The Missing (25 page)

‘Pretty slick.’ Banville rubbed his chin. ‘I’m still trying to figure out why he just didn’t pack up and leave.’

‘Ego, maybe. None of his victims had ever escaped. Or maybe he was afraid Rachel knew too much and he didn’t want to take the risk of her talking to us. Let me show you what I have on the car.’

Darby picked up the sheets where eight names were highlighted. ‘The closest states with recent Lagonda owners are Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New York.’

‘Wasn’t one of Traveler’s victims from Connecticut?’

Darby nodded. ‘Take a look at this name.’

‘Thomas Preston, from New Caanan, Connecticut,’ Banville said. ‘Owned the vehicle for two years, then sold it a little over two months ago. That Lagonda hasn’t been registered yet.’

‘Traveler could be the guy who bought the car. Let’s look into Preston first, see how long he’s lived in Connecticut, and if he owns a van.’

Banville reached across the console and grabbed the wall phone.

‘Steve, it’s Mat. Take a look at page fifteen. About halfway down the page, you’ll see the name Thomas Preston from New Caanan, Connecticut. Find out everything you can about him. I need to know if he owns a van.’

Twenty minutes later, the phone rang. Banville listened for a moment, then covered the receiver with his hand. ‘Preston doesn’t have a record. He’s fifty-nine, a lawyer, divorced and has lived in his house for the past twenty years. He’s never owned a van.’

Scratch Preston.

‘We need to find out who Preston sold the car to,’ Darby said. ‘We need to find his name. Ask your man to get Preston’s home number – get all of his numbers, business, cell phones, everything. And get the name of his insurance agency.’

Banville relayed the information and hung up. ‘If the buyer is Traveler, and he gave Preston a phony name, there’s no way we can track him.’

‘Let’s keep our fingers crossed. We’re overdue for some luck.’

‘Why did you want the name of his insurance agency?’

‘The safest way to play it is to call and pretend to be someone from his insurance company. The guy’s an attorney. You know how these guys act when you try to ask them questions about a criminal case. He’ll bury us in legal bullshit and paperwork. It will
be a week until he gives us an answer. But if we call and say we’re from his insurance agency, he’ll give us the info.’

‘I agree.’

Banville’s contact called back ten minutes later.

‘Do you mind if I make the phone call?’ Darby didn’t want Banville’s rough manner to turn away Preston.

Banville handed her the phone.

Darby tried the office number first. The secretary said Mr Preston was on another line. Darby had to wait through several minutes of soft elevator music.

‘Tom Preston.’

‘Mr Preston, I’m calling from Sheer Insurance in regards to your Aston Martin Lagonda.’

‘I sold it about two months ago.’

‘Did you turn in the plates?’

‘Of course I did.’

‘According to our records, the DMV says you didn’t.’

Preston went on the defensive. ‘I turned in the plates. If there’s a problem, take it up with the DMV.’

‘Clearly some mistake has been made. Did you make a copy of the title?’

‘I sure as hell did. I made copies of everything. Goddamn registry, if I ran my practice like they did, I’d be disbarred.’

‘I understand your frustration. Tell you what: Give
me the name and address of the person you transferred the title to, and I’ll see if I can save you a trip to the registry.’

‘I don’t remember his name. The copy of the title’s at home. I’ll call you first thing tomorrow morning. What’s your name again?’

‘Mr Preston, I really need to take care of this matter now. Is there someone you can call at home?’

‘No, I live alone – wait, I mailed him the owner’s manual.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘When he came to pick up the car, I didn’t have the original owner’s manual,’ Preston said. ‘I couldn’t find it. He wanted it and any other documentation I might have, so I told him I’d take a look. He gave me his address and I said I’d mail it to him. I wrote it down in my date book… Here it is. Fifteen Carson Lane in Glen, New Hampshire.’

‘What’s the man’s name?’

‘Daniel Boyle.’

Chapter 59

Banville’s detective at the Massachusetts Registry had already coordinated efforts with New Hampshire’s Department of Motor Vehicles. According to their computer records, Daniel Boyle had sold his van two days ago but hadn’t turned in the plates. There was no information in his registry file about an Aston Martin Lagonda.

