by Lisa Gardner
Detective Rock sat down. Detective Sinkus took the floor.
“So, uh, I thought I should have a handout. But when I looked at everything I had to share, it was fifty pages of names, and I thought, hell, no one here has time to read fifty pages of names, so I didn’t bother.”
“Thank God,” someone said.
“Appreciate it,” another detective commented.
The deputy superintendent cleared his throat in the corner. They immediately shut up.
Sinkus shrugged. “Look, my job’s to assemble a preliminary list of interview subjects. We’re talking contractors, neighbors, former lunatic-asylum workers, and known offenders in the area, going back thirty years. List? It’s a goddamn phone book. Not saying we can’t work it”—he glanced hastily at the deputy superintendent—“I’m just saying we’d have to quadruple the Boston police force to make a dent in this sucker. Basically, without more information to narrow down the suspect pool, like, say, a definitive time line, I don’t think the current task is manageable. Honest to God, this is one area where we need the victimology report.”
“Well, we don’t have it,” D.D. said flatly, “so try again.”
“Knew you’d say that,” Sinkus mumbled with a sigh. He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Okay, so I had an idea.”
“Spit it out.”
“I got an appointment tomorrow to interview George Robbards, former clerk at the Mattapan station. He processed all the incident reports from ’72 to ’98. I figure if there’s anyone who might have a bead on the area—and probably a good recollection of what activities, or what people, cops were talking about, even if they didn’t have enough to file on—it would be him.”
D.D. was actually stunned into silence. “Well, hell, Roger, that’s a brilliant idea.”
He smiled sheepishly, hands still in his pockets. “Honestly, it was my wife’s. Good news about having a newborn, my wife’s always awake now when I go home, so what the hell, we talk. She remembered me saying once that the clerks are the real brains of any police station. We all come and go. The clerks stay forever.”
That was true. A cop spent maybe three or four years at a single station. The police clerks, on the other hand, might serve for decades.
“Okay,” D.D. said briskly. “I like it. Those are the kinds of ideas we need. In fact, I’ll even forgive your lack of paperwork right now, as long as you deliver a transcript of tomorrow’s interview the second it’s completed. I’ve heard good things about Robbards. And given that six bodies in one location implies a subject who operated in the area for years, yeah, I’d like to hear Robbards’s thoughts. Interesting.”
D.D. picked up her copies of the reports. Pounded them into a neat pile.
“Okay, people. So this is where we’re at: We’re manning a machine-gun investigation, spraying the area with bullets and hoping like hell we’ll hit something. I know it’s tiring, it’s messy, it’s painful, but this is why we get paid the big bucks. Now, we have”—she glanced at her watch again—“seven hours and counting. So go forth, discover something brilliant, and report back by oh-seven-hundred. First person who tells me something we can use in the press briefing gets to go home to sleep.”
She started to push back from the table, half rising out of her chair. But then, at the last moment, she paused, regarded them more gravely.
“We all saw those girls,” she said gruffly. “What happened to them …” She shook her head, unable to continue, and around the table, guys looked away uncomfortably. Homicide detectives saw a lot of shit, but the cases that involved children always touched a nerve.
D.D. cleared her throat. “I want to send them home. It’s been thirty years. That’s too long. That’s … too sad for all of us. So let’s do this, okay? I know everyone’s tired, everyone’s stressed. But we gotta push ahead. We’re gonna make this happen. We’re gonna get these girls home to their families. And then we’re gonna stalk the son of a bitch who did this to the bitter ends of the earth, and nail his ass to the floor. Sound like a plan? I thought as much.”
D.D. pushed away from the table, strode for the door.
A full minute passed in silence. Then one by one the detectives headed back to work.
Bobby caught D.D. in her office. She was hunched over her computer screen, skimming a list of names with a pencil clenched in her fist. She was flying down the list so fast, Bobby wasn’t sure she could honestly be reading anything. Maybe she just wanted to look busy, in case someone, such as him, wandered by.
“What?” she asked presently.
“Got a call.”
She stopped reading, straightened, looked at him. “Thought you weren’t my lackey.”
“Thought you were my friend.”
