by Rick Mofina
Empty.
The room had been made. The beds were turned down crisply. Fresh towels were folded in the polished bathroom. He conjured up memories of Sarah, Cole, himself, preparing to leave earlier that morning.
He stood there, unable to move, unable to think, and stared at nothing, like the sole survivor left behind in the aftermath. He began to inventory the room and noticed something was not right.
Their luggage.
Some of Sarah’s clothes were still nicely folded, a ghostly reminder of her, but some of his clothes had spilled from their bags. Jeff allowed that maids repositioned items to clean but that was not how he and Sarah had left things. Was it? Or had someone rummaged through their clothes, looking for something?
Jeff went to the compartment where he’d left extra cash and traveler’s checks, relieved they were still there. But soon unease pinged in the back of his mind.
What is it?
He detected a smell beyond the carpet freshener and disinfectant tile cleaner, something familiar, a weakening trace of cologne.
Where had he smelled it before?
The men at the elevator.
Was it the same cologne in his room?
Jeff’s heart rate picked up before he recalled that he’d brushed against one of them. Did he smell it on his shirt? Maybe he shouldn’t have refused Cordelli’s offer to have cops stay with him. Maybe he should call him.
Maybe I’m just imagining everything?
Jeff started a shower to clear his mind.
He checked to ensure his cell phone’s volume was up and set it beside the room’s wireless phone, on a shelf near the shower. Cordelli would have alerted me to any calls, right? As steam rose around him, guilt and fear rippled through his body. He replayed the day, how it started in turmoil with Sarah before the vanishings, then Cordelli’s suspicions, how he’d tracked the SUV to the Bronx to have a gun pointed at him, the fire, two murders and Brewer’s accusations.
It’s all too much.
It’s my fault. Like it was with Lee Ann.
And like it was with Lee Ann, he was helpless again.
My daughter died in my care and I could do nothing.
Where are they? God, are they like that kid, bound somewhere?
Dying.
What should he do? What could he do?
Jeff made the water ice-cold to feel something other than useless and sorry for himself. His skin went numb.
But he endured.
He closed his hands into fists and hammered the walls.
He couldn’t cry. He couldn’t give up. He would never give up.
After the shower he checked his cell phone.
He checked it every minute.
Jeff thought about what Cordelli had said about the alert and reasoned that he should tell their family and friends back home because they were going to hear, if they hadn’t already with all the police calls to Montana.
Sarah had an aunt and uncle in Billings. In Laurel, there was Sarah’s principal. Jeff also needed to tell his boss, Clay, Sarah’s friends, Alice and Val. He scrolled through their numbers.
What do I say? How do I begin to tell them?
His thoughts scattered beyond the horror he was facing, back over time, beyond the agony he’d suffered with his daughter’s death, back to the moment he’d learned his mother and father had been killed.
It was the summer he’d turned fifteen and his parents were on vacation in Canada while he stayed with his grandfather, who’d given him a summer job helping him with his towing business.
It was the weekend and they’d gone to the fair in Billings to have some fun. Jeff loved the shooting gallery and the hot dogs. He remembered how he had just bought one for himself and his grandfather when a couple of highway patrol troopers, friends of his grandfather, appeared and took his grandfather aside.
The troopers’ grave faces contrasted with the joyous air of the fair. They raised their voices over the noise and Jeff heard fragments as one of them told his grandfather, “We tried your radio in your truck…somebody told us you were here at the fair…so damned sorry…”
Their eyes turned to Jeff, and they removed their hats when they joined his grandfather to approach him. Something terrible was coming and he felt his body go numb.
“Jeff, son,” his grandpa started, the tears rolling down his face, “your mom and dad… Oh, Jesus…”
Jeff let the hot dogs fall to the grass.
At fifteen, the world he knew had ended amid the deafening rock music, the diesel roar of the Scrambler and screams from the midway.
Jeff was at a loss then, as he was now, confronting the need to tell their people in Montana what had happened to Sarah and Cole. He thought hard about calling but he couldn’t bear to hear their voices, their horror and their questions.
He wrote the same short text message to each of them:
Sarah and Cole are lost in NYC. Very worried. Police trying to find them. Tell you more when I know it. Please pray.
Jeff closed his phone, stood at his hotel window and searched the lights of Manhattan as sirens echoed in the night.
CHAPTER 17
Manhattan, New York City
Nearly four miles south of where Jeff Griffin stood, Sheri Dalfini was on the brink.
At any moment this redheaded piece of work from the Bronx was going to give up something. Brewer was sure of it as he turned the laptop so she could see the arson-homicide photographs.
A little visual aid.
The two figures in the pictures were barely recognizable as human. Amid the two black masses there was a piece of shirt here, a shoe there, something that looked like a hand.
Sheri’s gasp bounced off the walls of the interview room at One Police Plaza where Brewer had been questioning her relentlessly since they’d released Griffin. Brewer was using a different strategy with her than he’d used with Griffin.
“Take a good, long look, Sheri,” Brewer said, “because if you don’t start telling me what I need to know, things are going to get real bad for you.”
