Jeff heard his name but didn’t move.
“Jeff?” Stroud nodded encouragement. “Would you step up, please?”
Suddenly he felt the folded sheet of paper in his hand as he moved to the podium. The camera lights were blinding; he could not discern faces, only the silhouettes of still photographers, their cameras clicking. The fresh bloodied cuts on his jaw and cheekbones made strong news pictures.
Jeff opened the page, stared at the enlarged bolded words, cleared his throat and began reading.
“I don’t know why my wife, Sarah, and our son, Cole, have been taken. I’m-” he saw the word
“Jeff, Vicky Knoller,
“Vicky, we said no questions.” Ryan joined Jeff at the podium to shut Knoller down but Jeff had indicated he would answer.
Ryan shot a look to Stroud. They did not want to risk further antagonizing the suspects. Stroud mouthed “One,” giving the okay for Jeff to answer a question. Ryan then placed his hand over the podium microphone and whispered a caution in Jeff’s ear to be careful and brief.
“This will be the final question,” Ryan said.
Grumbling rumbled through the press crowd.
“Sorry, guys, that’s how it is,” Ryan said, pointing to Knoller.
“Thank you,” she said. “Jeff, looking at the photos of you and Sarah battling the kidnappers, I can only imagine the horrible agony you’re enduring. If you could speak to Sarah and Cole right now, what would you tell them?”
As Jeff looked into the lights, images of Lee Ann, Sarah and Cole flashed before him. He reached into the deepest regions of his heart and spoke slowly.
“A year and a half ago we lost our six-month-old daughter, Lee Ann. It tore us apart. We made this trip with our son to help us deal with her loss and the fact we were blaming ourselves for it. I swear to God, I don’t know what’s happened here. I don’t understand why someone would take my family and murder people. I’m begging whoever did this to let them go and take me. If you need a hostage, take me. I mean, what kind of people terrorize women and children?”
Soft murmuring rose from the reporters, pages in notebooks rustled crisply as they were turned. Stroud, McCallert and the others exchanged looks of concern.
“Jeff.” Ryan kept his voice low over Jeff’s shoulder. “Careful.”
“You ask me what I want to say, it’s this-I love you, Cole, more than you’ll ever know. I love you, Sarah, and want you to know that you were right. We have to fight to hold this family together and I swear to you-”
“Jeff, okay.” Ryan tried in vain to cut Jeff off.
“-that’s what I’m going to do-”
“Jeff.”
“-I will never give up. I’m coming for you.”
Ryan got control of the podium.
“I think we’re done, folks. Okay. Thank you all very much.”
29
The old casket factory was an anomaly.
In a city with some of the most expensive real estate on earth, abandoned buildings were quickly sold, renovated or demolished.
But this aging four-story stone complex, standing forgotten near the East River, had changed hands many times over the years. Various permits had been issued, only to expire, with new ones reissued as the property fell into a bureaucratic black hole.
Established in 1896 to build coffins, the factory’s business peaked during the 1918 flu epidemic. After the Second World War it became a furniture warehouse that went bankrupt. Now it was a tax shelter for a numbered corporation-an absent landlord.
The corporation had contracted a property management agency with a record for violating local codes. Long ago there was talk that the agency was a front for a global money-laundering operation.
That was the history.
Rumor had it that several months ago the empty structure had been rented to an international production company. The company had paid in cash and intended to use the building for a movie, but the windows and doors remained boarded up. The rust-stained wrought-iron gate was padlocked. It was opened for the few vehicles that appeared and disappeared into the rear loading bays.
No one paid much attention to the place where Sarah and Cole were being held.
And today, at the very moment investigators were appealing to New Yorkers for help in their case, Jeff Griffin’s voice spilled from the large TV their captors were watching in a far reach of the factory. Sarah and Cole could not see Jeff but his words carried hope through the taut, foul air.
A great sob rose at the back of Sarah’s throat. Tears rolled down her face. She ached to break free of her binding and hold her husband. When the press conference ended she spoke in a quavering tone to Cole.
“See, honey, Daddy’s doing all he can to help us. We have to be strong.”
Cole didn’t react.
Sarah’s heart sank and her chain made a soft
Their captors were enraged.
In the aftermath, after the van had vanished into traffic, they’d replaced the hood over her head and began arguing with one another. Again, she guessed at their language: Russian, something Slavic, or Eastern European.
When they’d returned, and replaced her next to Cole, they’d removed her hood and the tape over her mouth. Once more they locked one handcuff around her wrist and threaded the second cuff to a long chain, as was the case for Cole.
Their chains were fastened to a steel beam.
Sarah and Cole had been put on ripped, stained mattresses that reeked of urine. They were given torn blankets, bags of chips, doughnuts, bottled water.
Their chains reached into a small bathroom. It had a battered, ill-fitting swinging door that shut, offering some privacy, but the handle was missing so it wouldn’t lock. Inside, the cramped room had filthy walls and an air vent the size of a milk crate wedged into patched-over, crumbling drywall. There was a discolored toilet that still flushed, a sink with running water, paper towels and several bars of soap still in their packages.
Their mattresses were pushed against a wall.
Sarah found a broken broom handle to fend off the rats. The floor was encased with bird shit from the pigeons that had entered through the holes in the roof. Often the birds made aggressive raids for their food.
Across the vast factory floor, dirty with islands of crumbling half walls, were steel drums of trash and scraps of rotting lumber. Forests of cracked concrete columns and rusting steel beams rose from the waste. Webs of wiring and broken light fixtures drooped from the great ceiling. Daylight dimmed because it was filtered through the lines of weathered factory windows yellowed with age, filth and bird droppings.
Sarah and Cole could see their captors in the far section. Twenty in all, she guessed. There was a lot of movement and Sarah saw an array of new computers and electrical equipment along with crates of components, supplies, weapons.
She also saw what looked like wardrobe racks with official-looking uniforms, and the wheels of several
