The Missing dm-1

by Chris Mooney

  Coop didn't push. Darby felt the sting of tears and tried to breathe it back.

  Then it welled up inside her, ugly and razor sharp, the truth she had been dragging around all these years. When the tears came, Darby didn't fight it, was tired of fighting.

  'Mel was screaming. Grady had a knife, and he was using it on Mel and she was screaming for him to stop. She begged me to come back down and help her. I didn't… I didn't ask Mel to come over or to bring Stacey – Mel made that decision. She was the one who made the decision to come over, not me, and a part of me… Every time I saw Mel's mother, the way she looked at me as though I was the one who made Mel disappear, I wanted to tell her the truth. I wanted to scream it at her until I knocked that goddamn look out of her eyes.'

  'Why didn't you tell her?'

  Darby didn't have an answer. How could she explain how a part of her hated Mel for coming over that night – and for bringing Stacey? How could she explain the guilt she felt for not only what had happened but for how she felt afterward, forced to carry not only the guilt but the anger?

  She closed her eyes, wanting to go back in time to that moment at the school lockers when Mel asked if they could go back to being friends. Darbywondered what would have happened if she had said yes. Would she still be alive? Or would she be buried out in the woods where no one would ever find her?

  Coop wrapped his big arm around her shoulder. Darby leaned against him.

  'Darby?'

  'Yeah?'

  'Leaving Melanie… It was the right thing to do.'

  Darby didn't speak again until they were on Route 1. She could see the tall buildings in Boston lit up in the distance.

  'I keep thinking about that day Evan came to the beach and told me about Victor Grady and Melanie Cruz. That was over twenty years ago. Twenty years. It hasn't fully sunk in yet.'

  'But at some point it will.'

  'Oh yes.'

  'Whenever you need to talk about it, I'm here,' Coop said. 'You know that, right?'

  'I do.'

  'Good.' Coop kissed the top of her head. He didn't let go. She didn't want him to let go.

  Dawn was breaking by the time they arrived in Belham. Darby showed Coop to the guest bedroom and then headed to the shower.

  Dressed in a clean pair of clothes and fresh bandages, she went to check on her mother. Sheila was fast asleep.

  Tell me where you buried Melanie.

  Ask… your… mother.

  Darby crawled into bed and pressed herself up against her mother's back, hugging her close. She had a memory of her parents sitting in the front seat of the old Buick station wagon with the wood paneling, Big Red tapping his thumbs against the steering wheel to a Frank Sinatra song and Sheila sitting next to him, smiling, the two of them still young, strong and healthy. Darby listened to her mother's soft breathing rise and fall, rise and fall, wanting it to last forever. III Little Girl Found

  Chapter 71

  Darby's eyes blinked open to bright lines of sunlight glowing around the drawn shades.

  Her mother wasn't in the room. Seeing the empty side of the bed caused a flutter of panic. Darby threw back the sheets, dressed quickly and headed downstairs. It was three in the afternoon.

  Coop was sitting at the island counter, drinking coffee and watching the small TV. He caught the expression on her face and knew at once what she was thinking.

  'Your mother wanted some fresh air, so the nurse put her in the wheelchair and took her around the block,' Coop said. 'Can I get you something to eat? I make a mean bowl of cereal.'

  'I'll just stick to coffee, thanks. What are they saying on the news?'

  'NECN is about to do another report after the commercials. Grab a seat and I'll get you some coffee.'

  The Boston media had jumped on the story hard and fast. During the ten hours she had slept, reporters had uncovered the connection between Daniel Boyle and Special Agent Evan Manning.

  Evan Manning's real name was Richard Fowler. In 1953, Janice Fowler, suffering from what would nowadays be called a severe case of postpartum depression, hanged herself while in the care of a state-run psychiatric facility. Hospital records indicated she had been committed shortly after her husband, Trenton Fowler, caught her trying to drown their only son in the bathtub. Janice told her husband she had woken up from her afternoon nap and found Richard standing next to her bed, holding a large kitchen knife. Richard Fowler was five years old.

