Chapter 92

92

After I returned the powerboat to the dock in East Hampton where Colleen was waiting, the three of us headed to an Airbnb I had rented in Bay Shore.

Olivia was in no condition to do much of anything, so we just tried to make her feel as comfortable as possible at the house. She did manage a small smile when Colleen showed her the new clothes we had bought for her.

There was no way to imagine the hell she had been through. Beaten, kidnapped, trafficked. Victims of this abuse were no different than veterans with PTSD. It would be years before she felt like herself if she was lucky.

It was around six when we finally got back to the city in my pickup. We were going to reunite Olivia with her mother at her place in the Bronx. Which was going to be a challenge to say the least as the woman, like the rest of us, had thought Olivia had been dead for the last year.

As we came into the Bronx over the Whitestone Bridge, I looked out at Manhattan's famous skyline to my left, lit up in an orange sunset haze. Then I looked back at Olivia to see that she was crying.

"Olivia, listen," Colleen said. "The stuff you've been through has nothing to do with you. It was done to you. You're innocent. It's the men who hurt you who are bad. Not you."

Olivia looked at me in the mirror.

"But my poor father," she said. "I got my father killed."

"No, no, no," I said. "You've got it all wrong, Olivia. It's the other way around. Your dad died to save you. Your dad was the one who led us to you. He started this whole thing."

"What?" she said. "What do you mean?"

"Mike's right," Colleen said to her. "The school and that bastard, Frank Stone, tried to pay your father off to leave it alone. They offered him half a million dollars to go away. He wouldn't do it. He didn't care about the money. He wasn't going to stop until he got answers.

"If it wasn't for your dad," Colleen said, "I wouldn't have been up here investigating and we would never have found you. He was the one, Olivia. Your dad saved you. It was your dad."

"It was?" Olivia said, rubbing at her eyes.

"Olivia, I'm a dad," I said. "Do you know how happy your father is right now that you made it out? He succeeded. He won."

"Exactly," Colleen said. "He beat these bastards. He never gave up hope. Now you get to live your life. I know it's hard and things are going to hurt for a long time, but you need to try to be happy. It's what your dad wanted. The only thing he wanted for you."

We got on the Cross Bronx Expressway and took it to the Major Deegan north and got off at the exit for Fordham Road. The apartment where Olivia lived with her mom was on a hilly street called Loring Place North.

"Right here," she said, pointing at an old brick walk-up with a rusting fire escape.

I pulled in at the hydrant in front and Colleen got out with Olivia to ring the buzzer. They rang a few times and nothing happened so they headed back to the truck. Just then a man came out and stood in the building's garbage way next to the front door. It was an older Spanish guy in a sheepskin-lined denim jacket. Olivia seemed to recognize him.

"That's my mom's super, Ralph. I'll ask him if he's seen my mom," Olivia said.

I looked down Loring as Colleen and I waited in the truck. It gave a nice view of a park on the other side of Fordham Road.

"I know this area," I said to Colleen. "Tolentine is around here, right? I went to summer school there after freshman year of high school. At the lunch break, we—er I mean some of the bad kids—used to sneak bodega beers in that park."

"The bad kids, huh?" Colleen said, looking at me. "You have to watch out for those bad kids."

Olivia walked back over and got into the truck.

"He says she's not here. She's at St. Nicholas of Tolentine Church. It's just around the corner."

"Mike knows where it is," Colleen said as I put it in Drive.

"Really? How?" Olivia said.

"He had to go to confession there once, right, Mike?" Colleen said, smiling.

We were at the corner about to make the turn when it happened.

Olivia leaped out the back door.

On the corner there was a laundromat and in front of it was a short black-haired woman with blue eye shadow. She almost fell down as Olivia all but tackled her. She was holding a bag of groceries but as we watched, she dropped them as she pulled Olivia to her.

"You think she's going to be okay?" Colleen said as the mom and daughter wept together in front of the laundromat.

"I don't know," I said. "But we got her home."