They Disappeared

23

Manhattan, New York City

The caller’s machinelike voice gave Jeff detailed orders.

“Go to the Thirty-fourth Street subway station. Take the Seventh Avenue express line south to Fourteenth Street. You will get further instructions there.”

As Jeff took notes on a hotel message pad, the hotel pen kept slipping through his sweating fingers. He stopped and used the top of a city trash bin to steady his writing.

The call had come through the new phone, the one they’d said police could not track. As he resumed jostling through the city’s busy streets, new fears gnawed at him.

New York was overwhelming.

He didn’t know the city, let alone the subway system.

What if I can’t find the right train, or get on the wrong one?

He drew the back of his hand across his mouth, fumbling with his maps, trusting he was moving in the right direction as another fear bit at him.

The plane.

God, did I make a mistake? Without the plane I have nothing. I should go back and get it. No, the plane is critical. It’s all I have to bargain for Sarah’s and Cole’s lives.

Jeff ran along Seventh Avenue by Madison Square Garden and Penn Station. The Seventh Avenue subway line was also known as the Broadway Line. The subway stop at Thirty-fourth Street and Penn Station extended over Thirty-second, Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth streets, according to Jeff’s map.

Which one do I take?

He stopped in front of the Thirty-second Street entrance to Penn Station, one of the busiest train stations in the world. Rivers of passengers flowed in and out of the building under the neon sign promoting a rock concert at Madison Square Garden. Jeff was unsure of the best way to go. Before descending the stairs into the concourse, he asked for help from a gray-stubbled man giving away commuter newspapers.

“I have to get on a train going south on the Seventh Avenue Broadway Line, is this the fastest way?”

“Naw, take the Thirty-fourth Street station.” He nodded to the stop a few blocks from where they stood. “See, that’s the best one for the Broadway Line.”

Jeff set out for the station. As he threaded through the pedestrian traffic his personal cell phone rang.

The number was blocked.

What if the killers were calling to check that he’d tossed the phone; or Cordelli had news; or it was Sarah or Cole? It rang again. He couldn’t let it go. He answered without speaking.

“Mr. Griffin?” a familiar voice asked. “Hello, can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Russ Powell at the Times. We were talking earlier.”

“How did you get this number?”

“Mr. Griffin, I just need a moment.”

“I can’t talk to you now.”

“Sir, I get the sense you’ve just had contact with your abducted wife, Sarah. Can you confirm that?”

“I’m sorry, I have to go.”

Jeff ended the call, shut off his phone, knowing he may have shut off his lifeline to Sarah and Cole. Just for a few moments, he told himself as he entered the station at Thirty-fourth Street and Seventh Avenue. The stairway shuddered as humid air with a trace of sewer smell carried the clamor of trains. Inside, he found a station booth, thankful there were only seven people ahead of him. His turn came fast.

“Next.” The agent’s voice sounded like it came from a tin can.

“I’m a first-time user of the subway-”

“How nice.”

“I need a southbound express train on the Seventh Avenue Broadway Line.”

“I’ll need $2.25 from you. Or, you can get a seven-day MetroCard, unlimited train and bus, thirty bucks.”

“I’ll take the card.”

The agent took Jeff’s cash, passed him the paper card.

“Slide the black strip through the slots at the turnstile. Follow the signs to the island platform, take a number 2 or 3 and get off at Fourteenth.”

Jeff hurried to the platform. It was crowded with commuters. He went to the midway point, kept close to the tiled wall, avoiding the edge. He’d read news stories about people getting shoved in front of trains.

He could hear the faded rumblings of the other trains at Penn Station. While waiting for his he looked into the black tunnel, the yawning jaws of the abyss, and thought of Sarah and Cole.

Will I ever see them again?

White lights shot at him from the darkness, bringing a screeching sound that turned into the hum of an approaching train. Its brakes moaned as it settled into the station. The doors opened and passengers getting off did a sidestep shuffle with those getting on.

Jeff found a seat between a woman reading the New Yorker magazine who smelled like an ashtray, and a man in a suit who must’ve doused himself with cologne, to counter the subway air.

The doors closed, the train jerked, tilting everyone, then gathered speed. The platform’s brightness gave way to the drab walls racing by. As Jeff assessed the other passengers he wrestled with more questions.

What if the killers are on this car, watching me?

At one end, a group of teenagers, mostly girls, yakked at high speed while hypertexting. Business types in suits, their noses in cell phones or tablets, were sprinkled throughout the car, along with tradesmen in paint-stained jeans. Other riders slouched over packs, eyes heavy, nodding near sleep.

