The Missing dm-1

by Chris Mooney

'Come on,' Evan Manning said. 'Let's go back to the house.'

  'She wanted to be a singer,' Darby said. 'For her birthday, her grandfather bought her a tape recorder and one day Mel came to me in tears 'cause she had never heard her voice on tape and thought she sounded ugly. She came to me because I knew she wanted to be a singer. Nobody knew it but me. We had a lot of secrets like that.'

  The FBI agent nodded, urging her along in that quiet, confident way he had.

  'She loved Froot Loops but hated the lemon ones and always picked them out. She was always this real picky eater – she couldn't have her food touching, thought it was gross. She had this really great sense of humor. She was really quiet, but she could – there were all these times when she'd say something, and it would get me laughing so hard my stomach would hurt. She was… Mel was just a really great person.'

  Darby wanted to keep talking, wanted to find a way to use her words to build a bridge that would take Special Agent Manning back through time and show him how Melanie was more than chunks of newsprint and two-minute sound bites. She wanted to keep talking until Melanie's name carried the same weight in the air as it did in her heart.

  'I shouldn't have left her there all alone,' Darby said, and the tears came again, harder this time, and she wished her father was standing here with her right now – wished he hadn't stopped to help that driver, a schizophrenic man who was on early probation after serving a three-year jail sentence for trying to kill a cop. She wished she could have her father back with her for one minute, just one lousy minute, so she could say how much she still missed him and loved him. If her father were here, Darby could tell him everything she was thinking and feeling. Her father would understand. And maybe, just maybe, he would carry her words back with him and share them with Stacey and Melanie, wherever they were now. II Little Girl Lost (2007)

  Chapter 6

  Carol Cranmore lay back on her bed, panting, as Tony collapsed on top of her.

  'Jesus,' he said.

  'I know.'

  She ran her hands up and down the small of his back. His sweat smelled of cologne and beer and the faint but sweet and pleasant odor of the marijuana they had smoked out on the back porch. Tony was right. Making love when you were high was unbelievable. She started giggling.

  Tony popped his head up. 'What?'

  'Nothing. I love you.'

  He kissed her cheek, about to push himself up when she wrapped her legs around the small of the back. 'No, not yet,' she said. 'I just want to lie like this for awhile, okay?'

  'Okay.'

  Tony kissed her again, harder this time, and lay back on top of her. Carol's mind ran to those ridiculously sappy love songs she heard on American Idol. Maybe those lame-o songs were about this feeling she had with Tony, this perfect feeling of coming together and forming one person that could take on the world. Maybe all the crap and disappointment you went through on a daily basis – especially if you lived here, in the armpit of the universe – Belham, Massachusetts – maybe it made moments like she had just shared with Tony all the more special.

  Smiling, she listened to the rain drumming against the roof and drifted off to sleep.

  Carol Cranmore woke up from a dream where she had been named prom queen – totally ridiculous because she had no interest in proms. Both she and Tony had boycotted this year's junior prom and went to dinner and the movies instead.

  Still, there was one aspect of the dream she liked, the part where she felt accepted by everyone gathered around the front stage, clapping for her. And she might have stayed there, wrapped in that warm memory if it wasn't for the noise that sounded like a car backfiring. She reached across the dark for Tony.

  The other side of the bed was warm but empty. Had he gone home?

  Carol had told him he could stay over. Her mother was heading over to her new boyfriend's house in Walpole after her shift at the paper factory. Walpole was a closer ride to her job in Needham, so that meant Carol had the house to herself to do whatever she wanted, and what she wanted was for Tony to spend the night. He had called his mother and told her he was crashing at a friend's house.

  The candles were still burning on her nightstand. Carol sat up. It was almost two a.m.

  Tony's clothes were still on the floor. He was probably using the bathroom.

  Carol had a case of the munchies from the pot. A bag of Fritos and a Mountain Dew would hit the spot.

