“There are to be no information leaks from this task force, and I mean none. Anyone who is thinking of calling their hook at whatever media outlet better think again if they value their jobs. The last thing we need is some media circus.”
She turned and stared directly at Emily.
“Am I coming in loud and clear?” she said.
“Not that clear,” Emily said with her charming southern smile. “But definitely loud.”
Chapter 22
Over the next hour, a Major Case management setup was hashed out. A command group of all the chiefs would be situated at One PP along with the intelligence coordinators who would be in charge of collecting, processing, analyzing, and disseminating all the different leads and breaks in the case. A rapid-start operations group along with a separate investigative group was put on call to be sent to pertinent crime scenes and victim residences.
Emily and I, as the lead investigative coordinators, headed directly out to the Skinners’ residence in the River-dale section of the Bronx. We didn’t have to be told twice to get away from all that brass.
My phone rang as we got on the West Side Highway.
“Bennett here.”
“Bennett here, too, Detective,” Seamus said. “I wanted to go over the plans for you-know-who’s you-know-what.”
He was talking about Mary Catherine. Her birthday was coming up on Wednesday, and we were planning a big surprise bash. I shook my head. I’d better come up with something good. With the funny way she was acting lately, this was pretty much going to have to be the social event of the year or I was doomed.
“I’m busy right this second,” I said. “I’ll have to call you back.”
“Oh, I get it. You’re with her right now, are ya?” Seamus said in a conspiratorial tone. “Oh, she’s a cute one, all right. I’d have a crush on her, too, if I was your age. Give me a note, and I’ll pass it to her. You know you want to.”
I hung up on him.
“Who was that?” Emily said.
“Wrong number,” I mumbled.
Emily shook her head at me with a smile.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you. How do you do it?” she said. “Great cop. Great dad. Head screwed on straight. How does that happen with ten kids? Oh, and a cat. Now that’s just showing off, don’t you think?”
I laughed as I gunned it north toward the Bronx.
“You see right through me,” I said. “I rent the cat for atmosphere.”
Chapter 23
The Skinners’ house was on Independence Avenue about a half mile west of the Henry Hudson Parkway near Wave Hill. A stunning view of the Hudson River rolled silently behind the ivy-draped rambling Tudor.
There was a genteel country air about the landscaped neighborhood. Getting out of the car, I thought about how nice it would be to have a backyard. I imagined the peace and quiet as I sat on warm grass with a cold drink. More like fantasized. Within the confines of New York City, genteel country airs with river views usually go for about eight figures.
We met Schultz and Ramirez in the horseshoe-shaped gravel drive.
“Last night around ten, Chelsea snuck out of her house to party downtown with a couple of girlfriends,” Ramirez said, reading his notes. “They said they let her out of a cab here on the corner of West Two Hundred and Fifty-fourth at around two-thirty. They didn’t want to drop her right in front of the house because they didn’t want to wake up her parents. Her mom found Chelsea ’s bag with her cell phone in it on the driveway just before six. He must have been waiting for her. Nobody saw any cars or people. Neighbors didn’t hear a thing.”
“Already checked out the Skinners,” Schultz said. “Parents are clean, but Chelsea got a desk-appearance ticket for drinking on the subway about a year ago. Chelsea, apparently, is a bit of a handful.”
I counted four luxury cars parked in the Skinners’ driveway as we walked toward the portico. A tall, upset-looking man in a pinstripe suit pulled open the door as we were about to ring the bell.
“Well, have you heard anything?” he said, staring at my shield. “Have you found Chelsea? I want answers.”
“Are you Harold Skinner?” I said.
“No, I’m not. Mr. Skinner is busy dying of grief that his daughter has been taken from him.”
A plump middle-aged woman appeared behind him.
“Mark,” she said to the man. “You’re my brother and I love you, but would you, please, just for one second, do me a favor and stop?
“I’m Rachael Skinner,” she said, shaking my hand. “Please come in.”
