The Missing

Banville reached across the console and grabbed the wall phone.

‘Steve, it’s Mat. Take a look at page fifteen. About halfway down the page, you’ll see the name Thomas Preston from New Caanan, Co

Twenty minutes later, the phone rang. Banville listened for a moment, then covered the receiver with his hand. ‘Preston doesn’t have a record. He’s fifty-nine, a lawyer, divorced and has lived in his house for the past twenty years. He’s never owned a van.’

Scratch Preston.

‘We need to find out who Preston sold the car to,’ Darby said. ‘We need to find his name. Ask your man to get Preston’s home number – get all of his numbers, business, cell phones, everything. And get the name of his insurance agency.’

Banville relayed the information and hung up. ‘If the buyer is Traveler, and he gave Preston a phony name, there’s no way we can track him.’

‘Let’s keep our fingers crossed. We’re overdue for some luck.’

‘Why did you want the name of his insurance agency?’

‘The safest way to play it is to call and pretend to be someone from his insurance company. The guy’s an attorney. You know how these guys act when you try to ask them questions about a criminal case. He’ll bury us in legal bullshit and paperwork. It will be a week until he gives us an answer. But if we call and say we’re from his insurance agency, he’ll give us the info.’

‘I agree.’

Banville’s contact called back ten minutes later.

‘Do you mind if I make the phone call?’ Darby didn’t want Banville’s rough ma

Banville handed her the phone.

Darby tried the office number first. The secretary said Mr Preston was on another line. Darby had to wait through several minutes of soft elevator music.

‘Tom Preston.’

‘Mr Preston, I’m calling from Sheer Insurance in regards to your Aston Martin Lagonda.’

‘I sold it about two months ago.’

‘Did you turn in the plates?’

‘Of course I did.’

‘According to our records, the DMV says you didn’t.’

Preston went on the defensive. ‘I turned in the plates. If there’s a problem, take it up with the DMV.’

‘Clearly some mistake has been made. Did you make a copy of the title?’

‘I sure as hell did. I made copies of everything. Goddamn registry, if I ran my practice like they did, I’d be disbarred.’

‘I understand your frustration. Tell you what: Give me the name and address of the person you transferred the title to, and I’ll see if I can save you a trip to the registry.’

‘I don’t remember his name. The copy of the title’s at home. I’ll call you first thing tomorrow morning. What’s your name again?’

‘Mr Preston, I really need to take care of this matter now. Is there someone you can call at home?’

‘No, I live alone – wait, I mailed him the owner’s manual.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘When he came to pick up the car, I didn’t have the original owner’s manual,’ Preston said. ‘I couldn’t find it. He wanted it and any other documentation I might have, so I told him I’d take a look. He gave me his address and I said I’d mail it to him. I wrote it down in my date book… Here it is. Fifteen Carson Lane in Glen, New Hampshire.’

‘What’s the man’s name?’

‘Daniel Boyle.’

Chapter 59

Banville’s detective at the Massachusetts Registry had already coordinated efforts with New Hampshire’s Department of Motor Vehicles. According to their computer records, Daniel Boyle had sold his van two days ago but hadn’t turned in the plates. There was no information in his registry file about an Aston Martin Lagonda.

New Hampshire DMV was transmitting Boyle’s license picture.

Coming up on the monitor was the driver’s license for Daniel Boyle, a white male, forty-eight years old. Boyle had thick blond hair and a pleasant-looking face with dead green eyes.

Banville hung up and immediately started dialing another number. ‘Boyle had his home number disco

‘Looks like he’s getting ready to move,’ Darby said.

‘He may already be gone. We’re trying to see if he has a cell phone. If he does, and if he’s carrying it with him and it’s turned on, we may be able to track down his location through his cellular signal. I don’t have that kind of equipment here. We’ll have to use someone from the phone company.’

Banville was now on the line with the Glen County sheriff’s office. Darby watched the GPS monitor. They were heading up 95 North at a fast clip. At their current speed, they would make it to Boyle’s address in a little over an hour.

‘The county sheriff, Dick Holloway, left for the day,’ Banville said after he hung up. ‘Dispatcher’s paged him. The woman I talked to knows the area – six or so old homes surrounding a lake. It’s pretty isolated, she said. She doesn’t remember Daniel Boyle but knew his mother, Cassandra. She lived out there for years until she disappeared.’

‘The dispatcher remembered this?’

‘Glen’s a small area, with a tight community. The woman I talked to grew up there. She was surprised to hear Boyle living back home again. She thought the house hadn’t been occupied in years.

‘The dispatcher also told me another interesting tidbit,’ Banville said. ‘Back in the late seventies, Alicia Cross, a neighborhood girl, disappeared. They never found her body. She’s going to have someone check the case to see if Boyle was ever a suspect.’

Darby felt the pieces coming together. ‘How long will it take Glen County to mobilize their SWAT unit?’

‘The SWAT members are from different counties,’ Banville said. ‘Once Holloway makes the call, we’re talking an hour or two just to get them together.’

‘What about sending a patrol car out there to see if Boyle’s home?’

‘I don’t want to run the risk of spooking him. This van is designed to look like a telephone repair truck. We’re less than an hour away. I say we head over to Boyle’s house and see if he’s home. If the Lagonda’s parked in his garage, we’ll call Holloway and ask for backup.’

‘I don’t think we should go with an explosive entry. If Boyle sees a cop on his doorstep, he may decide to go and kill Carol and the other women.’

‘I agree. Washington – he’s the man driving us – I’ll have him dress up as a phone technician. We have a couple of uniforms in here. His face hasn’t been on TV, so Boyle won’t recognize him. If Boyle sees a telephone repairman, he’ll be more inclined to open the door to us. Once he does, we’ll take him down.’

Chapter 60

Daniel Boyle had lived most of his life out of suitcases. His army training had taught him to live only with the bare essentials. He didn’t have much to pack.

The original plan was to leave Sunday, after he finished his business in the basement. That changed early this afternoon when Richard sent him a text message: ‘Remains found in woods. Leave now.’

Boyle saw the breaking news report on NECN. Belham police had discovered a set of remains buried in the woods. The report didn’t mention how the remains were found, or what had led police to the area. There was no video footage of the area, so he didn’t know where, exactly, the remains had been found.

The women who had disappeared during the summer of eighty-four were buried out in those woods, but the police had never found the bodies. They couldn’t find the bodies. The map he had left inside Grady’s house had burned away in the fire.

The police had found a single set of remains. He wondered if they had found the remains of his mother/sister. If they had, if they managed to identify her, then the police would start asking questions, which would lead them here, to New Hampshire.

Rachel must have told the police something. But what could she have possibly said? She didn’t know anything about the Belham woods or how many women he had buried there. Rachel didn’t know his name or where he lived – she certainly didn’t know about where he had buried his mother/sister. What could Rachel have told them? Had she found something in his office? In the filing cabinet? The questions kept turning over and over in his mind as he packed the envelopes and laptop.