Worst Case (Michael Bennett 3)

A stocky black man wearing a bright green, red, and yellow kufi on his head appeared in a doorway at the other end of the room. He hurried over, shock and anger in his face.

“Who are you? What are you doing here? You’re not allowed in here. Your shoes! You can’t wear shoes here in the mussalah. Are you crazy? Can’t you see this is a holy place?”

I showed him my shield.

“I’m with the police department. We’re looking for a girl who was—”

That’s when the Muslim man grabbed me violently by the lapels of my suit jacket.

“I don’t care who you are,” he cried, dragging me toward the door. “This is a sacrilege! Get out of here now! You have no right to do this!”

As we were bus

y struggling, I remembered the Harlem mosque incident in the seventies in which an NYPD cop had been killed. A police community conflict was all we needed now in the middle of a kidnapping.

A moment later, the muscular man suddenly fell to his side. Emily had tripped him somehow and now had her knee in his back as she ratcheted her cuffs onto his wrists. I helped her pull the hysterical man to his feet.

“Sir,” Emily said. “Please calm yourself. We’re sorry about the shoe mistake. We were unaware and apologize. We are law enforcement officers looking for a kidnapped girl. We were told she was here. Please help us. A young girl’s life is at stake.”

“I see,” he said. “I’m Yassin Ali, the imam here. I lost my temper. Of course, I’ll do anything to help.”

Emily undid his cuffs, and he guided us back out into the foyer.

“You say a girl is being held here?” he said, staring at us in disbelief. “But that’s impossible. There hasn’t been anyone here since morning prayer. What’s this girl’s name? Is she a member of the congregation?”

I showed him Chelsea’s picture.

“A white girl?” he said, perplexed. “No. There’s no way. There must be a mistake.”

“Has anything out of the ordinary occurred today? Anything that might direct us to where this girl could be?” I said. “Any deliveries or—?”

“No.” Then something flashed in his eyes.

“Actually, yes. When I came in, I heard a loud noise from the side of the building, where my office is. There’s an alley between us and the construction site next door. I thought maybe one of the workers had dumped some debris again, but when I looked out, there was nothing.”

“Please show us,” Emily said. “We don’t have a moment to waste.”

Chapter 28

THE SIDE ALLEY Yassin showed us was appalling. Water—from a busted sewage line, judging by its stench—cascaded down the brick wall of the building under construction next door. A faded blue tarp flapped from a hole on its third floor.

You knew you were in a bad section of Manhattan when even the real-estate flippers had abandoned ship.

The piles of debris in the dim alley looked like something out of a photography book about the Great Depression. I rushed ahead, wishing we’d brought a pair of wading boots as I slogged over garbage bags, old bricks, the rusted door of a car.

I was coming back from the rear of the alley when I almost tripped over a fridge discarded on its back with the door still attached. By law, supers were supposed to remove the doors because of the notorious suffocation death-trap threat to curious kids.

My breath caught as a thought suddenly occurred to me.

I flipped up the fridge’s freezer door with the heel of my shoe.

Something went loose in my chest as I stared down.

I didn’t want to be seeing what I was seeing, yet I had to drag my eyes away. Then I reeled back to the alley’s fence behind me. With a shaking hand held over my mouth, I stood staring at the broken glass glittering in the rubble-strewn field beyond the alley. A train creaked and clattered in the distance. The wind played with a plastic bag.

I went back only when Emily got to the spot. We stood beside the open fridge, solemn and silent like mourners beside a strange white casket.

From inside, Chelsea Skinner stared back at us.