“Why isn’t she crying?” Maggie heard herself say. “She must be awake. I must have woken her up. Banging.”
He tried the knob again, then gave up, put his shoulder into it. Once, twice, three times. The door stretched the jamb but didn’t open.
“Motherfucker,” he said, now fully awake, taken by fear. Why wasn’t his daughter crying? Instead, all that came under the door was the surge of the ocean.
He stepped back and kicked the door hard, reaching down for some primal Neanderthal strength. The jamb shattered this time, one of the hinges popping, the door flying open and bending backward, like a boxer who’s been gut-punched.
Maggie pushed past him into the room and screamed.
The window was wide open.
The crib was empty.
*
Maggie stood staring at it for a long time, as if the sight of an empty crib was a surreal impossibility. David ran to the window and looked out, first one way, then another. Then he was out of the room past her. She heard his feet thundering down the stairs, then heard the front door slam and heard his feet running through first grass, then sand, then gravel, as he made his way to the road.
He was on the phone downstairs when she found him.
“Yes,” he said. “This is life or death. I don’t care what it costs.”
A pause as he listened.
“Okay. We’ll be up.”
He hung up, eyes locked on some point in the middle distance.
“David?” she said.
“They’re sending someone.”
“Who?”
“The company.”
“What do you mean someone? Did you call the cops?”
He shook his head.
“This is my daughter. They took my daughter. We’re not using public servants.”
“What are you talking about? Who took her? She’s missing. They need to—we need to have someone, a lot of someones, out there looking for her right now.”
He stood and started turning on lights, going room to room, making the house look awake. She followed.
“David?”
But he was lost in thought, some kind of masculine scheme playing out in his head. She turned and grabbed the car keys off the hook.
“Well, I can’t just sit here.”
He caught up to her at the door, grabbed her wrist.
“It’s not—” he said, “she didn’t wander off. She’s two. Someone climbed up to her window and took her. Why? For money.”
“No.”
“But first,” he said, “first they took Frankie.”
She leaned against the wall, her head spinning.
“What are you—”
He put his hands on her, not in a rough way, but firmly, to let her know she was still connected to the earth, to him.
“Frankie knows us. She knows our routines, our finances—or at least a general sense of our finances—she knows which room Rachel sleeps in. Everything. They took Frankie so she could give them Rachel.”
Maggie went over and sat down on the sofa, purse still on her arm.
“Unless she’s working with them,” said David.
Maggie shook her head, shock calming her, making her limbs feel like seaweed floating on the waves.
“She’s not. She’s twenty-two. She goes to night school.”
“Maybe she needs money.”
“David,” said Maggie, looking at him. “She’s not helping them. Not on purpose.”
They thought about this, what it might take to compel a conscientious young woman to give up a sleeping toddler placed in her charge.
Forty-five minutes later, they heard car tires on the driveway. David went outside to meet them. He came back in with six men. They were clearly armed and had what could only be described as a military demeanor. One of the men wore a suit. He was olive-skinned, graying at the temples.
“Mrs. Bateman,” he said. “I’m Mick Daniels. These men are here for your protection and to help me ascertain the facts.”
“I had a dream,” she found herself telling him.
“Honey,” said David.
“About the Montauk Monster. That it was sliding up the side of our house.”
Mick nodded. If he found this odd at all, he didn’t say so.
“You were sleeping,” he told her, “but some part of you heard something. It’s genetic training. An animal memory of spending a few hundred thousand years as prey.”
He had them show him their bedroom and then Rachel’s room, had them retrace their steps. Meanwhile, two of his men examined the perimeter. Another two set up a command center in the living room, bringing in laptops, telephones, and printers.
They met up again with the full group ten minutes later.
“A single set of footprints,” they were told by a black man working a piece of bubble gum, “and two deeper marks directly under the window. We think that’s from the ladder. Tracks lead to a smaller structure on the property, then disappear. We found a ladder inside. Extendable. Tall enough to reach the second floor, I think.”
“So he didn’t bring his own ladder,” said Mick, “he used one that was already here. Which means he knew it was here.”