The Missing dm-1

by Chris Mooney

  'We just started contacting police agencies across the country,' Banville said. 'They're going to fax or email their missing persons cases. It's going to be a massive effort. It will take weeks – months, probably.'

  Darby found the board marked 'Colorado.' Kimberly Sanchez's picture was up at the top; eight more women were tacked underneath her.

  'What I can't figure out is the story Manning told us about being attacked,' Banville said. 'You think it was Boyle who attacked him?'

  'Yes,' Darby said.

  'He was already planting evidence to pin it all on Slavick. Why go through the trouble to stage that?'

  'By attacking Manning, Boyle made Manning an eyewitness who could turn around and pin it all on Slavick, when the time came.'

  'And Boyle needed to keep Manning close to control the investigation,' Coop said. 'I'm thinking that's why they bombed the lab and the hospital. They could label it as a terrorist attack, allowing the feds to step in and take over the investigation.'

  'Allowing Manning to pull the strings,' Banville added.

  Darby nodded. 'Of course, we could be wrong. Unfortunately, the only two people who can answer any of these questions are dead.'

  A cop poked his head into the room. 'Mat, you've got a phone call. Detective Paul Wagner from Montana. Says it's urgent.'

  'Tell him to hold, I'll be right there.' Banville turned back to Darby. 'They did Boyle's and Manning's autopsies this morning. Manning was the one who entered your house. They found a hairline fracture on his left arm. I thought you'd want to know.'

  Banville left them standing in the room full of missing women. Darby looked off at a board marked 'Seattle,' more pictures of missing women, more boards running down the long wall, each one crammed with pictures of missing women, some identified, some blank.

  'Take a look at this one,' Coop said.

  This board held the smiling faces of six missing women. There wasn't a state listed at the top. None of the women had names.

  'Judging by the hairstyles and clothes, I'm guessing these pictures were taken in the eighties,' Coop said.

  The woman with the pale skin and blond hair looked familiar for some reason. Something about the woman's face, Darby felt as though she knew her -

  Darby remembered. The picture of the blond woman on the board was the same picture the nurse had given her – the one the nurse had found inside the clothes Sheila had donated. Darby had shown the picture to her mother. 'That's Cindy Greenleaf's daughter, Regina,' Sheila had told her. 'You two played together when you were kids. Cindy sent it to me one year in a Christmas card.'

  Darby took the picture down from the board. 'I want to make a copy of this,' she said. 'I'll be right back.'

  Chapter 74

  As Darby walked back through the corridors, searching for a color copier, she saw a patrolman escorting an older woman toward Banville's office.

  No question the woman holding on to the patrolman's forearm was Helena Cruz. Mel and her mother both shared the same prominent cheekbones and the small ears that always got red when it was cold.

  'Darby,' Helena Cruz said in a dry whisper. 'Darby McCormick.'

  'Hello, Mrs Cruz.'

  'It's Miss Cruz, actually. Ted and I divorced a long time ago.' Melanie's mother swallowed, fighting hard to keep the painful memories from reaching her face. 'Your name was on the news. You work with the crime lab.'

  'Yes.'

  'Can you tell me what happened to Mel?'

  Darby didn't answer.

  'Please, if you know something -' Helena Cruz's voice broke. She quickly regained her composure. 'I need to know. Please. I can't live with not knowing anymore.'

  'Detective Banville can tell you. He's in his office. I'll take you there.'

  'You know what happened, don't you? It's written all over your face.'

  'I'm sorry.' I wish I could tell you how sorry I am.

  Helena Cruz stared down at the tops of her shoes. 'This morning, when I arrived in Belham, I went by my old house. I hadn't been there in years. A woman was outside raking leaves, and her daughter was playing in the sandbox – it's still there, in the same corner of the yard where you and Mel used to play. The two of you used to sit there for hours when you were little. Melanie liked to make sandcastles, and you used to smash them. Only Melanie never got mad when you did it. She never got mad at anything.'

