The Missing

A firefighter dropped his hose. He yelled something she couldn’t hear and then all four firefighters were ru

That could have been me, Darby thought. If I had been standing any closer to the van, I might be trapped or dead.

Coop was heading back with another stretcher – this one holding a young woman. Her limp arms hung over the sides of the stretcher and bumped against the rubble as her lifeless eyes stared up at the dark gray sky, the rain washing away soot and blood from her face.

Chapter 46

By quarter to three, all the survivors had been found and moved. Firemen were still crawling around the blast site; two were standing by with hoses. ATF agents and members of the Boston Bomb Squad, dressed in coveralls and boots, sifted through the debris.

The man in charge of the blast site was Kyle Romano, a former Marine explosives expert and a fifteen-year veteran of the Boston Bomb Squad. He was a big, burly man with a dark red buzz cut and a face scarred by acne.

Romano had to shout over the steady rotor-thump of the news chopper hovering in the sky directly above them.

‘It’s definitely dynamite,’ Romano said. ‘You can tell by the way the metal’s pitted. We also found pieces of a timer and what appears to be a metal footlocker. Given what you and everyone else told me, once those van doors opened, I’d say it sent a signal to the timer. You know the rest. Now I got a question for you.’

Romano scratched his nose. His face was covered in soot and ashes. ‘I was talking to Banville, and he told me this guy you’re after kidnaps young women.’

‘That’s right.’

‘This has the markings of a terrorist attack. You pull something like he did today, it’s guaranteed to draw attention. This guy you’re after, everything about him suggests he doesn’t want to be found.’

‘I think he’s feeling desperate,’ Darby said.

‘That’s the same thing the profiler told me – Ma

‘What else did he tell you?’

‘Not much. He was talking about the teenage girl that’s missing.’ Romano shook his head, sighing. ‘Poor girl’s as good as dead.’

‘He said that?’

‘Not in so many words.’ Romano took a long pull from his water bottle. That’s all I know right now.’

‘Can I help with something?’

‘Yes, you could point me to the piece of metal with the vehicle’s VIN number on it. It’s buried somewhere in this goddamn mess.’

‘I can help with the sifting,’ Darby said.

‘We’ve got ATF here to help. Bomb cases are different from the ones you work on – no offense. I’ve got to clamp down on the scene. Too many people walking around here. Thanks again for your help.’

The vehicle, its windows shattered from the blast, was part of the crime scene. Bomb techs were searching it for scraps of evidence. Darby couldn’t drive it.

Darby couldn’t find Coop. She’d have to walk home.

The press was everywhere. She walked past them, numb, and headed down a street only to realize it was closed off to allow investigators to sift through the debris.

When she stopped walking, she was standing near East Dunstable Road. There was Porter Avenue. Down the road was St. Pius. Half a mile up the road was the Hill. Sitting high above it was Buzzy’s.

The pay phone she had used over two decades ago to make the call was still in the same spot, replaced by a new Verizon model with a bright yellow receiver. Darby wanted to call Leland to see what had happened at the lab. She checked her pockets. All she had was dollar bills. She went inside Buzzy’s to get change.

The store was empty except for the teenage girl standing behind the counter. She was watching a news report about the bombing at Mass General on a small color TV set up on top of a mini-refrigerator.

‘Could you turn that up?’ Darby asked.

‘Sure.’

The reporter, who was live at the scene, didn’t have much information but he had plenty of visual footage of the bomb that had exploded inside the delivery garage at Mass General. As he talked about eyewitnesses who had described hearing a large, thunderous booming sound, the camera kept playing various footage of the destruction. Darby saw the streets lined with debris and overturned taxis and ambulances. The front half of Mass General, which was made entirely of glass, had been blown apart. When she saw the smoking crater, her first thought was a fertilizer bomb. A fertilizer bomb, if packaged correctly, could have caused the amount of destruction she was seeing on the TV.

Dozens of wounded people were being moved to Beth Israel Hospital. Mass General patients were in the process of being evacuated to other area hospitals. There was no information on how many people had been killed.

‘Were you there?’

Darby glanced away from the TV. The teenage girl was talking to her. She wore too much eyeliner and her face looked as though it had fallen inside a tackle box. Her nose was pierced, as were her bottom lip and tongue. Almost every available space on her ears was covered with pierced earrings.

‘Were you at the bomb site?’ the teenager asked. ‘Your clothes are, like, all dirty and ripped and stuff. And you’ve got blood on you.’

‘I was here in Belham.’

‘Oh my God, that must have been sooo freaky. Did you see any dead bodies?’

‘I need some change for the pay phone.’

Darby plunked her quarters down into the slot and dialed Leland’s cell phone. When his voice mail picked up, she tried his home number. His wife answered.

‘Sandy, this is Darby. Is Leland there?’

‘Just a moment.’

Darby swallowed. When Leland came on the line, she explained what had happened in Belham. Leland listened without interrupting.

‘Erin called me while I was stuck in traffic,’ Leland said after she finished talking. ‘She said a FedEx package came into the lab early this morning. They brought it downstairs to X-ray and found what looked like a body stuffed inside the box, so they rushed it upstairs. The return address was Carol Cranmore’s.’

‘Didn’t they test it for explosives?’

‘I don’t know. If I had to guess, I’d say they saw the body and decided to rush it upstairs. I’m in the process of pulling the security tapes from the garage and the lobby.

‘I was talking to Erin when the package blew up,’ Leland said. ‘I don’t think she made it. Pappy was out in a junkyard in Saugus collecting paint samples when the bomb went off. The blast took out the lab, the evidence lockers… it’s all gone.’

Darby wanted to ask about any other survivors but couldn’t get the words out.

‘I’m afraid I have more bad news,’ Leland said. ‘The hospital called looking for you a few minutes ago. Rachel Swanson went into cardiac arrest. They couldn’t revive her. They’re going to do her autopsy this afternoon.’

‘He killed her.’

‘Rachel Swanson was sick, Darby. The sepsis –’

‘Traveler needed to get to her. She was the key to finding him, and the only way he could do it was to create a diversion. What better diversion than bombing the hospital. The explosion creates a sense of panic – people start thinking it’s a terrorist attack and run for cover. Nobody’s paying any attention. Traveler moved in and killed her. Get someone over there and seal off the room – and pull the ICU security tapes.’

‘I already tried. ATF won’t allow access,’ Leland said. ‘I just got off the phone with Wendy Swanson, Rachel’s mother. Someone at the New Hampshire lab must have called her. She called us, wanting to know what hospital her daughter was in. I had to tell the woman her daughter was dead.’

‘Do you have her number? I want to talk to her about Rachel.’

‘That’s Banville’s job.’

‘Banville’s going to be tied up at the bomb site here in Belham. I want to talk to the mother to see if I can find out anything about Rachel, maybe figure out why she was selected. She might know something that can help us find Carol.’