by Chris Mooney
'I know who she is.'
'Do you know she's a crime scene investigator for the Boston Crime Lab?'
Richard didn't answer.
'She's working on Carol Cranmore's case,' Boyle said.
The Grady case is closed.'
'I don't like the idea of her snooping around.'
'Forget Grady. He's a dead end. Get Carol ready.'
'Let's keep her just for tonight. Just give me one night -'
'Do it,' Richard said, and hung up.
Boyle only needed a moment to get organized.
He tucked the Colt Commander in the shoulder holster under his vest. He slipped the silencer and stun gun in his right vest pocket so it was handy. The plastic bags holding rags soaked with chloroform were already in each pocket. He made a mental note to cut Carol and collect some of her blood. He wanted to plant it inside Slavick's house. It would be easy to do. Boyle had a set of keys to Slavick's house and shed.
Boyle was about to lock up the filing cabinet when he pulled the drawer back out and removed the old mask made of stitched-together strips of Ace bandages. He hadn't worn it in years. Smiling, Boyle slid the mask over his head and picked up the rope from the wall.
Chapter 22
Carol Cranmore sat on a cot, underneath a wool blanket that felt stiff and scratchy against the bare parts of her skin. She didn't know how long she had been awake. She knew she wasn't wearing Tony's shirt anymore. The clothes she was wearing – sweatpants a little too tight and a baggy sweatshirt – smelled of fabric softener.
She had no memory of being undressed. The only memory she had was the one she kept replaying over and over in her mind – the stranger pushing a foul-smelling cloth over her mouth.
Carol buried her hands in her hair. This isn't supposed to be happening to me. I'm supposed to be at school today. I'm supposed to have lunch with Tony and then I'm supposed to go to the mall with Kari because Abercrombie amp; Fitch is having a huge sale and I've saved up money from babysitting because I'm a good person. I shouldn't be here oh God why is this happening to me?
The panic felt like a monstrous tide rising above her. Carol drew in a sharp breath and all the fear and terror were rushing through her, rushing up her throat, and she was screaming it into the dark room, screaming until her throat was raw, screaming until she had nothing left.
The darkness didn't go away. Carol closed her eyes and prayed to God – prayed hard. She opened her eyes. The darkness was still here. And she needed to pee. Was there a toilet hidden somewhere in this pitch-black room?
Carol swung her legs off the cot and felt something with a hard edge bump up against her foot. She reached down, hands moving across the shape. It was a cardboard tray holding a wrapped sandwich and a soda can. Whoever had brought her here had not only dressed her before putting her to bed, he had taken the time to wrap a blanket around her to make sure she was warm and had brought her food.
Carol wiped the tears from her face. She removed the Saran Wrap and took a bite of the sandwich. Peanut butter and jelly. She washed it away with the soda. It was Mountain Dew, her favorite.
As Carol ate, she wondered, for a brief moment, if her abductor may have been her father. She had never met him before – she didn't even know his name. Her mother referred to the man as 'the donor' and that was it.
If her father had abducted her – stories like that were all over the news, it did happen – he wouldn't lock her up in a room with no lights. No, her father hadn't brought her here. Someone else had.
Carol finished the rest of the Mountain Dew, wondering if there was a light switch on the wall.
The wall behind her had the same rough, sandpaper-like texture as the floor. Concrete, probably. She rubbed her hands up and down along the wall above her cot and failed to find a light switch. But that didn't mean there wasn't one in here.
Carol got her bearings. Okay, here was the end of the cot. Two choices: left or right. She decided to go left and started moving her hands across the wall, counting her steps as she searched for a light switch. She counted all the way to eighteen when the wall ended. No place to move but left.
Nine steps and her shin bumped into something hard. She reached down and felt something cool and smooth. She kept running her hands over the curves and then she felt water and it came to her: a toilet. Good. She wanted to pee but that could wait. Keep moving.
