Darby McCormick: Fear The Dark Part 19

'Who's Harry?'

'The chief medical examiner, Harry Stein. The man responsible for this lovely establishment.' Then: 'I'm sorry your time was wasted.'

A rumbling, grinding sound filled the room. Then it stopped and the door to an outdated freight elevator opened, revealing a morgue attendant and a rolling cart with a body bag on top. They were barely able to fit inside the tight s.p.a.ce.

'Where are the bodies now?' Darby asked.

'Dunnigan & Sweet Funeral Home in Red Hill,' Gonzalez replied.

'I'd like to read your report and see the pictures.'

'I'll let Ray know when I've finished my report.'

'And when do you think that might be?'

Gonzalez made no effort to hide her displeasure. 'When I get a moment to breathe,' she said curtly. 'We're backed up, in case you haven't noticed. Now, if you'll excuse me.'

The door swung open and Theodore Lancaster stepped into the room.

'Sorry I'm late,' he said, and moved to the corner of the room where the disposable scrubs, masks and gloves were kept. 'Who do we have up first?'

'The Downes autopsies were done this morning,' Darby said. 'But you already knew that, didn't you?'

Lancaster put on a decent show of appearing shocked. But he couldn't hide the confidence and self-satisfaction exuding from his pores and posture.

'This is the first time I'm hearing about it, swear to G.o.d.' He looked at the body being lifted on to the table, an older woman with saggy b.r.e.a.s.t.s and thick hips and legs dimpled with cellulite, and Darby heard a ripping sound in her head, like cloth tearing, and in her mind's eye she pictured a sutured wound, the incision disturbed and bleeding, infected.

He isn't worth it, Darby thought.

Lancaster turned to her and said, 'You mean to tell me I drove all the way here for nothing?'

Darby moved to her rolling kit. As she leaned forward to grab the handle, she saw Lancaster's reflection in the gla.s.s cabinet directly in front of her. He stood a couple of feet away, looking at her backside and her legs, comparing what he saw now to the photographs of her stored in his mind. His mouth parted slightly and his eyes lit up with pleasure as his imagination conjured up all sorts of lascivious images.

Then he blinked and pushed them back into hiding. He stepped behind her and put a hand on her shoulder when she straightened. He moved his head closer to hers, and she heard a wet click in his throat.

'Those hotel shots of you,' he whispered against her ear, his breath hot and rank with cigarettes and coffee. 'Body like yours, you've got nothing to be ashamed of. You shouldn't let it go to waste either.'

Lancaster winked at her. When he wet his lips, Darby spun around and raked him with her elbow so hard blood and spittle flew from his mouth and stained the wall and shelves holding the morgue clothing. He staggered against the autopsy table and gripped its edge with both hands to keep from falling. She drove a fist into his kidney, and his back arched like he'd been jolted with electricity, and when he turned she jabbed him with her left and broke his nose, and then she followed it with a right cross that slammed into his left eye and knocked him against the naked corpse lying on the stainless-steel table.

'Stop,' Dr Gonzalez shrieked. The male morgue attendant stood frozen, his face white with shock. 'Stop it right now!'

Darby hit Lancaster again, a solid blow to the kidneys. A girlish scream roared past his lips, and as she c.o.c.ked back her fist to hit him again the male morgue attendant grabbed her in a bear hug. She didn't try to break free, and she didn't fight him when he started dragging her towards the door.

Lancaster gripped the edge of the autopsy table and staggered to his feet. Blood as bright as paint had pooled on the floor. As she was ushered into the hallway, Darby saw Lancaster turn to her, blood roaring from his broken nose, and just before the door shut he smiled, his teeth pink and his eyes burning with pleasure and satisfaction.

39.

Jackson Cooper stood with Terry Hoder in the squad room. The front desks and chairs had been moved in order to make room for the TV camera and lighting equipment.

A reporter from the local paper, the Red Hill Evening Item, and a TV cameraman were inside the police chief's office, waiting for Darby to arrive. After Hoder had explained the plan he and Darby had cooked up to trap the Red Hill Ripper, Coop pulled Hoder into the squad room to talk privately.

'This is stupid and dangerous and you know it,' Coop said.

Hoder sat on top of a desk, gripping it with both hands. His face was haggard and his colouring was off. He had spent the last three hours working and fine-tuning the list of questions the reporter would ask Darby. Hoder had also scripted her answers. The reporter had agreed to let Hoder script the video interview and edit the article in exchange for exclusives with Darby, Hoder and Ray Williams after the Red Hill Ripper was in custody.