About a dozen of Chelsea ’s extended family were sitting in the dead silent living room. They were red-eyed and shattered-looking, like mourners at a wake. Another tight-knit family was in agony this morning.
“Is Mr. Skinner around?” I said. “We’re going to have to speak to him as well.”
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Skinner said. “He’s resting right now. Sedated, actually. The family physician left a few minutes before you arrived. Tell me something, if you would, Detective. I heard that the other boy who was taken was found with ashes on his forehead. That’s a Catholic thing, isn’t it, with the ashes? We’re Jewish. What do ashes signify?”
How did she know about that? I thought. We’d kept that out of the media coverage. Someone in the task force must have spilled it. My money was on Deputy Mayor Hottinger. So much for plugging all the leaks.
“It’s a sign of willingness for Catholics to repent for their sins,” I said. “In addition to abstaining from indulgences like smoking or drinking and eating meat on Friday, it’s a way to symbolically share Christ’s sacrifice during Lent.”
“I see. Then this person, the kidnapper, is Catholic?”
“We don’t know what he is,” I told the poor woman truthfully. “We don’t even know that Chelsea ’s been kidnapped. Don’t assume the worst, ma’am. Let’s take things one at a time.”
Chapter 24
There was a family-photo wall in the hallway leading to the kitchen. Chelsea was a beautiful black-haired girl with striking light blue, almost gray, eyes. In the latest picture, she was wearing a hoodie with Lifeguard written across the front.
“Your daughter’s beautiful,” Emily said as Mrs. Skinner guided us to a large, bright kitchen table.
“ Chelsea had a brain tumor when she was six, a medulloblastoma on her brain stem,” the kind woman said quietly as she poured us coffee. “She completely beat it. The operations. The chemo. She’s a fighter. This is nothing compared to that. She’ll get out of this. I know she will.”
I wished I could have shared Mrs. Skinner’s startling conviction.
Some PD TARU guys arrived and got up on the Skinners’ wall phones and cell phones. An FBI tech from the New York office showed up as well and installed some e-mail-tracing software, in case our guy decided to switch tactics.
Mrs. Skinner showed us Chelsea ’s room on the third floor. It had a huge, sloping beamed ceiling and a little balcony that overlooked the garden and the covered in-ground pool. It was sleek with modern furniture. It looked more like a rich thirty-five-year-old’s room than a teenager’s. Jacob’s room by comparison looked unsophisticated, childish.
There had to be a link between Chelsea and Jacob. They were both only children, both rich. We’d learned that Chelsea attended Fieldston, a nearby expensive private school that was close to Horace Mann, where Jacob had gone to high school. Had they known each other? Maybe there was a teacher who had worked at both places. Was that the connection?
One thing I was sure of, this guy was definitely not picking these kids out of a hat.
After Mrs. Skinner left, Emily pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and got on the kid’s laptop. Chelsea ’s home page was her MySpace page.
Over Emily’s shoulder I read parts of Chelsea ’s blog. Some of what she was saying was pretty out there. Sexual boastings. Violent fantasies. I was shocked to see that there were some fairly explicit photos of her.
“Is this wha
t kids are up to now?” Emily said.
I shook my head alongside her as a photo of Chelsea with mascara-thick eyelashes leered from the screen. Was this what I would have to look forward to when my daughter Julia turned seventeen in three years?
“God, I hope not,” I said. “Note to self: Become Mennonite and save money for house in the middle of nowhere. I have ten kids. We could learn to farm, right? Get back to Mother Earth, reduce our carbon footprint, and build character all at the same time.”
“Don’t forget the cat,” Emily said.
“Socky. Right,” I said. “He could herd the cows.”
Chapter 25
I was coming out of Chelsea ’s room when the phone rang. But it wasn’t the Skinners’ phone. It was mine.
“Mike, hello. How’d you sleep? Well, I hope?”
Son of a bitch! I stopped in midstride, adrenaline jolting through me like live wire. It was him! The sly bastard was calling me instead of the house.
