The Missing (24 page)

And what about Carol? Was she still alive? Or was she already buried in an unmarked grave? Buried like Mel where no one would ever find her?

On the other side of these woods was Route 86. Twenty-four years ago, she had seen a woman being strangled. She didn’t know the woman’s name or what had happened to her. But Victor Grady did. The man from the woods had come for her and Darby had survived. If she survived that, she could survive anything.

Darby knew what she had to do. When she saw the exit, she hit the gas and bounced up the ramp.

Chapter 56

Darby parked the crime scene vehicle in the delivery area behind a liquor store. Safe from prying eyes, she called Pappy back on his cell and quickly filled him in on what had happened. She asked him to repeat the information on the paint chip and wrote everything down in her pocket notebook.

‘I meant to ask you this earlier: Who sent the paint sample to the Germans?’

‘I did,’ Pappy said. ‘I sent them a sample in case the feds weren’t able to identify it. Plus, the Germans said they would look at it right away.’

‘So as far as the feds are concerned, the paint chip wasn’t identified.’

‘As far as I know. My contact at the federal lab sent me an email and said he struck out.’

Evan Manning had told her the same thing.

‘Darby, if the feds find me, I’ll have to turn over what I have.’

‘Which is why you need to go someplace for the day.’

‘Well, I was thinking of heading over to the MIT library for awhile.’

‘Good. Stay there – and stay off your phone unless I call.’

Next she called Banville on his cell.

‘I take it you heard the good news,’ she said.

‘Our federal friends are at the station right now, going through my office files and computer.’

‘What are they looking for?’

‘Beats the hell out of me. They keep throwing out Title Eighteen as the reason for taking over the investigation.’

‘Title Eighteen,’ Darby said. ‘Doesn’t that have something to do with the Patriot Act?’

‘You’ve got it. It basically gives the FBI domestic investigative powers in cases involving terrorism. I don’t know anything more than that. My guess is, by the way they’re racing through here, we’ve stumbled across something potentially embarrassing and now they’re here to sweep it under the rug. When it comes to burying secrets, nobody does it better than our government – especially this administration.’

‘I found an entire set of –’

‘We shouldn’t be talking over a cellular phone. Call me back in five minutes at this number.’

Darby wrote it down and headed out to find a pay phone. There was one just outside the front doors of the liquor store. She went inside to get change and, armed with quarters, called Banville. She kept an eye on the parking lot, paranoid that Agent Vamosi was going to pull up at any moment.

Banville picked up right away. Behind him was the steady drone of traffic.

‘Are they monitoring our phone calls?’ Darby asked.

‘When it comes to the feds, I don’t take any chances. Tell me what you found.’

‘We found a skull. I had it partially dug up when the feds showed up and took over. Coop told me the feds got a hit on CODIS.’

‘I wonder if that’s what triggered all of this.’

‘CODIS will give them a name and a last known address, but I have a way we can find Carol Cran-more.’ Darby filled him in on the paint chip.

‘Aston Martin Lagonda,’ Banville said. ‘That’s a very select market.’

‘The cars brought into the U.S. should be easy to track down since they had such a small production run. We’ll concentrate our search on anyone living in or around New England. Traveler isn’t flying into Boston, he’s rooted somewhere close. What he does with these women requires privacy. We’ll look for owners with isolated houses.’

‘Manning told us they couldn’t identify the paint chip.’

‘So?’

‘Maybe they were lying to us,’ Banville said. ‘Maybe they’re already trying to track Traveler down through the paint chip.’

‘Or maybe Manning was telling the truth. Maybe
their lab couldn’t ID the paint chip and they’re planning on tracking down Traveler through the map.’

‘I’m not following.’

‘The map was printed from a website,’ Darby said. ‘The website’s URL was printed at the bottom of the page. They’ll track Traveler down through an IP address.’

‘I have no idea what an IP address is. The computer stuff is way over my head.’

‘All the feds need to do is to identify the people who accessed this particular section of the map. They’ll go to the company and have them print off a log of IP addresses – it’s a unique string of numbers assigned to your computer every time you log on to the internet through your ISP – your internet service provider. Those IP addresses can be tracked down to an individual computer.’

