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“He wrote, you cut him a check?” Bobby was still quizzing, rapidly flipping sheets.

“He wrote, we liquidated funds, rebalanced the portfolio, and then cut him a check, yes.”

“So these checks were never collected in person? You have a mailing address?” This was too good to be true. Which it was, as he spotted on the last page. “Wait a minute, you wrote the check to a bank in
Switzerland
?”

Barron shrugged one shoulder. “As Mrs. Eola mentioned, Christopher spent some time overseas. Obviously, he set up a bank account while he was there.”

Bobby arched a brow. Normal nineteen-year-olds did not open Swiss bank accounts. Not even the spoiled sons of Boston’s upper class. It felt like a preemptive strike to him. The act of a man who was already assuming he might need to hide assets sometime soon, perhaps for a life on the run. Made Bobby wonder what all Christopher had been doing during his “grand tour” of Europe.

Things were wrapping up now. Eola Sr. had his arm belatedly around his wife as she blotted at her smeared mascara. He whispered something in her ear. She gave him a tremulous smile.

“How is your daughter, Mrs. Eola?” Bobby asked softly.

The woman surprised him with her flinty answer: “She’s a lesbian, Detective. What else would you expect?”

Mrs. Eola rose. Her anger had invigorated her. Eola Sr. capitalized on the moment, ushering her out the door. The lawyers and secretary filed out behind them, one massively overpriced brigade, heading for the elevators.

In the lull that followed, Sinkus spoke first.

“So,” he asked D.D., “does this mean I can go to Switzerland?”

T
HE EMERGENCY TASK
-force meeting started late, given the overrun of the Eola interview. The majority of the detectives, however, had arrived as scheduled, meaning that by the time Bobby, D.D., and Sinkus appeared, the pizza boxes were empty, the soda consumed, and not even a breadstick remained.

Bobby eyed the lone survivor—a plastic cup of red pepper flakes. He thought better of it.

“All right, all right,” D.D. was saying briskly. “Gather ’round, listen up. For a change, we have developments to discuss, so let’s get cracking.”

Detective Rock yawned, then tried to cover the motion by fanning his piles of paper. “Heard we got a note,” he said. “Real deal or wannabe wacko?”

“Uncertain. We announced Annabelle Granger’s name in the beginning, but never released details on the locket or the other personal items. So our anonymous author either has inside information or is the real deal.”

That perked them up. D.D.’s next announcement, however, elicited collective groans. “I have copies of the note to distribute. But not yet. First things first: our nightly debrief. Let’s figure out what we know now, then we’ll consider how this little community outreach”—D.D. waved the stack of photocopies—“fits into the puzzle. Sinkus, you go first.”

Sinkus didn’t mind. As the go-to guy for Christopher Eola, he was humming with excitement. He recapped the interview with Eola’s parents, what they now knew of Eola’s sexual activities and how his former nanny matched a general description of Annabelle Granger, one of the known targeted victims. Even more interesting, Eola had access to vast financial resources. Between his Swiss bank account and multimillion-dollar trust fund, it was highly probable that he could maintain a lifestyle on the run, below the radar, etc., etc. In fact, just about anything was possible, so they’d have to open up their way of thinking.

Next steps: Put in a call to the State Department to track Eola’s passport; outreach to Interpol in case they either had Eola in their sights or a case involving an UNSUB of similar MO; and finally, determine due process for tracing funds transferred out of a Swiss bank account or, better yet, freeze the assets altogether.

“Declare Eola a terrorist,” McGahagin stated.

At his comment a few guys laughed.

“I’m not kidding,” the sergeant insisted. “Homicide means nothing to the Swiss government—or anyone else, for that matter. On the other hand, write up a report that you have reason to believe Eola buried radioactive material in the middle of a major metro area, and you’ll have his assets frozen lickety-split. Aren’t bodies radioactive? Who in this room remembers anything from science class?”

They looked at one another blankly. Apparently, none of them watched The Discovery Channel.

“Well,” McGahagin said stubbornly, “I think it’s true. And I’m telling you, it will work.”

Sinkus shrugged, made a note. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d finessed a square peg into a round hole. That’s why laws were written; so enterprising homicide detectives could figure out a way around them.

Sinkus was also in charge of tracking down Adam Schmidt, the AN from Boston State Mental who’d been fired for sleeping with a patient. He covered Schmidt next.

