by Lisa Gardner
“Wouldn’t want to disappoint a sergeant,” Bobby drawled.
D.D. flashed a tight smile at the acknowledgment of her new title, but didn’t comment; now was not the time nor place.
“Photographer’s already done the first round of shooting,” she said briskly. “We’re waiting for the videographer to wrap up, then you can go down.”
“Down?”
“Scene is subterranean, entrance beneath the awning. Don’t worry; we got a ladder in place, so it’s not hard to access.”
Bobby took a moment to let that sink in. “How big?”
“Chamber is approximately six by ten. We’re holding it to three people max, or you can’t move around.”
“Who found it?”
“Kids. Discovered it last night, I guess, while engaged in some recreational drinking and/or other hobbies. Thought it was cool enough to return tonight with a flashlight. They won’t do that again.”
“Are they still around?”
“Nah. EMTs gave them sedatives and took them away. It’s for the best. They were useless to us.”
“Lot of suits,” Bobby commented, eyeing the area around them.
“Yeah.”
“Lead detective?”
Her chin came up. “I’m the lucky duck.”
“Sorry, D.D.”
She grimaced, her face bleaker now that it was just the two of them. “Yeah, no shit.”
The sound of a throat clearing came from behind them. “Sergeant?”
The videographer had emerged from beneath the tarp and was waiting for D.D.’s acknowledgment.
“We’ll shoot again in intervals,” D.D. told the videographer, turning back toward the assembled masses. “Around once an hour to keep things up-to-date. You can grab a cup of coffee if you’d like, there’s a thermos in the van. But keep close, Gino. Just in case.”
The officer nodded, then headed for the van where the generator thundered away.
“All right, Bobby. We’re up.”
She started walking without waiting to see if he’d follow.
Beneath the blue awning, Bobby found a pile of Tyvek coveralls plus shoe booties and hairnets. He pulled the papery material over the top of his clothes, while D.D. exchanged her soiled booties for a fresh pair. There were two eye-and-snout masks lying next to the coveralls. D.D. didn’t take one, so neither did he.
“I’ll go first,” D.D. said. “I’ll yell ‘Clear’ when I hit the bottom, then it’s your turn.”
She gestured toward the back and Bobby caught the faint glow coming from a roughly two-by-two-foot opening in the ground. The top of a metal ladder protruded above the earthen lip. It gave him a strange feeling of déjà vu, as if he should know exactly what he was seeing.
And then, in the next instant, he got it; he knew why D.D. had called him. And he knew what he would see when he went down into the pit.
D.D. brushed his shoulder with her fingertips. The touch shocked him. He flinched; she immediately pulled away. Her blue eyes were somber, too large in her pale face.
“See you in five, Bobby,” she said quietly.
She disappeared down the ladder.
Two seconds later, he heard her voice again: “All clear.”
Bobby descended into the abyss.
It wasn’t dark. Spotlights had been placed in the corner, moveable light strips hung from the ceiling; crime-scene technicians needed bright lights for their laborious work.
Bobby kept his gaze focused in front of him, breathing shallowly through his mouth and processing the scene in small bits.
The chamber was deep, at least six feet tall; it easily cleared the top of his head. Wide enough for three people to stand shoulder to shoulder, it loomed ahead of him for nearly two full body lengths. Not a random sinkhole, he thought immediately, but something intentionally and painstakingly made.
The temperature was cool, but not cold. It reminded him of caves he’d once visited in Virginia; the air a constant fifty-five degrees, like a walk-in refrigerator.
Smell, not as bad as he had feared. Earthy, laced with the faintest odor of decay. Whatever had happened here, it was almost done now, hence the presence of the forensic anthropologist.
He touched one earthen wall with his gloved hand. It felt hard-packed, lightly ridged. Not bumpy enough to have been dug with a shovel; space was probably too big for that kind of labor anyway. He would guess the cavern had originally been dug with a backhoe. Maybe a culvert that had been ingeniously reengineered with another purpose in mind.
