Chris Mooney - The Missing

'I went out early the next morning with my gardening gloves and a hand trowel. I found a brown paper bag full of clothes – women's clothes – and a picture.'

'The one I just showed you.'

Shelia nodded. Her lips were pressed together.

'Do you know her name?' Darby asked.

'He never told me.'

'What else did you find?'

There was something lurking behind her mother's eyes that made Darby want to run away.

'Was it -' Darby's voice cracked around the words. She swallowed. 'Did you find Melanie?'

'Yes.'

Darby felt a hot knife slice its way through her stomach.

'I saw her face,' Sheila said, the words coming out raw, as if wrapped in barbed wire. The bag had been buried over Mel's face.'

Darby opened her mouth but no words came out.

Sheila broke down. 'I didn't know what to do, so I put the dirt back in the hole and went home. He called me early the next morning and I immediately told him about Melanie. He said he knew and told me to go out to the mailbox. There was a videotape in there and a sealed envelope. He told me to play the videotape and tell him what was on it. It was me. Digging out in the woods.'

Darby's head was spinning, everything around her a blur of colors.

'The pictures inside the envelope – they were pictures of you at your aunt and uncle's house. He said if I told anyone what happened, if I told anyone what I found out in the woods, he said he'd mail the videotape to the FBI. And then, after I was in jail, he said he would kill you. And I believed him. He had already tried to take you away from me once, I couldn't… I wasn't going to risk that.'

Sheila pressed a fist against her mouth. 'He kept sending pictures to remind me – pictures of you at school, pictures of you playing with your friends. He even put them in Christmas cards. And then he started sending me clothes.'

'Clothes? My clothes?'

'No, they were… they belonged to other people. Other women. They came in these packages, along with pictures, like this one.' Sheila gripped the sheet of paper in her fist. 'I didn't know what to do.'

'Mom, these clothes, where are they?'

'I thought maybe, just maybe, I could do something with them. Maybe mail them anonymously to the police. I don't know. I don't know what I was thinking, but I hung on to them for a long time.'

'Did you tell anyone? Maybe a lawyer?'

Sheila shook her head, cheeks wet from the tears. 'I kept thinking what would happen if I came forward. What if I told the police what I did? About how I kept the clothes of all these missing women and said nothing? If I did that, people would have thought you helped me hide the evidence. It didn't matter if it wasn't true. People would think you had something to do with it – look what happened to you when you worked on that rapist case. Your partner planted the evidence, and they thought you helped him. If I came forward, it would have ruined your career.'

It took a great effort for Darby to speak. 'What did you do with the clothes?'

'They were in the boxes you donated to the church.'

'And the pictures?'

'I threw them away.'

Darby buried her face in her hands. She saw the pictures of all the missing women, dozens and dozens of them lined up on the bulletin boards at the police station. If her mother had only come forward, then those women would be alive. That knowledge was inside her now, planted like a seed, its roots sinking deeper and deeper.

'I didn't know what to do,' Sheila said. 'I couldn't change what I did. I thought about going to the police hundreds of times, but all I could think about was you – what he would do to you if I went away. You were more important.'

'This place where you found Mel,' Darby said.

'I don't know.'

'Think about it.'

'I've been thinking about it all day, ever since I saw that man's face on TV. I don't remember. It was over twenty years ago.'

'Do you remember where you parked the car that morning? How far you went in?'

'No.'

'What about the directions Boyle gave you? Did you save them?'

'I threw them away.' Sheila was sobbing, the words sounding as though they were being ripped out of her. 'Don't hate me. I can't die knowing you hate me.'

Darby thought about Mel lying somewhere in the woods, buried beneath the ground, alone, where no one would ever find her.

'Can you forgive me?' Sheila said. 'Can you at least do that?'

Darby didn't answer. She was thinking about Mel – Mel standing by the locker, asking Darby to forgive Stacey so they could go back to being friends. Darby wished she had said yes. She wished she had forgiven Stacey. Maybe Mel and Stacey would have stayed home that night. Maybe they would be alive right now. Maybe all those women would.

'Mom… oh Jesus… '

Darby grabbed her mother's hands – the same hands that had hugged her were the same hands that had killed Grady and pushed the dirt back over Melanie. Darby felt the strength in her mother's grip; it was still there but not for much longer. Soon her mother would be gone, and Darby would bury her. And one day Darby would be gone too, buried alone, forgotten. Someday, if there was such a place as heaven, she hoped she could find Melanie and tell her how sorry she was. Maybe Mel would forgive her. Maybe Stacey would, too. Darby wished for that more than anything.