They Disappeared
They Disappeared
Rick Mofina
A loving family, fracturing under pressure… Jeff Griffin, a mechanic, and his wife, Sarah, travel from Montana to Manhattan to give their nine-year-old son, Cole, his dream vacation as they secretly face the heart-wrenching turmoil that has them teetering on divorce. In the wake of their heartbreak, a mother and son disappear…While sightseeing near Times Square, Jeff steps into a store to buy batteries for their camera—but upon returning to the street he finds that Sarah and Cole have vanished. A frantic father searches for clues as time ticks down… Battling his anguish and police suspicions, Jeff fights to rescue Sarah and Cole.He knows now that the love he and Sarah have is worth saving. But he could lose the chance to tell her amid growing fears that they have become entangled in an unfolding plot that could have global consequences.
A loving family, fracturing under pressure…
Jeff Griffin, a mechanic, and his wife, Sarah, travel from Montana to Manhattan to give their nine-year-old son, Cole, his dream vacation as they secretly face the heart-wrenching turmoil that has them teetering on divorce.
In the wake of their heartbreak, a mother and son disappear…
While sightseeing near Times Square, Jeff steps into a store to buy batteries for their camera—but upon returning to the street he finds that Sarah and Cole have vanished.
A frantic father searches for clues as time ticks down…
Battling his anguish and police suspicions, Jeff fights to rescue Sarah and Cole. He knows now that the love he and Sarah have is worth saving. But he could lose the chance to tell her amid growing fears that they have become entangled in an unfolding plot that could have global consequences.
Praise for the novels of Rick Mofina
THE BURNING EDGE
“All of the great thriller elements are in abundance: a terrifying villain, a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time and a reporter seeking answers at all costs. A winner in every aspect, and a must-read.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Rick Mofina’s tense, taut writing makes every thriller he writes an adrenaline-packed ride.”
—Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author
“The Burning Edge kept me up into the early morning hours—the plot is so well written that I could not put the book down!”
—www.ReadertoReader.com
IN DESPERATION
“A blisteringly paced story that cuts to the bone. It left me ripping through pages deep into the night.”
—James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author
“Hell hath no fury like a mother wronged. In Desperation is a superbly written thriller that plumbs the depths of every parent’s nightmare. Timely, tense, and terrifying, this book is sure to be a big hit!”
—Brad Thor, #1 New York Times bestselling author
THE PANIC ZONE
“Taut pacing, rough action and jagged dialogue feed a relentless pace. The Panic Zone is written with sizzling intent.”
—Hamilton Spectator
“Mofina’s on top of his game, pulling together a wickedly complicated plot with great skill and assurance. Genuinely chilling.”
—RT Book Reviews
VENGEANCE ROAD
“Vengeance Road is a thriller with no speed limit! It’s a great read!”
—Michael Connelly, New York Times bestselling author
“A gripping, no-holds-barred mystery…lightning paced…with enough twists to keep you turning pages well into the wee hours. Vengeance Road is masterful suspense.”
—Allison Brennan, New York Times bestselling author
They Disappeared
Rick Mofina
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
This book is for
Margaret Slavin Dyment
Contents
Chapter 1 (#ue6b7db1f-70e4-5b8d-b9d7-932cc8fd6bfb)
Chapter 2 (#ue2b033e2-a60f-5b55-bc7c-fc61d0b959b9)
Chapter 3 (#uf99c1d17-dd3e-5b96-a319-e56b5f9c3ba1)
Chapter 4 (#u8876c88d-3eaa-508a-b403-6a13217087d2)
Chapter 5 (#u64a43e1d-4e68-5f3a-b713-24d7742a3863)
Chapter 6 (#u92fd7963-2bd3-5176-ad10-fe7211101270)
Chapter 7 (#u0601936f-8499-5ec0-8d9c-62b9eeb8caab)
Chapter 8 (#u770695ca-0fc4-521e-8562-552b2490760e)
Chapter 9 (#ueb25f428-61dc-5ad8-bf21-198421f2882e)
Chapter 10 (#u2b8bbb8b-cf3d-5b8c-a994-4dea53cb4b61)
Chapter 11 (#ue56cad80-1a15-53ef-baa6-7acf1eebb3e0)
Chapter 12 (#ub11190fb-ab6a-5d4f-8a70-ae4ad4a8b898)
Chapter 13 (#ub56d509d-7bca-5d6b-8ccd-33b30350f3d2)
Chapter 14 (#u2276df19-36f8-507b-98de-6a8a4e92818b)
Chapter 15 (#u536d6088-fa09-5b05-a692-49482483e0a0)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 55 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 56 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 57 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 58 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 59 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 60 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 61 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 62 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 63 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 64 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 65 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 66 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 67 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 68 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 69 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 70 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
1
New York City
This trip is going to change us forever, Jeff Griffin thought as the jet descended into LaGuardia.
He looked at his son, Cole, age nine, excited to be on his first plane and marveling at Manhattan’s skyline poking through the clouds. Then Jeff glanced at his wife, Sarah, at her hand, her wedding ring.
Until a year and a half ago, they had been living a perfect life in Montana, where Jeff was a mechanic and a volunteer firefighter and Sarah was a schoolteacher. They’d come to New York for Cole because he’d always dreamed of seeing Manhattan. It seemed like the best thing to do, given all that they’d been through.
“It’s always going to be hard for us, Jeff,” Sarah had told him. “But we just can’t give up.”
While Sarah lived in hope, Jeff couldn’t help but think that this vacation to New York was a requiem for the life they once lived.
The landing gear locked into position with a hydraulic thud.
Jeff exhaled slowly and turned to Cole.
“Wow, Dad, this is so great! I can’t believe we’re really doing this!”
Jeff looked at Sarah. She gave him the promise of a smile and he held on to it, thinking that maybe, just maybe, he should reconsider.
After their plane landed, the Griffins moved through the arrival gate and joined the rush of passengers heading to the baggage claim area.
The air smelled like industrial carpet cleaner and pretzels.
Cole was energized by the bustling terminal as they made their way to the crowds at the carousels. Sarah went to the restroom while Jeff and Cole got their bags.
Jeff shouldered his way to the conveyor, plucked Sarah’s red bag from it, then his own. Cole had followed him and hefted his backpack from the carousel. Sarah had bought a new one for him, for the trip.
“Looks like the one.” Jeff gave it a quick inspection, black with white trim and mesh side pockets. He glanced quickly at the blue name tag without really reading it; blue was the right color for the tag. Then he helped Cole get his arms through the straps.
As they waited for Sarah, Cole tried counting all the carousels in their area but there were too many. He loved the blurring pace as people jostled to heave their luggage onto trolleys before wheeling them out through the main doors.
“I wish Mom would hurry up, Dad. Can we see the Empire State Building from here?”
“Maybe on the cab ride to the hotel—there’s Mom.”
“All set.” Sarah smiled, joining them.
They left the terminal through the automatic doors.
Jeff spotted a row of news boxes. They reminded him that the travel agent had mentioned that a major event would be taking place when they were to arrive. The headlines shouted about it. UN: Whole World in the City Again! said the Daily News. Tighter Security for World Leaders Means Gridlock for All! blared the New York Post.
As they queued up for a taxi in the ground transportation pickup zone, they didn’t notice that among the throng of arriving passengers, one man had taken an interest in Cole.
He was in his late twenties, a slender build with wild blond hair. His face was void of emotion. He looked European, a youngish student bohemian traveler. As he walked by them, slowly and unseen, his attention locked onto Cole’s bag.
The man hesitated.
The Griffins got into their cab. He stopped and watched, his face suddenly darkening with concern as they drove off.
His backpack was black with white trim and mesh side pockets.
It was identical to Cole’s backpack.
2
New York City
Their taxi merged onto the Grand Central Parkway and the driver lifted his head to his rearview mirror, which had a rosary hanging from it.
“Welcome to the capital of the world. Where are you coming in from?”
“Montana,” Jeff said.
“Cowboys and land spreading out to the mountains,” the driver said.
“That’s right.”
“Is this your first time to the Big Apple?”
“No, I’ve been here for a few conventions over the years, and—” Jeff glanced at Sarah. “We were here together, a long, long time ago.”
“Well, you picked a good time to return.”
“Why’s that?” Jeff asked.
“We got the president and about one hundred world leaders coming into town over the next few days for the UN meeting. Lots of security, sirens and helicopters. Messes up traffic.”
“Yeah, we saw that in the newspapers.”
“The president and helicopters, wow,” Cole said.
“It’s a huge show and a glorious pain.”
The road clicked under the taxi’s wheels as they moved onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Sarah looked out her window at the endless flow of apartment buildings, warehouses, factories and billboards. One showed a laughing baby’s face next to a smiling young woman in a graduation cap and she thought of their daughter, Lee Ann.
They were moving west toward the Midtown Tunnel when they came to a gently sloping segment. The tip of the Empire State Building emerged in the haze ahead as Manhattan’s skyline rose before them.
“Look at that! I gotta take a picture!” Cole said. “Oh, no, Mom, I put my camera in my backpack and it’s in the trunk. That was dumb, oh, no!”
“Here, use mine.”
Sarah fished her small digital camera from her bag. Cole, a technical master, clenched an eye, took a photo and showed his parents.
“Oh, this is awesome!” Cole said.
Moments later the taxi slowed. An overhead freeway sign guided three lanes to the great stone mouth of the Midtown Tunnel. Lines of traffic moved through the tollgates. The tunnel gleamed in brilliant orange and yellow as it curved under the East River to Manhattan.
Cole took more pictures until they surfaced somewhere near Fortieth Street and Third Avenue. As they looked at the skyscraper-lined canyons and the shining high-rise condos, Jeff’s cell phone rang. The call was a 646 area code with a number he didn’t recognize.
“Hello?”
He heard nothing and after several seconds of static he hung up.
“Who was that?” Sarah asked.
“Wrong number, I guess.” Jeff shrugged.
The sidewalks were a bazaar of action with streams of people hurrying, waving at taxis amid sirens, horns. Steam plumes curled from the hot dog stands. People panhandled and street merchants argued with delivery truck drivers while motorists screamed at jaywalkers who blocked streets.
They were a world away from Laurel, Montana.
Their hotel, the Central Suites Inn, was on West Twenty-ninth Street in the two-hundred block, not far from Madison Square Garden. They checked into their twelfth-floor room. It was large with two double beds.
“I need to freshen up,” Sarah said.
“All right, Cole and I will unpack and get changed,” Jeff said. “Then we can go out for dinner and maybe walk to the Empire State Building.”
Cole claimed the bed nearest to the window. He unzipped his backpack at the foot of it and dumped its contents. T-shirts, shorts, a chocolate bar, a bag of potato chips, maps of New York, a hoodie and socks fell out. All of it was unfamiliar, especially the man’s shaving kit.
“Uh, Mom, Dad?” Cole said.
Sarah set her things down and surveyed the heap. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, he’s got the wrong bag.” She inspected the backpack. The luggage claim bar code was torn. The blue name tag was faded and smudged. “I thought you guys checked this?”
“It looks exactly like Cole’s bag.” Jeff looked it over.
“A little, but the zippers are different.”
“What are we going to do, Mom?” Cole said. “I need my stuff.”
“We’ll call the airline, don’t worry, honey.” Sarah pulled a printed page from her bag and went to the room’s desk. “See, I put this paper inside all our bags. It has our hotel and cell phone numbers, so whoever has your bag can call us.”
While Sarah and Jeff searched their airline tickets for a lost luggage number, Cole turned to the strange belongings. One item drew his interest.
A tiny plastic toy jet.
He pushed a small button on top of it, lights flashed and it made a jet engine sound. Cole loved it. He moved behind the curtains, pressed the toy against the window, taking it on a flight over Manhattan’s tall buildings.
“I can’t find a claim number on my part of the ticket,” Sarah said just as Jeff’s cell phone rang.
“Hey.” Jeff looked at the display before he answered. “It’s the same number that tried to call me when we were in the taxi.”
“Mr. Griffin? Jeff Griffin of Laurel, Montana?”
“Yes.”
“This is Hans Beck, I tried calling you earlier. I got your number from your backpack. I have it, there was a mix-up at the airport and I was hoping you’d have mine? It looks just like yours—it has some clothes, snacks, maps and my razor inside.”
“Yes, we have it.”
“Good, can we trade them as soon as possible? I am running late for a train. According to your information, you’re at the Central Suites that’s near Penn Station?”
“Yes, we can exchange the bags now if you like.” Jeff nodded to Sarah, who smiled with relief and indicated that she would take a quick shower. After a few more minutes Jeff had worked out the bag trade with the caller.
“Cole! Let’s go get your backpack, son!”
Startled by his dad, Cole, who’d been running the plane up and down the curtain, let the toy slip to the lower end as he pushed the curtain aside.
“Really?” Cole stepped from the window. “Now?”
“Yes, really, yes, now. So put all that stuff back in the bag. Everything and let’s go.” Jeff had unfolded a map on his bed and studied it. “The guy who’s got your backpack is going to meet us now, so move it!”
Overjoyed at getting his possessions back, Cole forgot about the plane and gathered all the items as fast as he could, shoving them hastily into the backpack while his dad glanced at the map.
This Hans Beck had a German-sounding accent. Maybe he was a student, Jeff thought as he and Cole walked toward Madison Square Garden with his backpack.
They were to meet in front of a diner on Thirty-third Street across from Penn Station. Beck said he was twenty-nine, five foot eleven with blond hair. Jeff gave a description of himself and Cole, noting they would also recognize each other by the backpacks.
About twenty minutes after Beck had called, they spotted him on the street at the appointed location. Beck’s hair was unkempt, his clothes disheveled. He was dragging anxiously on a cigarette, his face taut.
This guy’s either on drugs or under some sort of pressure, Jeff thought.
“Are you Hans Beck?”
Beck blew a stream of smoke skyward and nodded.
“Jeff and Cole Griffin.”
They traded handshakes, then backpacks.
Immediately Beck began rummaging through his.
“Everything’s in here, right?” Beck said, snapping his head around at the sound of car horns from the traffic.
“Sure. We didn’t take anything, if that’s what you mean,” Jeff said.
“No, no, man.” Beck focused on Cole, then winked. “Because you’re too young to use my electric razor, right?”
“That’s funny,” Cole said. “The airplane you have in there is cool.”
“What airplane? You looked inside?”
“Sorry.” Cole glanced at his dad, then at Beck. “It was when I thought it was my backpack. I saw the little toy plane.”
“Everything’s in there,” Jeff said.
“What? Okay. I’m really late.” Beck looked around to the street, closed the bag, then hoisted it onto his back. “Yes, I packed it so fast, I’m not sure what I put in there. Well, I have to split. Thanks.”
Beck disappeared into the crowds entering Penn Station. Jeff’s attention followed him with a ping of unease before he turned to Cole.
“Let’s get back to the hotel, son.”
3
New York City
Hans Beck gripped his backpack and pinballed through Penn Station.
For a fleeting moment he considered boarding a train, any train, and getting away.
No use. They’re watching, waiting. And I need the money.
Beck had lied to Jeff Griffin about having to catch a train. Instead, he had to meet his contact and complete this delivery.
He’d nearly blown this job.
How could he have been so stupid to have picked up the wrong bag? In his time as a courier he’d never screwed up like this. His customers were enraged. He’d never had contacts so intense. He didn’t know who they were, or what they were involved in.
He didn’t want to know.
When he’d given them the Griffin backpack in error, they took no comfort in his assurance he would retrieve the misplaced bag.
Well, he did it, just as he said he would.
So everyone should relax, he told himself. We’ve got the right bag now. Soon this would be over and he’d be on a plane to Aruba awaiting a large deposit in a numbered account.
Beck left Penn Station and hurried by the post office and deep into the heart of the Hudson Yards. He moved quickly beyond the Long Island Rail Road maintenance tracks, where Thirty-third Street dipped into a wasteland near the Hudson River.
He was nearly jogging now as he hurried along a chain-link fence that surrounded a site where a massive foundation, reaching down several stories, was under construction. The sun had set, the entire area was deserted. He heard the hum of a motor, then brakes, and a panel van stopped suddenly beside him.
A side door slid open and he got in. It was crowded inside because several men were in the back working. A couple of them were talking on cell phones. Two others were working quickly on laptops.
The men had already acted on the information sheet they’d found in Cole Griffin’s bag and had quickly searched the family. They’d also taken pictures of Jeff and Cole on the street, making the exchange with Beck.
Everything had unfolded with urgency.
The men seized his backpack, dumped its contents, probed them, then tore through the empty backpack.
Whatever they needed was still missing.
For the first and last time in his life, Beck had failed to make a delivery.
His final thought was that a plastic bag had swallowed his head and his struggle against the forces holding him was in vain.
Everything went black.
His corpse was wrapped in a plastic sheet and hefted into the construction site. It was concealed under a layer of gravel at the base of a footing that would be filled with fifty cubic yards of concrete the next day.
4
New York City
The next morning the Griffins went down to the lobby for breakfast.
The dining area was crammed but Sarah spotted a table for them. Jeff and Cole moved with the crowd along the breakfast bar, loading their trays with sausages, eggs, cereal, fruit, toast, juice and coffee.
Jeff saw Sarah at the table with her phone, reading, then responding to a text message.
Who is she talking to?
It consumed him as they ate and discussed options for the day but he’d have to deal with it later. Cole was wearing a New York Jets T-shirt and ball cap they had bought the night before, along with his new souvenir New York key ring bearing his name. He’d clipped it on the belt loop of his jeans. After flipping through his guidebook, Cole decided he wanted to take a tour bus down to Ground Zero, then a ferry to the Statue of Liberty.
“But can we go to Times Square first?” he asked. “There’s a giant screen there that takes your picture and a toy store with a Ferris wheel inside. Can we go there?”
Jeff consulted his map of New York.
“Are you up for the walk?”
“You bet! And every time I see the Empire State Building I’m taking more pictures. Can I go back for another juice, Mom?”
“Sure.”
When they were alone, Jeff nodded to Sarah’s phone.
“So who were you talking to?”
“Valerie, back home. She was asking if we got in okay.”
“Valerie. Anybody else?”
“Jeff, please don’t do this.”
“Who, Sarah?”
Her face reddened; she was on the verge of losing it with him. Instead, she seized her phone, cued the message, then thrust it at him.
“Valerie. See? Valerie.”
“Sorry.”
Sarah put a hand to her mouth, blinking back tears. She looked toward the food bar to see Cole waiting his turn to fill his glass at the juice dispenser. She looked at Jeff.
“On our way in from the airport I saw this billboard and—” She halted, shifted her thought. “I don’t want a divorce and I don’t think this is the time or place to tell Cole that you want one. We can’t break his heart, Jeff. We have to hang on and work this out.”
He noticed she was twisting her wedding ring.
“I never blamed you for what happened,” she said. “I was out of my mind, we both were. I was angry but I never blamed you for what happened. Get this through your head. I love you. We have to fight to hold this family together, not tear what’s left of it apart, please.” Upon seeing Cole returning, she dropped her voice to a whisper. “Why in God’s name can’t you see that?”
Jeff looked at her without speaking, his mind racing with a million thoughts before Cole returned, sensing unease.
“Are you okay, Mom?”
She touched a tissue to her eyes.
“Just a sad memory, sweetie.”
“All right.” Jeff cleared his throat and stood with his tray to clear the table. “Let’s get going.”
They walked east to Seventh Avenue, then Broadway bound for Times Square. The city pulsated under a clear sky with the thud of a passing helicopter, the ever-present wail of sirens and traffic, telling him that he had to come to a decision. It weighed on him as they moved north along Broadway. Here, amid the whirlwind, he considered Sarah’s words.
We have to fight to hold this family together. We have to hang on and work this out. Was she right?
“Dad? Are you going to get in the picture with Mom now?”
Cole’s question pulled Jeff from his thoughts and he took an immediate assessment, estimating that they were somewhere around Forty-fourth and Forty-fifth Streets near Seventh Avenue. The streets were crowded, traffic was heavy. Not far from where they stood, massive neon signs soared in spectacular glory, exuding an air of controlled chaos. News reports flowed nonstop in electronic ribbons of light that wrapped around several buildings.
They were at the edge of Times Square.
Sarah had just taken Cole’s picture and returned her camera to him.
“Over there, Dad,” Cole said from behind the viewfinder. “Get next to Mom. I want to get that big flashy sign behind you—then we’ll go down to the center of Times Square, hurry!”
Jeff put his arm around Sarah, then felt her arm solidly around his waist. It felt good, it felt right, and a bittersweet sensation rolled over him. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d touched each other, held each other. This was not easy. They both made an effort to disguise the emotional turmoil churning under the smiles they’d manufactured for Cole.
Finally, he took the shot.
“All right,” he said. “Can we get one of us all together?”
“Let me ask somebody,” Jeff said.
He took the camera from Cole and went a few yards down the crowded sidewalk to an older man wearing a Yankees ball cap taking photos of two women, likely his wife and daughter. Jeff asked him if he would mind taking a Griffin family photo with Sarah’s camera.
“Be happy to.”
The man took the picture but when Cole requested he take one more, nothing happened with the camera. The man looked at it. “Looks like your batteries are gone.” The man handed it back. Jeff thanked him and turned to Cole and Sarah.
“I forgot to put in fresh ones,” Sarah said.
“It’s okay.” Jeff glanced around, spotting a suitable store behind them. “I’ll go in there and get fresh batteries. You stay right here, don’t go anywhere.”
“All right,” Sarah said. She and Cole began inspecting the jewelry, statues, artwork and T-shirts on a vendor’s cart. Jeff stepped toward the store but was stopped.
“Sir, could you spare any change for a veteran?”
A man with bushy dark hair and a beard flecked with bits of something white held up a hand in a dirty worn cyclist’s glove. He was in a wheelchair and missing his right leg. He wore torn jeans, a filthy John Lennon T-shirt and a tattered raincoat. His chair was reinforced with metal coat hangers and had a U.S. flag affixed to it. Jeff looked into his leathery weatherworn face, his brown eyes, and figured him to be in his early thirties. Guys who’d served deserved better, Jeff thought.
“How’d you lose the leg?”
“IED in Afghanistan. I ain’t had a decent meal in days, sir.”
Jeff thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out two crumpled fives.
“Here.”
The man stared at the cash.
“Thank you. God bless you and your beautiful family, there, sir.”
Jeff went to the store—Metro Manhattan Gifts and Things.
It had a narrow storefront of soot-streaked stone and a large window cluttered with a galaxy of tacky items. Discounts on jewelry, T-shirts and posters were listed on the chalkboard sign outside.
Inside, rock music throbbed from a radio station. The walls were jammed with T-shirts, ball caps, trinkets, posters, knickknacks. A young man was on a ladder, pulling down a cardboard box overflowing with scarves for two women. Racks filled with chips, chocolate bars and snack cakes bordered one side of the store, next to coolers filled with soda, juices and water.
Compact video recorders, cell phones and other electronics covered the wall behind the counter near the cash. A mounted security camera watched from above. Jeff took his place in line behind half a dozen customers.
As he waited, he saw Sarah and Cole through the window, browsing at the cart. They looked happy and the image sent his mind racing back to that last moment of perfection. Back to that time when he’d sat in his truck in their driveway and watched Sarah with Cole and their baby daughter, Lee Ann, through the window.
The last time they were happy.
And now he’d brought his family here, to the brink of disintegration.
Kransky the Shrink had been right; they couldn’t just overcome the blow of Lee Ann’s death. They had to adapt to it and allow each other to deal with it in their own way.
Throughout their ordeal Cole had been the rock of the family. He’d accepted that God had made his baby sister an angel and took her to heaven first to wait for them. Cole just got on with being a kid and continued obsessing about seeing New York City, the way most kids obsessed about seeing Disney World.
In this way Cole was the calm, healing force, holding them all together against the threat of destruction.
And the threat was not Sarah.
It’s me.
After all this time, Jeff realized that he’d failed to accept how Sarah dealt with her own grief and guilt. She blamed herself for being three hundred and forty miles away when their baby died. Jeff blamed himself for being in the next room asleep. He had been so numbed and blinded by his anger, his guilt, that he let it give way to paranoia, thinking wrongly that Sarah had turned to another man for comfort.
