Текст книги "The Missing"

Автор книги: Chris Mooney

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Chapter 19

Daniel Boyle unlocked the basement door and moved around the desk, walking past the computer monitors and the mannequins dressed in the costumes he wore. What he was looking for was inside the next room. He took out his keys and unlocked the filing cabinet.

The hanging file folders were arranged chronologically with his most recent projects near the front for easy access. The older projects were in the bottom drawer. The folder marked BELHAM was in the far back.

Dust rose from the folder as he flipped past the yellowed newspaper clippings of Victor Grady. In the back he found the bundled stacks of Polaroids.

The colors had faded in the pictures, but Melanie Cruz’s face was clear enough. She stood behind the locked bars of the wine cellar. The other five pictures showed what he had done to her. Boyle stared at the pictures and felt the beginnings of an erection.

He had taken other pictures – ones of Melanie Cruz lying dead in the ground out in the Belham woods. Those pictures, along with a map showing where she was buried, had been burned away in the fire. Boyle remembered how he had set the fire but couldn’t remember where he had buried Melanie Cruz or the other women.

He picked up the stack of pictures belonging to a teenage girl with dark red hair and striking green eyes. He removed the elastic bands and flipped over the first picture.

The teenager’s name was Darby McCormick. She bore a striking resemblance to the crime scene investigator he had seen at the hospital.

But was it the same person?

Boyle took out his cell phone and dialed information to get the number for the Boston Crime Lab. The operator connected him. Less than a minute later, he was listening to the lab’s automated phone system instructing him on how to contact someone at the lab. Two choices: enter the person’s extension or the first four letters of the person’s last name.

He punched in the letters and flipped through pictures of a heavy-set blond woman named Samantha Kent. Boyle remembered how she had refused to eat. How she got weak and then sick. How he had brought her out to the Belham woods to strangle her and was interrupted by Darby McCormick and her two friends – Melanie Cruz and the blond girl he later stabbed inside the foyer. What a mess that was. He was trying to remember the blonde’s name when the voice mail picked up.

‘You’ve reached the office of Darby McCormick. I’m either away from my desk or on another line –’

Boyle hung up and leaned back against the wall.

Chapter 20

Boyle stared up at the wall crammed full of pictures of the women he had hunted over the years. Sometimes he sat here for hours, staring up at the faces and recalling what he had done to each of them. Pleasant thoughts to pass the time.

Tacked to the bottom corner was an old picture of Alicia Cross. She had lived two streets over, on the other side of the woods behind his house. She was riding her bike along a long stretch of empty road when he pulled up next to her. Alicia’s mother, Boyle had told the twelve-year-old, had sent him to come get her and take her to the hospital. Alicia’s father had been in a serious car accident. Alicia was so upset she left her bike on the road and got into his car.

She was too scared to fight, too small to fight. Boyle was sixteen and strong.

For an entire week – the second week of his mother’s monthlong vacation in Paris – police and volunteers combed through the woods and surrounding neighborhoods. Boyle watched them through his bedroom window. For three days, police and volunteers from the neighborhood searched the woods around his house. He recalled the long summer afternoons he sat by the window, listening to Alicia’s mother call out her daughter’s name over and over again while he stimulated himself.

At night, he would go downstairs into the wine cellar and remove Alicia’s restraints. Sometimes he chased her through the dark basement. There were many places to hide.

While that was fun, nothing compared to the hot, blinding rush of excitement Boyle felt when he strangled her.

The night he killed her, he couldn’t sleep. Strangling Alicia was magnificent, but it wasn’t as fulfilling as watching the fear in her eyes, the way she stared at the rosary beads on the floor while she feebly clawed at the rope around her neck.

Boyle felt a tremendous sense of power – not the power to kill, no, that was too easy. What he held in his hands was the power to alter and shape destinies. He could change the shape of the world around him any way he wanted. Gripped in his hands was the power of God.

Early the next morning, while it was still dark, Boyle headed out into the woods with a shovel. When he came back for the body, he found his mother standing in the kitchen. She had come back from her Paris trip early. She didn’t say why, didn’t ask why his clothes were so dirty or why he was sweating. She made him take her luggage and shopping bags up to her bedroom and then spent the rest of the day sleeping.

