by Harlan Coben
On my right, I could see the abrupt slope that overlooked the Bronx. Lights twinkled from way below.
I heard a child’s yelp.
I stopped. It was not loud, but the sound was unmistakably that of a small child. I heard rustling. The child yelped again. It was farther away now. The rustling sound was gone, but I could hear the steady slap of footsteps on the pavement. Someone was running. Running with a child. Away from me.
No.
I broke into a sprint. The faraway lights provided enough illumination so that I could stay on the path. Up ahead, I saw the chain-link fence. It had always been locked. When I reached it, I saw that someone had used a bolt cutter on it. I pushed through and was back on the path now. I looked to my left, which led back up to the park.
No one.
Damn, what the hell had gone wrong? I tried to think rationally. Focus. Okay, if I were the one running away, which way would I go? Simple. I would veer to the right. The paths were confusing, dark, windy. You could easily hide in the shrubs. That would be the way to go if one were a kidnapper. I stopped for only an instant, hoping to pick up the sounds of a child. I didn’t. But I did hear someone say, “Hey!” with what sounded like genuine surprise.
I cocked my head. The sound had indeed come from my right. Good. I sprinted again, searching the horizon for a flannel shirt. Nothing. I continued down the hill. I lost my footing and almost tumbled down the hill. From my time living in this area, I knew the homeless found sanctuary on the off-path inclines too steep for the casual trekker. They made shelter out of branches and caves. Every once in a while, you could hear a rustling too loud for a squirrel. Sometimes a homeless guy would emerge out of seemingly nowhere—long haired, matted beard, the stench coming off him in waves. There was a spot not far from here where the male street prostitutes plied their trade to the businessmen getting off the A train. I used to jog by that area during the quiet of the day. Condom wrappers often littered the walkway.
I kept running, trying to keep my ears open. I hit a fork in the path. Damn. Again I asked, What way was the more twisty? I didn’t know. I was about to veer right again when I heard a sound.
Rustling in the bush.
Without thinking, I dived in. There were two men. One in a business suit. Another, much younger and dressed in jeans, was on his knees. The business suit yelled an expletive. I did not back away. Because I had heard the man’s voice before. Seconds ago.
He had been the one who yelled “Hey.”
“Did you see a man and a little girl go by here?”
“Get the hell out—”
I crossed over and slapped him in the face. “Did you see them?”
He looked far more shocked than hurt. He pointed to the left. “They went up that way. He was carrying the kid.”
I jumped back on the path. Okay, right. They were heading back up toward the green. If they stayed that route, they would come out not far from where I’d parked. I started running again, pumping my arms. I ran past the male prostitutes sitting on the wall. One of them caught my eye—he had a blue kerchief on his head—nodded, and pointed to stay on the path. I nodded a thanks back. I kept running. In the distance, I could see the lights of the park. And there, crossing in front of the lamppost, I caught a fleeting glimpse of the man in the flannel shirt carrying Tara.
“Stop!” I shouted. “Someone stop him!”
But they were gone.
I swallowed and started up the path, still shouting for help. No one reacted or shouted back. When I reached the outpost where lovers often gazed at the eastern view, I again spotted the flannel shirt. He was jumping over the wall into the woods. I started to follow but when I turned the corner, I heard someone yell, “Freeze!”
I looked behind me. It was a cop. He had his gun drawn.
“Freeze!”
“He has my kid! This way!”
“Dr. Seidman?”
The familiar voice came to my right. It was Regan.
What the . . . ? “Look, just follow me.”
“Where’s the money, Dr. Seidman?”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “They just jumped over that wall.”
“Who did?”
I saw where this was going. Two cops had their guns pointed. Regan was staring at me with his arms crossed. Tickner appeared behind him.
“Let’s talk about this, okay?”
Not okay. They wouldn’t shoot. Or if they did, I didn’t much care. So I started running. They took chase. The cops were younger and no doubt in better shape. But I had something going for me. I was crazed. I jumped the fence and fell down the incline. The cops pursued, but they were moving more gingerly, with normal human care.
“Freeze!” the cop yelled again.
I was breathing too fast to try to yell out more explanation. I wanted them to stay with me—I just didn’t want them to catch up.
I curled up my body and rolled down the hill. Dried glass clung to me and got caught up in my hair. The dust kicked up. I stifled a cough. Just as I was picking up speed, my rib cage slammed into the trunk of tree. I could hear the hollow thud. I gasped, the wind almost knocked out of me, but I hung on. Sliding to the side, I reached the path. The cops’ flashlights pursued. They were within sight but far enough behind. Fine.
On the path, my eyes swerved right, then left. No sign of the flannel shirt or Tara. I tried again to figure out which way he might run. Nothing came to me. I stopped. The police were coming closer.
“Freeze!” the cop yelled yet again.
Fifty-fifty chance.
I was about to break to my left, to head back into the darkness, when I saw the young man with the blue kerchief, the one who had nodded at me earlier. He shook his head this time and pointed in the direction behind me. “Thank you,” I said.