“Have finally located Jill Cochran, former head nurse,” Sinkus reported. “I’m told she has most of the records, etc., from the closed institute. She’s cataloging them, archiving them, I don’t know. Doing whatever it is you do to insane-asylum paperwork. I’m meeting with her in the morning to follow up on Mr. Schmidt.”

“Basic background check on Schmidt?” D.D. inquired.

“Nothing came up. So either Adam’s been a very good boy since his Boston State Mental days, or he’s been much smarter about not getting caught. My spidey sense is not tingly, however. I like Eola better.”

D.D. merely gave him a look.

Sinkus threw up his hands in defense. “I know, I know, a good investigator leaves no stone unturned. I’m turning, I’m turning, I’m turning.”

Sinkus, apparently, was a little punchy from lack of sleep. He sat down. Detective Tony Rock took over the hot seat, reporting on the latest activity on the Crime Stoppers hotline.

“What can I tell you?” the gravelly voiced detective rumbled, looking exhausted, sounding exhausted, and no doubt feeling as good as he looked and sounded. “We’re averaging thirty-five calls an hour, most of which fall into three basic categories: a little bit crazy, a lot crazy, and too sad for words. The a little and a lot crazy categories are about what you’d expect—aliens did it; men in white suits; if you really want to be safe in this world, you need to wear tin foil on your head.

“The too sad for words, well, they’re too sad for words. Parents. Grandparents. Siblings. All with missing family members. We got a woman yesterday who’s seventy-five. Her younger sister has been missing since 1942. She heard the remains were skeletal, thought she might get lucky. When I told her we didn’t believe the remains were that old, she started to cry. She’s spent sixty-five years waiting for her baby sister to come home. Tells me she can’t stop now; she made her parents a promise. Life is just plain shitty sometimes.”

Rock squeezed the bridge of his nose, blinked, forged on. “So, I got a list of seventeen missing females, all of whom vanished between 1970 and 1990. Some of these girls are local. One’s as far away as California. I got as much information from the families as possible for identification purposes. Including jewelry, clothing, dental work, bone fractures, and/or favorite toys—you know, in case we can match anything against the ‘personal tokens’ attached to each of the remains. I’m passing the info along to Christie Callahan. Otherwise, that’s it for me.”

He took a seat, the air seeming to leave his body until he collapsed, more than sat, in the folding metal chair. The man did not look good, and they lost a moment, staring at him and wondering who would be the first to say something.

“What?” he barked.

“You sure—” D.D. began.

“Can’t fix my mom,” Rock shot back. “Might as well find the fucker who murdered six girls.”

There wasn’t much anyone could add to that, so they moved on.

“All right,” D.D. declared briskly, “we got one prime suspect of above-average intelligence and financial resources, one still-worth-looking-at suspect who was a former employee, and a list of seventeen missing girls from the Crime Stoppers hotline. Plus, there may be a link to an abduction two years before any of these six girls disappeared. Who else wants to join the show? Jerry?”

Sergeant McGahagin had been in charge of culling unsolved BPD missing-persons cases involving female minors for the past thirty years. His team had developed a list of twenty-six cases from Massachusetts. They had now started on the broader New England area.

He was skimming the copy of Tony Rock’s report from Crime Stoppers, identifying five overlapping names between the two lists.

“What I need next,” McGahagin stated heavily, “is a victimology report. If Callahan can give me a physical description of the remains, there’s a chance I can make a match with an unsolved case. Then we could go to work on making a positive ID, which in turn would give us a time line for the mass grave. Bada bing, bada boom.”

McGahagin stared at D.D. expectantly.

She returned his look levelly. “What the hell do you want me to do, Jerry? Pull six victimology reports out of my ass?”

“Come on, it’s been four fucking days, D.D. How can we still know nothing about the six remains?”

“It’s called wet mummification,” D.D. shot back hotly. “And nobody’s ever dealt with it in New England before.”

“Then with all due respect to Christie, call someone who has.”

“She did.”

“What?” McGahagin appeared startled. Investigators made requests for resources, experts, forensic tests all the time. That didn’t mean the powers-that-be granted them. “Christie is getting reinforcements?”

“Tomorrow, I’m told. Some hotshot from Ireland who specializes in this shit and is curious to see a ‘modern’ example. The DA sprung for the dough—apparently the Crime Stoppers hotline isn’t the only one going insane. The entire city is flooding the governor’s office with hysterical complaints that a serial killer is loose and going to murder their daughters next. Which reminds me, the governor would like us to solve this case, mmm, about five minutes ago.”

D.D. rolled her eyes. The rest of the detectives managed a few chuckles.

