Текст книги "The Missing"

Автор книги: Chris Mooney

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Chapter 67

‘Carol,’ Darby whispered. ‘Carol, down here.’

Carol Cranmore, crouching down on the floor, stared at Darby through the hole.

‘I’m with the police,’ Darby said. ‘Are you hurt?’

Carol shook her head, her eyes wide and terrified.

‘I think there’s enough room for you to wiggle through,’ Darby said. ‘Come on, I’ll help you.’

Carol shimmied through the hole of jagged wood and got stuck. Darby grabbed Carol’s hands and pulled her through, the ragged ends of the split wood scratching her legs. Carol was barefoot. Her feet and ankles were scraped, bleeding in spots. She was dressed only in her underwear and bra and she was trembling.

‘He’s holding an axe, I saw him –’

‘I know who he is,’ Darby said. ‘I need to know where he is. Have you seen him?’

Carol shook her head.

‘How many people are down here with us? Do you know?’

‘I’ve heard some people – some women – but I’ve only seen one. She was bleeding. I was trying to wake her up when he came for me and I ran away and saw a skeleton.’ Carol’s face collapsed. ‘Please, I don’t want to die –’

Darby gripped the teenager by the shoulders. ‘Listen to me. I know you’re scared, but you can’t cry or scream. You can’t do that, understand? I don’t want him to find us. We’ve got to find a way out of here, and I need you to be strong for me. I need you to be brave. Can you do that?’

A woman screamed – too close, the sound coming from directly in front of them.

Darby clamped a hand over Carol’s mouth and pressed her up against the wall as a door slammed shut. The woman screamed again, coming from the room Carol was just in.

The woman started begging for her life. ‘Please… I’ll do anything you want, just don’t hurt me, please.’

Carol sobbed beneath Darby’s hand, her tears spilling over Darby’s fingers.

THUMP and Carol jumped as the woman screamed in horror.

CRACK and the woman’s scream turned to a gurgling rasp, Frank Sinatra singing ‘Fly Me to the Moon.’

THUMP, CRACK, THUMP, and then there was nothing but the sound of Evan’s heavy breathing. He was in the next room. Evan had killed one of the women and now he was tapping the axe against the wall, thump-thump-thump, trying to get Carol to scream, to find out where she was hiding.

The thumping sound stopped. Darby stared down at the hole. Come on, put your head through and take a look. All she needed was one good kick and she could break his nose. If he poked his head through and looked the other way, she could kick him hard in the back of the head and kick him unconscious.

Frank Sinatra started singing ‘My Way.’

Evan didn’t look through the hole.

Had he left?

Darby waited. Waited some more. Risk it, take a look.

Darby whispered in Carol’s ear: ‘I’m going to look through the hole. Stay here, and whatever you do, don’t move or scream, okay?’

Carol nodded. Darby knelt on the floor.

Past the dead woman’s hands, Darby saw black boots standing by an opened door. Evan was still in there, waiting. She saw the bloody axe hovering near his ankle.

Evan headed into another room, slamming the door behind him. Another door slammed shut, Frank Sinatra singing ‘The Way You Look Tonight.’

Darby had an idea. Oh God, please let this work.

‘Carol, this skeleton you saw, do you remember where it is?’

‘It’s back through there,’ Carol said, pointing at the hole.

‘I need you to show me.’

‘Don’t leave me here.’

‘I’m not going to leave you.’

‘You promise?’

‘I promise.’ Darby took off her shirt and handed it to Carol. ‘I’m going to go through the hole first. Once I get in there, I’m going to tell you to close your eyes and then I’m going to help pull you through again. Just give me a moment.’

Darby wiggled her way through the hole, the blood soaking through her T-shirt. After Carol came through, her eyes closed, Darby held her hand and led her away from the mangled body on the floor.

‘You can open your eyes now,’ Darby said. ‘Now show me where you saw the skeleton.’

‘It’s through that door.’

Darby eased it open. The hallway was empty. She closed the door softly behind them. Carol led Darby through two rooms, then a third, Darby staying out front and checking the blind spots while committing each room to memory.

