Chris Mooney - The Missing

Smiling, she listened to the rain drumming against the roof and drifted off to sleep.

Carol Cranmore woke up from a dream where she had been named prom queen – totally ridiculous because she had no interest in proms. Both she and Tony had boycotted this year's junior prom and went to dinner and the movies instead.

Still, there was one aspect of the dream she liked, the part where she felt accepted by everyone gathered around the front stage, clapping for her. And she might have stayed there, wrapped in that warm memory if it wasn't for the noise that sounded like a car backfiring. She reached across the dark for Tony.

The other side of the bed was warm but empty. Had he gone home?

Carol had told him he could stay over. Her mother was heading over to her new boyfriend's house in Walpole after her shift at the paper factory. Walpole was a closer ride to her job in Needham, so that meant Carol had the house to herself to do whatever she wanted, and what she wanted was for Tony to spend the night. He had called his mother and told her he was crashing at a friend's house.

The candles were still burning on her nightstand. Carol sat up. It was almost two a.m.

Tony's clothes were still on the floor. He was probably using the bathroom.

Carol had a case of the munchies from the pot. A bag of Fritos and a Mountain Dew would hit the spot.

She pulled back the sheet and stood naked, a tall girl for her age, her body long and lean, developing curves in the right places. She didn't put any clothes on, didn't mind being naked around Tony, who kept telling her how beautiful she was. He couldn't keep his hands off her. She opened the bedroom door, the night-light from the bathroom cutting the darkness in the hallway.

'Tony, you mind making a run to the 7-Eleven?'

He didn't answer. She peeked inside the bathroom and saw that he wasn't in there.

Maybe he was using the downstairs bathroom for some privacy.

There were some Ritz crackers in the kitchen cabinet. She could snack on those until Tony was done in the bathroom.

A cold draft was coming from the hallway. She put on her underwear and Tony's white shirt. Walking made her feel dizzy. Several times she had to reach out and touch the wall.

The kitchen door was wide open, as was the door leading to the back porch. Tony hadn't left; his car keys and wallet were inside his Red Sox baseball hat sitting on top of the counter. Probably went outside for a smoke, she thought. Her mother didn't have many rules, but she was dead set against smoking in the house, hated the way it stunk up the furniture.

Carol poked her head out into the small hallway and saw the rain pounding the street, the sound hard and unrelenting, a steady throbbing hum in her ears. Parked in front of Tony's car was a black van that had seen better days. One of the van's back doors was wide open, swinging in the driving wind that was blowing curtains of rain across the street. She thought she heard the creak of the door's hinges, knowing she was imagining it. Good Lord, she was high.

The van probably belonged to her next-door neighbor's son, Peter Lombardo, who had a habit of disappearing for months at a stretch only to return home, miserable and broke, then staying long enough to save up enough money to disappear again. Peter must have forgotten to lock up, probably in a rush to get inside, out of the rain.

Carol was thinking about going outside and shutting the doors – there was a raincoat in the front door closet – when she heard Tony step up behind her. He grabbed her hard around the waist and lifted her up. Carol giggled as she turned to kiss him.

A hand came up and clamped a foul-smelling cloth over her mouth.

Carol turned away, clawing at the man's wrist as he tried to carry her back inside the kitchen. Her foot hit the wall and, using it as leverage, she kicked the man backward against the doorjamb. He let her go. She dropped to the floor.

Dizzy, she felt dizzy because there was something on the rag. She could barely move, but she saw the rag on the floor. The man reached into his pocket and came back with a small envelope and a plastic bottle.

He dropped a tiny piece of string or something on the floor, near the kitchen door, and then took the plastic bottle and squirted some cold red liquid onto her fingers. It looks like blood, she thought as he took her hand and used it to smear the red liquid across the hallway wall.

The man picked up the rag. Carol drew in a breath to scream, sucked in chloroform and heard a crack of thunder rumble and die.

Darby McCormick stood on the back porch of the Cranmore home, running the beam of her flashlight over the door, a reinforced steel model with two deadbolts. The thunderstorm had stopped, but the rain hadn't tapered off, still coming down fast and strong.

Detective Mathew Banville of the Belham police had to yell over the noise, in a tone that left little doubt he was running thin on patience.

'The mother, Dianne Cranmore, came home around quarter of five because she forgot her checkbook and needed it for when she swung by the bank later today to pay the mortgage. When she pulled in, both doors were open and then she saw this -' Banville used his penlight to point to the bloody hand print on the hallway wall. The mother didn't find her daughter, but she found her daughter's boyfriend, Tony Marceillo, slumped on the stairs and immediately called nine-one-one.'

'Besides the mother, who else has been inside?'

'The first responding officer, Garrett, and the EMTs. They all went in through the front to get to the boyfriend. The mother gave Garrett the keys.'

'Garrett didn't come in this way?'

'He didn't want to destroy any evidence so he sealed the place off. We've issued an Amber Alert, but so far nothing.'

Darby glanced at her watch. It was coming up on six a.m. Carol Cranmore had been missing for several hours, enough time for her to be well out of Massachusetts.

On the gray carpet was a single tan fiber. Darby placed an evidence cone next to it.

'There's no sign of forced entry. Who else has keys to the house?'

'We're talking to the ex-husbands,' Banville said.

'How many she have?'

'Two, and that's not including the biological father. They were married for about fifteen minutes back in ninety-one.'

'And does this fine gentleman have a name?' Darby checked the kitchen floor, glad to see it was made of linoleum. It was an ideal surface for picking up footwear impressions.

'Mother called him "the sperm donor." Said he went back to Ireland right after he found out he was going to be a daddy. She hasn't heard from him since.'

'And they say all the good ones are taken.' Darby rummaged through her kit.

'The other two ex-husbands, one lives in Chicago, and the other lives here, in the wonderful city of Lynn,' Banville said. The dipshit from Lynn is the most interesting of the bunch. Street name is LBC, short for Little Baby Cool – don't ask me what that means. LBC's biological name is Trenton Andrews, did a five-year stretch in Walpole for the attempted rape of a minor – a fifteen-year-old girl. The Lynn police are looking for Mr Andrews right now. We're looking for registered sex offenders who live in the area.'

'I'm sure it will be quite a list.'

'You need anything else or can I go?'

'Hold on a moment.'

'Let's hurry it up.'

Darby didn't take Banville's clipped tone personally; he spoke to everyone this way. She had worked with him on two previous crime scenes and found him to be a thorough investigator; but his personality was gruff, to say the least, and he generally avoided eye contact. He also made sure people didn't stand too close to him – like now, he was leaning against the porch railing, a good five feet away.