  Seven years later, when Richard was twelve, his father was running his combine through his corn crop when the auger got clogged. Trenton Fowler had left the machine running. He stood on the platform above the auger, trying to clear away the obstruction when he slipped on the fine, silky blanket of corn dust on the platform and fell into the auger. Richard told police he didn't know how to shut off the combine.

  Richard's aunt, Ophelia Boyle, took in the young, bright orphan and moved him to her daughter's newly built home in Glen, New Hampshire. Ophelia's daughter, Cassandra, was expecting her first child. Cassandra was twenty-three and unmarried. She had refused to give the baby up for adoption.

  In 1963, single, unwed mothers were scandalous affairs that could ruin a family's reputation – especially in the affluent social and business circles in which Ophelia and her husband, Augustus, frequently traveled. They moved Cassandra, their only child, to Glen, New Hampshire, far away from Belham, and provided her with a sizable monthly allowance to raise her child, a boy she named Daniel. The boy's father, Cassandra told friends and neighbors, had died in a car accident.

  Interviews with former neighbors, many of whom were still living in the area, described Daniel as the classic loner – moody and withdrawn. They had a difficult time understanding the close relationship between Daniel and his good-looking, charismatic older cousin, Richard.

  Alicia Cross lived less than two miles away from the Boyle home. She was twelve years old when she vanished during the summer of 1978. By this time, Richard Fowler had changed his name to Evan Manning to start a new life. It seemed the only person who knew Richard had changed his name was his cousin, Daniel Boyle.

  Evan, a recent graduate of Harvard Law School, was living in Virginia when Alicia Cross disappeared. He had been accepted into the FBI's training program. Daniel Boyle was fifteen and living at home. The girl's body was never found, and police never caught her killer.

  Two years later, after graduating from an exclusive military school in Vermont, Daniel Boyle joined the army and became a trained marksman. His goal was to become a Green Beret. He was discharged from the army, at age twenty-two, for aggravated assault. A local society woman claimed Boyle had tried to strangle her.

  When Boyle left the army, there was no reason for him to work. He had access to his sizable trust fund. He wandered around the country for a year, doing odd jobs as a carpenter, and then finally returned home in the summer of 1983 to find that his mother's closets had been cleaned out. Daniel called his grandmother and asked about his mother's whereabouts. Ophelia Boyle didn't know. She filed a missing person's report, but it was later dismissed when police discovered Cassandra Boyle's passport was missing. The family never heard from Cassandra again.

  Ophelia paid for Evan's private schooling and later, college and Harvard Law School. Ophelia had even purchased the farm and kept it running profitably until her own death, in the winter of 1991, when she and her husband were shot to death during a home invasion. Police thought it might be an inside job and went to question Daniel Boyle. Boyle wasn't home that weekend. He was in Virginia visiting his cousin, who was now working in the FBI's newly formed Behavioral Science Unit. Evan Manning had corroborated Boyle's alibi.

  With his grandparents dead and his mother missing, Daniel Boyle became the sole beneficiary of an estate worth more than ten million dollars.

  Early this morning, police had unlocked a filing cabinet in Boyle's basement and discovered pictures of the women who had disappeared in Massachusetts during the summer of 1984, the time period the local media calle
d the Summer of Fear. The pictures indicated that Boyle had kept them in the basement of his home.

  Not much was known about the time after Belham, when Boyle traveled the country. At some point, he returned east and, in the basement of his cousin's farmhouse, constructed a maze of locked rooms that one investigator described as 'the most horrific thing I have ever seen in my thirty years in law enforcement.' A specialized unit made up of forensic archeologists had been called in to search for unmarked graves in the extensive woods behind Boyle's home.

  Carol Cranmore was being treated at an undisclosed facility. In a taped interview, Dianne Cranmore discussed her daughter's condition: 'Carol's still in shock right now. She's got a long road ahead of her, but we're going to get through this together. My baby girl's alive, and that's what matters. She wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for Darby McCormick of the Boston Crime Lab. She didn't give up hope.'

