The Missing (12 page)

Across from the bed was a cheap bookcase holding framed pictures of Carol as a baby. Two shelves were crammed with paperback romance novels plucked from library book sales. The books and trinkets on the bottom shelf were coated with dust – except for the three black leather-bound albums. Those had been moved.

Had Dianne pulled them out last night? If she did, why had she returned them? Maybe she wanted another picture of Carol – the one that was printed on the flyers.

Darby snapped on a pair of latex gloves and settled on the carpeted floor to examine the bottom shelf.

Mounted underneath the shelf, tucked in the far corner so it was safely out of view, was a small black plastic box half the size of a sugar packet. Sticking out of one side, a quarter inch in length, was an antenna.

A listening device.

Grabbing the penlight from her shirt pocket, Darby lay on her back and examined the black box. It was secured to the wood by a Velcro mounting strip. No wires, so it was most likely battery operated.

There were devices on the market that could be turned on and off remotely to save battery power; some were voice activated. They all had different transmitting ranges. What she needed to know were the specifications of this device.

Darby leaned in closer, hoping to find the manufacturer’s name and model number. She didn’t see it. The manufacturer’s stamp was most likely located on one of the sides flush against the wood, or on the back of the unit. In order to find it, she’d have to tear the device away from the Velcro strip. There was no way to do that quietly.

And if he’s listening right now, he’ll hear it and know we’ve found the listening device.

Darby stood up, legs fluttering, and hustled back to search Carol’s room again.

Chapter 26

Darby found a second listening device underneath Carol’s bed, mounted against the frame. Like the first device, this unit had been placed in such a way that she couldn’t find the manufacturer’s name or model number.

Two listening devices. She wondered how many more were inside the house.

Here was something else to think about: If Carol’s abductor had taken the time to install listening devices inside the house, was he was also monitoring police radio and cell phones? They sold police scanners at Radio Shack, and cell phone frequencies were just as easy to pick up, if you had the right equipment.

Coop was in the kitchen. She caught his attention, pressed a finger to her lips, then wrote what she had found on his clipboard.

He nodded and started to search the kitchen. Darby went outside.

Bloodhounds and their handlers were searching the woods, their barks echoing through the pleasantly warm air. Standing on the front porch, she dialed Banville’s number and watched a man limp his way
over to a telephone pole and use a staple gun to tack up a leaflet holding Carol’s picture. She wondered if Carol’s abductor was sitting in his car right now, listening.

Darby remembered the monitoring equipment the feds had used in a case she and Coop had worked on last year. The equipment was big and bulky. If Carol’s abductor was using similar equipment, it would need to be placed in something like the back of the van.

Banville picked up.

‘Where are you?’ Darby asked.

‘On my way back from Lynn,’ Banville said. ‘I got a call early this morning about our boy LBC. He’s been crashing at his girlfriend’s house for the past two months. He’s got a size nine foot, doesn’t own any boots, and we have two witnesses who will swear LBC was with them the night the Cranmore girl was taken. I think we can safely scratch him off our list. We’ve rounded up all the local pedophiles. They’re at the station right now.’

‘How soon before you’re back in Belham?’

‘I’m already here. What’s going on?’

‘Tell me where you are.’

‘I just stopped off for coffee at Max’s on Edgell Road.’

Darby knew the place. ‘Stay put. I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

Before she left, she checked in with Coop. Darby headed back out, deciding to walk to the diner. It
would be quicker than driving through all the traffic, and she could use the time to organize her thoughts.

Daniel Boyle stood across the street, watching Darby McCormick walking fast down Coolidge, head down and hands stuffed in her windbreaker pockets. He wondered where she was going.

For the past hour, while he had been papering the nearby houses with fliers, tucking the sheets underneath windshield wipers and inside mailboxes, he had been listening to Darby and her partner’s movements inside the house over his headphones. The iPod tucked in his pocket was actually a six-channel receiver that allowed him to switch between the six listening devices he had planted inside the house.