He’d let it all reach the point where it was tearing them apart.
What have I done?
Standing in line, waiting to buy batteries, it dawned on him. Maybe it had started when he felt Sarah’s arm around him, tight. But when the truth hit, it hit him like a freight train. Sarah was not cheating on him. She did not hate him. What he was doing was wrong. The last thing he wanted was to separate. He agreed with Sarah, when their baby girl died they went out of their minds with grief. They’d both been consumed with guilt and anger over losing her.
He replayed Sarah’s plea.
We have to fight to hold this family together. We have to hang on and work this out.
She was right.
They’d been through enough.
Suddenly Jeff felt like a man waking up.
How could I have been so stupid?
It was his turn at the counter and the clerk at the register, a girl in her twenties with a diamond stud in her left nostril, fuchsia streaks in her dyed white hair and tattoos on her arms, smiled as she chewed gum and bobbed her head to an old David Bowie song.
“I need some batteries.”
“What size?”
“Double A, I think. Wait, let me check, sorry.”
Horn blasts from the street competed with the music inside as Jeff opened the battery compartment. It took him three attempts. The clerk snapped her gum and eyed the other customers while she waited.
Patience in New York came at a premium.
“Yes, double A,” he said. “Better give me three of those four packs.”
She slapped them on the counter.
“Here you go.”
Jeff paid.
He returned to the street ready to tell Sarah that he’d come to his senses. This trip would change everything.
For the better.
He went to the vendor’s cart but they weren’t there.
He looked up and down the street.
No sign of Sarah and Cole.
What’s going on?
They must’ve gone into a store, he thought, and entered the nearest one, a crowded retail sportswear outlet. Inside he searched the packed aisles, scanning the shoppers for Sarah and Cole. He glimpsed a flash of green—the back of a boy’s New York Jets T-shirt as it disappeared behind a display of jackets.
There’s Cole.
Jeff hurried after him, ready to scold Sarah for vanishing, but he stopped cold. The boy was not Cole.
Jeff took immediate stock of the surroundings.
No sign of Sarah and Cole.
He hurried out and rushed into the next business, a crowded deli where he again took swift inventory. Again, he found no trace of his wife and son. He moved on, searching in vain. He stood on the sidewalk and scoured the storefronts across the street—but it was futile.
Jeff could not find Sarah and Cole.
Then, above all the crowds, the traffic, the noise and confusion, he heard the first high-pitched ring in the back of his mind. It shot to his gut where disbelief battled his fear that maybe something was wrong.
5
New York City
Jeff scanned the crowds, threading his way a few yards in one direction, then a few yards in another.
“Sarah!”
He looked up and down the street.
They disappeared.
He reached for his cell phone and called Sarah’s number. This is nuts. Where’d they go? It rang several times before going to her voice mail.
“Hey, you disappeared on me,” Jeff said. “Where are you? I’m standing by the souvenir cart.”
He studied the nearest storefronts again: a sports store, an electronics store, a ticket seller, a place fronted with plywood that was under renovation. Had they gone into one? Which one would they enter? He wasn’t sure. He’d told them not to move.
Did Sarah even hear her phone ring?
He called her number again. Again, he got her voice mail.
He scrutinized the street. Faces blurred as streams of people dissolved into chaotic rivers amid the smells of perfume, sweat and grilled spicy meat. Human features became indistinguishable as people brushed against him, bumped him.
“Are you looking for your wife and son?”
Jeff turned around to the man in the wheelchair—the man to whom he’d given ten bucks.
“Yes, did you see them?”
“I think they got picked up.”
“Picked up? What do you mean?”
“Well, I saw it from the corner of my eye. I wasn’t focused on it, but it looked like two guys picked them up.”
“What two guys?”
“Two guys sorta helped them into a van or an SUV and they drove off.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“It happened real fast, like everyone was in a hurry.”
“Where?”
“Right there.” He nodded to the spot where Jeff had left them.
Nothing was making sense. Jeff shook his head.
“I doubt that. My wife wouldn’t go with anyone. She doesn’t know anyone in New York.”
“It looked like they were pulling your boy and your wife was trying to stop them and then they took her, too. It was real fast and smooth.”
“What? That’s crazy.”
“I’m telling you what I saw.”
“Hold on.”
Jeff went to the ponytailed man selling souvenirs from the cart where Sarah and Cole had browsed moments ago. The man was wearing a tie-dye T-shirt and dark glasses.
“Who?” the man said after Jeff had explained.
“My wife and son. They were just here looking at your cart a few minutes ago. Did you see them go into a store?”
The ponytailed man scratched his three-day growth, then shrugged.
“Sorry, pal. It’s hectic here with people and traffic. People get picked up and dropped off around here every two seconds. I didn’t see anything.”
Jeff turned back to the wheelchair man.
“I think you saw someone else,” Jeff said. “I think they’re in a store.”
“No, it happened.”
“Did they say anything—where they were going, or who they were?”
“Sir, I don’t know.”
“What about the vehicle? What color was it?”
“Silver, white, I’m not sure…white, yeah, maybe white.”
Jeff ran his hand through his hair, unable to dismiss his unease over what this wheelchair guy claimed to have seen.
It just doesn’t make any sense.
“I think you’re mistaken and that you saw someone else.”
“I know I saw it out of the corner of my eye, but listen to me—it happened. It didn’t look right. I’m just telling you what I saw because you seem like a nice family. If you don’t want to believe me, that’s your choice.”
The man clamped his hands on his wheels and rolled away.
No, Jeff thought. I don’t want to believe you because this can’t be real.
Jeff took a quick breath, reached for his phone and tried Sarah again. But before he pressed her number, he saw something small and shiny in the street, near the curb.
A key ring.
Its clasp was open.
He picked it up. It was looped to a miniature novelty blue-and-white New York license plate with a name on it.
COLE.
Cole’s key ring.
It was in the gutter, where it would’ve fallen if he’d gotten into a vehicle.
Oh, Christ, it’s true! Oh, Jesus, no!
My wife! My son! Abducted from the street!
Why? Who would do this? Why?
Jeff trembled at the absurdity, the horror, as he looked in every direction searching for something, anything, to subdue the wave of alarm rising around him. This was the edge of Times Square—the crossroads of the world.... The concentration of people, the comings and goings, the enormity of it all, was dizzying.
He pulled his fingers into a fist around Cole’s key ring.
6
New York City
New York City police officers Jimmy Hodge and Roy Duggan were walking the beat: extended Times Square.
Earlier that morning, at the top of their tour, they’d helped two other cops corner a perp after he’d tried to boost a Mercedes on Seventh Avenue. Duggan happily let those two do the paperwork because he and Jimmy had good numbers this month—no danger of a white shirt breathing down their necks for stats.
Now they were back on patrol and a coffee break was overdue.
Duggan, a third-generation uniform with twenty-three years on the street, was telling young Jimmy, his rookie partner of four months, about a deli on Forty-seventh when a white guy in his thirties rushed up to them.
“I need help!”
Instinctively Hodge and Duggan braced while giving him the instant head-to-toe. Worried demeanor, sweaty. Six foot, medium build, muscular, clean-cut, brown hair, jeans, golf shirt with Laurel Montana Volunteer Fire Department insignia. Nothing in his hands but a cell phone.
“What’s the problem?” Hodge asked.
“My wife and son have been abducted.”
Hodge traded a quick glance with Duggan.
“Your wife and your son?” Hodge reached for his notebook.
“It happened a few minutes ago!”
“Take it easy, let’s start with some ID and names,” Hodge said.
The man identified himself as Jeff Griffin and Hodge started notes for a report.
“Okay, Jeff, tell us what happened and where,” Hodge asked.
The man walked them to the location, recounting the few details he had. Hodge took notes, asked short questions. Duggan said nothing. As their radios crackled with cross talk Duggan studied Jeff, listening, absorbing and watching through jaded brown eyes that seldom missed a thing. Nearly finished, Jeff turned to the wheelchair man, panhandling some fifteen yards up the street.
“…and that guy there in the wheelchair said he saw two men ‘help’ them into a van or an SUV before it drove away.”
“You got this from Freddie?” Duggan said.
“Is that his name, the soldier who lost his leg in Afghanistan? He said ‘it didn’t look right’ when he saw them being taken away.”
“Freddie sees a lot of things,” Duggan said.
Jeff nodded, clearly reassured he had a witness that police knew. But then Duggan elaborated.
“Sometimes Freddie sees things that aren’t there, depending on whether he’s on or off his meds. He didn’t lose his leg overseas—he slipped at a subway station platform. Train crushed it. Did you give him money?”
“Ten bucks.”
“He always tries to help people who give him money. He’s not a bad person,” Duggan said.
“What’re you saying?” In the tense silence, Jeff looked hard at Duggan, then Hodge, sensing doubt. His face showed an oncoming rush of helplessness. “What? You don’t believe me? Christ, what am I supposed to do here?”
“Maybe it’s like you said,” Hodge offered. “Maybe they went into a store and Freddie got mixed up. Maybe you should wait a bit?”
Suddenly remembering his one piece of evidence, Jeff reached into his pocket, then held up Cole’s key ring.
“I found this in the street, right where they were! We got this for Cole yesterday. He’d clipped it to his pants this morning! You’ve got to help me!”
Duggan’s face tightened as he blinked at Cole’s key ring. His instinct, forged from two decades of police work, was now telling him that the situation had changed.
“All right, here’s what we’re going to do,” Duggan said. “I’ll talk to Freddie. Jeff, give Officer Hodge any recent photos you have. We’ll start a canvass with other uniforms and I’ll call a car for you, Jeff.”
“Why?”
“This needs to go to the detective squad at Manhattan South.”
Duggan talked into his walkie-talkie as he started toward Freddie. Jeff cued up the photos on his camera and sent them to Hodge’s BlackBerry. He took more notes from Jeff, added more details.
Then Hodge hit Send.
“I’ve just shot the information and pictures to every cop patrolling this area,” Hodge said.
Duggan returned from taking Freddie’s information and was on his radio again searching the traffic.
“Jimmy, email your notes for the sixty-one to Sergeant McBain. I’ll call him. Jeff—” Duggan nodded to the street “—your ride’s here.”
A siren yelped and a marked NYPD radio car, lights flashing, pulled over. Duggan leaned into the empty passenger section, had a quick conversation with the officer behind the wheel. Duggan then opened the rear door for Jeff, who saw Hodge huddling with four other uniformed officers who’d arrived.
“Jeff, this is Officer Breedo. He’s going to drive you to the station house,” Duggan said. “He’ll take you in to Sergeant McBain, who’ll refer you to the detective squad. They’ll take over. Here’s my card with my cell and email—we have your information.”
“Thank you.”
“We’re going to circulate and look for Sarah and Cole here while you work with the detectives. The squad at the Fourteenth Precinct has more resources than we do. They’ll decide what steps to take next.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
* * *
Jeff got in the back.
The seat—vinyl patched with duct tape—was separated from the front by a plastic divider. There was little legroom. The back windows were up tight and would not open. The rear smelled of lemon-scented cleaner, barely masking the trace of vomit and despair. When Breedo slid the divider open, Jeff welcomed the relief as breezes from the open front windows carried Breedo’s cologne to the back of the car.
“It’s about ten blocks away. I’ll have you there in no time.”
The siren yelped again, then wailed nonstop as Breedo maneuvered the Crown Victoria through traffic. Jeff was no stranger to emergency vehicles. He took in the controls for the overhead lights, siren, public address, search lights, the small computer terminal. Breedo’s police radio issued a never-ending stream of coded transmissions.
Traffic ahead parted for them.
“See?” Breedo tapped his computer’s monitor. Jeff saw Sarah and Cole’s picture. “We’re getting information out there.”
Jeff’s gut writhed with relief and fear.
Then he noticed the visor above Breedo, where the faces of a woman and two girls around three or four years old smiled down from a color snapshot.
“That your family in the picture above you?”
“Those are my girls. Duggan says you’re a firefighter in Montana.”
“Volunteer. I’m a mechanic.”
“My brother was a firefighter. We lost him in the Towers.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
The siren wailed.
Jeff tried Sarah’s cell phone once more.
Again, it was futile. “Hi, this is Sarah. Please leave a message.” Keeping the phone pressed to his ear, he clung to her voice for a moment before another stab of concern hit him and he let go.
Breedo caught it and met him in the rearview mirror.
“Don’t worry, Jeff, we’re going to find your wife and son. Don’t worry.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
He saw Breedo’s profile as he drove. Then Jeff saw himself alone in the rearview mirror, stress lines carved in his face, worry bordering on fear clouding his eyes.
If this is a nightmare, then why can’t I wake up? Wake up!
Jeff got out Cole’s key ring, then the camera, and looked at the last picture taken of the three of them together.
He turned back to the window.
Manhattan blurred by and the siren rose to a near-scream.
7
New York City
The Fourteenth Precinct was situated on Thirty-fifth Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues in a three-story cream-and-coffee-colored building.
Breedo escorted Jeff to Sergeant McBain, a burly man on the north side of fifty. He was studying his computer at his desk and paused to gaze at them over his bifocals when Breedo introduced him.
“Sarge, this is Jeff Griffin, Duggan and Hodge’s sixty-one.”
McBain threw his attention to Jeff.
“Did the officers find my wife and son?” Jeff asked. “Did they call in?”
“No, I’m afraid nothing’s come in yet.” McBain removed his glasses to get a better read on Jeff. “I’ve spoken to the patrol officers and looked at their notes. From what I understand, Mr. Griffin, your wife and son left with two men in a vehicle, in an alleged abduction?”
“Nothing’s alleged, they were taken—what’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on, Mr. Griffin. We’re opening an investigation. We’ll do all we can to help you locate your wife and son.” McBain replaced his glasses and made a few strokes on his computer keyboard. “All right, Detectives Cordelli and Ortiz will talk to you. Officer Breedo will take you up to the squad.”
As they headed upstairs, Jeff told Breedo that he could not understand why everyone was skeptical when he needed their help.
“A lot of people mislead us,” Breedo said. “Or change their story.”
Arriving on the floor, Breedo led him down a hall to the fluorescent-lit squad room and a maze of government-issue metal desks. The walls were lined with file cabinets and clipboards holding crime reports, crime stats, corkboards with maps, wanted posters, shift schedules. One schedule had huge block letters: UN DETAIL SHIFT. A large flat-screen TV, mounted to the ceiling, was tuned to an all-news channel reporting on the UN meeting.
The area was abandoned except for one guy in plain clothes hunched at his desk, talking loud on the phone. The day shift was out. Jeff’s mind raced. Minutes ago he was walking down the street with his family. Now here he was, walking through a police squad room. Breedo stopped at two conjoined desks, then rolled over a cushioned swivel chair.
“Have a seat. I’ll find Cordelli and Ortiz.”
Jeff surveyed the desks. Their sides were pushed against a wall, under a well-used board displaying memos, calendars and personal items.
To the left: a framed degree from Long Island University for Juanita Ortiz, a newsletter photo of a beaming female cop in formal blues receiving her shield under the headline Detective Second Grade. There was a snapshot of a man and woman with a little girl, about five, by a mountain lake. The girl had an orange butterfly on her finger.
On the right side of the board: a framed degree in Criminal Justice for Victor Cordelli from Saint Joseph’s College, a framed autographed photo of a man with two members of the New York Yankees on either side. There was some kind of award for Detective Cordelli—First Grade for “Exceptional Duty” in the NYPD Intelligence Division. No photos of a wife or kids. There was a card with an array of vulgar handwritten notes: “Hey, Cordelli, condolences on twenty freakin’ years with the NYPD.”
Each desk had a computer monitor and keyboard. Here, Jeff saw file folders fanned over desks, and notebooks bound with elastic and neatly stacked. On one of the desks was a splayed copy of the New York Daily News with the same headline he’d seen in the boxes a short time ago while walking with Sarah and Cole from the hotel to where— Oh, Jesus!
He ran his hand over his face.
They just disappeared! They can’t be gone! Who would do this? Why? Why aren’t police rushing to search for them?
“Mr. Griffin?”
He turned to a woman in her mid-thirties, tawny hair pulled into a ponytail. She wore a dark blazer, matching pants, white shirt, looked sharp.
“Juanita Ortiz, and this is Vic Cordelli.”
Both detectives carried brimming coffee mugs but managed firm grips when they shook his hand. He declined their offer of a drink. They sat down. Juanita turned to a fresh page in a new notebook.
“I’m sorry, we just cleared another case last night,” Ortiz said. “And we know you told the patrol officers everything but we need you to tell us what happened.”
As Jeff recounted the morning, Cordelli leaned back in his chair. He was wearing jeans, a polo shirt, his ID and a shoulder holster holding a gun. He had a goatee, was about Jeff’s height, but was wiry and revving in a higher gear. Sipping from his mug like he really needed it, Cordelli eyed him over the rim.
After Jeff finished relating events, Cordelli asked to see Cole’s key ring.
“And you found this in the street where you last saw them?”
“Yes.”
Cordelli turned it over in his hand a few times before returning it. Then he asked to see all the pictures in Sarah’s camera and immediately downloaded them to his computer. From his vantage Jeff could partially see the photos as Cordelli scrutinized them one by one and Ortiz continued the interview.
“Jeff, will you volunteer all information about credit, bank and cell phones you and Sarah use?” she asked.
“Of course.” He pulled out his wallet.
“If this is a robbery,” she said while recording account numbers, “we’ll track charges, withdrawals, maybe get photos from an ATM, that sort of thing. It helps.”
“Is that what you think happened?”
“It’s one theory,” Ortiz said.
“If the men wanted to rob them, wouldn’t they’ve let them go by now? God, they could be doing anything to them.”
“Take it easy. At this point,” Cordelli said, “we’re not sure what it is.”
Jeff’s breathing quickened.
Was there something he was overlooking, or forgetting?
One by one images from the morning flowed across Cordelli’s monitor—the street, Cole, Sarah—haunting Jeff as he turned back to Ortiz, who went over her notes. She asked a spectrum of questions, probing a little deeper about Sarah, her job, her disposition, family medical conditions and family history. Jeff told her everything but withheld mention of Lee Ann and its toll. It was too painful, entangled with his own guilt, and irrelevant as far as he was concerned.
“What about my wife’s cell phone?” Jeff asked. “I read somewhere that you guys can track cell phones, that there’s technology to pinpoint where people are through their cell phone.”
“Sometimes,” Cordelli said. “May I see your phone?”
Cordelli turned it on, expertly buttoned and scrolled through its menu and functions. “Is your wife’s phone similar?”
“It’s the same.”
“These are older models. The tracking ability you’re talking about is limited on this type.” Cordelli returned Jeff’s phone and went back to studying the photos, adding, “And as for tracking roaming signals, the phone has to be turned on. Even then, we need warrants to get the phone companies to release that information—but we can expedite them.”
“Is there anything else you can do with the phone?”
“We can get a warrant to essentially clone your phone.”
“What does that mean?”
“Any calls, texts, downloads—received or sent—will also come to us, to a special line with the NYPD, without the caller or sender being aware. It’s like a tap. It allows us to be on top of any communication that might come from the bad guys. Say, a ransom call, or if your wife or son got to a phone and called for help. And we’ll work with FBI for warrants on your hotel or home and work phones in Montana, all numbers associated directly with you or your wife, in case any calls go there.”
“I want you to do everything that helps, yes.”
“We want to be prepared,” Cordelli said. “But the bad guys are smart. They toss the victims’ phones. And they use prepaid disposables that are virtually impossible to track.”
Hans Beck.
“Wait. There was a mix-up with Cole’s bag at LaGuardia. I got a call from this guy, Hans Beck. We had his backpack, he had ours and we met near Penn Station late yesterday and traded them.”
“Anything you can remember about him?”
Jeff described Beck and explained how he’d obtained Jeff’s cell phone number. Ortiz made notes.
“He was kind of weird, nervous,” Jeff said. “His number’s on my phone.”
Cordelli displayed the call list.
Jeff pointed to it.
“Did he threaten you, ask for money?” Cordelli asked.
“No.”
“How was he weird?”
“I don’t know—he seemed preoccupied, like something was on his mind. Maybe it was because he was rushed. He said he had to catch a train.”
“Did you see what was in his bag, drugs, anything unusual?”
Jeff shook his head and Cordelli and Ortiz exchanged glances.
“He could’ve targeted your family for a robbery or ransom,” Cordelli said. “Or it could be nothing. We’ll check out the number but it could be a dead end.”
“Well, what about all these police security cameras everywhere? Can’t you use them to find my wife and son?”
“Yes, we can,” Cordelli said.
“Then do it, goddammit! My family’s life is at stake!”
The detectives let a few tense moments pass in silence as Jeff blinked back his fear, frustration and guilt. He shook his head.
“Jeff,” Cordelli started, “you’re upset, we understand. But we have people looking. We are investigating as we speak. But we need to be confident that you’ve given us all the information we need.”
“I’ve told you everything I know.”
Cordelli went back to examining the photos.
“Jeff, is Sarah under a doctor’s care? Does she take any medication?”
“No.”
“Does she use illegal drugs? Maybe gamble?”
“What?”
“We have to ask.”
“No.”
“Does she or Cole spend a lot of time online, chatting with strangers?”
“No.”
“What was your wife’s state of mind just before this happened? How would you characterize her demeanor?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m looking at these pictures of you, of her, and I’ve got to tell you, your smiles look a little forced. I’m getting the feeling that there’s some underlying stress in your family.”
Jeff said nothing.
“Tell us about your family, your marriage. Is it all good out there in Big Sky Country?”
Jeff searched his heart for the answer.
“Who’s this?” Cordelli turned the monitor.
The image nearly winded Jeff. He didn’t know it was there—a beautiful shot of Sarah cradling Lee Ann, who was smiling up at her. Sarah smiled down at the angel in her arms. She’d obviously saved it on his phone.
“You said you have one child? Who’s this, Jeff?”
Cordelli’s eyes were like black ball bearings, shining hard.
“Our daughter.” Jeff cleared his throat. “She died about a year and a half ago. SIDS.”
“I’m so sorry,” Juanita said tenderly as Jeff’s attention flicked to the snapshot of Juanita and the girl with the butterfly.
“My condolences,” Cordelli said. “But how would you characterize your marriage since then, up to the point these pictures were taken here, this morning? Would you say there was stress in your family this morning before Sarah and Cole disappeared?”
Jeff swallowed hard.
“Yes.”
“Were you arguing?”
“Yes.”
Cordelli shot a glance to Ortiz: bingo.
“What were you arguing about?” Cordelli asked.
Jeff stared at the image with restrained anger and said slowly, “I need you to help me.”
“We are helping you,” Cordelli said. “But we need the truth, all of it. What were you arguing about before Sarah left with Cole?”
“We’d been having a hard time since we lost our daughter. Cole has always dreamed of seeing New York City, so we came here to give him the trip and to talk about our future.”
“Were you going to stay together, or separate?”
Surprised at the accuracy of the question Jeff said nothing.
“Losing a child can lead to divorce—it happens,” Cordelli said.
“It’s what we were talking about this morning,” Jeff said.
“So it would be fair to say your marriage was strained up to the point they disappeared?”
“I told them to stay right where they were while I bought new batteries for the camera.”
“Jeff, is it conceivable that Sarah was a little ticked at how your conversations were going and needed some time alone?”
He stared at Cordelli, knowing how it looked to him, but knowing the truth, still feeling Sarah’s arm around his waist, holding him tight.
“No.”
“I need you to be honest with us, Jeff. Would Sarah have any reason to harm Cole?”
“God, no! I’m telling you, no. I told you at the start, she’s a loving mother, a schoolteacher, a good person. She’s incapable of doing any of the things you’re suggesting.”
Cordelli shot a glance to Ortiz, leaving matters open but signaling an end to the interview.
“Okay, Jeff,” she said. “Be assured, we’re on this, leave everything with us. Meanwhile, we suggest you go back to your hotel, in case Sarah returns. We’ll stay in touch with you and we’ll ask you to call us, should anything change.”