Brewer showed her slide after slide.
The victims looked like charcoal mannequins. Their hair and facial features had been burned off, leaving split skin and white teeth exposed in a death grimace.
“Who are these people, Sheri?”
She shook her head.
“Where are Sarah and Cole Griffin?”
She continued shaking her head, frustrating Brewer.
“We’re talking about charges with four victims, Sheri—two dead and two missing.”
Tears began rolling down her face.
“You’re not telling me everything you know.” Brewer shoved two sticks of gum into his mouth and stared at her impassively. She was something, all right, with that explosion of red hair, the T-shirt with the pit bull and the Harley. Butterflies, flowers, dragons and angel warriors swirled along her arms. Brewer never got the tattoo craze and never would.
While Sheri sniffled at the crime scene pictures he resumed flipping through his folder on Sheri Marie Dalfini, age twenty-nine, born in Brooklyn, married to Donald Dean Dalfini, age thirty-four. Two children: Benjamin, age eight, and Saleena, age five.
Sheri’s occupation: mostly salesclerk. Donnie had been a factory worker at the Jebzite Foundry where they made sledgehammers before he was laid off about six months ago.
Sheri and Donnie were known to the police.
When she was nineteen Sheri was charged with shoplifting cosmetics. The charges were later dismissed. When she was twenty-two Sheri was charged with felony credit card fraud. She’d bought concert tickets, clothes and jewelry from someone who’d obtained them with a stolen credit card. Again, the charges were dismissed.
As for Donnie, two years ago he was charge
d with assault after beating up a guy outside a bar in the Bronx. Donnie claimed self-defense. The case against him was dropped.
The handgun at Sheri’s home was registered to Rosie Dalfini, Donnie’s mother. Sheri said Donnie wanted it in the house because they feared the people who stole their SUV might come after their family.
The SUV, the white 2010 GMC Terrain, was the key.
Brewer’s task force was alerted as soon as the SUV had emerged in Sarah and Cole Griffin’s abduction. And when the Brooklyn patrol unit saw it ablaze a few hours later, a second alarm sounded.
The Dalfini SUV was listed with scores of stolen vehicles suspected of being tied to the major organized-crime operation under investigation by the task force. The operation involved a mind-boggling number of local, state, federal and international law enforcement agencies. It went far beyond stolen cars, and had been designated a classified priority reaching the highest levels of government security and secrecy.
As tragic as the abductions and homicides were, they had yielded Brewer his first solid leads.
Sheri and Donnie Dalfini were critical to advancing those leads, Brewer was certain of it. Clicking his pen and chewing his gum, he reread the file. Something about this pair didn’t sit right.
Brewer saw a tiny red flag that went back almost a year.
At that time, Donnie had made an insurance claim after reporting that a large flat-screen valued at three thousand dollars was stolen from their home. He had a receipt from the New Jersey store where he’d said he’d purchased it. The store had since closed down, but while verification of the purchase was difficult, the insurance company paid out on the claim.
Not long after the payout, the New York State Insurance Frauds Bureau got an anonymous tip that Donnie had bought the TV at a garage sale in Connecticut for three hundred dollars, had staged the burglary and submitted a false claim. An investigation by Frauds Bureau investigators from General Unit was inconclusive, but Donnie Dalfini’s file was flagged.
They were watching him.
Some six months ago, at the time Donnie lost his job, he and Sheri purchased a fully loaded 2010 GMC Terrain for $34,391. The financing they got, based on Sheri’s job, meant high monthly payments, on top of all of their other bills.
It made no sense.
Not the brightest people in the Bronx, Brewer thought, unless they had a plan, some sort of scheme.
Three weeks ago, they reported the SUV stolen from the parking lot at the Neverpoint Mall. Donnie made an insurance claim. While it was being processed, the Insurance Frauds Bureau’s Auto Unit was alerted and the SUV was flagged as a potential fraudulent claim. The NYPD Auto Crime and Insurance Fraud Unit were notified. That unit then alerted Brewer’s joint task force.
And now here they were, with Brewer losing it with Sheri.
“Where are Sarah and Cole Griffin?”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
“Who are the dead people in the picture?”
“I don’t know. Why do you keep asking me the same thing? I told you everything I know from the moment the police came to my home and asked me to come down here and help answer questions about our stolen SUV.”
“We keep going around in circles.”
“Maybe I should have a lawyer?”
“You waived your rights when we brought you in.”
“That was when I thought you were treating me as a victim and not someone who is part of—part of this! Oh, Jesus, let me go home and see my kids.”
“How do you know Jeff Griffin?”
“He’s a freakin’ stranger to me. I told you what happened.”
“Where’s Donnie?”
“I told you, he’s looking for a job in New Jersey.”
“Did Donnie kill the people in the SUV?”
“No. He’s in New Jersey.”
“Where? The numbers you gave us don’t seem to work?”
“Bayonne, or Elizabeth. I don’t know.”
“Does he have Sarah and Cole?”
“God, no! We got nothing to do with that shit!”
Pages snapped as Brewer flipped through the file again. His jawline started throbbing.
