The Missing (19 page)

‘What does that mean? Name lipsticks?’

‘Lipstick companies, they can’t say colors like pink or blue. They’ve got to come up with cool marketing names like Pink Sugar and Loud and Lovely Lavender. Those are her names, by the way.’

‘Hands down, she’s certainly the brightest woman you’ve dated.’

The lines on the laptop’s screen started vibrating.

‘The listening devices are transmitting,’ the FBI tech said.

Darby grabbed the edge of her seat as the van sped up.

Chapter 42

The hospital bathroom reeked of Pine-Sol. Boyle was alone. He stood inside the last stall on the far left. He had already taken off his hat and FedEx jacket. The empty backpack, which had been strapped across his back, was now on the floor.

Boyle had worn green surgeon’s scrubs underneath his clothes. He took off his boots and slipped on a pair of sneakers. After he tied a bandana around his head, he stuffed the boots and FedEx clothes into the backpack and opened the stall door.

He checked himself in the mirror. Good. A pair of stylish black-framed glasses was tucked inside his breast pocket. He put them on.

Boyle stuffed his backpack inside the garbage can. He took out his BlackBerry and typed: ‘Ready. In position.’

Boyle opened the door and stepped out into the bright, busy corridor on the eighth floor. He walked down three corridors and stopped near the large bay windows overlooking the entrance for Mass General.

The only vehicles allowed near the main entrance were taxis and ambulances. He saw six ambulances
parked out front. Two more ambulances were coming. Police were busy directing traffic. More police had been called in to handle the swelling crowd of reporters. They were huddled near the old brick building used for hospital deliveries.

Richard’s message came through five minutes later: ‘Go.’

Boyle reached inside his pocket. The detonator felt cold in his hand.

He walked away from the windows toward ICU. When he reached the waiting room, he hit the button.

A distant rumble, followed by glass shattering. Then the screaming started.

Stan Petarsky was trying hard not to think about the dead body inside the box next to his feet. He tried to think about something pleasant – like Jim Beam over ice – when the elevator door opened.

Erin Walsh, the pretty blonde he saw sometimes in the cafeteria, was standing in front of a door, talking on her cell phone and waving to him to come this way, to the stairwell. Stan picked up the box and carried it into Serology Lab.

Erin started taking pictures. Stan didn’t want to stick around to see a severed body. He headed for the door, thinking about how to get his hands on some Jim Beam, when the package exploded.

Chapter 43

Darby had a new view: a monitor showing what was happening outside the surveillance van.

They were driving at a good clip down Pickney Street, three blocks away from the Cranmore house. The houses were a little better over here, but not by much. Darby spotted more than one car parked up on cinder blocks.

Karl Hartwig, one of the SWAT members, was kneeling in the center of the van, his face covered by the periscope. Everyone else was watching the laptop.

On the monitor and coming up close was a battered black van parked on the left-hand side of the road, near a grouping of trees making up a small patch of hillywoods.

Spikes danced on the laptop screen and leveled off.

‘He’s in the black van,’ the FBI tech said.

Hartwig talked into his chest mike: ‘Alpha-One, this is Alpha-Two, we have confirmation on a black Ford van with tinted windows and no license plates parked on Pickney Street, over.’

‘Roger, Alpha-Two. We’re moving into position.’

A moment later, the surveillance pulled over and came to a stop. The engine was still running, the floor vibrating beneath her feet. Hartwig moved the periscope.

On the monitor now, down the far end of the street from which they had just come, was a UPS truck. It traveled a few feet and pulled over. Darby caught a brief flash of black coming from the back of the truck and then it was gone.

The UPS truck didn’t move. Darby knew it would stay there and block the street.

Static over Hartwig’s mike, then ‘Alpha-Two, this is Alpha-One.’

‘Go ahead Alpha-One,’ Hartwig said.

‘Alpha teams Three and Four are moving in position. Stand by.’

‘Roger, Alpha-One. Standing by.’

The UPS truck swept past the woods. The third surveillance vehicle, a flower delivery van, made its way down Coolidge Road.

Traveler was blocked in.

The black van still hadn’t moved.

Banville hung up the wall phone. ‘All the areas are blocked off,’ he said. ‘Everyone’s in position.’