He might have said something in return, but I was already on my way. I cut back up and headed through the same chain-link fence I had pushed through earlier. I heard footsteps, but they were too far away. I looked up and again spotted the flannel shirt. He was standing near the lights of the subway steps. He seemed to be trying to catch his breath.
I ran faster.
So did he.
There was probably fifty yards that separated us. But he had to carry a child. I should be able to close in on him. I started running. The same cop yelled “Halt!” this time, I guess for the sake of variety. I hoped like hell they didn’t decide to shoot.
“He’s back on the street!” I shouted. “He has my daughter.”
I don’t know if they were listening or not. I reached the steps and took them three at a time. I was out of the park again, back on Fort Washington Avenue at Margaret Corbin Circle. I looked ahead at the playground. No movement. I glanced down Fort Washington Avenue and spotted someone running near Mother Cabrini High School, near the chapel.
The mind flashes to odd things. Cabrini Chapel was one of the most surreal stops in all of Manhattan. Zia had dragged me to Mass there once to see without telling why the chapel was something of a tourist spot. I immediately understood the draw. Mother Cabrini died in 1901, but her embalmed body is kept in what looks like a lucite block. That’s the altar. The priests conduct mass over her body/table. No, I’m not making that up. The same guy who preserved Lenin in Russia worked on Mother Cabrini. The chapel is open to the public. It even has a gift shop.
My legs felt heavy, but I kept moving. I no longer heard the police. I quickly glanced behind me. The flashlights were far away.
“Over here!” I shouted. “Near Cabrini High!”
I started sprinting again. I reached the entrance to the chapel. It was locked. There was no sign of flannel shirt anywhere. I looked around, eyes wide, panicked. I had lost them. They were gone.
“This way!” I shouted, hoping that either (or both) the police and Rachel would hear me.
But my heart sank. My chance. My daughter was gone again. I felt the weight on my chest. And that was when I heard the car start up.
My head jerked to th
e right. I scanned the street and started running. A car started moving. It was about ten yards in front of me. A Honda Accord. I memorized the license plate, even as I knew that would be futile. The driver was still trying to maneuver out of a parking spot. I couldn’t see who it was. But I wasn’t about to take any chances.
The Honda had just cleared the bumper of the car in front of it and was about start up when I grabbed the driver’s side door handle. Lucky break finally—he hadn’t locked the door. No time, I assumed, because he’d been in a rush.
Several things happened in a very short period of time. As I started pulling the door open, I was able to see through the window. It was indeed the flannel-shirt man. He reacted quickly. He grabbed the door and tried to hold it closed. I pulled harder. The door opened a crack. He hit the accelerator.
I tried to run with the car, like you see in the movies. The problem is, cars move faster than people. But I would not let go. You hear those stories about people gaining extraordinary strength in certain circumstances, about average men being able to lift cars off the ground to rescue trapped loved ones. I scoff at those stories. You probably do too.
I am not saying that I lifted a car. But I held on. I wedged my fingers in and wrapped them around the divide between the front door and back. I used both hands and willed my fingers into vises. I would not let go. No matter what.
If I hold on, my daughter lives. If I let go, my daughter dies.
Forget focus. Forget compartmentalizing. This thought, this equation, was as simple as breathing.
The man in the flannel shirt pushed down on the gas. The car was picking up speed now. I kicked my legs off the ground, but there was no place to perch them. They slid down the back door and landed with a clunk. I felt the skin of my ankles being scraped off on the pavement. I tried to regain my footing. No go. The pain was tremendous but inconsequential. I held on.
The status quo, I knew, was working against me. I couldn’t hang on much longer, no matter how much I willed it. I had to make a move. I tried to pull myself into the car, but I wasn’t strong enough. I hung on and let my arms go straight. I tried hopping up again. My body was horizontal now, parallel to the ground. I extended my body. My right leg reached up and curled around something. The antenna on the top of the car. Would that hold me? I didn’t think so. My face was pressed against the backseat window. I saw the little car seat.
It was empty.
Panic seized me again. I felt my hands slipping. We had only driven maybe a twenty, thirty yards. With my face against the glass, my nose bouncing against the window, my body and face scraped and battered, I looked at the child in the front seat and a crushing truth pried my hands off the car window.
Again the mind works in odd ways. My first thought was classically doctor: The child should be sitting in the back. The Honda Accord has a passenger-side airbag. No child under the age of twelve should ever sit in the front. Also, small children should be in a proper car seat. That was, in fact, the law. Riding out of a car seat and in the front . . . that was doubly unsafe.
Ridiculous thought. Or maybe natural. Either way, that was not the thought that ripped the fight out of me.
The flannel-shirted man yanked the steering wheel to the right. I heard the tires squeak. The car jerked, and my fingers slipped away. My grip was gone now. I went airborne. My body landed hard, skidding across the pavement like a stone. I could hear the police sirens behind me. They would, I thought, follow the Honda Accord. But it wouldn’t matter. I had only gotten a brief glimpse. But it had been enough to know the truth.
