they were watching Grady’s every move, seeing if they could find something before Grady packed up and moved away.’
Sheila’s voice was trembling. ‘That… monster came into my house, for my daughter, and the police were just going to let him go.’
Darby knew what was coming, felt it speeding toward her like a train.
‘Your father… He had an extra gun – a throw-away piece, he called it. He kept it downstairs in his workbench. I knew how to use it. I knew it couldn’t be traced. When Grady left for work, I went to his house. It was raining out. The back door underneath his porch was unlocked. I went inside. He had been packing. There were boxes everywhere.’
Darby felt cold beneath her clothes.
‘I was hiding inside his bedroom closet when he came home,’ her mother said. ‘I waited for him to come upstairs and go to sleep. The TV was on, I could hear it. I figured he must have fallen asleep in front of the TV, so I went downstairs. He was passed out in a chair. He had been drinking. There was a bottle on the floor. I turned up the TV and walked over to the chair. He didn’t move or wake up, even when I pressed the gun against his forehead.’
Chapter 76
In her mind’s eye Darby saw Victor Grady’s house, the one from her nightmares – the squalid rooms full of hand-me-down furniture and garbage overflowing with beer bottles and fast food. She imagined him coming home from work and ripping clothes from bureau drawers, stuffing them into boxes, garbage bags, whatever he could find. He had to get out of town and get moving because the police were trying to frame him for this business of these missing women.
And here came Sheila creeping down the stairs. Sheila moving quickly across the carpet to where Victor Grady lay passed out in a chair. Her mother, bargain hunter and coupon clipper, pressed the muzzle of the .22 to his forehead and pulled the trigger.
‘The gunshot didn’t make a lot of noise,’ Sheila said. ‘I was putting the gun in Grady’s hands when I heard footsteps racing up the basement steps. It was that man, Daniel Boyle. I thought he was with the police, and I was right. He had a badge. It said he was a federal agent.’
Darby could see the way it unfolded – the gunshot muffled by the rain and the TV, but Boyle had heard it because he was inside the house, in the basement, planting the evidence. He ran up the stairs thinking Grady had killed himself and found Sheila standing over the body.
‘When I saw that badge, I broke down,’ Sheila said. ‘All I could think about was you – what would happen to you if I went to jail. I begged him to let me go. He didn’t say anything. He just stood there, staring at me. He didn’t seem upset or surprised, just… blank.’
Darby wondered why he hadn’t killed her mother or, worse, abducted her. No, abducting her would look too suspicious; so would killing her. Boyle was there to plant evidence to frame Grady and now Grady was dead. Boyle had to think of something. Quick.
Then Darby remembered what Evan had told her about how he had been watching Grady’s house. Evan knew Boyle was inside the house, planting evidence. Evan had seen the fire.
‘He told me to go home and wait for him to call,’ her mother said. ‘He said if I told anyone, I would go to jail. He told me to go through the basement door. I didn’t know about the fire until the next morning.
‘He called me two days later and told me that he had taken care of Grady. But the fire had burned away most of the evidence. He said he had an idea, something that would keep me out of jail. He said he found evidence, but I had to get it because he was busy working the case. The evidence was buried out in the woods. He gave me directions and told me to get it and bring it home. Then he was going to come by and get it. He wouldn’t say what it was. He kept saying not to worry. He understood why I had killed Grady.
‘I went out early the next morning with my gardening gloves and a hand trowel. I found a brown paper bag full of clothes – women’s clothes – and a picture.’
‘The one I