The Missing dm-1

by Chris Mooney

  Darby had seen Grady's house once, at night. She had driven there on her own, about a month or so after coming home. She had hoped seeing the blackened shell of the house would somehow keep the nightmares away. It didn't.

  'There's one question you can answer for me,' Darby said.

  'You want to know if Melanie Cruz was on one of those tapes.'

  'The audiotapes were given to the federal lab for analysis. No copies were ever forwarded to Boston police.'

  'The heat from the fire either damaged or destroyed most of the recordings. It took months to have them enhanced. We had the victims' families provide us with voice samples for comparison purposes. Melanie's parents gave us a home movie. Because of the condition of the audiotape, we couldn't get an exact match, but our voice expert agreed that, in all probability, the voice on the tape belonged to Melanie Cruz. The parents didn't feel the same way.'

  'They heard the tape?'

  'They insisted on it. I played the part where Melanie… She was calling out for help. The mother shut the tape off and said, "That's not my daughter." She said her daughter was still alive and we had to find her.'

  Darby saw a snapshot of Helena Cruz turning her back to a cold blast ofwind, clutching the sheets with Mel's picture against her chest so they wouldn't blow away.

  'Did Mel say anything on the tape?'

  'Not much that I recall,' Evan said. 'Mostly I remember her screaming.'

  'Was she in pain?'

  'No, she was scared.'

  Darby could tell there was more. 'What did Mel say?'

  Evan paused.

  'Tell me,' Darby said.

  'She kept saying "Put away the knife, please don't cut me anymore."'

  Images flashed through Darby's mind – Mel's terrified face, the black tears from her mascara running down her cheeks. Stacey Stephens lying on the kitchen floor, blood spurting between the fingers clutched against her throat. Mel screaming as the man from the woods cut her.

  Folding her arms around her chest, Darby stared out the window at the fast-moving traffic and thought back to that cold winter evening in the Serology Lab. The box of evidence from the Grady case sat on the counter. She remembered holding the rag that had been used on Melanie – the rag that would have most likely been used on her if she had gone downstairs.

  'If you decide to go ahead and examine Grady's case for your dissertation, let me know,' Evan said. 'I'll make you copies of everythingwe have, including the audiotapes.'

  'I may take you up on that offer.'

  'Tell me about your conversation with Rachel Swanson.'

  For the next twenty minutes, Darby took him through her first encounter under the porch, finishing with what had happened in the hospital room.

  Evan didn't speak. He seemed preoccupied with his thoughts. Darby could feel the man's fierce intelligence at work. To be so freakishly smart might be a gift, but Darby was sure it was a lonely one.

  'Banville is mulling over the idea of using a reporter to set up a trap,' Evan said.

  'You don't sound convinced.'

  'If we blow the trap and he slips away – if he suspects we're on to him – he won't wait to kill Carol Cranmore.'

  Chapter 34

  Since 9/11, every package and letter coming inside Boston Police headquarters was taken downstairs to the basement levels and X-rayed.

  Darby paced the well-lit marble lobby full of patrolmen and detectives. The pacing helped keep her mind clear and focused.

  Twenty minutes later, she was running the package, a medium-sized brown padded mailer, up the set of stairs. She didn't want to waste time waiting for the elevator.

  Two white adhesive labels were on the front. The one in the center contained Dianne Cranmore's name and mailing address. The label in the upper left-hand corner contained only two words: 'Carol Cranmore.'

  Both labels were the same size. Both had been fed into a typewriter – most likely one of those old-fashioned manual models that used an ink ribbon. Darby saw the spots where the ink had smudged on some of the words.

  Coop had everything set up inside Serology. Waiting with him were Evan and Leland Pratt. Coop, clipboard in hand, stepped aside to give her some room.

  Darby set the mailer on a sheet of butcher paper. After measuring the mailer, she took several pictures, first with the lab camera, then with the digital. The digital pictures would be emailed to the federal lab where Evan had people waiting.

  Darby flipped the mailer over and looked for a manufacturer name or any unusual markings. All it said was 'No. 7.'