  Darby listened to Mrs Cruz's voice strip away time, taking her back to late-night sleepovers with Melanie, back to weeklong summer vacations in Cape Cod. The woman speaking to her right now was the same woman who made sure Darby always wore enough sunscreen because of her pale skin.

  Only that woman was gone. The woman standing in front of her was nothing more than a husk. The kindness had been sucked from her eyes. The look on her face was the same one Darby had seen in countless victims – filled with the pain and confusion about how the people you loved so fiercely could at any moment be ripped away from you through no fault of your own.

  'I brought Mel up to be too trusting. To always look for the good in people. I blame myself for that. You try and do the right thing by your children, and sometimes you just… Sometimes it just doesn't matter. Sometimes God has his own plan for you, and you'll never understand it, no matter how much you try to, no matter how much you pray for an answer. I keep telling myself it doesn't matter because nothing can ever take away this kind of hurt.'

  Darby had imagined this moment happening hundreds of times, had mentally rehearsed what words she would say and how Helena Cruz would react. Seeing the pain in her face, hearing the pleading desperation in her voice, brought back all those letters Darby had written when she was younger, that guilty part of her secretly believing that if she could take every awful thing she was feeling and put it into the right combination ofwords, she could somehow build a bridge across their mutually shared grief and, at the very least, come to a place of understanding.

  She had ripped up each of those letters. The only thing Helena Cruz wanted was her daughter back. And now, after twenty-four years of waiting, she wasn't any closer to bringing her home.

  'I don't know where Melanie is,' Darby said. 'If I did, I would tell you.'

  'Tell me she didn't suffer. At least give me that.'

  Darby tried to think of an appropriate answer. It didn't matter. Helena Cruz turned and walked away.

  Chapter 75

  Coop dropped Darby off and headed home. She entered the kitchen, looking for her mother. The nurse said Sheila was out in the backyard.

  Sheila was sitting near her old flower garden. The early evening air was cool and crisp as Darby trotted across the grass with one of the deck chairs. Sheila wore Big Red's Red Sox baseball cap and his blue down vest over a polar fleece jacket. A heavy wool blanket covered her lap and much of the wheelchair. She looked so incredibly frail.

  Darby placed the chair next to her mother, in a patch of dimming sunlight. Spread across Sheila's lap was a photo album full of baby pictures. Darby saw a picture of herself as a newly born infant swaddled in a pink blanket and matching cap.

  Her mother's eyes were bloodshot. She had been crying.

  'I saw the news. Coop told me the rest.' Sheila's voice was quiet as she stared at the bandages on the side of Darby's face. 'How bad is it?'

  'It will heal. I'm fine. Honest.'

  Sheila grabbed Darby's wrist, squeezed it. Darby held her mother's hand and looked out across the backyard, at her mother's white bedsheets flapping in the early evening breeze. The clothesline was planted a few feet away from the basement door where Evan Manning – not Victor Grady – had entered over two decades ago.

  Darby thought back to the day she found Evan waiting in the driveway. He was there to see how much she knew about what she had seen in the woods. Was Evan the one who had found the spare key? Or had Boyle cased the house earlier?

  'Where have you been?' Sheila asked.

  'I went down to the police station with Coop. Banville – he's the detective running the case –
he called and said he found some pictures.' Darby turned back to her mother. 'The pictures were of Melanie.'

  Sheila looked out across the yard. The breeze picked up, shaking the branches overhead and blowing the leaves across the yard.

  'Helena Cruz was there,' Darby said. 'She wanted to know where Mel is buried.'

  'Do you know?'

  'No. We'll ever know unless someone comes forward with new information.'

  'But you know what happened to Mel.'

  'Yes.'

  'What happened?'

  'Boyle kept Mel in the basement of his house and tortured her over a period of days, maybe even weeks.' Darby shoved her hands deep in her coat pockets. 'That's all I know.'

  Sheila traced a finger along a picture of Darby sleeping in a crib.

