Fear the Dark (15 page)

‘He didn’t rape any of his victims. The phone call, the photos of me – he’s trying to scare me off.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure, Darby.’

‘He went to great lengths to clean up that corner of the bedroom. He made a mistake, and he’s shitting his pants that we’re going to find it – find
him
.’

Hoder pushed himself off the trunk and placed all his weight on his cane. Then he shuffled a few steps towards her and turned his back to the sun, so he didn’t have to
squint. From behind the green tint of her sunglasses Darby could see the deep lines and grooves around his eyes and mouth. She could also see the irritation growing in his face.

‘You know what you are?’ Hoder said. ‘You’re a meddlesome whore.’

26

‘That’s how the Red Hill Ripper views you,’ Hoder said in his soft Southern drawl. ‘That’s why he called you last night and that’s why he sent out those naked pictures of you. Like all sexual sadists, he despises women. You’re a bitch and a slut, and he seeks complete control over you because you’re a woman and women are the enemy. Right now he’s planning on how he’s going to get to you and punish you. He’s rehearsing every single detail.’

Darby didn’t reply, her skin crawling with anxiety.

‘You’re an intelligent woman,’ he said. ‘You have a PhD from Harvard in criminal behaviour, and you’ve had first-hand experience with sadists. You know he’s fixated on you now. At some point he’s going to strike, and when he does he’s going to take you someplace where he can degrade you and torture you until your heart gives out. Tell me I’m wrong,’

You’re not
, Darby told herself. She looked away, at the notches in the mountains, and that thing that nagged her reappeared along the edges of her mind. She tried to chase the thought or feeling or whatever it was, but it had vanished like vapour scattered in the wind.

‘Why do I feel like I’m talking to a storm drain?’

‘I hear you,’ Darby said, and turned her attention back
to him. ‘You want to be my chaperone for the day? You’re hired. Give me the car keys.’

‘What would make me feel better is for you to go back to Sarasota.’

‘And what, exactly, is that going to accomplish?’

Hoder’s irritation had vanished, replaced by what appeared to be an almost paternal concern. ‘I never intended to put you in harm’s way,’ he said. ‘Maybe I should have shown better judgement before asking you to come here, I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m truly sorry for what happened to you this morning.’

Hoder wasn’t paying her lip service; she heard genuine regret and sorrow in his voice, and for some reason it triggered the image of David Downes tied to the dining-room chair, suffocating inside the bag, trying to scream at the killer to stop and then at the end trying to scream to his daughter and wife that he loved them, his last words forever lost, sealed behind the tape wrapped around his mouth.

Then the image vanished, leaving with her the cold certainty that when she found the killer she would do something horrible to him. If given the opportunity, she’d feed him into a wood chipper, slowly, inch by inch. Without regret and without remorse.

‘I’ll take care of the arrangements,’ Hoder said. ‘Go home, Darby. Please.’

‘Our guy already knows my name. If that Carlos Santos character found your unlisted home number and where you live, who’s to say the Red Hill Ripper won’t do the same with me?’

Hoder studied the scuffed tops of his loafers.

‘Besides,’ Darby said, ‘running away isn’t my style.’

Hoder swallowed, clearly pained. ‘I’m sorry.’

Darby was about to speak when the thing that had been nagging at her rose like a bubble in her mind and popped: the Ripper had called
after
she had hung up with Coop.

She spoke in a clear, calm voice. ‘I need to get to the hotel now.’

Hoder handed over the keys. She held the door open for him and, after a moment of deliberation, got in.

Hoder sat with the cane between his legs and stared out of the front window as they left the parking lot. She drove slowly, as if the thought she carried in her mind was a fragile, teetering thing that was about to crash into a million little pieces against the floor.

‘I went to school nights to get my master’s degree,’ he said, the tyres crunching across the gravel. ‘For my thesis, I interviewed soldiers who had survived combat. My plan was to write about the commonalities of post-traumatic stress disorder, but what I ended up writing about was something I called “second life syndrome”.’

Darby concentrated on the road, on the thoughts bouncing around in her head.

