It was a terrible mistake.
Falcon Hill was set at the end of a long tree-bordered drive sealed off at the entrance with iron gates. In the late afternoon when the adults gathered on the terrace behind the house for martinis, Susannah developed the habit of wandering down the drive to the gates where she played with a doll or climbed up on the filigreed ironwork to extend her view. After having spent so many years being restricted to prescribed walks around the same city block, she found her new freedom dazzling.
She was jumping rope at the bottom of the drive one June afternoon when the balloon man appeared. Even though she was seven years old, jumping rope was a new skill for her-one requiring all her concentration-so at first she didn't see him. The soles of her leather sandals scuffed on the blacktop as she counted softly under her breath. Her fine auburn hair, neatly secured back from her face with a pair of barrettes shaped like cocker spaniels, lifted off her shoulders each time the rope snapped.
When she finally looked up and saw the balloon man, she didn't find his presence along the narrow residential road unusual. A magician had entertained at Paige's birthday party, and an Easter Bunny had personally delivered their baskets. California was an enchanted place where all sorts of magical things could happen.
Tossing down her jump rope, she stepped up on the bottom rung of the gate and watched his approach.
"Balloons for free!" the man called as he came nearer.
He was wearing dusty brown shoes along with a workman's gray pants and gray shirt. Unlike a workman, however, his face was covered by a merry clown mask with a cherry nose and fuzzy purple hair.
"Balloons for free! They never pop, they never stop. Best balloons around."
Balloons that didn't pop? Susannah's eyes widened in amazement. She hated the angry noise balloons made when they broke, and she was entranced with the idea of possessing one that wouldn't frighten her.
As the man approached, she pushed a small hand through the fence and, gathering her courage, said, "Could I please have one of your free balloons, sir?"
He didn't seem to hear her, "Balloons for free. They never pop, they never stop. All my balloons for free."
"Excuse me," she repeated politely. "Might I have a balloon."
He still didn't look at her. Maybe he couldn't see her through his clown mask, she thought.
"All my balloons for free," he chanted. "Come and follow me."
Follow him? Although no one had ever spoken to her about it, she wasn't certain she was permitted beyond the gates. She gazed longingly at the multicolored bundle of balloons dancing on their strings, and their beauty made her feel giddy.
"All my balloons for free. Come and follow me."
The balloon man's chant seemed to sing in her blood. Her parents were drinking martinis on the terrace, and by the time she ran back to ask for permission, the balloon man would be gone. It seemed silly to lose her chance to own one of these magical balloons, especially since she was certain her father wouldn't mind. He kept telling her to have fun and not to worry so much.
"All my balloons for free. Come and follow me."
She pulled the gate key from its hiding place in a little tin box tucked inside one of the stone urns. Precious seconds elapsed while she fit it into the lock. "Wait," she called out, afraid the balloon man would disappear. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and concentrated on making the lock work. The key finally turned. Planting the heels of her sandals firmly on the blacktop, she dragged open the gate far enough to slip through.
She felt enormously pleased with herself as she began running beside the high row of hedges that had been planted next to the fence to give the estate privacy from the road. "Please wait for me!" she cried.
It was a warm June day. The hem of her bright yellow sundress slapped her legs and her hair skipped out behind her head. In the distance the balloons bobbed on their strings, gay splashes of color spangled against the open sky. She laughed at the beauty of them, at the distant music of the balloon man's cries, at the joyous feeling of being a child and running free along the narrow road. Her laughter sounded strange and wonderful to her ears. Although she was too young to articulate it, the heavy weight of her past no longer seemed so burdensome. She felt happy, secure, and wonderfully carefree.
She was still laughing when a strange man jumped out from a stand of sycamores and grabbed her.
Fear coagulated in her throat, and she made a horrible animal sound as his fingers dug into her arms. He had a big, fleshy nose and a bad smell. She tried to scream for her father, but before she could utter a sound, another man-the balloon man-came up beside her and pressed his hand over her mouth. Just before he covered her with a blanket, he yanked off his mask and she caught a glimpse of his face, as thin and sly as the head of a fox.
They shoved her down on the floor of a paneled van. One of them kicked her and told her to be quiet. The heavy weave of the blanket snagged a cocker spaniel barrette and pulled a clump of her fine hair from its roots. She bit through her bottom lip to keep from crying out. The heat inside the blanket was suffocating and her cramped position agonizing. But it was fear rather than pain that finally forced her into unconsciousness.
Hours later, the harsh jolting of the van awakened her. She tasted the rusty blood in her mouth and knew she was going to die, but she didn't make a sound. The van jerked to a stop. Her body began to tremble. She curled tighter, instinctively protecting the fragile organs that supported her life. The hinges of the rear doors squealed like a dying animal as they opened. The blanket was snatched away and she squeezed her eyes shut, too young to look bravely at what she feared.
They dragged her from the van. The cold night air hit her skin, and she gazed hopelessly at the flat desert landscape around her. The darkness was as thick as the inside of her grandmother's closet, its blackness penetrated only by a thin icing of stars and the dim glow of the van's interior light.
The sly-faced balloon man had her in his grasp. As he carried her toward a wooden shack, her instinct for survival took over and she tried to free herself. She screamed over and over again, but the emptiness of the desert absorbed her little girl's cries as if they were nothing more significant than the whisper of a few grains of blowing sand.
The man with the fleshy nose unfastened a padlock on the door of the shack and thrust her inside. The interior smelled like dust and rust and oil. Neither man spoke. The only sounds were her own broken whimpers. They wrapped a heavy chain around her neck as if she were a dog and bolted the other end to the wall. Just before they left her alone, one of them thrust the bundle of balloons inside. But the balloon man had lied. By the second day the heat in the shed had popped every one of them.
Newspapers all over the country carried the story of the kidnapping of little Susannah Faulconer. The police guards found a ransom demand for a million dollars in the mailbox. Kay sealed herself in her bedroom with Paige and refused to go near the windows, even though the draperies were tightly closed. Joel was wild with fear for the small, solemn stepdaughter he had grown to love so deeply. As he paced the rooms of Falcon Hill, he asked himself how something like this could have happened. He was an important man. A powerful man. What had he done wrong? She meant more to him than any person on earth, but he had not been powerful enough, he had not been ruthless enough, to protect her.
On the third day of the kidnapping, the FBI received an anonymous tip that led them to the shack on the edge of the Mojave Desert. The agents found Susannah chained to the wall. She was curled on the floor in her soiled yellow sundress, too weak to lift her head or to realize that these men were friends instead of enemies. Her arms and legs were raw with scrapes, and the strings of a dozen broken balloons were wrapped through her dirty fingers.