Darby McCormick: Fear The Dark Part 2

Darby found herself being seduced by the man's easy Southern charm. He had used it when interviewing serial killers, getting them to open up and discuss the dark impulses that drove them. In some cases he got the killers to disclose where they had buried certain bodies.

'What I'm saying is, don't be afraid to challenge me.'

Darby smiled. 'Believe me, you got nothing to worry about on that front.'

4.

Darby joined Coop at the back of the Jeep as Hoder drove off. He had been unloading their forensics gear while she'd been talking.

'Why didn't you join us?'

Coop pulled out the bulky Alternative Light Source unit. 'I wanted him to experience the full measure of your glowing personality.'

'Mission accomplished.'

'Judging by what I heard, I'd say so.' Coop shut the hatchback, the sound echoing for a beat. 'Never give an inch, do you?'

'Why live a life of half-measures? Come on, let's boogie.'

Having grown up and worked in a city where sirens and traffic and people yelling at one another were nothing more than background noises, as common as birds tweeting, Darby was struck by just how unbelievably quiet this place was. The wind picked up, shaking the towering pines, but after it died she could hear the ticking of the SUV's engine; the melting snow from the home's roof pinging its way down the gutters, which were packed with ice; and the click and sc.r.a.pe of her boots and the suitcase's rolling wheels as she walked with Coop, who was dragging their equipment.

The air here she had never smelled anything so wonderfully clean. Invigorating. She felt like someone who had experienced the world's best night of sleep and woken up clear-headed and energized.

Or maybe it all had to do with her adrenalin not from nerves. The adrenalin was psychologically induced from something only another cop would understand: the odd, palpable excitement of being on the hunt.

'What're you smiling at?' Coop asked.

'Just thinking about how much I miss this.'

'Working together?'

'Yeah.' She did miss working with him. But that hadn't been her first thought.

'I know it's going to be difficult, but please try not to jump my bones in there. It would be weird, not to mention unprofessional.'

'I'll try to control myself.'

Coop eased open the door. A white tarp covered the blond-wood foyer floor. Bright sunlight flooded through the windows in the surrounding rooms, and the cool air was fragrant with coffee and a tinge of wood smoke.

Hanging on the white-paned wall on her left were five artfully arranged framed pictures of a young brunette woman with a strong jaw and full lips. High school and college graduation photos, one of her as a baby and another as a toddler, the camera capturing her mid-jump on a bed and in a state of pure bliss.

The daughter, Darby thought, removing her sungla.s.ses. Please don't let her be in here.

Darby looked to the archway on her left. The walnut dining-table seated six. The pair of head-of-the-table carver chairs were gone as well as one of the side chairs.

A man in a navy-blue suit appeared at the end of the short hall leading into the kitchen. He wore white booties over his shoes and his hands were covered in latex. He also held a clipboard.

'Darby,' Coop said, placing his gear on the floor, 'meet Ray Williams. Ray is lead detective on the Ripper investigations. Ray, this is Darby McCormick, the forensics consultant I was telling you about.'

Williams was an inch or two shy of six feet and had dark brown eyes and thick black hair that was parted razor sharp on the side. He was also ruggedly handsome the kind of man, Darby suspected, who chopped his own firewood, was comfortable with tools and drank good Scotch. She felt her pulse quicken.

Even better, he wasn't a sloppy hick cop who didn't know his way around a crime scene. Wary of disturbing any potential footwear evidence the killer may have left in the hallway, Williams hugged a wall as he moved towards them, avoiding the main area of foot traffic along the floor.

He looked her up and down not in an overtly s.e.xual way, but more with a look of a surprise, as if he'd been expecting someone entirely different. Then she realized that she looked like she'd just climbed off a Harley snug black leather motorcycle jacket, jeans and chestnut-brown harness boots. All I'm missing is a helmet and some tats.

Coop had picked up on it. 'This is how PhDs from Harvard dress these days.'

'Ray Williams,' he said, his voice a deep, smooth purr. He had a firm handshake and rough, callused palms. He also had about a day's worth of stubble; Ray Williams was in that category of men who always had a permanent case of five o'clock shadow no matter how many times a day they shaved. 'Thanks for coming, glad to have you here.'

Williams sounded genuine. That wasn't always the case with detectives. They were, by nature, as territorial as a junkyard dog, and about as friendly.

Darby nodded to the stairs. 'How many we got?'

'Hoder didn't fill you in?' Williams asked.

Coop answered the question. 'He tried, but the signal dropped out. Again.'

