by Lisa Gardner
“Then he came back.”
Eola Sr. paused, his voice drifting off. He had lost his clipped, emotionless tone. A mood had settled over his face. Dark, angry, depressed. Bobby leaned forward. He could feel his stomach muscles tightening, steeling him for what was coming next.
“Natalie changed first,” Eola Sr. said, his voice far away. “Became moody, withdrawn. She would sit in silence for long periods of time, then suddenly lash out over the tiniest thing. We thought it was adjustment issues. She was fourteen, a difficult age. Plus, for over a year she’d had the house to herself, been like an only child. Maybe she resented Christopher’s return.
“He, if anything, seemed to indulge her tantrums. He brought her flowers, her favorite sweets. He called her silly nicknames, invented outrageous little songs. The more she pushed him away, the more he lavished attention on her, taking her to the movies, showing her off to his friends, volunteering to walk her to school. Christopher had grown into a fine young man while he was away. He’d filled out, settled into himself. I think more than a few of Natalie’s friends had a crush on him, which of course he used to his advantage. Pauline and I, we thought perhaps his travels had done him good. He was finally coming around.
“The day after Christopher’s birthday dinner, I received a call from a client in New York. Something had come up, I needed to meet with him. Pauline decided to join me, perhaps we could catch a show. We didn’t want to pull Natalie away from school, but that wasn’t a problem, Christopher was home. So we left him in charge and went away.”
That pause again. A heartbeat’s hesitation while Mr. Eola fought with his memories, struggled to find words. When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse and low, hard to hear.
“My emergency meeting turned out to not be such an emergency after all. And Pauline could not get tickets for the show she wanted to see. So we returned. A day early. We didn’t think to call.
“It was after eight o’clock at night. Our residence was dark, the help gone for the night. We found them right in the living room. Christopher was sitting in my favorite leather chair. He was buck naked. My daughter…Natalie…He was forcing her to perform…a sex act. She was sobbing. And I heard my son say, in a voice I’d never heard before, ‘You stupid fucking cunt, you had better swallow, or next time I’ll ram it up your ass.’
“Then he looked up. He saw us standing there. And he just smiled. This cold, cold smile. ‘Hey Dad,’ he said. ‘I owe you my thanks. She’s much better than Gabrielle.’ ”
Eola Sr. broke off again. His eyes found some spot on the burnished wood table, locking in. Beside him his wife had collapsed, her shoulders shaking spasmodically as she rocked back and forth.
D.D. moved first. She retrieved a box of tissues, handing one silently to Mrs. Eola. The older woman took it, tucked it into her folded hands, and resumed her rocking.
“Thank you for talking to us,” D.D. said softly. “I know this is terrible for your family. Last few questions, then I think we can wrap things up for the day.”
“What?” Eola Sr. asked tiredly.
“Can you give us a description of Gabrielle?”
Whatever he’d been expecting, this wasn’t it. Eola Sr. blinked. “I don’t…I hadn’t really thought about her…. What do you want?”
“The basics would be fine. Height, weight, eye color. Overall appearance.”
“Well…she was about five foot six. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Slender, but not that rail-thin you see so much these days. She was…robust, vivacious. Like a Catherine Zeta-Jones.”
D.D. nodded, while Bobby made the same mental connection she probably had. In other words, Gabrielle’s general description could also be applied to Annabelle.
Sinkus cleared his throat, drawing everyone’s attention back to him. It was time to wrap things up, but the detective appeared troubled.
“Mr. Eola, Mrs. Eola, if you don’t mind…after you caught Christopher, he went with you willingly to Boston State Mental?”
“He didn’t have a choice.”
“How so?”
“My money is my money, Detective Sinkus. And you can be quite sure after that…incident, I wasn’t giving Christopher one red cent. Christopher, however, did have his own resources. A trust left to him by his grandparents. By the terms of that trust, he was not eligible to collect until he turned twenty-eight. And even then he would need the cooperation of the trustee. Which would be me.”
Bobby got it the same minute D.D. did.