New Hampshire DMV was transmitting Boyle’s license picture.

Coming up on the monitor was the driver’s license for Daniel Boyle, a white male, forty-eight years old. Boyle had thick blond hair and a pleasant-looking face with dead green eyes.

Banville hung up and immediately started dialing another number. ‘Boyle had his home number disconnected three days ago.’

‘Looks like he’s getting ready to move,’ Darby said.

‘He may already be gone. We’re trying to see if he has a cell phone. If he does, and if he’s carrying it with him and it’s turned on, we may be able to track down his location through his cellular signal. I don’t have that kind of equipment here. We’ll have to use someone from the phone company.’

Banville was now on the line with the Glen County sheriff’s office. Darby watched the GPS monitor. They were heading up 95 North at a fast clip. At their current speed, they would make it to Boyle’s address in a little over an hour.

‘The county sheriff, Dick Holloway, left for the day,’ Banville said after he hung up. ‘Dispatcher’s paged him. The woman I talked to knows the area – six or so old homes surrounding a lake. It’s pretty isolated, she said. She doesn’t remember Daniel Boyle but knew his mother, Cassandra. She lived out there for years until she disappeared.’

‘The dispatcher remembered this?’

‘Glen’s a small area, with a tight community. The woman I talked to grew up there. She was surprised to hear Boyle living back home again. She thought the house hadn’t been occupied in years.

‘The dispatcher also told me another interesting tidbit,’ Banville said. ‘Back in the late seventies, Alicia Cross, a neighborhood girl, disappeared. They never found her body. She’s going to have someone check the case to see if Boyle was ever a suspect.’

Darby felt the pieces coming together. ‘How long will it take Glen County to mobilize their SWAT unit?’

‘The SWAT members are from different counties,’ Banville said. ‘Once Holloway makes the call, we’re talking an hour or two just to get them together.’

‘What about sending a patrol car out there to see if Boyle’s home?’

‘I don’t want to run the risk of spooking him. This van is designed to look like a telephone repair truck. We’re less than an hour away. I say we head over to Boyle’s house and see if he’s home. If the Lagonda’s parked in his garage, we’ll call Holloway and ask for backup.’

‘I don’t think we should go with an explosive entry. If Boyle sees a cop on his doorstep, he may decide to go and kill Carol and the other women.’

‘I agree. Washington – he’s the man driving us – I’ll have him dress up as a phone technician. We have a couple of uniforms in here. His face hasn’t been on TV, so Boyle won’t recognize him. If Boyle sees a telephone repairman, he’ll be more inclined to open the door to us. Once he does, we’ll take him down.’

Chapter 60

Daniel Boyle had lived most of his life out of suitcases. His army training had taught him to live only with the bare essentials. He didn’t have much to pack.

The original plan was to leave Sunday, after he finished his business in the basement. That changed early this afternoon when Richard sent him a text message: ‘Remains found in woods. Leave now.’

Boyle saw the breaking news report on NECN. Belham police had discovered a set of remains buried in the woods. The report didn’t mention how the remains were found, or what had led police to the area. There was no video footage of the area, so he didn’t know where, exactly, the remains had been found.

The women who had disappeared during the summer of eighty-four were buried out in those woods, but the police had never found the bodies. They couldn’t find the bodies. The map he had left inside Grady’s house had burned away in the fire.

The police had found a
single
set of remains. He wondered if they had found the remains of his mother/sister. If they had, if they managed to identify
her, then the police would start asking questions, which would lead them here, to New Hampshire.

Rachel must have told the police something. But what could she have possibly said? She didn’t know anything about the Belham woods or how many women he had buried there. Rachel didn’t know his name or where he lived – she certainly didn’t know about where he had buried his mother/sister. What could Rachel have told them? Had she found something in his office? In the filing cabinet? The questions kept turning over and over in his mind as he packed the envelopes and laptop.