“If Sarah shows up,” Cordelli said, “please return to the station house with her and Cole so we can sign off.”
Cordelli started repositioning file folders on his desk.
Clearing his desk.
That was all that Cordelli was interested in, Jeff thought later when he’d returned to the street and started looking for a cab.
Jeff would call the hotel and their room to check on Sarah.
But he had no intention of returning and doing nothing.
8
New York City
Time hammered against Jeff.
As his cab cut through the midtown traffic he watched the muted backseat TV monitor—reports on Broadway, the Mets, a triple murder in Brooklyn and more on the UN meeting in the Lower East Side.
Amid the horns, sirens, the chaos, he tried to think.
He called the hotel room, then the desk for messages—nothing.
His hope sinking, he turned to the city, the sidewalks, scanning the crowds, studying faces until details melted away. He understood the skepticism of the NYPD, knew how things looked to them.
Bad.
Because they were bad.
They’d said they were investigating but Cordelli and Ortiz likely thought Sarah took Cole for a few hours of shopping because she was pissed off. The detectives probably didn’t put much currency in the witness, a street guy, and were reluctant to give it much effort. Deep down Jeff believed they had doubts about his report. He didn’t trust them to make it a priority.
As his taxi rolled through the city, his misgivings resonated with his memories of himself at fifteen. His parents were killed when their tour bus crashed in the Canadian Rockies and he went to live with his grandfather near Billings.
In the months after the estate was settled, Jeff was given his father’s Ford pickup truck. Traces of his cologne were still in the truck; the steering wheel was worn from where his big hands usually held it. Jeff cherished the pickup because it was his connection to his mom and dad.
Jeff got his learner’s license, and when he drove the truck with his grandfather, it felt like his parents were in the cab with them. Jeff treasured the Ford, washing it and changing the oil himself. With that truck he learned how to fix things, to become self-reliant, to endure the deaths of his parents.
Then one day the truck was stolen from his grandfather’s driveway.
Jeff was devastated. They’d reported the theft to police, who’d promised to “leave no stone unturned” in recovering it. But days, then weeks, passed with no news. Jeff convinced his grandfather to let him search for it by driving him to truck stops, auto shops, bars and diners in nearly every town in Yellowstone County.
Weeks passed. Then, as if guided by fate, they’d spotted a Ford pickup at a mall near Ballantine where they’d stopped to shop for shirts. It was Jeff’s. It had a different plate and was all primed like it was going to be painted but it had the same tiny spiderweb fracture in the rear cab window and the chip in the left rear bumper.
After police and the court returned the truck, Jeff’s grandfather told him something he’d never forgotten.
“The truck could never be as important to anyone as it is to you, Jeff. There are certain things in this world that you just have to take care of yourself, or they’ll never be done right. If you don’t trust your gut in these matters, you’ll have to live with the consequences for the rest of your life.”
A horn blast yanked Jeff back to Manhattan’s traffic and a decision.
So what am I going to do here, now?
He had no choice. He would search for his family on his own.
Where do I start?
He’d go back to the spot where it happened and start looking there.
He tried calling Sarah again and again. It rang to her message. Nothing. It had been about two hours since he’d last seen Sarah and Cole.
Where the hell are you?
Jeff stared at his phone, then, on impulse, he called the number for Hans Beck and got a recorded message saying the number was no longer in service. That’s strange, Jeff thought, unsure what to make of it.
After the cab dropped him off, Jeff allowed himself a moment to entertain the belief that Sarah and Cole had returned. That they’d have some wild explanation and they’d all laugh it off. How sweet the relief would be. He’d admit to her that he’d been a fool, that he was wrong for wanting to separate—no, confused, stupid and so sorry.
He’d tell her that he wanted to keep their family together.
Hold them and never let them go.
But his hope was overtaken by reality as he came to the spot. There was no sign of Sarah or Cole. Freddie, the wheelchair panhandler, was gone. Jeff got out his camera, cued the photo of Sarah and Cole and returned to the ponytailed man selling souvenirs at the pushcart where Sarah and Cole had been. Again, Jeff begged for his help, showing him the photos.
The vendor shook his head, his face a mask of indifference behind his dark glasses.
“They were right here,” Jeff said.
“I told you, pal. I don’t remember them.”
Deflated, Jeff lowered his camera to grapple with a million thoughts, horrible imaginings of what the phantom abductors could be doing to his family at this very moment. Slowly he turned in a full circle in the heart of Manhattan, one of the busiest cities in the world.
He forced himself to remain calm, to think.
Retrace your steps. Re-create the scene.
His attention came to the store where he’d bought the batteries, where it all started: Metro Manhattan Gifts and Things.
He entered.
Not as busy as before. A few browsers checking out the knickknacks; otherwise, a lull. Even the music was subdued. He recognized the same girl at the counter.
A good sign.
She had her nose in her cell phone, thumbs flying.
He needed her. Don’t interrupt her. Not yet.
He assessed the store again, locking in on the security camera mounted on the wall above the counter. It was angled to the door, front window and the street.
Did it capture Sarah and Cole?
He had to see the camera’s perspective.
“Can I help you?”
The clerk had finished with her phone. Her bejeweled nostril sparkled as she smiled—nice bright teeth, sincere. He sensed a good heart.
“I was here a while ago buying batteries.”
“I remember you.”
“You do?”
“Your shirt, says Montana. I’ve visited Glacier National Park. It’s gorgeous.”
“Small world,” he said. “Look, I was hoping you could help me.”
“Depends on what you need.”
“My wife and son, we got separated out front, and I was thinking that maybe your security camera—” he nodded to it “—maybe it recorded them.”
She turned to it and back to him without speaking.
“I just need to see if it records the spot on the street where they were.”
“Why don’t you just look for them?”
“I did and a man who was near them told me they may have been abducted or robbed.”
“What? That’s a crazy scary.”
“I’m worried. I need to see where they went or what happened. Can I just have a look at your camera’s monitor, see it if picked up anything?”
“I don’t really want to get involved.”
“No, nothing like that. Just let me check it out, it won’t take long. No one has to know and I’ll pay you fifty dollars just to see. Just to have a look. If it doesn’t get the angle, then that’s it. If it does, I’ll give you more money to rewind it back?”
“I don’t know, I—”
“Excuse me,” a woman said.
A middle-aged man and woman approached with T-shirts, key rings, postcards. Jeff stepped aside as the girl rang them up.
“Can you tell us how to get to Central Park from here?” the woman asked.
“Go right out front and catch a bus on Eighth Avenue,” the girl said. “Or you can walk north on Eighth, but it’s about sixteen blocks.”
“Thank you.”
Once Jeff and the girl were alone again, he pressed his case. He showed her his digital camera and the photos of Sarah and Cole. The girl blinked at them—a typical American family vacationing in New York.
“We were right out front a couple of hours ago,” he said. “I just need to see what happened. I need your help.”
“I think you should just go to the police.”
“I did. I just returned from talking to detectives at the precinct.”
“There you go.”
“They said they’re looking, but I’m looking, too. Please, put yourself in my shoes. Wouldn’t you do everything you could?”
Considering his point and his plight, she glanced around, caught her bottom lip between her teeth. Jeff pulled out two twenties and a ten. She glanced at the cash.
“Just a quick look.” He gave her his wallet, his phone, everything. “You hold this. I’m just trying to find my wife and son.”
Searching his eyes she saw the emotion and desperation broiling behind them, his plea eroding her resistance.
“Please,” he said.
After another glance around she put Jeff’s items under the counter. Then she went to a wire mesh door that separated the counter from the rest of the store. She unlocked it and ushered him inside to the counter and the monitor on a lower shelf. The monitor screen was sectioned into quarters, four small clear color screens.
“It changes all the time,” she said.
Jeff passed the fifty dollars to the girl and lowered himself. On one of the screens he saw a miniature, partial view of the ponytailed vendor and the street—it was very limited but it was something.
“I need to enlarge this one.” Jeff tapped the top right quarter. “I need to rewind this one to the time I came in.”
“I can’t,” she said. “It’s locked so thieves can’t take it. See?”
She tapped a steel mesh case around the control console.
“What’s your name?”
“Mandy.”
“Mandy, I’ll pay you more. Is there anyone in the store with the key who can access the controls and can operate this? I need to see what happened to my wife and son. Then I’m gone.”
Mandy took stock. The store was quiet. She looked to the rear.
“Chad has the key. He’s in the back.”
“Can you get him? Please, I just need to rewind it and see what happened.”
Mandy pulled out her cell phone and sent a text message.
“Excuse me?” An old man rapped his knuckles on the counter and Mandy rang in his two sodas, two chocolate bars and two bags of chips, then came back to Jeff.
“Sit here and wait.” Mandy pushed an overturned plastic milk crate toward him so he could sit behind the counter unseen. A few minutes later a lanky man in his early twenties appeared at the wire mesh door. He was not the same young man Jeff had seen on the ladder a few hours earlier when he’d entered the store for batteries.
“What do you want, Mandy?” Then, seeing Jeff by the monitor, he said, “What the—? Who’s he? What’re you doing?”
She went to Chad, opened the door and updated him in a hushed tone loud enough for Jeff to hear. Chad’s neck was tattooed with flames. He was harder than Mandy. Listening to her, his eyes narrowed as he gave Jeff an icy appraisal.
“Two cops were here,” Chad said, “asking to see our surveillance footage. They didn’t tell me why.”
“When?” Mandy asked. “I didn’t see them.”
“It was twenty minutes ago when you and I were out on our break. Kyle told me when we got back.”
“Did they find anything in the footage?” Jeff asked.
“They never saw it because Kyle doesn’t have the key. I have the key. The cops told Kyle they’d be back later. Guess they’re asking around at other places. It’s probably got something to do with your situation.”
“Will you help me?” Jeff asked.
“Maybe. You gave Mandy fifty bucks?”
“Yes.”
“I want two hundred and all you get is a look. No copies.”
“Deal.”
“First, let me copy your driver’s license, to cover my ass.”
Jeff retrieved his wallet from the counter. Chad placed Jeff’s Montana license on the small photocopier, then Jeff pulled out the cash, nearly all he had left. Chad shoved it in his pocket, then unlocked the console.
“What time do you need?”
Jeff consulted his receipt for the time and Chad expertly rewound the footage. Tiny people moved backward in fast motion. Then he enlarged the images and let the recording play at normal speed. A time and date stamp ran across the bottom.
The footage offered a clear color overhead view of the counter, the front area of the store, the door and suspect height marker. It also captured the front window, and the area above all the items on display. It only showed a limited view of the street.
People bustled by in both directions on the sidewalk, bordered by street vendors and vehicle traffic—but beyond the sidewalk the view of the vendors and the road was restricted. Jeff eyed every movement of every stranger when—bam!
“That’s them!”
His pulse raced. There was Sarah taking Cole’s picture, then Cole taking one of him with Sarah.
“Slow it down.”
Jeff stopped breathing.
He concentrated on Sarah—feeling her slip her arm around him. Now the tourist was taking the shot of the three of them. The image tore at Jeff. The tourist looks at the camera. Dead batteries. Jeff has the camera and leaves for the store. He stops to talk to Freddie with the beat-up wheelchair. Jeff gives him money.
Behind them Sarah and Cole browse at the vendor’s souvenir cart. They move closer to the road. Bit by bit they are exiting the frame.
“Can you slow it down some more?”
The footage slowed to near frame-by-frame speed.
Now, Sarah and Cole are almost out of the picture. All Jeff can make out are their feet, up to their knees, and the lower portions of cars passing by.
One stops near Sarah and Cole with such suddenness.
It just appears.
Doors open, other legs emerge from it, shoes, black shoes, or boots. Military style? Three sets? They move fast, positioning next to Sarah and Cole. Right beside them. Too close. A moment passes, then they all move to the vehicle two steps away.
Doors open.
Sarah and Cole vanish.
Doors close.
The white vehicle pulls from the curb, the rear right quarter, rear bumper, plate flash. Then someone’s head, a passerby, blocks the view; the plate is obscured. The vehicle disappears.
It’s over.
“Hold it!” Jeff pressed his finger to the screen as if to grab the image and stop time.
Chad froze the frame.
“That plate. I need that license plate!”
“Hold on.”
Chad froze the footage, then frame by frame he reversed and forwarded it until he had the best view on the plate.
“Hold on.”
Chad enlarged the plate until it was clear enough to read.
“I need something to write with,” Jeff said.
Mandy passed him a pad and pen and Jeff copied down the New York State license number.
“Can I use your computer to get online?” Jeff asked.
Chad and Mandy traded worried glances, obviously concerned that they were already too involved in whatever was going on.
“No.” Chad returned the security surveillance system to its normal state and his keys jingled. “That’s all you’re going to get from us.”
“Please.”
“We’re done.” Chad locked up the console.
“You saw what happened!” Jeff said.
“I don’t know what happened,” Chad said.
“Those people took my wife and son! I have to run this plate!”
“I don’t know what I saw, but we’re not getting involved.”
“I just need a computer.”
“We’re done,” Chad said.
Jeff looked at Mandy.
“There’s an internet café three blocks west of here,” she said. “I’ll draw you a map.”
9
New York City
In the minutes after Jeff had left the Fourteenth Precinct, Detective Vic Cordelli resumed staring at the pictures of the Griffins.
Juanita Ortiz stopped reading her notes and shifted her gaze to him.
“What is it, Vic?”
Cordelli brooded as mistrust gnawed at him and he shook his head.
“I just don’t know about this one, Juanita.”
Ortiz tapped her pen against her notes, sighing to herself.
“You got a lot going on—” Ortiz picked up her landline “—but I need you to help me get to work and run this thing, okay?”
Ortiz called the Real Time Crime Center downtown at One Police Plaza. The RTCC operated a vast computer network, including hundreds of surveillance cameras and plate readers in all boroughs. She’d requested all footage covering the time and location of Sarah and Cole Griffin’s abduction.
While that was being processed Cordelli ran the Griffins through the National Crime Information Center, which held active records on millions of cases, ranging from thefts, to missing persons, fugitives and terrorists. The query rang no bells—no arrest, warrants, nothing.
As Ortiz checked with other local, state and regional databases, Cordelli got on the phone to Montana. He hooked up with Detective Blaine Thorsen of the Laurel Police Department, who was puzzled at why the NYPD was calling about Jeff and Sarah Griffin.
“No.” Thorsen’s keyboard clicked as he consulted local computer records for Cordelli. “There’s no complaint history here. No custody orders. It’s a damn shame that they lost their baby a while back.”
“What was the cause?”
“The coroner said it was SIDS. We investigated and had no reason to believe otherwise. They’re nice people. Why are you checking? What’s going on in New York?”
“They’re here on vacation,” Cordelli said. “Jeff’s reported that Sarah and Cole were abducted less than two hours ago near Times Square.”
“Abducted? Shit, really?”
“We’re looking into it.”
“Do you have any suspects?”
“A witness gave us a couple of men and a vague vehicle description. Nothing solid. Does this sound out of character for the Griffins?”
“Completely,” Thorsen said. “That family went through hell when they lost their daughter and now this. Lord Almighty. If you need anything from our end, anything at all, let us know.”
Cordelli hung up.
His perspective was shifting.
He reviewed the report from the uniforms, the witness statement taken by Roy Duggan. He knew Duggan, knew he was a hard-ass who didn’t trust many people. Duggan wouldn’t waste his time if he didn’t sense a case here. Cordelli would have to get down to the street and talk to Freddie.
For now, he returned to the family photos, the baby, Sarah, Jeff and Cole. Cordelli considered putting out an Amber Alert for Cole but they had nothing on a vehicle.
Juanita was still working her phone and the computer. These days an investigation entailed as much mouse clicking as shoe leather.
The more Cordelli looked at the Griffin family pictures, the deeper he’d looked into himself and how hollow his life had become.
Three nights back, in the case they’d just closed, a jacked-up addict had put a gun in his face but it jammed. Cordelli’s “this-is-it” moment made him realize that nobody would mourn him because, after five years, he’d determined marriage wasn’t for him. He’d told his wife that he couldn’t breathe, that he was on a leash.
She got a lawyer and cut him loose.
The papers came through yesterday.
Seeing the Griffins underscored what he would never have.
It’s what he saw with Juanita every day. He could never tell her how it ate him up. She had Lucy, her little girl, and Bert, her husband. He was a building contractor who often surprised her with picnics in Central Park or getaway weekends to Boston.
Cordelli figured these things were factors contributing to why he had been skeptical and a bit of a prick to Jeff Griffin. Yeah, maybe, he thought, downing the last of his coffee, maybe a little.
It was stupid.
He would correct it, starting now.
Going back over everything, one theory came to mind telling him that—
“Hey, you there? Vic? Hello? Did you hear me?”
Ortiz had yanked him from his thoughts.
“I said RTCC just came through. I think we’ve really got something here. Come around, you’ve got to see this.”
10
New York City
The fleeting video images of Sarah and Cole vanishing with strangers were seared in Jeff’s mind as he hurried through New York’s streets to the internet café.
Seeing what had happened to them made it real.
Someone had taken them, pulled them from the street in a heartbeat.
Why? Who would do this? It’s insane!
His scalp prickling, he glanced at the directions to the café while rushing through a crosswalk against a red light. A Mercedes bumper came within inches of his knee—the horn blast startled him as the driver spewed obscenities. Jeff waved it off, took a deep breath and moved on.
What was he doing running around like this?
He should call Cordelli and Ortiz, alert them to the surveillance footage and the plate. He’d do that. But not yet, because when he considered the slip of paper bearing the license number, he knew he had more than hope in his hand.
This was his thread to Sarah and Cole.
Nothing was going to stop him from following it.
* * *
It was called Virtual Connections Online Coffeehouse.
Jazz music and the hissing gurgle of espresso machines filled the air of the packed café. At every table people had their noses in their BlackBerries, tablets, cell phones and laptops. All the rental computer terminals were in use. Jeff got his instructions and number from a girl in a white apron at the counter.
“Hit Enter, the rates come up. Swipe your credit card. Remember to log out. Three people are ahead of you but it won’t be long—we have twelve terminals.”
While waiting, Jeff went to the ATM next door for more cash. By the time he’d come back, a terminal in the corner had become available. The mouse was sticky and the keyboard was so worn off he had to strain to see what letters he was typing.
He took the half hour rate of seven dollars. He knew the detectives were monitoring his family credit card, so he used his company card for Clay Platt’s Auto Service. He’d explain the charges to Clay later. Once he was online he searched Google services that identified license plates. He submitted the plate number for New York State, then his credit card information.
A few seconds later the monitor displayed the data. The vehicle was a white 2010 GMC Terrain, the registered owner was Donald Dalfini and his address was 88 Steeldown Road, New York City. There was a vehicle identification number, title, registration date and other information.
Jeff printed it all off, then searched the address.
It was in the Bronx. The map put it near Neverpoint Park in the southeast section of the borough. The estimated travel time from midtown was about forty minutes.
Jeff collected his pages, folded them into his pocket and debated his next step.
Call Cordelli and Ortiz, tell them I saw the recording and now had a plate and address.
He took out Ortiz’s business card and pressed the number. The line rang, then went straight to her voice mail. He didn’t want to leave a message and he didn’t want to waste any time.
I’ll follow this on my own. I’ll take it as far as I can, then I’ll alert them once I have something.
Jeff worked his way through the crowd to the street and flagged down the first cab he saw.
11
New York City
“Run it again but slow it down.”
Cordelli rolled his chair beside Ortiz at her computer.
A few keystrokes and she replayed the video provided by the New York Police Department’s Real Time Crime Center. The images covered Forty-fourth and Forty-fifth Streets near Seventh Avenue—at the time of Sarah and Cole’s abduction.
It had taken time for the RTCC to gather the material but the number of angles, proximity and superior quality captured by its network exceeded anything from a single camera with a partial street view.
“Here we go.” Ortiz’s monitor offered an array of sharp perspectives as she zeroed in on what they needed.
Sarah Griffin emerges, taking a picture of Cole. Jeff joins them, his arm around her as Cole photographs his parents. Jeff approaches a tourist who takes a shot of the family, then looks at the camera. Jeff takes it, turns to the storefronts, talks with the panhandler in a wheelchair, then enters a store. Sarah and Cole move to a vendor’s cart, looking at souvenirs. A white SUV with tinted windows brakes at the curb. Two men exit on the curbside, leaving passenger doors open. They’re wearing ball caps, dark glasses, full beards, big, dark, front-button shirts loose enough to hide a weapon, dark jeans, dark boots, moving fast into Sarah and Cole’s space. One leans to Cole’s ear, telling him something, takes his arm, puts his other arm on Cole’s shoulder and swiftly thrusts him into the backseat. Sarah reacts with the second man, who is trying to push her back. They appear to only want the boy. But Sarah battles her way into the backseat after Cole. The men overpower her, shut the doors, abducting her, as well. The SUV pulls away…gone like it never happened…no reaction from people on the street. Jeff emerges from the store searching, asking people, calling on his cell phone. Nothing…
The images froze: Jeff Griffin alone, helpless in the street.
The scene drove it home for Ortiz and Cordelli, briefly imagining the fear twisting in Jeff’s gut before they’d kicked things into high gear. Cordelli tapped his pen to the monitor on the SUV’s New York plate.
They wrote it down.
“Get the center to run the plate through everything,” he said.
“Already on it.” Ortiz had grabbed her phone.
“We want to get units rolling to the address of the registered owner ASAP. And,” Cordelli added, “get them to track the SUV through the surveillance network. Can they tell us where it went? Where it is now?”
As Ortiz dealt with her call, Cordelli used her keyboard to replay the footage. He eyed every aspect, absorbed every detail of the chilling act that had played out in broad daylight on one of the busiest streets on earth.
“What do you think?” Ortiz asked after finishing the call.
“Who the hell are these guys? Why would they kidnap a Montana schoolteacher and her nine-year-old son?”
“It’s hard to tell by her reaction if she knows them.”
“Go back to this angle, on this one.” Cordelli touched his pen to the monitor. “I can’t make out any features on the suspects. Counting the driver, is it four men?”
“The SUV’s got a little too much tint on the windows and that glare on the windshield doesn’t help.”
“We need to look into the family’s finances, see if they had gambling or drug debts,” Cordelli said.
“I thought the people in Montana said they were clean, upstanding.”
“We’ll check again and we’ll get the FBI in Billings to assist. We’ll request warrants on the family’s computers, check their records. Maybe it’s an online thing. Maybe she was having an affair that went bad.”
“Or maybe the kid was chatting with a predator, told them about the family’s vacation?” Ortiz said.
Cordelli went to his desk and made calls.
“I’ll get things rolling to put out an Amber Alert.”
He advised their supervisor, then started pulling together photos of Sarah and Cole, notes on the SUV—the plate, color—description of the suspects.
Ortiz’s cell phone rang.
Her eyes widened slightly as she listened, then jotted notes.
“This is happening now?” Her voice betrayed a measure of incredulity before she said, “Got it,” and hung up.
“Vic, you’re not going to believe this.” Ortiz stood, pulled on her jacket. “I’ll tell you on the way. We’ve got to leave right now.”
12
Neverpoint Park, the Bronx, New York City
The address for the SUV was in a corner of Neverpoint where faded Realtors’ signs listed small, tired-looking houses as Must Sell or with Price Reduced.
“My stepfather lived here,” Jeff’s cabdriver said. “There was a landfill over there, that whole section.”
It had taken about half an hour to travel from midtown to this part of the East Bronx, which was bound by Long Island Sound and the East River. After leaving the expressway, they’d driven through a mixture of warehouses, pawnshops, drugstores, hair salons and pizzerias.
They’d passed an assortment of low-income city apartment projects before coming to neighborhoods of shingle-roofed one- and two-story houses with small yards. On Steeldown Road, parked cars lined both sides of the street. A dog was in the middle of it, his head inside a fast-food take-out bag as he worked on the remains.
For the umpteenth time, Jeff glanced at the information on the printout, then back to the street.
Who was Donald Dalfini?