He moved ahead two feet, came to the first support beam, an old, splintering two-by-four. It formed part of a crude buttress arching over the room. A second buttress appeared three feet after the first.
He explored the ceiling with his fingertips. Not dirt, but plywood.
D.D. caught his motion. “Whole ceiling’s wood,” she supplied. “Topped with dirt and debris except for the opening, where he left an exposed wooden panel he could plop on and off. When we first got here, it looked like random construction debris lying in the middle of an overgrown field. You’d never guess … You’d never know …” She sighed, looked down, then seemed to try to shake herself out of it.
Bobby nodded curtly. The space was fairly clean, spartanly furnished: an old five-gallon bucket placed next to the ladder, lettering so faded with age, only dim shadows remained; a folded-up metal chair, corners laced with rust, propped against the left-hand wall; a metal shelving unit, spanning the length of the far wall, covered in bamboo blinds on the verge of disintegration.
“Original ladder?” he asked.
“Metal chain link,” D.D. answered. “We’ve already bagged it as evidence.”
“Plywood cover obscuring the opening, you said? Find any good sticks around?”
“One approximately three feet in length and an inch and a half thick. Bark worn off. Props up the plywood cover about as you’d expect.”
“And the shelves?” He took a step toward them.
“Not yet,” D.D. spoke up sharply.
He concealed his surprise with a shrug, then turned to face her; it was her party after all.
“I don’t see many evidence placards,” he said at last.
“It’s that clean. It’s like the subject closed it up. He used it. For a while, I’m willing to bet, then one day he simply moved on.”
Bobby studied her intently, but she didn’t elaborate.
“Feels old,” he commented.
“Abandoned,” D.D. specified.
“Got a date?”
“Nothing scientific. We’ll have to wait for Christie’s report.”
He waited again, but once more she refused to provide additional information.
“Yeah, okay,” he said after a moment. “It looks like his work. You and I only have secondhand details, though. Have you contacted the detectives who worked the original scene?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been here since midnight; haven’t had a chance to check the old case file yet. That’s a lot of years back, though. Whichever officers handled it, they’re bound to be retired by now.”
“November eighteen, 1980,” Bobby provided softly.
D.D. got a tight look around her mouth. “Knew you’d remember,” she murmured grimly. She straightened her shoulders. “What else?”
“That pit was smaller, four by six. I don’t recall any mention of support beams in the police report. I think it’s safe to say it was less sophisticated than this one. Jesus. Reading about it still isn’t the same as seeing it. Jesus.”
He touched the wall again, feeling the hard-packed earth. Twelve-year-old Catherine Gagnon had spent nearly a month in that first earthen prison, living in a timeless black void interrupted only by visits from her captor, Richard Umbrio, who had held her as his own personal sex slave. Hunters had found her by accident shortly before Thanksgiving, when they had tapped on the plywood cover and been startled to hear faint cries below. Catherine had been saved; Umbrio sent to prison.
The sto
ry should’ve ended there, but it didn’t.
“I don’t remember any mention of other victims at Umbrio’s trial,” D.D. was saying now.
“No.”
“Doesn’t mean he hadn’t done it before, though.”
“No.”
“She could’ve been his seventh victim, eighth, ninth, tenth. He wasn’t the type to talk, so anything’s possible.”
“Sure. Anything’s possible.” He understood what D.D. left un-said. And it’s not like they could ask. Umbrio had died two years ago, shot by Catherine Gagnon, under circumstances that had been the true death knell to Bobby’s STOP career. Funny how some crimes just went on and on and on, even decades later.
Bobby’s gaze returned to the covered shelves, which he noticed D.D. was still avoiding. D.D. hadn’t called him at two in the morning to look at a subterranean chamber. BPD hadn’t issued red-ball deployment for a nearly empty pit.
“D.D.?” he asked quietly.
She finally nodded. “Might as well see it for yourself. These are the ones, Bobby, who didn’t get saved. These are the ones who remained down in the dark.”