  The news reporter mentioned that the mothers of the majority of victims weren't so lucky. Next they played an interview with Helena Cruz.

  'I've been wondering what happened to Melanie my whole life,' Helena Cruz said. 'I've carried all these questions about what happened to my daughter and now, more than twenty years later, I've come to find out that the man responsible for killing her wasn't Victor Grady but a federal agent. The FBI won't answer my questions. Someone there knows what happened to my daughter, I'm sure of it.'

  Darby was staring at Helena Cruz's face when the house phone rang. It was Banville.

  'Have you seen the news?' he asked.

  'I'm watching NECN right now. They're talking about the connection between Evan and Boyle.'

  'It gets even better. The mother, Cassandra Boyle? Turns out she was Boyle's sister.'

  'Jesus.' That certainly explained why the family had shipped her all the way up to the boondocks of New Hampshire. 'Did Boyle know?'

  'I have no idea. As for the mother packing up and running off, everything I've seen so far looks legit, but who knows? I also pulled the case file on the grandparents' deaths. No suspects or witnesses. Someone came in, shot them while they were sleeping and cleaned them out.'

  'And Manning provided the alibi,' Darby said.

  'Yes. I also got a look at Manning's BlackBerry. There were several text messages on it that confirm that he helped Boyle with the bombing. And that number Boyle called? It belongs to Manning. Boyle must have been calling to warn him.'

  'What's the status on Boyle's laptop? You have any luck breaking the passwords?'

  'We did. He did all his banking online. We can't access a lot of the information – he has a private bank in the Caymans – but what we did manage to find were the pictures. Boyle stored the pictures of his most recent victims on his computer. We also found some maps of his burial locations. They span the country.'

  'What about Melanie Cruz? Did you find anything out about her or the other women who disappeared in eighty-four?'

  'We haven't found a map for Belham. But I know Melanie Cruz is dead. We found Polaroids in Boyle's filing cabinet. If you want to see them, swing by the station. I'll be here all day.'

  'What's in the pictures?'

  'It's best if I show them to you in person.'

  Chapter 72

  Banville was talking on the phone when Darby showed up with Coop. Banville saw them standing outside his doorway, motioned them to come in and pointed to the two chairs set up against the wall, near the coat rack.

  Fifteen minutes later, Banville hung up. He rubbed the fatigue out of his face. 'That was the state's forensic anthropologist. I sent Carter out to the woods early this morning to take a poke around the area where the feds found the set of remains. There's nothing else buried out there.'

  'I'm surprised the feds allowed him access to the site,' Coop said.

  'Oh, they put up a fuss. Problem is the cat's already out of the bag. Manning's all over the news. The feds pounced on his Back Bay apartment. I know this is going to come as a total surprise to the two of you, but our good friends from Fart, Barf and Itch aren't sharing any information on Manning or that white supremacist asshole they killed. These guys have a huge public relations nightmare on their hands.' Banville looked to Darby. 'Get ready for your close-up. The media is going to be all over this story forweeks.'

  'Carter found a full set of remains?'

  'A full set,' Banville said. 'Definitely a female, buried out there between ten and fifteen years, maybe longer. He wants to carbon-date the bones to establish a timeline.'

  Banville leaned back in his chair. 'I told Carter about the women who disappeared around here during the summer of eighty-four. The remains may belong to one of those women, but, given the height and some bone characteristics, it's definitely not Melanie Cruz.'

  'I'd like to see the pictures.'

  Banville handed her an envelope.

  It was difficult to look at the harsh color photographs of Melanie bound and gagged in the wine cellar in Boyle's basement. The camera had captured the terror in her face. In each photo, Melanie was alone. In each photo, she was crying.

  That could have been me.

  'Do we have any idea how she died?'

  Banville shook his head. 'If we find her remains, we might have a shot. You think Manning or Boyle buried her out in the woods?'

  Ask… your… mother.

  Darby shifted in her chair. 'I don't know what to think anymore.'

