“I think—okay, I don’t know for sure—but I think someone may have snatched Ray Kilbride and his brother.”
“What are you talking about?”
She told him about getting to the Kilbride house seconds after the van pulled out of the driveway. The fact that no one was home. The missing computer, the set of plastic cuffs.
“He was supposed to call me back,” Duckworth said.
“What?”
“Ray Kilbride called me. Then he was interrupted, said he was going to call me back soon, and he hasn’t.”
“I’m right,” Julie said. “They’ve been taken.”
“Who the hell would do that?” Duckworth asked. “Listen, I’m gonna go out to the Kilbride house, see what’s going on. You got the license plate on the van?”
“I’m not close enough to read it. When I had the chance, I wasn’t thinking.”
“Okay, look, anything happens with the van, call me at this number. This is my cell. Got that?”
“I got it.”
She stayed with the van.
THERE was an accident at the far end of the Lincoln Tunnel. Traffic was getting through a car at a time by the mouth. The white van was about five car lengths ahead. Once it was past the accident, it took off.
By the time Julie’s car was past the fender bender, and she drove onto the island of Manhattan, the van was nowhere to be seen.
“Motherfucker!” she shouted, banging her fist against the steering wheel.
SIXTY
AFTER pulling off the moving blankets and dragging me from the van, Nicole or Lewis tore off the tape that was binding my legs. But the ski mask stayed on. They led me through a door and guided me no more than half a dozen feet down what I supposed was a short hallway. My shoulder brushed up against a wall at one point, and wooden boards creaked below my feet. Hands from behind held both my shoulders, as though guiding me through a doorway.
Then the hands stopped me, and turned me 180 degrees.
“Sit,” Lewis said, working my bound arms over the back of what felt like a standard wooden chair, then shoving me down into it. Then he ran a couple loops of duct tape about my waist, securing me to the chair. He didn’t tape my ankles to the legs, so I moved them around in small circles, getting my blood circulating wherever I could. Suddenly, someone grabbed a fistful of ski mask at the top of my head and yanked, grabbing some of my hair in the process.
I blinked several times as my eyes adjusted to the light, although there wasn’t all that much of it. Lewis was standing directly in front of me, then moved out of the way as Nicole brought Thomas into the room. He was pushed down onto a second chair a couple of feet away from me, taped in, and then Nicole pulled his ski mask off. He blinked a couple of times, as I had, then exchanged a frightened glance with me.
“I’ll get the computer,” Lewis said. “And let Howard know we’re here.”
We were in a windowless room, about twelve by twelve, that had the feel of being the back of a shop. In one corner was a heavy, antique rolltop desk, the sliding door in the up position to allow for a computer. The various cubbyholes were jammed with paperwork, what looked like bills, receipts, newspaper clippings. The walls were almost entirely covered in shelves, made from the same kind of planks that made up the worn, wood floor. The shelves were crammed with old, musty books, antique clocks, Royal Doulton figurines, old-fashioned cameras with bellows that could be stretched out, accordion-style. But most of all, there were toys. Decades-old tinplate cars and trucks, the paint worn off by children who were very likely dead now. Pewter toy soldiers. Dinky Toys, like the ones I had when I was a kid. I spotted an Esso tanker truck my father had given me around the time I was three. An assortment of Batmobile models, in metal and plastic and in various scales. A set of lawn darts and hoops, like we once had and played with in the backyard until Thomas nearly speared the neighbor’s dog. A child-sized plastic fireman’s helmet in red with the word “Texaco” emblazoned across the front. Cardboard boxes of old board games based on long since canceled television shows, like Columbo, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Brady Bunch, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. And, of course, countless dolls. Barbies, Raggedy Anns, Cabbage Patch Kids, and life-sized plastic babies whose eyes would shut when you laid them flat. Some were minus limbs; others, heads. One shelf contained a collection of old metal robots; another a pile of tinplate trains that looked as though they’d been in a catastrophic wreck. Three black balls, each about the size of a squash ball, which I recognized as sixties-era Wham-O Super Balls, the kind that could bounce over a house.
But I didn’t feel nostalgic, looking at these treasures from yesterday. What I felt was scared. Scared shitless.