Before the video was posted on the home page of the newspaper's website, it would be emailed to Hoder's point man at the Denver Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory. There, the Nerd Herd, as they called themselves, would insert a hidden program into the video, which would allow them to trace anyone who clicked on it. Both Darby and Hoder believed the Red Hill Ripper was an extreme narcissist who religiously followed and possibly collected his own press clippings. The killer, they believed, wouldn't be able to resist watching the video. In order for the trace to work, the person had to watch the video for at least a couple of minutes.

'Let Williams do the interview,' Coop said. 'He's head of the task force.'

'The Red Hill Ripper isn't interested in or threatened by Ray Williams.' Then Hoder's eyes narrowed, like something of interest had come into his vision. 'Or me, for that matter.'

Coop hated the way the guy seemed to read minds.

'Right now this creep is looking for a way to get to her. He wants things to be all close and personal, remember?'

'The interview was her idea,' Hoder said. 'I voiced my reservations.'

'But you didn't say no, did you? You could've put a stop to this, and you didn't.'

'I understand your objections. It's difficult to put someone you're deeply in love with in harm's way.'

Coop looked at him sharply. Hoder craned his head and stared at the acoustic ceiling tiles.

Coop moved closer. 'You voiced your reservations, as you so eloquently put it, so if something happens to Darby you can soothe your conscience by saying, "Hey, everyone, I told her not to do this." And since she's not a federal agent, if something happens to her, there won't be any blowback on you or on the Bureau. Am I getting warm, Terry? No, don't answer. It's written all over your face.'

Hoder sighed. He looked and sounded incredibly tired and bored, as if he'd been asked to explain the meaning of life to a kitten.

'What would you suggest I do?'

'Put a stop to this,' Coop said, irritated by the man's soft drawl and laconic replies.

'Again, this was her idea. She insisted on doing it and '

'And you're going along with it because, like her, you've developed a major hard-on for this nut-job. Only your reasons are about your legacy. You're set to retire next year, and this little experiment you dreamed up a rolling forensics unit full of specialists with direct access to our lab will prove your point to the director if you find the Red Hill Ripper. That's what this entire thing is about, Terry. Preserving your legacy.'

'All due respect, you're out of line.'

'Cut the bulls.h.i.t. We both know why you're scripting this video.'

'Darby will be well insulated. He won't get to her.'

'You're deliberately lighting a fire under this guy's a.s.s. Why not let him go on thinking he's intellectually superior to us while we work the evidence?'

'Is there some new piece of evidence I don't know about?'

'We're still examining the blood we found. And don't forget about the plastic fingerprint. We're waiting on that.'

'Otto told me the blood samples were destroyed by the bleach.'

'He's still got other samples to go through,' Coop said confidently, even though the truth was that it wasn't looking good.

'And then what? Who's going to do the DNA?'

'We are. The rolling lab has PCR kits. We can get a DNA sample in two to three hours.'

'And then we'll have to mail the kits back to our lab. More waiting. What about that residue Darby found on the sliding gla.s.s door? Was it cutting oil?'

Coop shook his head. 'Mineral spirits,' he said. 'There's no way to identify the brand. But the duct tape? The samples will arrive tomorrow morning no later than 9.30 a.m. Second the package arrives our guys are going to get to work comparing them to those in our duct tape library. They'll be able to identify the brand. We might get lucky.' Coop instantly regretted his last words.

'The Red Hill Ripper is already focused on Darby,' Hoder said. 'That's not going to change. I didn't make that happen, by the way. He did that all by himself. If we can get him to watch the interview, we may be able to locate him and save the next family.'

'Or maybe he'll decide to stay in the shadows. He knows we're not going to be here forever, so he can afford to wait us out. After we leave, maybe he'll decide to visit Darby next month, a year later, break into her home in the middle of the night and do that.' Coop jerked his thumb at the whiteboards holding the crime scene photographs of the strangled women.

Hoder studied his hands. 'Your anger is misdirected,' he said. 'You should be having this conversation with Darby.'

'Don't worry, I'm planning to.'

'Good. Because if she doesn't want to do this, she doesn't have to.' Hoder seemed disappointed, almost sad, when he said it.

40.

Darby insisted on doing the interview. She stood in the hall outside the squad room and listened to Coop rattle off his objections for about half a minute before she broke in and politely but firmly told him she was going through with it.

'This isn't just about your safety,' Coop said. 'What happens if this plan of yours backfires and you rile this guy and he decides to go after another family?'

'He's going to do that anyway.'

'And what if this interview makes him decide to move up his timetable? Have you stopped to consider that?'

'I have, which is why I'm doing the interview. I want him to focus his attention on me and he will. The Red Hill Evening Item has been promoting my name all day, this exclusive interview with me. They've sent out Twitter and Facebook messages announcing it. He's going to watch it, Coop, and we're going to find him.'

'You're taking a baseball bat to a hornet's nest.'