  She pulled back the sheet and stood naked, a tall girl for her age, her body long and lean, developing curves in the right places. She didn't put any clothes on, didn't mind being naked around Tony, who kept telling her how beautiful she was. He couldn't keep his hands off her. She opened the bedroom door, the night-light from the bathroom cutting the darkness in the hallway.

  'Tony, you mind making a run to the 7-Eleven?'

  He didn't answer. She peeked inside the bathroom and saw that he wasn't in there.

  Maybe he was using the downstairs bathroom for some privacy.

  There were some Ritz crackers in the kitchen cabinet. She could snack on those until Tony was done in the bathroom.

  A cold draft was coming from the hallway. She put on her underwear and Tony's white shirt. Walking made her feel dizzy. Several times she had to reach out and touch the wall.

  The kitchen door was wide open, as was the door leading to the back porch. Tony hadn't left; his car keys and wallet were inside his Red Sox baseball hat sitting on top of the counter. Probably went outside for a smoke, she thought. Her mother didn't have many rules, but she was dead set against smoking in the house, hated the way it stunk up the furniture.

  Carol poked her head out into the small hallway and saw the rain pounding the street, the sound hard and unrelenting, a steady throbbing hum in her ears. Parked in front of Tony's car was a black van that had seen better days. One of the van's back doors was wide open, swinging in the driving wind that was blowing curtains of rain across the street. She thought she heard the creak of the door's hinges, knowing she was imagining it. Good Lord, she was high.

  The van probably belonged to her next-door neighbor's son, Peter Lombardo, who had a habit of disappearing for months at a stretch only to return home, miserable and broke, then staying long enough to save up enough money to disappear again. Peter must have forgotten to lock up, probably in a rush to get inside, out of the rain.

  Carol was thinking about going outside and shutting the doors – there was a raincoat in the front door closet – when she heard Tony step up behind her. He grabbed her hard around the waist and lifted her up. Carol giggled as she turned to kiss him.

  A hand came up and clamped a foul-smelling cloth over her mouth.

  Carol turned away, clawing at the man's wrist as he tried to carry her back inside the kitchen. Her foot hit the wall and, using it as leverage, she kicked the man backward against the doorjamb. He let her go. She dropped to the floor.

  Dizzy, she felt dizzy because there was something on the rag. She could barely move, but she saw the rag on the floor. The man reached into his pocket and came back with a small envelope and a plastic bottle.

  He dropped a tiny piece of string or something on the floor, near the kitchen door, and then took the plastic bottle and squirted some cold red liquid onto her fingers. It looks like blood, she thought as he took her hand and used it to smear the red liquid across the hallway wall.

  The man picked up the rag. Carol drew in a breath to scream, sucked in chloroform and heard a crack of thunder rumble and die.

  Chapter 7

  Darby McCormick stood on the back porch of the Cranmore home, running the beam of her flashlight over the door, a reinforced steel model with two deadbolts. The thunderstorm had stopped, but the rain hadn't tapered off, still coming down fast and strong.

  Detective Mathew Banville of the Belham police had to yell over the noise, in a tone that left little doubt he was running thin on patience.

  'The mother, Dianne Cranmore, came home around quarter of five because she forgot her checkbook and
needed it for when she swung by the bank later today to pay the mortgage. When she pulled in, both doors were open and then she saw this -' Banville used his penlight to point to the bloody hand print on the hallway wall. The mother didn't find her daughter, but she found her daughter's boyfriend, Tony Marceillo, slumped on the stairs and immediately called nine-one-one.'

  'Besides the mother, who else has been inside?'

  'The first responding officer, Garrett, and the EMTs. They all went in through the front to get to the boyfriend. The mother gave Garrett the keys.'

  'Garrett didn't come in this way?'

  'He didn't want to destroy any evidence so he sealed the place off. We've issued an Amber Alert, but so far nothing.'

  Darby glanced at her watch. It was coming up on six a.m. Carol Cranmore had been missing for several hours, enough time for her to be well out of Massachusetts.

  On the gray carpet was a single tan fiber. Darby placed an evidence cone next to it.

  'There's no sign of forced entry. Who else has keys to the house?'

