Lisa Gardner - Hide

He'd gotten involved with her. Not physically, like D.D. and most others assumed. But emotionally, which was perhaps even worse, and the reason Bobby never bothered to correct anyone's assumptions. He had crossed the line. He'd cared about Cat, and as the people around her had started dying horrific deaths, he'd feared for her life.

Turned out, for good reason.

To this day, D.D. contended that Catherine Gagnon was one of the most dangerous females ever to live in Boston, a woman who had most likely (though they lacked solid evidence) set up her own husband to be killed. And to this day, whenever Bobby thought of her, he mostly saw a desperate mother trying to protect her small child.

A person could be both noble and callous. Self-sacrificing and self-absorbed. Genuinely caring. And a stone-cold killer.

D.D. had the luxury of hating Catherine. Bobby understood her too well.

Now Bobby threw away the paper plate, crumpled the Coke can, tossed it in the recycling bin. He was just gathering up his car keys, mentally steeling himself for what would probably be a very expensive parking ticket, when his phone rang.

He glanced at caller ID, then at the clock. Eleven-fifteen p.m. He understood what had happened before he ever picked up the receiver.

"Catherine," he said calmly

"Why the hell didn't you tell me?" she exploded hysterically.

Which was how Bobby learned that the media had finally discovered the truth.

ALL RIGHT, PEOPLE," D.D. Warren said crisply, passing around the latest reports. "We have approximately"-she glanced at her watch-"seven hours, twenty-seven minutes for damage control. The big guys upstairs are in agreement that at oh-eight-hundred, we're giving our first press conference. So, for God's sake, give me some progress to report or we're all going to look like assholes."

Bobby, who was trying to slip discreetly into the conference room, caught the tail end of her statement, just as D.D.'s gaze swung up and spotted his late entrance. She scowled at him, looking even more exhausted and ragged than the last time he'd seen her. If he'd caught six hours of sleep in the past two and a half days, D.D. had snagged about three. She also appeared nervous. He scanned the room, then spotted the deputy superintendent, head honcho of Homicide, sitting in the corner. That would do it.

"Nice of you to join us, Detective Dodge," D.D. drawled for the room's benefit. "I thought you were grabbing dinner, not six hours at a spa."

He gave the best apology a cop could make. "I brought lemon squares."

He placed the last of Mrs. Higgins's homemade treasures in the middle of the table. The other detectives pounced. Eating baked goods trumped needling the state guy any day of the week.

"So, as I was saying," D.D. continued, slapping away hands until she could snag a cookie for herself, "we need news. Jerry?"

Sergeant McGahagin, head of the three-man squad in charge of compiling the list of missing girls, looked up from the table. Rather hastily, he brushed powdered sugar off his report, fingers shaking so hard from his two-day caffeine binge, he actually missed the single sheet of paper the first three times. McGahagin settled for reading the executive summary where it lay on the table.

"We got twelve names of missing females under the age of eighteen unsolved from '65 to '83; six names from '97 to '05; and, of course, fourteen years to go in between," he spat out as one rapid-fire sentence, eyes blinking furiously "I could use two more bodies to help scan lists if anyone finds himself with free time. 'Course we also need the forensic anthropologist's report for cross-reference. And then you gotta wonder if the bodies are all from Mass. or do we need to broaden out to the greater New England area-Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine. Really hard to do, you know, without a victim profile; I don't even know if we're barking up the right tree, that's all I have to report."

D.D. stared at him. "Jesus, Jerry. Lay off the coffee for an hour, will you? You're gonna need a blood transfusion the rate you're going."

"Can't," he said, twitching. "Will get a headache."

"Can you even hear through the ringing in your ears?"

"Huh?"

"Oh boy" D.D. sighed, stared out at the wider table. "Well, Jerry has a point. Hard to know how good any of our research is going without the victimology report. I spoke with Christie Callahan two hours ago. Bad news is, we probably get to wait at least two weeks."

The detectives groaned. D.D. held up her hand. "I know, I know. You guys think you're overloaded? She's even more screwed than we are. She's got six mummified remains that all have to be processed properly, and not even a brilliant-and might I add charming-task force to assist. Of course, she's also doing this by the book. Which means the remains first had to be fumigated for prints. Then they had to be sent to Mass General for X-rays, and are just now returning to her lab.

"Apparently, wet mummification is its own peculiar thing. It occurs naturally in the peat bogs of Europe, and there've been a few cases in Florida. But this is a first for New England, meaning Christie is learning as she goes. She's guessing three or four days to process each mummy Given six mummies, you do the math."

"Can she give us results one at a time, as she gets each corpse processed?" Detective Sinkus asked. He was the one with the new baby, which probably explained the state of his clothing.

"She's considering it. There's archaeological protocol, or some shit like that, which argues for treating the remains as a group. Individually, we may not see what is implied by the group as a whole."

"What?" Detective Sinkus asked.

"I'll work on her," D.D. said. She switched gears to Detective Rock, who was handling the Crime Stoppers reports. "Tell us the truth: Anyone confess yet?"

"Only about three dozen. Bad news, most of 'em have recently gone off their meds." Rock picked up an impressive stack of papers and started passing it around. Rock had been on the Boston PD roughly forever. Even Bobby had heard stories of the veteran detective's legendary abilities to zoom straight from hideous crime A to random bit of evidence B to evil perpetrator C. Tonight, however, the detective's hearty boom carried a forced undercurrent. His buzz-cut black hair seemed to have picked up extra highlights of gray, while shadows had gathered beneath his eyes. Given his mother's rapidly deteriorating health, working a massive investigation had to be difficult. Still, he was getting things done.

"You only have to pay attention to the top sheet," Rock was explaining. "The detailed logs are just for those of you with time to kill."

That elicited a few tired chuckles.

"So, we're averaging a call every few minutes, and that's before the media went ballistic tonight. Kind of sad about the leak." He looked at D.D. as if she might comment.

She merely shook her head. "Don't know how it happened, Tony. Don't have time or energy to care. Frankly, I'm impressed we made it as long as we did."

Rock shrugged philosophically at that. Fifty-six hours under the radar had been a minor miracle. "Well, before the leak, we had a pretty easy time eliminating the whackos. We'd just ask if they buried the remains together or separately. Once they went into elaborate descriptions of the grave site, we could merrily cross them off our list. So yeah, there's been a lot of calls, but it's been pretty smooth sailing. Don't know if you'll find me saying that tomorrow."

"Any good leads?" D.D. pressed.

"Couple. Got a call from a man who claimed to be an attendant nurse at Boston State Mental in the mid-seventies. Said one of the patients at that time was the son of a very wealthy family in Boston. They didn't want anyone to know the kid was there, never paid him a visit. Rumor mill was that the son had done something 'inappropriate' with his little sister. This was the family's way of dealing with it. Patient's name was Christopher Eola. We're running it now, but can't find a current address or driver's license for him. We're working on tracking down the family"