The Missing (11 page)

When she finished, Boyle stood and paced the room, pausing several times to stare at the phone. He wanted to call Richard, but Richard had strict orders never to call him on his cell phone. Boyle knew he should wait until Richard arrived to tell him about the plan but he couldn’t wait. Boyle was too excited. He needed to talk to Richard now.

Boyle picked up the phone and dialed Richard’s cell. Richard didn’t pick up. Boyle hung and dialed again. Richard picked up on the fourth ring. He was angry.

‘I told you to
never
call this number –’

‘I need to talk to you,’ Boyle said. ‘It’s important.’

‘I’ll call you back.’

The wait was excruciating. Boyle rocked back and forth in his chair, staring at the phone, waiting for Richard to call back. Twenty minutes later, he did.

‘We can connect Rachel to Slavick,’ Boyle said.

‘How?’

‘Slavick’s a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. When he was living in Arkansas, at the compound for the Hand of the Lord, he tried to abduct an eighteen-year-old woman and failed – he would have gone to jail if the woman had been able to pick him
out of a lineup. He also trained at their weapons facility, worked in their gun shop. And he fire-bombed black churches and synagogues.’

‘You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.’

‘Slavick’s planning his own underground movement here in New Hampshire,’ Boyle said. ‘I’ve been inside his compound. He has fertilizer bombs in the shed, and in his basement there’s a batch of homemade explosives – plastic explosives. We can use them to create a diversion to get to Rachel.’

‘You want to bomb the hospital?’

‘When a bomb goes off, it creates instant chaos. People will think it’s a terrorist attack – they’ll be reliving nine-eleven all over again. While everyone’s running around, nobody will be paying attention to us. One of us can slip inside and kill Rachel, pump some air through her IV line and she’ll go into cardiac arrest. It will look like she died of natural causes.’

Richard didn’t answer. Good. He was thinking about it.

‘If we bomb the hospital, not only will we kill Rachel, we can bring the FBI into this sooner,’ Boyle said. ‘Once Slavick’s DNA profile finds its match on CODIS, the FBI will be here at lightning speed to take over the case.’

‘You’re right about that. If Slavick’s identity makes it into the press, the feds will have a PR nightmare
on their hands. Where’s Slavick now? At home?’

‘He’s in Vermont for the weekend, interviewing potential members for his movement,’ Boyle said. The GPS unit is still attached to his Porsche. I can tell you where he is right now, if you want.’

‘If we go ahead with this, you’ll have to move – quickly.’

‘It’s time I move again anyway. I’ve been thinking about heading back to California.’

‘You can’t go back to Los Angeles. They’re still looking for you there.’

‘I was thinking of La Jolla, someplace upscale. We should use this opportunity to get rid of Darby McCormick. Make it look like an accident. I have some ideas.’

‘We’ll talk some more when I get there.’

‘What about Carol? Can I keep her?’

‘For the moment. Don’t let her out of the cell yet.’

‘I’ll wait for you,’ Boyle said. ‘We can play with her together.’

Chapter 24

Darby had set up a temporary work space in her old bedroom. The bed was gone, replaced by her father’s desk. It faced the two windows overlooking the front yard.

Before leaving work, she made copies of the evidence report and the pictures. She tacked the pictures on the corkboard above the desk and then settled into the chair with the evidence file.

For awhile, she was aware of every sound – the tick of the grandfather clock from downstairs, her mother’s soft snoring from down the hallway. Then she was lost in the file.

Two hours later, her head felt crowded, thoughts tripping over one another. It was closing in on eleven. She decided to take a break and went downstairs to make some tea.

The box of clothing was still by the door. She saw the pink sweater and had a new memory – alone in the house at fifteen, the weekend after her father’s funeral, his down vest with its smell of cigars pressed against her face.

Darby pulled the sweater from underneath the pair of ripped jeans and sat on the floor. The hum of
the refrigerator filled the kitchen. She rubbed the cashmere between her fingers. Soon this would be all that was left of her mother – her clothes with their fading whispers of perfume, memories frozen in pictures.

