THE GRAB

BY GRANGE
Grange@emailaccount.com

[ prologue ]

DISCLAIMER: The following piece of fiction is intended as adult entertainment and has been posted by the author only to an appropriate group on the Internet. It is not intended for children, and the author does not condone making it accessible to children.

Permission to electronically repost, store, and copy this work is freely granted by the author, provided that both this disclaimer and the contact information at the end of the work are included.

All characters in this work are fictitious, any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. The author does not necessarily condone or endorse any of the activities detailed in this story, some of which are dangerous and/or illegal.

I was in the guest bedroom on the second floor, admiring a very nice Waterhouse print when I heard a car in the driveway. Remember that, because I’ll get back to it later. The Waterhouse print, I mean, not the fact that I was in the guest bedroom. At the sound, I checked my watch. 2223 hours. As I left the bedroom, I heard the sound of the automatic garage door swing upward, heard the car’s engine idle, and then switch off. As the garage door swung down again I quit listening and walked the length of the hall to the pull-down staircase leading to the attic. I was up those stairs and crouching on the attic floor by the time Patrick Friedman’s heavy footsteps crossed the kitchen’s tiled floor. As I swung the staircase closed behind me, I imagined that I could hear his wife, Emily, fastening the three locks on the door that connected the garage to the kitchen. I imagined that I could hear his daughter, Jackie, hanging her coat on a rack, kicking her shoes off, and opening the refrigerator.

And who says that criminals don’t have an active imagination?

Muffled conversation through two floors came up to me as I made my way to an antique wing-backed chair in desperate need of upholstering. The attic was partially finished, had a floor of maroon-colored carpet and a few pieces of furniture arranged in a not-altogether unpleasing way. Bed, lamp, television, plastered walls. I imagined daughter Jackie and friends holding sleepover parties in the attic, Emily holding aloft a plate of brownies for the gaggle of prepubescent girls.

All right, I told myself, enough imagining. But it was hard to do anything else. I knew that I had several hours ahead of me to do nothing but let my imagination run wild, and it was hard to stay focused on the indistinct noises that managed to reach my lonely perch.

I moved a rubber-gloved finger and wiped the sweat from my brow. Though it was a cool evening, it was hot in the attic. I’d planned for that, of course. I’d planned all of this. I’d even checked the attic stairs when I entered the house at 1915 hours to make certain that none of them were squeakers. Yeah, I’d planned it all right, but that doesn’t mean I had to like it. Kidnapping is a highly wired profession at best.

In the kitchen, a teakettle whistled. In a sheer, blinding moment of panic, I mistook the sound for a police siren. Nerves.

Maybe I’d been an idiot when I’d agreed to the job. Maybe I should have told James that I was getting too old for it. Why was I out in the ass-end of Boston, in a tasteful red-brick home in a quiet suburban neighborhood, planning to violate the peace and dignity of the state of Massachusetts? The money? Oh, sure, the money was nice, very nice indeed. But I didn’t need it. I don’t have any expensive habits, no fancy cars to maintain, or boats, I didn’t have a problem with booze or pills, nothing to suck it up. Anything I made on my jobs usually got funneled into real estate in Queens, T-bonds, mutual funds. I could stop working today and never sweat for a meal even if I lived to be a hundred. No, it wasn’t the money.

Sitting had become uncomfortable. I got to my feet, did a few squat-thrusts. There was a day bed along one wall. I lay down on top of it, and made a bundle of the green quilt to rest my head behind. I closed my eyes.

There wasn’t too much noise coming to me. At one point there was the sound of quick, small feet on the stairs, the depressurizing sound of a door secure in its frame opening with the application of a little force. My imagination filled in the blanks. She was at her computer, logging on to the Internet. She smiled as the chime of an instant message window brought her a clever salutation from one of her friends. She visited Justin Timberlake’s official fanpage. Do young girls even still care about Justin Timberlake?

What about Patrick and Emily? Were they in front of their stereo system in the living room, speaking softly over a glass of wine while a Schubert symphony played in the background. Maybe a few cups of decaffeinated coffee and something sweet in the breakfast nook. When they tired, would he take a final check downstairs, fastening the locks, setting the alarm, while she tucked Jackie into bed, kissed her goodnight? Would he join his wife in his daughter’s room, or would he linger over a glass of excellent scotch in a Waterford tumbler?

When Patrick threw the bolt on the kitchen’s sliding door, would he notice that I had sawn through it? Was he even now racing for a telephone to summon the police?

Just thoughts in the dark, entertaining myself in the dim of an attic, on one unseasonably cool August evening.

I could have been in my own home, in my own bed. I could have been at the theater, or playing chess with James. I could have hit some of the bars in SoHo, listening to a little jazz number at an after hours place I knew. But no, I was in Boston, on Copperwood Lane, 190 miles away from home and hearth.

I stayed where I was and waited.