  'Sometimes the manufacturer stamps its name inside one of the glued seams,' Evan said. 'Check when you take it apart.'

  Darby pinched the pull tab between her gloved fingers and opened the mailer. Small gray particles – the shredded filler used for the padding – swam in the air. She turned the mailer over and gently shook out its contents.

  A folded white shirt fell onto the butcher paper.

  Darby pried open the mailer's lip. There was nothing else in there.

  She unfolded the shirt. A cold balloon of fear filled her stomach when she found the pictures, three in all.

  Darby transferred the pictures to a separate sheet of butcher paper resting under the soft afternoon sunlight coming in through the windows.

  Here was a picture of Carol Cranmore dressed in gray sweats, scared as she walked with her hands outstretched in a room of concrete walls and floors. There was a drain by her bare foot.

  Here was Carol on the floor, stunned and frightened, staring up at the person behind the camera.

  The last photograph was Carol stuck in a corner, a scream frozen on her face.

  Evan stared down at the pictures with his cold and penetrating gaze. 'Is Carol Cranmore blind?'

  'No, she isn't,' Darby said. 'Why?'

  'The way she's walking, bumping into the wall, I thought she might be blind. He must have surprised her in the dark, then.'

  Darby held the first picture in her hand, staring at it as though it were a window into Carol's dark prison cell. Seeing the terror captured on Carol's face made Darby feel closer to the teenager.

  She flipped the pictures over. Taped to the back of the third picture were several strawberry blond hairs. Carol's hair.

  Darby took in a deep breath. Okay. Let's do this.

  'Coop, I have some writing on the back of the photo, bottom right-hand corner.' Darby swung over the desk magnifier to read lettering. 'H as in Henry, P as in Peter, one-seven-nine. There's no processing stamp.'

  Coop was standing next to her. 'Could be a photo printer,' he said. 'The letters and numbers you found are probably the paper's stock number.'

  Darby checked the back of the second picture. Same writing in the same bottom corner.

  'Let's get the hairs over to DNA,' Darby said. 'Coop, finish up with the mailer. I'll work on the shirt.'

  Evan left to listen to the tape alone in the conference room.

  The white shirt, a man's size large, hung on a hanger, suspended above a table covered with a sheet of butcher paper. Darby worked a spatula over the shirt, scraping for trace evidence that might have been stuck. It was tedious, painstaking work. The entire time she had to fight the urge to rush.

  'Got something,' Pappy said.

  Lying on the white paper, mixed in with the dirt and flecks of rust, was a single tan fiber. Darby grabbed it with a pair of tweezers and tucked it inside a glassine envelope.

  Next, she moved the light magnifier over the trace evidence.

  'I have a black speck here, could be a paint chip,' Darby said. 'There are several of them.'

  It was coming up on five. Evan had people standing by the federal lab for another hour. She gathered the glassine envelopes and distributed them through the lab before heading to check on the fingerprints.

  Coop had used ninhydrin on the mailer. The paper was a dark purple. The mailer had been carefully cut open along the seams.

  'The outer shell is a mess of fingerprints,' Coop said.
'I have comparison samples from the woman who picked up the mailer. The inside of the mailer is clean. No fingerprints, but he did use latex gloves. I found a tiny piece of it stuck on the mailer's self-adhesive lip but I didn't find any prints.'

  'What about the pictures?' Darby asked.

  'They're absolutely clean. I may have some luck with the adhesive sides of the tape and the labels. I'm about to do that next.'

  'Okay, you have anything else?'

  'Just the name of the mailer – Tempest,' Coop said. 'It was stamped under a fold. That's all I've got. Mary Beth just called. She's down in Missing Persons. She has something on the two names Rachel Swanson mentioned.'

  Chapter 35

  Stomach grumbling from hunger, Darby pushed open the conference room door.

  '- wasn't able to trace it,' Banville was saying to Evan.

  'Trace what?' Darby asked. She took the seat next to Leland and handed him a file folder.

