by Lisa Gardner
“Ah shit!” Annabelle Granger said.
“Detective Bobby Dodge,” he answered politely. “I have a few follow-up questions—”
“What the hell are you doing here? I didn’t give you my address!”
“Well, I am a detective.”
That reply earned him only silence. He finally held up her phone number. “Reverse directory. I put in your number and, voilà, I got a name and address. Technology is a wonderful thing, yes?”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about the pit,” she called out from the other side of the door. “How could you sit right across from me, relentlessly milking me for information, and still withhold those kinds of details? Particularly once you realized one of those girls might be my best friend.”
“I see you’ve been watching the news.”
“Me and all of Boston. Jerk.”
Bobby spread his hands. He found it difficult to negotiate with a solid wood door, but he did his best. “Look, we’re all on the same page. We want to know what happened to your friend and find the sorry son of a bitch who did it. Given that, do you think I can come in?”
“No.”
“Suit yourself.” He reached inside his jacket pocket, withdrew his audio mini-recorder, a spiral notepad, his pen. “So—”
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m asking my questions.”
“In an open stairway? Whatever happened to privacy?”
“Whatever happened to hospitality?” He shrugged. “You set the ground rules, I’m just playing by them.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Two sharp metal thunks as steel bolt locks drew back. The rasp of a chain being temperamentally released. A third, more resonant thunk from the vicinity of the floor. Annabelle Granger took her home security seriously. He was curious to see how a professional curtain seamstress had managed to reconcile ambience with the iron bars that no doubt guarded her windows.
She flung the door open. There was a flash of white, then a long-legged dog hurtled itself at Bobby’s kneecaps, barking shrilly. Annabelle made no move to rein in the animal. Just watched him through narrowly slit eyes, as if this was the ultimate test.
Bobby stuck out a hand. The dog didn’t bite it off. Instead, it ran around his legs over and over again. He tried tracking it and immediately grew dizzy.
“Herd dog?”
“Yeah.”
“Border collie?”
“They’re black and white.”
“Australian shepherd.”
She nodded.
“Got a name?”
“Bella.”
“Will she eventually stop barking?”
A single shoulder shrug. “Are you deaf yet?”
“Almost.”
“Then soon.”
He stepped gingerly into the apartment. Bella pressed against the backs of his legs, gamely helping him out. When he got in the apartment, Annabelle closed the door. She went back to work on the double bolt lock, chain lock, and floor jam. Bella finally stopped spinning, standing in front of him to bark instead. Pretty dog, he decided. Really long, sharp teeth.
The last steel bolt fired home, and as if a switch had been thrown, Bella shut up. She gave a final huff, then trotted into the tiny sitting area, weaving her way through piles of fabric before plopping down on a half-buried dog bed. At the last moment, she cocked one eye at him, as if to say she was still paying attention, then she sighed, put her head on her paws, and went to sleep.
“Good dog,” Bobby murmured, impressed.
“Not really,” Annabelle said, “but we suit each other. Neither one of us likes unexpected guests.”
“I’m a bit of a loner myself.” Bobby walked deeper into the apartment, doing his best to scope out the place while he had the chance. First impressions: small, cramped main room leading to a small, cramped bedroom. Kitchen was about the size of his bedroom closet, strictly utilitarian, with plain white cupboards and cheap Formica countertops. Family room was slightly larger, boasting a plush green love seat, oversize reading chair, and a small wooden table that also doubled as a work space. Walls were painted a rich golden yellow. Two expanses of enormous eight-foot-high windows were trimmed out with scalloped shades made from a sunflower-covered fabric.
As for any other features of the room, they were obscured by piles of fabric. Reds, greens, blues, golds, florals, stripes, checks, pastels. Silk, cotton, linen, chenille. Bobby didn’t know a lot about these things, but he was guessing there was about any fabric you could ever want somewhere in this room.