Ten steps and here was a sink.
Eight more steps and her hands were feeling around the controls for a shower. She turned the knob slightly, heard water run through the pipe and then felt it splash her head and face. She was locked in a small, cold room with a cot, a toilet, a sink and a shower. A light switch had to be close by. Her captor wouldn't let her live in the dark, would he? Please God, please let me find a light switch.
Six more steps and the wall ended. Ten more steps. The wall turned left and Carol followed it with her hands, counting one, two, three, four – wait, here was something rough and hard and cold. It was metal. She kept moving her hands along the metal, up and down and across.
It was a door but not like any door she knew about. This door was very wide and made of steel. No doorknob or lever. If Tony were here, he would know what it was. When his father wasn't busy being a drunk, he was a contractor, and a pretty good one -
Tony. Had he been brought here, too?
'Tony? Tony, where are you?'
Carol stood in the cool dark, listening hard over the blood pounding in her ears.
A voice called out from far away, sounding garbled, as though it were traveling underneath water.
Carol yelled Tony's name again, as loud as she could, and pressed her ear against the cold steel. Someone was trying to talk back to her. Someone was out there, but the voice was too far away.
An idea floated up from out of the depths of Carol's mind, surprising her: Morse code. She had read about it in history class. She didn't know Morse code, but she knew enough to work with it.
Carol knocked twice on the door. Listen.
Nothing.
Try again.
Two more knocks. Listen.
Two knocks came back, faint but clear.
A panel inside the door swung open to a burst of dim light. Staring at her from the other side was a face covered with dirty bandages, the eyes hidden behind pieces of black cloth.
Carol stumbled backward into the darkness, screaming as the steel door slid open.
Chapter 23
Boyle took out the gun, about to enter Carol's room when his mother spoke to him for the first time in years:
You don't have to kill her, Daniel. I can help you.
Boyle's breath was hot and stale underneath the mask. Carol was bunkered underneath the cot, begging him not to hurt her. He didn't want to lose Carol – he didn't want to lose any of them, not now, not after all his hard work and planning.
You can keep her, Daniel. You can keep all of them.
How?
Why should I tell you? After what you and Richard did to me when you came back home? I kept your secret for all those years, and you repaid me by burying me alive out in the woods. I told you then you'd never get rid of me, and I was right. You kill all these women who remind you of me and I'm still with you – I'll always be with you, Daniel. Maybe I'll just let the police come and take you away.
They won't find me. Everything leads to Earl Slavick. I've already planted the pictures on his computer. I've printed out the maps from his computer so the FBI can trace him. With one phone call I'll lead them to Slavick's doorstep.
But that doesn't solve your problem with Rachel, does it?
She doesn't know anything. She doesn't -
She made her way into your office, remember? She went through your file cabinet. Who knows what she found in there?
She's never seen my face. And I have Slavick's blood. I slipped inside his house with the copy of the keys I made and I put the chloroform rag over his face while he was sleeping and I took his blood, the tan carpet fibers from h
is bedroom -
You're very smart, Daniel, but you made a mistake with Rachel. She outsmarted you, and when she wakes up – and you know she will – she'll tell the police everything she knows, and they'll come and take you away. You'll spend the rest of your life locked inside a small, dark room.
I won't let that happen – I'll kill myself, if I have to.
You don't have to kill Carol, but you have to kill Rachel. You need to kill her before she wakes up. I know how to solve your problem with Rachel. Would you like me to tell you?
Yes.
Yes what?
Yes, please. Please help me.
Will you do what you're told?
Yes.
Shut the door.
Boyle did.
Go back to your office.
Boyle did.
Take a seat. That's a good boy. Now here's what you need to do…
Boyle listened to his mother explain what needed to be done. He didn't ask any questions because he knew she was right. She was always right.
