Читать книгу They Disappeared - Rick Mofina, Rick Mofina - Страница 18

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?

He couldn’t live with himself if it turned out that he was this close but did nothing to save them. He’d already faced an unbearable loss. Standing in the street, in front of the house, Jeff had no choice.

My wife and son could be in there and I’m going in after them.

He wrote down the Honda’s New York plate and scanned the interior. It had an overflowing ashtray. The passenger seat was covered with flyers and junk-food wrappers. Other than this car out front there was no sign of any vehicles at the house.

The curtains were drawn.

All quiet, except for the jets flying in and out of LaGuardia.

How was he going to do this? Call the phone number he obtained on the search record printout? Or ring the doorbell? A dog’s distant bark underscored that he was losing time. There was a diffusion of light near a window. A shadow passed by a curtain.

Someone’s in there.

Jeff stepped onto the property, walked to the side of the house, bent down and cupped his face to a basement window. His eyes adjusted to a double laundry sink, a washer and dryer, clothes heaped on the floor.

He flinched.

A child’s earsplitting scream shattered the quiet.

Cole?

Something inside the house vibrated, someone moving around. Jeff started for the backyard but was stopped by a wooden fence and a gate that reached to his shoulders. He tried the handle; the gate was locked. He tried reaching over it for a latch but got nothing.

Gripping the top of the fence, he hefted himself over it, landing on a garden hose that snaked to the back. Jeff followed it past a back door to patio steps, a small deck with lawn chairs and picnic table. It was a typical family backyard.

He stopped at the sight of two children standing in the grass, some fifteen feet away: a boy about Cole’s age and a girl who looked to be four or five, both wearing swimsuits.

The hose meandered to the girl. She used both hands to hold the dripping nozzle, which she pointed at the boy, who was drenched. For a moment, water plunking from the boy to the deck was the only sound.

Then the boy, his blond water-slicked hair darkened, turned to Jeff at the same time as the girl.

The boy was not Cole.

The children’s eyes widened slightly as they stared at Jeff, speechless until the girl said, “Hello.”

At a loss, Jeff scanned the small yard when he noticed the children’s attention shift a fraction to his left.

“I have a gun,” a woman’s voice said from behind him.

Jeff turned.

The woman’s arms were extended; her hands were wrapped around the pistol aimed at him.

“Get on your knees and put your hands behind your head!”

Before Jeff could explain she shouted.

“Do it now, asshole! Or I swear to God I’ll shoot you dead.”