Chris Mooney - The Missing

Here was a picture of Carol Cranmore dressed in gray sweats, scared as she walked with her hands outstretched in a room of concrete walls and floors. There was a drain by her bare foot.

Here was Carol on the floor, stunned and frightened, staring up at the person behind the camera.

The last photograph was Carol stuck in a corner, a scream frozen on her face.

Evan stared down at the pictures with his cold and penetrating gaze. 'Is Carol Cranmore blind?'

'No, she isn't,' Darby said. 'Why?'

'The way she's walking, bumping into the wall, I thought she might be blind. He must have surprised her in the dark, then.'

Darby held the first picture in her hand, staring at it as though it were a window into Carol's dark prison cell. Seeing the terror captured on Carol's face made Darby feel closer to the teenager.

She flipped the pictures over. Taped to the back of the third picture were several strawberry blond hairs. Carol's hair.

Darby took in a deep breath. Okay. Let's do this.

'Coop, I have some writing on the back of the photo, bottom right-hand corner.' Darby swung over the desk magnifier to read lettering. 'H as in Henry, P as in Peter, one-seven-nine. There's no processing stamp.'

Coop was standing next to her. 'Could be a photo printer,' he said. 'The letters and numbers you found are probably the paper's stock number.'

Darby checked the back of the second picture. Same writing in the same bottom corner.

'Let's get the hairs over to DNA,' Darby said. 'Coop, finish up with the mailer. I'll work on the shirt.'

Evan left to listen to the tape alone in the conference room.

The white shirt, a man's size large, hung on a hanger, suspended above a table covered with a sheet of butcher paper. Darby worked a spatula over the shirt, scraping for trace evidence that might have been stuck. It was tedious, painstaking work. The entire time she had to fight the urge to rush.

'Got something,' Pappy said.

Lying on the white paper, mixed in with the dirt and flecks of rust, was a single tan fiber. Darby grabbed it with a pair of tweezers and tucked it inside a glassine envelope.

Next, she moved the light magnifier over the trace evidence.

'I have a black speck here, could be a paint chip,' Darby said. 'There are several of them.'

It was coming up on five. Evan had people standing by the federal lab for another hour. She gathered the glassine envelopes and distributed them through the lab before heading to check on the fingerprints.

Coop had used ninhydrin on the mailer. The paper was a dark purple. The mailer had been carefully cut open along the seams.

'The outer shell is a mess of fingerprints,' Coop said. 'I have comparison samples from the woman who picked up the mailer. The inside of the mailer is clean. No fingerprints, but he did use latex gloves. I found a tiny piece of it stuck on the mailer's self-adhesive lip but I didn't find any prints.'

'What about the pictures?' Darby asked.

'They're absolutely clean. I may have some luck with the adhesive sides of the tape and the labels. I'm about to do that next.'

'Okay, you have anything else?'

'Just the name of the mailer – Tempest,' Coop said. 'It was stamped under a fold. That's all I've got. Mary Beth just called. She's down in Missing Persons. She has something on the two names Rachel Swanson mentioned.'

Stomach grumbling from hunger, Darby pushed open the conference room door.

'- wasn't able to trace it,' Banville was saying to Evan.

'Trace what?' Darby asked. She took the seat next to Leland and handed him a file folder.

'Dianne Cranmore received a call at her home an hour ago,' Banville said. 'The answering machine picked it up. It was a message from Carol saying she needed to talk to her mother and would call back in fifteen minutes. She did but didn't stay on long enough for a trace. Dianne Cranmore confirmed it was her daughter. One of my guys dropped off a copy of the tape. We were just about to listen to it.'

Banville hit the PLAY button on the tiny micro-cassette recorder and leaned back in his seat. Evan finished typing on his laptop. Darby folded her hands on the table and stared at the recorder sitting a few inches away.

On the tape, the phone picked up. 'Carol? Carol, it's me, are you okay?'

Darby heard stifled tears, the clearing of the throat.

'Carol, honey, is that you?'

'Mom, it's me. I'm… He hasn't hurt me.'

Swallowing. Rapid breathing.

'Where are you?' Dianne Cranmore said. 'Can you tell me?'

'I can't see anything, it's too dark.'

'Where… What can I – Carol, listen to me -'

'He's here inside this room. He's got a knife.'

'You need to protect yourself, like I showed you.'

Click.

Banville shut off the recorder.

Evan looked to Leland. 'With your permission, I'd like to send this tape to our lab. We can enhance the background noises, see if there's anything there. I'd also like to send the mailer and pictures. Questioned Documents can identify the type of typewriter used on the mailing labels and see if it matches another case.'

Darby could tell Leland wanted to say no, but he was boxed in a corner where he couldn't. The FBI's Document Section was composed of seven different units that investigated anything to do with paper. The Boston lab simply couldn't compete.

'As long as we share everything,' Leland said. 'I take it the federal government has improved its communication.'

'See for yourself Evan reached across the table and dialed the number on the conference phone.

The sound of the phone ringing echoed over the speakerphone.

A voice picked up: 'Peter Travis.'

'Peter, Evan Manning. I'm calling from the Boston lab. I'm with lab director Leland Pratt and the forensic investigator on this case, Darby McCormick. Also joining us is the lead investigator, Detective Mathew Banville, from the Belham police. They may have a question or two for you, so I'm going to tell them to just jump right in.'

'Absolutely,' Travis said.

'Did you get all the digital pictures I sent you?'

'I've got them loaded up on my screen. The quality of the writing on the mailing labels isn't all that clear. I'll need the originals if you want me to identify the typewriter.'

'You'll have them. Let's start with the pictures first.'

'HP one-seven-nine is the brand of photo paper published by Hewlett-Packard. The paper is manufactured specifically for digital photo printers. You slip the memory card in, or you download the digital pictures from your computer or disc key, and it prints out a three-by-five picture.'

'That's the same size we have here.'

'I can take ink samples from the picture and try and narrow down the type of printer cartridge, but you're talking about a very big market,' Travis said. 'You're not going to find Traveler that way.'

'Traveler?' Darby asked.

'We'll get to that in a moment,' Evan said. 'Go ahead, Peter.'

'I can match the photo to the printer, if you have the printer.'

'I don't have a printer, I don't have a suspect, and a seventeen-year-old girl is missing. What about analyzing the pictures using digital image processing techniques?'

'It's not a bad way to go. The problem is digital photography has evolved to such a point where you can doctor photographs without leaving any evidence.'

'Meaning our guy could have, say, erased a window from the photograph.'

'He could have erased a window, added a window – he could add and delete whatever he wanted if he knows how to operate the software. Given our past experiences, I doubt he'd leave anything in there that would lead us to his doorstep. I did find a new piece of evidence you can add to your list. Hold on a moment.'

A brief sound of pages being snapped back. 'Okay, here it is,' Travis said. 'The mailer he used most likely belongs to a small paper company named Merrill, based out of Hollis, New Hampshire. The company went under in ninety-five. They don't make them anymore.'