They Disappeared

“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.