When she finished, Boyle stood and paced the room, pausing several times to stare at the phone. He wanted to call Richard, but Richard had strict orders never to call him on his cell phone. Boyle knew he should wait until Richard arrived to tell him about the plan but he couldn't wait. Boyle was too excited. He needed to talk to Richard now.
Boyle picked up the phone and dialed Richard's cell. Richard didn't pick up. Boyle hung and dialed again. Richard picked up on the fourth ring. He was angry.
'I told you to never call this number -'
'I need to talk to you,' Boyle said. 'It's important.'
'I'll call you back.'
The wait was excruciating. Boyle rocked back and forth in his chair, staring at the phone, waiting for Richard to call back. Twenty minutes later, he did.
'We can connect Rachel to Slavick,' Boyle said.
'How?'
'Slavick's a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. When he was living in Arkansas, at the compound for the Hand of the Lord, he tried to abduct an eighteen-year-old woman and failed – he would have gone to jail if the woman had been able to pick him out of a lineup. He also trained at their weapons facility, worked in their gun shop. And he fire-bombed black churches and synagogues.'
'You're not telling me anything I don't already know.'
'Slavick's planning his own underground movement here in New Hampshire,' Boyle said. 'I've been inside his compound. He has fertilizer bombs in the shed, and in his basement there's a batch of homemade explosives – plastic explosives. We can use them to create a diversion to get to Rachel.'
'You want to bomb the hospital?'
'When a bomb goes off, it creates instant chaos. People will think it's a terrorist attack – they'll be reliving nine-eleven all over again. While everyone's running around, nobody will be paying attention to us. One of us can slip inside and kill Rachel, pump some air through her IV line and she'll go into cardiac arrest. It will look like she died of natural causes.'
Richard didn't answer. Good. He was thinking about it.
'If we bomb the hospital, not only will we kill Rachel, we can bring the FBI into this sooner,' Boyle said. 'Once Slavick's DNA profile finds its match on CODIS, the FBI will be here at lightning speed to take over the case.'
'You're right about that. If Slavick's identity makes it into the press, the feds will have a PR nightmare on their hands. Where's Slavick now? At home?'
'He's in Vermont for the weekend, interviewing potential members for his movement,' Boyle said. The GPS unit is still attached to his Porsche. I can tell you where he is right now, if you want.'
'If we go ahead with this, you'll have to move – quickly.'
'It's time I move again anyway. I've been thinking about heading back to California.'
'You can't go back to Los Angeles. They're still looking for you there.'
'I was thinking of La Jolla, someplace upscale. We should use this opportunity to get rid of Darby McCormick. Make it look like an accident. I have some ideas.'
'We'll talk some more when I get there.'
'What about Carol? Can I keep her?'
'For the moment. Don't let her out of the cell yet.'
'I'll wait for you,' Boyle said. 'We can play with her together.'
Chapter 24
Darby had set up a temporary work space in her old bedroom. The bed was gone, replaced by her father's desk. It faced the two windows overlooking the front yard.
Before leaving work, she made copies of the evidence report and the pictures. She tacked the pictures on the corkboard above the desk and then settled into the chair with the evidence file.
For awhile, she was aware of every sound – the tick of the grandfather clock from downstairs, her mother's soft snoring from down the hallway. Then she was lost in the file.
Two hours later, her head felt crowded, thoughts tripping over one another. It was closing in on eleven. She decided to take a break and went downstairs to make some tea.
The box of clothing was still by the door. She saw the pink sweater and had a new memory – alone in the house at fifteen, the weekend after her father's funeral, his down vest with its smell of cigars pressed against her face.
Darby pulled the sweater from underneath the pair of ripped jeans and sat on the floor. The hum of the refrigerator filled the kitchen. She rubbed the cashmere between her fingers. Soon this would be all that was left of her mother – her clothes with their fading whispers of perfume, memories frozen in pictures.