“You threatened to cut him off. Deny him his inheritance.”
“Goddamn right,” Eola Sr. spat. “I let him live that night, that was generosity enough.”
“You hit him,” Mrs. Eola whispered. “You ran at him. You leapt on him. You kept hitting and hitting. And Natalie was screaming and you were screaming and it went on and on and on. Christopher just sat there. Wearing that terrible smile, his mouth filling with blood.”
Eola Sr. didn’t bother with an apology. “I chased his scrawny ass up to his bedroom, where he locked himself inside. And I…I tried to think of what to do next. I honestly couldn’t bring myself to kill my only son. But at the same time, I could not subject my daughter to the scrutiny of the police. I consulted my attorney”—his gaze flickered to Barron—“who suggested a third alternative. He warned me, however, that given Christopher’s age, committing him to a mental institute would be difficult. I would need him to stay voluntarily, or I would have to get a court order, meaning that we’d have to go to the police.
“My son is smart. I’ll grant him that. And as I said, he has an appreciation for the finer things in life. I can’t imagine him living on the streets any more than he could. So in the morning, we made a deal. He would stay at Boston State Mental until his twenty-eighth birthday. At which point, assuming he fulfilled the terms of our deal, I would release his inheritance. Three million dollars is nothing to sneeze at, and Christopher knew it. He went, and we never saw him again.”
“You never visited?” Sinkus clarified.
“My son is dead to us.”
“Never checked on his progress, not even by phone?”
“My son is dead to us, Detective.”
“So, you didn’t know your son got himself in a bit of trouble at Boston State Mental. Ended up in Bridgewater.”
“When Boston Mental announced it would be closing, I called over. The doctor informed me that Christopher had already been sent to Bridgewater. I found it convenient.”
Sinkus frowned. “And on Christopher’s twenty-eighth birthday?”
“A note arrived at my attorney’s office. ‘A deal is a deal,’ it read. I signed off on the funds.”
“Wait a minute,” D.D. spoke up sharply. “Christopher turned twenty-eight in April of 1982. You’re telling me that he came into three million dollars on that day?”
“Actually, he inherited three point five. The funds were well managed.”
“And he accessed these funds?”
“He has made periodic withdrawals over the years.”
“What?”
Eola Sr. turned to his lawyer. “John, if you would, please.”
Barron lifted up a leather briefcase, briskly snapped it open. “This is confidential information, Detectives. We trust you will treat it accordingly.”
He passed around copies of a stapled sheaf of papers. Financial records, Bobby realized, quickly skimming the sheets. Detailed financial records of Christopher’s trust fund, and the date each time he made a withdrawal.
Bobby’s gaze went straight to Barron. “How did he make contact? When Christopher wanted money, what did he do, pick up the phone?”
“Ridiculous,” Barron snapped. “It’s a trust fund, not an ATM. We required a written request, properly signed and notarized, which we kept as part of the official records. Keep flipping, you’ll find a copy of each sheet. You’ll see that Christopher was partial to increments of one hundred thousand, roughly two to three times a year.”
“He wrote, you cut him a check
?” Bobby was still quizzing, rapidly flipping sheets.
“He wrote, we liquidated funds, rebalanced the portfolio, and then cut him a check, yes.”
“So these checks were never collected in person? You have a mailing address?” This was too good to be true. Which it was, as he spotted on the last page. “Wait a minute, you wrote the check to a bank in Switzerland?”
Barron shrugged one shoulder. “As Mrs. Eola mentioned, Christopher spent some time overseas. Obviously, he set up a bank account while he was there.”
Bobby arched a brow. Normal nineteen-year-olds did not open Swiss bank accounts. Not even the spoiled sons of Boston’s upper class. It felt like a preemptive strike to him. The act of a man who was already assuming he might need to hide assets sometime soon, perhaps for a life on the run. Made Bobby wonder what all Christopher had been doing during his “grand tour” of Europe.