At 0130 hours, my watched beeped, once, softly in the quiet night. I hadn’t heard a sound within the house for an entire half-hour. I padded silently to the trap-door, crossing right over the master bedroom where the Friedman’s hopefully slept soundly. I went down the stairs, treading softly on my crepe soles. I landed in the second-floor hallway, right outside Jackie’s bedroom. My nerves were wire-tense at this point, I wanted to get it done, get out, get away. Even so, I did things like a professional. I folded the trap door closed again, closing it level with the stucco ceiling.

Remember what I said earlier about admiring the Waterhouse painting in the guest bedroom? It’s coming up again. I’m a fairly cultured guy, and I like paintings, but in another sense I don’t like them. You can look at a work of art, appreciate it for its technical brilliance and aesthetic merits, but you have no sense, no sense whatsoever, of all the work that went into its construction. And that’s a shame, because you’re missing more than half the story.

I opened the door slowly, increasing the pressure until the slightly swollen wood popped. My eyes were adjusted to the dim light, and I could see the shape of the girl on the bed. I was back-lit by the hallway running lights, so even if she had been awake, she wouldn’t have realized that I was a stranger in the half-second she has before I move.

I closed the door behind me much more swiftly than I had opened it. I took the gun from my jacket pocket. I didn’t squeeze off immediately, but took the shot carefully. The pressurized gas capsule made a whisper of sound, like someone coughing beneath their breath, and the dart lodged beautifully in her center mass. 5mg of the general anesthetic diazepam were get injected subcutaneously, and we were underway.

She was out before I’d finished crossing the room. I moved fast, retrieving the dart from her abdomen, and removing the sweaty bulk from the small of my back. It was a large rectangle of canvas, fitted with a zipper all along its outer edge. I unfolded it, placed it on the floor, and transferred the girl from the bed to the floor, atop the bag. I folded it over her, and ran the zipper along until she was sealed within. It wouldn’t fool anyone at a range closer than twenty feet or as to its contents, but it would do for transporting her to the next stage. She would be out for a good few hours, and so I left her lying on her bedroom floor and proceeded back down the hallway to the guest bedroom. I’d lifted a girl’s pink suitcase from the downstairs closet much earlier in the day, and stashed it under the double-bed in the guest room.

I went through her bureau drawers, and filled the suitcase with underwear, socks, jeans, shirts. There was a wallet on her bed-side table, and a book. I put both of those in the suitcase. I emptied her jewelry box, took the loose change, pictures from their frames, and a few odds and ends. Moving to the bathroom attached to her room, I added toothbrush, toothpaste, comb and soap. The chicanery wouldn’t last very long if the police were summoned and took a more detailed look around, but it would buy me some precious hours. Runaways tend to generate much less media focus than kidnappings, and police attention tends to linger within a very close radius to the child’s home for the brief time the investigation is maintained. Sometimes it’s never even discovered that one of my nocturnal visits was anything more than a bairn that flew in the night. The few times they were it was never in anything less than thirty-six hours. Luck has nothing to do with that, by the way.

Treading on my crepe soles, I went downstairs to the first floor with the suitcase in hand. I stepped over the fourth step from the bottom, knowing that it squeaked. Friedman had deactivated the alarm when he’d returned with Emily and Jackie, and reset it when the family had gone to bed for the night. I like burglar alarms and pick-proof locks. It keeps amateurs out of the business. I set the suitcase down outside the door, and then went back for my mission objective.

Going down the stairs with seventy-five pounds worth of girl slung over my shoulder was a slow process. I took it one step at a time, avoiding the fourth step as before, and kept my weight as evenly distributed as I could. I set her down next to her suitcase, and closed the kitchen door. I relocked it by picking it in reverse. I had to leave the bolt sawed through, nothing I could do about that. Nobody’s perfect.

But I did come very close to perfection. I restored the alarm system, rewiring it to render the kitchen door once more unbreachable. Every impulse I had told me to get away, to go, but I spent the extra few minutes, and only an imperceptible scrap of electrical tape hinted that the wires had ever been tampered with.

Perfectionism? Call it the fact that cops can hit or miss all day long, but I can’t afford to miss once. Call it the pursuit of excellence. Call it what you will, but if those two fucknuts in Utah had been half as concerned as I am with the art of the grab, we’d still have no clue what the fuck happened to Elizabeth Smart.

My watch chirped again, once, at 0145, and at that precise moment, a single streetlamp went out. The area normally illuminated by the lamp overlooked the jogging path that abutted the Friedman home, winding around the large artificial lake in their community. I took Jackie over my shoulder again, and crossed the Friedman's yard and started walking along the path, going downhill. At the bottom of the slope, I turned off onto another street in the neighborhood, and walked quickly to 16905 Gingerfield Way. It had been empty for six months, and the painter's van I'd parked in the driveway on each of the previous two days had no doubt earned some interest. The license plate and company information stenciled on the side had been noted, most likely, and if things got that far could be traced to a nonexistent company in Connecticut as far as I cared. The important thing was that no one in the neighborhood had seen it the day I'd entered the Friedman home, for the very simple reason that I'd left it in the garage.

