leave. Vamosi had already pulled out. Darby followed. Her arms were shaking with anger, her eyes hot and wet.
She thought about Rachel Swanson. Rachel, with her confident smile and hard-won knowledge, had survived unbelievable pain and cruelty for years. Rachel, with her emaciated body full of scars and sores and broken bones, had kept a list of her fellow prisoners and planned for the moment of her escape. Now she was dead.
And what about Carol? Was she still alive? Or was she already buried in an unmarked grave? Buried like Mel where no one would ever find her?
On the other side of these woods was Route 86. Twenty-four years ago, she had seen a woman being strangled. She didn’t know the woman’s name or what had happened to her. But Victor Grady did. The man from the woods had come for her and Darby had survived. If she survived that, she could survive anything.
Darby knew what she had to do. When she saw the exit, she hit the gas and bounced up the ramp.
Chapter 56
Darby parked the crime scene vehicle in the delivery area behind a liquor store. Safe from prying eyes, she called Pappy back on his cell and quickly filled him in on what had happened. She asked him to repeat the information on the paint chip and wrote everything down in her pocket notebook.
‘I meant to ask you this earlier: Who sent the paint sample to the Germans?’
‘I did,’ Pappy said. ‘I sent them a sample in case the feds weren’t able to identify it. Plus, the Germans said they would look at it right away.’
‘So as far as the feds are concerned, the paint chip wasn’t identified.’
‘As far as I know. My contact at the federal lab sent me an email and said he struck out.’
Evan Manning had told her the same thing.
‘Darby, if the feds find me, I’ll have to turn over what I have.’
‘Which is why you need to go someplace for the day.’
‘Well, I was thinking of heading over to the MIT library for awhile.’
‘Good. Stay there – and stay off your phone unless I call.’
Next she called Banville on his cell.
‘I take it you heard the good news,’ she said.
‘Our federal friends are at the station right now, going through my office files and computer.’
‘What are they looking for?’
‘Beats the hell out of me. They keep throwing out Title Eighteen as the reason for taking over the investigation.’
‘Title Eighteen,’ Darby said. ‘Doesn’t that have something to do with the Patriot Act?’
‘You’ve got it. It basically gives the FBI domestic investigative powers in cases involving terrorism. I don’t know anything more than that. My guess is, by the way they’re racing through here, we’ve stumbled across something potentially embarrassing and now they’re here to sweep it under the rug. When it comes to burying secrets, nobody does it better than our government – especially this administration.’
‘I found an entire set of –’
‘We shouldn’t be talking over a cellular phone. Call me back in five minutes at this number.’
Darby wrote it down and headed out to find a pay phone. There was one just outside the front doors of the liquor store. She went inside to get change and, armed with quarters, called Banville. She kept an eye on the parking lot, paranoid that Agent Vamosi was going to pull up at any moment.
Banville picked up right away. Behind him was the steady drone of traffic.
‘Are they monitoring our phone calls?’ Darby asked.
‘When it comes to the feds, I don’t take any chances. Tell me what you found.’
‘We found a skull. I had it partially dug up when the feds showed up and took over. Coop told me the feds got a hit on CODIS.’
‘I wonder if that’s what triggered all of this.’
‘CODIS will give them a name and a last known address, but I have a way we can find Carol Cran-more.’ Darby filled him in on the paint chip.
‘Aston Martin Lagonda,’ Banville said. ‘That’s a very select market.’
‘The cars brought into the U.S. should be easy to track down since they had such a small production run. We’ll concentrate our search on anyone living in or around New England. Traveler isn’t flying into Boston, he’s rooted somewhere close. What he does with these women requires privacy. We’ll look for owners with isolated houses.’
‘Manning told us they couldn’t identify the paint chip.’
‘So?’
‘Maybe they were lying to us,’ Banville said. ‘Maybe they’re already trying to track Traveler down through the paint chip.’
‘Or maybe Manning