  'I keep thinking about these pictures – about the memories behind them,' her mother said. 'I keep wondering if you take these memories with you, or if they just vanish when you die.'

  Darby's chest was fluttering. She knew what she had to ask.

  'Mom, when I was in the basement with Manning, he said something about where Mel was buried.' It seemed to take a long time to get the words out. 'When I asked him where she was, what had happened to her, Manning told me to ask you.'

  Sheila looked as though she'd been slapped.

  'Do you know something?' Darby said.

  'No. No, of course not.'

  Darby squeezed her hands into fists. She felt light-headed.

  She removed the folded piece of paper – the color copy of the picture of the woman from the bulletin board. She placed it on top of the photo album.

  'What's this?' Sheila asked.

  'Open it.'

  Sheila did. Her face changed, and then Darby knew.

  'Am I supposed to know this person?' Sheila asked.

  'Remember the picture the nurse found in the clothes you donated? I showed it to you, and you said it was a picture of Cindy Greenleaf's daughter, Regina.'

  'My memory is very foggy from the morphine. Can you take me back inside? I'm very tired, and I'd like to lie down.'

  'That picture is posted on a bulletin board down at the station. This woman was one of Boyle and Manning's victims. We don't know who she is.'

  'Please take me inside,' Sheila said.

  Darby didn't move. She hated this. She had to do it.

  'After Boyle left Belham, he headed out to Chicago. Nine women disappeared and then Boyle moved on to Atlanta. Eight women vanished there. Twenty-two women disappeared in Houston. Boyle kept moving from state to state while Manning set up people to take the fall. We're talking close to a hundred missing women, probably more. Some of them, we don't even know their names. Like the woman in this picture.'

  'Leave this alone, Darby. Please.'

  'These missing women had families. There are mothers out there just like Helena Cruz who are wondering what happened to their daughters. I know there's something you're keeping from me. What is it, Mom?'

  Sheila's gaze was lingering over a picture of Darby, her two front teeth missing, standing in the upstairs bathtub.

  'You need to tell me, Mom. Please.'

  'You don't know what it's like,' her mother started.

  Darby waited, heart quickening.

  'I don't know what, Mom?'

  Sheila's face was pale. Darby could see the tiny blue veins in her mother's eggwhite skin.

  'When you hold your baby for the first time, when you hold it in your arms and nurse it and watch it grow, you'll do anything in this world to protect your child. Anything. The kind of love you feel… It's like what Dianne Cranmore told you. It's more love than your heart can ever hold.'

  'What happened?'

  'He had your clothes,' Sheila said.

  'Who had my clothes?'

  'The detective, Riggers, he told me he had found clothes belonging to some of the missing women inside Grady's house. And there were pictures. He had pictures of you and he had taken some of your clothes.'

  'He didn't take any clothes that night.'

  'Riggers told me Grady must have come inside the house at some point and took some of your clothes. He didn't say why. It didn't matter. None of it mattered because Riggers botched the search – it was an illegal search, and all the evidence they found was worthless because these men, these so-called professionals, they blew it, and Grady was going to walk.'

  'Riggers told you this?'

  'No, Buster did. Your father's friend. Remember, he used to take you to the movies and -'

  'I know who he is. What did he tell you?'

  'Buster told me how Riggers had botched the case, about how they were watching Grady's every move, seeing if they could find something before Grady packed up and moved away.'

  Sheila's voice was trembling. 'That… monster came into my house, for my daughter, and the police were just going to let him go.'

  Darby knew what was coming, felt it speeding toward her like a train.

  'Your father… He had an extra gun – a throw-away piece, he called it. He kept it downstairs in his workbench. I knew how to use it. I knew it couldn't be traced. When Grady left for work, I went to his house. It was raining out. The back door underneath his porch was unlocked. I went inside. He had been packing. There were boxes everywhere.'

  Darby felt cold beneath her clothes.

