Rick Mofina - They Disappeared

“Yes, sir, she’s seven, and Omarr loves her to death.”

Taking stock of the apartment, Ortiz thought it waswell-kept with modest dignity. The sofa, coffee table, area rugs, lamps, wereimmaculate. Framed photos of people and keepsakes were lovingly displayed on theshelves.

Ortiz inspected each of them.

Many were of older men and women, looked like they were onvacations, a few of younger people, including a good number of the littlegirl.

Ortiz stopped at one framed picture: a birthday picture.

The little girl was smiling before a huge cake with sevencandles and the words Happy Birthday Shereesa icedon it.

The man standing behind her, smiling with his hands on hershoulder, was Omarr. Ortiz’s attention went to Omarr’s hand.

She concentrated on the ring he was wearing.

Oh, Jesus.

In the kitchen Brewer would not let up with his questions forLouella Bell.

“I told you I don’t know where Omarr is.” Louella’s eyesshifted to the doorway where Ortiz was standing.

When Brewer and Cordelli turned, Ortiz tilted her head and theyjoined her in the living room.

“Look at this one,” Ortiz pointed her BlackBerry at thebirthday photo. “Look at his ring.” Ortiz then turned her small screen to showBrewer and Cordelli the color picture she’d cued and enlarged.

It was the same ring.

The photo was among dozens provided by the crime scenepeople.

It was the ring found on one of the victims at the SUV fire inBrooklyn.

“Well, well, well,” Brewer said.

Ortiz glanced back toward the little girl, a gesture thatsuggested Brewer be careful. Then he took Ortiz’s BlackBerry and returned to thekitchen.

“Miss Bell.” Brewer showed Louella the enlarged picture of thering from the crime scene. “Omarr wears a ring just like that, doesn’t he?”

She stared at the ring in the picture for the longest time, notmoving, not saying anything until her tired eyes brimmed with tears.

“Miss Bell-” Brewer cleared his throat “-does Omarr have adentist?”

Louella closed her eyes.

She was not a stupid woman.

The day she had dreaded was here.

The day part of her had died when her daughter was killed hadcome again with an armed invasion and four grim-faced detectives standing in herhome at four in the morning.

Louella May Bell knew.

“I have a card in my purse.”

She swallowed and went to stand but her knees gave out.

Brewer and Cordelli caught her, set her gently back in herchair.

Suddenly Shereesa flew to her and the two held on to eachother.

“It’s just us now, child, just us.”

Manhattan, New York City

Jeff Griffin was too tense to sleep.

He dozed, awakened and then drifted into that torpid state between consciousness and fantasy.

In his darkest hour he found a flash of happiness: a vision of himself with Sarah, Lee Ann and Cole together. It passed in brilliant light like a dying star before the horror descended, crushing him until he woke to the nightmare.

On the luggage rack at the foot of their bed, he saw Sarah’s sweater, a folded top and pants. On the neatly made bed beside him, Cole’s underwear, shorts and T-shirts.

These were the remnants of yesterday.

He was alone in the aftermath.

It was 6:20 a.m.

He grabbed his cell phone from the nightstand, thankful it was fully charged.

No messages. No texts. Nothing.

He called down to the front desk. A man answered.

“No, sir, there are no messages for 1212.”

Jeff placed the handset back in the cradle. Pain hammered from the inside of his skull; his stomach was cramping from having not eaten for some twenty-four hours.

They need you. Get to work.

He started the room’s coffeemaker, then took a shower. Images of the car fire and corpses swirled in the water’s rush until he remembered Cordelli’s caution.

“You’ll make yourself crazy imagining the worst scenarios.”

Stepping from the shower he thought, first things first. His stomach roiled to the point of nausea. He had to eat something. Sarah, a believer in contingency, had put a couple of apples and granola bars in her bag.

Okay, that was breakfast.

Jeff ate the food and drank black coffee, deciding he would call Cordelli for an update. Maybe the cops had a lead from the fire victims? As Jeff reached for the hotel phone, it rang.

His heart skipped. Please let it be Sarah. He grabbed it.

“Is this Jeff?” a woman’s voice asked. “Jeff Griffin?”

It was not Sarah.

“Who’s calling?”

“Melissa Mason from the New York Post, I’m trying to reach Jeff Griffin. Would that be you?”

Melissa Mason was caffeine fueled and fast-talking, with a New York accent. Cordelli had told him that police were going to put out a public appeal for help on the case late last night.

“Yes, this is Jeff Griffin.”

“Jeff, I’m writing a story for the Post. Have you received any word on the whereabouts of your wife and son?”

“No.”

“Do you any idea who would do this?”

“No.”

“Can you detail for me exactly what happened near Times Square yesterday?” Jeff hesitated, then told her. Melissa punctuated his recounting of events with “uh-huhs,” then asked more questions and went over their background. “Sarah’s a teacher? And you’re a mechanic and a volunteer firefighter in Montana? And Cole is nine? Is he your only child?”

That one stopped Jeff cold. But he answered.

“We had a daughter, Lee Ann. She died at six months.”

“Oh, my God, I’m sorry,” Melissa said. “This whole ordeal has gotta be horrible for you. What thoughts are going through your mind?”

“I want them back. I don’t know who did this, I don’t know why. I want them back.”

“I understand. Um, Jeff, I’d like to come to your hotel with a photographer to take your picture, would you agree?”

“I don’t know, I-”

“We’ll go big with Sarah’s and Cole’s pictures. It’ll help find them, Jeff. It’ll go on our site, and on the streets, everywhere. It won’t take long. We can be there in forty-five minutes, maybe sooner. We’ll try sooner.”

“All right.”

“Do you have a cell phone number, an email address?”

Jeff needed to keep his cell phone clear.

“Just use the hotel number.”

After the call Jeff switched on the TV in time to catch a local New York City morning newscast. Sarah and Cole stared back at him.

He didn’t move except to adjust the volume as the female anchor read the news.

“We start off this morning with this breaking story of two dead men and the brazen abduction of a schoolteacher from Montana and her nine-year-old son. Tyko Sanderay has more. Tyko?”

The story cut to a reporter in his twenties downtown.

“Yes, thank you, Maria. Police say this strange case all started here, yesterday morning on the fringes of Times Square, when Sarah Griffin and her nine-year-old son, Cole, were abducted by as many as three men in a white SUV. Detectives and FBI agents say this brazen criminal act was caught by security cameras.”

Stop-action images of Sarah and Cole being taken quickly into the vehicle played as the reporter’s voice carried over them.

“The woman’s husband, the boy’s father, reported his family missing to the NYPD yesterday morning. Detectives determined it was a stranger abduction. Now, here’s where the story gets even more troubling. Within hours of the kidnappings the vehicle was driven into Brooklyn. The vehicle, a 2010 GMC Terrain, was discovered in Brooklyn on fire by an NYPD patrol unit. And we obtained this footage from a viewer who was passing by when firefighters arrived.”