The Missing (29 page)

Evan saw her and went to pick up the axe.

‘Don’t do it.’

He brought the axe up over his head. Darby fired and blew a hole through his stomach.

Evan slumped back against the wall. She kicked the axe away. He tried to get up, fell, kept trying until his arms went limp.

Behind the mask came a wet, sick, wheezing sound. He managed to say one word:

‘Melanie.’

Darby ripped off the mask.

‘Buried… She’s buried . ..’ Evan started choking on his blood.

‘Where? Where is Mel buried?’

‘Ask… your… mother.’

Darby felt the skin stretch tight across her face.

Evan smiled, and that was all.

Darby removed Evan’s belt and unzipped his coveralls. She patted down the pockets and found a set of keys. She didn’t find a cell phone, but she did find a small digital camera stuffed inside one of the pouches on the carpenter’s belt. She slid the camera in her back pocket.

Hands slick with blood, she tried each key until she found the one that unlocked the padlocks on the doors. Darby drew in a breath and looked up at the dark ceiling.

‘He’s dead. He can’t hurt you. Is there anyone else in here?’

No answer. The music kept playing.

‘I have his keys. I can come help you. If you’re there, call out to me.’

No answer. The music kept playing.

Darby went back for Carol. The teenager was hunkered against a dark corner in the hallway, rocking back and forth, in shock.

‘It’s over, Carol. Everything’s okay. Here, take my hand. That’s it, hold on tight, I’m going to pull you through… No, don’t look at the floor, look at me. I’m going to take you out of here, but I want you to close your eyes until I tell you to open them, okay? Good. That’s it, keep them closed. Only a few more steps. That’s it. Don’t look down. We’re almost there. We’re almost home.’

Chapter 69

It seemed to take forever to find their way out of the maze.

Darby stood on the opposite end of the dungeon, in a corridor with four identical cages. She knew she was on the other side because this corridor had an extra steel door armed with four padlocks. She used the keys. It was the only time Carol let go of her hand.

A ladder bolted against the wall led up to a basement illuminated with soft light coming from an opened door on the far left, across from the stairs. Darby approached the door, Carol’s hand gripped fiercely in her own.

Six video monitors were set up on top of an old desk. Each screen showed a prison cell in dark green color – night vision. Evan and Boyle had installed surveillance cameras equipped with night vision so they could watch their prisoners. All the cells were empty.

Evan’s clothes were neatly folded on top of a table. His cell phone was lying on top of his wallet, along with his car keys.

Darby was about to head into the room with Carol
when she spotted the various costumes draped over mannequins. The heads were covered in Halloween masks – some store bought, some homemade. Behind the mannequins was a Peg-Board-covered wall holding various weapons – knives, machetes, axes and spears.

‘I want you to stand outside here for just a moment,’ Darby said. ‘Stand right here, okay? I’ll be right back.’

Darby picked up the cell phone and keys and saw a locked door. One of the keys opened it. Inside she found a locked filing cabinet and a wall crammed full of pictures of the women who had been brought here. She tried the keys on the cabinet. None of them worked.

In some of the pictures, the women were smiling. In others, they were frightened. Mixed among them were horrible snapshots showing how they had been killed. Darby imagined Boyle and Evan standing in here, staring at the pictures as they put on their costumes, getting ready for the hunt.

Darby stared at all the faces until she couldn’t bear to look at them anymore. She grabbed Carol’s hand, grateful for its warmth, and headed up the basement steps into the first floor of the old house. The lights worked. No furniture, just cold and empty rooms full of decay. Several of the windows had been boarded up.

Darby opened the front door, hoping to find a
street sign. There were no street lights out here, just darkness and a cold wind blowing across rolling, empty fields. The rundown farmhouse behind them was the only home out here.

Evan’s car, she remembered, had a GPS unit. She found his car parked behind the farmhouse. Darby started the car and cranked up the heat.

Their location was on the GPS screen. Darby gave the 911 operator the address and requested more than one ambulance. She didn’t know if any of the other women in the basement were still alive.

‘Carol, do you know the phone number for your next-door neighbors who live across your driveway? The white house with the green shutters?’