Bobby handled the blinds carefully. The cords felt old, rotting in his hands. Some of the tiny interwoven pieces of bamboo were splintering, snagging on the strings, making the shade difficult to roll. He could smell the taint stronger here. Sweet, almost vinegary. His hands shook in spite of himself and he had to work to steady his heartbeat.
Be in the moment, but outside the moment. Detached. Composed. Focused.
The first blind rolled up. Then the second.
What helped him the most, in the end, was sheer incomprehension.
Bags. Clear plastic garbage bags. Six of them. Three on the top shelf, three on the bottom, positioned side by side, tied neatly at the top.
Bags. Six of them. Clear plastic.
He staggered back.
There were no words. He could feel his mouth open, but nothing was happening, nothing coming out. He just looked. And looked and looked, because such a thing couldn’t exist, such a thing couldn’t be. His mind saw it, rejected it, then saw the image and fought with it all over again. He couldn’t … It couldn’t …
His back hit the ladder. He reached behind, grabbing the cool metal rungs so hard he could feel the edges bite into the flesh of his hands. He focused on that sensation, the sharp pain. It grounded him. Kept him from having to scream.
D.D. pointed up to the ceiling, where one of the light strips had been hung.
“We didn’t add those two hooks,” D.D. said quietly. “They were already there. We didn’t find any lanterns left behind, but I would assume …”
“Yeah,” Bobby said roughly, still breathing through his mouth. “Yeah.”
“And the chair, of course.”
“Yeah, yeah. And the fucking chair.”
“It’s, uh, it’s wet mummification,” D.D. said, her own voice sounding shaky, working at control. “That’s what Christie called it. He bound the bodies, put each in a garbage bag, then tied the top. When decomp started … well, there was no place for the fluids to go. Basically, the bodies pickled in their own juices.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“I hate my job, Bobby,” D.D. whispered suddenly, starkly. “Oh God, I never wanted to see anything like this.” She covered her mouth with her hand. For a moment, he thought she might break down, but she caught herself, soldiered through. She turned away from the metal shelves, however. Even for a veteran cop, some things asked too much.
Bobby had to work to abandon his grip on the metal ladder rungs.
“We should go up,” D.D. said briskly. “Christie’s probably waiting. She just needed to fetch body bags.”
“Okay.” But he didn’t turn toward the ladder. Instead, he walked back to the exposed metal shelves, to a sight his mind couldn’t accept but already would never forget.
The bodies had turned the color of mahogany with time. They were not the dried, empty husks he’d seen on shows of Egyptian mummies. They were robust, almost leathery in appearance, each feature still distinct. He could follow the long ropy lines of impossibly thin arms wrapped around gently rounded legs, bent at the knees. He could count ten fingers, clasped at the ankles. He could make out each of the faces, the hollows of their cheeks, the pointy tips of their chins resting upon their knees. Their eyes were closed. Their mouths pursed. Hair matted against their skulls, long lank strands covering their shoulders.
They were small. They were naked. They were female. Children, mere children, crouched inside clear garbage bags from which they would never escape.
He understood now why the detectives above weren’t saying a word.
He reached out a gloved hand, lightly touched the first bag. He didn’t know why. Nothing he could say, nothing he could do.
His fingers fell upon a thin, metal chain. He plucked it from the pleated folds at the top of the bag, to discover a small silver locket. It bore a single name: Annabelle M. Granger.
“He tagged them?” Bobby swore viciously.
“More like trophies.” D.D. had come to stand behind him. She reached behind a second bag with her gloved hands and carefully revealed a small tattered bear hanging from a string. “I think … Hell, I don’t know, but each bag has an object. Something that meant something to him. Or something that meant something to her.”
“God.”
D.D.’s hand was on his shoulder now. He hadn’t realized how hard his jaw was clenched until she touched him. “We have to go up, Bobby.”
“Yeah.”
“Christie needs to get to work.”
“Yeah.”