Darby stared at the spot where Melanie had stood begging for her life. She stared at the wall with its coat of paint that hid Stacey's blood. Victor Grady was sealed between these walls, now and forever, along with memories of her father, and Darby couldn't understand how Sheila could move through these rooms day after day competing with these two totally separate but equally powerful ghosts.
A car raced by, blaring rap music.
Darby found she was standing. Her hands trembled as she bent to pick up the sweater. She didn't know why she was sweating.
It was closing in on midnight. Best to get some sleep. Tomorrow morning she and Coop were going to head out early to the Cranmore house. With a few hours of sleep and a fresh eye, she was hoping to find something she might have overlooked or missed.
Upstairs, Darby laid in the recliner, cold beneath the comforter. When sleep finally came, Darby dreamed of a house with mazes of dark hallways and shifting rooms, doors that opened to black holes.
Carol Cranmore was also dreaming.
Her mother stood in the doorway of her bedroom, saying it was time to wake up and get ready for school. Carol could still see the smile on her mother's face when her eyes fluttered open to pitch-black darkness. She felt the itchy blanket wrapped around her and then remembered where she was and what had happened to her.
Panic flared and then, oddly, disappeared. And as strange as it sounded, she still felt sleepy. The last time she had felt this exhausted was last summer, at Stan Petrie's all-weekend party down in Falmouth where they drank all night and played touch football all day at the beach.
Carol wondered about the food again. Was it drugged? The sandwich had left a slight chalky taste in her mouth – it had tasted funny even when she was eating it – and some time later, after the man with the mask shut the door, she had grown real tried, which surprised her. She shouldn't be tired. She should be wide awake with fear, but she could barely keep her eyes open. And she needed to pee again. Badly.
She crawled out from underneath the cot, stood and immediately swung her right hand out, feeling for the wall. There it was. How many steps until the wall ended? Eight? Ten? She staggered forward, blinking, eyes wide open in the darkness that wouldn't go away. This must be what a blind person felt like.
She found the toilet and sat down. For no reason at all, she saw the desk in her room with its window view of the ugly street and the trees with their beautiful leaves having turned gold, red and yellow. She wondered what time it was, whether
it was day or night. Was it still raining?
By the time she flushed, Carol felt better. Awake. Now she had to deal with the fear.
Carol knew she had to come up with a plan. The man who had brought her here would be coming for her again. She couldn't fight him off with her hands. Maybe there was something in here she could use – the bed. The bed was made with these steel rods. Maybe she could try and dismantle it, grab one of the rods and use it as a bat and knock him unconscious.
Carol felt her way through the darkness, thinking about the person who was trapped down here with her. She hoped to God it was Tony. Maybe Tony was awake, wandering around his room right now, looking for something to use to defend -
Carol bumped headfirst into something solid, a scream escaping her lips as she stumbled backward, almost tripping.
Not a wall, it definitely wasn't a wall, didn't have its hard, rough flatness. What was it then? Not the sink either. This was something new and different. What was it? Whatever this thing was, it was blocking her path.
A tiny green light glowed in the darkness, directly in front of her.
The man with the mask was standing behind a camera.
The flash went off, the bright white light piercing her eyes. Blinded, Carol stumbled back. She bumped into the sink, tripped and fell to the floor.
Another flash.
Carol crawled away, bright spots of lights dancing and fading in front of her eyes. Another flash and she bumped her head against the corner of the wall. She was trapped.
Chapter 25
Darby drove out early the next morning, while it was still dark.
Half a dozen patrolmen were busy redirecting the traffic on Coolidge Road in order to accommodate the swelling numbers of state police cruisers, unmarked detective cars and news vans that were clogging up the streets near Carol Cranmore's house. Small armies of volunteers were gathered, getting ready to canvass the neighborhood with fliers bearing Carol's picture.
Darby's attention turned to the state troopers holding the leashes of search and rescue dogs. She was surprised to see them. Because of statewide budget cuts, search and rescue dogs weren't ordinarily called out to the scene of missing or abducted people.