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by Lisa Gardner

  “Not probable,” Sinkus filled in for her.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  The task-force room fell silent.

  “So where are we?” McGahagin prodded, trying to wrap things up.

  “Tracking down Christopher Eola,” Detective Sinkus offered.

  “Finishing our report on missing girls,” D.D. added, with a pointed look back at McGahagin. “And,” her voice grew conciliatory, more thoughtful, “honing in on the time line of 1980 through ’82. We know the mental hospital closed in 1980. We know, thanks to Detective Sinkus, that animals began disappearing in Mattapan—which is an interesting little sidebar. We also know that at least one perpetrator, Richard Umbrio, had come up with the idea of imprisoning a girl in an underground pit. And we know that by the fall of ’82, a man was stalking a girl in Arlington and that her best friend disappeared shortly thereafter twenty-five miles away in Lawrence. We have some reason to believe all these events are related, if only by their proximity in time, so let’s get that nailed down.

  “Sinkus, you’re on Christopher Eola—from the moment he left Boston State Mental, where did he go, what did he do? Where is he now? McGahagin, your team can finish the comprehensive list of missing girls. I want you to focus on all names from the early eighties, summarize the details from each case file, start looking for any connections—and I mean any—between the missing girls. How many names do you have?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “All right, start digging. See if you can tie any of those missing girls to Mattapan, Christopher Eola, Richard Umbrio, or Annabelle Granger. I want to know if any of the families remember their daughters receiving anonymous gifts before they disappeared, about any incidents of Peeping Toms in the neighborhood, that sort of thing. Let’s assume Annabelle’s case gives us an MO, and see if any of the others fit the pattern.

  “As for the Catherine Gagnon connection—Bobby and I will be flying to Arizona tomorrow to meet with her in person. Which gives Bobby exactly”—she glanced at her watch—“twelve more hours to uncover all relevant connections between Richard, Catherine, and Annabelle. All right, people, that’s a wrap.”

  D.D. pushed out of her chair. Belatedly, the rest of them followed suit.

  Bobby followed D.D. out of the room. He didn’t speak until they were in the relative privacy of her office.

  “Nice ambush,” he commented.

  “You handled it okay.” D.D. had never been one to apologize. Even now, she mostly appeared impatient. “What?”

  “Started thinking about something this evening.”

  “Good for you. Bobby, I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I would sell my soul for a shower. Instead, I’m five minutes from meeting with the deputy superintendent, where I get to convince him we’ve made significant progress in an investigation when I think we honestly understand less today than we did yesterday. Don’t talk dirty to me. I’m too fucking tired.”

  He made a motion with his fingers—the world’s tiniest violin playing in sympathy.

  She sat down heavily and scowled at him. “What?”

  “According to Annabelle Granger, her whole family fled in the middle of the afternoon, taking with them only five suitcases. So what happened to the house?”

  D.D. blinked at him. “I don’t know. What happened to the house?”

  “Exactly. I’ve spent two hours poring over newspaper stories from the end of ’82 through ’83. Think of it: an entire house, fully furnished, suddenly abandoned in the middle of a neighborhood. You’d think someone would notice. But I can’t find any reports in the news or the police files.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking the house wasn’t abandoned. I’m thinking someone, maybe Russell Granger, returned to wrap up loose ends.”

  D.D. perked up. “For no one to notice, he would’ve had to do it fairly quickly,” she mused.

  “Yeah, within a matter of weeks, I’m guessing.”

  “Meaning right around the time Dori Petracelli disappeared.”

  “Seems about right.”

  “You check storage units, real estate records?”

  “So far, no storage units or real estate transactions under the name Russell Granger.”

  “Then who owned Annabelle’s house in Arlington?”

  “According to property records, Gregory Badington.”

  “Who’s Gregory Badington?”

  Bobby shrugged. “Dunno. Name’s listed as deceased. I’m working on identifying next of kin.”

