They Disappeared

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.