The Dalfini house at 88 Steeldown Road was a frame-and-stucco bungalow with a fenced yard. There was an older, dirty Honda with a dented rear quarter parked on the street out front, but the driveway was empty. The GMC Terrain registered to the address was a late model that would cost some thirty thousand dollars. Jeff didn’t see how it fit with the income level of the neighborhood.
He told the driver to keep going.
The knot in Jeff’s stomach was tightening, making it harder for him to concentrate.
Is this a mistake?
No, he had to do this. Too much was at stake.
“Pull over and let me out,” he said when they were midway into the next block. Jeff paid the fare, tipped the driver, then gave him another twenty.
“Kill your meter and wait. I may need to return to Manhattan fast.”
“Sure, pal. Out here to get some action, huh?” The driver winked at him in the rearview mirror and reached for his copy of the New York Post.
Walking to the house Jeff’s breathing quickened, the horror rising. He couldn’t believe the past few hours: Sarah and Cole abducted, the NYPD challenging his report, leaving him alone to track the people who took his wife and son to this street.
To this house.
This was beyond his control.
Suddenly, he was besieged with questions.
What are you doing? What are you getting into? You’re not a cop. You should let Cordelli and Ortiz handle this, he thought as he came to the bungalow. But what if Sarah and Cole are being held here, right now? What it they’re being tortured, or worse?
He couldn’t live with himself if it turned out that he was this close but did nothing to save them. He’d already faced an unbearable loss. Standing in the street, in front of the house, Jeff had no choice.
My wife and son could be in there and I’m going in after them.
He wrote down the Honda’s New York plate and scanned the interior. It had an overflowing ashtray. The passenger seat was covered with flyers and junk-food wrappers. Other than this car out front there was no sign of any vehicles at the house.
The curtains were drawn.
All quiet, except for the jets flying in and out of LaGuardia.
How was he going to do this? Call the phone number he obtained on the search record printout? Or ring the doorbell? A dog’s distant bark underscored that he was losing time. There was a diffusion of light near a window. A shadow passed by a curtain.
Someone’s in there.
Jeff stepped onto the property, walked to the side of the house, bent down and cupped his face to a basement window. His eyes adjusted to a double laundry sink, a washer and dryer, clothes heaped on the floor.
He flinched.
A child’s earsplitting scream shattered the quiet.
Cole?
Something inside the house vibrated, someone moving around. Jeff started for the backyard but was stopped by a wooden fence and a gate that reached to his shoulders. He tried the handle; the gate was locked. He tried reaching over it for a latch but got nothing.
Gripping the top of the fence, he hefted himself over it, landing on a garden hose that snaked to the back. Jeff followed it past a back door to patio steps, a small deck with lawn chairs and picnic table. It was a typical family backyard.
He stopped at the sight of two children standing in the grass, some fifteen feet away: a boy about Cole’s age and a girl who looked to be four or five, both wearing swimsuits.
The hose meandered to the girl. She used both hands to hold the dripping nozzle, which she pointed at the boy, who was drenched. For a moment, water plunking from the boy to the deck was the only sound.
Then the boy, his blond water-slicked hair darkened, turned to Jeff at the same time as the girl.
The boy was not Cole.
The children’s eyes widened slightly as they stared at Jeff, speechless until the girl said, “Hello.”
At a loss, Jeff scanned the small yard when he noticed the children’s attention shift a fraction to his left.
“I have a gun,” a woman’s voice said from behind him.
Jeff turned.
The woman’s arms were extended; her hands were wrapped around the pistol aimed at him.
“Get on your knees and put your hands behind your head!”
Before Jeff could explain she shouted.
“Do it now, asshole! Or I swear to God I’ll shoot you dead.”
13
Neverpoint Park, the Bronx, New York City
Jeff raised his hands and lowered himself to the lawn.
The woman holding the gun ordered her children into the house.
Jeff got on his knees, his mind racing.
Are Sarah and Cole here? Where’s the SUV?
The woman kept her gun on him and kept her distance.
A shrub of frizzy red hair haloed her face. She had to be in her late twenties but the lines carved deep around her mouth suggested an embittered life. She had an overbite. She wore jeans and a T-shirt showing a pit bull guarding a motorcycle. Tattoos swirled along her arms.
“Get out your wallet.”
Slowly Jeff pulled it from his pocket and tossed it to her feet. Keeping her gun on him she retrieved it, examined his driver’s license and fire department photo identification.
“Montana? Why the hell are you here, trespassing, threatening my kids?”
His pulse galloping, Jeff thought it odd she hadn’t called the police. Or maybe she has and I’ll hear sirens? Her voice was throaty, she may have been drinking. She looks like someone who has been arrested before. If she’s involved in the abduction she wouldn’t want police coming to this place.
“Answer me, asshole!”
He tried to think.
“My wife and son were abducted a few hours ago near Times Square in an SUV registered to this address.”
“That’s a crock of shit!”
“It’s the truth. Do you know Donald Dalfini? Where is the SUV? Are you his wife?” The woman didn’t answer. As she considered his questions, Jeff kept talking. “Let me show you something?”
She took a moment, then nodded once. Jeff fished out Sarah’s digital camera and Cole’s key ring. He cued up the photos and held the camera to her with the ring.
“Look at these, please. Pictures we took today. I’m telling the truth.”
Hesitating, she inched forward, keeping the gun on Jeff. She took the items with her free hand, then backed away. As she looked them over Jeff told her everything—about Lee Ann, the trip, everything. He explained all the events that brought them here, to this moment.
“Tell me where my wife and son are. I’m begging you.”
Jeff saw that her eyes were blue, a bit glassy, as he searched them for her reaction. With each passing second her hardness started to fracture. As she blinked back tears her mouth began moving and she spoke, in a whisper, to herself. Jeff struggled to hear, certain she’d said, “I told Donnie it’s freakin’ wrong, stupid.”
“Please,” Jeff said. “I’m begging you. Are they okay? Are my wife and son hurt? Please.”
On the verge of tears, she dragged the back of her hand across her mouth.
“Shut up! Your shit’s got nothing to do with us!”
“It’s your SUV. It’s registered to this address.”
“It was stolen three weeks ago when I went to the Neverpoint Mall. I’ve been scared the fuckers who took it would come here.”
“Then we’re on the same side. We both need to know what happened.”
“Sheri, you need my help?”
A woman’s voice came from just inside the sliding doors to the deck. A large woman in her fifties with long white hair stood in the dim light. She was wearing an oversize Mets T-shirt and tapped the tip of a baseball bat into the palm of her left hand.
“Did you call Donnie?” Sheri asked the older woman.
“I left him a message. Did you find out who this asshole is? Want me to help you with him?”
“No, I’ve got this.”
But Sheri’s voice quavered; her hands were shaking, signaling that she was losing her internal struggle to regard Jeff as a threat. He needed to search the house, then he’d alert Cordelli and Ortiz.
“Sheri, I told you the truth,” he said. “If what you told me is true, let me look through your house for my family, then I’ll go.”
“I told you we got nothing to do with that.”
“I need to look. Put yourself in my shoes.”
As she weighed Jeff’s argument, he pressed his case further.
“Sheri, listen to me—I need to find my family. Let me look and I’ll go. No matter what you do, your SUV is linked to my family’s disappearance and police will be coming here. I can let them know you helped, or I can let them know you hid something. I think you have a good heart. I don’t believe you want to kill me because I’m telling you the truth. I need to find my wife and son.”
After studying his face she swallowed, then lowered her gun.
“All right. Belva! Bring the kids out back. This won’t take long.”
“Are you nuts, girl?”
“It’s my damn house. Do as I say!”
It was a small bungalow; the reek of cigarettes and stale beer hung in the air. The kitchen table was cluttered with plates, butter knives, an open bag of cookies, a loaf of white bread and jars of jelly and peanut butter. When Jeff entered the living room it became evident why Sheri might not call the police. The coffee table was lined with empty liquor bottles, beer cans and small clear plastic bags containing something organic.
There were newspapers open to want ads with jobs circled.
“Since Donnie got laid off at the plant, it’s been hard,” Sheri was almost apologizing to Jeff. “The mortgage, car and credit card payments are piling up. We’re looking for jobs but it’s hard, and then with the SUV stolen, that took the cake.”
Holding her gun at her side, Sheri kept her distance as she escorted Jeff in his room-by-room search on the main floor bedrooms. He recognized the intrusive aspect of a stranger in her bedroom and those of her children but it was eclipsed by the outrage forced upon him. He looked in closets, under beds, in the basement and he tapped on walls until he was satisfied that Sarah and Cole were not here. When they’d returned to the living room Jeff’s cell phone rang.
The display showed a blocked number.
His heart rate soared when he answered.
“Jeff, this is Detective Cordelli. We’ve located the SUV.”
“What about Sarah and Cole?”
Sirens and the rush of the road indicated Cordelli was in a car.
“No confirmation. We’re en route to the scene now.”
“What’s the location? I’m coming.”
“You sit tight at your hotel—we’ll keep you posted.”
“Tell me the location, Cordelli!”
“Jeff, look, we’re not there yet. I don’t know exactly what we have.”
“It’s my wife and son, tell me! I’m a firefighter. I’ve been to ‘scenes,’ Cordelli, bad ones. Other people will be gawking at the site. I have a right to be there, you know I do.”
“Jeff, I’ll call you back.”
“No, I need to know.”
At that moment Sheri and Jeff heard a distant siren that was approaching her area. Jeff figured that the police might also be acting on the Dalfinis’ address. If that was the case, he didn’t want to wait for them.
“Tell me the location now!” Jeff glanced out the window down the street. His cab was still waiting. “I swear I’ll get it, one way or another.”
Cordelli let a beat pass before relenting.
“Got a pen and paper?”
Cordelli recited the location. Jeff copied it on the newsprint border of a newspaper on Sheri’s coffee table.
“What was that all about?” Sheri said.
“The NYPD have found something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know exactly but I have to go.” Jeff collected his wallet and things from Sheri. “If it comes up, I’ll tell the police that you tried to help me.”
Sheri said nothing.
Concern deepened the worry lines on her face and she tried to absorb all that had taken place as Jeff hurried out of her home and trotted down the street to his cab.
14
Brooklyn, New York City
The 2010 GMC Terrain burned within sight of the Brooklyn Bridge, in the loading area of an abandoned warehouse at the fringe of a derelict industrial section of Brooklyn Heights.
Officers in a marked NYPD car patrolling the zone were first to spot it. They’d called it in with the plate number. By the time crews from Engine 205, Ladder 118, arrived the SUV was engulfed, the blaze blasting outward and skyward, turning the vehicle into a mass of ferocity.
The inferno crackled and hissed, discharging sparks and flakes of melted debris. Firefighters stretched a line, keeping a safe distance using the reach of the hose stream. Explosions can propel white-hot fragments with bullet force. Like all first responders, they knew every call could be their last. Their firehouse had lost eight members in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Cordelli and Ortiz pulled up amid the sirens and lights of more arriving emergency vehicles. They were directed to Fire Lieutenant Van Reston. A crowd was collecting at the yellow tape that cordoned the area. Cordelli had to shout over the rattle-roar of the pumper.
“What do you have?”
“Arson, and given the intensity, I’m guessing they used an incendiary device.”
Cordelli took down Reston’s information in his notebook.
“Anyone inside?”
“Don’t know yet. We’ll know soon as we can have a look.”
“Thanks.” Cordelli and Ortiz scanned the area for surveillance cameras. It didn’t look promising. They went to Officer Marktiz, the uniform who’d called it in.
“Any witnesses?”
“Naw.” Marktiz shook his head as he retrieved more tape from the trunk of his car. “Nobody stepped up, nobody around. Nothing. We’ll help with a canvass.”
Cordelli and Ortiz knew coming into this that it didn’t look good.
The vehicle used in the abduction of Sarah and Cole Griffin came up stolen, now it had been torched—all premeditated.
“They must’ve had a switch car ready,” Ortiz said. “I don’t like this, it’s all too methodical. Now we could have homicides. I do not freakin’ like this.”
“Yup.”
Thick smoke clouds churned from the wreck as crews doused the flames. Cordelli and Ortiz turned as a gust sent a choking column their way. When they turned back, Cordelli faced an old problem walking at him: Detective Larry Brewer.
“What the hell is he doing here?”
Cordelli had worked with Brewer a few years back. The guy’s ego was bigger than Yankee Stadium and fit with his near-inhuman aura. Brewer’s utter baldness accentuated his bulging black eyes and his pointed ears, earning him the nickname “Diablo.”
“What’re you doing at my scene, Cordelli?” Brewer’s jaw worked a wad of gum.
“We’re on a case.”
“You’re contaminating my scene. We’ve got an ongoing undercover operation with the task force.”
“We’re working an abduction—mother and son—and that’s our vehicle.”
“I saw your alert. My case takes precedence over yours, we’re taking over. It’s ours now. My captain will advise your supervisor to advise you to skip back to Midtown South and get me your notes.”
“We’re not going anywhere, Larry,” Cordelli said. “We’re going to wait here for Lieutenant Reston to give us the green light on our scene.”
Brewer grimaced, twisting his neck until his Adam’s apple popped. “You’re in our way, Vic.” Brewer stepped into Cordelli’s space just as Brewer’s cell phone rang. He answered it, pointed his chin to the other side of a patrol car and he and his partner stepped away.
“He’s a piece of work,” Ortiz said.
“He’s a slab of misery.”
With the sound of pressured water against metal, Cordelli turned sadly back to the smoldering ruin.
“I’ll bet we have somebody in there, Juanita.”
“I’m praying we don’t. Look.”
Beyond the tape, Jeff Griffin had stepped from a taxi to anxiously survey the scene. Cordelli cursed himself for giving up the address, but Griffin was right—he would’ve found out.
Cordelli had requested two cars be dispatched to the house of the registered owner on Steeldown Road in the Bronx, and he’d hoped the units got to it before Brewer got a chance to claim it.
Now, a firefighter at the wreckage was shouting and signaling for Lieutenant Reston to look into the SUV’s interior. Whatever was inside could not be viewed from a distance. Cordelli saw Reston lean in, saw his face crease before he directed his men to their next steps.
“Damn,” Cordelli said.
It was clear to him what they’d found.
* * *
It was clear to Jeff Griffin, too.
He was experienced with these scenes.
From where he stood, he read Reston’s face and it hit him.
Oh, Jesus.
The dread Jeff had locked in the darkest reaches of his heart lashed against the chains that held it there. He saw the fire crews unfold the large yellow tarps—the universal flag of tragedy, the confirmation of death. He watched them take care positioning the covering. Protecting the scene while respecting the dignity of the dead.
He was familiar with the funereal procedure.
He’d performed it himself.
He knew what happened to fire victims—how their skin cracked, how their bones broke, how the skulls could shatter and how the bodies could be burned beyond recognition.
Sarah and Cole.
He began shaking, pierced by one thought.
I have to see them. I have to see for myself.
Everything went white.
Time froze.
He could not immediately remember physically getting as close as he did to the SUV’s charred remains before hands seized him and dragged him back while he screamed for Sarah and Cole. All he saw was the brilliant yellow sheet. All he could imagine was the horror under it. He didn’t know how much time had passed or how he came to be in the rear seat of a police car with his hands covering his nose and mouth, blood roaring in his ears. For a moment or two he’d cried and when he dried his face, the clink of the handcuffs around his wrists alerted him to a man standing just outside the car.
“Mr. Griffin? I’m Detective Brewer. Can you hear me now?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I’m going to start again. You have the right to remain silent....”
15
Manhattan, New York City
Jeff Griffin was placed in a stark interview room at One Police Plaza.
He’d waived his right to an attorney.
Left alone to contend with the agony of no one confirming that Sarah and Cole were dead, all he could do was pray.
Please, tell me it’s not them in the SUV, I’m begging you.
Adrenaline rippled through him.
He flattened his hands on the wooden table in front of him while memories strobed, snapshots of standing near Times Square with Sarah and feeling her arm around him. Tight. We have to hang on and work this out. Snapshots of the joy in Cole’s face as he marveled at the skyscrapers.
They can’t be dead.
By degrees Jeff regained the strength to keep from losing control. He had to hang on. He had to keep hoping, he told himself as events after the fire came into focus. Upon his arrest, Cordelli had rushed to the car, confronting the bald detective, demanding answers.
“Hey, Brewer! Where the hell are you taking him?”
Brewer had flashed his palm to Cordelli while he ended a cell phone call with “—okay, so we’re good at Steeldown Road in the Bronx.” Then he’d turned to Cordelli. “Step back, Vic. He’s mine now. We’ve got two homicides, this is our operation.”
“He’s got nothing to do with this the way you think, Brewer.”
“You don’t know squat. Just get your notes to me or it’s your ass!”
Brewer had gotten into the passenger seat of the unmarked Ford and closed the door. His partner, Klaver, was behind the wheel. The motor roared and its siren yelped as the Crown Vic left for the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan and NYPD headquarters downtown. They took Jeff up the elevator to a cell-like room where he waited.
Time swept by and he’d stared at the cinder-block walls and at his own reflection in the two-way mirror where he saw a man struggling not to fall into the abyss.
Sarah. Cole.
A click. The door opened. Brewer and Klaver entered.
They dropped file folders and notebooks on the table, dragged and positioned the two empty chairs opposite Jeff, then filled them.
“Are my wife and my son dead?”
The room went cold.
The detectives stared at Jeff.
Klaver was fair-skinned and wore the somber, pointed face of an undertaker. Brewer’s expression burned with the intensity of an embittered cop bereft of compassion.
“The medical examiner and our people are still processing,” Brewer said.
“You can tell me the presumed age and gender,” Jeff said.
“Can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“The remains are in bad shape. We’re awaiting confirmation.”
“Bull. You have an idea who’s in that SUV.”
“I know this is a horrible time,” Brewer said. “We’ll let you know as soon as we can. We’ve been reading your report and statement to Detectives Cordelli and Ortiz. We’ve made a lot of calls here and in Montana and right now we need to ask you a few questions.”
“About what? I’ve been through this with Cordelli, he knows everything.”
“The vehicle is linked to our operation.”
“What operation?”
“We can’t disclose details. A lot is in play right now.”
“What does that mean? What the hell is this? My wife and son were abducted, they could be dead and you don’t give a damn!”
“It doesn’t get any more serious than this and we’ll get through it faster if you help us to help you.”
Blinking back his anger Jeff looked away, shaking his head in disgust.
“This won’t take long, Jeff.” Klaver spoke in the softer voice of the “good cop” and opened a folder. “There are a few things we need your help on.”
Jeff’s silence invited Klaver’s first question.
“Take us back, step by step, to your arrival in New York, up to and immediately after you reported Sarah and Cole had been abducted.”
Jeff inhaled and recounted every detail for the detectives. Afterward, he answered Klaver’s follow-up questions, then Brewer weighed in.
“You and Sarah had lost a child. It took a toll on your marriage. You were planning to separate and were arguing about it at the time of Sarah and Cole’s disappearance, is that correct?”
“What is this?”
“Is that correct?” Brewer said.
“Yes, I told Cordelli everything.”
“Not quite everything,” Brewer said.
“Did you accuse Neil Larson of having an affair with your wife?” Klaver continued.
Jeff was stunned at how they’d found out and how they were using it.
“Jeff?”
What was happening?
“Did you accuse Neil Larson of having an affair with your wife?”
Brewer watched Jeff swallow hard before answering. “Yes.”
“And did you confront him in a school parking lot where he worked with your wife, to the point others had to restrain you?” Brewer asked.
Jeff hesitated at the twisting of the truth.
“Yes.”
“And did that form part of your argument with Sarah just before you reported that she and Cole had been abducted?”
“Yes.”
“So you confirm these facts?” Brewer said.
“Yes.”
“What’s your relationship with Donnie and Sheri Dalfini?” Brewer asked.
“Relationship? I don’t know them. It’s their SUV.”
“How did you get their address in the Bronx?”
“I went to a store, Metro Gifts or something, and got them to let me look at their security camera. It was pointed at where Sarah and Cole were standing and I got the plate. Then I searched the plate online and took a cab to the address.”
“Why didn’t you check with the police first?” Brewer asked.
“I had the feeling that no one was looking for my family.”
Brewer and Klaver paused to consider Jeff’s answer.
“Jeff,” Brewer said, “as a firefighter you’ve been to death scenes. You probably know a lot of people in law enforcement back home in Montana. You probably know something of investigative procedures.”
Jeff said nothing, uneasy at the picture being drawn around him.
“You seemed to get out to Steeldown Road very fast to talk to Sheri Dalfini about her stolen SUV. Almost as if you wanted to get to the Dalfini residence before police but immediately after you’d reported Sarah and Cole’s abduction. And then you got to the fire at the speed of light.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It just doesn’t look right to us at this stage,” Brewer said. “It just doesn’t add up.”
The floor shifted under Jeff as realization rolled over him with seismic force.
“I don’t like what you’re implying.”
Brewer shifted his lower jaw. In all his time and over all the cases he’d worked he’d come to respect one abiding rule: at the outset of an investigation everyone lies, and when the facts and pieces of evidence emerge, the lies melt like dirty snow in the rain.
“Jeff, I want you to be straight with me here,” Brewer said. “When you believed your wife was maybe fucking Neil Larson and going to leave you I bet it hurt, what with just losing your baby and all. And I’m thinking that maybe you fantasized about making sure Sarah never left you, that maybe you came up with an elaborate foolproof plan. You take her to a location, step away, the cameras record it—”
“What! That’s crazy!”
“Maybe something went wrong, or you didn’t know who you were dealing with.”
“This is insane! Tell me who was in that SUV!”
Glaring at Jeff, Brewer reached for his BlackBerry, entered a command.
“This was in the SUV, Jeff. It matches the description in your report.”
He slid the device to Jeff, carefully studying his reaction as Jeff looked at the crisp photograph of what remained of a New York Jets ball cap. Only a ball cap. Half consumed by fire, half scorched, but clearly identifiable, small, white with the green jet patch on white, familiar to Jeff as the one they bought for Cole.
Oh, Jesus. Oh, Christ, no.
Jeff looked at it until it blurred.
They’re gone.
Jeff ached to pull Cole and Sarah from the darkness.
Sitting there in that small police room, the shock of seeing Cole’s burned ball cap propelled him back to Montana and the morning he’d found Lee Ann.
Her little face all blue, her mouth a tiny O.
His futile efforts to save her.
He thought of his baby daughter with Sarah and Cole and that moment he saw the three of them through the window from his pickup in the driveway.
That perfect moment.
He struggled to hang on to those images but they were gone.
Jeff put his face in his hands and in that cold, hard room he never felt the heat of Brewer’s and Klaver’s stares as Brewer slowly slid back his BlackBerry. Chairs scraped; the detectives gathered their files.
“We’ll leave you alone to consider matters,” Brewer said.
The door opened to ringing phones, conversations and the squawk of walkie-talkies. Above the din Jeff recognized Cordelli’s voice in a fragment of conversation. “Brewer! Did you get my message? My supervisor called yours and—”
The door closed, leaving Jeff alone, adrift in a sea of torment. Minutes passed with the same questions hammering against his skull: Who would steal his wife and son? Who? Why? His confusion and grief coiled into anger.
He would find them.
Whoever did this, he would hunt them down.
The door handle clicked.
This time Brewer entered with Cordelli.
“You can go now. Cordelli will take you out,” Brewer said.
“What?” Jeff threw his question to Cordelli, then back to Brewer.
“Thank you for your help. We’ll be in touch,” Brewer said.
Jeff swallowed.
“What about my wife and son? Can I see them?”
“It’s not them,” Brewer said.
“It’s not them?” Jeff absorbed the news.
“The medical examiner just confirmed the remains belong to two adult males. We’re still working on identifying them.”
“What the hell is this? You show me my son’s cap, you lead me to believe my family’s dead, you accuse me of planning this whole thing. What is this?”