  D.D. scowled. “So Russell didn’t own the house. Maybe he rented. But still, you’re right. Furniture, clothes, stuff. All of that had to be taken care of somehow by someone.” D.D. picked up a pencil, bounced the eraser off the top of her desk. “Do you have a Social Security number for Mr. Granger? What about a license?”

  “Am searching DMV records now. Got a call in to his former employer, MIT.”

  “Keep me apprised.”

  “One more thing. We’d have to work it from your end….”

  “And that is?”

  “Sure would be good to know the order of the victims. Like you said, we seem to be narrowing in on a time line. I think we need to place each of those six girls in that time line. I think it makes a great deal of difference whether Dori Petracelli was the beginning—or the end.”

  D.D. nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll call Christie. No guarantees, however. Her limitations are her limitations, and the information you want means by definition she’s analyzed all six remains.”

  “Yeah, got that.”

  “You’ll keep pushing the Russell Granger angle?”

  “Yep.”

  “Anything else we need for tomorrow?”

  “Told Annabelle I’d pick her up at ten.”

  “Ah, a day with Catherine Gagnon,” D.D. murmured. “God give me strength.”

  “You’ll leave the brass knuckles at home?” he asked dryly.

  She merely gave him a pinched smile. “Now, Bobby, a girl’s gotta have some fun….”

  BELLA AND I ran. Down Hanover, exiting right, weaving through a myriad of side streets until we burst through to the main drag of Atlantic Avenue. We picked up pace, thundering into Christopher Columbus Park, bursting up the short flight of stairs, flying beneath the long, dome-shaped trellis before pounding down the other side, across the street, and into Faneuil Hall. My breath grew ragged. Bella’s tongue lolled.

  But still we ran. As if I could be fast enough to escape the past. As if I could be strong enough to face my fears. As if through sheer force of will I could block Dori’s grave from my mind.

  We hit Government Center, then looped back to the North End, dodging reckless taxis, passing the clusters of homeless bedded down for the night, then finally returning to Hanover Street. There, we finally slowed, chests heaving, and limped our way back to the apartment. Once inside, Bella drank an entire bowl of water, collapsed on her bed, and closed her eyes with a contented sigh.

  I showered for thirty minutes, put on my pajamas, lay on my bed wide-eyed. It would be a long night.

  I DREAMED OF my father for the first time in ages. Not an anxiety dream. Not even an angry dream, where he appeared as some omnipotent giant and I was a tiny little person, yelling at him to leave me alone.

  Instead it was a scene from my twenty-first birthday. My father had invited me to dinner at Giacomo’s. We arrived promptly at five, because the local favorite seated only a handful and never took reservations; on a Friday or Saturday night, the line for a table would wrap around the block.

  But it was a Tuesday, quiet. My father, feeling expansive, had ordered each of us a glass of Chianti. Neither of us drank much, so we sipped our wine slowly while dipping thick slices of homemade bread into peppered olive oil.

  Then my father, out of the blue: “You know, this makes it all worth it. Seeing you looking so beautiful, all grown up. It’s all a parent wants for his child, sweetheart. To raise her, to keep her safe, to see the adult he always knew she c
ould become. Your mother would be proud.”

  I didn’t say anything. My throat felt too tight. So I sipped more wine. Dipped more bread. We sat in silence and it was enough.

  Eighteen months later, my father would step off the curb into the path of a zigzagging taxi, his face so badly shattered by the impact, I identified his remains based upon the vial of ashes he still wore around his neck.

  I honored his wishes by cremating his body and mixing his ashes with my mother’s in my pendant. Then I took the urn down to the waterfront late one moonless night and turned the rest of his ashes loose in the wind.

  All these years later, my father’s entire worldly possessions still fit in five neat suitcases. His only personal item: a small box containing fourteen charcoal sketches of my mother.

  I packed up my father’s apartment in one afternoon. Canceled the utilities, wrote those last few checks. When I shut his apartment door behind me for the last time, I finally understood. I had my freedom. And the price of it was to always be alone.

