Hide (Detective D.D. Warren, #2)(22)

"What?" Detective Sinkus asked.

"I'll work on her," D.D. said. She switched gears to Detective Rock, who was handling the Crime Stoppers reports. "Tell us the truth: Anyone confess yet?"

"Only about three dozen. Bad news, most of 'em have recently gone off their meds." Rock picked up an impressive stack of papers and started passing it around. Rock had been on the Boston PD roughly forever. Even Bobby had heard stories of the veteran detective's legendary abilities to zoom straight from hideous crime A to random bit of evidence B to evil perpetrator C. Tonight, however, the detective's hearty boom carried a forced undercurrent. His buzz-cut black hair seemed to have picked up extra highlights of gray, while shadows had gathered beneath his eyes. Given his mother's rapidly deteriorating health, working a massive investigation had to be difficult. Still, he was getting things done.

"You only have to pay attention to the top sheet," Rock was explaining. "The detailed logs are just for those of you with time to kill."

That elicited a few tired chuckles.

"So, we're averaging a call every few minutes, and that's before the media went ballistic tonight. Kind of sad about the leak." He looked at D.D. as if she might comment.

She merely shook her head. "Don't know how it happened, Tony. Don't have time or energy to care. Frankly, I'm impressed we made it as long as we did."

Rock shrugged philosophically at that. Fifty-six hours under the radar had been a minor miracle. "Well, before the leak, we had a pretty easy time eliminating the whackos. We'd just ask if they buried the remains together or separately. Once they went into elaborate descriptions of the grave site, we could merrily cross them off our list. So yeah, there's been a lot of calls, but it's been pretty smooth sailing. Don't know if you'll find me saying that tomorrow."

"Any good leads?" D.D. pressed.

"Couple. Got a call from a man who claimed to be an attendant nurse at Boston State Mental in the mid-seventies. Said one of the patients at that time was the son of a very wealthy family in Boston. They didn't want anyone to know the kid was there, never paid him a visit. Rumor mill was that the son had done something 'inappropriate' with his little sister. This was the family's way of dealing with it. Patient's name was Christopher Eola. We're running it now, but can't find a current address or driver's license for him. We're working on tracking down the family"

D.D. raised a brow. "Better than I expected," she said. "Gives us at least one person to dangle in front of the press."

"Given the location," Rock said dryly, "I thought we'd have a longer list of crazies to track down. Then again, the night's young."

He took a deep breath, scrubbed at his gray-stubbled cheeks. "And, as you'd expect with these types of cases, we've had some outreach from families with missing kids. I have a list." He held it up for Sergeant McGahagin. "Some of these folks are outta state, so I guess we're getting started on that wider survey you were talking about. And"—he skimmed down the names McGahagin had reported—"I see three matches already: Atkins, Gomez, Petracelli."

D.D.'s expression didn't change. Bobby thought it interesting she hadn't volunteered any details from her conversation with Annabelle Granger yet, including the mention of Dori Petracelli. Then again, D.D. always liked to play things close to the vest.

He'd done some follow-up digging on Dori Petracelli himself, so inclusion of her name on the list of missing girls didn't surprise him. It was the date—November 12,1982—that continued to stump him.

Detective Rock sat down. Detective Sinkus took the floor.

"So, uh, I thought I should have a handout. But when I looked at everything I had to share, it was fifty pages of names, and I thought, hell, no one here has time to read fifty pages of names, so I didn't bother."

"Thank God," someone said.

"Appreciate it," another detective commented.

The deputy superintendent cleared his throat in the corner. They immediately shut up.

Sinkus shrugged. "Look, my job's to assemble a preliminary list of interview subjects. We're talking contractors, neighbors, former lunatic-asylum workers, and known offenders in the area, going back thirty years. List? It's a goddamn phone book. Not saying we can't work it"—he glanced hastily at the deputy superintendent— "I'm just saying we'd have to quadruple the Boston police force to make a dent in this sucker. Basically, without more information to narrow down the suspect pool, like, say, a definitive time line, I don't think the current task is manageable. Honest to God, this is one area where we need the victimology report."

"Well, we don't have it," D.D. said flatly, "so try again."

"Knew you'd say that," Sinkus mumbled with a sigh. He stuck his hands in his pockets. "Okay, so I had an idea."

"Spit it out."

"I got an appointment tomorrow to interview George Robbards, former clerk at the Mattapan station. He processed all the incident reports from '72 to '98. I figure if there's anyone who might have a bead on the area—and probably a good recollection of what activities, or what people, cops were talking about, even if they didn't have enough to file on—it would be him."