by Chris Mooney
‘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.
‘I need you to leave,’ Darby said. ‘Now.’
Lancaster made a clicking sound in his throat. ‘You don’t have any authority here.’
‘Neither do you. Time for you to leave, chief.’
Darby saw the beginnings of a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth, and it reminded her of the neighbour who had lived across the street from the house where she grew up – a widower named Stan Perry who had always watched his property with a vigilante’s energy and enthusiasm. Once a neighbourhood boy who suffered from some form of mental disability had lost control of his dog, a hyperactive black Labrador, which had sprinted across Perry’s lawn and got into his newly planted hydrangeas. The dog was in the process of relieving itself when the boy caught up with it and grabbed its leash.
Perry had darted out of the house, his cheeks and neck the colour of a fire hydrant. But he didn’t scream or yell. Instead, he leaned forward, his hands resting on his knees, and spoke rapidly to the boy. Darby couldn’t hear the exchange – she watched from her living-room window – but the boy left in tears, and what she remembered was the way Perry had smiled at having found an outlet for the cruelty that lived inside his heart.
Lancaster, though, seemed a bit slicker – the kind of man who never spoke in anger and nursed his hatred and cruelty in private, at home or at a bar, sipping a drink while he plotted ways to leave his mark on those who got in his way or denied his wishes. He looked at her with a smug complacency.
‘Well,’ he said, a smile playing on his lips, ‘far be it from me to argue with a woman so full of passion.’ He slid the pen back inside his breast pocket. ‘By the way: if you want to address your menopausal anger and mood swings, I’ve got the name of a doctor who will be more than happy to prescribe something.’
It shot up her spine like a flare. Her lips pursed and she felt the muscles in her arms tighten, her right hand forming a fist.
Lancaster walked away.
Let it go.
‘Sheriff?’
Lancaster glanced at her from the doorway.
‘Make sure you sign out before you leave.’
‘Of course. Anything else, doctor?’ His eyes flickered with amusement.
‘Yeah,’ Darby said. ‘Speak to me like that again and you’ll be taking your next meal through a feeding tube.’
14
Sally Kelly lived with six cats. An 8 × 10 photograph of each one was set in an expensive-looking matted frame, all of which were proudly displayed on her mantelpiece. Each photo had been taken on a Christmas-tree skirt, a small gold bell affixed either to a red or a green bow tied around the animal’s neck.
‘Lissie’s no longer with us,’ Kelly said, and pointed to a Maine Coon with a pancake-shaped head and a snaggletooth. ‘I had to put her down right after the holidays. She was hell on wheels that one, and about as friendly as a cactus. But she’ll always have a special place in my heart. Let’s go into the kitchen.’
If it weren’t for the pictures, Darby wouldn’t know that five cats, let alone one, lived here. The woman ran a fastidious household. The pleasantly warm air didn’t contain a single whiff of cat litter or urine, and the living-room carpet and furniture showed no sign of any fur.
The kitchenette was also immaculate. Darby sat at a breakfast nook with a wraparound high-back bench, the table covered with a blue vinyl cloth, while Sally Kelly, a petite woman with hair so shockingly white it seemed to glow, shuffled about the kitchen, making a fuss of making tea, even though Darby had declined the woman’s offer.
Maybe she just needs to keep busy, Darby thought, her ballpoint poised over her notebook. David Downes’s 53-year-old secretary was clearly still in shock from this morning’s grisly discovery. The woman’s face was leached of colour, her eyes bloodshot and puffy, and she kept looking around the black-and-green-speckled laminate counters and sand-coloured linoleum floor, blinking rapidly, as though she had misplaced or lost something of importance.
‘I explained what happened to the police,’ Kelly said, fetching mugs from a cabinet. ‘On the second day, when David didn’t report to work, I –’
‘Excuse me for interrupting, Mrs Kelly –’
‘Miss, actually. I’ve never been married. Please, call me Sally.’
‘I’m trying to get a feel for the family. What they were like.’
‘They were good and decent people.’
‘Mr Downes was a lawyer?’
Kelly nodded. ‘Real estate law,’ she said. ‘I worked for him … must be eight years now. He hired me as his secretary. Then he had to let his bookkeeper go, when the housing bubble here burst, and I took over those duties too.’
Kelly placed teabags into a pair of heavy white mugs that sat on the narrow laminate counter and set some water to boil in a saucepan on the stove. She had developed the s
ame unresponsive glare Darby had seen over and over again in the family and friends of murder victims – a thousand-yard stare that begged for someone to release them from purgatory and to return them to a normal life.
‘They made –’ Her voice caught. Kelly swallowed and cleared her throat. ‘They made me identify the bodies.’
‘Mr and Mrs Downes didn’t have any family in the area?’
Kelly shook her head. She wore jeans and slippers and an oversized grey wool sweater that came down almost to her knees. ‘David was an only child,’ she said. ‘Linda too. They met in high school, here in Red Hill, did you know that?’
‘No, I didn’t. I’m sorry for your loss.’
The woman’s eyes were bright. ‘Such horrible things shouldn’t happen to good and decent people.’