  BELLA CRAWLED INTO bed with me around three. I think I had been crying. She licked my cheeks, then turned around three times before collapsing in a heap at my side. I curled around her, and slept the rest of the night with my cheek against the top of her head and my fingers curled into her fur.

  SIX a.m., BELLA wanted breakfast, I needed to pee. My thoughts were still scattered, I had dark circles under my eyes. I should finish my current project, send out the invoice, then get packed for Arizona.

  I thought instead of the day ahead. The meeting with Catherine Gagnon, who everyone agreed that I didn’t know. Yet the cops were willing to fly all the way to Phoenix to see her with me.

  The unknown unknowns. My life seemed to be full of them.

  And then, brushing my teeth, the gears finally started churning in my brain.

  With four hours before departure to Arizona, I knew what I needed to do next.

  MRS. PETRACELLI OPENED the door and seemed to step right out of my memory. Twenty-five years later, her figure remained trim, her hair a dark bun pinned conservatively at the nape of her neck. She wore dark wool slacks, a cream-colored cashmere sweater. With her carefully made-up face and red-lacquered nails, she was everything I remembered: the polished Italian wife who took impeccable pride in her home, her family, and her appearance.

  As I stood on the opposite side of the screen door, however, she plucked at a loose thread dangling from the hem of her sweater, and I could see her fingers were trembling.

  “Come in, come in,” she said brightly. “Oh my goodness, Annabelle, I couldn’t believe it when you called. It’s so nice to see you again. What a fine young woman you have become. Why, you are the spitting image of your mother!”

  She waved me inside, hands moving, head bobbing as she gestured me into a butter-colored kitchen, where a round table awaited with steaming mugs of coffee and sliced tea bread. I could feel the forced gaiety behind her words, however, the brittle edge to her smile. I wondered if she could gaze on any of Dori’s girlhood friends without seeing what she had lost.

  I had looked up Walter and Lana Petracelli this morning, using the phone book listings on the Internet. They had moved from the Arlington neighborhood to a little cape in Waltham. It had cost me a small fortune in cab fare to get here, but I thought it would be worth it.

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice,” I said.

  “Nonsense, nonsense. We always have time for old friends. Cream, sugar? Would you like a slice of banana bread? I made it last night.”

  I took cream, sugar, and a slice of banana bread. I was glad the Petracellis had moved. Just being around Mrs. Petracelli was giving me a terrible case of déjà vu. If we had been visiting in their old kitchen in their old house, I wouldn’t have been able to take it.

  “Your parents?” Mrs. Petracelli asked briskly, taking the seat across from me and picking up her own coffee, which she drank black.

  “They died,” I said softly, adding hastily, “Several years back,” as if that made a difference.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Annabelle,” Mrs. Petracelli said, and I believed her.

  “Mr. Petracelli?”

  “Still in bed, actually. Ah, the price of getting old. But we still get out and about quite a bit. In fact, I have a meeting at nine for the Foundation, so I’m afraid I can’t linger too long.”

  “The Foundation?”

  “The Dori Petracelli Foundation. We fund DNA tests for missing persons cases, in particular, very old cases where the police departments may not have the resources or the political will to pay for all the tests now available. You’d be amazed at how many skeletal remains are simply tucked away in morgues or whatnot, having been shelved before the advent of DNA testing. These are the cases where the new technology might have the most impact, yet these are precisely the victims who remain overlooked. It’s a catch-22—victims often need an advocate to apply pressure to an investigation, and yet without an identity there’s no family to advocate for the victim. The Foundation is working to change that.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “I cried for two years after Dori disappeared,” Mrs. Petracelli said matter-of-factly. “After that, I grew very, very angry. All in all, I’ve found the anger to be more useful.”

  She picked up her mug, took a sip of coffee. After a moment, I did, too.

  “I didn’t know until recently what had happened to Dori,” I said softly. “That she’d been abducted, gone missing. I honestly…I had no idea.”

