Tick Tock

Chapter 51

I WAS WITH EMILY, putting on some coffee about an hour later, when I heard a strange, gut-wrenching call come over the break room's radio.

There was some kind of disturbance uptown. An unconscious, unresponsive child had been found in a store on Fifth Avenue. When I heard the name of the store repeated, my blood went cold.

"What, Mike? What is it?" Emily said, straining to listen.

"They found a little girl uptown at FAO Schwarz, the famous toy store across from the Plaza Hotel. Not good, Em. It's on the same block as the CBS Early Show, the locale of the bombing on Tuesday."

There was a more massive crowd than usual out in front of the landmark toy store when Emily and I arrived after a long, twenty-minute ride uptown. Two radio cars and two ambulances spun their lights in front of the freaked-out-looking tourists and moms and little kids.

A veteran Nineteenth Precinct sergeant whose eye I caught shook his dismal face before I was three steps out of my car.

I showed the cop the picture of Angela.

"Tell me this isn't her," I said.

"Marone a mi," the cop said, the smoke from his cupped cigarette rising like incense as he crossed himself. "It's her. They found her in the back. The clerk thought she was just sleeping."

Emily and I both turned as a car squealed up behind my cruiser. It was a black Lexus with tinted windows. I had my hand on my Glock when its door was flung wide open and a man got out. A man with red hair and even redder eyes.

It was Kenneth Cavuto, Angela's father.

"No!" I yelled as Cavuto bolted toward the store's entrance.

I managed to get there a second before him. No way could I let Angela's dad see his little girl. Not here. Not like this.

Apparently the distraught father had other plans. I'm not a small guy, but Cavuto shoved me off my feet like I was an empty cardboard box. I grunted as I fell forward and my chin hit the concrete.

I got back up and ran after Cavuto into the empty store. I bolted down some steps past museum-quality displays of giant stuffed animals: ostriches and horses and giraffes. I was scrambling past the Puppet Park when I heard a sound that stopped me.

It was a scream in a pitch I'd never heard before. I looked at Emily. She shook her head. We both knew what it was. It was the sound of Cavuto's heart breaking.

It took me, Emily, and three uniforms to get Cavuto off his daughter. I actually had to cuff him. He started crying soundlessly as he banged his head against the polka-dot-carpeted floor.

"Go out to your truck and get something to knock this poor son of a bitch out, would you?" I yelled at a gawking EMT.

I noticed only then that my chin was bleeding. I put my thumb on it to stop the drip as I turned and looked at the girl. She was sitting in a stroller with her eyes closed, her white-blond hair the same shade as the oversize polar bear on the shelf beside her.

I turned away and got down on my knees next to the father and placed my hand on his sobbing back.

I opened my mouth to say something. Then I closed it. What was there to say?