The Abduction

8

Bright autumn colors lit up the tree-lined streets of Nashville, Tennessee, on Tuesday, Halloween morning. One good rainfall and it would all be gone, but a solid week of chilly nights and sunny days had set the leaves ablaze.

The sun was shining brightly as twelve-year-old Kristen boarded the transport van at Wharton Middle School. It was the same routine each morning, Monday through Friday. Kristen attended homeroom at Wharton until nine o’clock, then rode the van to Martin Luther King, Jr., High School, a magnet school on the other side of picturesque Fisk University. Kristen was a gifted sixth grader who studied English literature at a tenth-grade level. Schoolwork was easy; looking older was the hard part. Her heart-shaped face was just beginning to show angles of maturity, and the results were promising—too promising, as far as her protective mother was concerned. Makeup was forbidden until she turned thirteen, but Kristen still managed a little mascara to accentuate her huge dark eyes, her best feature. She knew, too, that her long legs would someday be an asset, but for now the gangly pre-teenager was happy just to get by without tripping over them.
“Hi, Reggie.” She was her usual cheery self as she bounded into the front passenger seat. The middle school was having a contest, so she was dressed in her Halloween costume. A red, white, and blue sweat suit with the TEAM USA logo and a big snack food insignia that marked it as the official sweat suit of the 2000 Olympics.
Sixty-year-old Reggie tipped his driving cap. “Mornin’, Miss Kristen.”
“Will you please stop calling me ‘Miss Kristen.’ It’s so aristocratic.”
His eyes widened. “Now that’s a high-falutin’ word if I ever did hear one. They teachin’ you real good over at the high school, ain’t they, Miss Kristen?”
“I guess.”
The van merged into traffic on the busy Dr. D.B. Todd Boulevard. The street bordered Fisk University, which lay roughly midway between Wharton Middle School and Martin Luther King High School. Reggie turned onto the campus at Meharry Street, then parked in front of Jubilee Hall, a six-story dormitory built in the nineteenth century in Victorian Gothic style.
The campus detour was part of their agreed-upon routine. From the very first day, Kristen had hated arriving at the high school in a van marked WHARTON MIDDLE SCHOOL. She thought she could make a much more fitting entrance if Reggie simply dropped her off at the university and let her walk the remaining three blocks to the high school. She had been forced to bat her eyes and turn on the charm, but after two weeks she’d finally sold Reggie on the arrangement. The only condition was that he be allowed to trail behind in the van, keeping an eye on her from a safe but inconspicuous distance.
“See you tomorrow, Reggie.” She eagerly opened the passenger door, jumped down with her book bag, and started across the college campus. She passed the old library with its big broken clock, an imposing building of brick and stone that now housed administration. To her left were the towering Fisk Memorial Chapel, the quaint Harris Music Building with Italianate detail, and a modern three-story library with a long concrete colonnade. The two-block walk across campus inspired her with dreams of becoming the youngest student ever at the nation’s oldest black college.
As she exited beneath the iron campus gate, she noticed the Wharton Middle School van trailing slowly, no more than fifty feet behind her. She crossed Jackson Street and started down Seventeenth Avenue. The van was creeping along, now less than fifty feet behind her.
She stopped and grimaced. With her hands on hips she glared back at the van, as if to say, “Reggie, you’re following too close.”
She turned and headed for the high school, strolling down a cracked old sidewalk that had been rearranged by the twisted roots of hundred-year-old oaks. A bench at the corner was the perfect place to stop and undo the awful pigtails her mother had weaved for her. The left one unfurled quickly. She was tugging on the other when she noticed the Wharton Middle School van drawing closer.
“Darn it, Reggie,” she muttered. She shook her hair out, styling it the cool way she liked it, then picked up her book bag and started toward the corner.
The van was just twenty feet behind her.
Kristen ignored him, refusing to look back. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead until she stopped at the corner to check traffic. Not a car in sight. The van rolled through the intersection, right past her. It stopped on the other side of the street, as if positioned to lead her straight to the high school.
She was mad now. What the heck is Reggie up to?
She crossed the street and stopped even with the van. The colored leaves from the canopy overhead reflected off the windshield, making it difficult for her to see inside. But she could make out Reggie’s familiar old driving cap. From the sidewalk, she glared and shouted, “Reggie, we had a deal!”
The engine was running, but the van stayed put.
With angry steps she approached the van and yanked the passenger door open.
She started, then smiled. He was wearing a rubberized Lincoln Howe mask, the most popular mask for Halloween 2000. “Very cute, Reggie. Happy Halloween to you, too.”
The driver grabbed her wrist.
“Reggie, come on—”
She froze in mid-sentence. The hand was white. It wasn’t Reggie.
The grip tightened—the powerful grip of a man much younger than Reggie. A quick yank nearly ripped her arm from its socket. In a split second she was off her feet, flying through the open door. She landed upside down on the passenger seat. Another man grabbed her legs, threw a sack over her head, and pulled her to the rear of the van.
“Go!” he shouted.
The door slammed, the locks clicked. Kristen tried to kick and punch, but her wrists and ankles were bound with plastic cuffs. The heavy sack muted her screams. Her thigh burned with the jab of a needle, like the vaccinations at school.
The driver pulled off his mask and drove away slowly—just like Reggie Miles, the most careful old driver at Wharton Middle School.


