The Missing dm-1

by Chris Mooney

  'Don't worry, I'm well acquainted with how you federal guys operate.'

  'The man we took down was Earl Slavick, a former informant we had working inside a white supremacist group with suspected ties to the Oklahoma City bombing. While Slavick was feeding us information about his group, he had started his own racial cleansing agenda and abducted women from the area. I was called in to help out local authorities. By the time I figured out what was going on, Slavick had packed up and disappeared. We've been looking for him ever since.'

  'So you knew right away Slavick was involved in Carol Cranmore's abduction because of the boot prints I found.'

  'Yes, I told you that.'

  'But you didn't tell me Slavick's DNA profile was loaded into CODIS. You didn't tell me it was classified. That way, when a match was found, the FBI would know, and then you guys could come in and clean up your mess quietly. You didn't want anyone to know that the man making all these women disappear was a former FBI informant. The remains we found in the woods, she was one of Slavick's victims, wasn't she?'

  'Congratulations,' Evan said in a cold tone. You've connected all the dots.'

  'One last question,' Darby said. 'How did you find out where Traveler – excuse me, Earl Slavick – was hiding?'

  Evan didn't answer.

  'Let me guess,' Darby said. 'It was the map I found. The URL was printed on the bottom. You tracked Slavick through his IP address, didn't you?'

  'We've traded information. Now it's your turn.'

  'We found a shed in the back of a house equipped with the same prison cells we saw in the pictures with Carol Cranmore. The house belongs to Daniel Boyle. I'm willing to bet he set up Slavick to take the fall.'

  Evan didn't answer.

  'Sounds like you guys are going to have a real PR disaster on your hands,' Darby said. 'I hope it doesn't make the news. They'll drag the story out all year, don't you think? No, probably not. You guys will find a way to bury it. When it comes to hiding the truth, nobody does it better than the federal government.'

  'Where's Boyle?'

  'He's dead.'

  'You killed him?'

  'Banville did.' She gave Evan the address. 'Don't forget to bring the chopper.'

  Darby hung up. She closed her eyes and pressed the ice pack against her face. The skin was cold and numb.

  Chapter 65

  The Black Hawk made two runs over the woods and failed to find a heat signature. Either Boyle had killed Carol several days ago or her body was buried too deep.

  The search for the graves would resume tomorrow morning at eight, when the New Hampshire state police showed up with cadaver-sniffing dogs. It was their case now.

  Forensic technicians from the state lab had arrived shortly before midnight and divided themselves into two teams – one to process the house, and the other to work the crime scene in the woods.

  Evan wasn't allowed access to either the woods or the house. He spent most of his time on the phone, pacing near the far end of the lawn, under the oak trees. Darby spent her time going over her statement with two of Holloway's detectives.

  Banville trotted out of the woods, looking drained. 'Holloway found Boyle's wallet, phone and keys – lots of keys,' he said. 'How much youwant to bet one of those keys belongs to Slavick's house?'

  'I doubt the feds will let us anywhere near it until we allow them access to Boyle's house.'

  'What's Manning been up to?'

  'He's been working the phone. I'm sure Zimmerman and his band of merry elves will be here any moment trying to weasel their way in. They've got to be real nervous now that they know they killed the wrong man.'

  'Boyle had one of those BlackBerry phones in his pocket,' Banville said. 'Holloway took a look at it. He didn't find any email, but the phone keeps a log of all incoming and outgoing calls. Boyle called someone at nine-eighteen tonight.'

  'Who was he calling?'

  'Don't know yet. The call lasted roughly forty-six seconds. Holloway said it's a Massachusetts area code. He's tracking down the number now. Have you talked with Manning?'

  'No. He hasn't said anything to me.'

  'Good. Keep it that way. Let the asshole sweat for a change.'

  Banville's phone rang. His face changed.

  'Dianne Cranmore,' he said. 'I've got to take this. Then I'll see if I can get someone to drive you home – don't fight me on this, Darby. I don't want you here when the feds arrive. I'll take the heat for this. If anyone asks, I ordered you to come along.'

