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 just showed you.'
Shelia nodded. Her lips were pressed together.
'Do you know her name?' Darby asked.
'He never told me.'
'What else did you find?'
There was something lurking behind her mother's eyes that made Darby want to run away.
'Was it -' Darby's voice cracked around the words. She swallowed. 'Did you find Melanie?'
'Yes.'
Darby felt a hot knife slice its way through her stomach.
'I saw her face,' Sheila said, the words coming out raw, as if wrapped in barbed wire. The bag had been buried over Mel's face.'
Darby opened her mouth but no words came out.
Sheila broke down. 'I didn't know what to do, so I put the dirt back in the hole and went home. He called me early the next morning and I immediately told him about Melanie. He said he knew and told me to go out to the mailbox. There was a videotape in there and a sealed envelope. He told me to play the videotape and tell him what was on it. It was me. Digging out in the woods.'
Darby's head was spinning, everything around her a blur of colors.
'The pictures inside the envelope – they were pictures of you at your aunt and uncle's house. He said if I told anyone what happened, if I told anyone what I found out in the woods, he said he'd mail the videotape to the FBI. And then, after I was in jail, he said he would kill you. And I believed him. He had already tried to take you away from me once, I couldn't… I wasn't going to risk that.'
Sheila pressed a fist against her mouth. 'He kept sending pictures to remind me – pictures of you at school, pictures of you playing with your friends. He even put them in Christmas cards. And then he started sending me clothes.'
'Clothes? My clothes?'
'No, they were… they belonged to other people. Other women. They came in these packages, along with pictures, like this one.' Sheila gripped the sheet of paper in her fist. 'I didn't know what to do.'
'Mom, these clothes, where are they?'
'I thought maybe, just maybe, I could do something with them. Maybe mail them anonymously to the police. I don't know. I don't know what I was thinking, but I hung on to them for a long time.'
'Did you tell anyone? Maybe a lawyer?'
Sheila shook her head, cheeks wet from the tears. 'I kept thinking what would happen if I came forward. What if I told the police what I did? About how I kept the clothes of all these missing women and said nothing? If I did that, people would have thought you helped me hide the evidence. It didn't matter if it wasn't true. People would think you had something to do with it – look what happened to you when you worked on that rapist case. Your partner planted the evidence, and they thought you helped him. If I came forward, it would have ruined your career.'
It took a great effort for Darby to speak. 'What did you do with the clothes?'
'They were in the boxes you donated to the church.'
'And the pictures?'
'I threw them away.'
Darby buried her face in her hands. She saw the pictures of all the missing women, dozens and dozens of them lined up on the bulletin boards at the police station. If her mother had only come forward, then those women would be alive. That knowledge was inside her now, planted like a seed, its roots sinking deeper and deeper.
'I didn't know what to do,' Sheila said. 'I couldn't change what I did. I thought about going to the police hundreds of times, but all I could think about was you – what he would do to you if I went away. You were more important.'
'This place where you found Mel,' Darby said.
'I don't know.'
'Think about it.'
'I've been thinking about it all day, ever since I saw that man's face on TV. I don't remember. It was over twenty years ago.'
'Do you remember where you parked the car that morning? How far you went in?'
'No.'
'What about the directions Boyle gave you? Did you save them?'
'I threw them away.' Sheila was sobbing, the words sounding as though they were being ripped out of her. 'Don't hate me. I can't die knowing you hate me.'
Darby thought about Mel lying somewhere in the woods, buried beneath the ground, alone, where no one would ever find her.
'Can you forgive me?' Sheila said. 'Can you at least do that?'