“Oh Bobby. You’re such a jerk.”
The insult made him smile. “I never realized until now just how much I missed you. Can I come in yet, or am I supposed to be bearing roses?”
“Fuck roses,” she said. “I still want a decent roast beef sandwich.” But her voice had lost its edge. She waved to the empty desk chair across from her. He took that as an invitation, plopping down in the high-backed executive chair. D.D. pushed away from the computer. She really did look like hell, purple bags under her eyes, fingernails bitten down to the nubs. Minute she saw herself on TV, she was gonna be pissed.
“Catherine send her regards?” D.D. asked dryly.
“Not in so many words, but I’m sure she was thinking of her love for the Boston police the entire time we talked.”
“So what’d she say?”
“In a minute.”
An arched brow. “In a minute?”
“I have other news to report first. Come on, D.D., give a guy a break. Working these hours, I could use some foreplay.”
The corner of her mouth twitched up in an unexpected smile. For a moment, Bobby found himself thinking about the good old days again—in particular, the area they had gotten right.… He caught himself, straightening quickly, flipping through his spiral notebook.
“I, um … looked up Russell Granger. Started checking on Annabelle’s story.”
D.D.’s smile disappeared. She sighed, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees. They were back to business. “Am I going to like this report? More important, can I use it for the press conference?”
“Possibly. So: Russell Granger filed a police report in August of ’82, one of three reports he would file leading up to October. First report was trespassing. Granger heard someone in his yard in the middle of the night. Went out himself, swore he heard someone running away. When he checked again in the morning, he found muddy footprints all around the perimeter. Couple of uniforms went out, jotted down his story, but not much to do: no real crime, no description of the subject. Report got filed, ‘Call us again if you have any trouble, Mr. Granger,’ yada, yada, yada.
“Second report was a Peeping Tom, filed September eight. Also called in by Mr. Granger, but on behalf of his elderly neighbor, Geraldine Watts, who swore she saw a young man ‘skulking’ around the Granger residence and peering into one of the windows. Two uniformed officers were dispatched once again, Stan Jezukawicz and Dan Davis, known more affectionately as Stan-n-Dan. They interviewed Mrs. Watts, who provided a description of a white male, between five nine and six two, dark hair, ‘disheveled’ in appearance, wearing a gray T-shirt and jeans. She never got a look at his face. As she was picking up the phone to dial Mr. Granger, the subject took off running down the street.”
“Where did Mrs. Watts live?”
“Across the street from the Grangers. Point is, the window where the unidentified subject was ‘skulking’ belonged to Annabelle, the Grangers’ seven-year-old daughter. At this point, according to Stan-n-Dan, Mr. Granger started to get very agitated. Turned out that for the past few months, little ‘gifts’ had been appearing on his front porch. One had been a plastic horse, one a yellow Super Ball, one a blue marble. You know, kid kind of stuff. Mr. Granger and his wife had assumed that one of the other
children on the block had a crush on Annabelle, was a secret admirer.”
“Ah shit,” D.D. said. “The locket. Wrapped in the Peanuts comic strip, isn’t that what Annabelle said?”
“Yeah. Stan-n-Dan take the hint and, with Granger in tow, start canvassing all the neighbors. Plenty of kids, none of them have any idea what Mr. Granger is talking about. Mr. Granger gets upset; he’s convinced the Peeping Tom is the secret admirer, meaning a grown man is stalking his daughter. He demands immediate police protection, all sorts of stuff. Stan-n-Dan talk him down. Again, no crime has been committed, you know? And maybe the secret admirer is actually a classmate from Annabelle’s school. They promise to check it out.
“Stan-n-Dan depart, write up their report. It’s sent over for a detective’s review, but again, what’s the crime? Stan-n-Dan, to be fair, are conscientious. They follow up with the school and get the principal to talk to Annabelle’s classmates. These ‘interviews’ don’t generate any hits, unfortunately—if the ‘secret admirer’ is one of Annabelle’s schoolmates, the kid is too intimidated to confess.
