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The first envelope contained two sets of false IDs – passports, driver’s licenses, birth certificates and Social Security cards. The last two held ten grand in case, his seed money to help get him started in another city. After that, he could use his laptop to wire money from the private bank he used in the Caymans.
Boyle zipped up the suitcase. He didn’t know regret or sadness. The emotional concepts were as foreign to him as the terrain on the moon. Still, he would miss this house, his childhood home, with its big rooms and privacy, the magnificent view of the lake from the master bedroom. What he would miss most was the basement.
Boyle clicked off the bedroom light. There was only one item left to pack.
He walked into the finished room over the three-car garage. He didn’t turn on the lights; he could see fine by the moonlight coming in through the windows and skylight.
He walked past the walk-in closets still holding his mother’s clothes and knelt on the floor next to the window overlooking the driveway. He peeled back the carpet, removed the loose floorboard and grabbed the well-oiled Mossberg shotgun and shells. He had used it only once, to kill his grandparents.
Boyle glanced out the window, about to stand when he saw someone below him, looking inside his garage.
It was Banville, the detective from Belham.
Boyle froze.
Banville was talking into his jacket. The detective was wearing an earpiece. A surveillance kit. Banville was talking into a vest mike.
They found you, Daniel.
His mother’s voice.
They’re coming to take you away, just like I said they would.
This was a mistake. He had carefully built a trail of evidence that led back to Earl Slavick. The blood, the padded mailers and the navy blue fibers, the pictures he had taken of Carol – everything led to Slavick. Banville shouldn’t be here.
Why hadn’t Richard called him? He was watching Banville.
Had something happened to Richard?
Boyle took out his BlackBerry. He didn’t want to send a text message and wait for an answer. He needed to know. Now. He called Richard’s main number.
The phone kept ringing and ringing. Richard’s voice mail picked up. Boyle left a message. ‘Banville’s at my house. Where are you?’
A telephone van pulled into his driveway. The dim interior light clicked on. Sitting behind the wheel was a man dressed in a brown jacket, a Verizon patch stitched on his breast pocket. He was studying a clipboard.
So this was how they were going to do it. Have a telephone repairman ring the doorbell and when he opened the door they’d take him down. They wouldn’t risk breaking in because they were worried he would kill Carol.
There’s no escape for you, Daniel.
He wouldn’t answer the door. They’d go away if he didn’t answer the door. He would wait until they left and then he would drive away.
It’s too late. They know you’re home. The lights are on downstairs and in the garage – Banville’s seen the boxes you left by the car. The police know you’re getting ready to leave. If you don’t come out, they’ll come in.
He could sneak through the back door and head into the woods. He had the keys for the shed. The Gator was in there. Head out on one of the trails to the main road, then find a car and hotwire it – no, the Gator would be too noisy. He’d have to follow one of the trails on foot.
Banville brought other cops with him, Daniel. They have the house surrounded. You won’t get far.
Boyle looked around the dark woods, wondering how many SWAT officers were hiding out there.
It’s over, Da
‘No.’
They’re going to lock you up on death row, in a place darker than the cellar.
‘Shut up.’
They’ll probably extradite you to a place where they have the death penalty. They’ll strap you down to a table and give you the needle and the last voice you’ll ever hear before you suffocate to death will be mine, Da
He wouldn’t let them take him in. He wasn’t going to die alone in some goddamn cage. He had to get to his car or the surveillance van. He knew a spot where he could dump it, run and then hide out for awhile until he could figure out a plan to disappear again.
The driver stepped out of the van. Banville had drawn his sidearm.
Boyle threaded four Super Magnum shells into the shotgun. He dumped the rest of the shells in his pocket and headed for the stairs.
Chapter 61
Darby watched the front of the house through the periscope.
On the way here, she had imagined finding a rundown house, some brooding structure with a sunken-in porch and broken windows. The house she was looking at resembled the ones she saw in upscale Weston, Massachusetts – a sprawling antique Colonial of massive rooms full of expensive furniture and the latest in electronic trinkets. Landscape lights lit up a nice brick walkway, the shrubs surrounding it neatly manicured.
An Aston Martin Lagonda, the front hood and sides marred with pockets of rust, was parked in the garage. Banville had radioed the news over her earpiece. Darby was rigged with the same surveillance kit used by the Secret Service – an earpiece and lapel mike attached to a small black box clipped to her belt.
Darby wanted to call for backup, but Banville didn’t want to wait. Boxes were stacked next to the car; Boyle was about to move. Mobilizing the New Hampshire SWAT unit would take too long, and he had to consider the possibility that Carol and the other women might be somewhere in the house, alive. They needed to take Boyle down now.
Someone was home. A single light was on downstairs, coming from the foyer, and Darby was sure she had spotted movement in the upstairs bedroom before the light turned off.
Glen Washington, the detective dressed in the brown coat and pants, rang the doorbell.
A phone was ringing. Not one of the wall phones. It was Coop’s cell. She answered it.
‘We’ve found Traveler,’ Evan Ma
‘You’re sure it’s him?’
‘I’m positive. The man HRT took down is the man who attacked me at the garage. He’s got the same tattoo on his forearm as John Smith. Do you remember what I told you about the mailer? The one with Carol Cranmore’s clothes?’
Darby went back to watching the house. ‘You said they didn’t make those mailers anymore. The company went bankrupt.’
‘I’m looking at a whole shelf-full of those mailers right now. They’re a match. This person also has an old IBM electric typewriter, a computer, a photo printer and paper. I won’t know for sure about the paper and the printer until I get them back to the lab. We also found several different types of listening devices.’
‘Where’s Carol?’
Washington rang the doorbell again.
‘We’re searching for her right now,’ Evan said. ‘I’m sorry about what happened earlier. I didn’t want it to go down that way, but it wasn’t my decision.’
The door to the front house opened.
Washington’s voice came over her earpiece: ‘Good evening, sir. I’m with the telephone –’
A shotgun blast blew him off the front steps.
Chapter 62
Darby dropped the phone and watched as Banville brought up his handgun and fired two shots inside the doorway – BOOM and the shotgun blast splintered apart the door frame, chunks of wood raining down on Banville’s back.
Darby scooped the cell phone from the floor. Evan was saying ‘Darby? What’s going on? You there?’ She hung up and dialed 911 to request medical assistance and backup.
Looking back through the periscope, she caught a fast glimpse of Banville heading inside the front door. Washington lay on his back, his hand scrabbling at his chest.