by Lisa Gardner
“Ah nuts. As soon as we’re done here, I’ll head over with you, look around.”
She must have appeared dubious, because he declared with some exasperation, “Former tac team, D.D. I know a thing or two about breaking and entering.”
“Please, you guys ram the door with a giant metal ‘key.’ Your style and our subject’s style … very far removed.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Bobby muttered, but he sounded troubled. “That’s what’s bugging me—the stalking MO fits but … Twenty-five years ago, when the subject first operated, his target was young females. Seven-year-old Annabelle Granger, her best friend, Dori Petracelli. Now, suddenly, he’s into grown women? You, Annabelle … I’m not a profiler, but I didn’t think that sort of thing happened.”
“Maybe our ages aren’t relevant to him. Annabelle is the one who got away. Having found her again, he’s determined that she doesn’t escape. And as for me … I’m lead investigator. He wants to yank my chain. But I’m also less personal to him, which is why he didn’t mind sending dogs instead of doing the deed himself. She’s his life’s work. I’m a hobby.”
“Encouraging thought.”
“Especially for me. Who wants to be killed as an afterthought? Also, Bobby, look at Eola. Most people believe he killed a nurse at Boston State Mental. So if Eola is our man, you’re talking about someone with a history of targeting females regardless of age. Wasn’t Bundy like that? We think of him as attacking college coeds, but some of his victims were quite young. These guys … who the hell knows what really makes ’em tick?”
Bobby didn’t say anything right away. Then he said, “You still consider Russell Granger a suspect?”
“I will until you prove otherwise.”
“Came back from the dead?” Bobby murmured wryly.
D.D. surprised us both. “Spoke with the ME last night, Bobby. Given the current demands on your time, I figured I’d do you a favor and follow up on the circumstances surrounding Annabelle’s father’s death. According to the file, police contacted Annabelle—Tanya—she made the ID, and that was good enough for the ME. Think about it, Bobby. The face was a mess. The ME’s office never ran prints or documented any identifying marks—it was just a hit-and-run, and the guy’s daughter identified the body. Meaning that corpse could’ve been anyone carrying Michael W. Nelson’s driver’s license. A stranger, a vagrant. Some poor slob he pushed into on-coming traffic …”
D.D.’s words seemed to have struck Bobby dumb. Which was good, because I didn’t think I could hear above the torrent of blood rushing in my ears. D.D. thought my father was still alive? Theorized he might have killed someone else to fake his own death? Honestly believed he was the evil mastermind behind this homicidal crime spree?
But that was absurd. My father wasn’t a killer! Not of little girls, not of Dori Petracelli, not of grown men. He never would’ve done such a thing.
He wouldn’t have left me.
My legs gave out. My shoulder hit the front door, pushing it open. D.D. and Bobby didn’t notice. They were too busy analyzing their case, ripping apart my father, turning one of the few truths I knew into a giant lie.
We hadn’t left Arlington because my father needed to cover his tracks. We had moved to protect me. We had moved because …
“Roger, please don’t go. Roger, I’m begging you, please don’t do this.…”
“Whoever it is,” Bobby was saying now, still sounding clearly skeptical, “the UNSUB wants attention. And for all his ‘cleverness’ he’s making no attempt at being subtle. He left a note on your car, a gift at Annabelle’s front door. Why? If he’s that brilliant, why not kill both of you and be done with it? He wants the chase. He wants the opportunity to show off. Which is exactly how we’re going to catch him. He’s going to reach out again, and when he does, we’ll nail his ass.”
“Hope you’re right,” D.D. murmured. “Because I’m pretty sure, a guy like this has something scary planned next.”
They turned, headed toward the front steps. Belatedly, I stumbled to my feet, bolting up the stairs. Detectives Sinkus and McGahagin looked at me curiously as I swept into my apartment. I went straight into the bedroom. Closed the door.
Seconds passed. Eventually, I heard a tentative knock.
I didn’t say anything. Whoever knocked went away.
I sat on my narrow bed, clutching the vial of ashes around my neck and wondering if even it contained a lie.