“This info gets filed away. And the case languishes. What’s there to do? There’s record of Mr. Granger calling in a few more times, demanding answers, but no one has much to tell him. Keep his eyes out, call again if there’s any problems, yada, yada, yada.
“October nineteen, eleven-oh-five p.m., Mr. Granger calls police dispatch requesting immediate assistance. There’s an intruder in his house. Dispatch sends four cars to the neighborhood. Stan-n-Dan catch the news on the radio and also go flying over, concerned about the family.
“Guess it’s a mob scene when they get there. Granger is out on his front porch, dressed in pajamas, wielding a baseball bat. Man nearly gets himself shot by the first responders before Stan-n-Dan sort it all out. Dan notes in his report that Granger doesn’t look too good these days. Ragged, jerky. Sounds like Granger hasn’t slept much; since the last incident, he’s been up most nights ‘keeping watch.’
“Also turns out Mr. Granger told a little white lie. Upon being pressed, no one actually broke into his house. Instead, he once again heard sounds outside. But Granger didn’t think the police would take that seriously enough, hence he’d ‘expanded’ his report. Most of the officers don’t take this so well, but again, Stan-n-Dan feel an obligation. They walk around the perimeter, looking for signs of trouble. They notice a few changes to the landscaping—Mr. Granger has ripped out the shrubs near his house, chopped down two trees. Yard is pretty open now, not many places to hide. They both think this is a little paranoid, until they get to Annabelle’s window: There are deep gouges in the wood beneath the frame. Fresh tool marks, like the kind made from a crowbar. Someone was trying to break in.”
“But Annabelle is fine?” D.D. interjected with a frown.
“Absolutely. She’s not sleeping in her room anymore, you see. Mr. Granger and his wife had already made the decision after the Peeping Tom report to move her into their room. In all three incidents, the kid never heard a thing. As for the wife, I don’t know. The uniforms never interviewed her. Sounds like Mr. Granger did the talking. Mrs. Granger was always inside the house with Annabelle.”
D.D. rolled her eyes. He knew what she was thinking: sloppy police work. Both spouses should have been interviewed, separately, the seven-year-old as well. But twenty-five years later, what could you do?
“Given the tool marks,” Bobby continued, “Stan-n-Dan conduct a door-to-door canvass of the neighborhood. When they get to Mrs. Watts’s house, the woman who originally reported the Peeping Tom, she appears really agitated. Turns out she hasn’t been sleeping well—the mice in the attic are making too much noise.”
“The mice?”
“That’s what Stan-n-Dan think, too. They go flying upstairs. In the attic they discover a ‘nest’: a used sleeping bag, flashlight, can opener, bottles of water and, get this, a five-gallon empty plastic bucket that’s obviously been serving as a latrine.”
“Please tell me we have that plastic bucket in evidence.”
“We would never be so lucky. They did try to print it, however, so we would have a copy of the prints on file, except that there were no prints.”
“Sweet Jesus. Did anything go right with this investigation?”
“No. This thing was FUBAR all the way around. Now, of course, Mrs. Watts is hysterical—looks like someone has been living in her attic. But that’s nothing compared to Russell Granger, who pretty much demands the National Guard deploy just to protect him and his family. It gets even worse when the detectives start going through the ‘nest’ and find a whole stack of Polaroids: of Annabelle walking to school; of Annabelle out at recess; of Annabelle playing hopscotch with her best friend, Dori Petracelli …”
D.D. closed her eyes. “All right, cut to the chase.”
Bobby shrugged. “There was nothing the police could do. They had no description of the man, and in regard to Annabelle, they didn’t have a crime. It’s ’82, before the anti-stalking laws. They revisit Annabelle’s school, interrogating bus drivers, janitors, male teachers, anyone who’s come into contact with Annabelle and therefore might have formed an ‘attachment’ to her. They work the scene in Mrs. Watts’s house. Initial examination of evidence doesn’t yield prints, doesn’t yield much of anything. The detectives spin their wheels searching for a vagrant/pedophile who’s partial to stalking little girls and living in old ladies’ attics. They visited mental health institutes, soup kitchens, the usual roundup of perverts. It was all local knowledge in those days, and it doesn’t get them anywhere.