Darby stared at the spot where Melanie had stood begging for her life. She stared at the wall with its coat of paint that hid Stacey’s blood. Victor Grady was sealed between these walls, now and forever, along with memories of her father, and Darby couldn’t understand how Sheila could move through these rooms day after day competing with these two totally separate but equally powerful ghosts.

A car raced by, blaring rap music.

Darby found she was standing. Her hands trembled as she bent to pick up the sweater. She didn’t know why she was sweating.

It was closing in on midnight. Best to get some sleep. Tomorrow morning she and Coop were going to head out early to the Cranmore house. With a few hours of sleep and a fresh eye, she was hoping to find something she might have overlooked or missed.

Upstairs, Darby laid in the recliner, cold beneath the comforter. When sleep finally came, Darby dreamed of a house with mazes of dark hallways and shifting rooms, doors that opened to black holes.

Carol Cranmore was also dreaming.

Her mother stood in the doorway of her bedroom,
saying it was time to wake up and get ready for school. Carol could still see the smile on her mother’s face when her eyes fluttered open to pitch-black darkness. She felt the itchy blanket wrapped around her and then remembered where she was and what had happened to her.

Panic flared and then, oddly, disappeared. And as strange as it sounded, she still felt sleepy. The last time she had felt this exhausted was last summer, at Stan Petrie’s all-weekend party down in Falmouth where they drank all night and played touch football all day at the beach.

Carol wondered about the food again. Was it drugged? The sandwich had left a slight chalky taste in her mouth – it had tasted funny even when she was eating it – and some time later, after the man with the mask shut the door, she had grown real tried, which surprised her. She shouldn’t be tired. She should be wide awake with fear, but she could barely keep her eyes open. And she needed to pee again. Badly.

She crawled out from underneath the cot, stood and immediately swung her right hand out, feeling for the wall. There it was. How many steps until the wall ended? Eight? Ten? She staggered forward, blinking, eyes wide open in the darkness that wouldn’t go away. This must be what a blind person felt like.

She found the toilet and sat down. For no reason at all, she saw the desk in her room with its window
view of the ugly street and the trees with their beautiful leaves having turned gold, red and yellow. She wondered what time it was, whether it was day or night. Was it still raining?

By the time she flushed, Carol felt better. Awake. Now she had to deal with the fear.

Carol knew she had to come up with a plan. The man who had brought her here would be coming for her again. She couldn’t fight him off with her hands. Maybe there was something in here she could use – the bed. The bed was made with these steel rods. Maybe she could try and dismantle it, grab one of the rods and use it as a bat and knock him unconscious.

Carol felt her way through the darkness, thinking about the person who was trapped down here with her. She hoped to God it was Tony. Maybe Tony was awake, wandering around his room right now, looking for something to use to defend –

Carol bumped headfirst into something solid, a scream escaping her lips as she stumbled backward, almost tripping.

Not a wall, it definitely wasn’t a wall, didn’t have its hard, rough flatness. What was it then? Not the sink either. This was something new and different. What was it? Whatever this thing was, it was blocking her path.

A tiny green light glowed in the darkness, directly in front of her.

The man with the mask was standing behind a camera.

The flash went off, the bright white light piercing her eyes. Blinded, Carol stumbled back. She bumped into the sink, tripped and fell to the floor.

Another flash.

Carol crawled away, bright spots of lights dancing and fading in front of her eyes. Another flash and she bumped her head against the corner of the wall. She was trapped.

Chapter 25

Darby drove out early the next morning, while it was still dark.

Half a dozen patrolmen were busy redirecting the traffic on Coolidge Road in order to accommodate the swelling numbers of state police cruisers, unmarked detective cars and news vans that were clogging up the streets near Carol Cranmore’s house. Small armies of volunteers were gathered, getting ready to canvass the neighborhood with fliers bearing Carol’s picture.

Darby’s attention turned to the state troopers holding the leashes of search and rescue dogs. She was surprised to see them. Because of statewide budget cuts, search and rescue dogs weren’t ordinarily called out to the scene of missing or abducted people.

‘I wonder who’s picking up the tab for the dogs,’ Coop said.