Things were wrapping up now. Eola Sr. had his arm belatedly around his wife as she blotted at her smeared mascara. He whispered something in her ear. She gave him a tremulous smile.
“How is your daughter, Mrs. Eola?” Bobby asked softly.
The woman surprised him with her flinty answer: “She’s a lesbian, Detective. What else would you expect?”
Mrs. Eola rose. Her anger had invigorated her. Eola Sr. capitalized on the moment, ushering her out the door. The lawyers and secretary filed out behind them, one massively overpriced brigade, heading for the elevators.
In the lull that followed, Sinkus spoke first.
“So,” he asked D.D., “does this mean I can go to Switzerland?”
THE EMERGENCY TASK-force meeting started late, given the overrun of the Eola interview. The majority of the detectives, however, had arrived as scheduled, meaning that by the time Bobby, D.D., and Sinkus appeared, the pizza boxes were empty, the soda consumed, and not even a breadstick remained.
Bobby eyed the lone survivor—a plastic cup of red pepper flakes. He thought better of it.
“All right, all right,” D.D. was saying briskly. “Gather ’round, listen up. For a change, we have developments to discuss, so let’s get cracking.”
Detective Rock yawned, then tried to cover the motion by fanning his piles of paper. “Heard we got a note,” he said. “Real deal or wannabe wacko?”
“Uncertain. We announced Annabelle Granger’s name in the beginning, but never released details on the locket or the other personal items. So our anonymous author either has inside information or is the real deal.”
That perked them up. D.D.’s next announcement, however, elicited collective groans. “I have copies of the note to distribute. But not yet. First things first: our nightly debrief. Let’s figure out what we know now, then we’ll consider how this little community outreach”—D.D. waved the stack of photocopies—“fits into the puzzle. Sinkus, you go first.”
Sinkus didn’t mind. As the go-to guy for Christopher Eola, he was humming with excitement. He recapped the interview with Eola’s parents, what they now knew of Eola’s sexual activities and how his former nanny matched a general description of Annabelle Granger, one of the known targeted victims. Even more interesting, Eola had access to vast financial resources. Between his Swiss bank account and multimillion-dollar trust fund, it was highly probable that he could maintain a lifestyle on the run, below the radar, etc., etc. In fact, just about anything was possible, so they’d have to open up their way of thinking.
Next steps: Put in a call to the State Department to track Eola’s passport; outreach to Interpol in case they either had Eola in their sights or a case involving an UNSUB of similar MO; and finally, determine due process for tracing funds transferred out of a Swiss bank account or, better yet, freeze the assets altogether.
“Declare Eola a terrorist,” McGahagin stated.
At his comment a few guys laughed.
“I’m not kidding,” the sergeant insisted. “Homicide means nothing to the Swiss government—or anyone else, for that matter. On the other hand, write up a report that you have reason to believe Eola buried radioactive material in the middle of a major metro area, and you’ll have his assets frozen lickety-split. Aren’t bodies radioactive? Who in this room remembers anything from science class?”
They looked at one another blankly. Apparently, none of them watched The Discovery Channel.
“Well,” McGahagin said stubbornly, “I think it’s true. And I’m telling you, it will work.”
Sinkus shrugged, made a note. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d finessed a square peg into a round hole. That’s why laws were written; so enterprising homicide detectives could figure out a way around them.
Sinkus was also in charge of tracking down Adam Schmidt, the AN from Boston State Mental who’d been fired for sleeping with a patient. He covered Schmidt next.
“Have finally located Jill Cochran, former head nurse,” Sinkus reported. “I’m told she has most of the records, etc., from the closed institute. She’s cataloging them, archiving them, I don’t know. Doing whatever it is you do to insane-asylum paperwork. I’m meeting with her in the morning to follow up on Mr. Schmidt.”
“Basic background check on Schmidt?” D.D. inquired.
“Nothing came up. So either Adam’s been a very good boy since his Boston State Mental days, or he’s been much smarter about not getting caught. My spidey sense is not tingly, however. I like Eola better.”
D.D. merely gave him a look.