In the end, it was my fault. My phone started ringing. I didn’t feel like leaving my room to answer it. So naturally, the answering machine picked up. And naturally, Mr. Petracelli left his message with half of the Boston PD listening in.
“Annabelle, I found the sketch from the Neighborhood Watch meeting, as you requested. Of course, I’d prefer not to mail these materials. I suppose I can make it back into the city if you really want me to. Same time, same place? Give me a buzz.” He rattled off a number. I sat on my bed and sighed.
The knock that came on my bedroom door this time was not a request.
I opened the door to find Bobby standing there, a very dark look on his face. “Sketch? Same time? Same place?”
“Hey,” I said brightly. “Want to go for a ride?”
Mr. Petracelli was relieved to hear he wouldn’t have to make the dreaded drive into the city. Bella also thought heading out was a grand idea. Which just left Bobby and me, sitting up front, careful not to meet each other’s eyes.
Traffic was light. Bobby called into Dispatch, requesting a background check on my old neighbors. It intrigued me not to be the only one who was paranoid, for a change. Generally, I ran the name of everyone I met through Google.
“Where’s D.D.?” I finally asked.
“Had to attend to other business.”
“Eola?” I fished.
He slanted me a look. “And how would you know that name, Annabelle?”
I went with a bald-faced lie. “The Internet.”
He arched a brow, clearly not fooled, but didn’t ignore my question. “D.D. is in the process of running a crime scene in her own home. The subject may have left a gift at your door, but he broke into D.D.’s home and stole her underwear.”
“It’s because she’s a blonde,” I said, which only earned me another droll gaze.
We pulled into the Petracellis’ driveway.
The tiny gray cape seemed to blend into the overcast sky. White shutters. Small green yard. The right home for an elderly couple who would never have grandkids.
“Mr. Petracelli never thought the Lawrence police took his daughter’s case seriously enough,” I volunteered as we got out of the car. Bella whined. I told her to stay. “If you mention you’re looking into a connection between Dori’s disappearance and my stalker, I think Mr. Petracelli will open up.”
“I talk, you listen,” Bobby informed me coldly.
Badass, I mouthed behind his back, but didn’t say a word as we headed up the flagstone walk.
Bobby rang the doorbell. Mrs. Petracelli opened the door. She sighed when she saw the two of us. Gave me a look I can only describe as deeply apologetic.
“Walter,” she said calmly, “your guests are here.”
Mr. Petracelli came bounding down the stairs with far more energy than I remembered from my previous visit. He had an accordion-style file folder tucked under his right arm and a bright, almost surreal gleam in his eyes.
“Come in, come in,” he said jovially. He shook Bobby’s hand, mine, too, then glanced around as if searching for my attack dog. “I was excited to hear you were coming, Detective. And so soon! I have the information, absolutely, it’s all right here. Oh, but wait, look at us, standing in the foyer. How rude of me. Let’s make ourselves comfortable in the study. Lana dear—some coffee?”
Lana sighed again, headed for the kitchen. Bobby and I trailed after Mr. Petracelli as he went skipping to the study. Once there, he plopped himself on the edge of a leather wingback chair, eagerly opening up his file folder, spreading out sheets of p
aper. Compared to his ominous, brooding approach last night, he was practically whistling as he pulled out page after page bearing the grim details of his daughter’s abduction.
“So you’re with the Boston PD?” he asked Bobby.
“Detective Robert Dodge, sir, Massachusetts State Police.”
“Excellent! I always said the state should be involved. The locals just don’t have enough resources. Small towns equal small cops equal small minds.” Mr. Petracelli seemed to finally have all his paperwork arranged just so. He glanced up, happened to notice that Bobby and I both still lingered in the doorway.
“Sit, sit, please, make yourselves at home. I’ve been keeping detailed notes for years. We have quite a bit to cover.”
I sat on the edge of a green plaid love seat, Bobby wedged beside me. Mrs. Petracelli appeared, depositing coffee cups, cream, sugar. She departed as quickly as possible. I didn’t blame her.