‘Alpha-One, all teams report ready to go,’ Hartwig said. ‘We’re in position and standing by, over.’

‘Acknowledged, Alpha-Two. Prepare to engage.’

‘Copy, Alpha-One.’

Darby felt the surveillance van pull away from the
curb, stop and turn around. Hartwig locked up the periscope and crouched next to his partner near the van’s back doors. Clipped to their belts were stun grenades – also known as flashbangs because of their blinding flash and deafening blast. An explosive entry had been authorized.

Darby watched the black van on the monitor. It still hadn’t moved.

Hartwig turned to her and said, ‘The two of you are to stay in here until the area is secured, understood?’

The van slowed down.

Hartwig gave the signal to his partner. The van’s back doors swung open.

The two SWAT officers jumped out into the light rain, leaving the back doors open. Darby moved out of her seat to get a better view.

SWAT officers were already positioned at the back of the Ford van, their gloved hands on the door – here came another SWAT officer running out from the woods, bringing up his pistol, targeting the driver’s side window.

Hartwig gave the hand signal. A SWAT officer yanked on the door handle and the van’s back doors open.

Hartwig tossed the flashbang grenade inside, and before Darby shut her eyes, she saw a man in a dark jacket sitting in front of a table holding some type of equipment full of small, blinking lights.

The grenade exploded in blinding light, the blast deafening. Hartwig came around and brought up his weapon, his laser scope targeted on the person’s back. He was still sitting in front of the table. He hadn’t moved, and his hands were hidden inside his jacket pockets.

‘HANDS ON TOP OF YOUR HEAD, DO IT NOW, PUT THEM UP AND DON’T MOVE.’

Traveler didn’t move.

Darby felt the van come to a sharp and sudden stop. Banville was out of his seat, moving past her. Hartwig rushed into the back of Traveler’s van.

‘GET YOUR HANDS UP IN THE AIR RIGHT NOW. DO IT.’

Hartwig threw Traveler to the floor.

Darby stepped outside, legs shaking from the time spent sitting. She wanted to be in there with the SWAT officer, wanted to see Traveler’s face and look into his eyes when he said Carol’s name.

Hartwig stepped out of the van, shaking his head. He said something to Banville.

Coop was standing next to her now. Traveler was lying on the floor. He wasn’t moving.

Banville was heading back.

‘What’s going on?’ Darby said.

‘It’s a dead body bound to a chair,’ Banville said. That’s what’s going on.’

‘What? The grenade couldn’t have killed him.’

‘He’s been dead for several hours,’ Banville said. ‘Someone strangled him.’

‘Then what’s with all that equipment?’

Banville didn’t answer. He had stepped back inside the van, the wall phone already pressed against his ear.

‘It’s got to be him,’ the FBI tech said behind her. ‘The listening devices are being picked up in
that
van. Look, there’s an L32 receiver in there.’

‘Maybe he’s using the equipment to transmit the signal somewhere else,’ his partner said.

The commotion and noise, and the sight of eight SWAT team members hovering around the van had drawn the neighbors out of their homes. They stood on the front steps, many of them standing in the rain, wanting to know what was going on.

‘Let’s secure the scene,’ Darby told Coop.

Standing across the street was a girl no older than eight. She was dressed in a yellow rain slicker and held her mother’s hand. The girl looked scared, on the verge of tears. Darby was watching her when the van exploded and blew the girl and her mother off the ground.

Chapter 44

An evacuation siren blared over the hospital speakers. Daniel Boyle pushed his way through the crowds of civilians, doctors and nurses running in all directions, people bumping into each other, some falling, everyone scrambling to find an exit, to get away from the dust and smoke filling the hallways.

The ICU waiting room was empty. The ICU doors were opened. Nobody was guarding Rachel’s room. The two cops responsible for watching her had either been called away or had decided to leave.

Boyle ran down the hallway. The ICU nurses had left their post. He was alone. He looked through the window to Rachel Swanson’s room. She was sleeping.

Boyle pushed open the door with his arm, careful about not leaving any fingerprints.

Hand already inside his breast pocket, he came back with the hypodermic. He clamped the plastic cap between his teeth, exposing the needle, his thumb drawing the plunger higher as he moved to the bed.