  'I was hiding inside his bedroom closet when he came home,' her mother said. 'I waited for him to come upstairs and go to sleep. The TV was on, I could hear it. I figured he must have fallen asleep in front of the TV, so I went downstairs. He was passed out in a chair. He had been drinking. There was a bottle on the floor. I turned up the TV and walked over to the chair. He didn't move or wake up, even when I pressed the gun against his forehead.'

  Chapter 76

  In her mind's eye Darby saw Victor Grady's house, the one from her nightmares – the squalid rooms full of hand-me-down furniture and garbage overflowing with beer bottles and fast food. She imagined him coming home from work and ripping clothes from bureau drawers, stuffing them into boxes, garbage bags, whatever he could find. He had to get out of town and get moving because the police were trying to frame him for this business of these missing women.

  And here came Sheila creeping down the stairs. Sheila moving quickly across the carpet to where Victor Grady lay passed out in a chair. Her mother, bargain hunter and coupon clipper, pressed the muzzle of the.22 to his forehead and pulled the trigger.

  'The gunshot didn't make a lot of noise,' Sheila said. 'I was putting the gun in Grady's hands when I heard footsteps racing up the basement steps. It was that man, Daniel Boyle. I thought he was with the police, and I was right. He had a badge. It said he was a federal agent.'

  Darby could see the way it unfolded – the gunshot muffled by the rain and the TV, but Boyle had heard it because he was inside the house, in the basement, planting the evidence. He ran up the stairs thinking Grady had killed himself and found Sheila standing over the body.

  'When I saw that badge, I broke down,' Sheila said. 'All I could think about was you – what would happen to you if I went to jail. I begged him to let me go. He didn't say anything. He just stood there, staring at me. He didn't seem upset or surprised, just… blank.'

  Darby wondered why he hadn't killed her mother or, worse, abducted her. No, abducting her would look too suspicious; so would killing her. Boyle was there to plant evidence to frame Grady and now Grady was dead. Boyle had to think of something. Quick.

  Then Darby remembered what Evan had told her about how he had been watching Grady's house. Evan knew Boyle was inside the house, planting evidence. Evan had seen the fire.

  'He told me to go home and wait for him to call,' her mother said. 'He said if I told anyone, I would go to jail. He told me to go through the basement door. I didn't know about the fire until the next morning.

  'He called me two days later and told me that he had taken care of Grady. But the fire had burned away most of the evidence. He said he had an idea, something that w
ould keep me out of jail. He said he found evidence, but I had to get it because he was busy working the case. The evidence was buried out in the woods. He gave me directions and told me to get it and bring it home. Then he was going to come by and get it. He wouldn't say what it was. He kept saying not to worry. He understood why I had killed Grady.

  'I went out early the next morning with my gardening gloves and a hand trowel. I found a brown paper bag full of clothes – women's clothes – and a picture.'

  'The one I just showed you.'

  Shelia nodded. Her lips were pressed together.

  'Do you know her name?' Darby asked.

  'He never told me.'

  'What else did you find?'

  There was something lurking behind her mother's eyes that made Darby want to run away.

  'Was it -' Darby's voice cracked around the words. She swallowed. 'Did you find Melanie?'

  'Yes.'

  Darby felt a hot knife slice its way through her stomach.

  'I saw her face,' Sheila said, the words coming out raw, as if wrapped in barbed wire. The bag had been buried over Mel's face.'

  Darby opened her mouth but no words came out.

  Sheila broke down. 'I didn't know what to do, so I put the dirt back in the hole and went home. He called me early the next morning and I immediately told him about Melanie. He said he knew and told me to go out to the mailbox. There was a videotape in there and a sealed envelope. He told me to play the videotape and tell him what was on it. It was me. Digging out in the woods.'

  Darby's head was spinning, everything around her a blur of colors.

  'The pictures inside the envelope – they were pictures of you at your aunt and uncle's house. He said if I told anyone what happened, if I told anyone what I found out in the woods, he said he'd mail the videotape to the FBI. And then, after I was in jail, he said he would kill you. And I believed him. He had already tried to take you away from me once, I couldn't… I wasn't going to risk that.'