EXCERPT FROM THE DAEDALUS DECEPTION

If David Proctor had been more alert, he probably would have realized that his suitcase was being stolen. His 757 had been placed in a holding pattern over Savannah however, and Proctor, never a stalwart flyer, had nearly wrung the pink out of his hands, staring out the window as the city slowly rotated beneath him.

Finally, shaken but on the ground, he had stopped to make a telephone call to his wife, Barbara.

Strange, he thought, as the phone rang on, I wonder why the machine didn’t kick in.

He shrugged and racked the receiver. Maybe there had been a power outage. He’d be home soon enough, anyway.

Proctor made his way to the baggage pickup, and scanned the brightly lit scrolling displays announcing arrivals. He finally found the one assigned to his flight, surrounded by anxious travelers jostling to grab their own bags and get home.

He joined the crowd around the revolving carousel. In front of him was a tall man in a black raincoat. Proctor’s head only came to the man’s shoulders, so he weaved back and forth, trying to glimpse his bag on the carousel belt.

Seconds later, the man in front of him whirled quickly and headed for the escalators, nearly knocking David over.

“That was rude,” a woman next to Proctor said.

“Beg pardon?”

“That man. He didn’t even excuse himself. He almost ran right over you.”

“Must be a Yankee,” Proctor said, grinning.

“Raised in a barn,” she sniffed. “Oh, there’s my luggage.”

“Allow me,” David said.

He reached down, pulled her old-style leather suitcase and makeup case from the belt, and placed them on the ground in front of her.

“Heavy,” he said. “Hope you don’t have to go far.”

“I know,” she said. “I should go out and buy some of those new rolling bags. My mother gave these to me when I graduated from college. I couldn’t bear to part with them. Would you mind, sir? I need to go fetch a cart.”

Proctor smiled as she headed over to the rental cart rack, dumped a handful of quarters into the slot, and pulled a cart away. She was back at his side in a moment.

He picked up the suitcase and the makeup case, and placed them on the cart for her.

“You should be more careful,” he told her. “You don’t know who I am. I might have made off with your things.”

“Oh, pooh. They wouldn’t fit you at all. Thank you, young man.”

He watched her waddle off, and then turned his attention back to the beltway.

He didn’t see his luggage pass by. He saw the same bags go around once or twice, and at first presumed that the porters were still unloading the trailer in the back. After the same bags rolled by three times, however, he became a little alarmed.

Proctor had lost his luggage before. He was a frequent – if reluctant – flyer, and anyone who flies regularly could tell horror stories of luggage sitting in a bin in Anchorage while its owners languished in Miami.

Proctor began to feel the persistent tingle of panic buzz down the back of his neck. His bags weren’t terribly expensive, but he had a present in one of them that he had planned to give Barbara that evening. He had found an especially exquisite antique brooch in a shop in San Francisco two days before and had bought it on impulse. It had cost over a hundred dollars, but its true value was its unique setting of filigreed gold plate and hand-beaten grape leaves. He was sure he would never see another like it, and immediately told himself that it was the perfect coming-home gift for his young wife.

He checked his jacket pocket, and was relieved to find his baggage check receipt there. Perhaps this would be simply a minor inconvenience.

It took Proctor a few minutes to find the InterContinental Airlines service desk. A young man with perfectly razor-cut blond hair and a crisply trimmed moustache was working there.

“May I help you?” he asked. He made it sound as if helping David was merely the essence of his existence.

“Please,” Proctor said. He handed over his receipt. “My bags were supposed to be on Flight 2281 from San Francisco, but they never came out.”

“I’ll look right into it, sir,” the man said. “Please have a seat. I’ll be right back out.”

Proctor sat on the preformed, vinyl-upholstered bowling alley bench InterContinental had installed next to the service desk, and tried to relax. It was difficult. The bench was not constructed for comfort, and he was already edgy.

He scanned the people riding the escalator down from the arrival gate. His gaze traveled up the line straight to the top of the escalator.

The man who had run into him was standing at the top, looking over the baggage claim area.

Proctor thought this was curious, but didn’t think much more about it, until he realized that the man was staring for just a few seconds directly at him. Proctor tried to avoid the man’s eyes, and at the distance it was difficult to say with any assurance that the man was actually staring at him, but he seemed to feel the man’s eyes watching.

After a couple of tense moments, the man hefted a strapped bag to his shoulder, pulled the handle from a rolling bag, and slowly walked away.

Proctor first felt relief, and then a curious thought crossed his mind. It was amazing how ubiquitous the rolling luggage and shoulder bags had become. It would be easy to mistake your own luggage for someone else’s in the mass of incoming bags whenever a plan arrived.

He was still thinking about this when the blond InterContinental service host reappeared behind his counter.

“Mr. Proctor,” he called.

David walked over to the counter.

“I can’t explain this,” the man said. “InterContinental changed to a barcode system of luggage identification several years ago. The tags we place on your luggage are uniquely coded. Nobody gets the same code twice, and no two bags on any flight ever have the same code. That way, we can simply scan the code when the bags are placed on the airplane, and scan them again after the airplane lands.”

“Yes?” Proctor asked. “Just tell me where my bags went.”

“That’s the problem, sir. Your luggage was scanned in at SFO, and placed on your airplane. It didn’t go anywhere.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, it went somewhere, of course. It went… well, it went here. The baggage handlers apparently scanned your bags just a little over a quarter hour ago, a few minutes after your plane landed. They should be out on the beltway.”

“But they aren’t,” Proctor said. “I waited, and they never appeared.”

