They Disappeared

“Run it again but slow it down.”

Cordelli rolled his chair beside Ortiz at her computer.

A few keystrokes and she replayed the video provided by the New York Police Department’s Real Time Crime Center. The images covered Forty-fourth and Forty-fifth Streets near Seventh Avenue—at the time of Sarah and Cole’s abduction.

It had taken time for the RTCC to gather the material but the number of angles, proximity and superior quality captured by its network exceeded anything from a single camera with a partial street view.

“Here we go.” Ortiz’s monitor offered an array of sharp perspectives as she zeroed in on what they needed.

Sarah Griffin emerges, taking a picture of Cole. Jeff joins them, his arm around her as Cole photographs his parents. Jeff approaches a tourist who takes a shot of the family, then looks at the camera. Jeff takes it, turns to the storefronts, talks with the panhandler in a wheelchair, then enters a store. Sarah and Cole move to a vendor’s cart, looking at souvenirs. A white SUV with tinted windows brakes at the curb. Two men exit on the curbside, leaving passenger doors open. They’re wearing ball caps, dark glasses, full beards, big, dark, front-button shirts loose enough to hide a weapon, dark jeans, dark boots, moving fast into Sarah and Cole’s space. One leans to Cole’s ear, telling him something, takes his arm, puts his other arm on Cole’s shoulder and swiftly thrusts him into the backseat. Sarah reacts with the second man, who is trying to push her back. They appear to only want the boy. But Sarah battles her way into the backseat after Cole. The men overpower her, shut the doors, abducting her, as well. The SUV pulls away…gone like it never happened…no reaction from people on the street. Jeff emerges from the store searching, asking people, calling on his cell phone. Nothing…

The images froze: Jeff Griffin alone, helpless in the street.

The scene drove it home for Ortiz and Cordelli, briefly imagining the fear twisting in Jeff’s gut before they’d kicked things into high gear. Cordelli tapped his pen to the monitor on the SUV’s New York plate.

They wrote it down.

“Get the center to run the plate through everything,” he said.

“Already on it.” Ortiz had grabbed her phone.

“We want to get units rolling to the address of the registered owner ASAP. And,” Cordelli added, “get them to track the SUV through the surveillance network. Can they tell us where it went? Where it is now?”

As Ortiz dealt with her call, Cordelli used her keyboard to replay the footage. He eyed every aspect, absorbed every detail of the chilling act that had played out in broad daylight on one of the busiest streets on earth.

“What do you think?” Ortiz asked after finishing the call.

“Who the hell are these guys? Why would they kidnap a Montana schoolteacher and her nine-year-old son?”

“It’s hard to tell by her reaction if she knows them.”

“Go back to this angle, on this one.” Cordelli touched his pen to the monitor. “I can’t make out any features on the suspects. Counting the driver, is it four men?”

“The SUV’s got a little too much tint on the windows and that glare on the windshield doesn’t help.”

“We need to look into the family’s finances, see if they had gambling or drug debts,” Cordelli said.

“I thought the people in Montana said they were clean, upstanding.”

“We’ll check again and we’ll get the FBI in Billings to assist. We’ll request warrants on the family’s computers, check their records. Maybe it’s an online thing. Maybe she was having an affair that went bad.”

“Or maybe the kid was chatting with a predator, told them about the family’s vacation?” Ortiz said.

Cordelli went to his desk and made calls.

“I’ll get things rolling to put out an Amber Alert.”

He advised their supervisor, then started pulling together photos of Sarah and Cole, notes on the SUV—the plate, color—description of the suspects.

Ortiz’s cell phone rang.

Her eyes widened slightly as she listened, then jotted notes.

“This is happening now?” Her voice betrayed a measure of incredulity before she said, “Got it,” and hung up.

“Vic, you’re not going to believe this.” Ortiz stood, pulled on her jacket. “I’ll tell you on the way. We’ve got to leave right now.”

12

Neverpoint Park, the Bronx, New York City

The address for the SUV was in a corner of Neverpoint where faded Realtors’ signs listed small, tired-looking houses as Must Sell or with Price Reduced.

“My stepfather lived here,” Jeff’s cabdriver said. “There was a landfill over there, that whole section.”

It had taken about half an hour to travel from midtown to this part of the East Bronx, which was bound by Long Island Sound and the East River. After leaving the expressway, they’d driven through a mixture of warehouses, pawnshops, drugstores, hair salons and pizzerias.

They’d passed an assortment of low-income city apartment projects before coming to neighborhoods of shingle-roofed one- and two-story houses with small yards. On Steeldown Road, parked cars lined both sides of the street. A dog was in the middle of it, his head inside a fast-food take-out bag as he worked on the remains.

For the umpteenth time, Jeff glanced at the information on the printout, then back to the street.

Who was Donald Dalfini?

The Dalfini house at 88 Steeldown Road was a frame-and-stucco bungalow with a fenced yard. There was an older, dirty Honda with a dented rear quarter parked on the street out front, but the driveway was empty. The GMC Terrain registered to the address was a late model that would cost some thirty thousand dollars. Jeff didn’t see how it fit with the income level of the neighborhood.

He told the driver to keep going.

The knot in Jeff’s stomach was tightening, making it harder for him to concentrate.

Is this a mistake?

No, he had to do this. Too much was at stake.

“Pull over and let me out,” he said when they were midway into the next block. Jeff paid the fare, tipped the driver, then gave him another twenty.

“Kill your meter and wait. I may need to return to Manhattan fast.”

“Sure, pal. Out here to get some action, huh?” The driver winked at him in the rearview mirror and reached for his copy of the New York Post.

Walking to the house Jeff’s breathing quickened, the horror rising. He couldn’t believe the past few hours: Sarah and Cole abducted, the NYPD challenging his report, leaving him alone to track the people who took his wife and son to this street.

To this house.

This was beyond his control.

Suddenly, he was besieged with questions.

What are you doing? What are you getting into? You’re not a cop. You should let Cordelli and Ortiz handle this, he thought as he came to the bungalow. But what if Sarah and Cole are being held here, right now? What it they’re being tortured, or worse?