And cords and trim pieces, too, he figured out, walking past the kitchen counter and discovering the other side adorned with strings of tassels.
“Homey,” he commented, then pointed to the windows. “Great lighting, too. Must be helpful for your line of work.”
“What do you want?”
“Now that you mention it, a glass of water would be great.”
Annabelle thinned her lips, but crossed to the sink, banging on the faucet.
She was dressed casually this morning. Low-rise black sweatpants, a gray long-sleeve top that skimmed to a stop just above her waist. Her dark hair was held back loosely in a ponytail, no makeup adorned her face. Again he was struck by her resemblance to Catherine, and yet he couldn’t think of two women who seemed more different.
Catherine was a carefully wrapped package, a woman who consciously honed her sex appeal and wielded it like a weapon. Annabelle, on the other hand, was an advertisement for urban chic. When she slapped the half-full glass of water into his hand, he didn’t so much think of sex as he thought she might try to kick his ass. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and he finally got it.
“Boxing,” he said.
“What about it?”
“You’re a boxer.” He tilted his head to the side. “Tony’s gym?”
She snorted. “Like I want to work out with a bunch of testosterone-pumped muscle heads. Lee’s. He specializes in kickboxing anyway.”
“Any good?”
She glanced at her watch. “Tell you what. If you don’t have your questions asked in the next fifteen minutes, you can find out.”
“You this testy with all cops, or I’m just special?”
She regarded him stony-eyed. He sighed and decided to get on with it. Russell Granger’s deep love for law enforcement had apparently been passed on to his daughter. Bobby set down the water, flipped open his notepad.
“So, I learned some things about what happened in the fall of ’82.” He glanced up expectantly, thinking to find a glimmer of interest in her eyes, a small softening of her stance. Nothing. “Turns out some guy—an unidentified subject, UNSUB, we call him in official police speak—took an interest in you. Started delivering little gifts to the house. Was caught trespassing after dark. Went so far as to try to break into your bedroom.
“The police were called by your father several times. Third time out, they discovered the subject had been hiding in the neighbor’s attic across the street, where apparently he had been watching you. They found stacks of Polaroids, notes containing your daily schedule, that sort of thing. Any of this sound familiar?”
“No.” She still sounded belligerent, but her arms were down, her expression less certain. “What’d the police do?”
“Nothing. Back in ’82, stalking a seven-year-old girl wasn’t a crime. Creepy, yes. Criminal, no.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Apparently, your father thought so as well, because within weeks of the final episode, your family disappeared. And weeks after that,” his voice grew quieter, “Dori Petracelli was snatched from her grandparents’ yard in Lawrence, never to be seen again. You’re sure you didn’t know?”
“I looked it up online,” she said curtly. “Last night. I figured you wouldn’t help me. Detectives answer their own questions, not other people’s. So I looked it up for myself.”
He waited. It didn’t take long.
“Have you seen her
missing photo, you know, the portrait they posted all over town?”
He shook his head.
“Come here.” She crossed the space abruptly, brushing by him, into the family room. He saw a small notebook computer buried under a pile of papers. She swept the papers to the floor, flipped open the lid, and the computer screen came to life. It took only a few clicks of the mouse on the Internet and Dori Petracelli’s missing photo filled the screen. He still didn’t get it. Annabelle had to point it out to him.
“Look around her neck. It’s the locket. She’s wearing my necklace.”
Bobby squinted, bent closer. The photo was fuzzy, black and white, but upon closer inspection…He sighed. If he’d had any doubts before, this took care of them.
“According to the blurb on the website,” Annabelle spoke up quietly, “that photo was taken a week before Dori disappeared. Most recent photo, you know.” Her voice changed, grew an edge. “I bet he liked that. I bet it turned him on. Watching all the news stories, flashing her picture, showing that locket, begging for her safe return. UNSUBs like to follow their own cases, right? Like to know how clever they have been. Bastard.”
She turned away from him, taking several jerky steps across the room.