‘The Sarah Sullivan fund, I bet.’ Sarah Sullivan was the name of a Belham girl who was abducted from the Hill several years ago. Her father, Mike Sullivan, a local contractor, had set up a fund to
cover any additional expenses related to a missing person’s investigation.

Darby had to wait for the cops to move the blockades out of the way. When she turned the corner, the crowds of reporters and TV crews saw the crime scene vehicle and descended on them, shouting questions.

By the time they finally reached the house, her ears were ringing. Darby shut the front door and placed her kit in the downstairs foyer. The copper smell of blood grew stronger as she climbed the stairs.

Dianne’s bedroom was in the same neat, tidy condition as it had been the other night. One of the dresser drawers was half open, as was the closet door. On the floor was a safe, one of those portable fireproof models people used to store important documents.

Carol’s mother had probably come here to pack-up some clothes while the house was being processed as a crime scene. Darby remembered standing in her own bedroom, packing up clothes for her stay at the hotel while a detective watched from the doorway.

Darby stepped into Carol’s room. A gold, predawn light was visible through the windows. She looked at the surfaces covered with fingerprint powder, trying to tune out the sounds of dogs barking and reporters shouting questions over the constant blaring of car horns from Coolidge Road.

‘What are we looking for, exactly?’ Coop asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Good. That should help us narrow down our search.’

The teenager’s clothes hung on wire hangers inside the closet. A few shirts and pants were marked with the kind of stickers and price tags often used at thrift stores and yard sales. The shoes and sneakers were arranged in two neat rows by the season: the summer sneakers and sandals in the back, and in the front row, the fall and winter boots and shoes.

The window set up by the desk overlooked a chain-link fence and the neighbor’s yard with its clothesline stretched from the back porch to a tree. Below, in the overgrown weeds, was a wooden ladder half-buried in the dirt. Crushed beer cans and cigarette butts littered the ground. Darby wondered what Carol thought of this view, how she managed to push it aside so it wouldn’t get to her.

The top of the desk was clean and neat. An assortment of colored pencils was organized in glass jars. The middle drawer contained a decent charcoal sketch of her boyfriend reading a book in the brown chair from downstairs. Carol had left out the duct tape in the drawing.

The folder underneath the drawing held magazine and newspaper clippings of biographical profiles of successful women. Carol had underlined several quotes in red ink and made notes in the margins like
‘important’ and ‘remember this.’ Written on the inside of the folder, in black marker, was a quote: ‘Behind every successful woman is herself.’

A three-ring binder contained articles on beauty secrets. The section marked ‘Exercise’ was devoted to dieting tips. For inspiration, Carol had pasted a picture of an extremely thin quasi-celebrity wearing big, round sunglasses.

‘As fun as this is, I’m not much use to you up here. I’m going to take a look at the kitchen again. Holler down if you find anything.’

Carol’s bedding had been stripped and bagged. Darby sat on the sagging mattress and looked out the window at the television cameras. She wondered if Carol’s abductor was watching.

What was she looking for, exactly?

What common trait did Carol Cranmore share with the other missing women?

Both Carol and Terry Mastrangelo were average-looking at best. In her picture, Terry had a frumpy, exhausted look Darby had seen in lots of single mothers. Carol was five years younger, a senior in high school. She was the better looking of the two, razor thin, with sharp blue eyes set against pale, freckled skin.

No, it wasn’t a physical attraction; Darby felt sure of that. The trait these two youngwomen shared was something beyond the surface, something she couldn’t see.

The problem was that Darby didn’t know Carol beyond the framed pictures on the hallway and the pieces of evidence collected in bags – she didn’t know Terry Mastrangelo at all. At the moment, both women were snapshots frozen in pictures.

Terry Mastrangelo was a single mother.

Dianne Cranmore was a single mother.

Was Carol’s mother the intended target?

Granted, Dianne Cranmore was a full decade older than Terry, but age didn’t seem to be a factor in the abductor’s selection process. The idea was still turning over in Darby’s mind when she stood and headed back to the mother’s bedroom.

Dianne had spent good money on the comforter and sheets. She had some decent jewelry, but nothing worth stealing. Wellworn clothes hung inside the closet. It looked like she splurged a little on nice shoes.