I entered the garage through the side-door, rather than the car port. The back of the van was open. The interior had no windows. There were two sections created by a simple screen placed behind the driver’s seat. The rear of the van was padded lightly with shag carpeting, sectioned by a simple screen from the driver's seat.

I set Jackie down in the back of the van, but left her for now. I pulled my gloves from my hands, and walked back to her house for the suitcase. As I was descending the hill again, the light switched back on, having reached the end of the five-minute window. I was visible again, and as I turned onto Gingerfield Way a private security car turned the corner. I managed to smile and give the car a perfunctory nod without breaking stride. They went along their merry way, and why not? They'd seen only a well-dressed and self-possessed gentleman who looked as though he belonged.

Back in the van, I unzipped the bag I'd put Jackie in, and switched on the dome light on the van's ceiling. My tensions bled slowly away, and I smiled a big, goofy grin as the first tinges of satisfaction crept over me. I nibbled on some cheese and Triscuits I’d prepared. I was ravenous. My last meal had come more than ten hours ago, and I’d drunk nothing since entering the Friedman’s house. I sipped some Gatorade. All the tension, the discomfort, the anxiety, it was all bought and paid for in moments like this.

She was lovely. If she hadn’t been, I would never have bothered with her in the first place. She was about four-and-a-half feet tall from crown to toes. Ten years old, her hair was a vibrant color of red-blonde some call strawberry. It was long, hanging past her shoulders and the middle of her back. Her sweat had plastered tendrils of it across her cheeks, and I moved it to one side, brushing the back of my finger across the smooth, warm skin of her cheek. Her eyes, when they were open, were bright and blue. I knew that over the summer she’d gone to a day camp, played basketball and soccer heavily. Her skin was tanned, freckled, as soft as silk, muscled very lithely, very slim. Her lips were a soft pink Cupid’s bow, her face heart-shaped. Around one ankle she wore a braided anklet she or one of her friends had doubtless made over the summer. She was wearing a white cami top stretched tight across her torso and black-on-red checkered boxer shorts!
. There was the slightest of swelling at her chest, nothing more than apple-buds. Her body still had a boyish shape, her legs long and lean. I ran my fingers down those tanned legs, the inside of her thigh, the arch of her foot.

I put my face against her neck, breathing the clean, girlish smell. My tongue licked the hollow of her throat and lapped up the taste of her sweat. I kissed her full on the lips, my little Sleeping Beauty, and explored the warm, moist mouth. I could have stayed there, happily fondling her for hours, but I had work to do yet, and it was only with difficulty that I tore myself away from her.

I retrieved two pairs of thick leather straps, and fastened them around her wrists and ankles. The interior was soft enough not to chafe, but I pulled them too tight to be escaped by the young girl, and fastened them with a lock. I placed another lock around the D-ring attached to each and secured her to the four anchor posts I’d welded to the floor of the van, drawing her as taut as a bowstring and spread-eagle. I selected a thick bit of foam padding and placed it carefully in her mouth, then kept her jaw closed with me left hand as I brought the tape across her lips. Once, twice, thrice, her mouth was stuffed almost to overfill, and effectively gagged. I wasn’t done yet, and put a stiff collar about her throat that would keep her from turning her neck, a blindfold across her eyes, and a small cushion behind her head.

Done and done. I sat in the driver’s seat of the van and yelled and banged the steering wheel just to get the last of my tension out. The hardest part of things was done and over with, and it would all be downhill from there, with certain benefits my occupation would afford me and my predilections would enjoy. It’s important to love your job, I feel, and I certainly adore mine. But like I said, you can look at a work of art and only see the end result, not all the labor that went into it. Just like me, and my work. Once I went into motion, down the attic stairs and into her bedroom, the grab took me twenty minutes, give or take, to accomplish. But that was the result of two months of planning. Selecting the girl on the basis of her houses’ proximity to no fewer than two highways, on the basis of lack of siblings, absence of pets. The physical surveillance of the neighborhood, the background check on the parents and child. Then there were people I !
didn’t even know whose work had arranged for the streetlamp to turn off at the precise moment I needed it to, to disable the traffic cameras in a five-mile radius of the Friedman home, had motel reservations made, and cars prepared for transfer twice along the way, and so on. The act, too, of breaking and entering, disabling the alarm over the kitchen door, selecting a hiding space for the day. And the contingencies, the what-ifs, also had to be planned with equal care and determination. The planning of the route that would take us to James’ home in suburban Virginia where she would be processed, selecting motels for their privacy, the anonymity they offered. The preparations that would be necessary to restrain Jackie along the way, and still permit me a bit of fun. You don’t see any of that when I grab a child, and it’s to my credit that you don’t. But still, the work goes into it, months and months and hours and hours, and when things go off like they had with Jackie, smooth as clockwork, it makes you appreciate your own professionalism.

I pulled the garage door closed behind me, and navigated my way through the maze of Boston streets to Marginal Road. I had no worries about traffic cameras as I merge onto I-90 West, because I planned it out, and did my job right. I played with the radio until I found some sulky late-night jazz, and sang along with the Monk as I made my way, gradually, towards our destination.

*****

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