A sharp bell rang through the high school halls. Lockers slammed. Cigarette smoke poured from the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms. A fight beneath the stairwell finally broke up, leaving one kid crying. A steady stream of latecomers trickled into Mrs. Roberta Hood’s tenth-grade English class, though a few students just seemed to come and go as they pleased, unwilling to commit to in or out. The raucous Halloween spirit had invaded Martin Luther King, Jr., High School.
Mrs. Hood was middle-aged, but she looked much older. Her hair was completely gray, and her glasses were so thick they distorted her eyeballs. She’d taught high school English for over twenty years, searching for the next Ralph Ellison or Maya Angelou. She was quite certain her protégé wasn’t among the delinquents in the back flicking lighted matches into a waste can.
“Boys, stop it!”
The class laughed as she stomped out the flames. She brushed the ashes from her elaborate costume—authentic black and leopard-spotted robes of African tribal royalty—then returned to her desk and checked the seating chart. Some of the students were too cool for costumes, but many came dressed. Werewolves and vampires were especially popular. She noted the usual no-shows—and one who was not so usual. Her favorite student was missing. She scanned the room to see if she’d taken a different seat, or if she’d just missed her in her costume. She didn’t see her. She rose from her desk and checked the hallway. Not there, either.
A look of concern came over her face. She felt particularly protective of Kristen, given her age and her family’s stature. Kristen had missed class only once before. That time, the assistant principal had called from the middle school to say she wasn’t coming.
Mrs. Hood cleared her throat and called for attention. “Class, quiet, please.”
A mob by the window was fighting to have their palms read by a girl who’d come as a gypsy. The rest of the students kept talking. Even in a magnet high school, it took only a few bad kids to disrupt the entire class, especially on Halloween.
“Claaaaaass!”
Her shriek was louder than even she thought possible. The room was startled into silence. As she paused to catch her breath, the concern in her eyes turned to fear.
“Please,” she said breathlessly. “Has anyone seen Kristen Howe?”


Reggie Miles reached into his pants pocket.
His head was throbbing from the blow he’d received, but it had rendered him unconscious for only a moment. He’d pretended to be out for much longer than he was. Though blindfolded, he’d heard enough to realize they’d gotten Kristen, too.
Reggie hadn’t heard a peep from her since the abduction. He’d overheard the men talking about some kind of injection they’d given her—something to make her sleep. He could still hear them talking, presumably in the front seat. That meant he and Kristen had to be in the back. Engine vibrations told him they were moving, as did the gentle rocking of the vehicle that came with maneuvering through traffic. He was counting the turns—left, right, right again—trying to figure where they were headed. He was losing track, though with all the stops and starts he was sure they had yet to reach the expressway.
His hand moved a centimeter at a time, deeper and deeper into his pocket. The plastic cuffs pinched his wrists, but after twenty minutes he’d worked his hands into the right position. Finally, he reached his key chain. He cupped the entire ring in his palm, so it wouldn’t jingle. He slipped it from his pocket, then slid his hands back into the restrained position, behind his back. Reggie’s fingers weren’t as nimble as they used to be, but fifty years of whittling had made him pretty facile with a jackknife. He opened the blade.
Slowly he started to cut through the plastic ties that bound his wrists.