Darby made fists by her sides, wincing slightly. Her right hand was swollen, covered by a glove; the abrasions along the knuckles rubbed against the stiff leather. She turned slightly, looked down the hall and saw Ray Williams standing in front of the police chief's desk through the office-door gla.s.s. Hoder sat in the chair, his face solemn and downcast as he listened. She couldn't hear what Williams was saying. She didn't need to.

Williams had torn a strip out of her when he discovered that she had sucker-punched Deputy Sheriff Lancaster in an autopsy room, no less. His rage momentarily extinguished, he stopped speaking, and the silence inside the cruiser had felt like a dirge for the remainder of the ride. She didn't blame him. She'd let her anger get away from her. Not only had she given Lancaster sufficient ammo to take the investigation away from Red Hill, but her actions had most likely killed Williams's employment chances in the new law enforcement regime.

'I saw the list of questions and answers the two of you came up with,' Coop said, struggling to remain calm. 'You go on the record saying those things, you might as well be jamming a stick of dynamite up this guy's a.s.s. Once you light the fuse, who the h.e.l.l knows how he's going to react? Maybe he'll decide to take his aggression out on someone else instead of you.'

Darby couldn't hide her irritation. 'So what do you suggest we do, then? Cross our fingers and hope for a stroke of luck?'

'We keep working the evidence. That's what you and I do best. The lab's running with the things we took from the Downes '

'This guy is too G.o.dd.a.m.n careful, Coop. It's not like he's left us a lot to work with.'

'You haven't had time to fully study the other case files. Let's go over each one together, now, and maybe we'll find something that was overlooked, a piece of evidence that '

'We need to be proactive here. We can't stay on this investigation forever. At some point we're going to have to pack up and leave, and if we haven't found him by then, guess what happens next? Right now we have a tremendous opportunity to trap him, and you're asking me to ignore it?'

'You can't orchestrate the behaviour of a psychopath. You told me that, remember?'

Darby said nothing.

Coop put a hand on the wall and leaned in closer. 'This is about you wanting this guy to come after you,' he said in a low voice. 'That way you'll have an excuse to blow him out of his socks.'

Darby brushed past him and entered the squad room. She was glad to see someone had hung sheets over the whiteboards to hide the grisly crime scene photos from the reporter and cameraman.

Hoder excused himself from the group and motioned for Darby to join him in the corner. He handed her two sheets of paper: they held the questions and her scripted answers.

'A s.e.xual s.a.d.i.s.t like the Red Hill Ripper thinks he's intellectually superior to you, me, the Bureau, everyone,' Hoder said. 'The questions I wrote down are going to highlight your intellectual superiority. The answers are designed to make you come across as some sort of super-cop, make him feel that he has a self-inflated sense of his own importance and prowess. Leave the leather jacket on, by the way. It'll help sell the image. And unzip it so he can see your shoulder holster.'

And my chest, Darby added privately.

Again, Hoder seemed to sense her thoughts. 'He despises women. All s.a.d.i.s.ts do,' he said. 'His hatred is already locked on you, and you're going to channel it by driving home the point that you've solved all the serial cases you've worked on, that the Red Hill Ripper isn't going to be an exception because he's nowhere near as smart or as cunning as the others. You'll go to the ends of the earth to find him, crawl under every rock that sort of thing. I wrote some things down right there on the first page, the part marked "statement". We want to trigger the guy's deep-seated feelings of self-hatred and inferiority and, hopefully, keep him logged on to his computer.

'Look relaxed and speak confidently, maybe even with contempt. I wrote everything down for you, but the important thing here is for you to say it in your own voice. Do whatever feels natural. Go with your gut.'

Then Hoder put a fatherly hand on her shoulder. 'I can't stress this next point enough,' he said. 'If at any time you feel uncomfortable or uncertain about this, if you change your mind about wanting to go through with the interview, you end it. You're the one in charge.'

'Let's do this.'

The reporter, Chad Levine, was an affable, pudgy man with a handlebar moustache and a bad comb-over. He wore a corduroy sports coat with a pair of pressed Dockers khakis and suede chukka boots, and he radiated the excitement of a child whose long-held secret wish had suddenly been granted.

'Do you need to read these?' he asked, holding up the pages containing Hoder's scripted questions and answers.

Darby shook her head and took the seat across from the reporter. She couldn't see the cameraman behind the hot, white lights aimed on her. She took off her gloves and covered her right hand with her left so the camera wouldn't see the split skin and the swelling.

'We can do as many takes as you like,' Levine said, pinning the microphone to her leather jacket.

Darby pointed behind her, to the poster advertising the reward and hotline. 'Make sure that's in every shot.'

'It will be. We'll also have the number posted on the bottom of the interview. Agent Hoder said you have a statement you'd like to make. Do you want to read it now or at the end of the interview?'