Williams nodded. Looking at Darby, he said, 'Cell phones don't work too well here. Not enough towers.' He flipped open his pad. 'Vics are David and Laura Downes, and their daughter, Samantha. That's her right there.' Williams pointed to the photos hanging on the wall and Darby felt something inside her tear. 'Samantha's twenty-two. Moved back in with her parents last year after graduating from college, works at the one and only bar that's still open downtown Wagon Wheel Saloon, across from the place where you guys are staying. David's forty-seven. Lawyer, specializes in real-estate law. Laura's forty-eight. Former schoolteacher.'

'Same as the previous four families?' Darby asked.

'Same plastic bindings, duct tape, all of it.'

'Beds?'

'Both of 'em look as though they were made by Martha Stewart herself. Daughter's bedroom is on the first floor, off the kitchen.'

Coop said, 'Who found them?'

'I did,' Williams said. 'Downes's secretary, a woman named Sally Kelly, called the station this morning. Downes didn't show up for work yesterday, didn't call her or send an email. When she still hadn't heard back from him this morning, she asked if we could send someone over. Said she tried calling Downes at home and on his cell even tried the wife's cell. I was at the station there when the call came in, so I decided to swing by to check it out. Found both cars parked in the garage and the front door unlocked. No tool marks or forced entry, but there's a hole cut in the sliding gla.s.s door off the living-room.

'I got about halfway up the stairs when I smelled them. They're all in the main bedroom. Go to the top of the stairs and hook a left. I didn't enter either bedroom and I stayed away from the main traffic areas not that I think we're going to find any footwear impressions. This guy is too slick. My notes are here if you want 'em, underneath the sign-in sheet.' Williams held up his clipboard and then placed it by the door. 'Until this place has been worked over, I don't want anyone in here besides the three of us.'

Darby said, 'I noticed there aren't any patrol cars here.'

'A couple of units are on their way here to secure the perimeter, but I doubt this place is gonna turn into a sideshow.'

'What I meant was, why don't you have people doing door to door, talking to the neighbours?'

'There aren't any. You're standing in the only house on the street that's currently occupied. Rest of 'em are vacant have been for quite a while.'

Coop said, 'Brewster's sheriff's office getting involved?'

'I haven't notified them. Don't plan to either.' Williams let his words linger in the air for a moment. 'Hoder told me he's sending up some sort of mobile lab. Said you guys could handle the forensics stuff, which is what I'd prefer anyway. State lab's backed up like a toilet. We wouldn't get test results for weeks.'

Then Williams turned to Darby and said, 'Coop tell you about the incorporation?'

Darby nodded.

'The guy in charge of Brewster's sheriff office, Teddy Lancaster, is of the belief that me and my people, what few of 'em I've got left, are incapable of finding the Red Hill Ripper ourselves if we had any talent, he said, we would've found the son of a b.i.t.c.h by now. Ted's been heavily lobbying the pencil-pushers with a view to getting the cases pulled from us.'

'Is he conducting his own investigation?'

'Oh, I'm sure he is. He's got access to all the case files I'm required to forward copies of everything to him. But I'm not required to call him about what happened here, and since this is still my case there's no reason for him to partic.i.p.ate. I want to keep it that way as long as possible. I don't know if Coop told you, but if Lancaster finds the Ripper before me and my people do, it'll pretty much seal the argument that none of us Red Hill folk will be needed in the new regime. And the state will jump on it because it'll save them a good chuck of dough. They'll pa.s.s some of the savings Teddy's way, so he can promote his people, maybe build a new deck on his house, or whatever.'

'How many homicide detectives does your department have?' Darby asked.

'You're looking at him. I've got to call the ME. Anything you guys need, ask. I could really use a win here.'

Williams left, shutting the door softly behind him.

'No pressure or anything,' Coop said, slipping out of his coat.

Darby pulled her hair behind her hand and secured it with a rubber band as she looked up the stairs. She didn't want to meet the wide-eyed dead just yet. First, she wanted to get a sense of how the family had lived.

5.

Dressed head to toe in a white Tyvek 'bunny' suit and wearing a facemask and clear goggles, Darby gripped a clipboard in one hand, the ALS unit in the other, and moved across the hall and into a small kitchen with a cream-coloured tiled floor and white appliances set against cherry cabinets. Clean dishes and gla.s.ses were stacked in a plastic drying rack on a black-and-brown-speckled granite countertop, and a gla.s.s coffeepot was full.

It must have been set to an automatic timer the night before, Darby thought, her gaze cutting to the edge of the kitchen counter, where she found a prepaid Netflix envelope with an empty DVD sleeve on top of it. It was for the first season of Game of Thrones. The disk was probably still in the player. The mother probably left the sleeve here so it would be in her line of sight when she came into the kitchen in the morning. So she wouldn't forget to collect the disk from the player and then mail it back.

