Not the most precise time line in the world, but it got them started.
One three-person detective squad was now creating a list of missing Massachusetts girls, going back to 1965. Since records were only computerized from 1997 on, that meant manually skimming massive printouts of every single missing person from '65 to '97, identifying which of the cases were still unsolved and involved a female minor, then record those case-file numbers to be looked up separately on microfiche. Currently, the squad completed six years of missing persons every twenty-four hours. They were also consuming approximately one gallon of coffee every ninety minutes.
Of course, the Crime Stoppers hotline was also going insane. The public only knew that the remains of six females had been found on the site of the former Boston State Mental Hospital, and the scene appeared to be dated. That was still enough to have the crackpots out in force. Reports of strange nighttime lights coming from the property Rumors of a satanic cult in Mattapan. Two callers claimed to have been abducted by UFOs and had seen all six girls aboard the ship. (Really, what did they look like? What were they wearing? Did they give you their names?) Those callers had a tendency to hang up quick.
Other calls were more intriguing: girlfriends ratting out ex-boyfriends who had bragged of doing "something awful" at the former hospital site. Others were simply heartbreaking: parents, from all over the country, calling in to ask if the remains might be those of their missing child.
Every call generated a report, every report had to be followed up by a detective, including the monthly call from a woman in California who insisted that her ex-husband was the real Boston Strangler, mostly because she'd never liked him. It was taking five detectives to handle the load.
Which left D.D.'s squad, plus Bobby, with miscellaneous management tasks. Determining a list of "interview subjects" based on the various real estate developers and community projects active at the site. Trying to get a list of patients and administrators from a mental hospital that had shut down thirty years ago. Entering the crime-scene elements into VICAP, given the uniqueness of the subterranean pit.
Following up the resulting hit—Richard Umbrio—had become Bobby's project. He had pulled the microfiche of the original case file, including a decent collection of photos. He'd also put in a call to the lead detective, Franklin Miers, who'd retired to Fort Lauderdale eight years ago.
Now Bobby was sitting in the tiny interrogation room that served as his temporary office, studying a hand-sketched diagram of the pit that had once held twelve-year-old Catherine Gagnon.
According to Miers's notes, Catherine had been abducted while walking home from school. Umbrio had come upon Catherine when driving around the neighborhood and asked if she would help him look for a lost dog. She took the bait and that was that.
A hulking bear of a man even at the age of nineteen, Umbrio had no problem subduing the slightly built sixth-grader. He whisked her away to an underground chamber he had prepared in the woods, and that's when Catherine's real ordeal began. Nearly thirty days in an underground pit, where her only visitor was a rapist with a penchant for Wonder bread.
If hunters hadn't stumbled upon the pit, most likely Umbrio would've eventually killed her. Instead, Catherine survived, identified her attacker, and testified against him. Umbrio was whisked away to prison. Catherine was left to rebuild her life, the so-called Thanksgiving Miracle whose adult life wasn't so miraculous after all. Being held by a monster had definitely left its mark.
Miers's notes described a case that was shocking, but routine. Catherine was a credible witness, and evidence found in the pit—a metal chain-link ladder, a plastic bucket, the plywood cover—bore out her story
Umbrio did it. Umbrio went to prison. And two years ago, when Umbrio was mistakenly paroled from prison, he returned to stalking Catherine with the same homicidal zeal he had shown prior to his arrest.
In short, Umbrio was a murderous, monstrous freak of nature, quite capable of killing six girls and interring their bodies on the grounds of an abandoned mental institute.
Except Umbrio was safe behind bars by the end of 1980. And according to Annabelle Granger, she didn't receive the locket found on Unidentified Mummified Remains #1 until 1982. Which meant… ?
Forty-eight hours into a critical investigation, Bobby didn't have any answers, but he was developing a fascinating list of questions.
D.D. finally returned from escorting Annabelle out of the building. She yanked out a chair and plopped down like a puppet whose strings had just been cut. "Jesus fucking Christ," she said.