  'We're talking to the ex-husbands,' Banville said.

  'How many she have?'

  'Two, and that's not including the biological father. They were married for about fifteen minutes back in ninety-one.'

  'And does this fine gentleman have a name?' Darby checked the kitchen floor, glad to see it was made of linoleum. It was an ideal surface for picking up footwear impressions.

  'Mother called him "the sperm donor." Said he went back to Ireland right after he found out he was going to be a daddy. She hasn't heard from him since.'

  'And they say all the good ones are taken.' Darby rummaged through her kit.

  'The other two ex-husbands, one lives in Chicago, and the other lives here, in the wonderful city of Lynn,' Banville said. The dipshit from Lynn is the most interesting of the bunch. Street name is LBC, short for Little Baby Cool – don't ask me what that means. LBC's biological name is Trenton Andrews, did a five-year stretch in Walpole for the attempted rape of a minor – a fifteen-year-old girl. The Lynn police are looking for Mr Andrews right now. We're looking for registered sex offenders who live in the area.'

  'I'm sure it will be quite a list.'

  'You need anything else or can I go?'

  'Hold on a moment.'

  'Let's hurry it up.'

  Darby didn't take Banville's clipped tone personally; he spoke to everyone this way. She had worked with him on two previous crime scenes and found him to be a thorough investigator; but his personality was gruff, to say the least, and he generally avoided eye contact. He also made sure people didn't stand too close to him – like now, he was leaning against the porch railing, a good five feet away.

  She grabbed another flashlight, the heavy-duty Mag-Lite, and laid it down on the kitchen floor, angling the light until she found what she was looking for – a series of wet latent footwear impressions.

  'Sole pattern looks like a men's boot, around a size eleven,' Darby said. 'Looks like our man came in through here and left through here. You might want to check and see what LBC favors for footwear.'

  'Anything else?'

  'You're free to go.'

  Banville bolted down the stairs. Darby went to work bracketing off the boot impressions with tape. When she finished, she placed evidence cones next to the best impressions, then grabbed her kit and umbrella and stepped into the rain.

  Across the driveway, seated at a table behind the kitchen window at the next-door neighbor's house, was Carol's mother. Dianne Cranmore pressed a wadded-up tissue against her eyes as she talked to a detective writing in a notepad. Darby looked away from the mother's broken expression and hustled to the front door.

  The busy street was lit up by flashing blue and white lights. Police were standing out in the rain, directing traffic and keeping the crowds of reporters behind the sawhorses blocking off the street. The entire neighborhood was awake. People were standing out on their porches and watching from behind windows, wanting to know what was going on.

  Darby slipped a pair of disposable booties over her shoes and stepped inside the foyer. Her partner, Jackson Cooper, who was known to everyone simply as Coop, was hunched over a well-muscled young male dressed in a tight pair of black bikini briefs. The body was slumped at an awkward angle against the wall on the carpeted landing between the two sets of stairs. Blood had pooled under him, soaking into the carpet. Darby counted three shots – one in the forehead, two in a tight pattern on the cougar tattooed above the heart.

  Coop pointed to the tight shot pattern on the teenager's chest. 'Double tap.'

  'I'd say our guy's a trained marksman,' Darby said.

  'If I had to guess, I'd say the boyfriend heard something and decided to come downstairs to investigate. He comes down these steps to check the front door, finds it locked, and on the way back up gets shot twice in the chest. Then he falls, lands here and gets one planted in the forehead to make sure he doesn't get back up.'

  'Which means our guy is used to shooting in the dark.'

  Coop nodded. 'No scratches on his hands or arms. He didn't get a chance to fight.'

  'But his girlfriend did,' Darby said, and told him about the bloody handprint.

  'What's Banville's take on this?'

  'He's starting with the ex-husband angle.'

  'Why add murder to kidnapping?'

  'Who knows?'

  'That doctorate in criminal psychology is really paying off for you,' Coop said. 'ID here?'