He had listened to the chatty conversation between Darby and her partner inside Carol’s room. After her partner left, Darby had rustled about the bedroom for a bit, opening drawers, before heading back to the mother’s bedroom. Lots of movement in there, especially near the bottom shelf of the bookcase where he had placed one of the listening devices.

Then Darby headed back to Carol’s bedroom again, and after half an hour or so of searching, she went back downstairs to the kitchen. There was no conversation between Darby and her partner. A few minutes later, she was standing on the front porch, making a call on her cell phone.

Why did she have to come outside to make the call? If she had found something interesting, some new piece of evidence, why not make the call from inside the house? Why did she have to step outside?

Boyle had placed the listening devices in strategic locations where no one should be looking. Had she found them?

Clearly, she had discovered
something.
When she was on the phone, she had seemed either nervous or excited – and she kept looking around the street as if she knew he was here, mixed in with all the volunteers. She had watched him limp his way over to the telephone pole and put up a flier. He had adopted the limp because he wanted to stay close to the house. The cop handing out the fliers had no problem with it.

Boyle watched Darby take a right onto Drummond Avenue. He wanted to follow her and see where she was going.

No. Too risky. She had seen him. He should leave, just to be safe.

Boyle switched the receiver to the listening devices inside the kitchen and limped his way back to his car. All he heard was the echo of footsteps.

The reception on the iPod grew dimmer. The receiver inside his car had a much broader range. The police were no doubt looking for a van, so he had opted for his recent purchase, an old Aston Martin Lagonda, the same car his grandfather/father
had owned. The car’s engine and transmission were brand new, but the outer shell was in desperate need of a new paint job. The paint had started to fleck and peel in several places, especially around the pockets of rust.

Boyle picked up his new BlackBerry phone. Richard had given it to him last night. It was equipped with encryption technology so it couldn’t be overheard by the police or anyone trying to listen in on a scanner. The stolen phone had been reprogrammed so the calls couldn’t be traced by the phone company.

‘What’s Darby doing?’

‘She’s still walking,’ Richard said. ‘I wonder if she found the bugs you left in the house.’

‘I’m wondering the same thing. What do you want to do?’

‘I think we should assume she found them. Where did you buy them?’

‘I didn’t. They’re homemade.’

‘Good. She can’t trace them. Do you have any extra ones?’

‘I do.’

‘We should plant some of them inside Slavick’s house.’

‘Do you still want to go ahead with the plan?’

‘Absolutely,’ Richard said. ‘We need to throw them off the scent. I’ll call you later.’

Boyle started his car and drove away from the commotion to find a quiet street.

Twenty minutes later, he was driving through a more upscale neighborhood. No cars sitting on blocks here, no welfare mothers sitting on their porches. This neighborhood had lots of nice lawns and neatly painted houses.

As Boyle examined the homes, he recalled how he wasn’t that far away from where Darby used to live. He wondered if her mother was still living there. That was easy enough to find out.

There, the white house. The door behind the screen door was open. Someone was home.

Boyle drove to the end of the street. He put on a pair of gloves and reached under the seat for the padded mailer. He rolled the window down, turned the car around and tossed the mailer onto the porch steps of the white house.

By the time Boyle reached the highway, he felt relaxed and in control. The plan was in motion. Now all he needed to do was to get himself a FedEx or UPS truck and a body.

Chapter 27

Darby found Banville sitting in a red vinyl booth in the back corner, nursing a cup of coffee. No one else was around him. Taped to the window facing the small parking lot was a poster board holding Carol Cranmore’s picture.

‘I found listening devices inside Carol’s house,’ Darby said after she sat down. ‘I don’t think they’ve been there that long, since none of them are coated in dust.’

‘You said listening
devices.
How many did you find?’

‘At the moment, four – one in the mother’s bedroom, one in Carol’s room, the other two mounted on top of the kitchen cabinets. I don’t know the make or the model number of the bugs. That information is most likely stamped on the back, and I can’t examine them because each one is mounted by Velcro. There’s no way to rip the bug off without making any noise.’