  'Dianne Cranmore received a call at her home an hour ago,' Banville said. 'The answering machine picked it up. It was a message from Carol saying she needed to talk to her mother and would call back in fifteen minutes. She did but didn't stay on long enough for a trace. Dianne Cranmore confirmed it was her daughter. One of my guys dropped off a copy of the tape. We were just about to listen to it.'

  Banville hit the PLAY button on the tiny micro-cassette recorder and leaned back in his seat. Evan finished typing on his laptop. Darby folded her hands on the table and stared at the recorder sitting a few inches away.

  On the tape, the phone picked up. 'Carol? Carol, it's me, are you okay?'

  Darby heard stifled tears, the clearing of the throat.

  'Carol, honey, is that you?'

  'Mom, it's me. I'm… He hasn't hurt me.'

  Swallowing. Rapid breathing.

  'Where are you?' Dianne Cranmore said. 'Can you tell me?'

  'I can't see anything, it's too dark.'

  'Where… What can I – Carol, listen to me -'

  'He's here inside this room. He's got a knife.'

  'You need to protect yourself, like I showed you.'

  Click.

  Banville shut off the recorder.

  Evan looked to Leland. 'With your permission, I'd like to send this tape to our lab. We can enhance the background noises, see if there's anything there. I'd also like to send the mailer and pictures. Questioned Documents can identify the type of typewriter used on the mailing labels and see if it matches another case.'

  Darby could tell Leland wanted to say no, but he was boxed in a corner where he couldn't. The FBI's Document Section was composed of seven different units that investigated anything to do with paper. The Boston lab simply couldn't compete.

  'As long as we share everything,' Leland said. 'I take it the federal government has improved its communication.'

  'See for yourself Evan reached across the table and dialed the number on the conference phone.

  The sound of the phone ringing echoed over the speakerphone.

  A voice picked up: 'Peter Travis.'

  'Peter, Evan Manning. I'm calling from the Boston lab. I'm with lab director Leland Pratt and the forensic investigator on this case, Darby McCormick. Also joining us is the lead investigator, Detective Mathew Banville, from the Belham police. They may have a question or two for you, so I'm going to tell them to just jump right in.'

  'Absolutely,' Travis said.

  'Did you get all the digital pictures I sent you?'

  'I've got them loaded up on my screen. The quality of the writing on the mailing labels isn't all that clear. I'll need the originals if you want me to identify the typewriter.'

  'You'll have them. Let's start with the pictures first.'

  'HP one-seven-nine is the brand of photo paper published by Hewlett-Packard. The paper is manufactured specifically for digital photo printers. You slip the memory card in, or you download the digital pictures from your computer or disc key, and it prints out a three-by-five picture.'

  'That's the same size we have here.'

  'I can take ink samples from the picture and try and narrow down the type of printer cartridge, but you're talking about a very big market,' Travis said. 'You're not going to find Traveler that way.'

  'Traveler?' Darby asked.

  'We'll get to that in a moment,' Evan said. 'Go ahead, Peter.'

  'I can match the photo to the printer, if you have the printer.'

  'I don't have a printer, I don't have a suspect, and a seventeen-year-old girl is missing. What about analyzing the pictures using digital image processing techniques?'

  'It's not a bad way to go. The problem is digital photography has evolved to such a point where you can doctor photographs without leaving any evidence.'

  'Meaning our guy could have, say, erased a window from the photograph.'

  'He could have erased a window, added a window – he could add and delete whatever he wanted if he knows how to operate the software. Given our past experiences, I doubt he'd leave anything in there that would lead us to his doorstep. I did find a new piece of evidence you can add to your list. Hold on a moment.'

  A brief sound of pages being snapped back. 'Okay, here it is,' Travis said. 'The mailer he used most likely belongs to a small paper company named Merrill, based out of Hollis, New Hampshire. The company went under in ninety-five. They don't make them anymore.'

  'So our guy has a stockpile of them in his house.'

  'It's a strong possibility. I'd add it to your list. However, I'd like to reserve my final judgment until I've had a chance to examine the mailer.'

  'You'll have it on your desk tomorrow morning,' Evan said.