“Do you know what insurance investigators at the State Frauds Bureau found out after you made the claim for the SUV?”
“How would I know?”
“They found that just before the claim you had an extra key made.”
“So?”
“Mall security cameras show you touching a wheel before leaving the vehicle and then an unidentified suspect touching the same spot before driving off with it.”
Sheri said nothing, then flinched when Brewer’s hand whip-slapped on the table.
“We know what you and Donnie did! We know you staged the theft!” Brewer stood and raised his voice. “Listen good, Sheri. As we speak we’re preparing to execute search warrants at your house in the morning. You will be charged in connection with two homicides and the kidnappings of Sarah and Cole Griffin. You will sleep in a holding cell tonight, you will not go home and you will never see your kids again.”
Sheri didn’t move.
“Now, you can bring in a lawyer and we’ll call the D.A. and prepare charges. Or, you can tell me who else is involved, help us and we’ll tell the D.A. you’re being cooperative. Sheri, you’re facing a world of trouble and this is your last chance, the only way you can help yourself. Our offer is going to expire in about five minutes.”
Sheri was frozen.
“Do you understand what’s at stake for you? This is the end of the road for you, Sheri Marie Dalfini. You’re going to prison.”
She stared through Brewer to a lifetime of hard living, a lifetime of mistakes, bad choices and anguish. She couldn’t take it anymore. Her chin began to quiver. Brewer had played his hand and at this point he’d let her have the quiet. The life she’d had, as sorry as it was, was over.
He had her.
“I told Donnie it was stupid for us to buy that goddamned SUV. We couldn’t afford it. But no, he had to have it. He said he needed it after losing his job at the foundry so he wouldn’t look like a loser.”
Brewer slid a box of tissues to her.
“The payments were too much. We had to go to his mother for money, then for food. When it finally sunk in with Donnie, he started asking some of his asshole friends at the bar about people who could help us out of our jam.
“He found a guy who would pay us two thousand for the SUV if we left it in the lot. He’d make it disappear, then we could make the insurance claim and still be ahead to pay off some bills.”
“Who is this guy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think!”
“I can’t remember his name exactly, but after the SUV was gone, Donnie never got the money. Donnie couldn’t find the guy. Donnie’s friends warned Donnie not to mess with the guy, to shut up about the money, which we would never see, and that if we told anybody we’d be ratted out to insurance. That’s when Donnie got scared and got his mother’s gun.
“Then out of the blue, friends get word to Donnie that the guy that owes him the money has a one-time high-paying job, or something, that was yesterday.”
“Is this the Bayonne or Elizabeth thing?”
“I don’t know, because I haven’t heard from Donnie since the day before yesterday. I don’t know nothing and I can’t find Donnie. We got bill collectors calling, then this Montana guy scares me to death by showing up at our home looking for his wife and kid and I’m losing my freakin’ mind and now our SUV is—” Sheri began choking on her words “—and those people in the pictures and, Jesus, I don’t know anything…I swear.”
“Who, Sheri?” Brewer said. “Who is the guy that Donnie went to work for, the guy who owed him for the SUV? Give us the names of the peo
ple involved, the people who wanted your SUV.”
Brewer slid a pad and freshly sharpened pencil toward her.
“Give us names and if they’re real I’ll do all I can to help you.”
Sheri nodded, brushed the tears from her cheeks, took up the pencil.
“I don’t know—I’m not sure of the spellings.”
“Give us what you can.”
As her tears stained the paper she began printing, slowly and carefully.
18
Morningside Heights, New York City
3:30 a.m.
Tranquil.
Acting on Sheri Dalfini’s information, eight more unmarked police cars rolled into the crime-peppered enclave in the low hundreds, east of Morningside Park.
Would they find Sarah and Cole Griffin here?
Brewer watched from his window.
Despair permeated this corner of the city where living meant dying a little every day. Here, dreams twisted into rage against the system until they yielded the belief that to survive you have to take what you want. It was the same story in neighborhoods like this everywhere, Brewer thought.
This is how it was for Omarr Aimes.
His name was the one Sheri Dalfini had given them. All she had was “Omar Big Time,” with Omarr spelled with one r. Brewer ran it through the computers searching variations, aliases, and sure enough, Omarr Lincoln Roderick Aimes, aka “Sweet Time,” aka “Sweet Ride,” aka “Big Time,” came up. Age, thirty-two.
Brewer was surprised Omarr had lived this long. He’d been shot four separate times. Started out as a juvie boosting cars; went inside and came out a hardened banger, working his way up the drug-dealer food chain. Omarr then took to a righteous cause with some “brotherhood,” which was tied to international smuggling networks that had fallen under Brewer’s investigation and the abduction.
Was Omarr a player in Sarah and Cole’s kidnapping?
Klaver eased their Ford to a stop before a marked unit. Cordelli and Ortiz were behind them. A few hours ago the brass had folded Cordelli’s case into Brewer’s operation. Cordelli and Ortiz, who was easy on the eyes, were now part of the task force, assigned to work with Brewer and Klaver.
