It’s not just my job that I won’t be able to do if I don’t find out what happened to my sister. It’s my life that I won’t be able to do.
Being able to admit this to herself had been both frightening and liberating.
With a Glock as her main weapon and a Beretta Nano stuck in an ankle holster in case everything else went to hell—which it often did in her line of work—Pine pulled to a stop three cookie-cutter houses down from Vincenzo’s humble abode.
All the homes here were salt boxes with asphalt shingles, about 1,200 square feet set over a story and a half of unremarkable architecture. The area was all post–World War II housing, constituting a grid of homes that had surrounded virtually every city across the country within a decade after the “boys” had come home from fighting Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito. Nine or so months thereafter, Baby Boomers by the millions were born in neighborhoods just like this. Those Boomers were now taking their rightful place as grandparents to the Millennials and the Z generations. What was left was an old, tired group of dwellings inhabited both by the elderly and also those just starting out.
Though they looked alike, the properties did differ. Some yards were neat and organized. Siding and trim were freshly painted. Mailboxes rested on stout metal posts, and washed cars were parked in driveways that had been kept up.
Other homes had none of these attributes. The cars in the driveways or parked in the yards were more often resting on cinder blocks than on tires. The sounds of air-powered tools popping and generators rumbling foretold that some of these places had businesses operating out of them, either legal or not. Siding peeled away from these structures, and front doors were missing panes of glass. Mailboxes were leaning or entirely gone. Driveways were more weeds than concrete or gravel.
She counted three dwellings with bullet holes in the façade, and one that still had police crime scene tape swirling in the tricky wind.
Tony Vincenzo’s place fell into the houses-that-hadn’t-been-kept-up category. But she didn’t care what his home looked like. She only wanted everything he held in his memory or in hard evidence about his grandfather Ito and any others who might have played a role in her childhood nightmare.
She eased out of her car and stared at the front of the house. Ito Vincenzo had once owned this place and had raised his family here with his wife. Pine had no idea what sort of a father and husband he was. But if he had it in him to nearly kill one little girl and kidnap another, she would rate his parental skills suspect, at the very least.
Tony Vincenzo worked at Fort Dix, the nearby army installation. The prison where his father was behind bars was part of that complex. Maybe the son wanted to be close to the father. If so, maybe Tony visited Teddy regularly and thus might have information to share about Ito that he’d learned from his old man.
Pine headed up the sidewalk where the concrete had lurched upward, corrupted by decades of freezing and thawing and no maintenance. She imagined Ito Vincenzo, her sister’s abductor and the man who almost killed her, walking this very same path decades before. The thought left her nearly breathless. She stopped, composed herself, and kept going.
Pine reached the front door and peered in one of the side glass panels. She could see no activity going on in there. If the guy had followed in his daddy’s footsteps, the criminal element would not be out in the open. They usually did their dirty deeds in the basement and away from prying eyes. Yet the guy was gainfully employed at Fort Dix, so maybe he was completely law-abiding.
She knocked and got no answer. She knocked again as a courtesy and got the same result. She looked to her left at the house next door, where an old woman was rocking in a chair on her front porch, some needlework in hand. It was sunny, though cool, and she had on a bright orange shawl. Her gray hair looked freshly permed, with patches of shiny pink scalp peeking through here and there like sunlight through clouds. She took no note of Pine; her bespectacled eyes were focused on stitch one, purl two. Her yard was neatly kept, and colorful flowerpots with winter mums in them were arrayed around the porch, adding needed color to what was otherwise drab and cold.
“Tony’s in there,” the woman said quietly.
Pine walked over to the far end of Vincenzo’s front porch and put her hand on the wooden railing. “You know him?”
The woman, keeping her eyes on her needlework, nodded imperceptibly. “But I don’t know you.”
“Name’s Atlee.”
“Funny name for a girl.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that. So, he’s here?”
“Saw him go in an hour ago and he hasn’t come out.”
“Just him?”
“That I don’t know. But I haven’t seen anyone else.” The whole time the woman spoke quietly and kept her eyes on the knitting. Anyone not standing as close as Pine would not even be able to tell she was speaking to her.
“Okay, thanks for the heads-up.”
“You here to arrest him? You a cop?”
“No, and yes, I am,” said Pine.
“Then why are you knocking on his door?”
“Just want to ask him some questions.”
“He works at Fort Dix.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard.”
“He probably won’t like your questions.”
“Probably not. Does he live here full-time? I couldn’t find that out.”
“He’s in and out. He’s not nice to me. He calls me bad names and he pisses on my flowers. And I don’t like the look of his friends. This used to be a nice neighborhood. But not anymore. Now I just want to make it out alive.”
“Well, thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. Boy’s bad news. You watch yourself.”
“I will.” Pine walked back over to the front door and knocked again.
“Anthony Vincenzo?” she called out.
Nothing. For one, two, three seconds. Then something. A lot of something.
A noise exploded from the back of the house. Pine had heard that sound many times.
A back door being kicked open. Then another familiar noise: feet running away. People were always running away from her. And with good reason. And with equally good reason, she wasn’t going to let that happen.
She leapt over the porch railing as the woman looked up from her yarn and needles.
“Go get the little prick,” she said, a smile creasing her heavily wrinkled face.
Pine’s boots hit the pavement. She was at full speed in five strides.
Inhale through the nose, out through the mouth. Motor the arms and the legs will follow.
A blur of blue shirt and lighter jeans and clunky white sneakers was up ahead and pulling away.
She redoubled her speed but wasn’t making up any ground. Tony Vincenzo was over a decade younger, and undoubtedly faster, even with Pine’s longer legs. And he had the added fuel of fear. Fear could make the slow fast and the weak strong.
And turn a coward into the bravest of the brave, if only because there’s no way out.
“Tony, I just want to talk to you, that’s all,” she shouted out as she sucked in one quick breath after another.
Vincenzo merely increased his speed. Asshole was an Olympian now. She’d need a car to catch him.
Shit.
Pine looked around, eyeing any way she could take a shortcut and catch up to him. She briefly contemplated pulling her weapon and firing a warning shot just to scare the shit out of him, maybe making him run crazy, hit something, and fall over. That would be all she’d need.