“Bobby …”
He yanked his hand away. Looked at them one last time, feeling the pressure, the need, to imprint each image into his brain. As if it would bring them comfort to know they would not be forgotten. As if it mattered to them anymore to know they were not alone in the dark.
He headed back for the ladder. His throat burned. He couldn’t speak.
Three deep breaths and he burst up through the opening, under the light blue tarp.
Back into the cool misty night. Back to the glow of spotlights. Back to the noise of news choppers who’d finally caught whiff of the story and were now whirling in the sky overhead.
Bobby didn’t go home. He could’ve. He’d come as a favor to D.D. He’d confirmed what she’d suspected. No one would’ve questioned his departure.
He poured a cup of hot coffee from the crime-scene van. Leaned against the side of the vehicle for a while, buffered by the white noise of the roaring generator. He never drank the coffee. Just twisted the cup around and around with shaky fingers.
Six a.m. arrived, sun starting to peek over the horizon. Christie and her assistant brought up the bodies, encased now in black body bags. The remains fit three to a gurney, making for two trips to the ME’s van. First stop would be to the BPD’s lab, in order for the plastic garbage bags that encased each body to be fumigated for prints. Then the remains would journey on to the OCME lab, where postmortem would finally begin.
As Christie departed, so did most of the detectives. These kinds of scenes were run by the forensic anthropologist, so with Callahan gone, there wasn’t much left to do.
Bobby dumped out his cold coffee, tossed the cup in the garbage.
He was waiting in the passenger’s seat of D.D.’s car when she finally walked out of the woods. And then, because they had loved each other once, even been friends after that, he cradled her head against his shoulder and held her while she cried.
My father loved old sayings. Among his favorites, Chance favors the prepared mind. Preparedness, in my father’s eyes, was everything. And he started to prepare me the minute we fled Massachusetts.
We started with Safety 101 for a seven-year-old. Never accept candy from a stranger. Never leave school with anyone, not even someone I know, unless he or she provides the correct password. Never get close to an approaching car. If the driver wants directions, send him to an adu
lt. Looking for a lost puppy? Send him to the police.
Stranger appears in my room in the middle of the night? Yell, scream, bang on the walls. Sometimes, my father explained, when a child is deeply terrified, she finds it impossible to operate her vocal cords; hence, kick over furniture, throw a lamp, break small objects, blow on my red emergency whistle, do anything to make noise. I could destroy the entire house, my father promised me, and in that situation my parents would not be mad.
Fight, my father told me. Kick at kneecaps, gouge at eyes, bite at throat. Fight, fight, fight.
With age, my lessons grew more involved. Karate for skill. Track team for speed. Advanced safety tips. I learned to always lock the front door, even when at home in broad daylight. I learned to never answer the door without first looking through the peephole and to never acknowledge someone I didn’t know.
Walk with your head up, steps brisk. Make eye contact, but do not maintain. Enough for the other party to know you’re attuned to your surroundings, without calling undue attention to yourself. If I ever felt uncomfortable, I should catch up to the nearest group of people in front of me and follow in their wake.
If I was ever threatened in a public bathroom, yell “Fire;” people will respond to the threat of a fire before they’ll respond to cries of rape. If I was ever uncomfortable in a mall, run to the nearest female; women are more likely to take action than men, who often feel uncomfortable getting involved. If I was ever confronted by someone pointing a gun, make a run for it; even the most skilled sharpshooter had difficulty hitting a moving target.
Never leave the shelter of your home or workplace without having your car key in hand. Walk to your vehicle with the key protruding from between your curled fingers like a shank. Do not unlock the door if a stranger is standing behind you. Do not climb into the car without first checking the backseat. Once inside, keep the doors locked at all times; if you need air, a window may be cracked one inch.
My father did not believe in weapons; he had read that women were more likely to lose possession of their firearm and have it used against them. That’s why until the age of fourteen I wore a whistle around my neck for use in case of emergency and always carried mace.