Three hardwood steps led down into a family-room with soft, b.u.t.tery-yellow walls adorned with framed oil pictures of seascapes. A soapstone fireplace took up the far wall, the charred remains of a fire still visible in the hearth.

Pictures of the family were scattered around the kitchen and family-room. David Downes was a thin, bald man with a slight overbite and nerdy appearance a man who probably wore socks with his sandals. His wife, Laura, was a homely woman with curly brown hair and a bright smile. She tried to hide her ample figure with oversized tees and sweaters, all of which gave her a tent-like appearance. Samantha seemed to be their sole child, as she was the only one who featured prominently in the photos.

A big, L-shaped couch faced a flat-screen TV. Darby imagined the family on the brown sofa with its soft, deep cushions, everyone watching TV as a fire popped and hissed, the trio oblivious to the horror that awaited them one night after they went to bed.

Located ten or so feet behind the sofa was a sliding gla.s.s door. Wind blew through a rectangular-shaped hole that had been cut into the gla.s.s.

In her mind's eye Darby saw a gloved hand reaching through the hole and clicking back the lock. Pictured the faceless intruder carefully sliding open the door and then stepping into the living-room and then what? What did you do first?

We know you brought a gla.s.s-cutter, zip ties, duct tape and bags. You wouldn't have carried those things in your pockets at least not in the beginning. You would have stored them in something, wouldn't you?

Darby imagined him setting a backpack on the floor, then pulling out the items he needed and sticking them in his pockets. After that, he would head to Samantha's room: grab the daughter and the parents would co-operate.

Darby was sure the killer had a gun. Even a small revolver would enforce immediate group compliance. People played hero all the time with knives. They took risks. That wasn't the case with guns.

Darby moved back to the kitchen and down a short hall that led to a dark bedroom. The door was open. Samantha's bedroom. It had a hardwood floor, and the blinds were drawn so there was no need to turn off any lights.

Coop moved next to her, a DSLR camera gripped in his hands, as she knelt and plugged the ALS unit into a socket. She turned on the unit, its fan whirring and a small motor throbbing, and picked up the attached wand. She held the wand at a very sharp, low angle just above the threshold, turning the beam of intensely bright white light to the right side of the neatly made bed.

Visible in the dust were several footwear impressions.

Coop carefully entered the bedroom, evidence markers in his hand. 'No tread marks,' he said. 'He must've been wearing cloth booties over his sneakers or whatever was on his feet.'

'He was wearing something with a soft sole. He wouldn't want to make any noise.'

Darby shut off the unit. Disappointment growling in her stomach, she used her pen to flick the bedroom light switch.

6.

Underneath a ceiling light that, oddly, resembled a large breast with a big metallic nipple, Darby saw a framed Les Miserables print hanging on a wall above a poster bed adorned with bright cushions to bring out the colours in the old Americana quilt.

The bed was neatly made. Everything in her line of vision appeared orderly and clean, as though Samantha had tidied up before leaving for the day.

Darby entered the bedroom. The corner shelving installed between the closet and the window held stuffed animals, makeup and back issues of Vogue and Cosmo, and an iPad with one of those foldable covers that doubled as a stand. Darby saw her reflection in the screen.

While Coop took general photos used to give an idea of the overall condition and layout of the scene Darby sketched and mapped the area, taking detailed notes. She noticed that there weren't any personal pictures on the walls, bureau or desk. She didn't find any inside the desk either which wasn't necessarily odd, as Samantha Downes had been raised in the digital age, when every movement and thought, no matter how inane, was doc.u.mented and captured by a smartphone or tablet and posted on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, tumblr. the list of social media sites was endless.

Darby finished her notes and sketch. 'I'm going to check the area in front of the sliding gla.s.s door,' she said, unplugging the ALS unit.

Past the gla.s.s door she saw a deck made of pressure-treated wood, the floor damp from the melting blocks of ice clogging the gutters. There was more snow in the backyard. Had the killer walked through there and left footprints, or had he simply walked up the driveway and up the back porch?

There was no question he had stood on the back deck while he worked on cutting the gla.s.s. If the wood were wet or damp that night, when he stepped inside the house he would have left a footwear impression on the living-room's hardwood floor.

The words meticulous and careful echoed in the back of her mind as she turned on the unit, holding the wand at different angles against the floor, hoping the oblique lighting source would find an impression.

There weren't any. And there wasn't any dust.

Coop entered the living-room. 'Anything?'

'No. He definitely wiped down this area here before leaving.'

'Told you we're dealing with a new strain of pervert.'