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Rick Mofina
A loving family, fracturing under pressure… Jeff Griffin, a mechanic, and his wife, Sarah, travel from Montana to Manhattan to give their nine-year-old son, Cole, his dream vacation as they secretly face the heart-wrenching turmoil that has them teetering on divorce. In the wake of their heartbreak, a mother and son disappear…While sightseeing near Times Square, Jeff steps into a store to buy batteries for their camera—but upon returning to the street he finds that Sarah and Cole have vanished. A frantic father searches for clues as time ticks down… Battling his anguish and police suspicions, Jeff fights to rescue Sarah and Cole.He knows now that the love he and Sarah have is worth saving. But he could lose the chance to tell her amid growing fears that they have become entangled in an unfolding plot that could have global consequences.
A loving family, fracturing under pressure…
Jeff Griffin, a mechanic, and his wife, Sarah, travel from Montana to Manhattan to give their nine-year-old son, Cole, his dream vacation as they secretly face the heart-wrenching turmoil that has them teetering on divorce.
In the wake of their heartbreak, a mother and son disappear…
While sightseeing near Times Square, Jeff steps into a store to buy batteries for their camera—but upon returning to the street he finds that Sarah and Cole have vanished.
A frantic father searches for clues as time ticks down…
Battling his anguish and police suspicions, Jeff fights to rescue Sarah and Cole. He knows now that the love he and Sarah have is worth saving. But he could lose the chance to tell her amid growing fears that they have become entangled in an unfolding plot that could have global consequences.
Praise for the novels of Rick Mofina
THE BURNING EDGE
“All of the great thriller elements are in abundance: a terrifying villain, a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time and a reporter seeking answers at all costs. A winner in every aspect, and a must-read.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Rick Mofina’s tense, taut writing makes every thriller he writes an adrenaline-packed ride.”
—Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author
“The Burning Edge kept me up into the early morning hours—the plot is so well written that I could not put the book down!”
—www.ReadertoReader.com
IN DESPERATION
“A blisteringly paced story that cuts to the bone. It left me ripping through pages deep into the night.”
—James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author
“Hell hath no fury like a mother wronged. In Desperation is a superbly written thriller that plumbs the depths of every parent’s nightmare. Timely, tense, and terrifying, this book is sure to be a big hit!”
—Brad Thor, #1 New York Times bestselling author
THE PANIC ZONE
“Taut pacing, rough action and jagged dialogue feed a relentless pace. The Panic Zone is written with sizzling intent.”
—Hamilton Spectator
“Mofina’s on top of his game, pulling together a wickedly complicated plot with great skill and assurance. Genuinely chilling.”
—RT Book Reviews
VENGEANCE ROAD
“Vengeance Road is a thriller with no speed limit! It’s a great read!”
—Michael Connelly, New York Times bestselling author
“A gripping, no-holds-barred mystery…lightning paced…with enough twists to keep you turning pages well into the wee hours. Vengeance Road is masterful suspense.”
—Allison Brennan, New York Times bestselling author
They Disappeared
Rick Mofina
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
This book is for
Margaret Slavin Dyment
Contents
Chapter 1 (#ue6b7db1f-70e4-5b8d-b9d7-932cc8fd6bfb)
Chapter 2 (#ue2b033e2-a60f-5b55-bc7c-fc61d0b959b9)
Chapter 3 (#uf99c1d17-dd3e-5b96-a319-e56b5f9c3ba1)
Chapter 4 (#u8876c88d-3eaa-508a-b403-6a13217087d2)
Chapter 5 (#u64a43e1d-4e68-5f3a-b713-24d7742a3863)
Chapter 6 (#u92fd7963-2bd3-5176-ad10-fe7211101270)
Chapter 7 (#u0601936f-8499-5ec0-8d9c-62b9eeb8caab)
Chapter 8 (#u770695ca-0fc4-521e-8562-552b2490760e)
Chapter 9 (#ueb25f428-61dc-5ad8-bf21-198421f2882e)
Chapter 10 (#u2b8bbb8b-cf3d-5b8c-a994-4dea53cb4b61)
Chapter 11 (#ue56cad80-1a15-53ef-baa6-7acf1eebb3e0)
Chapter 12 (#ub11190fb-ab6a-5d4f-8a70-ae4ad4a8b898)
Chapter 13 (#ub56d509d-7bca-5d6b-8ccd-33b30350f3d2)
Chapter 14 (#u2276df19-36f8-507b-98de-6a8a4e92818b)
Chapter 15 (#u536d6088-fa09-5b05-a692-49482483e0a0)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 55 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 56 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 57 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 58 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 59 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 60 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 61 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 62 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 63 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 64 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 65 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 66 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 67 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 68 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 69 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 70 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
1
New York City
This trip is going to change us forever, Jeff Griffin thought as the jet descended into LaGuardia.
He looked at his son, Cole, age nine, excited to be on his first plane and marveling at Manhattan’s skyline poking through the clouds. Then Jeff glanced at his wife, Sarah, at her hand, her wedding ring.
Until a year and a half ago, they had been living a perfect life in Montana, where Jeff was a mechanic and a volunteer firefighter and Sarah was a schoolteacher. They’d come to New York for Cole because he’d always dreamed of seeing Manhattan. It seemed like the best thing to do, given all that they’d been through.
“It’s always going to be hard for us, Jeff,” Sarah had told him. “But we just can’t give up.”
While Sarah lived in hope, Jeff couldn’t help but think that this vacation to New York was a requiem for the life they once lived.
The landing gear locked into position with a hydraulic thud.
Jeff exhaled slowly and turned to Cole.
“Wow, Dad, this is so great! I can’t believe we’re really doing this!”
Jeff looked at Sarah. She gave him the promise of a smile and he held on to it, thinking that maybe, just maybe, he should reconsider.
After their plane landed, the Griffins moved through the arrival gate and joined the rush of passengers heading to the baggage claim area.
The air smelled like industrial carpet cleaner and pretzels.
Cole was energized by the bustling terminal as they made their way to the crowds at the carousels. Sarah went to the restroom while Jeff and Cole got their bags.
Jeff shouldered his way to the conveyor, plucked Sarah’s red bag from it, then his own. Cole had followed him and hefted his backpack from the carousel. Sarah had bought a new one for him, for the trip.
“Looks like the one.” Jeff gave it a quick inspection, black with white trim and mesh side pockets. He glanced quickly at the blue name tag without really reading it; blue was the right color for the tag. Then he helped Cole get his arms through the straps.
As they waited for Sarah, Cole tried counting all the carousels in their area but there were too many. He loved the blurring pace as people jostled to heave their luggage onto trolleys before wheeling them out through the main doors.
“I wish Mom would hurry up, Dad. Can we see the Empire State Building from here?”
“Maybe on the cab ride to the hotel—there’s Mom.”
“All set.” Sarah smiled, joining them.
They left the terminal through the automatic doors.
Jeff spotted a row of news boxes. They reminded him that the travel agent had mentioned that a major event would be taking place when they were to arrive. The headlines shouted about it. UN: Whole World in the City Again! said the Daily News. Tighter Security for World Leaders Means Gridlock for All! blared the New York Post.
As they queued up for a taxi in the ground transportation pickup zone, they didn’t notice that among the throng of arriving passengers, one man had taken an interest in Cole.
He was in his late twenties, a slender build with wild blond hair. His face was void of emotion. He looked European, a youngish student bohemian traveler. As he walked by them, slowly and unseen, his attention locked onto Cole’s bag.
The man hesitated.
The Griffins got into their cab. He stopped and watched, his face suddenly darkening with concern as they drove off.
His backpack was black with white trim and mesh side pockets.
It was identical to Cole’s backpack.
2
New York City
Their taxi merged onto the Grand Central Parkway and the driver lifted his head to his rearview mirror, which had a rosary hanging from it.
“Welcome to the capital of the world. Where are you coming in from?”
“Montana,” Jeff said.
“Cowboys and land spreading out to the mountains,” the driver said.
“That’s right.”
“Is this your first time to the Big Apple?”
“No, I’ve been here for a few conventions over the years, and—” Jeff glanced at Sarah. “We were here together, a long, long time ago.”
“Well, you picked a good time to return.”
“Why’s that?” Jeff asked.
“We got the president and about one hundred world leaders coming into town over the next few days for the UN meeting. Lots of security, sirens and helicopters. Messes up traffic.”
“Yeah, we saw that in the newspapers.”
“The president and helicopters, wow,” Cole said.
“It’s a huge show and a glorious pain.”
The road clicked under the taxi’s wheels as they moved onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Sarah looked out her window at the endless flow of apartment buildings, warehouses, factories and billboards. One showed a laughing baby’s face next to a smiling young woman in a graduation cap and she thought of their daughter, Lee Ann.
They were moving west toward the Midtown Tunnel when they came to a gently sloping segment. The tip of the Empire State Building emerged in the haze ahead as Manhattan’s skyline rose before them.
“Look at that! I gotta take a picture!” Cole said. “Oh, no, Mom, I put my camera in my backpack and it’s in the trunk. That was dumb, oh, no!”
“Here, use mine.”
Sarah fished her small digital camera from her bag. Cole, a technical master, clenched an eye, took a photo and showed his parents.
“Oh, this is awesome!” Cole said.
Moments later the taxi slowed. An overhead freeway sign guided three lanes to the great stone mouth of the Midtown Tunnel. Lines of traffic moved through the tollgates. The tunnel gleamed in brilliant orange and yellow as it curved under the East River to Manhattan.
Cole took more pictures until they surfaced somewhere near Fortieth Street and Third Avenue. As they looked at the skyscraper-lined canyons and the shining high-rise condos, Jeff’s cell phone rang. The call was a 646 area code with a number he didn’t recognize.
“Hello?”
He heard nothing and after several seconds of static he hung up.
“Who was that?” Sarah asked.
“Wrong number, I guess.” Jeff shrugged.
The sidewalks were a bazaar of action with streams of people hurrying, waving at taxis amid sirens, horns. Steam plumes curled from the hot dog stands. People panhandled and street merchants argued with delivery truck drivers while motorists screamed at jaywalkers who blocked streets.
They were a world away from Laurel, Montana.
Their hotel, the Central Suites Inn, was on West Twenty-ninth Street in the two-hundred block, not far from Madison Square Garden. They checked into their twelfth-floor room. It was large with two double beds.
“I need to freshen up,” Sarah said.
“All right, Cole and I will unpack and get changed,” Jeff said. “Then we can go out for dinner and maybe walk to the Empire State Building.”
Cole claimed the bed nearest to the window. He unzipped his backpack at the foot of it and dumped its contents. T-shirts, shorts, a chocolate bar, a bag of potato chips, maps of New York, a hoodie and socks fell out. All of it was unfamiliar, especially the man’s shaving kit.
“Uh, Mom, Dad?” Cole said.
Sarah set her things down and surveyed the heap. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, he’s got the wrong bag.” She inspected the backpack. The luggage claim bar code was torn. The blue name tag was faded and smudged. “I thought you guys checked this?”
“It looks exactly like Cole’s bag.” Jeff looked it over.
“A little, but the zippers are different.”
“What are we going to do, Mom?” Cole said. “I need my stuff.”
“We’ll call the airline, don’t worry, honey.” Sarah pulled a printed page from her bag and went to the room’s desk. “See, I put this paper inside all our bags. It has our hotel and cell phone numbers, so whoever has your bag can call us.”
While Sarah and Jeff searched their airline tickets for a lost luggage number, Cole turned to the strange belongings. One item drew his interest.
A tiny plastic toy jet.
He pushed a small button on top of it, lights flashed and it made a jet engine sound. Cole loved it. He moved behind the curtains, pressed the toy against the window, taking it on a flight over Manhattan’s tall buildings.
“I can’t find a claim number on my part of the ticket,” Sarah said just as Jeff’s cell phone rang.
“Hey.” Jeff looked at the display before he answered. “It’s the same number that tried to call me when we were in the taxi.”
“Mr. Griffin? Jeff Griffin of Laurel, Montana?”
“Yes.”
“This is Hans Beck, I tried calling you earlier. I got your number from your backpack. I have it, there was a mix-up at the airport and I was hoping you’d have mine? It looks just like yours—it has some clothes, snacks, maps and my razor inside.”
“Yes, we have it.”
“Good, can we trade them as soon as possible? I am running late for a train. According to your information, you’re at the Central Suites that’s near Penn Station?”
“Yes, we can exchange the bags now if you like.” Jeff nodded to Sarah, who smiled with relief and indicated that she would take a quick shower. After a few more minutes Jeff had worked out the bag trade with the caller.
“Cole! Let’s go get your backpack, son!”
Startled by his dad, Cole, who’d been running the plane up and down the curtain, let the toy slip to the lower end as he pushed the curtain aside.
“Really?” Cole stepped from the window. “Now?”
“Yes, really, yes, now. So put all that stuff back in the bag. Everything and let’s go.” Jeff had unfolded a map on his bed and studied it. “The guy who’s got your backpack is going to meet us now, so move it!”
Overjoyed at getting his possessions back, Cole forgot about the plane and gathered all the items as fast as he could, shoving them hastily into the backpack while his dad glanced at the map.
This Hans Beck had a German-sounding accent. Maybe he was a student, Jeff thought as he and Cole walked toward Madison Square Garden with his backpack.
They were to meet in front of a diner on Thirty-third Street across from Penn Station. Beck said he was twenty-nine, five foot eleven with blond hair. Jeff gave a description of himself and Cole, noting they would also recognize each other by the backpacks.
About twenty minutes after Beck had called, they spotted him on the street at the appointed location. Beck’s hair was unkempt, his clothes disheveled. He was dragging anxiously on a cigarette, his face taut.
This guy’s either on drugs or under some sort of pressure, Jeff thought.
“Are you Hans Beck?”
Beck blew a stream of smoke skyward and nodded.
“Jeff and Cole Griffin.”
They traded handshakes, then backpacks.
Immediately Beck began rummaging through his.
“Everything’s in here, right?” Beck said, snapping his head around at the sound of car horns from the traffic.
“Sure. We didn’t take anything, if that’s what you mean,” Jeff said.
“No, no, man.” Beck focused on Cole, then winked. “Because you’re too young to use my electric razor, right?”
“That’s funny,” Cole said. “The airplane you have in there is cool.”
“What airplane? You looked inside?”
“Sorry.” Cole glanced at his dad, then at Beck. “It was when I thought it was my backpack. I saw the little toy plane.”
“Everything’s in there,” Jeff said.
“What? Okay. I’m really late.” Beck looked around to the street, closed the bag, then hoisted it onto his back. “Yes, I packed it so fast, I’m not sure what I put in there. Well, I have to split. Thanks.”
Beck disappeared into the crowds entering Penn Station. Jeff’s attention followed him with a ping of unease before he turned to Cole.
“Let’s get back to the hotel, son.”
3
New York City
Hans Beck gripped his backpack and pinballed through Penn Station.
For a fleeting moment he considered boarding a train, any train, and getting away.
No use. They’re watching, waiting. And I need the money.
Beck had lied to Jeff Griffin about having to catch a train. Instead, he had to meet his contact and complete this delivery.
He’d nearly blown this job.
How could he have been so stupid to have picked up the wrong bag? In his time as a courier he’d never screwed up like this. His customers were enraged. He’d never had contacts so intense. He didn’t know who they were, or what they were involved in.
He didn’t want to know.
When he’d given them the Griffin backpack in error, they took no comfort in his assurance he would retrieve the misplaced bag.
Well, he did it, just as he said he would.
So everyone should relax, he told himself. We’ve got the right bag now. Soon this would be over and he’d be on a plane to Aruba awaiting a large deposit in a numbered account.
Beck left Penn Station and hurried by the post office and deep into the heart of the Hudson Yards. He moved quickly beyond the Long Island Rail Road maintenance tracks, where Thirty-third Street dipped into a wasteland near the Hudson River.
He was nearly jogging now as he hurried along a chain-link fence that surrounded a site where a massive foundation, reaching down several stories, was under construction. The sun had set, the entire area was deserted. He heard the hum of a motor, then brakes, and a panel van stopped suddenly beside him.
A side door slid open and he got in. It was crowded inside because several men were in the back working. A couple of them were talking on cell phones. Two others were working quickly on laptops.
The men had already acted on the information sheet they’d found in Cole Griffin’s bag and had quickly searched the family. They’d also taken pictures of Jeff and Cole on the street, making the exchange with Beck.
Everything had unfolded with urgency.
The men seized his backpack, dumped its contents, probed them, then tore through the empty backpack.
Whatever they needed was still missing.
For the first and last time in his life, Beck had failed to make a delivery.
His final thought was that a plastic bag had swallowed his head and his struggle against the forces holding him was in vain.
Everything went black.
His corpse was wrapped in a plastic sheet and hefted into the construction site. It was concealed under a layer of gravel at the base of a footing that would be filled with fifty cubic yards of concrete the next day.
4
New York City
The next morning the Griffins went down to the lobby for breakfast.
The dining area was crammed but Sarah spotted a table for them. Jeff and Cole moved with the crowd along the breakfast bar, loading their trays with sausages, eggs, cereal, fruit, toast, juice and coffee.
Jeff saw Sarah at the table with her phone, reading, then responding to a text message.
Who is she talking to?
It consumed him as they ate and discussed options for the day but he’d have to deal with it later. Cole was wearing a New York Jets T-shirt and ball cap they had bought the night before, along with his new souvenir New York key ring bearing his name. He’d clipped it on the belt loop of his jeans. After flipping through his guidebook, Cole decided he wanted to take a tour bus down to Ground Zero, then a ferry to the Statue of Liberty.
“But can we go to Times Square first?” he asked. “There’s a giant screen there that takes your picture and a toy store with a Ferris wheel inside. Can we go there?”
Jeff consulted his map of New York.
“Are you up for the walk?”
“You bet! And every time I see the Empire State Building I’m taking more pictures. Can I go back for another juice, Mom?”
“Sure.”
When they were alone, Jeff nodded to Sarah’s phone.
“So who were you talking to?”
“Valerie, back home. She was asking if we got in okay.”
“Valerie. Anybody else?”
“Jeff, please don’t do this.”
“Who, Sarah?”
Her face reddened; she was on the verge of losing it with him. Instead, she seized her phone, cued the message, then thrust it at him.
“Valerie. See? Valerie.”
“Sorry.”
Sarah put a hand to her mouth, blinking back tears. She looked toward the food bar to see Cole waiting his turn to fill his glass at the juice dispenser. She looked at Jeff.
“On our way in from the airport I saw this billboard and—” She halted, shifted her thought. “I don’t want a divorce and I don’t think this is the time or place to tell Cole that you want one. We can’t break his heart, Jeff. We have to hang on and work this out.”
He noticed she was twisting her wedding ring.
“I never blamed you for what happened,” she said. “I was out of my mind, we both were. I was angry but I never blamed you for what happened. Get this through your head. I love you. We have to fight to hold this family together, not tear what’s left of it apart, please.” Upon seeing Cole returning, she dropped her voice to a whisper. “Why in God’s name can’t you see that?”
Jeff looked at her without speaking, his mind racing with a million thoughts before Cole returned, sensing unease.
“Are you okay, Mom?”
She touched a tissue to her eyes.
“Just a sad memory, sweetie.”
“All right.” Jeff cleared his throat and stood with his tray to clear the table. “Let’s get going.”
They walked east to Seventh Avenue, then Broadway bound for Times Square. The city pulsated under a clear sky with the thud of a passing helicopter, the ever-present wail of sirens and traffic, telling him that he had to come to a decision. It weighed on him as they moved north along Broadway. Here, amid the whirlwind, he considered Sarah’s words.
We have to fight to hold this family together. We have to hang on and work this out. Was she right?
“Dad? Are you going to get in the picture with Mom now?”
Cole’s question pulled Jeff from his thoughts and he took an immediate assessment, estimating that they were somewhere around Forty-fourth and Forty-fifth Streets near Seventh Avenue. The streets were crowded, traffic was heavy. Not far from where they stood, massive neon signs soared in spectacular glory, exuding an air of controlled chaos. News reports flowed nonstop in electronic ribbons of light that wrapped around several buildings.
They were at the edge of Times Square.
Sarah had just taken Cole’s picture and returned her camera to him.
“Over there, Dad,” Cole said from behind the viewfinder. “Get next to Mom. I want to get that big flashy sign behind you—then we’ll go down to the center of Times Square, hurry!”
Jeff put his arm around Sarah, then felt her arm solidly around his waist. It felt good, it felt right, and a bittersweet sensation rolled over him. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d touched each other, held each other. This was not easy. They both made an effort to disguise the emotional turmoil churning under the smiles they’d manufactured for Cole.
Finally, he took the shot.
“All right,” he said. “Can we get one of us all together?”
“Let me ask somebody,” Jeff said.
He took the camera from Cole and went a few yards down the crowded sidewalk to an older man wearing a Yankees ball cap taking photos of two women, likely his wife and daughter. Jeff asked him if he would mind taking a Griffin family photo with Sarah’s camera.
“Be happy to.”
The man took the picture but when Cole requested he take one more, nothing happened with the camera. The man looked at it. “Looks like your batteries are gone.” The man handed it back. Jeff thanked him and turned to Cole and Sarah.
“I forgot to put in fresh ones,” Sarah said.
“It’s okay.” Jeff glanced around, spotting a suitable store behind them. “I’ll go in there and get fresh batteries. You stay right here, don’t go anywhere.”
“All right,” Sarah said. She and Cole began inspecting the jewelry, statues, artwork and T-shirts on a vendor’s cart. Jeff stepped toward the store but was stopped.
“Sir, could you spare any change for a veteran?”
A man with bushy dark hair and a beard flecked with bits of something white held up a hand in a dirty worn cyclist’s glove. He was in a wheelchair and missing his right leg. He wore torn jeans, a filthy John Lennon T-shirt and a tattered raincoat. His chair was reinforced with metal coat hangers and had a U.S. flag affixed to it. Jeff looked into his leathery weatherworn face, his brown eyes, and figured him to be in his early thirties. Guys who’d served deserved better, Jeff thought.
“How’d you lose the leg?”
“IED in Afghanistan. I ain’t had a decent meal in days, sir.”
Jeff thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out two crumpled fives.
“Here.”
The man stared at the cash.
“Thank you. God bless you and your beautiful family, there, sir.”
Jeff went to the store—Metro Manhattan Gifts and Things.
It had a narrow storefront of soot-streaked stone and a large window cluttered with a galaxy of tacky items. Discounts on jewelry, T-shirts and posters were listed on the chalkboard sign outside.
Inside, rock music throbbed from a radio station. The walls were jammed with T-shirts, ball caps, trinkets, posters, knickknacks. A young man was on a ladder, pulling down a cardboard box overflowing with scarves for two women. Racks filled with chips, chocolate bars and snack cakes bordered one side of the store, next to coolers filled with soda, juices and water.
Compact video recorders, cell phones and other electronics covered the wall behind the counter near the cash. A mounted security camera watched from above. Jeff took his place in line behind half a dozen customers.
As he waited, he saw Sarah and Cole through the window, browsing at the cart. They looked happy and the image sent his mind racing back to that last moment of perfection. Back to that time when he’d sat in his truck in their driveway and watched Sarah with Cole and their baby daughter, Lee Ann, through the window.
The last time they were happy.
And now he’d brought his family here, to the brink of disintegration.
Kransky the Shrink had been right; they couldn’t just overcome the blow of Lee Ann’s death. They had to adapt to it and allow each other to deal with it in their own way.
Throughout their ordeal Cole had been the rock of the family. He’d accepted that God had made his baby sister an angel and took her to heaven first to wait for them. Cole just got on with being a kid and continued obsessing about seeing New York City, the way most kids obsessed about seeing Disney World.
In this way Cole was the calm, healing force, holding them all together against the threat of destruction.
And the threat was not Sarah.
It’s me.
After all this time, Jeff realized that he’d failed to accept how Sarah dealt with her own grief and guilt. She blamed herself for being three hundred and forty miles away when their baby died. Jeff blamed himself for being in the next room asleep. He had been so numbed and blinded by his anger, his guilt, that he let it give way to paranoia, thinking wrongly that Sarah had turned to another man for comfort.
He’d let it all reach the point where it was tearing them apart.
What have I done?
Standing in line, waiting to buy batteries, it dawned on him. Maybe it had started when he felt Sarah’s arm around him, tight. But when the truth hit, it hit him like a freight train. Sarah was not cheating on him. She did not hate him. What he was doing was wrong. The last thing he wanted was to separate. He agreed with Sarah, when their baby girl died they went out of their minds with grief. They’d both been consumed with guilt and anger over losing her.
