The Missing

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 Manning said. 'He was living in New Hampshire. Hostage Rescue had to take him down. That's all I can tell you.'

'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.