Bobby straightened more slowly, keeping his gaze on her face. “What do you remember, Annabelle—”
“Don’t call me that! You can’t use real names. I go by Tanya. Call me Tanya.”
“Why? It’s been twenty-five years. What do you still have to fear?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know? I’ve grown comfortable with the fact that my dad was dancing to the tune of a paranoid drummer. You’re the one now saying his fears were genuine. What am I supposed to do with that? Some guy stalked me and I never even knew. Then I left and he…he snatched my best friend and he…”
She broke off, unable to continue. Her hand pressed hard over her mouth, her other arm curling protectively around her waist. From the dog bed, Bella looked up, wagged her tail, and whined.
“Sorry, girl,” Annabelle whispered. “Sorry.”
Bobby gave her a minute. She pulled it together. Chin coming up, shoulders squaring off. He didn’t understand the father yet; he had a lot of questions about the father, actually. But by all appearances, Russell Granger had raised his daughter right. Twenty-five years later, this girl was tough.
Then the buzzer for her apartment sounded and she jumped.
“What the…” she started nervously. “I don’t get many…” She crossed quickly to the bay windows overlooking the street, checking out who was ringing her unit. Bobby already had his hand tucked inside his jacket, fingers resting on the butt of his gun as he fed off her nervousness. Then just as quickly as the episode started, it ended. Annabelle looked out, spotted the UPS truck, and smiled self-consciously as her shoulders sagged in relief.
“Bella,” she called, “it’s your boyfriend.”
Annabelle went to work on the door locks while Bella pawed frantically at the wood.
“Boyfriend?” Bobby asked.
“Ben, the UPS driver. He and Bella have a thing. I order, he delivers, she gets cookies. I know dogs are color-blind, but if Bella could see a rainbow, her favorite color would still be brown.”
Annabelle had finally gotten the locks undone. She pushed open the door and nearly got mowed down by her dog.
“Be right back,” Annabelle called over her shoulder to Bobby, then disappeared down the stairs in Bella’s wake.
The interruption gave Bobby a moment to collect his thoughts. And add to his mental notes. He was getting a pretty good idea of the life Annabelle currently led. Isolated. Security conscious. Insular. Did her shopping by mail-order catalog or Internet. Best friend was her dog. Closest thing to human connection—signing for her daily delivery from the UPS man.
Perhaps her father had done his job a little too well.
Bella returned, panting hard, looking satisfied. Annabelle was a touch slower coming up the stairs. She wiggled through the doorway with a box roughly the size of her desk. Bobby tried to assist, but she waved him off, dropping the box on the kitchen floor.
“Fabric,” she volunteered, kicking the large box ruefully. “Occupational hazard, I’m afraid.”
“For a client or ‘just because’?”
“Both,” she admitted. “It always starts as an order for a client, then next thing I know, I’ve added two bolts of ‘just because.’ Frankly, it’s a good thing I don’t live in a bigger space, or Lord only knows.”
He nodded, watching as she crossed to the sink and poured her own glass of water. She seemed composed again. Fetching the delivery had allowed her a chance to regroup her defenses. Now or never, he decided.
“Summer of ’82,” he declared. “You’re seven years old, your best friend is Dori Petracelli, and you’re living with your mother and father in Arlington. What comes to mind?”
She shrugged. “Nothing. Everything. I was a kid. I remember kid stuff. Going to swim at the Y. Playing hopscotch on the driveway. I don’t know. It was summer. Mostly, I remember having fun.”
“The gifts?”
“SuperBall. I found it on the front porch, in a little box wrapped in the Sunday comics. The ball was yellow and bounced very high. I loved it.”
“Did your father say anything? Take it away?”
“Nope. I lost it under the front porch.”
“Other gifts?”
“Marble. Blue. Found a similar way, met a similar fate.”
“But the locket…”
“The locket made my father angry,” she conceded. “I do remember that. But in my mind, I never knew why. I thought my father was being difficult, not protective.”
