Fear the Dark (7 page)

Tricia laughs. It’s a lovely sound.

I wonder what her screams would sound like.

Just a glimpse
, I promised myself. And now I’ve had it. Besides, there’s one other thing I need to do before I go home. I knock back the rest of my bourbon and place a ten on the table. I pick up my coat, feeling warm and comfortable and satisfied. Hopeful.

12

By 6 p.m. they had finished processing the master bedroom and bath, Samantha Downes’s bedroom, the living-room floor and the back deck off the sliding glass door. Darby’s lower back ached and her mind felt cramped from hunger and the fatigue that was working its way through her limbs.

They had collected the usual preliminary evidence found at a homicide – hairs and fibres from the bodies and rooms as well as an assortment of fingerprints, all of which, Darby suspected, belonged to the Downes family. The footwear impressions on the living-room floor were matched to footwear belonging to the family. No fingerprints had been found on either the toilet or the blue plastic bucket, which suggested he had wiped everything down. And he had taken away whatever rag or towel he’d used on the bedroom wall, because they hadn’t found it in any of the garbage cans.

Darby had checked the family’s medicine cabinets. While David Downes took medications for high blood pressure, insomnia and several anti-depressants for anxiety and depression, Darby hadn’t found a prescription bottle for neomycin belonging to him, his wife or his daughter, nor had she found an empty one in the trash. They’d need a court order to access the family’s
medical records to see if any of them had been taking the antibiotic.

Coop had also found a ‘plastic’ fingerprint on the skirting board – a three-dimensional friction-ridge impression created when someone presses a fingertip in fresh paint, soap, hot wax, tar or car grease. In this case, it was in polyurethane. The skirting board had been treated with the polymer years, maybe decades, ago. There was no way the Red Hill Ripper could have left the print, but procedure dictated that Coop process the print anyway. He would use it later, in the courses that he taught at the FBI Academy, where students, forensic investigators and law enforcement officers learned how to identify and retrieve tricky prints from various surfaces.

The mobile lab’s satellite was down and could be fixed only in Denver. MoFo Coop, along with Otto and Hayes, would go there to work on the rest of the collected evidence.

Coop had another reason for wanting to go to Denver tonight: the Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, an FBI-sponsored and accredited full-service digital forensics laboratory and training centre that worked with law enforcement agencies in Colorado and Wyoming. RCFL had agreed to examine all the home and business computers and tablets belonging to the Downes family.

The Denver RCFL facility also had a cell phone kiosk that utilized a newly developed FBI technology called UFED, short for the Universal Forensic Extraction Device. It could download data from any cell or smart phone and collate it into a report, which could then be
burned on to a CD or DVD in as little as thirty minutes. Use of the kiosk, however, was by appointment only, and Coop had booked a slot for tomorrow at 11 a.m.

It was now coming up on seven. Darby stood with Coop inside the kitchen, cataloguing evidence. Hoder, who had been on his feet most of the day, balancing his weight on his cane, had returned to the hotel so he could ice his swollen knee. He wouldn’t be making the trip to Denver.

‘I want you to stay here, in Red Hill,’ Coop said.

Darby looked up.

‘If Williams can get the autopsies scheduled for tomorrow, one of us should be here. Besides, I’ll have help in Denver.’

Darby felt relieved. She wanted to spend the evening going through the evidence files. A long-time sufferer from motion sickness, she had never been able to read or concentrate while in a car.

‘Sounds good,’ she said, and went back to writing.

‘Really?’ Coop asked in mock surprise. ‘Here I was expecting an argument.’ He handed her the keys to his rental and added, ‘You must be getting mellow in your old age.’

As Darby wrote, she thought about the plastic bag that had been stuck to David Downes’s face like a cobweb, his skin pale and sweaty beneath the bag, the thinning remains of his fine brown hair matted against his scalp and forehead. Several strips of duct tape had been wrapped around his mouth and the back of his head.