Now they were standing in a corridor with a concrete wall. We must be at one end of the maze. But which end?

Carol pointed to the pitch-black end of the corridor. Lying on the floor was a torn shirt.

‘It’s down there.’

Breathing hard, Darby led the way through the dark, holding Carol’s hand.

At the dead end of the corridor was a scattering of bones small and large – the fractured end of a femur, a tibia and a cracked skull. Darby wondered if Evan and Boyle had left the bones here to scare the other women.

Wait, back to the femur. It was spiked at the end. Sharp. Use that.

Bone clutched in her hand, Darby ran to the opposite end of the corridor with Carol. Only one door down here. Darby eased the door open and came face-to-face with the man from the woods.

Chapter 68

Evan’s head was covered by the same mask of dirty Ace bandages she had seen over two decades ago, the eyes and mouth covered with the same strips of black cloth. Blood was splashed against his blue coveralls and carpenter’s belt, which had been modified to accommodate several knives and a gun holster.

Carol screamed as Evan swung the axe. Darby slammed the door shut and threw her weight against it. This door didn’t have a push-button lock like some of the others. Carol helped her try to hold the door in place.

THUMP as the axe split the wood, the blade sinking deep into Darby’s cheek.

Darby screamed but kept her weight against the door. Had to run, where could they run? THUMP as the axe came down again. Think, they had to hide, think – the hole in the room with the dead body. Evan couldn’t fit through it. Go that way. They’d have to run fast to make it.

A gunshot blew away the wood next to Darby’s head. She gripped Carol’s hand and ran fast through the dark rooms and corridors. Please God, please don’t let either of us trip. Darby threw doors shut behind her as she ran, Evan chasing after them, his footsteps growing closer… closer… too close.

Another gunshot hit the wall behind her. Carol screamed and Darby pushed her into the room with the dead body. Darby turned and saw Evan raising the gun. She swung the door shut as he fired, blowing a chunk out of the door. It had a push-button lock, oh thank you God. Darby pounded it shut with her fist.

Carol was staring at the dead woman. Darby gripped Carol by the shoulders, turned her around and moved her to the hole. Evan tried to open the door but couldn’t. He was locked out.

‘Go through,’ Darby said.

Carol wiggled her way through the jagged opening and got stuck. Darby pushed her through as Evan kicked the door, THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.

Darby got down on her knees again, whispering to Carol kneeling on the other side: ‘Bang the doors like we’re running away – bang them as loud as you can, okay? I’ll join you in a minute.’

‘You promised you wouldn’t leave me –’

A gunshot blew another hole through the door.

‘Run, Carol. Run.’

Darby stood, almost slipping in the blood. The room was dark, but she could see Evan’s black-gloved hand reaching through the hole. Carol slammed doors open and shut. Darby pressed her back against the wall. She felt blood sliding down her neck. She touched her cheek, felt the deep gash and the bone. The eye above it was swollen shut.

Evan found the doorknob, turned it and opened the door.

He came through holding the gun. Darby gripped the bone with both hands and sunk the jagged end deep into Evan’s stomach.

Beneath the mask a scream of pain, and Darby tore the bone free and stabbed him again in the stomach. Evan tried to bring the gun around and she stabbed him again. He fired the gun next to her ear, the sound deafening, and when he grabbed her hair she brought up the bone’s jagged end and sunk it deep into Evan’s throat.

He dropped the gun as he grabbed the bone with both hands. Darby pushed him back into the other room. His gun was lying on the floor – a nine-millimeter Glock, his FBI-issued sidearm. She picked it up, swung the door shut and locked it.

‘Carol, stay where you are,’ Darby said. Then, louder: ‘I’m with the police. If there’s anyone else in here, stay where you are until I tell you to come out.’

Darby threw the door open and raised the Glock.

Evan was staggering around the small room, the spiked end of the femur sticking out of his neck. He was trying to control the blood pouring out of his stomach. He was bleeding out. Let him bleed.