As the train rocked and yawed, the lights of local stations strobed and Jeff’s mind flashed with memories.

Sarah glowing on their wedding day…letting go of Cole’s hands as he took his first steps…holding Lee Ann seconds after she was born…so tiny…so perfect…carrying her coffin in the cemetery at the edge of town…the mountains…the crying wind…the ache in his heart that would never go away….

The train lumbered to a stop at the Fourteenth Street station and the doors opened. Jeff took the stairs two at a time, surfacing to morning in Chelsea and the West Village.

Standing at West Fourteenth Street and Seventh Avenue, with time slipping by, he scanned the streets for any hint of Sarah, Cole or his next move. He looked at the deli, the flower shop, the grocery store. He searched the area’s tree-lined sections that fronted a pizza place, a smoke shop, shoe repair outlet, nail salon, dress store, check-cashing store. As he glanced up at the red-and-gray stone tenement buildings rising over the neighborhood, his fear mounted.

Sarah or Cole could be in any of these buildings.

He looked at the traffic, at the people coming and going as if today was normal.

How can the world keep on turning?

Where is my family?

He stared at the phone the killers had put in his hand, attempted to redial but got a busy signal. The knot in his gut tightened and he wanted to scream at them.

I’m here! Dammit, I did what you wanted! Give me my family!

He was done waiting for them to call and took out his personal cell phone from his pocket, turned it on and redialed.

It was futile.

Another busy signal.

When he ended the call his personal cell phone rang in his hand.

Hope surging, he answered without checking the number.

“Jeff, this is Clay at the shop.”

“Clay.”

“Listen, son, we’re just hearing the news here in town about Sarah and Cole. Is it true?”

“Yes. They’re lost.”

“I don’t understand. What happened?”

“Clay, I have to go.”

“But is there anything we can do to help?”

The kidnapper’s phone began ringing.

“Clay, thanks.”

Jeff ended his call and answered the ringing phone.

“State your location,” the robotic voice demanded.

“West Fourteenth Street and Seventh Avenue.”

“Get back on the subway at Fourteenth. Take a number 1 local train north to the Eighteenth Street station. Get off and start walking east on West Eighteenth Street into the three hundreds. Don’t stop.”

“Let me speak to my wife and son now!”

The caller hung up.

Jeff rushed down the subway stairs, swiped his MetroCard, followed the signs to the local platform and boarded a northbound number 1 train. Eighteenth Street was the next stop, so he remained standing.

As the train jerked forward and gathered speed, he made a rough count of the other passengers in the car. About a dozen. He kept close watch until the train decelerated and clattered to a halt at the Eighteenth Street platform.

A few people got off, a few got on. He worked his way around them and rushed to the stairs and surfaced. He followed the caller’s instructions and headed east on West Eighteenth Street.

Parked cars lined both sides of the narrow street.

Traffic appeared nonexistent, as if this part of Manhattan had been abandoned. He walked steadily, taking inventory of the stone buildings, small walk-up apartment blocks, the art deco-facade of a health center, a few arching trees, the plywood-sheltered scaffolding of segments under renovation and businesses shuttered with roll-up steel doors.

Something was catching up to him.

A tidal wave of emotion and fear.

Why is this happening? Am I being punished for what happened to Lee Ann, for wanting to destroy what remained of my family? How could I have been so blind, so stupid? I need them now more than ever.

His anger mounting, his heart pounded in time with each hurried step. He was fighting his urge to cry out for Sarah and Cole when he heard the tick and purr of an engine.

A van was rolling along the street behind him.

He dismissed it as a delivery truck.

But it didn’t pass him. Instead, it slowed, matching his speed.

Jeff took a quick look: a white GMC cargo, with dark windows up front. No commercial markings on the panels. It was a Savana, maybe 2010, 2011, in good shape.

A bearded man wearing a ball cap and dark glasses was in the passenger seat with his window all the way down.

“Excuse me, Mr. Griffin? We need you to step over to the van.” The man tapped a leather wallet to his door frame. A badge glinted.

Cops, Jeff thought, not good. Not now.

“No, you guys take off, I’m handling this!”

The van halted in protest.

“Get over here! We’ve got something to show you!”

Jeff stopped, glanced up and down the street, then, as he neared the van, the side door swung open and his knees nearly buckled.

It was Sarah.

Her mouth and hands were bound with duct tape.

Two men on either side of her wore distorted white ghost masks. One of the men was pointing a gun at him. The other was holding a knife to Sarah’s throat.

Her eyes were huge with terror as they found Jeff’s.