“Now, about November twelve, 1982 …”
Mr. Petracelli had indeed kept scrupulous notes. Over the years, he’d developed an elaborate time line of the last day of Dori’s life. He knew when she got up. What she ate for breakfast. What clothes she selected, what toys she had in the yard. At approximately noon, her grandmother told her it was time for lunch. Dori had wanted a tea party instead, with her collection of stuffed bears on the picnic table. Not seeing the harm, Dori’s grandmother had delivered a plate of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, crusts cut off, plus a sliced apple. Last she had seen, Dori was passing out treats among her plush guests. Dori’s grandmother went inside to tidy up the kitchen, then got caught up talking to a neighbor on the phone. When she returned out front twenty minutes later, the bears were still sitting, each with a bite of sandwich and apple in front of its nose. Dori was nowhere to be found.
Mr. Petracelli knew when the first call had been placed to 911. He knew the name of the officer who had responded, what questions were asked, how they were answered. He had notes on the search parties formed, lists of the volunteers who showed up—some of whom he’d asterisked for never giving a satisfactory alibi for what they were doing between 12:15 and 12:35 that afternoon. He knew the dog handlers who volunteered their services. The divers who eventually tended to the nearby ponds. He had seven days’ worth of police and local activity distilled into elaborate chronological graphs and comprehensive lists of names.
Then he had the information from my father.
I couldn’t tell from Bobby’s face what he thought of Mr. Petracelli’s presentation. Mr. Petracelli’s voice raised and lowered with various stages of intensity, sometimes even spitting words as he hashed out obvious failings in what seemed to be a thorough search for a missing girl. Bobby’s expression remained impassive. Mr. Petracelli talked. From time to time, Bobby took notes. But mostly Bobby listened, his face betraying nothing.
Personally, I wanted to see the sketch. I wanted to gaze at the face of the man I believed had targeted me, sentenced my family to a lifetime on the run, then killed my best friend.
The reality was disappointing.
I had expected an angrier-looking man. A black-and-white sketch with dark, shifty eyes, the tattoo of a teardrop topping the right cheek. Instead, the artfully rendered drawing, my father’s work most certainly, appeared almost pedantic. The subject was young—early twenties, I would guess. Short dark hair. Dark eyes. Small, almost refined-looking jawline. Not a thug at all. In fact, the picture reminded me of the kid who used to work in the neighborhood pizza parlor.
I studied the drawing for a long time, waiting for it to speak to me, tell me all its secrets. It remained a crude sketch of a young man who, frankly, could be any one of tens of thousands of twenty-year-old, dark-haired males who’d passed through Boston.
I didn’t get it. My father had run from this?
Bobby asked Mr. Petracelli if he had a fax machine. In fact, we could both see one standing on the desk behind Mr. Petracelli. Bobby explained it might be faster if he faxed the notes, etc., into the office right away, for the other detectives to get started. Mr. Petracelli was overjoyed to have someone finally take his file seriously.
I watched Bobby punch in the fax number. He included an area code, which wouldn’t have been necessary for a Boston exchange. And the only piece of paper he fed into the machine was the sketch.
Bobby sent the rest of the pages through the fax on copy function, helping himself to the duplicates. Mr. Petracelli was rocking back and forth on the edge of his chair, his face unnaturally red, his smile beaming. The excitement of the moment had obviously spiked his blood pressure. I wondered how soon before the next heart attack. I wondered if he’d make his goal of living long enough to see his daughter’s body recovered.
We drained our coffee cups, just to be polite. Mr. Petracelli seemed reluctant for us to depart, shaking our hands again and again.
When we finally made it out to the car, Mr. Petracelli stood on the front porch, waving, waving, waving.
My last glance of him was as we drove down the street. He became a small, hunch-shouldered old man, face too red, smile too bright, still waving determinedly at the police detective he firmly believed would finally bring his daughter home.
“You faxed the sketch to Catherine Gagnon,” I said the moment we hit the highway. “Why?”
“Your father showed Catherine a sketch when she was in the hospital,” he said abruptly.
