Текст книги "The Missing"

Автор книги: Chris Mooney

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

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 called 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.

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.

‘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.