But it was the man’s eyes, wide and nearly bulging from
their sockets, that haunted Darby; how, after the bag had been removed, they had been locked on his daughter. Intimately familiar with the mechanics of death, she could feel the man’s terror – could feel the plastic bindings biting and then cutting through his skin as he thrashed about with the bag taped over his head, sucking in the last few breaths of precious oxygen through his nose and unable to see his wife or daughter but able to hear Samantha begging and pleading and screaming.

Coop was saying something to her.

‘Sorry, what’s that?’ Darby asked as she continued writing.

‘I said I hope there aren’t any surprises when this case goes to court. You know how lawyers can get.’

‘Which is why we should put this guy in a body bag.’

Darby caught Coop’s reproachful glare. ‘You can’t treat, let alone cure, a sexual sadist, Coop. There’s no therapy or psychotropic-medication regimen that will bring them anywhere near the neighbourhood of normal, that will allow them to feel remorse or empathy. If you don’t want a sadist to kill again, you either lock him up for life or you put him down.’

‘And you’re for putting him down.’

‘Why should taxpayers have to pick up the tab for someone who’s the mental equivalent of a rabid dog?’

Coop studied her face.

‘You don’t resolve evil, Coop. You extinguish it.’

‘You might want to keep these thoughts to yourself while you’re out in the dating pool. Just a suggestion.’

After Coop and the others left, Darby sat alone in the
house, waiting for the patrolman to deliver copies of the case files, which had been promised by Williams.

The man arrived a few minutes past 7.30. He had a handlebar moustache and smelled of pipe tobacco. The nametag stitched into the breast of his coat read
MILLER
. He stood on the front porch, and he didn’t ask to come in.

Not that Darby would have let him: every person allowed access to a crime scene increased the risk of contamination or the destruction of evidence.

‘Evidence files are in my trunk,’ the patrolman said to Darby. ‘You done in here?’

Darby nodded. ‘Does Williams want me to seal the door?’

‘No, just lock it up. Mike will seal it.’ Miller jerked a thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of the patrol car parked in front of the driveway. ‘He’s taking the night shift.’

‘Williams told me David Downes had a secretary, Sally something.’

‘Sally Kelly.’

‘Do you know her address? I’d like to talk to her tonight.’

‘I don’t know it off the top of my head, but I can get it for you.’

Darby grabbed her jacket and the keys to Coop’s rental. She placed the time of her departure on the security log, shut off all the lights and locked the door behind her. She carried her box of evidence to Miller’s patrol car, where she exchanged it for one stuffed with files.

Miller had written Sally Kelly’s address on a piece of paper. Darby plugged it into the GPS.

The faces of the dead crowded her thoughts as she drove through the pitch-black roads. They had streetlights, but they were turned off. She suspected the struggling town had cut the power to save money.

Darby was halfway through her sixteen-mile trip when she realized she’d left her kit at the house. She wanted to use her own equipment at the autopsies that she hoped would take place tomorrow. Not wanting to have to get up early to come and retrieve it, she turned around and backtracked to the Downes home.

Fifteen minutes later, when she pulled up against the kerb and parked a few feet behind the police cruiser assigned to watch the house, she felt her throat constrict, her breath like shards of glass trapped in her chest.

The lights for the master bedroom had been turned on.

13

Darby could see a shadow moving behind the shade facing the street. Then she looked to the cruiser bathed in the beam of her headlights and, seeing it was empty, killed the headlights and the ignition. She pocketed the keys as she threw open the car door, the veins in her temple and arms humming with what felt like an electrical charge.

This isn’t your case
, an inner voice warned.
You’re a consultant, nothing more than a hired hand. Cool it or you’ll get bounced
.

Darby walked on to the driveway and saw a silhouette out of the corner of her eye. The patrolman assigned to watch the house stood in the woods to her right, steam rising from the tree where he was relieving himself.

Darby didn’t break stride; she continued towards the house.

‘Nature called,’ he said, fumbling with his zipper as he staggered down the slope of snow. ‘You know how it is on a watch.’

Darby didn’t answer.

The patrolman chased after her. Then he darted in front of her, blocking her access to the walkway.

‘Something I can help you with?’

‘You can get out of my way,’ Darby said.