The child in the car was not my daughter.
chapter 29
Again I wasin a hospital, this time New York Presbyterian—my old stomping grounds. They hadn’t yet run X rays, but I was pretty sure they’d find a cracked rib. Nothing you could really do about it other than shoot yourself up with painkillers. It would hurt. That was okay. I was pretty scraped up. There was a gash on my right leg that looked like the work of a shark attack. Skin had been ripped off both elbows. None of that mattered.
Lenny arrived in record time. I wanted him here because I was not really sure how to handle this. At first, I almost convinced myself that I had made a mistake. A child changes, right? I had not seen Tara since she was six months old. A lot of growth occurs in that period. She’d have matured from wee infancy to an older toddler. I’d been hanging on to a moving car, for crying out loud. I had only gotten the briefest of glimpses.
But I knew.
The child in the front seat of the car looked to be a boy. He was probably closer to three years old than two. His skin, his coloring, was simply too pale.
It was not Tara.
I knew that Tickner and Regan had questions. I wanted to cooperate. I also wanted to know how the hell they had found out about the ransom drop. I hadn’t seen Rachel yet either. I wondered if she were in the building. I also wondered about the fate of the ransom money, the Honda Accord, the man in the flannel shirt. Had they caught him? Had he kidnapped my daughter originally—or had that first ransom drop been a con job too? If so, how had my sister, Stacy, fitted into it?
In short, I was confused. Enter Lenny aka Cujo.
He burst through the door dressed in baggy khakis and a pink Lacoste shirt. His eyes had that scared, wild look that again brought back memories of our childhood. He pushed past a nurse and approached my bed.
“What the hell happened?”
I was about to give Lenny an overview when he stopped me with a raised finger. He turned to the nurse and asked her to leave. When we were alone he nodded for me to go ahead again. Starting with seeing Edgar in the park, I ran through calling Rachel, her arrival, her preparation with all the electronic gizmos, the ransom calls, the drop, my dive on the car. I backtracked and told him about the CD. Lenny interrupted—he always interrupted—but not as often as usual. I saw something cross his face, and maybe—I don’t want to read too much into it here—but maybe he was hurt that I hadn’t confided in him. The look didn’t last long. Lenny gathered himself a piece at a time.
“Any chance that Edgar has been playing you?” he asked.
“To what end? He’s the one who’s lost four million dollars.”
“Not if he’s the one who set it up.”
I made a face. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Lenny didn’t like it, but he didn’t have a response either. “So where is Rachel now?”
“She’s not here?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I don’t know, then.”
We both went quiet a second.
“Maybe she went back to my house,” I said.
“Yeah,” Lenny said. “Maybe.”
There was nary a trace particle of conviction in his voice.
Tickner pushed open the door. His sunglasses sat atop his shaved head, a look I found disconcerting; if he bent his neck and drew a mouth on the lower part of his pate, it would look like a second face. Regan followed in a sort of hip-hop step, or maybe the soul patch was affecting the way I viewed him. Tickner took the lead.
“We know about the ransom demand,” he said. “We know your father-in-law gave you another two million dollars. We know that you visited a private detective agency today called MVD and asked about the password to a CD-ROM owned by your late wife. We know that Rachel Mills was with you and that she did not, as you told Detective Regan earlier, return to the Washington, D.C., area. So we can skip all that.”
Tickner moved closer. Lenny watched him, ready to pounce. Regan folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “So let’s start with the ransom money,” Tickner said. “Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did someone take it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“He told me to put it down.”
“Who is ‘he’?”
“The kidnapper. Whoever was on the cell phone.”
“Where did you put it dow
n?”
“In the park. On the path.”
“And then what?”
“He said to start walking forward.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“That’s when I heard a child cry and someone start running. Everything went crazy after that.”
“And the money?”
“I told you. I don’t know what happened to the money.”
“How about Rachel Mills?” Tickner asked. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked at Lenny, but he was studying Tickner’s face now. I waited.
“You lied to us about her returning to Washington, D.C., isn’t that correct?” Tickner asked.
Lenny put a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s not start by mischaracterizing my client’s statements.”
Tickner made a face as if Lenny were a turd that had plopped down from the ceiling. Lenny stared back, unfazed. “You told Detective Regan that Ms. Mills was on her way back to Washington, did you not?”
“I said I didn’t know where she was,” I corrected him. “I said shemight have gone back.”
“And where was she at the time?”
Lenny said, “Don’t answer.”
I let him know that it was okay. “She was in the garage.”
“Why didn’t you tell Detective Regan that?”
“Because we were getting ready for the ransom drop. We didn’t want anything slowing us down.”
Tickner folded his arms. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Then ask another question,” Lenny snapped.
“Why would Rachel Mills be involved in the ransom drop?”
“She’s an old friend,” I said. “And I knew she’d been a special agent with the FBI.”
“Ah,” Tickner said. “So you thought maybe her experience could help you here?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t call Detective Regan or myself?”
“That’s correct.”
“Because?”
Lenny took that one. “You know damn well why.”