Later that night, he dumped Alicia’s body in the grave. Boyle stood over her body, gripped with a peculiar sadness. He shouldn’t have killed her. He should have strangled her until she passed out. That way, when she woke up, he could do it all over again, as many times as he wanted.

Boyle heard a branch snap behind him. He turned around and saw his mother, her face clear in the moonlight. She didn’t look angry, or sad, or disappointed. She looked blank.

‘Hurry up and bury it,’ was all she said.

She didn’t talk to him during the long walk back to the house. He spent the time wondering what would happen. Two years ago, when she caught him strangling a cat, she sent him to his room. She waited until he fell asleep and then came in and hit him with the buckle end of a belt. He had the scars to prove it.

His mother locked the front door. ‘Did you keep her in the house?’

He nodded.

‘Show me.’

He did. Alicia’s rosary beads were on the floor. They must have fallen from his pocket.

‘Pick it up,’ his mother said.

He did. By the time he stood, his mother had locked the door to the wine cellar.

During his two-week confinement, he used the same slop bucket Alicia had used for her bathroom needs. He slept on the cold concrete floor. His mother didn’t visit him. She didn’t bring him food.

Trapped alone in the cool dark that never went away, Boyle never cried or called out for his mother. He used the time constructively, thinking about what he would do next.

He had some wonderful ideas for his mother.

One day he woke to voices. There was a vent in the adjoining room and he could hear his mother talking to someone upstairs – the police. His mother had called the police. Panic gripped up and then floated away when he heard his grandmother’s voice.

‘You can’t leave him down there forever,’ Ophelia Boyle was saying.

‘Fine,’ his mother said. ‘You can take Daniel home with you. I’ve been thinking he should be spending time with his father, anyway. Should I bring Daniel by the club or the office?’

Boyle had been told his father had died in a car accident before he was born.

This isn’t the first time Daniel’s done something like this,’ his mother said. ‘I told you about the animals who disappeared around here last summer – and let’s not forget the time Marsha Erickson caught him peeking inside her daughter’s window in the middle of the night.’

Boyle thought about his cousin, Richard Fowler. Richard was Marsha’s friend. He had been inside her house several times, had stolen her money and lacy underwear – Richard was the one who had put the sleeping pills in Marsha’s beer. When she passed out, Richard called Boyle and said to come over. The two of them spent a wonderful night playing with Marsha inside her bedroom. Her parents were away for the weekend.

After that weekend, Boyle would often wake up in the middle of the night, remembering what he had done to Marsha. Several times he would venture outside and stand by her bedroom window to watch her sleep, imagining all the new and wonderful things he could do to her – only this time she would be conscious. It was more fulfilling when they fought back. He thought about the prostitute Richard had choked to death in the backseat of his car. She didn’t pray to God or beg for her life; she fought back with everything she had and might have hurt Richard severely if Boyle hadn’t come back with the rock.

His grandmother’s voice snapped Boyle out of his daydream: ‘Daniel is your problem, Cassandra. You’re going to have to figure out –’

‘I want him gone.’

‘You had your opportunity,’ his grandmother said. ‘I told you about the doctor in Switzerland who would have gotten rid of the bastard with a simple operation, but you absolutely refused because you wanted to blackmail –’

‘What I wanted, Mother, was for you to protect me. Daddy climbed into my bed, he put his hands between my –’

‘You’ve punished me sufficiently, Cassandra, and you’ve certainly used the situation to your advantage. I met all of your demands. I built you this brand-new house, filled it with everything you wanted. I bought you expensive cars – I’ve given you everything you wanted on top of the princely sum of money you demanded. Now you’ve run through the money. I’m not giving you any more.’

‘And you keep forgetting that Daddy was the one who got me pregnant,’ his mother said. ‘That… thing downstairs is your son, not mine.’

‘Cassandra –’

‘Get rid of him,’ his mother said. ‘Or I will.’

Days later, his grandmother opened the door. She told him to shower and get dressed in his best suit. He did. She told him to get in the car. He did. Four hours later, when she pulled up in front of a military school that specialized in treating what she called ‘troubled boys,’ she told him not to call home for any reason. His grandmother would handle all financial matters. She gave him a private number to call.

Boyle never called her. The only person he ever talked to was the only person who wanted to talk to him: his cousin Richard.