He replayed Sarah’s plea.
We have to fight to hold this family together. We have to hang on and work this out.
She was right.
They’d been through enough.
Suddenly Jeff felt like a man waking up.
How could I have been so stupid?
It was his turn at the counter and the clerk at the register, a girl in her twenties with a diamond stud in her left nostril, fuchsia streaks in her dyed white hair and tattoos on her arms, smiled as she chewed gum and bobbed her head to an old David Bowie song.
“I need some batteries.”
“What size?”
“Double A, I think. Wait, let me check, sorry.”
Horn blasts from the street competed with the music inside as Jeff opened the battery compartment. It took him three attempts. The clerk snapped her gum and eyed the other customers while she waited.
Patience in New York came at a premium.
“Yes, double A,” he said. “Better give me three of those four packs.”
She slapped them on the counter.
“Here you go.”
Jeff paid.
He returned to the street ready to tell Sarah that he’d come to his senses. This trip would change everything.
For the better.
He went to the vendor’s cart but they weren’t there.
He looked up and down the street.
No sign of Sarah and Cole.
What’s going on?
They must’ve gone into a store, he thought, and entered the nearest one, a crowded retail sportswear outlet. Inside he searched the packed aisles, scanning the shoppers for Sarah and Cole. He glimpsed a flash of green—the back of a boy’s New York Jets T-shirt as it disappeared behind a display of jackets.
There’s Cole.
Jeff hurried after him, ready to scold Sarah for vanishing, but he stopped cold. The boy was not Cole.
Jeff took immediate stock of the surroundings.
No sign of Sarah and Cole.
He hurried out and rushed into the next business, a crowded deli where he again took swift inventory. Again, he found no trace of his wife and son. He moved on, searching in vain. He stood on the sidewalk and scoured the storefronts across the street—but it was futile.
Jeff could not find Sarah and Cole.
Then, above all the crowds, the traffic, the noise and confusion, he heard the first high-pitched ring in the back of his mind. It shot to his gut where disbelief battled his fear that maybe something was wrong.
5
New York City
Jeff scanned the crowds, threading his way a few yards in one direction, then a few yards in another.
“Sarah!”
He looked up and down the street.
They disappeared.
He reached for his cell phone and called Sarah’s number. This is nuts. Where’d they go? It rang several times before going to her voice mail.
“Hey, you disappeared on me,” Jeff said. “Where are you? I’m standing by the souvenir cart.”
He studied the nearest storefronts again: a sports store, an electronics store, a ticket seller, a place fronted with plywood that was under renovation. Had they gone into one? Which one would they enter? He wasn’t sure. He’d told them not to move.
Did Sarah even hear her phone ring?
He called her number again. Again, he got her voice mail.
He scrutinized the street. Faces blurred as streams of people dissolved into chaotic rivers amid the smells of perfume, sweat and grilled spicy meat. Human features became indistinguishable as people brushed against him, bumped him.
“Are you looking for your wife and son?”
Jeff turned around to the man in the wheelchair—the man to whom he’d given ten bucks.
“Yes, did you see them?”
“I think they got picked up.”
“Picked up? What do you mean?”
“Well, I saw it from the corner of my eye. I wasn’t focused on it, but it looked like two guys picked them up.”
“What two guys?”
“Two guys sorta helped them into a van or an SUV and they drove off.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“It happened real fast, like everyone was in a hurry.”
“Where?”
“Right there.” He nodded to the spot where Jeff had left them.
Nothing was making sense. Jeff shook his head.
“I doubt that. My wife wouldn’t go with anyone. She doesn’t know anyone in New York.”
“It looked like they were pulling your boy and your wife was trying to stop them and then they took her, too. It was real fast and smooth.”
“What? That’s crazy.”
“I’m telling you what I saw.”
“Hold on.”
Jeff went to the ponytailed man selling souvenirs from the cart where Sarah and Cole had browsed moments ago. The man was wearing a tie-dye T-shirt and dark glasses.
“Who?” the man said after Jeff had explained.
“My wife and son. They were just here looking at your cart a few minutes ago. Did you see them go into a store?”
The ponytailed man scratched his three-day growth, then shrugged.
“Sorry, pal. It’s hectic here with people and traffic. People get picked up and dropped off around here every two seconds. I didn’t see anything.”
Jeff turned back to the wheelchair man.
“I think you saw someone else,” Jeff said. “I think they’re in a store.”
“No, it happened.”
“Did they say anything—where they were going, or who they were?”
“Sir, I don’t know.”
“What about the vehicle? What color was it?”
“Silver, white, I’m not sure…white, yeah, maybe white.”
Jeff ran his hand through his hair, unable to dismiss his unease over what this wheelchair guy claimed to have seen.
It just doesn’t make any sense.
“I think you’re mistaken and that you saw someone else.”
“I know I saw it out of the corner of my eye, but listen to me—it happened. It didn’t look right. I’m just telling you what I saw because you seem like a nice family. If you don’t want to believe me, that’s your choice.”
The man clamped his hands on his wheels and rolled away.
No, Jeff thought. I don’t want to believe you because this can’t be real.
Jeff took a quick breath, reached for his phone and tried Sarah again. But before he pressed her number, he saw something small and shiny in the street, near the curb.
A key ring.
Its clasp was open.
He picked it up. It was looped to a miniature novelty blue-and-white New York license plate with a name on it.
COLE.
Cole’s key ring.
It was in the gutter, where it would’ve fallen if he’d gotten into a vehicle.
Oh, Christ, it’s true! Oh, Jesus, no!
My wife! My son! Abducted from the street!
Why? Who would do this? Why?
Jeff trembled at the absurdity, the horror, as he looked in every direction searching for something, anything, to subdue the wave of alarm rising around him. This was the edge of Times Square—the crossroads of the world.... The concentration of people, the comings and goings, the enormity of it all, was dizzying.
He pulled his fingers into a fist around Cole’s key ring.
6
New York City
New York City police officers Jimmy Hodge and Roy Duggan were walking the beat: extended Times Square.
Earlier that morning, at the top of their tour, they’d helped two other cops corner a perp after he’d tried to boost a Mercedes on Seventh Avenue. Duggan happily let those two do the paperwork because he and Jimmy had good numbers this month—no danger of a white shirt breathing down their necks for stats.
Now they were back on patrol and a coffee break was overdue.
Duggan, a third-generation uniform with twenty-three years on the street, was telling young Jimmy, his rookie partner of four months, about a deli on Forty-seventh when a white guy in his thirties rushed up to them.
“I need help!”
Instinctively Hodge and Duggan braced while giving him the instant head-to-toe. Worried demeanor, sweaty. Six foot, medium build, muscular, clean-cut, brown hair, jeans, golf shirt with Laurel Montana Volunteer Fire Department insignia. Nothing in his hands but a cell phone.
“What’s the problem?” Hodge asked.
“My wife and son have been abducted.”
Hodge traded a quick glance with Duggan.
“Your wife and your son?” Hodge reached for his notebook.
“It happened a few minutes ago!”
“Take it easy, let’s start with some ID and names,” Hodge said.
The man identified himself as Jeff Griffin and Hodge started notes for a report.
“Okay, Jeff, tell us what happened and where,” Hodge asked.
The man walked them to the location, recounting the few details he had. Hodge took notes, asked short questions. Duggan said nothing. As their radios crackled with cross talk Duggan studied Jeff, listening, absorbing and watching through jaded brown eyes that seldom missed a thing. Nearly finished, Jeff turned to the wheelchair man, panhandling some fifteen yards up the street.
“…and that guy there in the wheelchair said he saw two men ‘help’ them into a van or an SUV before it drove away.”
“You got this from Freddie?” Duggan said.
“Is that his name, the soldier who lost his leg in Afghanistan? He said ‘it didn’t look right’ when he saw them being taken away.”
“Freddie sees a lot of things,” Duggan said.
Jeff nodded, clearly reassured he had a witness that police knew. But then Duggan elaborated.
“Sometimes Freddie sees things that aren’t there, depending on whether he’s on or off his meds. He didn’t lose his leg overseas—he slipped at a subway station platform. Train crushed it. Did you give him money?”
“Ten bucks.”
“He always tries to help people who give him money. He’s not a bad person,” Duggan said.
“What’re you saying?” In the tense silence, Jeff looked hard at Duggan, then Hodge, sensing doubt. His face showed an oncoming rush of helplessness. “What? You don’t believe me? Christ, what am I supposed to do here?”
“Maybe it’s like you said,” Hodge offered. “Maybe they went into a store and Freddie got mixed up. Maybe you should wait a bit?”
Suddenly remembering his one piece of evidence, Jeff reached into his pocket, then held up Cole’s key ring.
“I found this in the street, right where they were! We got this for Cole yesterday. He’d clipped it to his pants this morning! You’ve got to help me!”
Duggan’s face tightened as he blinked at Cole’s key ring. His instinct, forged from two decades of police work, was now telling him that the situation had changed.
“All right, here’s what we’re going to do,” Duggan said. “I’ll talk to Freddie. Jeff, give Officer Hodge any recent photos you have. We’ll start a canvass with other uniforms and I’ll call a car for you, Jeff.”
“Why?”
“This needs to go to the detective squad at Manhattan South.”
Duggan talked into his walkie-talkie as he started toward Freddie. Jeff cued up the photos on his camera and sent them to Hodge’s BlackBerry. He took more notes from Jeff, added more details.
Then Hodge hit Send.
“I’ve just shot the information and pictures to every cop patrolling this area,” Hodge said.
Duggan returned from taking Freddie’s information and was on his radio again searching the traffic.
“Jimmy, email your notes for the sixty-one to Sergeant McBain. I’ll call him. Jeff—” Duggan nodded to the street “—your ride’s here.”
A siren yelped and a marked NYPD radio car, lights flashing, pulled over. Duggan leaned into the empty passenger section, had a quick conversation with the officer behind the wheel. Duggan then opened the rear door for Jeff, who saw Hodge huddling with four other uniformed officers who’d arrived.
“Jeff, this is Officer Breedo. He’s going to drive you to the station house,” Duggan said. “He’ll take you in to Sergeant McBain, who’ll refer you to the detective squad. They’ll take over. Here’s my card with my cell and email—we have your information.”
“Thank you.”
“We’re going to circulate and look for Sarah and Cole here while you work with the detectives. The squad at the Fourteenth Precinct has more resources than we do. They’ll decide what steps to take next.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
* * *
Jeff got in the back.
The seat—vinyl patched with duct tape—was separated from the front by a plastic divider. There was little legroom. The back windows were up tight and would not open. The rear smelled of lemon-scented cleaner, barely masking the trace of vomit and despair. When Breedo slid the divider open, Jeff welcomed the relief as breezes from the open front windows carried Breedo’s cologne to the back of the car.
“It’s about ten blocks away. I’ll have you there in no time.”
The siren yelped again, then wailed nonstop as Breedo maneuvered the Crown Victoria through traffic. Jeff was no stranger to emergency vehicles. He took in the controls for the overhead lights, siren, public address, search lights, the small computer terminal. Breedo’s police radio issued a never-ending stream of coded transmissions.
Traffic ahead parted for them.
“See?” Breedo tapped his computer’s monitor. Jeff saw Sarah and Cole’s picture. “We’re getting information out there.”
Jeff’s gut writhed with relief and fear.
Then he noticed the visor above Breedo, where the faces of a woman and two girls around three or four years old smiled down from a color snapshot.
“That your family in the picture above you?”
“Those are my girls. Duggan says you’re a firefighter in Montana.”
“Volunteer. I’m a mechanic.”
“My brother was a firefighter. We lost him in the Towers.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
The siren wailed.
Jeff tried Sarah’s cell phone once more.
Again, it was futile. “Hi, this is Sarah. Please leave a message.” Keeping the phone pressed to his ear, he clung to her voice for a moment before another stab of concern hit him and he let go.
Breedo caught it and met him in the rearview mirror.
“Don’t worry, Jeff, we’re going to find your wife and son. Don’t worry.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
He saw Breedo’s profile as he drove. Then Jeff saw himself alone in the rearview mirror, stress lines carved in his face, worry bordering on fear clouding his eyes.
If this is a nightmare, then why can’t I wake up? Wake up!
Jeff got out Cole’s key ring, then the camera, and looked at the last picture taken of the three of them together.
He turned back to the window.
Manhattan blurred by and the siren rose to a near-scream.
7
New York City
The Fourteenth Precinct was situated on Thirty-fifth Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues in a three-story cream-and-coffee-colored building.
Breedo escorted Jeff to Sergeant McBain, a burly man on the north side of fifty. He was studying his computer at his desk and paused to gaze at them over his bifocals when Breedo introduced him.
“Sarge, this is Jeff Griffin, Duggan and Hodge’s sixty-one.”
McBain threw his attention to Jeff.
“Did the officers find my wife and son?” Jeff asked. “Did they call in?”
“No, I’m afraid nothing’s come in yet.” McBain removed his glasses to get a better read on Jeff. “I’ve spoken to the patrol officers and looked at their notes. From what I understand, Mr. Griffin, your wife and son left with two men in a vehicle, in an alleged abduction?”
“Nothing’s alleged, they were taken—what’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on, Mr. Griffin. We’re opening an investigation. We’ll do all we can to help you locate your wife and son.” McBain replaced his glasses and made a few strokes on his computer keyboard. “All right, Detectives Cordelli and Ortiz will talk to you. Officer Breedo will take you up to the squad.”
As they headed upstairs, Jeff told Breedo that he could not understand why everyone was skeptical when he needed their help.
“A lot of people mislead us,” Breedo said. “Or change their story.”
Arriving on the floor, Breedo led him down a hall to the fluorescent-lit squad room and a maze of government-issue metal desks. The walls were lined with file cabinets and clipboards holding crime reports, crime stats, corkboards with maps, wanted posters, shift schedules. One schedule had huge block letters: UN DETAIL SHIFT. A large flat-screen TV, mounted to the ceiling, was tuned to an all-news channel reporting on the UN meeting.
The area was abandoned except for one guy in plain clothes hunched at his desk, talking loud on the phone. The day shift was out. Jeff’s mind raced. Minutes ago he was walking down the street with his family. Now here he was, walking through a police squad room. Breedo stopped at two conjoined desks, then rolled over a cushioned swivel chair.
“Have a seat. I’ll find Cordelli and Ortiz.”
Jeff surveyed the desks. Their sides were pushed against a wall, under a well-used board displaying memos, calendars and personal items.
To the left: a framed degree from Long Island University for Juanita Ortiz, a newsletter photo of a beaming female cop in formal blues receiving her shield under the headline Detective Second Grade. There was a snapshot of a man and woman with a little girl, about five, by a mountain lake. The girl had an orange butterfly on her finger.
On the right side of the board: a framed degree in Criminal Justice for Victor Cordelli from Saint Joseph’s College, a framed autographed photo of a man with two members of the New York Yankees on either side. There was some kind of award for Detective Cordelli—First Grade for “Exceptional Duty” in the NYPD Intelligence Division. No photos of a wife or kids. There was a card with an array of vulgar handwritten notes: “Hey, Cordelli, condolences on twenty freakin’ years with the NYPD.”
Each desk had a computer monitor and keyboard. Here, Jeff saw file folders fanned over desks, and notebooks bound with elastic and neatly stacked. On one of the desks was a splayed copy of the New York Daily News with the same headline he’d seen in the boxes a short time ago while walking with Sarah and Cole from the hotel to where— Oh, Jesus!
He ran his hand over his face.
They just disappeared! They can’t be gone! Who would do this? Why? Why aren’t police rushing to search for them?
“Mr. Griffin?”
He turned to a woman in her mid-thirties, tawny hair pulled into a ponytail. She wore a dark blazer, matching pants, white shirt, looked sharp.
“Juanita Ortiz, and this is Vic Cordelli.”
Both detectives carried brimming coffee mugs but managed firm grips when they shook his hand. He declined their offer of a drink. They sat down. Juanita turned to a fresh page in a new notebook.
“I’m sorry, we just cleared another case last night,” Ortiz said. “And we know you told the patrol officers everything but we need you to tell us what happened.”
As Jeff recounted the morning, Cordelli leaned back in his chair. He was wearing jeans, a polo shirt, his ID and a shoulder holster holding a gun. He had a goatee, was about Jeff’s height, but was wiry and revving in a higher gear. Sipping from his mug like he really needed it, Cordelli eyed him over the rim.
After Jeff finished relating events, Cordelli asked to see Cole’s key ring.
“And you found this in the street where you last saw them?”
“Yes.”
Cordelli turned it over in his hand a few times before returning it. Then he asked to see all the pictures in Sarah’s camera and immediately downloaded them to his computer. From his vantage Jeff could partially see the photos as Cordelli scrutinized them one by one and Ortiz continued the interview.
“Jeff, will you volunteer all information about credit, bank and cell phones you and Sarah use?” she asked.
“Of course.” He pulled out his wallet.
“If this is a robbery,” she said while recording account numbers, “we’ll track charges, withdrawals, maybe get photos from an ATM, that sort of thing. It helps.”
“Is that what you think happened?”
“It’s one theory,” Ortiz said.
“If the men wanted to rob them, wouldn’t they’ve let them go by now? God, they could be doing anything to them.”
“Take it easy. At this point,” Cordelli said, “we’re not sure what it is.”
Jeff’s breathing quickened.
Was there something he was overlooking, or forgetting?
One by one images from the morning flowed across Cordelli’s monitor—the street, Cole, Sarah—haunting Jeff as he turned back to Ortiz, who went over her notes. She asked a spectrum of questions, probing a little deeper about Sarah, her job, her disposition, family medical conditions and family history. Jeff told her everything but withheld mention of Lee Ann and its toll. It was too painful, entangled with his own guilt, and irrelevant as far as he was concerned.
“What about my wife’s cell phone?” Jeff asked. “I read somewhere that you guys can track cell phones, that there’s technology to pinpoint where people are through their cell phone.”
“Sometimes,” Cordelli said. “May I see your phone?”
Cordelli turned it on, expertly buttoned and scrolled through its menu and functions. “Is your wife’s phone similar?”
“It’s the same.”
“These are older models. The tracking ability you’re talking about is limited on this type.” Cordelli returned Jeff’s phone and went back to studying the photos, adding, “And as for tracking roaming signals, the phone has to be turned on. Even then, we need warrants to get the phone companies to release that information—but we can expedite them.”
“Is there anything else you can do with the phone?”
“We can get a warrant to essentially clone your phone.”
“What does that mean?”
“Any calls, texts, downloads—received or sent—will also come to us, to a special line with the NYPD, without the caller or sender being aware. It’s like a tap. It allows us to be on top of any communication that might come from the bad guys. Say, a ransom call, or if your wife or son got to a phone and called for help. And we’ll work with FBI for warrants on your hotel or home and work phones in Montana, all numbers associated directly with you or your wife, in case any calls go there.”
“I want you to do everything that helps, yes.”
“We want to be prepared,” Cordelli said. “But the bad guys are smart. They toss the victims’ phones. And they use prepaid disposables that are virtually impossible to track.”
Hans Beck.
“Wait. There was a mix-up with Cole’s bag at LaGuardia. I got a call from this guy, Hans Beck. We had his backpack, he had ours and we met near Penn Station late yesterday and traded them.”
“Anything you can remember about him?”
Jeff described Beck and explained how he’d obtained Jeff’s cell phone number. Ortiz made notes.
“He was kind of weird, nervous,” Jeff said. “His number’s on my phone.”
Cordelli displayed the call list.
Jeff pointed to it.
“Did he threaten you, ask for money?” Cordelli asked.
“No.”
“How was he weird?”
“I don’t know—he seemed preoccupied, like something was on his mind. Maybe it was because he was rushed. He said he had to catch a train.”
“Did you see what was in his bag, drugs, anything unusual?”
Jeff shook his head and Cordelli and Ortiz exchanged glances.
“He could’ve targeted your family for a robbery or ransom,” Cordelli said. “Or it could be nothing. We’ll check out the number but it could be a dead end.”
“Well, what about all these police security cameras everywhere? Can’t you use them to find my wife and son?”
“Yes, we can,” Cordelli said.
“Then do it, goddammit! My family’s life is at stake!”
The detectives let a few tense moments pass in silence as Jeff blinked back his fear, frustration and guilt. He shook his head.
“Jeff,” Cordelli started, “you’re upset, we understand. But we have people looking. We are investigating as we speak. But we need to be confident that you’ve given us all the information we need.”
“I’ve told you everything I know.”
Cordelli went back to examining the photos.
“Jeff, is Sarah under a doctor’s care? Does she take any medication?”
“No.”
“Does she use illegal drugs? Maybe gamble?”
“What?”
“We have to ask.”
“No.”
“Does she or Cole spend a lot of time online, chatting with strangers?”
“No.”
“What was your wife’s state of mind just before this happened? How would you characterize her demeanor?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m looking at these pictures of you, of her, and I’ve got to tell you, your smiles look a little forced. I’m getting the feeling that there’s some underlying stress in your family.”
Jeff said nothing.
“Tell us about your family, your marriage. Is it all good out there in Big Sky Country?”
Jeff searched his heart for the answer.
“Who’s this?” Cordelli turned the monitor.
The image nearly winded Jeff. He didn’t know it was there—a beautiful shot of Sarah cradling Lee Ann, who was smiling up at her. Sarah smiled down at the angel in her arms. She’d obviously saved it on his phone.
“You said you have one child? Who’s this, Jeff?”
Cordelli’s eyes were like black ball bearings, shining hard.
“Our daughter.” Jeff cleared his throat. “She died about a year and a half ago. SIDS.”
“I’m so sorry,” Juanita said tenderly as Jeff’s attention flicked to the snapshot of Juanita and the girl with the butterfly.
“My condolences,” Cordelli said. “But how would you characterize your marriage since then, up to the point these pictures were taken here, this morning? Would you say there was stress in your family this morning before Sarah and Cole disappeared?”
Jeff swallowed hard.
“Yes.”
“Were you arguing?”
“Yes.”
Cordelli shot a glance to Ortiz: bingo.
“What were you arguing about?” Cordelli asked.
Jeff stared at the image with restrained anger and said slowly, “I need you to help me.”
“We are helping you,” Cordelli said. “But we need the truth, all of it. What were you arguing about before Sarah left with Cole?”
“We’d been having a hard time since we lost our daughter. Cole has always dreamed of seeing New York City, so we came here to give him the trip and to talk about our future.”
“Were you going to stay together, or separate?”
Surprised at the accuracy of the question Jeff said nothing.
“Losing a child can lead to divorce—it happens,” Cordelli said.
“It’s what we were talking about this morning,” Jeff said.
“So it would be fair to say your marriage was strained up to the point they disappeared?”
“I told them to stay right where they were while I bought new batteries for the camera.”
“Jeff, is it conceivable that Sarah was a little ticked at how your conversations were going and needed some time alone?”
He stared at Cordelli, knowing how it looked to him, but knowing the truth, still feeling Sarah’s arm around his waist, holding him tight.
“No.”
“I need you to be honest with us, Jeff. Would Sarah have any reason to harm Cole?”
“God, no! I’m telling you, no. I told you at the start, she’s a loving mother, a schoolteacher, a good person. She’s incapable of doing any of the things you’re suggesting.”
Cordelli shot a glance to Ortiz, leaving matters open but signaling an end to the interview.
“Okay, Jeff,” she said. “Be assured, we’re on this, leave everything with us. Meanwhile, we suggest you go back to your hotel, in case Sarah returns. We’ll stay in touch with you and we’ll ask you to call us, should anything change.”
“If Sarah shows up,” Cordelli said, “please return to the station house with her and Cole so we can sign off.”
Cordelli started repositioning file folders on his desk.
Clearing his desk.
That was all that Cordelli was interested in, Jeff thought later when he’d returned to the street and started looking for a cab.
Jeff would call the hotel and their room to check on Sarah.
But he had no intention of returning and doing nothing.
8
New York City
Time hammered against Jeff.