“Fine,” I said, ungluing myself from the carpet and racing downstairs into the study, where we were set up. I found the department tech and pointed excitedly at my phone. He retrieved a handheld voice recorder from a laptop bag and handed it to me. I held it by my phone’s earpiece.
“I’m glad you called back,” I said. “Where are you? Maybe we could talk in person?”
“Maybe,” he said. “But then again, maybe not, Mike. How do you like the Skinners’ place? Exquisite, wouldn’t you say?”
What? He knew I was here? Or was he just guessing? Was he watching the place?
“And that view,” he continued. “The grandeur of the mighty river beneath those austere crags. Truly to die for, if you’ll excuse the term. Thomas Cole himself could hardly have done it justice, wouldn’t you agree? But what am I doing, dropping such names to a policeman? Thomas Cole was a painter, you see. He started the Hudson River School.”
“Was Frederic Edwin Church a Hudson River School guy?” I said, to keep him talking.
“Why, yes, he was, Mike. You know your art history. Where did you go to school?”
The police academy, scumbag, I felt like saying to him.
“ Manhattan College,” I said instead.
“Never heard of it,” the kidnapper said.
“Well, it’s pretty small,” I said. “Could we speak to Chelsea? We’re ready to give you what you want if you’d only tell us.”
Then he said the words I was dreading.
“If that’s the case, then listen closely,” he said. “I want you to come and get it. I want you to come and get little Chels and bring her back to Mumsy. You know the drill. Get in a car. Ten minutes. You can bring your pretty little FBI friend, too, if you like.”
Chapter 26
The Circle Line tour boat was coming through the Amtrak swing bridge down on the Harlem River as we raced across the Henry Hudson Bridge.
And if you look up, ladies and gents, I thought, emergency lights blazing through the lower level’s E-Z Pass lane, you’ll see an authentic, stressed-out New York City cop about to break the sound barrier.
I clicked the siren to full auto as we blasted through the Manhattan-side tolls at a stomach-churning seventy.
We’d just been told Chelsea was in Harlem. I couldn’t lose another kid. If there was any possible way to get to her before it was too late, I was going to do it.
“Where are you now?” the kidnapper said into the ear of my hands-free headset. Again, he’d insisted on guiding me street by street. My own personal insane OnStar operator.
“On the Manhattan side of the Henry Hudson Bridge,” I said.
“Did you know that it was built by Robert Moses back in the thirties using New Deal labor?” he said. “In twenty years, Moses managed to build most of New York City ’s major bridges, parkways, and public beaches. The Twin Towers were knocked down almost ten years ago, and it’s still just a pit. Our civilization is winding down, Mike. It’s obvious. So’s our planet. Take a fork out of the drawer and turn off the oven timer. This place is done.”
“Hello? Hello? I think the signal’s breaking up,” I said as I whipped off the headset to clear the sweat and bull crap out of my ears. Beside me, Emily was working two radios and her cell phone as we gunned it south. I cupped my cell’s microphone.
“How are we looking?” I whispered.
Besides Aviation and the Emergency Service Unit backing us up, the phone company was on board now, actively working on a trace.
“Verizon’s still trying to triangulate,” Emily said. “Nothing so far.”
As I drove, I racked my brain to come up with a way to try to throw the kidnapper off balance, turn the tables on him. He was in charge, and what was worse from the smug tone of his voice, it sounded like he knew it.
“Are you there?” he was saying angrily when I patched back in.
“Hello? Hello?” I said. “The signal seems to be back now.”
“The signal, huh? I believe you, Mike. Almost. Now take the George Washington Bridge exit.”
Shit, I thought. That exit was already blowing past on my left. I spun the wheel, mercilessly mowing down a family of construction traffic cones on the exit’s shoulder. We missed a head-on with a construction light cart by a few millimeters as I just made it back into the lane.
“Can you hear me now?” the kidnapper said. “Head over to Broadway, if it’s not too much trouble.”