During his two years at Vermont’s Mount Silver Academy, Boyle had learned discipline. When he graduated, he enlisted in the army. There he learned how to put planning and organization above the secret need that burned like a supernova in the center of his mind. He had to apply that same discipline now, to this situation.

Daniel Boyle, forty-eight, went into the other room and stared at the green glow coming from the six monitors set up on the shelf. Rachel Swanson’s cell was dark. The other five cells were occupied. They were sleeping. Carol Cranmore seemed to be coming awake.

Chapter 21

Boyle’s cell phone rang. It was Richard. Boyle heard traffic in the background. Richard was calling from a pay phone. He always called from a pay phone. He was always so careful.

I’ve been thinking about Rachel,’ Richard said. ‘Do you still have Slavick’s Colt Commander?’

‘I have it.’

‘Good. Now listen to me. I want you to take Carol back to Belham.’

‘No.’

‘Danny, we need to get rid of her.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘You’re going to drive Carol back to Belham.’

‘No.’

‘You’re going to bring her out into the woods and shoot her in the back of the head – and make sure you leave the body out in the open. I want her to be found quickly.’

‘I want to keep her,’ Boyle said.

‘After you shoot her, I want you to plant Slavick’s blood on her clothes and underneath her fingernails. The police will think she fought him off before he shot her. The police will come in and investigate, and they’ll find the blood belongs to Slavick. It will match the blood you left at Carol’s house.’

‘Let’s play with Carol for awhile. You know what the girls are like when they see the basement for the first time.’

‘We can’t risk it. There’s too much trace evidence in the basement. We don’t want the police to find anything on her to connect her to Rachel.’

‘What are we going to do about her?’

‘I’m still thinking about it.’

‘She’s at Mass General. I know her room number.’

‘We’ll talk about it when I get there. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.’

Wait, there’s something I need to tell you,’ Boyle said. ‘It’s about Victor Grady.’

‘Grady? What does Grady have to do with this?’

‘Do you remember the names of the three girls who saw me strangling Samantha Kent?’

‘I know two of them are dead.’

‘I’m talking about the redhead, Darby McCormick.’

Richard didn’t answer.

‘She’s the teenager who left her backpack in the woods,’ Boyle said. ‘You went into her house and she fractured your arm with the hammer –’

‘I know who she is.’

‘Do you know she’s a crime scene investigator for the Boston Crime Lab?’

Richard didn’t answer.

‘She’s working on Carol Cranmore’s case,’ Boyle said.

The Grady case is closed.’

‘I don’t like the idea of her snooping around.’

‘Forget Grady. He’s a dead end. Get Carol ready.’

‘Let’s keep her just for tonight. Just give me one night –’

‘Do it,’ Richard said, and hung up.

Boyle only needed a moment to get organized.

He tucked the Colt Commander in the shoulder holster under his vest. He slipped the silencer and stun gun in his right vest pocket so it was handy. The plastic bags holding rags soaked with chloroform were already in each pocket. He made a mental note to cut Carol and collect some of her blood. He wanted to plant it inside Slavick’s house. It would be easy to do. Boyle had a set of keys to Slavick’s house and shed.

Boyle was about to lock up the filing cabinet when he pulled the drawer back out and removed the old mask made of stitched-together strips of Ace bandages. He hadn’t worn it in years. Smiling, Boyle slid the mask over his head and picked up the rope from the wall.

Chapter 22

Carol Cranmore sat on a cot, underneath a wool blanket that felt stiff and scratchy against the bare parts of her skin. She didn’t know how long she had been awake. She knew she wasn’t wearing Tony’s shirt anymore. The clothes she was wearing – sweatpants a little too tight and a baggy sweatshirt – smelled of fabric softener.

She had no memory of being undressed. The only memory she had was the one she kept replaying over and over in her mind – the stranger pushing a foul-smelling cloth over her mouth.

Carol buried her hands in her hair. This isn’t supposed to be happening to me. I’m supposed to be at school today. I’m supposed to have lunch with Tony and then I’m supposed to go to the mall with Kari because Abercrombie & Fitch is having a huge sale and I’ve saved up money from babysitting because I’m a good person. I shouldn’t be here oh God why is this happening to me?

The panic felt like a monstrous tide rising above her. Carol drew in a sharp breath and all the fear and terror were rushing through her, rushing up her throat, and she was screaming it into the dark room, screaming until her throat was raw, screaming until she had nothing left.

