Darkness Fell

Heroin Takes Over a House, and Mom
By MICHAEL WILSON and J. DAVID GOODMANNOV. 29, 2014 NYT

Darkness fell on Wood Court on Staten Island, and they came. Footfalls on the gravel path, their crunch-crunch-crunch setting dogs barking, babies wailing, parents peering out windows, night after night.

“Cars pulling in and out,” said one neighbor who, still concerned for his family’s safety, declined to give his name. “Fifteen, 20 minutes, then out. Fifteen, 20 minutes, then out.” Cars idled on the corner, rock music thumping.

The strangers were headed to 19 Wood Court. A family had moved there in 2009. A father, a mother and three teenagers: two girls and a boy.

Soon, the husband was gone. The children, gone. The woman stayed — or more accurately, a jittery version of the busy, gregarious housewife with the day job and the quick laugh.

And she was not alone. All sorts of people seemed to be coming and going now, and living there. And dogs.

“Two pit bulls,” the neighbor said. “One of them almost attacked my father-in-law. They used to walk them off the leash.”

The condo is one of several that back up to one another, a gravel path alley in between. Strangers, lost, stumbled into the wrong yards.

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