Boyle wished he could wake her up, wished he could watch Rachel scream one final time before she started convulsing.

The needle pierced the IV tube. Boyle pushed the air through the line.

A quick wipe of the line using his jacket cuff and he was moving back to the door. Hurry.

Cap back on the needle, the hypodermic tucked back inside his pocket. Hurry.

Out the door and walking swiftly down the hallway, nobody watching –

One of the hospital’s security staff was standing next to the nurse’s station. The man was dressed in a dark raincoat and wore an earpiece and a lapel mike. He was looking around the space, searching for the wounded when he spotted Boyle.

Boyle ran to him. ‘Everyone’s gone,’ he said. ‘It’s all clear.’

An alarm sounded from behind the front desk.

The security man turned to look at the monitors. ‘What’s going on?’

Boyle pretended to study the numbers on the monitor. ‘One of the patients has gone into cardiac arrest,’ Boyle said. ‘I’ll take care of it. Make sure everyone gets to the stairwells.’

‘You sure I can’t help you?’

‘No, get going. I can take it from here.’

The security man didn’t move.

Very calmly, as if reaching for a pen, Boyle slipped his hand inside his white coat and undid the snap for the shoulder holster. He’d drop the rent-a-cop if he
had to. Drop him first and then run for the stairwell.

No need. The security man had left. Boyle watched him leave, then turned the corner and headed for the bathroom. He grabbed his backpack from the trash and made his way toward a cop directing people into the stairwell. Boyle blended into the crowd of civilians and hospital staff.

The morning was filled with rain and sirens. He jogged down Cambridge Street and took the stairs for the T station.

Yesterday, on his way home from Belham, he purchased an electronic T pass at South Station. He swiped the pass through the magnetic card reader, leaving no fingerprints, and stood with the rest of the people watching the chaos below them. Smoke drifted from the crumbled ruins of the delivery garage. Fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars were coming from all directions. Shards of glass and pieces of brick and concrete covered Cambridge Street. Some of the store windows, Boyle saw, had been blown apart by the blast.

When the train pulled up, Boyle grabbed a window seat, took out his BlackBerry and typed a message to Richard: ‘Done.’

To pass the time, Boyle thought about what he would do to Carol Cranmore once she stepped outside her room. Sooner or later, she would come out for her food. They all did.

But he couldn’t wait forever, not now. The preparations for leaving were already made. He would have to kill them all soon – tonight, maybe.

Chapter 45

The right side of Darby’s face throbbed as she helped Coop lift another wounded SWAT officer onto the stretcher. The officer was unconscious but breathing.

They carefully made their way over the wet debris, heading as fast as they could through the rain and smoke, toward the far end of the street where the wounded lay scattered on the ground. Dozens of them were being treated by the EMTs and doctors rushed in from Belham Hospital. The dead ones lay still under blue tarps weighed down by rocks.

Darby eased the officer onto a gurney. She was about to head back out when she spotted Evan Manning kneeling on the ground, lifting up a blue sheet to examine the face of one of the dead. She pushed her way through the crowds of medical staff shouting orders over the wail of the approaching sirens, the screaming and the crying.

She grabbed Evan by the arm. ‘Did you find Traveler?’

‘Not yet.’ He seemed genuinely surprised to see her. ‘What happened to your face?’

‘I was knocked down by the blast.’

‘What?’

‘It’s too loud here. Come this way.’

Darby led him across the street and into the woods. The leaves protected them from the rain. It was quieter in here but not by much.

‘I tried calling you on your cell,’ Evan said, wiping the water away from his face.

‘I’m pretty sure I broke it when I fell. What’s going on with Traveler?’

‘All the roads are blocked off, but so far, we haven’t found him.’

‘In order to have set off the bomb, he’d have to be close by, wouldn’t he? We need to make sure the cops at the roadblocks are checking everyone they see. He could still be somewhere around here – he could be walking away right now.’

‘We’re checking everyone. Listen, I’ve got to leave. I’m going to be tied up in Boston. It doesn’t look good.’

‘What’s going on in Boston?’

‘There was an explosion inside your building. I don’t know all the details yet.’