‘The Lombardos. I know their number. I babysit for their kids sometimes.’

Darby dialed the number. A woman answered the phone, her voice thick with sleep.

‘Mrs Lombardo, my name is Darby McCormick. I’m with the Boston Police Lab. Is Dianne Cranmore there? I need to speak with her immediately.’

Carol’s mother came to the phone.

‘I have someone here who would like to speak to you,’ Darby said, and handed the phone to Carol.

Chapter 70

According to the GPS unit, the abandoned farmhouse was twenty-six miles away from Boyle’s house. Darby called Mathew Banville and told him what happened and what she had found.

The four ambulances arrived first. While Carol was being examined, Darby told the EMTs what was waiting for them in the basement maze. She showed them which key opened the padlocks and which one opened the locked doors. She sat in the back of the ambulance with Carol until the sedative kicked in. Darby allowed the EMT to look her over but refused a sedative herself.

The EMT was stitching up her face when Banville arrived with the local police. He stayed with Darby while Holloway and his men headed inside the farmhouse.

‘Did you bring Boyle’s keys?’ Darby asked.

‘Holloway has them.’

‘There’s a locked filing cabinet in the room with the pictures. I’d like to see if there’s anything on Melanie Cruz in there.’

‘The state’s forensic crew should be here any moment,’ Banville said. ‘It’s their case now. We’ll
let them process the crime scene. How are you holding up?’

Darby didn’t have an answer. She gave him Evan’s camera. ‘There are some pictures on there showing what he did to the women.’

‘Holloway said you could give your statement tomorrow, after you’ve had some sleep. One of his officers is going to drive you home.’

‘I already called Coop. He’s on his way.’

Darby told Banville about Melanie Cruz and the other missing women. When she finished, she wrote a phone number on the back of his business card.

‘That’s my mother’s home number. If you find out anything about Melanie, I don’t care what time it is, give me a call.’

Banville slipped the card in his back pocket. ‘I called Dianne Cranmore right after I hung up with you,’ he said. ‘I told her that if it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have found her daughter. I wanted her to know that.’

‘We found her together.’

‘What you did… ’ Banville looked at Evan’s car and stared at it for what seemed like a long time. ‘If you hadn’t pushed me, if I had turned my back on you, this would have turned out differently.’

‘But it didn’t. Thank you.’

Banville nodded. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands.

Darby put out her hand. Banville shook it.

By the time Coop pulled up in his Mustang, the road in front of the farmhouse was crowded with police cars and forensic vehicles. The local media was here, too. Darby spotted a couple of TV cameras set up behind the barricades. A photographer was trying to take her picture.

Coop took off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. He hugged her tight against him for a long time.

‘Where can I take you?’

‘Home,’ Darby said.

Coop drove down the dark, bumpy roads in silence. Her clothes smelled of blood and gunpowder. She rolled down the window, closed her eyes and let the wind blow across her face.

When the car pulled over, she opened her eyes and saw that they were parked in a breakdown lane on a highway. Coop reached into the backseat and came back with a small cooler. Inside, packed on top of ice, were two glasses and a bottle of Bushmills Irish whiskey.

‘I thought you could use it,’ Coop said.

Darby filled the glasses with ice and poured the whiskey. She had nearly drained her second drink by the time they reached the state border.

‘Much better,’ Darby said.

‘I was tempted to call Leland, but I thought you might want to tell him yourself, in person.’

‘You would be correct.’

‘I’d like to tag along with my camera. I want to capture the moment on film.’

‘There’s something I want to tell you,’ Darby said, and told Coop about Melanie and Stacey. It was the second time she told the story. This time, she wanted to tell it slowly. She wanted to tell Coop all the things she had felt.

‘I told Mel I didn’t want to be friends with Stacey, and Mel just couldn’t let it go,’ Darby said. ‘She had to keep pushing. She wanted everything to go back to the way it was. She had to be the peacemaker. When I saw her downstairs, I wanted –’ Darby caught herself.

Coop didn’t push. Darby felt the sting of tears and tried to breathe it back.