As his cab cut through the midtown traffic he watched the muted backseat TV monitor—reports on Broadway, the Mets, a triple murder in Brooklyn and more on the UN meeting in the Lower East Side.
Amid the horns, sirens, the chaos, he tried to think.
He called the hotel room, then the desk for messages—nothing.
His hope sinking, he turned to the city, the sidewalks, scanning the crowds, studying faces until details melted away. He understood the skepticism of the NYPD, knew how things looked to them.
Bad.
Because they were bad.
They’d said they were investigating but Cordelli and Ortiz likely thought Sarah took Cole for a few hours of shopping because she was pissed off. The detectives probably didn’t put much currency in the witness, a street guy, and were reluctant to give it much effort. Deep down Jeff believed they had doubts about his report. He didn’t trust them to make it a priority.
As his taxi rolled through the city, his misgivings resonated with his memories of himself at fifteen. His parents were killed when their tour bus crashed in the Canadian Rockies and he went to live with his grandfather near Billings.
In the months after the estate was settled, Jeff was given his father’s Ford pickup truck. Traces of his cologne were still in the truck; the steering wheel was worn from where his big hands usually held it. Jeff cherished the pickup because it was his connection to his mom and dad.
Jeff got his learner’s license, and when he drove the truck with his grandfather, it felt like his parents were in the cab with them. Jeff treasured the Ford, washing it and changing the oil himself. With that truck he learned how to fix things, to become self-reliant, to endure the deaths of his parents.
Then one day the truck was stolen from his grandfather’s driveway.
Jeff was devastated. They’d reported the theft to police, who’d promised to “leave no stone unturned” in recovering it. But days, then weeks, passed with no news. Jeff convinced his grandfather to let him search for it by driving him to truck stops, auto shops, bars and diners in nearly every town in Yellowstone County.
Weeks passed. Then, as if guided by fate, they’d spotted a Ford pickup at a mall near Ballantine where they’d stopped to shop for shirts. It was Jeff’s. It had a different plate and was all primed like it was going to be painted but it had the same tiny spiderweb fracture in the rear cab window and the chip in the left rear bumper.
After police and the court returned the truck, Jeff’s grandfather told him something he’d never forgotten.
“The truck could never be as important to anyone as it is to you, Jeff. There are certain things in this world that you just have to take care of yourself, or they’ll never be done right. If you don’t trust your gut in these matters, you’ll have to live with the consequences for the rest of your life.”
A horn blast yanked Jeff back to Manhattan’s traffic and a decision.
So what am I going to do here, now?
He had no choice. He would search for his family on his own.
Where do I start?
He’d go back to the spot where it happened and start looking there.
He tried calling Sarah again and again. It rang to her message. Nothing. It had been about two hours since he’d last seen Sarah and Cole.
Where the hell are you?
Jeff stared at his phone, then, on impulse, he called the number for Hans Beck and got a recorded message saying the number was no longer in service. That’s strange, Jeff thought, unsure what to make of it.
After the cab dropped him off, Jeff allowed himself a moment to entertain the belief that Sarah and Cole had returned. That they’d have some wild explanation and they’d all laugh it off. How sweet the relief would be. He’d admit to her that he’d been a fool, that he was wrong for wanting to separate—no, confused, stupid and so sorry.
He’d tell her that he wanted to keep their family together.
Hold them and never let them go.
But his hope was overtaken by reality as he came to the spot. There was no sign of Sarah or Cole. Freddie, the wheelchair panhandler, was gone. Jeff got out his camera, cued the photo of Sarah and Cole and returned to the ponytailed man selling souvenirs at the pushcart where Sarah and Cole had been. Again, Jeff begged for his help, showing him the photos.
The vendor shook his head, his face a mask of indifference behind his dark glasses.
“They were right here,” Jeff said.
“I told you, pal. I don’t remember them.”
Deflated, Jeff lowered his camera to grapple with a million thoughts, horrible imaginings of what the phantom abductors could be doing to his family at this very moment. Slowly he turned in a full circle in the heart of Manhattan, one of the busiest cities in the world.
He forced himself to remain calm, to think.
Retrace your steps. Re-create the scene.
His attention came to the store where he’d bought the batteries, where it all started: Metro Manhattan Gifts and Things.
He entered.
Not as busy as before. A few browsers checking out the knickknacks; otherwise, a lull. Even the music was subdued. He recognized the same girl at the counter.
A good sign.
She had her nose in her cell phone, thumbs flying.
He needed her. Don’t interrupt her. Not yet.
He assessed the store again, locking in on the security camera mounted on the wall above the counter. It was angled to the door, front window and the street.
Did it capture Sarah and Cole?
He had to see the camera’s perspective.
“Can I help you?”
The clerk had finished with her phone. Her bejeweled nostril sparkled as she smiled—nice bright teeth, sincere. He sensed a good heart.
“I was here a while ago buying batteries.”
“I remember you.”
“You do?”
“Your shirt, says Montana. I’ve visited Glacier National Park. It’s gorgeous.”
“Small world,” he said. “Look, I was hoping you could help me.”
“Depends on what you need.”
“My wife and son, we got separated out front, and I was thinking that maybe your security camera—” he nodded to it “—maybe it recorded them.”
She turned to it and back to him without speaking.
“I just need to see if it records the spot on the street where they were.”
“Why don’t you just look for them?”
“I did and a man who was near them told me they may have been abducted or robbed.”
“What? That’s a crazy scary.”
“I’m worried. I need to see where they went or what happened. Can I just have a look at your camera’s monitor, see it if picked up anything?”
“I don’t really want to get involved.”
“No, nothing like that. Just let me check it out, it won’t take long. No one has to know and I’ll pay you fifty dollars just to see. Just to have a look. If it doesn’t get the angle, then that’s it. If it does, I’ll give you more money to rewind it back?”
“I don’t know, I—”
“Excuse me,” a woman said.
A middle-aged man and woman approached with T-shirts, key rings, postcards. Jeff stepped aside as the girl rang them up.
“Can you tell us how to get to Central Park from here?” the woman asked.
“Go right out front and catch a bus on Eighth Avenue,” the girl said. “Or you can walk north on Eighth, but it’s about sixteen blocks.”
“Thank you.”
Once Jeff and the girl were alone again, he pressed his case. He showed her his digital camera and the photos of Sarah and Cole. The girl blinked at them—a typical American family vacationing in New York.
“We were right out front a couple of hours ago,” he said. “I just need to see what happened. I need your help.”
“I think you should just go to the police.”
“I did. I just returned from talking to detectives at the precinct.”
“There you go.”
“They said they’re looking, but I’m looking, too. Please, put yourself in my shoes. Wouldn’t you do everything you could?”
Considering his point and his plight, she glanced around, caught her bottom lip between her teeth. Jeff pulled out two twenties and a ten. She glanced at the cash.
“Just a quick look.” He gave her his wallet, his phone, everything. “You hold this. I’m just trying to find my wife and son.”
Searching his eyes she saw the emotion and desperation broiling behind them, his plea eroding her resistance.
“Please,” he said.
After another glance around she put Jeff’s items under the counter. Then she went to a wire mesh door that separated the counter from the rest of the store. She unlocked it and ushered him inside to the counter and the monitor on a lower shelf. The monitor screen was sectioned into quarters, four small clear color screens.
“It changes all the time,” she said.
Jeff passed the fifty dollars to the girl and lowered himself. On one of the screens he saw a miniature, partial view of the ponytailed vendor and the street—it was very limited but it was something.
“I need to enlarge this one.” Jeff tapped the top right quarter. “I need to rewind this one to the time I came in.”
“I can’t,” she said. “It’s locked so thieves can’t take it. See?”
She tapped a steel mesh case around the control console.
“What’s your name?”
“Mandy.”
“Mandy, I’ll pay you more. Is there anyone in the store with the key who can access the controls and can operate this? I need to see what happened to my wife and son. Then I’m gone.”
Mandy took stock. The store was quiet. She looked to the rear.
“Chad has the key. He’s in the back.”
“Can you get him? Please, I just need to rewind it and see what happened.”
Mandy pulled out her cell phone and sent a text message.
“Excuse me?” An old man rapped his knuckles on the counter and Mandy rang in his two sodas, two chocolate bars and two bags of chips, then came back to Jeff.
“Sit here and wait.” Mandy pushed an overturned plastic milk crate toward him so he could sit behind the counter unseen. A few minutes later a lanky man in his early twenties appeared at the wire mesh door. He was not the same young man Jeff had seen on the ladder a few hours earlier when he’d entered the store for batteries.
“What do you want, Mandy?” Then, seeing Jeff by the monitor, he said, “What the—? Who’s he? What’re you doing?”
She went to Chad, opened the door and updated him in a hushed tone loud enough for Jeff to hear. Chad’s neck was tattooed with flames. He was harder than Mandy. Listening to her, his eyes narrowed as he gave Jeff an icy appraisal.
“Two cops were here,” Chad said, “asking to see our surveillance footage. They didn’t tell me why.”
“When?” Mandy asked. “I didn’t see them.”
“It was twenty minutes ago when you and I were out on our break. Kyle told me when we got back.”
“Did they find anything in the footage?” Jeff asked.
“They never saw it because Kyle doesn’t have the key. I have the key. The cops told Kyle they’d be back later. Guess they’re asking around at other places. It’s probably got something to do with your situation.”
“Will you help me?” Jeff asked.
“Maybe. You gave Mandy fifty bucks?”
“Yes.”
“I want two hundred and all you get is a look. No copies.”
“Deal.”
“First, let me copy your driver’s license, to cover my ass.”
Jeff retrieved his wallet from the counter. Chad placed Jeff’s Montana license on the small photocopier, then Jeff pulled out the cash, nearly all he had left. Chad shoved it in his pocket, then unlocked the console.
“What time do you need?”
Jeff consulted his receipt for the time and Chad expertly rewound the footage. Tiny people moved backward in fast motion. Then he enlarged the images and let the recording play at normal speed. A time and date stamp ran across the bottom.
The footage offered a clear color overhead view of the counter, the front area of the store, the door and suspect height marker. It also captured the front window, and the area above all the items on display. It only showed a limited view of the street.
People bustled by in both directions on the sidewalk, bordered by street vendors and vehicle traffic—but beyond the sidewalk the view of the vendors and the road was restricted. Jeff eyed every movement of every stranger when—bam!
“That’s them!”
His pulse raced. There was Sarah taking Cole’s picture, then Cole taking one of him with Sarah.
“Slow it down.”
Jeff stopped breathing.
He concentrated on Sarah—feeling her slip her arm around him. Now the tourist was taking the shot of the three of them. The image tore at Jeff. The tourist looks at the camera. Dead batteries. Jeff has the camera and leaves for the store. He stops to talk to Freddie with the beat-up wheelchair. Jeff gives him money.
Behind them Sarah and Cole browse at the vendor’s souvenir cart. They move closer to the road. Bit by bit they are exiting the frame.
“Can you slow it down some more?”
The footage slowed to near frame-by-frame speed.
Now, Sarah and Cole are almost out of the picture. All Jeff can make out are their feet, up to their knees, and the lower portions of cars passing by.
One stops near Sarah and Cole with such suddenness.
It just appears.
Doors open, other legs emerge from it, shoes, black shoes, or boots. Military style? Three sets? They move fast, positioning next to Sarah and Cole. Right beside them. Too close. A moment passes, then they all move to the vehicle two steps away.
Doors open.
Sarah and Cole vanish.
Doors close.
The white vehicle pulls from the curb, the rear right quarter, rear bumper, plate flash. Then someone’s head, a passerby, blocks the view; the plate is obscured. The vehicle disappears.
It’s over.
“Hold it!” Jeff pressed his finger to the screen as if to grab the image and stop time.
Chad froze the frame.
“That plate. I need that license plate!”
“Hold on.”
Chad froze the footage, then frame by frame he reversed and forwarded it until he had the best view on the plate.
“Hold on.”
Chad enlarged the plate until it was clear enough to read.
“I need something to write with,” Jeff said.
Mandy passed him a pad and pen and Jeff copied down the New York State license number.
“Can I use your computer to get online?” Jeff asked.
Chad and Mandy traded worried glances, obviously concerned that they were already too involved in whatever was going on.
“No.” Chad returned the security surveillance system to its normal state and his keys jingled. “That’s all you’re going to get from us.”
“Please.”
“We’re done.” Chad locked up the console.
“You saw what happened!” Jeff said.
“I don’t know what happened,” Chad said.
“Those people took my wife and son! I have to run this plate!”
“I don’t know what I saw, but we’re not getting involved.”
“I just need a computer.”
“We’re done,” Chad said.
Jeff looked at Mandy.
“There’s an internet café three blocks west of here,” she said. “I’ll draw you a map.”
9
New York City
In the minutes after Jeff had left the Fourteenth Precinct, Detective Vic Cordelli resumed staring at the pictures of the Griffins.
Juanita Ortiz stopped reading her notes and shifted her gaze to him.
“What is it, Vic?”
Cordelli brooded as mistrust gnawed at him and he shook his head.
“I just don’t know about this one, Juanita.”
Ortiz tapped her pen against her notes, sighing to herself.
“You got a lot going on—” Ortiz picked up her landline “—but I need you to help me get to work and run this thing, okay?”
Ortiz called the Real Time Crime Center downtown at One Police Plaza. The RTCC operated a vast computer network, including hundreds of surveillance cameras and plate readers in all boroughs. She’d requested all footage covering the time and location of Sarah and Cole Griffin’s abduction.
While that was being processed Cordelli ran the Griffins through the National Crime Information Center, which held active records on millions of cases, ranging from thefts, to missing persons, fugitives and terrorists. The query rang no bells—no arrest, warrants, nothing.
As Ortiz checked with other local, state and regional databases, Cordelli got on the phone to Montana. He hooked up with Detective Blaine Thorsen of the Laurel Police Department, who was puzzled at why the NYPD was calling about Jeff and Sarah Griffin.
“No.” Thorsen’s keyboard clicked as he consulted local computer records for Cordelli. “There’s no complaint history here. No custody orders. It’s a damn shame that they lost their baby a while back.”
“What was the cause?”
“The coroner said it was SIDS. We investigated and had no reason to believe otherwise. They’re nice people. Why are you checking? What’s going on in New York?”
“They’re here on vacation,” Cordelli said. “Jeff’s reported that Sarah and Cole were abducted less than two hours ago near Times Square.”
“Abducted? Shit, really?”
“We’re looking into it.”
“Do you have any suspects?”
“A witness gave us a couple of men and a vague vehicle description. Nothing solid. Does this sound out of character for the Griffins?”
“Completely,” Thorsen said. “That family went through hell when they lost their daughter and now this. Lord Almighty. If you need anything from our end, anything at all, let us know.”
Cordelli hung up.
His perspective was shifting.
He reviewed the report from the uniforms, the witness statement taken by Roy Duggan. He knew Duggan, knew he was a hard-ass who didn’t trust many people. Duggan wouldn’t waste his time if he didn’t sense a case here. Cordelli would have to get down to the street and talk to Freddie.
For now, he returned to the family photos, the baby, Sarah, Jeff and Cole. Cordelli considered putting out an Amber Alert for Cole but they had nothing on a vehicle.
Juanita was still working her phone and the computer. These days an investigation entailed as much mouse clicking as shoe leather.
The more Cordelli looked at the Griffin family pictures, the deeper he’d looked into himself and how hollow his life had become.
Three nights back, in the case they’d just closed, a jacked-up addict had put a gun in his face but it jammed. Cordelli’s “this-is-it” moment made him realize that nobody would mourn him because, after five years, he’d determined marriage wasn’t for him. He’d told his wife that he couldn’t breathe, that he was on a leash.
She got a lawyer and cut him loose.
The papers came through yesterday.
Seeing the Griffins underscored what he would never have.
It’s what he saw with Juanita every day. He could never tell her how it ate him up. She had Lucy, her little girl, and Bert, her husband. He was a building contractor who often surprised her with picnics in Central Park or getaway weekends to Boston.
Cordelli figured these things were factors contributing to why he had been skeptical and a bit of a prick to Jeff Griffin. Yeah, maybe, he thought, downing the last of his coffee, maybe a little.
It was stupid.
He would correct it, starting now.
Going back over everything, one theory came to mind telling him that—
“Hey, you there? Vic? Hello? Did you hear me?”
Ortiz had yanked him from his thoughts.
“I said RTCC just came through. I think we’ve really got something here. Come around, you’ve got to see this.”
10
New York City
The fleeting video images of Sarah and Cole vanishing with strangers were seared in Jeff’s mind as he hurried through New York’s streets to the internet café.
Seeing what had happened to them made it real.
Someone had taken them, pulled them from the street in a heartbeat.
Why? Who would do this? It’s insane!
His scalp prickling, he glanced at the directions to the café while rushing through a crosswalk against a red light. A Mercedes bumper came within inches of his knee—the horn blast startled him as the driver spewed obscenities. Jeff waved it off, took a deep breath and moved on.
What was he doing running around like this?
He should call Cordelli and Ortiz, alert them to the surveillance footage and the plate. He’d do that. But not yet, because when he considered the slip of paper bearing the license number, he knew he had more than hope in his hand.
This was his thread to Sarah and Cole.
Nothing was going to stop him from following it.
* * *
It was called Virtual Connections Online Coffeehouse.
Jazz music and the hissing gurgle of espresso machines filled the air of the packed café. At every table people had their noses in their BlackBerries, tablets, cell phones and laptops. All the rental computer terminals were in use. Jeff got his instructions and number from a girl in a white apron at the counter.
“Hit Enter, the rates come up. Swipe your credit card. Remember to log out. Three people are ahead of you but it won’t be long—we have twelve terminals.”
While waiting, Jeff went to the ATM next door for more cash. By the time he’d come back, a terminal in the corner had become available. The mouse was sticky and the keyboard was so worn off he had to strain to see what letters he was typing.
He took the half hour rate of seven dollars. He knew the detectives were monitoring his family credit card, so he used his company card for Clay Platt’s Auto Service. He’d explain the charges to Clay later. Once he was online he searched Google services that identified license plates. He submitted the plate number for New York State, then his credit card information.
A few seconds later the monitor displayed the data. The vehicle was a white 2010 GMC Terrain, the registered owner was Donald Dalfini and his address was 88 Steeldown Road, New York City. There was a vehicle identification number, title, registration date and other information.
Jeff printed it all off, then searched the address.
It was in the Bronx. The map put it near Neverpoint Park in the southeast section of the borough. The estimated travel time from midtown was about forty minutes.
Jeff collected his pages, folded them into his pocket and debated his next step.
Call Cordelli and Ortiz, tell them I saw the recording and now had a plate and address.
He took out Ortiz’s business card and pressed the number. The line rang, then went straight to her voice mail. He didn’t want to leave a message and he didn’t want to waste any time.
I’ll follow this on my own. I’ll take it as far as I can, then I’ll alert them once I have something.
Jeff worked his way through the crowd to the street and flagged down the first cab he saw.
11
New York City
“Run it again but slow it down.”
Cordelli rolled his chair beside Ortiz at her computer.
A few keystrokes and she replayed the video provided by the New York Police Department’s Real Time Crime Center. The images covered Forty-fourth and Forty-fifth Streets near Seventh Avenue—at the time of Sarah and Cole’s abduction.
It had taken time for the RTCC to gather the material but the number of angles, proximity and superior quality captured by its network exceeded anything from a single camera with a partial street view.
“Here we go.” Ortiz’s monitor offered an array of sharp perspectives as she zeroed in on what they needed.
Sarah Griffin emerges, taking a picture of Cole. Jeff joins them, his arm around her as Cole photographs his parents. Jeff approaches a tourist who takes a shot of the family, then looks at the camera. Jeff takes it, turns to the storefronts, talks with the panhandler in a wheelchair, then enters a store. Sarah and Cole move to a vendor’s cart, looking at souvenirs. A white SUV with tinted windows brakes at the curb. Two men exit on the curbside, leaving passenger doors open. They’re wearing ball caps, dark glasses, full beards, big, dark, front-button shirts loose enough to hide a weapon, dark jeans, dark boots, moving fast into Sarah and Cole’s space. One leans to Cole’s ear, telling him something, takes his arm, puts his other arm on Cole’s shoulder and swiftly thrusts him into the backseat. Sarah reacts with the second man, who is trying to push her back. They appear to only want the boy. But Sarah battles her way into the backseat after Cole. The men overpower her, shut the doors, abducting her, as well. The SUV pulls away…gone like it never happened…no reaction from people on the street. Jeff emerges from the store searching, asking people, calling on his cell phone. Nothing…
The images froze: Jeff Griffin alone, helpless in the street.
The scene drove it home for Ortiz and Cordelli, briefly imagining the fear twisting in Jeff’s gut before they’d kicked things into high gear. Cordelli tapped his pen to the monitor on the SUV’s New York plate.
They wrote it down.
“Get the center to run the plate through everything,” he said.
“Already on it.” Ortiz had grabbed her phone.
“We want to get units rolling to the address of the registered owner ASAP. And,” Cordelli added, “get them to track the SUV through the surveillance network. Can they tell us where it went? Where it is now?”
As Ortiz dealt with her call, Cordelli used her keyboard to replay the footage. He eyed every aspect, absorbed every detail of the chilling act that had played out in broad daylight on one of the busiest streets on earth.
“What do you think?” Ortiz asked after finishing the call.
“Who the hell are these guys? Why would they kidnap a Montana schoolteacher and her nine-year-old son?”
“It’s hard to tell by her reaction if she knows them.”
“Go back to this angle, on this one.” Cordelli touched his pen to the monitor. “I can’t make out any features on the suspects. Counting the driver, is it four men?”
“The SUV’s got a little too much tint on the windows and that glare on the windshield doesn’t help.”
“We need to look into the family’s finances, see if they had gambling or drug debts,” Cordelli said.
“I thought the people in Montana said they were clean, upstanding.”
“We’ll check again and we’ll get the FBI in Billings to assist. We’ll request warrants on the family’s computers, check their records. Maybe it’s an online thing. Maybe she was having an affair that went bad.”
“Or maybe the kid was chatting with a predator, told them about the family’s vacation?” Ortiz said.
Cordelli went to his desk and made calls.
“I’ll get things rolling to put out an Amber Alert.”
He advised their supervisor, then started pulling together photos of Sarah and Cole, notes on the SUV—the plate, color—description of the suspects.
Ortiz’s cell phone rang.
Her eyes widened slightly as she listened, then jotted notes.
“This is happening now?” Her voice betrayed a measure of incredulity before she said, “Got it,” and hung up.
“Vic, you’re not going to believe this.” Ortiz stood, pulled on her jacket. “I’ll tell you on the way. We’ve got to leave right now.”
12
Neverpoint Park, the Bronx, New York City
The address for the SUV was in a corner of Neverpoint where faded Realtors’ signs listed small, tired-looking houses as Must Sell or with Price Reduced.
“My stepfather lived here,” Jeff’s cabdriver said. “There was a landfill over there, that whole section.”
It had taken about half an hour to travel from midtown to this part of the East Bronx, which was bound by Long Island Sound and the East River. After leaving the expressway, they’d driven through a mixture of warehouses, pawnshops, drugstores, hair salons and pizzerias.
They’d passed an assortment of low-income city apartment projects before coming to neighborhoods of shingle-roofed one- and two-story houses with small yards. On Steeldown Road, parked cars lined both sides of the street. A dog was in the middle of it, his head inside a fast-food take-out bag as he worked on the remains.
For the umpteenth time, Jeff glanced at the information on the printout, then back to the street.
Who was Donald Dalfini?
The Dalfini house at 88 Steeldown Road was a frame-and-stucco bungalow with a fenced yard. There was an older, dirty Honda with a dented rear quarter parked on the street out front, but the driveway was empty. The GMC Terrain registered to the address was a late model that would cost some thirty thousand dollars. Jeff didn’t see how it fit with the income level of the neighborhood.
He told the driver to keep going.
The knot in Jeff’s stomach was tightening, making it harder for him to concentrate.
Is this a mistake?
No, he had to do this. Too much was at stake.