Evan saw her and went to pick up the axe.

‘Don’t do it.’

He brought the axe up over his head. Darby fired and blew a hole through his stomach.

Evan slumped back against the wall. She kicked the axe away. He tried to get up, fell, kept trying until his arms went limp.

Behind the mask came a wet, sick, wheezing sound. He managed to say one word:

‘Melanie.’

Darby ripped off the mask.

‘Buried… She’s buried . ..’ Evan started choking on his blood.

‘Where? Where is Mel buried?’

‘Ask… your… mother.’

Darby felt the skin stretch tight across her face.

Evan smiled, and that was all.

Darby removed Evan’s belt and unzipped his coveralls. She patted down the pockets and found a set of keys. She didn’t find a cell phone, but she did find a small digital camera stuffed inside one of the pouches on the carpenter’s belt. She slid the camera in her back pocket.

Hands slick with blood, she tried each key until she found the one that unlocked the padlocks on the doors. Darby drew in a breath and looked up at the dark ceiling.

‘He’s dead. He can’t hurt you. Is there anyone else in here?’

No answer. The music kept playing.

‘I have his keys. I can come help you. If you’re there, call out to me.’

No answer. The music kept playing.

Darby went back for Carol. The teenager was hunkered against a dark corner in the hallway, rocking back and forth, in shock.

‘It’s over, Carol. Everything’s okay. Here, take my hand. That’s it, hold on tight, I’m going to pull you through… No, don’t look at the floor, look at me. I’m going to take you out of here, but I want you to close your eyes until I tell you to open them, okay? Good. That’s it, keep them closed. Only a few more steps. That’s it. Don’t look down. We’re almost there. We’re almost home.’

Chapter 69

It seemed to take forever to find their way out of the maze.

Darby stood on the opposite end of the dungeon, in a corridor with four identical cages. She knew she was on the other side because this corridor had an extra steel door armed with four padlocks. She used the keys. It was the only time Carol let go of her hand.

A ladder bolted against the wall led up to a basement illuminated with soft light coming from an opened door on the far left, across from the stairs. Darby approached the door, Carol’s hand gripped fiercely in her own.

Six video monitors were set up on top of an old desk. Each screen showed a prison cell in dark green color – night vision. Evan and Boyle had installed surveillance cameras equipped with night vision so they could watch their prisoners. All the cells were empty.

Evan’s clothes were neatly folded on top of a table. His cell phone was lying on top of his wallet, along with his car keys.

Darby was about to head into the room with Carol when she spotted the various costumes draped over mannequins. The heads were covered in Halloween masks – some store bought, some homemade. Behind the mannequins was a Peg-Board-covered wall holding various weapons – knives, machetes, axes and spears.

‘I want you to stand outside here for just a moment,’ Darby said. ‘Stand right here, okay? I’ll be right back.’

Darby picked up the cell phone and keys and saw a locked door. One of the keys opened it. Inside she found a locked filing cabinet and a wall crammed full of pictures of the women who had been brought here. She tried the keys on the cabinet. None of them worked.

In some of the pictures, the women were smiling. In others, they were frightened. Mixed among them were horrible snapshots showing how they had been killed. Darby imagined Boyle and Evan standing in here, staring at the pictures as they put on their costumes, getting ready for the hunt.

Darby stared at all the faces until she couldn’t bear to look at them anymore. She grabbed Carol’s hand, grateful for its warmth, and headed up the basement steps into the first floor of the old house. The lights worked. No furniture, just cold and empty rooms full of decay. Several of the windows had been boarded up.

Darby opened the front door, hoping to find a street sign. There were no street lights out here, just darkness and a cold wind blowing across rolling, empty fields. The rundown farmhouse behind them was the only home out here.

Evan’s car, she remembered, had a GPS unit. She found his car parked behind the farmhouse. Darby started the car and cranked up the heat.

Their location was on the GPS screen. Darby gave the 911 operator the address and requested more than one ambulance. She didn’t know if any of the other women in the basement were still alive.