Chapter 27
I followed the kidnapper’s instructions through Washington Heights and on deeper into Harlem. As we turned off Broadway at St. Nicholas Avenue, we passed a series of enormous housing projects that were as stark and depressing as warehouses in an industrial plant.
Bulletproof windows began to appear on the corner delis and Chinese takeouts. It looked a lot like the section of the Bronx where we’d found Jacob Dunning.
I was on another magical misery tour of the inner city, complete with constant narration.
“Take a good look around, Mike,” the kidnapper said. “Remember the War on Poverty? Poverty won. African Americans and Latino immigrants were lured into the cities because of jobs, and then the jobs moved away with all the white people. The racial and economic inequality that still exists in this country makes me physically sick sometimes.
“It’s not just here, either. Look at places like Newark, Pittsburgh, St. Louis. It’s the twenty-first century, and still there’s a lack of decent employment and no shortage of discrimination toward people of color.”
“Where to now?” I said.
“You’re getting warm. Make a left onto One Hundred and Forty-first, a left onto Bradhurst, and a right onto One Hundred and Forty-second,” the kidnapper said.
At 142nd, a single, leaning brownstone stood on the corner of a mostly rubble-filled lot. I slowed, scanning its surrounding weeds. I spotted a diaper, a mattress, and a rusty shopping cart but, thankfully, no Chelsea.
“Go to two-eight-six. That’s where she is, Mike. Time for me to go. Tell Mom I said hi,” he said and hung up.
I rapidly scanned the buildings and screeched to a stop in front of the address. I jumped out of the car and stared up at the onion-shaped dome above the three-story building in front of me.
“It’s a mosque,” I radioed our backup. “I repeat. We’re at two-eight-six One Hundred and Forty-second Street. It’s on the north side of the street. We can’t wait. We’re going in the front.”
We opened a pair of elaborate doors and rushed into a large, shabby, definitely unchic lobby. It looked like the mosque had been converted from an old movie theater.
“Hello?” I called as we entered an open area where the seats had once been. There were windows in its walls now, and the floor was covered in Oriental rugs. It must be the prayer room, I figured. The light-filled space was divided in half by a large lace screen, and one of the walls was covered in elaborate tile.
A stocky black man wearing a bright green, red, and yellow kufi on his head appeared in a doorway at the other end of the room. He hurri
ed over, shock and anger in his face.
“Who are you? What are you doing here? You’re not allowed in here. Your shoes! You can’t wear shoes here in the mussalah. Are you crazy? Can’t you see this is a holy place?”
I showed him my shield.
“I’m with the police department. We’re looking for a girl who was-”
That’s when the Muslim man grabbed me violently by the lapels of my suit jacket.
“I don’t care who you are,” he cried, dragging me toward the door. “This is a sacrilege! Get out of here now! You have no right to do this!”
As we were busy struggling, I remembered the Harlem mosque incident in the seventies in which an NYPD cop had been killed. A police community conflict was all we needed now in the middle of a kidnapping.
A moment later, the muscular man suddenly fell to his side. Emily had tripped him somehow and now had her knee in his back as she ratcheted her cuffs onto his wrists. I helped her pull the hysterical man to his feet.
“Sir,” Emily said. “Please calm yourself. We’re sorry about the shoe mistake. We were unaware and apologize. We are law enforcement officers looking for a kidnapped girl. We were told she was here. Please help us. A young girl’s life is at stake.”
“I see,” he said. “I’m Yassin Ali, the imam here. I lost my temper. Of course, I’ll do anything to help.”
Emily undid his cuffs, and he guided us back out into the foyer.
“You say a girl is being held here?” he said, staring at us in disbelief. “But that’s impossible. There hasn’t been anyone here since morning prayer. What’s this girl’s name? Is she a member of the congregation?”
I showed him Chelsea ’s picture.
“A white girl?” he said, perplexed. “No. There’s no way. There must be a mistake.”
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