  Darby was watching two men from the coroner's office carrying out a body bag on a stretcher when Evan stepped up next to her.

  'The swelling on your face still looks pretty bad. You should put some more ice on it.'

  'I'll grab some on the way home.'

  'Are you heading out?'

  'As soon as Banville finds me a ride,' Darby said.

  'I can drive you.'

  'You're not sticking around?'

  'I'm not too popular right now.'

  'I can't imagine why.'

  'How about we call a truce and you let me drive you home? Better yet, why don't you let me drive you to a hospital?'

  'I don't need to go to the hospital.'

  'Then I'll take you home.'

  Darby glanced at her watch. It was well after midnight. If Banville couldn't get someone here to give her a ride, she'd have to call Coop or wait for one of Banville's men to come up here. Either way, she wouldn't be back in Belham until at least three a.m. But if she left now, with Evan, she could get home at a reasonable hour, get some sleep and arrive here well rested for tomorrow morning's search.

  'Let me tell Banville,' Darby said.

  Inside the car, Darby watched the passenger's side rearview mirror and stared at the blinking pulse of blue and white lights grow smaller and dimmer. Some part of her felt as though she were abandoning Carol.

  When the glow of lights finally disappeared, the road in front of her dark except for the headlights, Darby found it difficult to breathe. The inside of the car felt too close. She needed air. She needed to move.

  'Stop the car.'

  'What's wrong?'

  'Just stop the car.'

  Evan pulled over. Darby threw the door open and stumbled out onto the dirt road. Dark woods surrounded her; all she could see was Carol locked inside that cold, gray prison cell, alone and scared, away from her mother.

  Darby knew that kind of fear. She had felt it when she was hiding under the bed, when she was locked inside her mother's room and later, when Melanie was downstairs crying out for help.

  The car's engine shut off. A door opened and shut behind her. A moment later, Darby heard Evan's footsteps crunching over the gravel.

  'You've done everything you could to help find her,' he said in a gentle voice.

  Darby didn't answer. She kept staring at the dark woods. Carol was buried somewhere out there.

  Darby turned her attention to the tiny throb of blue and white lights blinking in the distance. She thought about Boyle standing up in one of the bedroom windows, watching as the surveillance van pulled into his driveway and then -

  'He made a phone call,' Darby said out loud.

  'Excuse me?'

  'Boyle made a phone call after we pulled into his driveway – there was a record of it on his BlackBerry. Boyle called someone at nine-eighteen. We pulled into his driveway a little after nine – I remember seeing the time on the surveillance monitor.'

  Darby saw it clearly in her mind's eye – Boyle standing behind the window and seeing the telephone repair van pulling into his driveway. How did he know the police were in there? He didn't. Banville was standing in the driveway. Had Boyle spotted him? Maybe.

  So let's assume Boyle spotted Banville. Boyle grabs the shotgun, and before he heads downstairs, he makes a phone call. Who was he calling? Who could possibly help -

  ' Oh Jesus.' Darby grabbed the back of her neck. 'Boyle made that phone call because he had someone working with him. Traveler wasn't one person –
it was two. Boyle was calling to warn his partner.'

  Darby turned around. Evan looked off in the distance, his eyes filmed with thought.

  'Think about it,' Darby said. 'Boyle orchestrated three bombings – the bomb in the van, the bomb he planted inside a mannequin stuffed inside a FedEx box, and the last one, the fertilizer bomb that took down the hospital.'

  'I know where you're heading. Boyle could have dropped off the van the night before, left it there and headed out the next morning with the FedEx truck.'

  'The listening devices turned on at a specific time. The only way Boyle could have done that was if he was watching us. But he couldn't have been watching us and driving the FedEx truck at the same time.'

  'It's not a bad theory,' Evan said. 'Maybe Slavick was his partner. We found plenty of evidence inside his house.'

  'Slavick wasn't the partner – he was the fall guy.'

  'Maybe Slavick turned on Boyle, and Boyle decided to let Slavick take the fall. With Slavick dead, Boyle can pack up and leave. He was getting ready to leave, wasn't he?'

