Chris Mooney - The Missing

'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.'

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.