  'Carter said that unless we come across some specific piece of information or evidence which can pinpoint where Melanie Cruz is buried, then we'll probably never find her.'

  Darby tucked the photos back in the envelope. Melanie fumbled with the charms on her bracelet as she listened to Stacey crying behind the Dumpster. 'Why can't we go back to being friends?' Mel asked later, at school.

  If only I had said yes, Darby thought.

  It took her a moment to find her voice. 'What about the other women? Do you know anything?'

  'Boyle brought them all to the basement and did different… things to them.' Banville handed her a larger envelope. Inside were bundles of Polaroids bound together by rubber bands.

  Darby immediately recognized some of the faces – Tara Hardy, Samantha Kent, and the faces of the women who disappeared after them. At the bottom of the envelope were pictures of a woman with a thin face and long blond hair. Like Rachel Swanson, she appeared to have been starved.

  Darby held up one of Samantha Kent's photos. 'This is the woman I saw in the woods,' she said. 'Do we know what happened to her?'

  'We have no idea what happened to her, or where her remains are,' Banville said. 'Did Manning tell you anything?'

  'Just that she was missing.' Darby didn't want to hold the pictures anymore. She placed the envelopes on the corner of the desk and wiped her palms on her jeans.

  'Do you want to hear the rest of it?'

  Darby nodded. She took in a deep breath and held it.

  'The basement you were in was wired with cameras,' Banville said. 'Boyle stored the videos on his computer. They go back about eight years, roughly around the time he returned east. In the beginning, Boyle and Manning hunted one victim at a time, then two, then three… Then Boyle built more of those cells and changed the rules of the game. He released his victims into the maze, and if they made it to the other side, the cell doors would be open and food would be waiting for them, and they'd be allowed to live.'

  'That's how Rachel Swanson had survived for so long,' Darby said. 'She had figured out a way through each door.'

  'If I had to guess, I'd say Boyle did the kidnapping while Evan worked on planting the evidence based upon whatever case he was working on – Victor Grady, Miles Hamilton, Earl Slavick. I'm sure there are others we don't know about.'

  Coop said, 'How long have they been doing this? Do we have any idea?'

  Banville stood. 'I'll show you what we've found.'

  Chapter 73

  Darby followed him through tight corridors humming with conversations and ringing with phone and fax machines.
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br />   Banville brought them into the large conference room where he had outlined the details of the trap to catch Traveler. The chairs had been stacked together and pushed to one corner to make space for presentation-style corkboards mounted on wheels. There were about a dozen boards in here, and each one held 8? 10 pictures of severalwomen.

  'Someone from the computer division came out this morning and broke the security on Boyle's laptop,' Banville said. 'All these pictures you're looking at were stored on there. We transferred the pictures to CDs and printed them out here. Fortunately for us, Boyle had the pictures organized in folders named after the states he visited. We think Boyle started here after he left Belham.'

  Banville stopped in front of a board marked 'Chicago.' The top picture was of a pretty blond woman with a bright and inviting smile. Her name was Tabitha O'Hare. She had been missing since 10/3/85.

  Underneath Tabitha O'Hare's picture was another 8? 10: Catherine Desouza, missing since 10/5/85.

  Next: Janice Bickeny, missing since 10/28/85.

  Four more women were listed, but they didn't have any names or dates, just pictures. Seven women, all missing.

  'We called Missing Persons in Chicago and had them email all their cases from eighty-five and matched the pictures to the ones stored on Boyle's computer,' Banville said. 'So far we've identified three of the seven missingwomen.'

  'Where are they buried?' Coop asked.

  'Don't know,' Banville said. 'We haven't found a map.'

  Darby looked to the next board, 'Atlanta.' Thirteen missing women, all prostitutes, according to the information posted beside their pictures.

  Boyle's next stop was Texas. Twenty-two women went missing from Houston over a two-year period. After Texas, Boyle moved on to Montana and then Florida. Darby counted the pictures on the two boards. Twenty-six missing women. No names, no dates to indicate how long they were missing, just pictures.