  'You told me you searched every inch of Slavick's house and didn't find any prison cells.'

  'Correct. But you found them at Boyle's house.'

  'They were holding pens.'

  'I'm not following.'

  'There were only two prison cells at Boyle's house,' Darby said. 'Rachel told me about the other women who were with her – Paula and Marci. That's three women – no, four. There were four other people with Rachel. Paula, Marci, and Rachel's boyfriend, Chad. So besides Rachel, there were three other people being kept where she was. Boyle must have kept them all someplace else.'

  'Maybe Chad was with Rachel first. After he was gone, maybe Boyle brought this Marci woman in first, and after she died, Boyle – or Boyle and Slavick – brought in Marci.'

  'No. They were all there at the same time.'

  'You don't know that for sure,' Evan said. 'Rachel Swanson was delusional. When she was in the hospital, she thought she was still inside her prison cell.'

  'You heard the tape. Rachel told me there wasn't any way out, only places to hide. The cells at Boyle's house were small. There wasn't any place for Rachel to hide. And she wrote those directions on her arm. They were directions out of somewhere. Rachel said, "It doesn't matter if you go right or left or straight, they all lead to dead ends." Rachel and the other women were kept someplace else, I'm sure of it.'

  'I know how much you want to find Carol, but I think you -'

  Darby brushed past Evan.

  'Where are you going?'

  'Back to Boyle's house,' Darby said. 'I need to talk to Banville.'

  Evan shoved his hands in his pockets. 'Have you considered the possibility that Boyle brought Rachel and the other women to his basement? Maybe he chased Rachel and the other women down there. There are plenty of rooms, lots of places to hide.'

  'How do you know so much about Boyle's basement?'

  'Because that's where I killed Melanie,' Evan said, and pressed the chloroform-soaked rag against her face.

  Chapter 66

  Darby came awake to a hazy layer of thoughts. She was lying on her stomach – not on a bed, no, it was too hard. Her good eye, the one that wasn't swollen shut, fluttered open to pitch-black darkness. She turned onto her back and sat up.

  For a brief moment she thought she might have been blinded in some terrible accident. Then she remembered.

  Evan had pressed a rag against her face. The man who had tried to comfort her that day on the beach when he told her about Victor Grady and the fate of the missing woman was the same man who had pressed a chloroform-soaked rag against her face and said he killed Melanie – Evan was Boyle's partner. Evan planted evidence while Boyle abducted women and brought them here.

  Darby stood, dizzy in the dark. She tried to breathe it away as she patted down her body. Her jacket was gone, but she was still wearing her clothes and boots. Her pockets had been emptied. She wasn't bleeding and she didn't seem hurt, but her legs wouldn't stop shaking.

  The dizziness passed. Now she had to get her bearings.

  Hands reaching out through the cool darkness, Darby inched forward, stopping when her fingertips bumped up against a flat, rough surface – a concrete wall. She moved to her left, counting her steps, one, two, three – her leg bumped up against something hard. She reached down, felt the shape with her hands. A cot. Five steps and the wall ended. Turn. Six steps, another bump against her leg. Here was a toilet. She was in a prison cell similar to the one that she had seen at Boyle's house, the one that had held Carol.

  A buzzer sounded, loud and angry like the ringing of a school bell.

  The door was opening, clank-clank-clank, a thin skin of light parting the darkness of her prison cell.

  She needed to defend herself. She needed a weapon. Search the cell. Everything was bolted down. There was nothing in here she could use.

  The door had opened to a corridor of very dim light.

  Music started playing – Frank Sinatra's 'I Get a Kick Out of You.'

  Evan didn't come in.

  The dizziness was gone, lost in the adrenaline. Think.

  Was Evan waiting for her to come out?

  Only one way out, Darby inched closer to the strange corridor, straining to listen for any sound behind the music. Watch for sudden movement. If he came at her, she'd go straight for the eyes. The son of a bitch couldn't hurt her if he couldn't see.

