Текст книги "The Missing"

Автор книги: Chris Mooney

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

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 would 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.’

Sheila pressed a fist against her mouth. ‘He kept sending pictures to remind me – pictures of you at school, pictures of you playing with your friends. He even put them in Christmas cards. And then he started sending me clothes.’

‘Clothes? My clothes?’

‘No, they were… they belonged to other people. Other women. They came in these packages, along with pictures, like this one.’ Sheila gripped the sheet of paper in her fist. ‘I didn’t know what to do.’

‘Mom, these clothes, where are they?’

‘I thought maybe, just maybe, I could do something with them. Maybe mail them anonymously to the police. I don’t know. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I hung on to them for a long time.’

‘Did you tell anyone? Maybe a lawyer?’

Sheila shook her head, cheeks wet from the tears. ‘I kept thinking what would happen if I came forward. What if I told the police what I did? About how I kept the clothes of all these missing women and said nothing? If I did that, people would have thought you helped me hide the evidence. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t true. People would think you had something to do with it – look what happened to you when you worked on that rapist case. Your partner planted the evidence, and they thought you helped him. If I came forward, it would have ruined your career.’

It took a great effort for Darby to speak. ‘What did you do with the clothes?’

‘They were in the boxes you donated to the church.’

‘And the pictures?’

‘I threw them away.’

Darby buried her face in her hands. She saw the pictures of all the missing women, dozens and dozens of them lined up on the bulletin boards at the police station. If her mother had only come forward, then those women would be alive. That knowledge was inside her now, planted like a seed, its roots sinking deeper and deeper.

‘I didn’t know what to do,’ Sheila said. ‘I couldn’t change what I did. I thought about going to the police hundreds of times, but all I could think about was you – what he would do to you if I went away. You were more important.’

‘This place where you found Mel,’ Darby said.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Think about it.’

‘I’ve been thinking about it all day, ever since I saw that man’s face on TV. I don’t remember. It was over twenty years ago.’

‘Do you remember where you parked the car that morning? How far you went in?’

‘No.’

‘What about the directions Boyle gave you? Did you save them?’

‘I threw them away.’ Sheila was sobbing, the words sounding as though they were being ripped out of her. ‘Don’t hate me. I can’t die knowing you hate me.’

Darby thought about Mel lying somewhere in the woods, buried beneath the ground, alone, where no one would ever find her.

‘Can you forgive me?’ Sheila said. ‘Can you at least do that?’

Darby didn’t answer. She was thinking about Mel – Mel standing by the locker, asking Darby to forgive Stacey so they could go back to being friends. Darby wished she had said yes. She wished she had forgiven Stacey. Maybe Mel and Stacey would have stayed home that night. Maybe they would be alive right now. Maybe all those women would.

‘Mom… oh Jesus… ’

Darby grabbed her mother’s hands – the same hands that had hugged her were the same hands that had killed Grady and pushed the dirt back over Melanie. Darby felt the strength in her mother’s grip; it was still there but not for much longer. Soon her mother would be gone, and Darby would bury her. And one day Darby would be gone too, buried alone, forgotten. Someday, if there was such a place as heaven, she hoped she could find Melanie and tell her how sorry she was. Maybe Mel would forgive her. Maybe Stacey would, too. Darby wished for that more than anything.

Acknowledgments

This book could not have been written without the support and insight of criminalist Susan Flaherty. Susan was not only kind enough to take me through her job at the Boston Crime Lab, she patiently answered all of my technical questions. All mistakes are mine.

Thanks to Gene Farrell, who was extremely helpful with police procedural questions, as was Gina Gallo. George Dazkevich helped me understand a lot of the technical information regarding computers without laughing too hard.

Special thanks to Dennis Lehane, for his many words of encouragement over the years, his advice and friendship.

Big thanks go to fellow writers and good friends John Connolly and Gregg Hurwitz, who patiently read through many drafts of this book and offered their advice and insights.

And last but not least, thanks to my publicist and friend, Maggie Griffin, for everything. You’re the best, Mags.

Writing – at least my own – is more painful than it is pleasant. The Missing was especially difficult, and the following people deserve a special round of thanks for their input and for putting up with me: Jen, Randy Scott, Mark Alves, Ron and Barbara Gondek, Richard Marek, Robert Pépin and Pam Bernstein. Mel Berger helped get me through the rough patches and patiently read through every incarnation of this book. My editor, Emily Bestler, once again gave me insights that made the book better. Thanks, Emily, for your astounding patience.

Thanks are also due to Stephen King’s excellent book On Writing and the songs of U2, most notably the album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, which kept me going through the long months of rewriting.

What you have in your hands is a work of fiction. That means, like James Frey, I made everything up.