Finding Claire Fletcher by Lisa Regan Page A

catching my feet after several tries.
    We struggled wordlessly until he had straddled me. His hands closed around my throat. I tried to stave off the pain, cling to consciousness, but blackness descended on me and I slid gratefully into the dark oblivion.
    When I woke, my feet were bound. When he came in again, I heard only his voice.
    “ I know what’s best for you, Lynn. I’m sorry you can’t understand that right now. I don’t like being hard on you. I wish you wouldn’t make me do such things. I want us to make a home here.”
    He untied my legs and left my hands bound together but untied me from the radiator. He pulled me up, but my legs still didn’t work properly. Just like a baby deer trying to walk for the first time, my legs folded beneath me. I stumbled along as he half-carried me out of the room. Everything was dark and fuzzy.
    When I felt the cold, hardness of porcelain on the backs of my legs, I realized we were in a bathroom. After I relieved myself, he took off the ropes, and my clothes, and showered me. The water scalded my face. I did not fight him.
    He dressed me again and returned me to my new room, tying me to the same place and securing my legs together tightly. That is where I remained. I began to count the days by the waning and waxing of the delicious daylight. When the count reached one hundred two, I began weeping each day in time with the sunrise.
    Surely I could not have been his captive for so long. I was disoriented. My defiance of him and entreaties for freedom earned me beatings, but I could not stop. I no longer cared about the fists flying at me or the feet heavy in my sides. I just did not want to go willingly.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
     
    Dinah Strakowski lived in the same house from which she had witnessed Claire Fletcher being abducted. In ten years, she had had no desire to move, although she had put on a new roof and cut back the foliage around the house. She had also replaced one hot water heater and all of the tiles on her kitchen floor. So she told Connor when he visited her.
    She was forty-six now. Her two children had recently left for college and she lived alone, which she liked because it was quieter and there was less laundry to do, but which she did not like because she missed the sounds of her children moving around the house at all hours.
    Her hair was badly dyed a coppery red. She was round and pudgy, which she attributed to the effects of aging. She was so pleased to have a guest, even if he was there to talk about the awful thing that happened to that poor little girl so long ago, that she made cookies and lemonade just for Connor’s arrival.
    Dinah chattered while Connor sat on her couch and fished a notepad and pen from his pocket. He tasted the cookies and lemonade to be polite, and in spite of the fact that he had already been there ten minutes and found out nothing useful, he discovered that he liked Dinah. She had a lovely, off-center charm about her that had mostly to do with her open, gracious manner and her effusive offerings.
    “Mrs. Strakowski,” Connor said when he could finally snatch a moment of silence. “As I said on the phone, I’m investigating the abduction of Claire Fletcher as a cold case. What I’d like to do is take you through that morning again, and I’d like you to tell me everything you remember. I know it’s been ten years, but I’d like you to try to recall every detail, no matter how insignificant it may seem.”
    Mrs. Strakowski nodded solemnly. “Oh Detective, I haven’t forgotten that day at all. Something like that is hard to put out of your mind. Why, I’ve thought about that poor girl and her family quite a bit. I even kept one of those missing fliers on my fridge for a couple of years because I felt so bad about it. I still second-guess myself today. Maybe if I had run out there with my broom or my son’s baseball bat instead of calling 911, I could have saved her.”
    “You did the right thing, Mrs. Strakowski,”