  Darby stood with her back against the cell wall. Okay. Get ready to run. Her heart was racing faster, faster… Okay, do it now. She turned and stepped into a long corridor holding six doors made of wood.

  All of the doors were shut. Some had doorknobs. Two of them were padlocked.

  Across from the doors were four opened prison cells. Darby checked the other three rooms. Empty. She checked them for something to use a weapon. Nothing. Everything was bolted down. In the last cell she detected an intense body odor that immediately reminded her of Rachel Swanson. This was where Rachel Swanson had been kept. This was where Rachel Swanson had lived all those years.

  The alarm bell sounded again. The steel doors clanked shut and locked into place.

  A new sound coming from somewhere far ahead of her – doors opening and slamming shut, opening and slamming shut.

  Evan. He was coming for her.

  She had to move, had to think about moving, but get moving to where? Pick a door.

  Darby tried the one directly in front of her. It was locked. The door next to it was unlocked. She opened it and stepped into the kind of maze that haunted her dreams.

  Facing her was a narrow corridor with no lights. She could make out the shape of four doors, two on each side – no, five, there was a fifth door at the end of the corridor. The walls were made of nailed-up sheets of plywood. Some of the wood had been split open. She looked through a small hole and peered into another room similar to this one.

  And then it hit her, the numbers and letters Rachel Swanson had written on her arm and on the map – they were directions for this maze. Rachel had figured out a way through each of the doors.

  Darby scrambled to recall the combinations of numbers and letters as doors opened and slammed shut all around her – someone else was in here besides Evan. Was Carol here? Was she alive? How many women were down here and why were they running? What was Evan going to do to them? To her?

  No time to think, Darby moved into another room, this one with two doors to choose from, only one unlocked. There were holes in the wall. Bullet holes. Evan had his gun. If he had a gun, oh Jesus, what would she do – what could she do? She couldn't do anything. She had to keep moving and find a way to sneak up on him and hurt him. First, she needed to find something to use as a weapon, had to find it quick.

  Darby froze. Someone was moving closer.

  The next room was bigger, with four doors. One of them was padlocked. She slipped inside and tried one door, and when it opened, she headed into another room, closing the door softly behind her, n
ot wanting to give away her location.

  This room had a corridor so narrow she had to go down it sideways. Some of the doors, she noticed, could be locked from the inside. Some had no doorknobs at all. Some rooms had no doors, just doorways. Why the variations?

  They hunt their victims down here. They hunt them through this maze and let them try to find places to hide to make the hunt more exciting.

  Moving deeper into the maze of changing rooms, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, pieces of her conversation with Rachel came back to her: There's no way out of here, there are only places to hide… doesn't matter if you go right or left or straight, they all lead to dead ends, remember?… There's no way out of here. I tried.

  There had to be a way out of here. Rachel Swanson had survived down here for years; there was a way out, or at least a place to hide -

  A piercing scream made Darby jump.

  THUMP and the woman screamed again – she was close, somewhere behind this thin wall. More doors opened and shut. How many women were down here?

  'HEEEEEEEEEEELP.'

  Not Carol's voice. Darby didn't know who the woman was, but she was close. Call out and let her know she wasn't alone? No, don't give away your location. Darby crept deeper into the maze, quickly taking in each room's markings as she searched the floors, hoping to find a piece of wood to use as a club, anything.

  Here was a room with splintered wood on the concrete floor. Black liquid was leaking from beneath one the doors. Darby knew what it was even before she knelt down. Blood. She could smell it. The door facing her wasn't locked. She eased it open. Please God, don't let Evan be in there.

  A woman lay facedown on the floor, blood pooling beneath her. Seeing how she had been butchered caused a scream to rise in Darby's throat.

  Darby stifled it back, her whole body shaking, her mind reeling as she looked around – bloody footprints were on the floor. The footprints moved down the corridor and disappeared. Evan was gone.

  Faint movement coming from the wall behind her. No door here, but near the bottom of the floor was a rectangular-sized hole large enough for her to move through. Was Evan in there?