  “Of course not. You were just a child when it happened, and no doubt had your own worries getting adjusted to your new life.”

  “You knew about our move?”

  “Well, sweetheart, when the moving vans came and loaded up your house, that was certainly a hint. Dori was devastated. I’ll be honest—we were very surprised. Certainly as…good friends of your family, we thought we’d receive prior notice. But that was a crazy time for your parents. I understand now, better than ever, their desire to keep you safe.”

  “What did they tell you?”

  Mrs. Petracelli cocked her head, seemed to be dredging up memories from the old days. “Your father came over one afternoon. He said that in light of everything that was happening, he’d decided to take the family away for a few days. I understood, of course, and was concerned for how you were doing. He said you were holding up well, but he thought it might be nice to go on a little vacation to take everyone’s mind off things.

  “I didn’t think of it much for the first week. I was too busy keeping Dori entertained—as your absence had put her in a bit of a sulk. Then the phone rang one night and it was your father again, saying we’d never believe it, but he’d gotten a great job offer and he’d decided to take it. So you wouldn’t be returning after all. In fact, he was arranging with a moving company to just pack everything up and ship it to your new address. He thought things would be better that way.

  “We were devastated. Walter and I enjoyed seeing your parents very much and, of course, you girls were so close. I’ll confess my first thought was simply how to break the news to Dori. Later, I grew a little angry. I felt…I wished your parents had returned one last time so you two girls could at least say a proper good-bye. And I wasn’t an idiot—your father was very vague on the phone, we didn’t even know which city you’d moved to. While I respected that privacy was his prerogative, I felt offended. We were friends, after all. Good friends, I’d thought. I don’t know…it was such a strange, strange autumn.”

  She looked at me, head tilted to the side, and her next question was surprisingly gentle.

  “Annabelle, do you remember what was going on before your family moved? Do you remember the police coming to your home?”

  “Some of it. I remember finding little gifts on the porch. I remember they made my father furious.”

  Mrs. Petracelli nodded. “I didn’t know what to think at the time. I’m not even sure I completely believed the initial reports of
a Peeping Tom. Why would a grown man want to peek in a little girl’s bedroom? We were all so unbelievably innocent back then. Only your father seemed to understand the danger. Of course, once we learned a strange man had been hiding in Mrs. Watts’s attic, we were horrified. Such things weren’t supposed to happen in our neighborhood.

  “Mr. Petracelli and I started talking about moving, especially after your family left. That’s what we were doing that week. We’d sent Dori to my parents for the weekend so we could go house hunting. We’d just gotten back from talking to a Realtor when our phone rang. It was my mother. She wanted to know if we knew where Dori was. ‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘Dori is with you.’ Then there was this long, long silence. And then I heard my own mother start to cry.”

  Mrs. Petracelli set down her coffee mug. She gave me a soft, apologetic smile, brushed self-consciously at the corners of her eyes. “It doesn’t get any easier. You tell yourself it will, but it doesn’t. There are two moments in my life that will always be with me till the day I die: the moment my daughter was born and the moment I received a phone call telling me she was gone. Sometimes I negotiate with God. I’ll give Him all the memories of joy, if He’ll just take away the ones filled with pain. Of course, it doesn’t work like that. I get to live with the whole kit and caboodle, whether I want to or not. Here”—her voice had gone brisk again—“have another piece of banana bread.”

  I took another piece. Both of us moved by rote, using the rituals of polite society to keep the horror of our conversation at bay.

  “Were there any leads?” I asked. “To Dori?” I dug a walnut out of the bread with my forefinger and thumb, placed it beside my coffee cup on the table.

  “One of the neighbors reported seeing an unmarked white van in the area. Best he could remember, a young man with short dark hair and a white T-shirt was at the wheel. The neighbor thought he might be a contractor working in the area. No one ever came forward, however. And in all the years, none of the tips have panned out.”

  I forced myself to meet her eye. “Mrs. Petracelli, did my father know that Dori had gone missing?”