“In the meantime Mr. Granger goes nuts. Accuses the cops of not caring. Accuses his neighbors of knowingly harboring perverts. Accuses the DA of single-handedly being responsible for the future murder of Granger’s seven-year-old daughter. Then one day the cops return to the Granger residence for a follow-up interview, and no one’s there. A week later, the DA gets a call from Mr. Granger announcing that since the Commonwealth of Massachusetts refused to protect his daughter, he’s moved. Granger hangs up before anyone can ask him any questions, and that’s it. The department steps up patrols of the neighborhood for a week or two, but nothing’s seen or reported again. And the case dies a natural death, the way these things do.”
“Wait a minute. Where’s that damn list again? Okay, according to what we learned today, Dori Petracelli went missing November twelve, just weeks after all this happened. Shouldn’t that have raised a few brows?”
“Dori didn’t disappear from her house. She vanished when she was visiting her grandparents out in Lawrence. Different jurisdiction, different circumstances. Looks like the Lawrence department asked for a copy of the police report for the unknown subject in Geraldine Watts’s house, but nothing came of it. Remember—no prints, no detailed physical description in the file. I think Lawrence gave the Granger incidents a cursory glance, and then, realizing there wasn’t anything solid there to sink their teeth into, focused their attention on their own case.”
D.D. sat back. “Shit. You’re thinking Annabelle was the real target, Dori the consolation prize.”
“Something like that.”
“Where does that leave us?”
“Twenty-five years wiser. Look.” Bobby leaned back, tucked his hands behind his head. “I don’t want to criticize Stan-n-Dan. I went through their report, and they gave Mr. Granger more time than a lot of officers would. I think what hurt them, however, was that they weren’t hunters. They went up in that attic, they saw a nest. Once it got that term, everyone else saw a nest as well, and that, coupled with the description of the guy as ‘disheveled,’ led all the investigators down a certain path. It’s one of the reasons this case didn’t seem to connect strongly to Dori Petracelli. According to reports, Dori’s abductor was driving a white van. But no one thought of the Peeping Tom on Annabelle’s street as owning a vehicle, as having those kinds of resources.”
“They were chasing a homeless man, someone mentally ill.”
“Exactl
y. But when I look at the scene in the attic, I don’t see a vagrant seeking shelter. From a sniper’s perspective, this was a hunting blind. Think of the vantage point—three stories up and directly across the street from the target. Guy’s got cover over his head, a sleeping bag for comfort, snacks in case he gets a little hungry, and a bucket for bodily functions. It’s perfect. Hunting is about waiting. This guy had come up with the perfect setup to wait a very long time.”
“Premeditated,” D.D. said softly.
“Calculated,” Bobby clarified. “Clever. This guy, the Peeping Tom, he’d done it before.”
“Maybe five other times?”
“Yeah.” Bobby nodded quietly. “Maybe. My two cents—Annabelle Granger was targeted by a sophisticated pedophile who had probably already abducted at least one other girl by this time. And if Annabelle’s father hadn’t proved to be such a paranoid little shit, it would be her body down there in that pit, not Dori Petracelli’s. Annabelle Granger got away. Dori wasn’t so lucky.”
D.D. rubbed her face. “We’re sure this is 1982? There is absolutely, positively no chance that every single investigator involved got the date wrong?”
“It was 1982.”
“And you’re sure—absolutely, positively sure—that Richard Umbrio was already incarcerated in Walpole at this time?”
“Yep. Got that date on several reports as well. The Peeping Tom wasn’t Umbrio, D.D. It’s not even a matter of comparing dates. Look at MO. Umbrio was an opportunistic predator, snatch and grab, Hey, little girl, have you seen my lost dog? This is far more elaborate, almost ritualized. We’re talking a totally different breed of whacko.”
“But the use of an underground pit!” D.D. exploded. “The close physical match between Annabelle Granger and Catherine Gagnon. You can’t tell me it’s completely coincidence.”
“There are other options. Copycat, for one. By August ’82, Umbrio’s trial’s long finished, the details of the abduction made public. Maybe someone found it ‘inspirational.’ ”