The darkness didn’t go away. Carol closed her eyes and prayed to God – prayed hard. She opened her eyes. The darkness was still here. And she needed to pee. Was there a toilet hidden somewhere in this pitch-black room?

Carol swung her legs off the cot and felt something with a hard edge bump up against her foot. She reached down, hands moving across the shape. It was a cardboard tray holding a wrapped sandwich and a soda can. Whoever had brought her here had not only dressed her before putting her to bed, he had taken the time to wrap a blanket around her to make sure she was warm and had brought her food.

Carol wiped the tears from her face. She removed the Saran Wrap and took a bite of the sandwich. Peanut butter and jelly. She washed it away with the soda. It was Mountain Dew, her favorite.

As Carol ate, she wondered, for a brief moment, if her abductor may have been her father. She had never met him before – she didn’t even know his name. Her mother referred to the man as ‘the donor’ and that was it.

If her father had abducted her – stories like that were all over the news, it did happen – he wouldn’t lock her up in a room with no lights. No, her father hadn’t brought her here. Someone else had.

Carol finished the rest of the Mountain Dew, wondering if there was a light switch on the wall.

The wall behind her had the same rough, sandpaper-like texture as the floor. Concrete, probably. She rubbed her hands up and down along the wall above her cot and failed to find a light switch. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t one in here.

Carol got her bearings. Okay, here was the end of the cot. Two choices: left or right. She decided to go left and started moving her hands across the wall, counting her steps as she searched for a light switch. She counted all the way to eighteen when the wall ended. No place to move but left.

Nine steps and her shin bumped into something hard. She reached down and felt something cool and smooth. She kept running her hands over the curves and then she felt water and it came to her: a toilet. Good. She wanted to pee but that could wait. Keep moving.

Ten steps and here was a sink.

Eight more steps and her hands were feeling around the controls for a shower. She turned the knob slightly, heard water run through the pipe and then felt it splash her head and face. She was locked in a small, cold room with a cot, a toilet, a sink and a shower. A light switch had to be close by. Her captor wouldn’t let her live in the dark, would he? Please God, please let me find a light switch.

Six more steps and the wall ended. Ten more steps. The wall turned left and Carol followed it with her hands, counting one, two, three, four – wait, here was something rough and hard and cold. It was metal. She kept moving her hands along the metal, up and down and across.

It was a door but not like any door she knew about. This door was very wide and made of steel. No doorknob or lever. If Tony were here, he would know what it was. When his father wasn’t busy being a drunk, he was a contractor, and a pretty good one –

Tony. Had he been brought here, too?

‘Tony? Tony, where are you?’

Carol stood in the cool dark, listening hard over the blood pounding in her ears.

A voice called out from far away, sounding garbled, as though it were traveling underneath water.

Carol yelled Tony’s name again, as loud as she could, and pressed her ear against the cold steel. Someone was trying to talk back to her. Someone was out there, but the voice was too far away.

An idea floated up from out of the depths of Carol’s mind, surprising her: Morse code. She had read about it in history class. She didn’t know Morse code, but she knew enough to work with it.

Carol knocked twice on the door. Listen.

Nothing.

Try again.

Two more knocks. Listen.

Two knocks came back, faint but clear.

A panel inside the door swung open to a burst of dim light. Staring at her from the other side was a face covered with dirty bandages, the eyes hidden behind pieces of black cloth.

Carol stumbled backward into the darkness, screaming as the steel door slid open.

Chapter 23

Boyle took out the gun, about to enter Carol’s room when his mother spoke to him for the first time in years:

You don’t have to kill her, Daniel. I can help you.

Boyle’s breath was hot and stale underneath the mask. Carol was bunkered underneath the cot, begging him not to hurt her. He didn’t want to lose Carol – he didn’t want to lose any of them, not now, not after all his hard work and planning.

You can keep her, Daniel. You can keep all of them.

How?

Why should I tell you? After what you and Richard did to me when you came back home? I kept your secret for all those years, and you repaid me by burying me alive out in the woods. I told you then you’d never get rid of me, and I was right. You kill all these women who remind you of me and I’m still with you – I’ll always be with you, Daniel. Maybe I’ll just let the police come and take you away.

