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car and drove away from the commotion to find a quiet street.
Twenty minutes later, he was driving through a more upscale neighborhood. No cars sitting on blocks here, no welfare mothers sitting on their porches. This neighborhood had lots of nice lawns and neatly painted houses.
As Boyle examined the homes, he recalled how he wasn’t that far away from where Darby used to live. He wondered if her mother was still living there. That was easy enough to find out.
There, the white house. The door behind the screen door was open. Someone was home.
Boyle drove to the end of the street. He put on a pair of gloves and reached under the seat for the padded mailer. He rolled the window down, turned the car around and tossed the mailer onto the porch steps of the white house.
By the time Boyle reached the highway, he felt relaxed and in control. The plan was in motion. Now all he needed to do was to get himself a FedEx or UPS truck and a body.
Chapter 27
Darby found Banville sitting in a red vinyl booth in the back corner, nursing a cup of coffee. No one else was around him. Taped to the window facing the small parking lot was a poster board holding Carol Cranmore’s picture.
‘I found listening devices inside Carol’s house,’ Darby said after she sat down. ‘I don’t think they’ve been there that long, since none of them are coated in dust.’
‘You said listening devices. How many did you find?’
‘At the moment, four – one in the mother’s bedroom, one in Carol’s room, the other two mounted on top of the kitchen cabinets. I don’t know the make or the model number of the bugs. That information is most likely stamped on the back, and I can’t examine them because each one is mounted by Velcro. There’s no way to rip the bug off without making any noise.’
‘And if we try to do that and he happens to be listening in, he’ll know we found the bug.’
‘That’s the problem. If I try to remove the bugs, he’ll hear us. If I dust it for prints, the fingerprint brush will make noise against the mike and he’ll hear us. And if I did happen to find a print, I’d have to use a tape lift to transfer it.
‘The other problem is the power source,’ Darby said. They run on batteries. He can’t leave them on all day, so there’s a good chance they’re remotely operated. He can turn them on and off to conserve battery power. If I had the device’s make and model, I could do a simple Google search and find the product specs. It would give us an idea of how long the batteries last, if it’s remote-operated, and the transmitting range. Some have a radius as much as half a mile, and almost every one of them can transmit through walls and windows with crystal-clear clarity.’
‘How do you know so much about bugs?’
‘One of the first big cases I worked on was a mob case. Thanks to the feds, I got a crash course in listening devices. Judging by what I saw at the house, I doubt these devices are that sophisticated. They may even be homemade.’
‘Funny you should mention the feds. I got a message this morning from the Boston office. The site profiler here in town wants to talk to me.’
‘What did he want?’
‘I haven’t talked with him yet.’
‘I think our guy took Carol out of the house and put her in the back of a van – only when he opened the doors, he found that Jane Doe wasn’t there. He searched for her, couldn’t find her, and at some point decided he had to leave. But before he did, he went back inside and planted the bugs in strategic locations so he could listen to us as we moved through the rooms. I think it’s safe to say he was listening to us last night. How many people do you have guarding Jane Doe’s room?’
‘At the moment, just one.’
‘Increase it. And make sure they check the ID of every person who comes inside the ICU.’
‘I’m already doing that. The press found out she’s at Mass General. They did a live news feed outside the hospital. It was all over the news.’
‘And Jane Doe?’
‘As of nine this morning, she was still sedated.’
‘I think it would be a good idea if you have someone put together a list of names of every volunteer helping search