Then it welled up inside her, ugly and razor sharp, the truth she had been dragging around all these years. When the tears came, Darby didn’t fight it, was tired of fighting.

‘Mel was screaming. Grady had a knife, and he was using it on Mel and she was screaming for him to stop. She begged me to come back down and help her. I didn’t… I didn’t ask Mel to come over or to bring Stacey – Mel made that decision.
She
was the one who made the decision to come over, not me, and a part of me… Every time I saw Mel’s mother, the way she looked at me as though I was the one who made Mel disappear, I wanted to tell her the truth. I wanted to scream it at her until I knocked that goddamn look out of her eyes.’

‘Why didn’t you tell her?’

Darby didn’t have an answer. How could she explain how a part of her hated Mel for coming over that night – and for bringing Stacey? How could she explain the guilt she felt for not only what had happened but for how she felt afterward, forced to carry not only the guilt but the anger?

She closed her eyes, wanting to go back in time to that moment at the school lockers when Mel asked if they could go back to being friends. Darbywondered what would have happened if she had said yes. Would she still be alive? Or would she be buried out in the woods where no one would ever find her?

Coop wrapped his big arm around her shoulder. Darby leaned against him.

‘Darby?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Leaving Melanie… It was the right thing to do.’

Darby didn’t speak again until they were on Route 1. She could see the tall buildings in Boston lit up in the distance.

‘I keep thinking about that day Evan came to the beach and told me about Victor Grady and Melanie Cruz. That was over twenty years ago.
Twenty years.
It hasn’t fully sunk in yet.’

‘But at some point it will.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Whenever you need to talk about it, I’m here,’ Coop said. ‘You know that, right?’

‘I do.’

‘Good.’ Coop kissed the top of her head. He didn’t let go. She didn’t want him to let go.

Dawn was breaking by the time they arrived in Belham. Darby showed Coop to the guest bedroom and then headed to the shower.

Dressed in a clean pair of clothes and fresh bandages, she went to check on her mother. Sheila was fast asleep.

Tell me where you buried Melanie.

Ask… your… mother.

Darby crawled into bed and pressed herself up against her mother’s back, hugging her close. She had a memory of her parents sitting in the front seat of the old Buick station wagon with the wood paneling, Big Red tapping his thumbs against the steering wheel to a Frank Sinatra song and Sheila sitting next to him, smiling, the two of them still young, strong and healthy. Darby listened to her mother’s soft breathing rise and fall, rise and fall, wanting it to last forever.

III Little Girl Found

Chapter 71

Darby’s eyes blinked open to bright lines of sunlight glowing around the drawn shades.

Her mother wasn’t in the room. Seeing the empty side of the bed caused a flutter of panic. Darby threw back the sheets, dressed quickly and headed downstairs. It was three in the afternoon.

Coop was sitting at the island counter, drinking coffee and watching the small TV. He caught the expression on her face and knew at once what she was thinking.

‘Your mother wanted some fresh air, so the nurse put her in the wheelchair and took her around the block,’ Coop said. ‘Can I get you something to eat? I make a mean bowl of cereal.’

‘I’ll just stick to coffee, thanks. What are they saying on the news?’

‘NECN is about to do another report after the commercials. Grab a seat and I’ll get you some coffee.’

The Boston media had jumped on the story hard and fast. During the ten hours she had slept, reporters had uncovered the connection between Daniel Boyle and Special Agent Evan Manning.

Evan Manning’s real name was Richard Fowler. In 1953, Janice Fowler, suffering from what would nowadays be called a severe case of postpartum depression, hanged herself while in the care of a state-run psychiatric facility. Hospital records indicated she had been committed shortly after her husband, Trenton Fowler, caught her trying to drown their only son in the bathtub. Janice told her husband she had woken up from her afternoon nap and found Richard standing next to her bed, holding a large kitchen knife. Richard Fowler was five years old.

Seven years later, when Richard was twelve, his father was running his combine through his corn crop when the auger got clogged. Trenton Fowler had left the machine running. He stood on the platform above the auger, trying to clear away the obstruction when he slipped on the fine, silky blanket of corn dust on the platform and fell into the auger. Richard told police he didn’t know how to shut off the combine.