don’t know how long I was in the room, but it seemed to be a lifetime. My heart was constantly racing. As I sat there, I kept thinking about being sent to prison. I decided that it didn’t sound that bad. Compared to what I had been living through, it would have been a huge improvement. As long as they didn’t put me back with Mitchell, it was going to be okay.
I leaned back on the sofa and tried to relax. Suddenly, the door flew open. Looking up, I felt my heart leap. My dad was standing there!
He looked at me as if he were seeing a ghost. His face showed absolute shock, as if I couldn’t be real. The dead was living! His daughter had come home! I looked at him and waited. Time froze. My heart stopped. I don’t know if I breathed. We stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity but must have been less than a second, then my daddy ran to me and grabbed me and started hugging me as only a father can. It was a grasp of desperation and giddy happiness and absolute disbelief. It was a hug of relief and happiness that is impossible to describe. But I felt it. And I knew he felt it. We held on to each other very tight. Then he pulled away and looked at me, staring into my face. “Elizabeth, is it really you?!”
It took me a moment before I was able to answer. “Yeah, Dad, it’s me.”
Both of us started crying, a swell of emotion that erupted from the very bottoms of our souls.
Then it seemed I heard a voice inside my head: You are home. You are home. It’s going to be okay.
I leaned into my dad’s shoulder and held on like I was going to drown.