“He did?”
“I want to see if it’s the same drawing.”
“But that’s not possible! Catherine was in the hospital in ’80, and that sketch wasn’t done until two years later.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the stalker dude didn’t start delivering gifts until August of 1982. And you can’t have a sketch of the stalker dude without any stalker.”
“There’s only one problem with that.”
“There is?”
“According to the police reports, no one ever saw the face of the ‘stalker dude.’ Not your father or mother, not Mrs. Watts, and not any of your neighbors. In theory, therefore, stalker dude could not have served as the basis for that drawing.”
Well, that was a stumper. I stewed on it, telling myself there was a logical explanation, while realizing I was using that line a lot lately. My father had known something in 1980, I decided. Something serious enough to drive him to masquerade as an FBI agent and visit Catherine with a sketch in hand. But what?
I tried searching my memory banks. I’d been only five in 1980. Living in Arlington and …
I couldn’t get anything to come to mind. Not even the memory of a comic-strip-wrapped gift. I was certain those started arriving two years later, when I was seven.
The silence was finally broken by the chirping of the cell phone clipped to Bobby’s waist. He retrieved it, exchanged a few terse words, slid a look at me sideways. He flipped it shut, seemed about to speak, then the phone rang again.
This time, his voice was different. Polite, professional. The voice of a detective addressing a stranger. He seemed to be trying to work out a meeting, and it wasn’t going his way.
“When do you leave for the conference? I’ll be honest, sir, I need to meet with you as soon as possible. It involves one of your former professors. Russell Granger—”
Even I could hear the sudden squawk on the other end of the line. And then, that quickly, Bobby was nodding.
“Where do you live again? Lexington. As a matter of fact, I happen to be right around the corner.”
He glanced at me. I answered with a shrug, grateful that I didn’t have to elaborate. Obviously, Bobby was trying to set up an interview with my father’s former boss and obviously it needed to happen now.
I didn’t mind. Of course, there was no way in hell I was waiting in the car.
“Time to take Bella for a walk,” Bobby announced as he drove through a winding side street just north of the Minuteman Statue in Lexington Center. Paul Schuepp had given his house number as 58. Bobby spotted 26, then 32, so
he was moving in the right direction. “Looks like a nice area to stretch your legs.”
Annabelle took it about as well as he expected. “Ha ha ha. Very funny.”
“I mean it. This is an official police investigation.”
“Then you’d better start deputizing me, because I’m going in.”
House number 48 … There, the white colonial with the red brick façade. “You know, it’s not exactly the Wild Wild West anymore.”
“Have you read the latest accounts of shootings in the city? Could’ve fooled me.”
Bobby pulled into the driveway. He had a decision to make. Spend ten minutes of the thirty Schuepp had agreed to spare arguing with Annabelle, or let her tag along and receive another lecture on proper policing techniques from D.D. He was still annoyed from his last conversation with the sergeant, which, frankly, didn’t work in D.D.’s favor.
Bobby popped his door and didn’t say a word as Annabelle followed suit.
“Detective Sinkus tracked down Charlie Marvin,” he filled her in as they headed for the front door. “Marvin spent the night at the Pine Street Inn, from midnight to eight a.m. Nine homeless and three staff members vouched for him. So whoever came to your building with that gift, it wasn’t him.”
Annabelle merely grunted. No doubt Charlie Marvin made a good suspect in her mind. On the one hand, he was an urban cross between a priest and Santa Claus. On the other hand, he wasn’t her father.
Bobby would like to say he didn’t believe Annabelle’s father had returned from the dead either. Except he was growing more and more puzzled by the hour. Mr. Petracelli had been a poignant lesson in the power of obsession. Bobby would have an officer follow up on Mr. Petracelli’s whereabouts late last night, though, in all honesty, delivering comic-strip-wrapped presents was probably a shade too subtle for someone who was obviously mad as a hatter.
The sketch was the key, Bobby decided. Who had Russell Granger known, and why had he felt threatened nearly two years before filing that first police report?