Free Taken by Chris Jordan

Crebbin on a casual basis for at least three years, and have always found him to be cordial and polite, if slightly distant, as I suppose any married guy is apt to be around a single mom. So there’s something wrong here, some terrible misunderstanding, something my poor addled mind has failed to grasp.
    “Look,” I say, my voice shaky and uncertain, “what are you doing here? Who called you?”
    I’m desperate to know, but Deputy Sheriff Crebbin is untouched by my anxiety, and betrays not a scintilla of sympathy. His cold, mysteriously stubborn expression makes me crazy—how dare they treat me like this, after what I’ve been through? What I’m still going through?
    “I don’t know what you think is going on,” I begin somewhat heatedly. “But here’s what happened. My son, Tommy, was snatched at the baseball game. When I got home his abductor was waiting. Right here in the house. He had a gun. He made me go to the bank and wire money to an offshore account. He promised to let my son go, but I think he was lying.”
    “Uh-huh. What makes you think this ‘abductor’ was lying?”
    “The last thing he said was ‘don’t look in the basement.’”
    Crebbin reacts as if he’s been slapped. “Basement?” He turns to the cops who have been, I now realize, handling my belongings. Picking things up, putting them down, which strikes me as rude. “Griffin! Pasco!” Sergeant Crebbin barks at his underlings. “Take a look around the basement.”
    Griffin, who appears to be several years older than Crebbin, shoots him a look of concern. “Sarge, don’t you think, maybe we, um, need a warrant for that?”
    Crebbin cuts him off with an impatient gesture, and turns to me, his expression intense, angry for some reason. As if something about me has deeply offended him. “Mrs. Bickford, do we have your permission to check out the basement? You’ve already given us permission to enter your domicile, and the law permits us to examine evidence found in plain view. The basement is assumed to be part of the domicile, so in essence you’ve already given us access to the basement.”
    Why is he babbling in legalese? Nothing makes sense. Is my brain still numb with the drug that knocked me out? Why can’t I make them understand that my son has been kidnapped?
    “The basement, Mrs. Bickford.”
    “Yes, yes,” I tell him. “Tell your men to go ahead. I want you to look in the basement. I want to know.”
    “What exactly do you want us to know?”
    But I shake my head, wave him off. Can’t speak of it. Too awful to contemplate. But I’ve been thinking about nothing else since the man in the mask phoned.
    “Stay on the sofa, Mrs. Bickford. Deputy Katz? See she doesn’t leave the room.”
    Katz is Deputy Rita, a female officer I’ve never seen before. Small-boned and Hepburn-thin, she stands awkwardly beside the couch with her hand on her buttoned holster, as if fearing that I’ll make a run for it. And she avoids looking me in the eye. I try to tell her what happened to my son, babble something about the man in the mask, but she seems determined to avoid conversation with me. I’m not ordinarily such a motormouth, but nerves keep me yakking, as if the steady stream of words may act as barrier for whatever unthinkable thing waits in the basement.
    “I thought he was here, you know? That he’d gotten a ride home with one of the other parents. From the game. Tommy won the game, he was excited. So was I. Yelling from the dugout, you know? We’re not supposed to. The parents, I mean. Supposed to maintain, be supportive, but not too noisy. Other parents might get offended. Then he went for an ice-cream sundae and then he wasn’t there and I was worried. Like you get when you can’t see your kid. Do you have kids? You’re so young, maybe not, but believe me, you never stop worrying. So I came home, looking for Tommy. Tomas, actually, that’s his real name. I thought he was here in the house, playing his video