The patrolman didn’t move. He was her height but wide across the shoulders, probably in his early thirties,
and he had the kind of pitted, acne-scarred skin that looked like it had been worked over by a cheese grater.

‘You can’t go in there until tomorrow,’ he said, panting, his breath steaming in the cold air. ‘Boss’s orders. He doesn’t –’

‘He in there? Williams?’

‘No. Place is locked up, remember?’

‘I know. I locked the door myself and shut off
all
the lights. Care to explain to me why the bedroom lights are on?’

‘You must’ve left them on by –’

‘Can it,’ she said, and brushed past him.

But the patrolman wasn’t finished with her yet. He jumped between her and the front door, and his expression morphed into a man who had just discovered his jockstrap had been spiked with Bengay.

‘I didn’t have a choice,’ he hissed. ‘This isn’t my fault.’

‘Who’s in there?’

‘Someone with the power to deep-six me with a phone call.’ His voice cracked and he had to clear his throat. ‘If I get shit-canned, I lose my pay and my medical. My wife’s pregnant and outta work. I can’t afford to get mixed up in this pissing contest between us and –’

‘What’s your name again?’

‘Nelson. Mike Nelson.’

Darby turned the doorknob. It was unlocked, and she saw that there wasn’t a police seal on the door.

‘This is what you’re going to do, Nelson. You’re going to park your ass in your car. You’re going to sit there and shut your mouth until I’m ready to talk to you, got it?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, sure.’

‘Next time you need to take a leak, don’t do it at the site of a crime scene. Now get out of here.’

Darby entered the house. After slipping on a pair of cloth booties, she picked up the clipboard holding the security log. Hers was the last name on the sheet. She put the clipboard down and climbed the steps, bright red spots flaring across her vision.

Not your case
, that inner voice warned her again, only it was growing dimmer, drowning in her growing anger.
You’re just a consultant, not your case …

The man standing at the foot of the bed and writing on a clipboard was rail thin and had a squared-off jaw and a chiselled profile. He wore bifocals and tan polyester slacks and a thin black tie draped across a starched taupe long sleeve shirt with epaulettes, and he smelled of cigar smoke.

He was also short. In his thick-soled Red Wing boots he stood no taller than five seven. He wasn’t wearing booties or latex gloves – the stupid son of a bitch hadn’t taken even the most basic precautions to protect the integrity of the crime scene.

He glanced at her over his shoulder, looking over her person. He had country-boy good looks and cornflower-blue eyes, and his dark blond hair was immaculately combed and parted razor-sharp.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Yeah,’ Darby said, aware of the heat climbing into her voice. ‘You can explain to me why you’re contaminating my crime scene.’

His eyebrows arched and his mouth opened and he
flinched like a man who had just been treated to a surprised rectal exam. ‘
Your
crime scene,’ he said.

‘Who are you?’

‘Theodore Lancaster.’

The Brewster deputy sheriff
, Darby thought, and then recalled what Ray Williams had said about the man, how Lancaster was angling to take the Ripper investigation away from Red Hill.
Don’t give him any fuel
.

‘My name is Darby McCormick. I’m –’

‘I know who you are and why you’re here.’ His tone was calm and indifferent, maybe even slightly bored. He sounded like he had been asked to impart information about the day’s weather. He used his pen to point at the evidence markers placed in the corner area the killer had wiped down. ‘Tell me what happened over there.’

‘Detective Ray Williams. He works here in Red Hill.’

‘I know who he is.’

‘Then you know he’s the lead detective and that this is his case.’

‘This is a joint investigation between –’

‘If Williams wanted you involved, he would’ve called you here. You wouldn’t have had to sneak in.’

Lancaster turned and held his arms behind his back, almost in a military stance, and gave her his full attention. She could hear the heat rumbling through the wall and ceiling vents.

‘I noticed your vehicle isn’t parked anywhere out front,’ Darby said. ‘My guess is you parked somewhere close by where no one would see you. After we left, you came over and intimidated a patrolman who’s barely out of puberty
into letting you in here. Congratulations on reaching a whole new level of spinelessness.’

The skin tightened around his eyes.

Dial it down. This isn’t your zip code
.