“According to reports, after the second incident, your parents moved you into their bedroom to sleep at night. Does that ring any bells?”
She frowned, looking genuinely perplexed. “There was something wrong with my room,” she said shortly, rubbing her forehead. “We needed to paint it? My father was going to fix…something? I don’t really remember now. Just, something was wrong, needed to be done. So I slept on the floor in their bedroom for a bit. Family camping trip, my father said. He even painted stars on the ceiling. I thought it was really cool.”
“Did you ever feel threatened, Annabelle? Like someone was watching you? Or did a stranger come up to you? Offer you gum or candy? Ask you to take a ride in his car? Or maybe the father of one of your school friends made you uncomfortable? A teacher who stood too close…”
“No,” she said immediately, voice certain. “And I think I would remember that. Of course, that was before my father’s version of safety boot camp, so if someone had approached me…I don’t know. Maybe I would’ve taken the candy. Maybe I would’ve gotten in the car. Eighty-two was the good year, you know.” She briskly rubbed her forearms, then added more flatly, “The days before it all went to hell.”
Bobby watched her for a bit, waited to see if she would say more. She seemed done, though, memories mined out. He couldn’t decide if he believed her or not. Kids were surprisingly perceptive. And yet she’d lived in the middle of a major neighborhood drama, uniformed officers called to her house three times in two months, and she never suspected a thing? Again, kudos to her father, who’d gone out of his way to protect his little girl? Or indication of something worse?
He waited until she finally looked up. The next question was the most important. He wanted her full attention.
“Annabelle,” he asked shortly. “Why did you leave Florida?”
“I don’t know.”
“And St. Louis and Nashville and Kansas City?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.” She threw up her hands, once again frustrated. “You think I haven’t asked these questions? You think I haven’t wondered? Every time we moved, I spent countless nights trying to figure out where I went wrong. What I did that was so bad. Or what threat I didn’t see. I never got it. I never got it. By the time I was sixteen, in my best judgme
nt, my father was simply paranoid. Some fathers watch too much football. Mine had a penchant for cash transactions and fake IDs.”
“You think your father was crazy?”
“You think sane people uproot their families every year and give them new identities?”
He could see her point. He just wasn’t sure where that left them. “You’re positive you don’t have any pictures from your childhood lying around? Photo album, pictures of your old house, neighbors, schoolmates? That would help.”
“We left it all in the house. I don’t know what happened to it after that.”
Bobby frowned, had a thought, made a note. “What about relatives? Grandparents, aunts or uncles? Someone who would have their own copies of your family photos, be happy to hear you’re back?”
She shook her head, still not meeting his eyes. “No relatives; that’s one of the reasons it was so easy to move away. My father was an orphan, a product of the Milton Hershey School in Pennsylvania. Credited their program, actually, for giving him his academic start. And as for my mother, her parents died shortly after I was born. Car accident, something like that. My mother didn’t talk about them much. I think she still missed them.
“You know,” she said abruptly, head coming up. “There is someone who would have photos, though. Mrs. Petracelli. Dori and I lived on the same block, went to the same school, attended the same neighborhood barbecues. She might even have photos of my family. I never thought of that. She might have a photo of my mother.”
“Good, good idea.”
Her voice grew hesitant. “Have…have you told them?”
“Who?”
“The Petracellis. Have you notified them about having found Dori? It’s horrible news, and yet in the perverse way these things work, I imagine they’ll be grateful.”
“Yeah,” he murmured quietly. “In the perverse way these things work…But no, we haven’t told them yet. We’ll wait until we have evidence to support the ID. Or, more likely, we’ll end up approaching them for a DNA sample to use for matching.” He contemplated her for a moment, then made a quick judgment call, one D.D. could hang him for later. “You want the inside track? The remains are mummified. Something the news reports haven’t managed to learn yet. Given that, it’s going to take a bit before we have more information on any of the bodies.”