Sinkus threw up his hands in defense. “I know, I know, a good investigator leaves no stone unturned. I’m turning, I’m turning, I’m turning.”
Sinkus, apparently, was a little punchy from lack of sleep. He sat down. Detective Tony Rock took over the hot seat, reporting on the latest activity on the Crime Stoppers hotline.
“What can I tell you?” the gravelly voiced detective rumbled, looking exhausted, sounding exhausted, and no doubt feeling as good as he looked and sounded. “We’re averaging thirty-five calls an hour, most of which fall into three basic categories: a little bit crazy, a lot crazy, and too sad for words. The a little and a lot crazy categories are about what you’d expect—aliens did it; men in white suits; if you really want to be safe in this world, you need to wear tin foil on your head.
“The too sad for words, well, they’re too sad for words. Parents. Grandparents. Siblings. All with missing family members. We got a woman yesterday who’s seventy-five. Her younger sister has been missing since 1942. She heard the remains were skeletal, thought she might get lucky. When I told her we didn’t believe the remains were that old, she started to cry. She’s spent sixty-five years waiting for her baby sister to come home. Tells me she can’t stop now; she made her parents a promise. Life is just plain shitty sometimes.”
Rock squeezed the bridge of his nose, blinked, forged on. “So, I got a list of seventeen missing females, all of whom vanished between 1970 and 1990. Some of these girls are local. One’s as far away as California. I got as much information from the families as possible for identification purposes. Including jewelry, clothing, dental work, bone fractures, and/or favorite toys—you know, in case we can match anything against the ‘personal tokens’ attached to each of the remains. I’m passing the info along to Christie Callahan. Otherwise, that’s it for me.”
He took a seat, the air seeming to leave his body until he collapsed, more than sat, in the folding metal chair. The man did not look good, and they lost a moment, staring at him and wondering who would be the first to say something.
“What?” he barked.
“You sure—” D.D. began.
“Can’t fix my mom,” Rock shot back. “Might as well find the fucker who murdered six girls.”
There wasn’t much anyone could add to that, so they moved on.
“All right,” D.D. declared briskly, “we got one prime suspect of above-average intelligence and financial resources, one still-worth-looking-at suspect who was a former employee, and a list of seventeen missing girls from the Crime Stoppers hotline. Plus, there m
ay be a link to an abduction two years before any of these six girls disappeared. Who else wants to join the show? Jerry?”
Sergeant McGahagin had been in charge of culling unsolved BPD missing-persons cases involving female minors for the past thirty years. His team had developed a list of twenty-six cases from Massachusetts. They had now started on the broader New England area.
He was skimming the copy of Tony Rock’s report from Crime Stoppers, identifying five overlapping names between the two lists.
“What I need next,” McGahagin stated heavily, “is a victimology report. If Callahan can give me a physical description of the remains, there’s a chance I can make a match with an unsolved case. Then we could go to work on making a positive ID, which in turn would give us a time line for the mass grave. Bada bing, bada boom.”
McGahagin stared at D.D. expectantly.
She returned his look levelly. “What the hell do you want me to do, Jerry? Pull six victimology reports out of my ass?”
“Come on, it’s been four fucking days, D.D. How can we still know nothing about the six remains?”
“It’s called wet mummification,” D.D. shot back hotly. “And nobody’s ever dealt with it in New England before.”
“Then with all due respect to Christie, call someone who has.”
“She did.”
“What?” McGahagin appeared startled. Investigators made requests for resources, experts, forensic tests all the time. That didn’t mean the powers-that-be granted them. “Christie is getting reinforcements?”
“Tomorrow, I’m told. Some hotshot from Ireland who specializes in this shit and is curious to see a ‘modern’ example. The DA sprung for the dough—apparently the Crime Stoppers hotline isn’t the only one going insane. The entire city is flooding the governor’s office with hysterical complaints that a serial killer is loose and going to murder their daughters next. Which reminds me, the governor would like us to solve this case, mmm, about five minutes ago.”