‘So these IP addresses, they’re like a digital fingerprint.’

‘Not only is it like a digital fingerprint, the IP address acts as an individual map which will lead the feds directly to Traveler’s home. The feds will get a list of IP addresses and start targeting anyone living in and around New England. That’s going to take some time. Tracking Traveler down through the make of the car will be quicker.’

‘Okay. Give me your notes again on the paint chip.’

‘Tell me where to meet you. It will be quicker.’

‘You need to go to the Boston office before you get into any more trouble.’

‘I want to help you. You’re going to need people you can trust.’

‘It’s not a matter of trust, Darby. The feds can’t hurt me. I’m set to retire at the end of next year, but if they find out you’re still investigating this case, they’ll make your life difficult. I’ve seen it happen before. Too many times. Go downtown. I’ll call and keep you up to date, I promise.’

‘If you want the notes, then I’m coming along for the ride.’

‘Getting involved in this could cost you your career. You may want to give that some thought.’

‘I want to find Carol Cranmore and bring her home. What do you want?’

Banville didn’t answer. Darby spoke into the silence.

‘We’re wasting time. Carol may still be alive. We need to jump on this now.’

‘You said you’re parked at a liquor store.’

‘Joseph’s Discount Liquors on Palisades,’ Darby said. ‘I’m parked out back, in the delivery area.’

‘I still have one of the surveillance vans. We can run the investigation from there. Give me twenty minutes.’

Chapter 57

At 1300 hours, the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team boarded a private business jet at the Quantico airstrip. They were coming from a debriefing on the Traveler case. This was what they knew:

In late 1992, nine Hispanic and African American women disappeared in and around Denver, Colorado. The lead suspect in the case, John Smith, had packed up and moved by the time police located his address.

Smith’s home had been thoroughly cleaned, but forensics technicians for the Denver police recovered a partial boot print that matched a footwear impression found in the dirt next to the abandoned vehicle belonging to one of the missing women. An empty trash can sprayed with Luminol revealed a small area of blood. Analysis yielded two different DNA samples.

The first sample matched the genetic profile of one of the missing Denver women. The DNA profile was entered into CODIS, the FBI’s Combined DNA Indexing System.

The second blood sample was also listed on CODIS, but the identity of the person was not made
available to law enforcement agencies or forensic laboratories. The sample belonged to Earl Slavick, a member of the Hand of the Lord, a paramilitary white supremacist group whose ethnic cleansing agenda included the overthrow of the U.S. government. The group, it was believed, had played a role in the Oklahoma City bombing, although no firm link had ever been established.

Slavick was also a high-level FBI informant.

Slavick had been given early parole in the beating of a Hispanic woman in exchange for providing the FBI with detailed information of the group’s activities at its secluded training headquarters in the Arkansas hills, not far from the Oklahoma border. As a member of the group, Slavick had been undergoing firearms training and bomb making when, in early 1990, he tried to abduct a Hispanic woman at gunpoint. Slavick dragged the woman, Eva Ortiz, into the woods. When Slavick tripped and fell, Ortiz ran away.

The woman had failed to pick Slavick out of a lineup. He was let go by local police.

When word of his botched abduction attempt finally reached the FBI, Slavick was already on his way to Colorado, under the alias John Smith, to start his own racial cleansing movement.

Given the highly sensitive nature of the case, all of Slavick’s files were classified. His fingerprints and DNA profile were left on the computer databases.
If a match was ever found, the FBI would be alerted to Slavick’s whereabouts, while the reporting law enforcement agency or forensic laboratory would only see the code name the FBI had given to the case: Traveler.

Slavick’s next stop after Denver was Las Vegas. Twelve women and three men vanished over a nine-month period. A footwear impression matched the one recovered in Denver.

When Slavick moved on to Atlanta in 1998, Special Agent Evan Manning was asked to help assist in the investigation of three missing women. Slavick, posing as a gas station attendant, had attacked Manning, who managed to crawl away before passing out. Like his many victims, Slavick vanished into thin air.

