Betrayed Read Online Free Page B

were worse than before, an endless spin cycle of horrors. The reality that my daughter was missing – possibly dead – clawed at my heart. I knew Tracey too well. She wouldn’t wil l ingly put her family under this kind of stress. Even at the height of her drug use, she would usually let us know where she was or that she wouldn’t be home. Even if she phoned in the early hours of the morning, she would let us know she was safe. Why would this time be any different? Deep down I knew she was dead, though I tried to pus h the thought away, as if denial could prevent it from being true.
    Early on Sunday morning, trusting that Senior-Superintendent Luyt had switched his phone back on, I dialled again. A sleepy voice an swered . Before he could disconnect again, I forced him to agree to meet me on Monday morning at seven.
    Sunday passed in a daze for the family. I vaguely remember driving for hours, looking for any sign of Tracey. I had to find some constru ctive way to fill the hours until my meeting with Luyt.
    My husband Buddy searched through Tracey’s notes and belongings for the phone numbers of friends we may not have contacted. Like a mantra, he kept on repeating that we would find her, but concern was etched deep in his face. He had withdrawn into a world of his own, his feelings buried deep inside, well hidden from the rest of the family . An introvert, he seldom spoke about his feelings or emotions and I was neglecting him, my thoughts following the single track of finding Tracey, no space for anything – or anyone else.
    I resented the apparent ease with which Buddy fell asleep those first two nights, but his keening chilled my blood. Sleep brought him no rest, just vivid pictures of tragedy and pain I couldn’t see. He would become quiet for a few moments as he turned to hold me in a death grip. Then he would toss away restlessly and the keening would begin again.
    Each morning my first thought would be of Tracey. Buddy and I hardly spoke as we went about our morning business. We didn’t know what to say to each other. Neither of us wanted to voice our fears. Our son, too, was haggard, bags under his eyes hinting that his dark hour s were as haunted as ours. Each of us was trying to protect the other from reality yet making it harder by not sharing our inner torment, a family united in worry yet isolated in pain.
    My heart was a stone slowly being crushed. One tiny grain of sand was the only hope I had left, the hope that she was still alive. But wit h each passing hour, even this speck of hope was being drowned by the growing certainty of her death.
    Late Sunday afternoon I said to Buddy, “You do know your daughte r is dead, don’t you? Please prepare yourself to bury her.”
    The colour drained from his face.
    â€œDon’t even say that,” he whispered.
    Monday morning I was wide-eyed and tense. It had been three days since Tracey’s car had been found. I watched the sky expand with a pale grey light until it was time for Glen and I to go to police headquar ters for our meeting.
    Although we briefly met Senior-Superintendent Luyt, I wasn’t sur prised when he told us he was unavailable for the meeting and passed us over to another captain of the division. This officer explained that a man named Captain Nick Kotze, “the best on the East Rand”, had been assigned to the case and we would be hearing from him shortly . None of the officers we spoke to even knew that we had filled in a missing person’s report.
    Slowly the awful truth dawned: the missing person’s docket had been shelved and hadn’t found its way to the detective division.
    Frustrated and furious though we were, we had little choice but to leave the police headquarters and wait for Captain Kotze to contact us. It seemed a good time to go to the pound to fetch Tracey’s car, which we hadn’t been able to retrieve on Friday because the pound was closi ng for the