‘It refers to soldiers who, having survived combat, believed they’d been touched by God’s hand or some other divine presence,’ Hoder said. ‘Because their life had been spared under the cruellest circumstances, they thought nothing bad would ever happen to them again. They lived their lives recklessly, marching headfirst into danger because the normal rules of life no longer applied to them.’

Darby knew where he was heading. ‘I don’t share that view, Terry, and I’ve never been a soldier.’

‘But you’ve survived combat with Traveler and the others that followed him. And then there’s that cult you and Cooper investigated, what, two years back, the one that abducted Jack Casey and his daughter and turned his wife into a vegetable.’

Images of what she had seen on that remote island off the coast of Maine flashed through her mind, and she unconsciously shifted in her seat.

‘There’s another psychological component at work here,’ Hoder said.

‘All due respect, how about giving the five-and-dime psychoanalysis a rest?’

‘You’re deliberately putting yourself in harm’s way because you want the Ripper to come after you. You want to kill him.’

‘Wrong.’

Hoder made no reply.

This morning’s depression has mercifully lifted. As I near my house, I feel more in control than ever. More hopeful.

And why shouldn’t I? I’m still safely hidden inside the shadows, and I still have the power to choose. I can take Angela Blake, Tricia Lamont, even the McCormick bitch, whenever I want.

Sarah gave me Angela’s picture because she knows I like a fighter. In that regard, Darby McCormick would be the ultimate challenge. She wouldn’t submit herself willingly to the rope, the way some of the others did. She wouldn’t scream or beg or cry. She’d lash out. I did a Google search on her last night, surprised by the number of articles that came up. I only had to read a handful to know that she gets off on killing. Given the chance, she’d blow my head off or slit my throat and then sleep like a baby. The woman has no conscience.

Women are fragile, delicate things; they break easily. And, like all things that break, they don’t look or function the same way after they’re put back together. You always see the cracks. The weak and vulnerable spots.

And hers is fear. The photos and last night’s phone call have put her into full red-alert mode. She’ll be constantly looking over her shoulder and watching her rear-view
mirror, terrified the Red Hill Ripper is coming for her. Every time the phone rings and every time she gets undressed her anxiety will go into overdrive. I have to stoke her fear, keep her simmering in it, so that she can’t sleep. She’ll become run down and, eventually, exhausted. She’ll be jumpy and irritable and prone to mistakes and she won’t see me coming.

The real challenge will be what to do with her. Training a woman to obey is really no different than training a dog. Some dogs take to their lessons easily. A few swift corrections and they’re in line. The more stubborn ones, you have to systematically break their spirit. Sometimes you have to drive your point home with a hand or fist. You have to be patient and find the way to deliver the message so it lives in their bones.

I pull into the driveway, as excited as a child on Christmas morning, and park. Sarah’s car isn’t here; today is Thursday, her errand day. I hit the button on the garage-door remote clipped to my visor and leave the truck running. I only need a few minutes in the basement.

I open the steamer trunk, a blast of dust hitting my nose as my eyes pore over a dozen fragmentation grenades and a sawn-off Mossberg shotgun; a bulletproof vest designed to withstand armour-piercing rounds; night-vision binoculars and goggles. I find what I’m looking for in the corner: a box holding a vial of Etorphine and a half-dozen syringes, held together with an elastic band. A small injection of that opioid and a normal, healthy adult will black out in less than a minute.

I tuck the box and syringes into my pocket, wanting to
have them close by for when the time comes. I can hear the radio playing upstairs. Sarah puts it on every time she leaves the house, believing that the news and an assortment of talk-radio hosts will convince a potential burglar that someone is home.

A reporter is talking about the Downes family, the latest victims of the Red Hill Ripper. The piece ends with a mention of the FBI sending Terry Hoder to Red Hill to hunt the killer.

Has Sarah heard this? Does she know? At some point I’m going to have to tell her.

I start up the stairs but my thoughts turn back to the other items inside the trunk.

What if the police come for me when I’m not at home? The FBI? I move back to the trunk and stand over it for several minutes.