That changed this morning, at 0800, when CODIS matched the blood found at the home of an abducted Massachusetts teenager to the DNA profile of Earl Slavick.

As the jet lifted off, nobody talked. HRT knew they were flying to Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. From there, a Black Hawk attack helicopter would take them to the command post set up in Lewiston.

Team commander Colin Cunney took off his headset. He took a few minutes to review his notes before standing up to address his crew.

‘Okay, boys, listen up. The computer-printed
map found early this morning was identified by our lab as having come from an online website specifically geared to hikers. Here’s where we got lucky. Two weeks ago, the map was accessed by a man living in twelve Cedar Road in Lewiston, New Hampshire. Crisis Management is already on the ground. They did a visual sweep of the house. It’s our boy Slavick.’

‘Hopefully he’ll stay put this time,’ Sammy DiBattista said.

Nervous laughter echoed inside the cabin.

‘A Black Hawk, courtesy of our friends at the Pease Air Force Base, made a run about an hour ago and got us a few aerial shots of the house,’ Cunney said. ‘The area’s thickly settled with woods, so we can use that to our advantage. There are three buildings: the house, a good-sized garage where he keeps a number of vehicles – so far they’ve spotted two vans – and a bunker. The entire area is surrounded with fences covered with razor wire, security cameras, infrared trip alarms, you name it.’

Cunney paused for a moment. He wanted his next point to sink in.

‘Slavick spent a lot of time at the Hand of the Lord’s training camp in Arkansas,’ he said. ‘Not only does he know how to shoot, he’s considered somewhat of an explosives expert. You all know he destroyed a hospital with a fertilizer bomb and a homemade plastic explosive stuffed inside a FedEx
box took down to the Boston Crime lab. Our man also killed two of our agents with dynamite packed inside a van. Going in, we’ve got to assume he’s rigged some of the buildings.

‘It will be nightfall by the time we arrive. Intel says there are other people on Slavick’s property – probably some local weekend warrior assholes he’s recruited for his movement. I want to hit him hard and fast. We’re not going to have another goddamn firefight, not if I can help it.’

The ghost of Waco passed through the faces.

Cunney looked to his two best snipers, Sammy DiBattista and Jim Hagman.

‘Sam, Haggy, you’re not to fire until you have the go-ahead from me, understood?’

Both men nodded. Cunney wasn’t worried. He had seen these two men in actual combat and knew their capabilities.

‘We don’t know how many women Slavick’s got trapped in there with him,’ Cunney said. ‘We’re going in with the assumption they’re alive. Rescuing those women is our primary objective. This is a tactical operation. There will be no negotiating.

‘One last thing. This is strictly a home team affair. We don’t have to worry about any interference from ATF or the locals. Crisis Management has assembled all the technical and tactical help we need. That’s all I have right now. Questions?’

Sammy DiBattista asked the question on every one’s
mind: ‘What do we do if Slavick decides to engage us?’

‘Simple,’ Cunney said. ‘We take the son of a bitch down.’

Chapter 58

The computers at the Massachusetts DMV were terribly slow. It took over two hours to assemble a twenty-page list of drivers who owned or had owned one of the twelve Aston Martin Lagondas imported into the United States.

Darby hunted through the sheets of tiny print for recent owners while Banville talked on one of the secured phones inside the surveillance van. More than four hours had passed since the feds had taken over the investigation. During that time, he had assembled a small group of detectives he could trust to handle the investigation discreetly.

Out of the twelve Lagondas, only eight were still active. The other four had been junked. Darby was in the process of compiling her notes when Banville hung up.

‘Rachel Swanson died of an air embolism,’ he said. ‘Someone pumped air through her IV line. The feds confiscated it along with the security tapes for ICU.’

‘Wonderful,’ Darby said. The feds were certainly covering their tracks.

‘We interviewed the ICU nurses, but nobody remembers anything but the news of the bomb.
That’s why Traveler bombed the hospital, didn’t he? Create all that confusion and fear and the son of a bitch slipped right in.’

‘It was just like 9/11. Everyone is running around, trying to find an exit. Nobody is paying attention to anyone.’