“Seriously, folks,” D.D. resumed speaking. “Christie is trying. We’re all trying. She believes she needs one more week. So we can sit on our hands and whine, or, here’s a thought, conduct some good old-fashioned police work.”

She returned her attention to McGahagin. “You said you had a list of twenty-six missing females from Massachusetts? Twenty-six seems like a lot to me.”

“As Tony said, it’s a shitty world.”

“You graph ’em? Do we have, say, a cluster of activity around certain dates?”

“Seventy-nine to eighty-two was not a good time to be a young female in Boston.”

“How bad?”

“Nine cases in four years, all unsolved.”

“Age parameters?”

“Zero to eighteen.”

D.D. considered him. “And if you narrow the age range to, say, between five years old and fifteen?”

“Drops it to seven.”

“Names?”

He did the honors, including Dori Petracelli.

“Locations?”

“All over. Southie, Lawrence, Salem, Waltham, Woburn, Marlborough, Peabody. If we make the assumption same subject was responsible for six of the seven cases…”

“By all means, let’s assume away.”

“You’re talking someone with a vehicle, for one,” McGahagin considered. “Someone who knows his way around the state, is comfortable blending in in a lot of different places. Maybe a utility worker, a repair person. Someone smart. Organized. Ritualized in his approach.”

“Time line fits Eola,” Sinkus commented. “Released in ’78, doesn’t have anything better to do…”

“Except,” D.D. murmured, “incidents wind down in ’82. Eola wouldn’t have any reason to stop. Eola could theoretically go on forever. Which, frankly, would be true of any perpetrator. Predators don’t magically just wake up one day and repent. Something happened. Other events, influences, must have interceded. Which brings us to”—her gaze shifted, found Bobby—“Russell Granger.”

Bobby sighed, tilted back his chair. He’d been so busy since returning to HQ he hadn’t had time to piss, let alone prepare notes. He had all eyes on him now, the city guys sizing up the state game. He did the best he could off the top of his head.

“According to police reports, Russell Granger first reported a Peeping Tom at his Arlington home in August of 1982. This set in motion a chain of events that culminated with Russell packing up his family and disappearing two months later, ostensibly to protect his seven-year-old daughter, Annabelle. So at first blush, we have a targeted victim—Annabelle Granger—and her poor, beleaguered father. Except…”

“Except,” D.D. agreed.

Bobby held up a finger. “One,” he said briskly, “Catherine Gagnon, who was abducted in 1980, recognized a photo of Russell Granger. Except Gagnon knew him as an FBI agent who interviewed her twice in the hospital after her rescue. That would be November of 1980, almost two years
before
the Peeping Tom report Russell Granger would file in Arlington.”

Rock had appeared to be nodding off at the table. This information, however, brought his head snapping up. “Huh?”

“Our thoughts exactly. Two, during his visits with Catherine, Granger produced a composite sketch for her consideration. Catherine said the black-and-white didn’t match her attacker. Granger tried to insist it did, got upset when she stayed firm, said it didn’t. So, was the sketch an attempt on the part of Granger to distract Catherine, or did he honestly have a suspect in mind as her rapist? I have my opinion.” He jerked his head toward D.D. “The sergeant has hers.

“Which brings us to three: There’s no record of Russell Granger. No driver’s license. No Social. Not for him, not for Annabelle’s mother, Leslie Ann Granger. According to real estate records, the Grangers’ home on Oak Street was owned by Gregory Badington of Philadelphia from ’75 to ’86. I’m guessing the Grangers rented the property, except Gregory passed away three years ago, and his wife, who sounded about one hundred and fifty on the phone, had no idea what I was talking about. So one dead end there.

“Yesterday, I started a routine check on financial records, got nowhere. Started a search for the Granger family furniture, ostensibly put into storage. Nada. It’s as if the family itself never existed. Except, of course, for the police reports Granger filed.”

“You think Russell Granger targeted his own daughter?” Rock said in confusion. “Made the whole thing up?”

Bobby shrugged. “Me, no. Sergeant Warren, on the other hand…”

“It would provide the perfect cover,” D.D. said flatly. “Maybe by ’82, Russell thought police would start noticing the sudden uptick in missing females. By positioning himself as a victim, he figured he could avoid being viewed as a suspect. Plus, it sets up the perfect cover for his own departure come October. Think about it. Seven missing girls between 1979 and 1982, one of them a known acquaintance of Russell Granger’s—his daughter’s best friend—yet not a single detective tries to track him down and question him. Why? Because he’s already established himself as a protective father. It’s perfect.”