  'Not yet.' Darby told him about the footwear evidence in the kitchen. 'I'm going to take a look around, and then we can do the preliminary walkthrough.'

  Light gray carpeting covered the stairs and the tiny hallway leading to a spacious TV room with mint-green walls and a brown couch and a matching chair mended by strips of duct tape. The mother had tried to brighten the place up with decorative throw pillows, a good area rug and assorted knickknacks.

  An archway separated the TV room from the dining room. On the table were several paperback romance novels by Nora Roberts and stacks of coupons. The two rooms had the stale, soiledwrapper feel of too much fast food and the fading odor of dope.

  Stretching across the upstairs wall were dozens of pictures of Carol and her achievements. Here was one of Carol as a toddler holding a paintbrush. In another one, Carol was wearing Mickey Mouse ears at Disney World. An expensive-looking frame held a certificate from Belham High School for the distinction of being a straight-A student. Then another framed certificate, this one for her leadership abilities on the student council. Here was a framed watercolor of the ocean, a ribbon pinned on it. Carol had won first place in an art contest.

  Carol's mother had hung the most prestigious awards and certificates at eye level outside her daughter's bedroom. That way, when Carol walked outside her bedroom door every morning and returned each night, she would always be reminded of her extraordinary talents.

  Car doors slammed. ID, the section of the lab that dealt exclusively with crime scene photography, had arrived. Darby grabbed her umbrella and headed out.

  She told Mary Beth Pallis about the body and the footwear impressions in the kitchen. After Mary Beth left, Darby examined the porch steps.

  The only interesting item she found was a discarded matchbook at the bottom step. She placed an evidence cone next to it. She backed up and stared at the porch. It hung suspended above the ground by columns. Latticework, also painted white, covered the perimeter. To the left of the stairs was a small door. Inside were plastic garbage cans and recycling bins.

  One of the garbage cans tipped over. A raccoon was in there, its eyes reflected in the flashlight -

  'Oh my God.'

  Darby opened the small door. The woman underneath the porch started to scream.

  Chapter 8

  Darby dropped her flashlight. She didn't pick it up. She stood absolutely still, staring wide-eyed at the woman who was now pressing a garbage can against the doorway to prevent anyone from entering.

  Patrolmen
came running. One of them grabbed Darby roughly by the arm and yanked her away from the door. He reached inside to move the garbage can.

  The woman's teeth, what few of them remained, sunk deep into exposed skin of his wrist. She twisted her head ferociously from side to side like a mongrel dog trying to rip free the last piece of meat from a bone.

  'My hand! The goddamn bitch is biting my hand!'

  Another patrolman moved in with a can of Mace. The woman saw it, let go of her bite and started knocking over the barrels and recycling containers as she screamed, scurrying back underneath the porch.

  Darby pushed the patrolman away and slammed the porch door shut.

  The patrolman holding the Mace said, 'What the hell you doing?'

  'We're going to give this woman some breathing room to calm down,' Darby said. The first patrolman, his eyes tearing, grabbed the dangling meat of his bleeding wrist with a shaking hand. 'Go and help him.'

  'All due respect, hon, your job is to -'

  'Move everyone out of the driveway – and while you're at it, make sure the ambulance doesn't pull in with its sirens blaring.'

  Darby turned and addressed the crowd of men who had gathered around her. 'Back up, I want everyone to back up now.'

  No one moved.

  'Do what she says.' Banville's voice. He emerged from the crowd, his black hair flattened by the rain.

  The patrolmen moved out of the driveway. Banville stepped up next to her. Darby explained what she had seen.

  'She's probably a crack addict,' Banville said. There's an abandoned house down the road where they all hang out.'

  'Let me try and talk her out of there.'

  Banville stared at the porch door, water dripping over his lumpy face. With his hangdog expression, he bore a striking resemblance to the cartoon character Droopy Dog.

  'Fine,' he said. 'But under no circumstances are you to go underneath the porch.'

  Darby put down her umbrella. Slowly, she opened the porch door. No screaming. She knelt in a cold puddle. The flashlight was still on and gave her enough light to see.