“Mr. Proctor, this doesn’t happen often. I’m afraid it appears that your bags have been stolen.”

For just a second, Proctor’s mind flashed on the tall dark man at the top of the escalator, and how he had carried the ubiquitous luggage away.

“I’ll be right back!” he said, and turned to dash to the escalator.

He took the up escalator steps two at a time. Once on the Second Level, he scanned the line of airline gates in each direction, but caught no sight of the stranger who had bumped into him in the crowd. He ran to the window, hoping to see the man hop into a cab or board a shuttle to the parking lot. The thief was nowhere to be seen.

“Damn!” he said, perhaps just a bit too loudly, and he slapped his palms against the glass. Several people at the nearby InterContinental terminal desk turned and looked at him curiously.

A security guard walked up.

“Is something wrong, sir?”

“My luggage was stolen,” Proctor said. “I thought I saw the guy who took it.”

“Why don’t you come with me, so I can take a report?”

Proctor followed the officer back down the escalator, to the InterContinental desk.

“Yes,” the blond clerk said, when the guard questioned him, “Mr. Proctor’s bags were checked in a few minutes ago. Apparently someone took them while they were on the carousel.”

“Can you describe this man you think took your luggage?” the guard asked Proctor.

“Sure. He was about a head taller than me, probably about six and a half feet. He had black hair, almost shoulder length, and a closely trimmed beard. And sunglasses.”

“Thin build, medium build, large build?” the guard asked, as he took notes.

“Hard to tell. He was wearing a dark raincoat. I don’t think he was thin. When he walked into me, he seemed pretty solid.”

“He walked into you?”

“I had just arrived at the baggage beltway. He turned and almost ran right through me.”

“And you didn’t notice he had your bags,” the guard said.

“I guess I was distracted. I had just tried to call my wife, and she didn’t answer the phone.”

“You flew in from San Francisco?”

“Yes. My business has its home office there.”

“Which business is that?”

“Bolero Insurance.”

The guard wrote it down.

“Business trip, then?”

“Yes. I started working for Bolero just a few weeks ago. They want me to visit all the major offices. Is this relevant, officer? I’m sure my job has nothing to do with the guy who stole my stuff.”

“You’re probably right,” the guard said. “Never hurts to be thorough, though.”

After another ten minutes or so of questioning, and after he signed the report, Proctor was told he could go. The blond clerk took his name and address, and assured him that he would be reimbursed the maximum allowed for loss of luggage. He apologized profusely, and suggested that if Proctor had any further concerns he could call the number on the card the clerk gave him to reach InterContinental’s main office.

Proctor pocketed the card and thanked him.

* * * * *

It took almost forty-five minutes for Proctor to make the trip from Savannah/Hilton Head Airport into the city. He had purchased a house south of the Savannah River several years earlier, before being transferred to his former company’s London office. He had considered selling the house at the time, but the real estate market had been in the dumper, so he’d decided to rent it out instead. After returning to the United States and marrying Barbara, they had lived near Washington D.C., so he had simply continued to rent out the house. When the offer from Bolero came in, and he was told he could live in Savannah, he had terminated the lease, and had brought Barbara back to Georgia to live.

The house was an unremarkable model on an unremarkable street that ended in a quiet cul-de-sac. The developer had built over a hundred homes in the neighborhood, cramming as many as he could manage on the quarter-acre lots. There were only three basic designs, but they were varied by exterior trim and paint schemes, so that their owners could tell one from the other.

David and Barbara Proctor lived in a two-story, three bedroom/two bath unit called the Excelsior Model. It was the top of the line in the neighborhood, in that it included a formal dining room, whereas the other models featured only dinettes off the kitchen. The Excelsior also included a finished bonus room, over the two-car garage which opened facing the street. The bonus room was where Barbara indulged her passion for painting. She had turned it into a studio, and spent most of each day there, working on one piece or another.

Proctor punched the remote control attached to the sun visor in his car and pulled into the garage. His was the only car that parked there. Since Barbara never left the house, she never needed an automobile.

He absently opened the trunk, and only then recalled that he didn’t have any baggage. There hadn’t been much of value in the bags, nothing that couldn’t be replaced easily with the money he’d eventually receive from the airlines, except for the brooch he’d bought for Barbara. There was no replacing it, and it was the only thing he was sorry to have lost.

“Barbara,” he called as he walked into the kitchen from the garage. “I’m back.”

There was no answer.

She must be taking a nap, he thought. He hurried up the stairs to their bedroom, but the bed was empty.

It was at that moment that David Proctor became aware of the overwhelming silence in the house. He checked the other bedrooms, but they were also empty. Then he walked into the bonus room.

It had been stripped. All of Barbara’s paintings were missing. Her easel and paint box had vanished. Someone had even vacuumed the carpet, judging by the telltale tracks left behind in the nap.

Proctor dashed down the stairs, but again only found empty rooms. The furniture had not been disturbed. The television and stereo were still exactly where he had left them. The only things missing were those which belonged to Barbara.

He ran back upstairs, taking the steps two at a time, into their bedroom.

Barbara’s side of the walk-in closet wasn’t empty. It was filled with David’s clothes, as was his side of the closet. All of Barbara’s clothes were gone.

David began to panic. It was unthinkable that Barbara simply might have left. She hadn’t been outside the walls of their house since they’d moved in.

He grabbed at the telephone by their bed and dialed 911.

“Emergency Services,” the operator said. “How may I direct your call?”

“Police, please,” he said. “I think my wife has been kidnapped!”