“Pull over and let me out,” he said when they were midway into the next block. Jeff paid the fare, tipped the driver, then gave him another twenty.
“Kill your meter and wait. I may need to return to Manhattan fast.”
“Sure, pal. Out here to get some action, huh?” The driver winked at him in the rearview mirror and reached for his copy of the New York Post.
Walking to the house Jeff’s breathing quickened, the horror rising. He couldn’t believe the past few hours: Sarah and Cole abducted, the NYPD challenging his report, leaving him alone to track the people who took his wife and son to this street.
To this house.
This was beyond his control.
Suddenly, he was besieged with questions.
What are you doing? What are you getting into? You’re not a cop. You should let Cordelli and Ortiz handle this, he thought as he came to the bungalow. But what if Sarah and Cole are being held here, right now? What it they’re being tortured, or worse?
He couldn’t live with himself if it turned out that he was this close but did nothing to save them. He’d already faced an unbearable loss. Standing in the street, in front of the house, Jeff had no choice.
My wife and son could be in there and I’m going in after them.
He wrote down the Honda’s New York plate and scanned the interior. It had an overflowing ashtray. The passenger seat was covered with flyers and junk-food wrappers. Other than this car out front there was no sign of any vehicles at the house.
The curtains were drawn.
All quiet, except for the jets flying in and out of LaGuardia.
How was he going to do this? Call the phone number he obtained on the search record printout? Or ring the doorbell? A dog’s distant bark underscored that he was losing time. There was a diffusion of light near a window. A shadow passed by a curtain.
Someone’s in there.
Jeff stepped onto the property, walked to the side of the house, bent down and cupped his face to a basement window. His eyes adjusted to a double laundry sink, a washer and dryer, clothes heaped on the floor.
He flinched.
A child’s earsplitting scream shattered the quiet.
Cole?
Something inside the house vibrated, someone moving around. Jeff started for the backyard but was stopped by a wooden fence and a gate that reached to his shoulders. He tried the handle; the gate was locked. He tried reaching over it for a latch but got nothing.
Gripping the top of the fence, he hefted himself over it, landing on a garden hose that snaked to the back. Jeff followed it past a back door to patio steps, a small deck with lawn chairs and picnic table. It was a typical family backyard.
He stopped at the sight of two children standing in the grass, some fifteen feet away: a boy about Cole’s age and a girl who looked to be four or five, both wearing swimsuits.
The hose meandered to the girl. She used both hands to hold the dripping nozzle, which she pointed at the boy, who was drenched. For a moment, water plunking from the boy to the deck was the only sound.
Then the boy, his blond water-slicked hair darkened, turned to Jeff at the same time as the girl.
The boy was not Cole.
The children’s eyes widened slightly as they stared at Jeff, speechless until the girl said, “Hello.”
At a loss, Jeff scanned the small yard when he noticed the children’s attention shift a fraction to his left.
“I have a gun,” a woman’s voice said from behind him.
Jeff turned.
The woman’s arms were extended; her hands were wrapped around the pistol aimed at him.
“Get on your knees and put your hands behind your head!”
Before Jeff could explain she shouted.
“Do it now, asshole! Or I swear to God I’ll shoot you dead.”
13
Neverpoint Park, the Bronx, New York City
Jeff raised his hands and lowered himself to the lawn.
The woman holding the gun ordered her children into the house.
Jeff got on his knees, his mind racing.
Are Sarah and Cole here? Where’s the SUV?
The woman kept her gun on him and kept her distance.
A shrub of frizzy red hair haloed her face. She had to be in her late twenties but the lines carved deep around her mouth suggested an embittered life. She had an overbite. She wore jeans and a T-shirt showing a pit bull guarding a motorcycle. Tattoos swirled along her arms.
“Get out your wallet.”
Slowly Jeff pulled it from his pocket and tossed it to her feet. Keeping her gun on him she retrieved it, examined his driver’s license and fire department photo identification.
“Montana? Why the hell are you here, trespassing, threatening my kids?”
His pulse galloping, Jeff thought it odd she hadn’t called the police. Or maybe she has and I’ll hear sirens? Her voice was throaty, she may have been drinking. She looks like someone who has been arrested before. If she’s involved in the abduction she wouldn’t want police coming to this place.
“Answer me, asshole!”
He tried to think.
“My wife and son were abducted a few hours ago near Times Square in an SUV registered to this address.”
“That’s a crock of shit!”
“It’s the truth. Do you know Donald Dalfini? Where is the SUV? Are you his wife?” The woman didn’t answer. As she considered his questions, Jeff kept talking. “Let me show you something?”
She took a moment, then nodded once. Jeff fished out Sarah’s digital camera and Cole’s key ring. He cued up the photos and held the camera to her with the ring.
“Look at these, please. Pictures we took today. I’m telling the truth.”
Hesitating, she inched forward, keeping the gun on Jeff. She took the items with her free hand, then backed away. As she looked them over Jeff told her everything—about Lee Ann, the trip, everything. He explained all the events that brought them here, to this moment.
“Tell me where my wife and son are. I’m begging you.”
Jeff saw that her eyes were blue, a bit glassy, as he searched them for her reaction. With each passing second her hardness started to fracture. As she blinked back tears her mouth began moving and she spoke, in a whisper, to herself. Jeff struggled to hear, certain she’d said, “I told Donnie it’s freakin’ wrong, stupid.”
“Please,” Jeff said. “I’m begging you. Are they okay? Are my wife and son hurt? Please.”
On the verge of tears, she dragged the back of her hand across her mouth.
“Shut up! Your shit’s got nothing to do with us!”
“It’s your SUV. It’s registered to this address.”
“It was stolen three weeks ago when I went to the Neverpoint Mall. I’ve been scared the fuckers who took it would come here.”
“Then we’re on the same side. We both need to know what happened.”
“Sheri, you need my help?”
A woman’s voice came from just inside the sliding doors to the deck. A large woman in her fifties with long white hair stood in the dim light. She was wearing an oversize Mets T-shirt and tapped the tip of a baseball bat into the palm of her left hand.
“Did you call Donnie?” Sheri asked the older woman.
“I left him a message. Did you find out who this asshole is? Want me to help you with him?”
“No, I’ve got this.”
But Sheri’s voice quavered; her hands were shaking, signaling that she was losing her internal struggle to regard Jeff as a threat. He needed to search the house, then he’d alert Cordelli and Ortiz.
“Sheri, I told you the truth,” he said. “If what you told me is true, let me look through your house for my family, then I’ll go.”
“I told you we got nothing to do with that.”
“I need to look. Put yourself in my shoes.”
As she weighed Jeff’s argument, he pressed his case further.
“Sheri, listen to me—I need to find my family. Let me look and I’ll go. No matter what you do, your SUV is linked to my family’s disappearance and police will be coming here. I can let them know you helped, or I can let them know you hid something. I think you have a good heart. I don’t believe you want to kill me because I’m telling you the truth. I need to find my wife and son.”
After studying his face she swallowed, then lowered her gun.
“All right. Belva! Bring the kids out back. This won’t take long.”
“Are you nuts, girl?”
“It’s my damn house. Do as I say!”
It was a small bungalow; the reek of cigarettes and stale beer hung in the air. The kitchen table was cluttered with plates, butter knives, an open bag of cookies, a loaf of white bread and jars of jelly and peanut butter. When Jeff entered the living room it became evident why Sheri might not call the police. The coffee table was lined with empty liquor bottles, beer cans and small clear plastic bags containing something organic.
There were newspapers open to want ads with jobs circled.
“Since Donnie got laid off at the plant, it’s been hard,” Sheri was almost apologizing to Jeff. “The mortgage, car and credit card payments are piling up. We’re looking for jobs but it’s hard, and then with the SUV stolen, that took the cake.”
Holding her gun at her side, Sheri kept her distance as she escorted Jeff in his room-by-room search on the main floor bedrooms. He recognized the intrusive aspect of a stranger in her bedroom and those of her children but it was eclipsed by the outrage forced upon him. He looked in closets, under beds, in the basement and he tapped on walls until he was satisfied that Sarah and Cole were not here. When they’d returned to the living room Jeff’s cell phone rang.
The display showed a blocked number.
His heart rate soared when he answered.
“Jeff, this is Detective Cordelli. We’ve located the SUV.”
“What about Sarah and Cole?”
Sirens and the rush of the road indicated Cordelli was in a car.
“No confirmation. We’re en route to the scene now.”
“What’s the location? I’m coming.”
“You sit tight at your hotel—we’ll keep you posted.”
“Tell me the location, Cordelli!”
“Jeff, look, we’re not there yet. I don’t know exactly what we have.”
“It’s my wife and son, tell me! I’m a firefighter. I’ve been to ‘scenes,’ Cordelli, bad ones. Other people will be gawking at the site. I have a right to be there, you know I do.”
“Jeff, I’ll call you back.”
“No, I need to know.”
At that moment Sheri and Jeff heard a distant siren that was approaching her area. Jeff figured that the police might also be acting on the Dalfinis’ address. If that was the case, he didn’t want to wait for them.
“Tell me the location now!” Jeff glanced out the window down the street. His cab was still waiting. “I swear I’ll get it, one way or another.”
Cordelli let a beat pass before relenting.
“Got a pen and paper?”
Cordelli recited the location. Jeff copied it on the newsprint border of a newspaper on Sheri’s coffee table.
“What was that all about?” Sheri said.
“The NYPD have found something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know exactly but I have to go.” Jeff collected his wallet and things from Sheri. “If it comes up, I’ll tell the police that you tried to help me.”
Sheri said nothing.
Concern deepened the worry lines on her face and she tried to absorb all that had taken place as Jeff hurried out of her home and trotted down the street to his cab.
14
Brooklyn, New York City
The 2010 GMC Terrain burned within sight of the Brooklyn Bridge, in the loading area of an abandoned warehouse at the fringe of a derelict industrial section of Brooklyn Heights.
Officers in a marked NYPD car patrolling the zone were first to spot it. They’d called it in with the plate number. By the time crews from Engine 205, Ladder 118, arrived the SUV was engulfed, the blaze blasting outward and skyward, turning the vehicle into a mass of ferocity.
The inferno crackled and hissed, discharging sparks and flakes of melted debris. Firefighters stretched a line, keeping a safe distance using the reach of the hose stream. Explosions can propel white-hot fragments with bullet force. Like all first responders, they knew every call could be their last. Their firehouse had lost eight members in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Cordelli and Ortiz pulled up amid the sirens and lights of more arriving emergency vehicles. They were directed to Fire Lieutenant Van Reston. A crowd was collecting at the yellow tape that cordoned the area. Cordelli had to shout over the rattle-roar of the pumper.
“What do you have?”
“Arson, and given the intensity, I’m guessing they used an incendiary device.”
Cordelli took down Reston’s information in his notebook.
“Anyone inside?”
“Don’t know yet. We’ll know soon as we can have a look.”
“Thanks.” Cordelli and Ortiz scanned the area for surveillance cameras. It didn’t look promising. They went to Officer Marktiz, the uniform who’d called it in.
“Any witnesses?”
“Naw.” Marktiz shook his head as he retrieved more tape from the trunk of his car. “Nobody stepped up, nobody around. Nothing. We’ll help with a canvass.”
Cordelli and Ortiz knew coming into this that it didn’t look good.
The vehicle used in the abduction of Sarah and Cole Griffin came up stolen, now it had been torched—all premeditated.
“They must’ve had a switch car ready,” Ortiz said. “I don’t like this, it’s all too methodical. Now we could have homicides. I do not freakin’ like this.”
“Yup.”
Thick smoke clouds churned from the wreck as crews doused the flames. Cordelli and Ortiz turned as a gust sent a choking column their way. When they turned back, Cordelli faced an old problem walking at him: Detective Larry Brewer.
“What the hell is he doing here?”
Cordelli had worked with Brewer a few years back. The guy’s ego was bigger than Yankee Stadium and fit with his near-inhuman aura. Brewer’s utter baldness accentuated his bulging black eyes and his pointed ears, earning him the nickname “Diablo.”
“What’re you doing at my scene, Cordelli?” Brewer’s jaw worked a wad of gum.
“We’re on a case.”
“You’re contaminating my scene. We’ve got an ongoing undercover operation with the task force.”
“We’re working an abduction—mother and son—and that’s our vehicle.”
“I saw your alert. My case takes precedence over yours, we’re taking over. It’s ours now. My captain will advise your supervisor to advise you to skip back to Midtown South and get me your notes.”
“We’re not going anywhere, Larry,” Cordelli said. “We’re going to wait here for Lieutenant Reston to give us the green light on our scene.”
Brewer grimaced, twisting his neck until his Adam’s apple popped. “You’re in our way, Vic.” Brewer stepped into Cordelli’s space just as Brewer’s cell phone rang. He answered it, pointed his chin to the other side of a patrol car and he and his partner stepped away.
“He’s a piece of work,” Ortiz said.
“He’s a slab of misery.”
With the sound of pressured water against metal, Cordelli turned sadly back to the smoldering ruin.
“I’ll bet we have somebody in there, Juanita.”
“I’m praying we don’t. Look.”
Beyond the tape, Jeff Griffin had stepped from a taxi to anxiously survey the scene. Cordelli cursed himself for giving up the address, but Griffin was right—he would’ve found out.
Cordelli had requested two cars be dispatched to the house of the registered owner on Steeldown Road in the Bronx, and he’d hoped the units got to it before Brewer got a chance to claim it.
Now, a firefighter at the wreckage was shouting and signaling for Lieutenant Reston to look into the SUV’s interior. Whatever was inside could not be viewed from a distance. Cordelli saw Reston lean in, saw his face crease before he directed his men to their next steps.
“Damn,” Cordelli said.
It was clear to him what they’d found.
* * *
It was clear to Jeff Griffin, too.
He was experienced with these scenes.
From where he stood, he read Reston’s face and it hit him.
Oh, Jesus.
The dread Jeff had locked in the darkest reaches of his heart lashed against the chains that held it there. He saw the fire crews unfold the large yellow tarps—the universal flag of tragedy, the confirmation of death. He watched them take care positioning the covering. Protecting the scene while respecting the dignity of the dead.
He was familiar with the funereal procedure.
He’d performed it himself.
He knew what happened to fire victims—how their skin cracked, how their bones broke, how the skulls could shatter and how the bodies could be burned beyond recognition.
Sarah and Cole.
He began shaking, pierced by one thought.
I have to see them. I have to see for myself.
Everything went white.
Time froze.
He could not immediately remember physically getting as close as he did to the SUV’s charred remains before hands seized him and dragged him back while he screamed for Sarah and Cole. All he saw was the brilliant yellow sheet. All he could imagine was the horror under it. He didn’t know how much time had passed or how he came to be in the rear seat of a police car with his hands covering his nose and mouth, blood roaring in his ears. For a moment or two he’d cried and when he dried his face, the clink of the handcuffs around his wrists alerted him to a man standing just outside the car.
“Mr. Griffin? I’m Detective Brewer. Can you hear me now?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I’m going to start again. You have the right to remain silent....”
15
Manhattan, New York City
Jeff Griffin was placed in a stark interview room at One Police Plaza.
He’d waived his right to an attorney.
Left alone to contend with the agony of no one confirming that Sarah and Cole were dead, all he could do was pray.
Please, tell me it’s not them in the SUV, I’m begging you.
Adrenaline rippled through him.
He flattened his hands on the wooden table in front of him while memories strobed, snapshots of standing near Times Square with Sarah and feeling her arm around him. Tight. We have to hang on and work this out. Snapshots of the joy in Cole’s face as he marveled at the skyscrapers.
They can’t be dead.
By degrees Jeff regained the strength to keep from losing control. He had to hang on. He had to keep hoping, he told himself as events after the fire came into focus. Upon his arrest, Cordelli had rushed to the car, confronting the bald detective, demanding answers.
“Hey, Brewer! Where the hell are you taking him?”
Brewer had flashed his palm to Cordelli while he ended a cell phone call with “—okay, so we’re good at Steeldown Road in the Bronx.” Then he’d turned to Cordelli. “Step back, Vic. He’s mine now. We’ve got two homicides, this is our operation.”
“He’s got nothing to do with this the way you think, Brewer.”
“You don’t know squat. Just get your notes to me or it’s your ass!”
Brewer had gotten into the passenger seat of the unmarked Ford and closed the door. His partner, Klaver, was behind the wheel. The motor roared and its siren yelped as the Crown Vic left for the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan and NYPD headquarters downtown. They took Jeff up the elevator to a cell-like room where he waited.
Time swept by and he’d stared at the cinder-block walls and at his own reflection in the two-way mirror where he saw a man struggling not to fall into the abyss.
Sarah. Cole.
A click. The door opened. Brewer and Klaver entered.
They dropped file folders and notebooks on the table, dragged and positioned the two empty chairs opposite Jeff, then filled them.
“Are my wife and my son dead?”
The room went cold.
The detectives stared at Jeff.
Klaver was fair-skinned and wore the somber, pointed face of an undertaker. Brewer’s expression burned with the intensity of an embittered cop bereft of compassion.
“The medical examiner and our people are still processing,” Brewer said.
“You can tell me the presumed age and gender,” Jeff said.
“Can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“The remains are in bad shape. We’re awaiting confirmation.”
“Bull. You have an idea who’s in that SUV.”
“I know this is a horrible time,” Brewer said. “We’ll let you know as soon as we can. We’ve been reading your report and statement to Detectives Cordelli and Ortiz. We’ve made a lot of calls here and in Montana and right now we need to ask you a few questions.”
“About what? I’ve been through this with Cordelli, he knows everything.”
“The vehicle is linked to our operation.”
“What operation?”
“We can’t disclose details. A lot is in play right now.”
“What does that mean? What the hell is this? My wife and son were abducted, they could be dead and you don’t give a damn!”
“It doesn’t get any more serious than this and we’ll get through it faster if you help us to help you.”
Blinking back his anger Jeff looked away, shaking his head in disgust.
“This won’t take long, Jeff.” Klaver spoke in the softer voice of the “good cop” and opened a folder. “There are a few things we need your help on.”
Jeff’s silence invited Klaver’s first question.
“Take us back, step by step, to your arrival in New York, up to and immediately after you reported Sarah and Cole had been abducted.”
Jeff inhaled and recounted every detail for the detectives. Afterward, he answered Klaver’s follow-up questions, then Brewer weighed in.
“You and Sarah had lost a child. It took a toll on your marriage. You were planning to separate and were arguing about it at the time of Sarah and Cole’s disappearance, is that correct?”
“What is this?”
“Is that correct?” Brewer said.
“Yes, I told Cordelli everything.”
“Not quite everything,” Brewer said.
“Did you accuse Neil Larson of having an affair with your wife?” Klaver continued.
Jeff was stunned at how they’d found out and how they were using it.
“Jeff?”
What was happening?
“Did you accuse Neil Larson of having an affair with your wife?”
Brewer watched Jeff swallow hard before answering. “Yes.”
“And did you confront him in a school parking lot where he worked with your wife, to the point others had to restrain you?” Brewer asked.
Jeff hesitated at the twisting of the truth.
“Yes.”
“And did that form part of your argument with Sarah just before you reported that she and Cole had been abducted?”
“Yes.”
“So you confirm these facts?” Brewer said.
“Yes.”
“What’s your relationship with Donnie and Sheri Dalfini?” Brewer asked.
“Relationship? I don’t know them. It’s their SUV.”
“How did you get their address in the Bronx?”
“I went to a store, Metro Gifts or something, and got them to let me look at their security camera. It was pointed at where Sarah and Cole were standing and I got the plate. Then I searched the plate online and took a cab to the address.”
“Why didn’t you check with the police first?” Brewer asked.
“I had the feeling that no one was looking for my family.”
Brewer and Klaver paused to consider Jeff’s answer.
“Jeff,” Brewer said, “as a firefighter you’ve been to death scenes. You probably know a lot of people in law enforcement back home in Montana. You probably know something of investigative procedures.”
Jeff said nothing, uneasy at the picture being drawn around him.
“You seemed to get out to Steeldown Road very fast to talk to Sheri Dalfini about her stolen SUV. Almost as if you wanted to get to the Dalfini residence before police but immediately after you’d reported Sarah and Cole’s abduction. And then you got to the fire at the speed of light.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It just doesn’t look right to us at this stage,” Brewer said. “It just doesn’t add up.”
The floor shifted under Jeff as realization rolled over him with seismic force.
“I don’t like what you’re implying.”
Brewer shifted his lower jaw. In all his time and over all the cases he’d worked he’d come to respect one abiding rule: at the outset of an investigation everyone lies, and when the facts and pieces of evidence emerge, the lies melt like dirty snow in the rain.
“Jeff, I want you to be straight with me here,” Brewer said. “When you believed your wife was maybe fucking Neil Larson and going to leave you I bet it hurt, what with just losing your baby and all. And I’m thinking that maybe you fantasized about making sure Sarah never left you, that maybe you came up with an elaborate foolproof plan. You take her to a location, step away, the cameras record it—”
“What! That’s crazy!”
“Maybe something went wrong, or you didn’t know who you were dealing with.”
“This is insane! Tell me who was in that SUV!”
Glaring at Jeff, Brewer reached for his BlackBerry, entered a command.
“This was in the SUV, Jeff. It matches the description in your report.”
He slid the device to Jeff, carefully studying his reaction as Jeff looked at the crisp photograph of what remained of a New York Jets ball cap. Only a ball cap. Half consumed by fire, half scorched, but clearly identifiable, small, white with the green jet patch on white, familiar to Jeff as the one they bought for Cole.
Oh, Jesus. Oh, Christ, no.
Jeff looked at it until it blurred.
They’re gone.
Jeff ached to pull Cole and Sarah from the darkness.
Sitting there in that small police room, the shock of seeing Cole’s burned ball cap propelled him back to Montana and the morning he’d found Lee Ann.
Her little face all blue, her mouth a tiny O.
His futile efforts to save her.
He thought of his baby daughter with Sarah and Cole and that moment he saw the three of them through the window from his pickup in the driveway.
That perfect moment.
He struggled to hang on to those images but they were gone.
Jeff put his face in his hands and in that cold, hard room he never felt the heat of Brewer’s and Klaver’s stares as Brewer slowly slid back his BlackBerry. Chairs scraped; the detectives gathered their files.
“We’ll leave you alone to consider matters,” Brewer said.
The door opened to ringing phones, conversations and the squawk of walkie-talkies. Above the din Jeff recognized Cordelli’s voice in a fragment of conversation. “Brewer! Did you get my message? My supervisor called yours and—”
The door closed, leaving Jeff alone, adrift in a sea of torment. Minutes passed with the same questions hammering against his skull: Who would steal his wife and son? Who? Why? His confusion and grief coiled into anger.
He would find them.
Whoever did this, he would hunt them down.
The door handle clicked.
This time Brewer entered with Cordelli.
“You can go now. Cordelli will take you out,” Brewer said.
“What?” Jeff threw his question to Cordelli, then back to Brewer.
“Thank you for your help. We’ll be in touch,” Brewer said.
Jeff swallowed.
“What about my wife and son? Can I see them?”
“It’s not them,” Brewer said.
“It’s not them?” Jeff absorbed the news.
“The medical examiner just confirmed the remains belong to two adult males. We’re still working on identifying them.”
“What the hell is this? You show me my son’s cap, you lead me to believe my family’s dead, you accuse me of planning this whole thing. What is this?”
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Rick Mofina
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Триллеры
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: A loving family, fracturing under pressure… Jeff Griffin, a mechanic, and his wife, Sarah, travel from Montana to Manhattan to give their nine-year-old son, Cole, his dream vacation as they secretly face the heart-wrenching turmoil that has them teetering on divorce. In the wake of their heartbreak, a mother and son disappear…While sightseeing near Times Square, Jeff steps into a store to buy batteries for their camera—but upon returning to the street he finds that Sarah and Cole have vanished. A frantic father searches for clues as time ticks down… Battling his anguish and police suspicions, Jeff fights to rescue Sarah and Cole.He knows now that the love he and Sarah have is worth saving. But he could lose the chance to tell her amid growing fears that they have become entangled in an unfolding plot that could have global consequences.