‘Carol, do you know the phone number for your next-door neighbors who live across your driveway? The white house with the green shutters?’

‘The Lombardos. I know their number. I babysit for their kids sometimes.’

Darby dialed the number. A woman answered the phone, her voice thick with sleep.

‘Mrs Lombardo, my name is Darby McCormick. I’m with the Boston Police Lab. Is Dianne Cranmore there? I need to speak with her immediately.’

Carol’s mother came to the phone.

‘I have someone here who would like to speak to you,’ Darby said, and handed the phone to Carol.

Chapter 70

According to the GPS unit, the abandoned farmhouse was twenty-six miles away from Boyle’s house. Darby called Mathew Banville and told him what happened and what she had found.

The four ambulances arrived first. While Carol was being examined, Darby told the EMTs what was waiting for them in the basement maze. She showed them which key opened the padlocks and which one opened the locked doors. She sat in the back of the ambulance with Carol until the sedative kicked in. Darby allowed the EMT to look her over but refused a sedative herself.

The EMT was stitching up her face when Banville arrived with the local police. He stayed with Darby while Holloway and his men headed inside the farmhouse.

‘Did you bring Boyle’s keys?’ Darby asked.

‘Holloway has them.’

‘There’s a locked filing cabinet in the room with the pictures. I’d like to see if there’s anything on Melanie Cruz in there.’

‘The state’s forensic crew should be here any moment,’ Banville said. ‘It’s their case now. We’ll let them process the crime scene. How are you holding up?’

Darby didn’t have an answer. She gave him Evan’s camera. ‘There are some pictures on there showing what he did to the women.’

‘Holloway said you could give your statement tomorrow, after you’ve had some sleep. One of his officers is going to drive you home.’

‘I already called Coop. He’s on his way.’

Darby told Banville about Melanie Cruz and the other missing women. When she finished, she wrote a phone number on the back of his business card.

‘That’s my mother’s home number. If you find out anything about Melanie, I don’t care what time it is, give me a call.’

Banville slipped the card in his back pocket. ‘I called Dianne Cranmore right after I hung up with you,’ he said. ‘I told her that if it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have found her daughter. I wanted her to know that.’

‘We found her together.’

‘What you did… ’ Banville looked at Evan’s car and stared at it for what seemed like a long time. ‘If you hadn’t pushed me, if I had turned my back on you, this would have turned out differently.’

‘But it didn’t. Thank you.’

Banville nodded. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands.

Darby put out her hand. Banville shook it.

By the time Coop pulled up in his Mustang, the road in front of the farmhouse was crowded with police cars and forensic vehicles. The local media was here, too. Darby spotted a couple of TV cameras set up behind the barricades. A photographer was trying to take her picture.

Coop took off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. He hugged her tight against him for a long time.

‘Where can I take you?’

‘Home,’ Darby said.

Coop drove down the dark, bumpy roads in silence. Her clothes smelled of blood and gunpowder. She rolled down the window, closed her eyes and let the wind blow across her face.

When the car pulled over, she opened her eyes and saw that they were parked in a breakdown lane on a highway. Coop reached into the backseat and came back with a small cooler. Inside, packed on top of ice, were two glasses and a bottle of Bushmills Irish whiskey.

‘I thought you could use it,’ Coop said.

Darby filled the glasses with ice and poured the whiskey. She had nearly drained her second drink by the time they reached the state border.

‘Much better,’ Darby said.

‘I was tempted to call Leland, but I thought you might want to tell him yourself, in person.’

‘You would be correct.’

‘I’d like to tag along with my camera. I want to capture the moment on film.’

‘There’s something I want to tell you,’ Darby said, and told Coop about Melanie and Stacey. It was the second time she told the story. This time, she wanted to tell it slowly. She wanted to tell Coop all the things she had felt.

‘I told Mel I didn’t want to be friends with Stacey, and Mel just couldn’t let it go,’ Darby said. ‘She had to keep pushing. She wanted everything to go back to the way it was. She had to be the peacemaker. When I saw her downstairs, I wanted –’ Darby caught herself.

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.