I decide against taking the Mossberg. While the shotgun has massive stopping power, it’s useless against long-distance targets. If I’m bunkered down somewhere and locked in a firefight, I’ll need the Springfield. I sling the rifle strap over my shoulder and stuff a box of ammo into an empty pocket.

At the last moment I decide to take three grenades with me. If I’m forced to leave this world, why not go out in a blaze of glory?

27

Darby entered the hotel lobby and went straight to the reception desk in search of Laurie, who had checked her in last night. Laurie wasn’t there; nor was she inside the small office behind the counter.

Darby would deal with that later. First, she needed to go to her room.

She had drawn the blackout curtains after last night’s phone call and left them that way when she locked up this morning. Now she found them still drawn, the room caged in a partial darkness.

Darby hit the wall’s light switch and the matching lamps on the nightstands came to life. She left the door open behind her and the curtains as they were. She looked around the room for the TV remote, found it on the bureau and turned on the TV.

A commercial for a new medication used to treat erectile dysfunction started to play on the screen. She increased the volume slightly, then tossed the remote on her bed and slipped out of her boots. She went to the bathroom and turned on the shower. When she stepped back into the room, she left the bathroom door open behind her and moved to the nightstand with the phone.

The cordless handset didn’t have any visible screws, but it did have a back cover. She fitted her thumb into the
groove and, careful not to make any noise, gently wiggled it forward until the cover came off.

The rectangular-shaped area behind the cover housed a pair of rechargeable batteries; it was connected to the rest of the handset by a pair of Phillips-head screws. Using a fingernail, she carefully removed the batteries, not wanting to make a sound, and found two more screws underneath. She studied them underneath the nightstand lamp’s bright light for a moment. Then from her back pocket she removed the zippered pouch she had taken from her kit.

Tucked inside the pouch’s black mesh was a small adjustable screwdriver with a dozen different point heads. Fortunately it had the small head size she needed.

Darby sat on the edge of the bed and went to work removing the screws with the methodical care of a bomb technician tasked with defusing an improvised explosive device. If her suspicions were correct about what was inside the handset she needed to be as quiet as possible.

It took her two minutes to remove the screws and another five to dismantle the rest of the handset. She had to switch from the Phillips-head to a flathead in order to carefully prise apart the plastic shell.

She found what she was looking for in the nest of wires near the earpiece.

Darby put everything on the bed and in her stocking feet moved back into the hall of dim light and stone flooring. Hoder stood at the opposite end, waiting. She had told him to remain there to make sure no one came into the hall.

He leaned forward, both hands gripping his cane, and
looked at her questioningly. She nodded and surprise lit up his face. He raised his eyebrows until they almost met his hairline.

‘Definitely an audio bug,’ Darby said after she reached him. She had explained her theory about a listening device having been installed inside her phone as they were entering the hotel. ‘Looks like an older model, battery operated, but I’m sure.’

‘You think he heard you?’ Hoder kept his voice low, as if the bug were hovering inches away from them.

‘I turned on the TV and shower so I doubt he heard me taking the phone apart, and I took my boots off so he didn’t hear me walking out of the room. I don’t have the proper equipment to know if he is, in fact, listening right now. I doubt Red Hill does – we can ask – but if they don’t I’m sure Coop can scrounge up what we need from the Denver office.’

‘How did you know?’ Hoder asked.

‘The bug in my phone? Because he called almost immediately after I hung up with Coop.’

‘That it?’

Darby nodded. Hoder visibly stiffened, as if she had betrayed him somehow. As if she had come across information and refused to share it with him.

‘It was a hunch,’ she said. ‘A lucky guess.’

Hoder looked like he had come to some sort of private conclusion about her. Or maybe she was reading too much into it. Maybe Hoder was privately admonishing or punishing himself for not having figured it all out earlier.

His smile was forced, his voice flat when he said, ‘What about the range of this thing?’

‘No idea. I’ll know more once I find out the serial number – provided I can find one.’ Darby sighed and tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘We have a bigger problem.’