They won’t find me. Everything leads to Earl Slavick. I’ve already planted the pictures on his computer. I’ve printed out the maps from his computer so the FBI can trace him. With one phone call I’ll lead them to Slavick’s doorstep.

But that doesn’t solve your problem with Rachel, does it?

She doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t –

She made her way into your office, remember? She went through your file cabinet. Who knows what she found in there?

She’s never seen my face. And I have Slavick’s blood. I slipped inside his house with the copy of the keys I made and I put the chloroform rag over his face while he was sleeping and I took his blood, the tan carpet fibers from his bedroom –

You’re very smart, Daniel, but you made a mistake with Rachel. She outsmarted you, and when she wakes up – and you know she will – she’ll tell the police everything she knows, and they’ll come and take you away. You’ll spend the rest of your life locked inside a small, dark room.

I won’t let that happen – I’ll kill myself, if I have to.

You don’t have to kill Carol, but you have to kill Rachel. You need to kill her before she wakes up. I know how to solve your problem with Rachel. Would you like me to tell you?

Yes.

Yes what?

Yes, please. Please help me.

Will you do what you’re told?

Yes.

Shut the door.

Boyle did.

Go back to your office.

Boyle did.

Take a seat. That’s a good boy. Now here’s what you need to do . ..

Boyle listened to his mother explain what needed to be done. He didn’t ask any questions because he knew she was right. She was always right.

When she finished, Boyle stood and paced the room, pausing several times to stare at the phone. He wanted to call Richard, but Richard had strict orders never to call him on his cell phone. Boyle knew he should wait until Richard arrived to tell him about the plan but he couldn’t wait. Boyle was too excited. He needed to talk to Richard now.

Boyle picked up the phone and dialed Richard’s cell. Richard didn’t pick up. Boyle hung and dialed again. Richard picked up on the fourth ring. He was angry.

‘I told you to never call this number –’

‘I need to talk to you,’ Boyle said. ‘It’s important.’

‘I’ll call you back.’

The wait was excruciating. Boyle rocked back and forth in his chair, staring at the phone, waiting for Richard to call back. Twenty minutes later, he did.

‘We can connect Rachel to Slavick,’ Boyle said.

‘How?’

‘Slavick’s a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. When he was living in Arkansas, at the compound for the Hand of the Lord, he tried to abduct an eighteen-year-old woman and failed – he would have gone to jail if the woman had been able to pick him out of a lineup. He also trained at their weapons facility, worked in their gun shop. And he fire-bombed black churches and synagogues.’

‘You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.’

‘Slavick’s planning his own underground movement here in New Hampshire,’ Boyle said. ‘I’ve been inside his compound. He has fertilizer bombs in the shed, and in his basement there’s a batch of homemade explosives – plastic explosives. We can use them to create a diversion to get to Rachel.’

‘You want to bomb the hospital?’

‘When a bomb goes off, it creates instant chaos. People will think it’s a terrorist attack – they’ll be reliving nine-eleven all over again. While everyone’s running around, nobody will be paying attention to us. One of us can slip inside and kill Rachel, pump some air through her IV line and she’ll go into cardiac arrest. It will look like she died of natural causes.’

Richard didn’t answer. Good. He was thinking about it.

‘If we bomb the hospital, not only will we kill Rachel, we can bring the FBI into this sooner,’ Boyle said. ‘Once Slavick’s DNA profile finds its match on CODIS, the FBI will be here at lightning speed to take over the case.’

‘You’re right about that. If Slavick’s identity makes it into the press, the feds will have a PR nightmare on their hands. Where’s Slavick now? At home?’

‘He’s in Vermont for the weekend, interviewing potential members for his movement,’ Boyle said. The GPS unit is still attached to his Porsche. I can tell you where he is right now, if you want.’

‘If we go ahead with this, you’ll have to move – quickly.’

‘It’s time I move again anyway. I’ve been thinking about heading back to California.’

‘You can’t go back to Los Angeles. They’re still looking for you there.’

‘I was thinking of La Jolla, someplace upscale. We should use this opportunity to get rid of Darby McCormick. Make it look like an accident. I have some ideas.’

‘We’ll talk some more when I get there.’

‘What about Carol? Can I keep her?’

‘For the moment. Don’t let her out of the cell yet.’

‘I’ll wait for you,’ Boyle said. ‘We can play with her together.’