  'The footwear impression recovered from the Cranmore home belongs to Traveler. It's manufactured by Ryzer Gear, their Adventurer model.'

  'And the paint chip?'

  'We struck out. The sample is not in our system. That's all I've got on my end. How did you make out with the shirt?'

  Evan looked to Darby.

  'We've recovered one tan fiber,' Darby said. The fiber matches the one we found in the foyer of the Cranmore house. The hair taped to the back of the picture is a similar match for Carol Cranmore. Fortunately, a root bulb was attached, so we can get a DNA sample. We struck out on the fingerprints on the mailer. It's a wipe.'

  'Any questions for Peter?' Evan asked the room.

  There weren't any.

  'Peter, I need you to contact Alex Gallagher, tell him to analyze an audiotape,' Evan said. 'It will be in the package I'm sending out today. You have my cell phone?'

  'I do. I'll be in touch.'

  Evan hung up.

  'I have some information on the two names Rachel Swanson mentioned at the hospital,' Darby said. 'Missing Persons did a search and came up with two possible candidates from New England.'

  Leland handed her the folder. Darby removed the first sheet, a printed 8? 10 color college graduation picture of a woman with plain features and curly blond hair. She placed it on the table.

  'This is Marci Wade from Greenwich, Connecticut,' Darby said. 'She's twenty-six, lives at home with her parents. This past May, she drove to meet a former high school friend who was attending the University of New Hampshire. This friend lived about two miles from the campus. Marci drove home on a Sunday night and her car broke down on Route 95. She hasn't been seen since.'

  The second sheet Darby placed on the table was a printed picture of a good-sized woman, with round cheeks and a small port-wine stain on her flabby chin.

  'This is Paula Hibbert, a forty-six-year-old single mother and schoolteacher for a public high school in Barrington, Rhode Island. She asked her neighbor to watch her son so she could go and pick up a prescription for his asthma. She made it to the pharmacy but didn't make it home. They never found her or her car. She disappeared in January of last year.

  'I don't know any details about the cases, or what they found for evidence,' Darby said. 'Both labs are closed for the day. We'll be on the phone first thing tomorrow morning. That
's all I have. Now, Special Agent Manning, why don't you tell us about Traveler?'

  Chapter 36

  Evan swung his laptop around so it was facing the room.

  On the screen was a picture of a Hispanic-looking woman with bleached blond hair.

  'This is Kimberly Sanchez, from Denver, Colorado,' Evan said. 'She disappeared in the summer of ninety-two. Went out for a jog and never came back.'

  Evan clicked through the photos of eight more women. They were all Hispanic or African American, all in their mid-twenties to early thirties. They were all last seen last seen alone, driving away in their own cars, leaving a bar or their place ofwork late at night. The last trait they shared was that their bodies had never been recovered.

  'The Colorado task force caught one lucky break,' Evan said. 'A witness leaving a nightclub saw the last victim getting inside a black Porsche Carrera with Colorado license plates. The same witness also recalled that the back bumper was dented.

  'Police narrowed down the search of Porsche owners in the Colorado area. One of them, John Smith, was from Denver. When police went to question him, Smith wasn't home. Four days later, when Smith still hadn't returned home, police searched the house he was renting. Smith was already gone. He wiped the place clean before he left, but forensics managed to recover two key pieces of evidence – a small blood sample in a trash can and a boot print belonging to a Ryzer hiking boot, size eleven. It was an identical match to the boot print found in the dirt next to one of the victims' cars.'

  Evan clicked a key and on the screen was a picture of a white man with an overgrown beard and mustache. He had piercing green eyes and the kind of painfully thin face generally seen on heroin addicts.

  'This is a picture of John Smith taken from his Colorado license,' Evan said. 'Neighbors said the back bumper of Smith's Porsche had been dented from a recent accident. They also filled us in on some other details. Smith went out a lot at night, was somewhat antisocial. Nobody knew what he did for a living, and nobody had been inside his house. Several neighbors recalled spotting the same crude tattoo on his forearm – a shamrock with the numbers six-six-six.'