Lisa Gardner - Hide

Three, there was the highly messy, disturbing, niggling little detail that Annabelle Granger happened to be the spitting image of another young girl, Catherine Gagnon, who was kidnapped and held in an underground pit in 1980, two years before Dori Petracelli vanished. Catherine's abductor, Richard Umbrio, had been imprisoned by the beginning of '82, however, meaning he couldn't have been involved in Annabelle's case.

Bobby stopped talking. His fellow officers stared at him.

"Yep," he said briskly. "That's about what I think, as well."

Detective Tony Rock spoke first. "Holy shit," he declared. He looked worse tonight than he had last night. The long hours, or the situation with his mother?

"Another astute observation."

McGahagin turned on D.D. "Were you ever going to tell us about this?"

Score one for McGahagin.

"I thought it was important to verify Annabelle's story first," D.D. replied steadily, "given its rather perplexing impact on our investigation. She herself couldn't provide any supporting documentation. Instead, Detective Dodge has spent the past twenty-four hours substantiating the details. I'm willing to believe her now. Unfortunately, I still don't know what any of this means."

"We can add to the profile of our suspect," Sinkus spoke up. "We're definitely looking for a predator who's methodical and ritualized in his approach. He doesn't just abduct his victims-he stalks them first."

"Who might be in some way connected to Richard Umbrio," another detective thought out loud. "Can we interview Umbrio?"

"Dead," Bobby volunteered, but didn't elaborate.

"But you said he was imprisoned."

"At Walpole."

"So maybe they still have his personal effects. Including correspondence?"

"Worth a try"

"What about Catherine Gagnon? Any connection between her and Annabelle Granger?"

"Not that we've determined," Bobby said. "But we've set up a meeting between the two women for tomorrow afternoon. Perhaps once they see each other in person…" He shrugged.

A couple of the task-force members were studying him now. Detectives had a relentless memory for details, such as that two years ago Officer Dodge had been involved in a fatal shooting involving a man named Jimmy Gagnon. Surely the last name wasn't just a coincidence.

But they didn't ask and he didn't tell.

"Charlie Marvin spotted Annabelle at the Boston State Mental site," D.D. was saying now. "Said he thought she looked familiar. I caught up with him after Annabelle left and tried to press him for details. Maybe he'd seen her or someone who looked like her in Mattapan. He was vague, though. Just thought for a moment he recognized her from somewhere, one of those passing things. I don't know if there's something more significant there or not. Annabelle would've been just a child when Boston State Mental closed, so an actual connection between her and the site…"

"Not probable," Sinkus filled in for her.

"No, I don't think so."

The task-force room fell silent.

"So where are we?" McGahagin prodded, trying to wrap things up.

"Tracking down Christopher Eola," Detective Sinkus offered.

"Finishing our report on missing girls," D.D. added, with a pointed look back at McGahagin. "And," her voice grew conciliatory, more thoughtful, "honing in on the time line of 1980 through '82. We know the mental hospital closed in 1980. We know, thanks to Detective Sinkus, that animals began disappearing in Mattapan-which is an interesting little sidebar. We also know that at least one perpetrator, Richard Umbrio, had come up with the idea of imprisoning a girl in an underground pit. And we know that by the fall of ' 82, a man was stalking a girl in Arlington and that her best friend disappeared shortly thereafter twenty-five miles away in Lawrence. We have some reason to believe all these events are related, if only by their proximity in time, so let's get that nailed down.

"Sinkus, you're on Christopher Eola-from the moment he left Boston State Mental, where did he go, what did he do? Where is he now? McGahagin, your team can finish the comprehensive list of missing girls. I want you to focus on all names from the early eighties, summarize the details from each case file, start looking for any connections-and I mean any -between the missing girls. How many names do you have?"

"Thirteen."

"All right, start digging. See if you can tie any of those missing girls to Mattapan, Christopher Eola, Richard Umbrio, or Annabelle Granger. I want to know if any of the families remember their daughters receiving anonymous gifts before they disappeared, about any incidents of Peeping Toms in the neighborhood, that sort of thing. Let's assume Annabelle's case gives us an MO, and see if any of the others fit the pattern.

"As for the Catherine Gagnon connection-Bobby and I will be flying to Arizona tomorrow to meet with her in person. Which gives Bobby exactly"-she glanced at her watch-"twelve more hours to uncover all relevant connections between Richard, Catherine, and Annabelle. All right, people, that's a wrap."

D.D. pushed out of her chair. Belatedly, the rest of them followed suit.

Bobby followed D.D. out of the room. He didn't speak until they were in the relative privacy of her office.

"Nice ambush," he commented.

"You handled it okay" D.D. had never been one to apologize. Even now, she mostly appeared impatient. "What?"

"Started thinking about something this evening."

"Good for you. Bobby, I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I would sell my soul for a shower. Instead, I'm five minutes from meeting with the deputy superintendent, where I get to convince him we've made significant progress in an investigation when I think we honestly understand less today than we did yesterday Don't talk dirty to me. I'm too fucking tired."

He made a motion with his fingers-the world's tiniest violin playing in sympathy.

She sat down heavily and scowled at him. "What?"

"According to Annabelle Granger, her whole family fled in the middle of the afternoon, taking with them only five suitcases. So what happened to the house?"

D.D. blinked at him. "I don't know. What happened to the house?"

"Exactly I've spent two hours poring over newspaper stories from the end of '82 through '83. Think of it: an entire house, fully furnished, suddenly abandoned in the middle of a neighborhood. You'd think someone would notice. But I can't find any reports in the news or the police files."

"What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking the house wasn't abandoned. I'm thinking someone, maybe Russell Granger, returned to wrap up loose ends."

D.D. perked up. "For no one to notice, he would've had to do it fairly quickly," she mused.

"Yeah, within a matter of weeks, I'm guessing."

"Meaning right around the time Dori Petracelli disappeared."

"Seems about right."

"You check storage units, real estate records?"

"So far, no storage units or real estate transactions under the name Russell Granger."

"Then who owned Annabelle's house in Arlington?"

"According to property records, Gregory Badington."

"Who's Gregory Badington?"

Bobby shrugged. "Dunno. Name's listed as deceased. I'm working on identifying next of kin."

D.D. scowled. "So Russell didn't own the house. Maybe he rented. But still, you're right. Furniture, clothes, stuff. All of that had to be taken care of somehow by someone." D.D. picked up a pencil, bounced the eraser off the top of her desk. "Do you have a Social Security number for Mr. Granger? What about a license?"

"Am searching DMV records now. Got a call in to his former employer, MIT."

"Keep me apprised."

"One more thing. We'd have to work it from your end…"

"And that is?"

"Sure would be good to know the order of the victims. Like you said, we seem to be narrowing in on a time line. I think we need to place each of those six girls in that time line. I think it makes a great deal of difference whether Dori Petracelli was the beginning-or the end."