The Missing

Chapter 71

Darby's eyes blinked open to bright lines of sunlight glowing around the drawn shades.

Her mother wasn't in the room. Seeing the empty side of the bed caused a flutter of panic. Darby threw back the sheets, dressed quickly and headed downstairs. It was three in the afternoon.

Coop was sitting at the island counter, drinking coffee and watching the small TV. He caught the expression on her face and knew at once what she was thinking.

'Your mother wanted some fresh air, so the nurse put her in the wheelchair and took her around the block,' Coop said. 'Can I get you something to eat? I make a mean bowl of cereal.'

'I'll just stick to coffee, thanks. What are they saying on the news?'

'NECN is about to do another report after the commercials. Grab a seat and I'll get you some coffee.'

The Boston media had jumped on the story hard and fast. During the ten hours she had slept, reporters had uncovered the connection between Daniel Boyle and Special Agent Evan Manning.

Evan Manning's real name was Richard Fowler. In 1953, Janice Fowler, suffering from what would nowadays be called a severe case of postpartum depression, hanged herself while in the care of a state-run psychiatric facility. Hospital records indicated she had been committed shortly after her husband, Trenton Fowler, caught her trying to drown their only son in the bathtub. Janice told her husband she had woken up from her afternoon nap and found Richard standing next to her bed, holding a large kitchen knife. Richard Fowler was five years old.

Seven years later, when Richard was twelve, his father was running his combine through his corn crop when the auger got clogged. Trenton Fowler had left the machine running. He stood on the platform above the auger, trying to clear away the obstruction when he slipped on the fine, silky blanket of corn dust on the platform and fell into the auger. Richard told police he didn't know how to shut off the combine.

Richard's aunt, Ophelia Boyle, took in the young, bright orphan and moved him to her daughter's newly built home in Glen, New Hampshire. Ophelia's daughter, Cassandra, was expecting her first child. Cassandra was twenty-three and unmarried. She had refused to give the baby up for adoption.

In 1963, single, unwed mothers were scandalous affairs that could ruin a family's reputation – especially in the affluent social and business circles in which Ophelia and her husband, Augustus, frequently traveled. They moved Cassandra, their only child, to Glen, New Hampshire, far away from Belham, and provided her with a sizable monthly allowance to raise her child, a boy she named Daniel. The boy's father, Cassandra told friends and neighbors, had died in a car accident.

Interviews with former neighbors, many of whom were still living in the area, described Daniel as the classic loner – moody and withdrawn. They had a difficult time understanding the close relationship between Daniel and his good-looking, charismatic older cousin, Richard.

Alicia Cross lived less than two miles away from the Boyle home. She was twelve years old when she vanished during the summer of 1978. By this time, Richard Fowler had changed his name to Evan Manning to start a new life. It seemed the only person who knew Richard had changed his name was his cousin, Daniel Boyle.

Evan, a recent graduate of Harvard Law School, was living in Virginia when Alicia Cross disappeared. He had been accepted into the FBI's training program. Daniel Boyle was fifteen and living at home. The girl's body was never found, and police never caught her killer.

Two years later, after graduating from an exclusive military school in Vermont, Daniel Boyle joined the army and became a trained marksman. His goal was to become a Green Beret. He was discharged from the army, at age twenty-two, for aggravated assault. A local society woman claimed Boyle had tried to strangle her.

When Boyle left the army, there was no reason for him to work. He had access to his sizable trust fund. He wandered around the country for a year, doing odd jobs as a carpenter, and then finally returned home in the summer of 1983 to find that his mother's closets had been cleaned out. Daniel called his grandmother and asked about his mother's whereabouts. Ophelia Boyle didn't know. She filed a missing person's report, but it was later dismissed when police discovered Cassandra Boyle's passport was missing. The family never heard from Cassandra again.

Ophelia paid for Evan's private schooling and later, college and Harvard Law School. Ophelia had even purchased the farm and kept it running profitably until her own death, in the winter of 1991, when she and her husband were shot to death during a home invasion. Police thought it might be an inside job and went to question Daniel Boyle. Boyle wasn't home that weekend. He was in Virginia visiting his cousin, who was now working in the FBI's newly formed Behavioral Science Unit. Evan Manning had corroborated Boyle's alibi.

With his grandparents dead and his mother missing, Daniel Boyle became the sole beneficiary of an estate worth more than ten million dollars.

Early this morning, police had unlocked a filing cabinet in Boyle's basement and discovered pictures of the women who had disappeared in Massachusetts during the summer of 1984, the time period the local media called the Summer of Fear. The pictures indicated that Boyle had kept them in the basement of his home.

Not much was known about the time after Belham, when Boyle traveled the country. At some point, he returned east and, in the basement of his cousin's farmhouse, constructed a maze of locked rooms that one investigator described as 'the most horrific thing I have ever seen in my thirty years in law enforcement.' A specialized unit made up of forensic archeologists had been called in to search for unmarked graves in the extensive woods behind Boyle's home.

Carol Cranmore was being treated at an undisclosed facility. In a taped interview, Dianne Cranmore discussed her daughter's condition: 'Carol's still in shock right now. She's got a long road ahead of her, but we're going to get through this together. My baby girl's alive, and that's what matters. She wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for Darby McCormick of the Boston Crime Lab. She didn't give up hope.'

The news reporter mentioned that the mothers of the majority of victims weren't so lucky. Next they played an interview with Helena Cruz.

'I've been wondering what happened to Melanie my whole life,' Helena Cruz said. 'I've carried all these questions about what happened to my daughter and now, more than twenty years later, I've come to find out that the man responsible for killing her wasn't Victor Grady but a federal agent. The FBI won't answer my questions. Someone there knows what happened to my daughter, I'm sure of it.'

Darby was staring at Helena Cruz's face when the house phone rang. It was Banville.

'Have you seen the news?' he asked.

'I'm watching NECN right now. They're talking about the connection between Evan and Boyle.'

'It gets even better. The mother, Cassandra Boyle? Turns out she was Boyle's sister.'

'Jesus.' That certainly explained why the family had shipped her all the way up to the boondocks of New Hampshire. 'Did Boyle know?'

'I have no idea. As for the mother packing up and running off, everything I've seen so far looks legit, but who knows? I also pulled the case file on the grandparents' deaths. No suspects or witnesses. Someone came in, shot them while they were sleeping and cleaned them out.'

'And Manning provided the alibi,' Darby said.

'Yes. I also got a look at Manning's BlackBerry. There were several text messages on it that confirm that he helped Boyle with the bombing. And that number Boyle called? It belongs to Manning. Boyle must have been calling to warn him.'

'What's the status on Boyle's laptop? You have any luck breaking the passwords?'

'We did. He did all his banking online. We can't access a lot of the information – he has a private bank in the Caymans – but what we did manage to find were the pictures. Boyle stored the pictures of his most recent victims on his computer. We also found some maps of his burial locations. They span the country.'

'What about Melanie Cruz? Did you find anything out about her or the other women who disappeared in eighty-four?'

'We haven't found a map for Belham. But I know Melanie Cruz is dead. We found Polaroids in Boyle's filing cabinet. If you want to see them, swing by the station. I'll be here all day.'

'What's in the pictures?'

'It's best if I show them to you in person.'