The first envelope contained two sets of false IDs – passports, driver’s licenses, birth certificates and Social Security cards. The last two held ten grand in case, his seed money to help get him started in another city. After that, he could use his laptop to wire money from the private bank he used in the Caymans.

Boyle zipped up the suitcase. He didn’t know regret or sadness. The emotional concepts were as foreign to him as the terrain on the moon. Still, he would miss this house, his childhood home, with its big rooms and privacy, the magnificent view of the lake from the master bedroom. What he would miss most was the basement.

Boyle clicked off the bedroom light. There was only one item left to pack.

He walked into the finished room over the
three-car garage. He didn’t turn on the lights; he could see fine by the moonlight coming in through the windows and skylight.

He walked past the walk-in closets still holding his mother’s clothes and knelt on the floor next to the window overlooking the driveway. He peeled back the carpet, removed the loose floorboard and grabbed the well-oiled Mossberg shotgun and shells. He had used it only once, to kill his grandparents.

Boyle glanced out the window, about to stand when he saw someone below him, looking inside his garage.

It was Banville, the detective from Belham.

Boyle froze.

Banville was talking into his jacket. The detective was wearing an earpiece. A surveillance kit. Banville was talking into a vest mike.

They found you, Daniel.

His mother’s voice.

They’re coming to take you away, just like I said they would.

This was a mistake. He had carefully built a trail of evidence that led back to Earl Slavick. The blood, the padded mailers and the navy blue fibers, the pictures he had taken of Carol – everything led to Slavick. Banville shouldn’t be here.

Why hadn’t Richard called him? He was watching Banville.

Had something happened to Richard?

Boyle took out his BlackBerry. He didn’t want to send a text message and wait for an answer. He needed to know. Now. He called Richard’s main number.

The phone kept ringing and ringing. Richard’s voice mail picked up. Boyle left a message. ‘Banville’s at my house. Where are you?’

A telephone van pulled into his driveway. The dim interior light clicked on. Sitting behind the wheel was a man dressed in a brown jacket, a Verizon patch stitched on his breast pocket. He was studying a clipboard.

So this was how they were going to do it. Have a telephone repairman ring the doorbell and when he opened the door they’d take him down. They wouldn’t risk breaking in because they were worried he would kill Carol.

There’s no escape for you, Daniel.

He wouldn’t answer the door. They’d go away if he didn’t answer the door. He would wait until they left and then he would drive away.

It’s too late. They know you’re home. The lights are on downstairs and in the garage – Banville’s seen the boxes you left by the car. The police know you’re getting ready to leave. If you don’t come out, they’ll come in.

He could sneak through the back door and head into the woods. He had the keys for the shed. The Gator was in there. Head out on one of the trails to the main road, then find a car and hotwire it – no, the
Gator would be too noisy. He’d have to follow one of the trails on foot.

Banville brought other cops with him, Daniel. They have the house surrounded. You won’t get far.

Boyle looked around the dark woods, wondering how many SWAT officers were hiding out there.

It’s over, Danny. You can’t escape.

‘No.’

They’re going to lock you up on death row, in a place darker than the cellar.

‘Shut up.’

They’ll probably extradite you to a place where they have the death penalty. They’ll strap you down to a table and give you the needle and the last voice you’ll ever hear before you suffocate to death will be mine, Danny. You’re going to die alone, just like I did.

He wouldn’t let them take him in. He wasn’t going to die alone in some goddamn cage. He had to get to his car or the surveillance van. He knew a spot where he could dump it, run and then hide out for awhile until he could figure out a plan to disappear again.

The driver stepped out of the van. Banville had drawn his sidearm.

Boyle threaded four Super Magnum shells into the shotgun. He dumped the rest of the shells in his pocket and headed for the stairs.

Chapter 61

Darby watched the front of the house through the periscope.

On the way here, she had imagined finding a rundown house, some brooding structure with a sunken-in porch and broken windows. The house she was looking at resembled the ones she saw in upscale Weston, Massachusetts – a sprawling antique Colonial of massive rooms full of expensive furniture and the latest in electronic trinkets. Landscape lights lit up a nice brick walkway, the shrubs surrounding it neatly manicured.