‘And if we try to do that and he happens to be listening in, he’ll know we found the bug.’

‘That’s the problem. If I try to remove the bugs, he’ll hear us. If I dust it for prints, the fingerprint brush will make noise against the mike and he’ll hear
us. And if I did happen to find a print, I’d have to use a tape lift to transfer it.

‘The other problem is the power source,’ Darby said. They run on batteries. He can’t leave them on all day, so there’s a good chance they’re remotely operated. He can turn them on and off to conserve battery power. If I had the device’s make and model, I could do a simple Google search and find the product specs. It would give us an idea of how long the batteries last, if it’s remote-operated, and the transmitting range. Some have a radius as much as half a mile, and almost every one of them can transmit through walls and windows with crystal-clear clarity.’

‘How do you know so much about bugs?’

‘One of the first big cases I worked on was a mob case. Thanks to the feds, I got a crash course in listening devices. Judging by what I saw at the house, I doubt these devices are that sophisticated. They may even be homemade.’

‘Funny you should mention the feds. I got a message this morning from the Boston office. The site profiler here in town wants to talk to me.’

‘What did he want?’

‘I haven’t talked with him yet.’

‘I think our guy took Carol out of the house and put her in the back of a van – only when he opened the doors, he found that Jane Doe wasn’t there. He searched for her, couldn’t find her, and at some
point decided he had to leave. But before he did, he went back inside and planted the bugs in strategic locations so he could listen to us as we moved through the rooms. I think it’s safe to say he was listening to us last night. How many people do you have guarding Jane Doe’s room?’

‘At the moment, just one.’

‘Increase it. And make sure they check the ID of every person who comes inside the ICU.’

‘I’m already doing that. The press found out she’s at Mass General. They did a live news feed outside the hospital. It was all over the news.’

‘And Jane Doe?’

‘As of nine this morning, she was still sedated.’

‘I think it would be a good idea if you have someone put together a list of names of every volunteer helping search for Carol Cranmore. Check licenses, too, see if you have anyone from out of town. Any luck locating Terry Mastrangelo’s family?’

‘We’re working on it.’ Banville returned the coffee cup to its saucer. ‘About these devices you found,’ he said. ‘Do you have any idea about the kind of monitoring equipment our guy would be using?’

‘Depending on the bug’s frequency strength, it could be something as simple as an FM receiver. I’ve heard of receivers disguised as a Walkman, but again, the range would be rather short. If he was using something like that, he’d have to be close to the house. To listen from a longer range, you’d need
more sophisticated equipment – bulky stuff that’s not so easy to conceal.’

‘So right now our guy could be sitting in his van parked somewhere near the Cranmore house.’

‘Please don’t tell me you’re thinking of having patrol cars do a sweep of the area,’ Darby said. If Carol’s abductor spotted patrolmen stopping people in their cars, he wouldn’t hesitate to leave the area. He might even panic and kill Carol.

‘It’s tempting, sure, but it’s too risky,’ Banville said. ‘No, what I was thinking was how we could use this to our advantage.’

‘You set up a trap.’

‘You sound like you’ve already got something in mind.’

‘First, we need to figure out the frequency range of the listening devices. Then we set up roadblocks – we lock down every possible way he can escape. You put me in one of the rooms with Coop, and as we’re talking about made-up evidence, you track down the frequency.’

‘That’s not a bad plan. Tracking down the frequency, though, we’re not set up for that.’

‘The feds are. They come in, they’ll find out what frequency those devices are transmitting on, and they can narrow it down. We need to move on this soon. I’m pretty sure those listening devices operate on batteries. We might have a day or two before they die.’

Banville stared out the window, at the people heading into the diner. She couldn’t read anything in his face. Every emotion, from surprise to sadness, was carefully sealed behind the same blank mask he always wore.

‘This morning a reporter from the
Herald
cornered me and asked if I’d like to comment on the connection between Carol Cranmore and a missing woman by the name of Terry Mastrangelo.’