by Rick Mofina
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.
CHAPTER 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.
CHAPTER 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.
CHAPTER 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.