Darby could hear the faint tick of a clock coming from somewhere down the hall. She waited a decent interval before gently moving forward.
‘What can you tell me about their daughter? What was Samantha like?’
‘Sammy was … solid. A solid person. Smart. Had her act together, never gave her parents a lick of grief – and what a hard worker! You don’t see that much any more. These younger generations, they don’t want to put in the time and effort. The sacrifice. They just want to click a computer mouse or tap some button on their phone and have everything given to them.’
‘Did you know her well?’
Kelly nodded. ‘He made me a part of his family, David,’ she said. ‘I had dinner with them just last week.’
‘When?’
‘Sunday. Linda made pot roast. She was a very good cook. Took it up after she retired. She was a nursery-school teacher.’
‘Was Samantha there? At dinner?’
Kelly nodded as the kettle whistled.
‘How did she seem to you?’
‘The way she always did, sunny and happy.’ Kelly poured the boiling water into the mugs. ‘Well, maybe a little the worse for wear. She was putting herself through graduate school. University of Denver. Business, I think. Or economics, one of those.’
‘Do you know where she worked?’
‘Wagon Wheel Saloon. It’s a bar. Downtown.’ Kelly picked up the mugs and carried them to the table, walking stiffly. Painfully. She caught the question in Darby’s eyes.
‘Fibromyalgia,’ Kelly said. ‘It’s always worse in the winter, especially when the temperature keeps jumping up and down.’ She placed the mugs on the table and then eased herself into the opposite seat. ‘One day it’s freezing cold, and then the next day it’s in the sixties, and all it makes me want to do is lie in bed.’
‘Did Mr Downes ever mention anything to you about his daughter having an encounter with a strange man? Maybe someone who was watching or following her?’
‘The police asked me those same questions. I told them no. If something like that had happened to Sammy, David never mentioned it to me. Well, there was – never mind, it’s stupid.’
‘Tell me.’
‘She said he smelled. Like garbage.’
15
Darby had her pen poised over her notebook. ‘Who smelled like garbage?’
‘This man at Sammy’s college,’ Kelly replied.
‘This man was a student?’
‘I think so. I don’t know for sure. I overheard Sammy talking to her father about it, when she came to the office to get his keys.’
‘When did you overhear this conversation?’
Kelly’s face reddened with embarrassment. ‘I wasn’t eavesdropping, if that’s what you’re insinuating,’ she said. ‘The door was open and they were chitchatting about college, how classes were going – that sort of thing.’
‘When was this?’
‘In … September, I think. Yes, early September. College had just started, and Sammy had come by the office to get her father’s car keys, because the car she used, Linda’s Buick, was having problems again. David told her to take his car to Denver because he was worried about her getting stuck on the road. Sammy said something along the lines of, “Remember that guy who came to class and made the room smell like a garbage truck? He never came back.” Something like that.’
‘Did she mention a name by any chance?’
Kelly shook her head. ‘The way she said it, though … She sounded sad. Like she felt bad for him.’
‘Did Samantha or Mr Downes ever mention this man again?’
‘No.’ Kelly casually waved a hand near her face, as if trying to swat away a fly, and added, ‘It’s probably nothing. Frankly, I feel foolish for even mentioning it.’
‘Don’t.’ Darby placed her hand on the woman’s bony wrist and smiled. ‘What can you tell me about Samantha’s friends?’
‘I know she was close to a couple of girlfriends from high school. Jennifer and the other one there … Debbie, I think her name was.’
‘Last names?’
‘I don’t know. I do know they’re no longer here. They moved away after college. Somewhere on the East Coast, I think. Most of Sammy’s friends moved away, there was certainly no reason for them to stay here. She was very close to her parents. Only children are sometimes like that. I wouldn’t know personally – the good Lord didn’t bless me with children – but I’ve read articles about how only children have attachment issues. As adults, they like to stick close to their families. Or so these so-called experts say.’
‘Did she have a boyfriend? Anyone serious?’
‘Not that I know of. She dated, obviously – she was a beautiful girl – but I didn’t know any of her beaus – and I most certainly did not ask.’
The way Sally Kelly spoke and acted for some reason reminded Darby of another era: the time of Prohibition and speakeasies, when women wore skirts that covered their knees. A time when men wore fedoras and nice suits and courted women and had the manners of proper gentlemen – opening car and restaurant doors, goodnight pecks on the cheek, calling everyone ‘miss’.
Darby closed her notebook and placed her business card on the table. ‘If you remember or think of anything else, you can call me on my cell. You can also leave a message for me at the station or at the hotel, the Silver Moon Inn. Thank you for your time, Miss Kelly.’
Sally Kelly gripped the back of the bench and struggled to rise.
‘I can let myself out,’ Darby said. ‘Please, sit.’
‘I need to lock up after you leave.’
Darby helped the woman to her feet. ‘What’s your take on the Red Hill Ripper?’
‘My take?’
‘You have any thoughts on it?’
Kelly looked like she’d been asked to lick a toilet seat. ‘Absolutely not,’ she said, as they shuffled into the living-room. ‘That is not a topic I choose to dwell on.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Are you married? Live with anyone?’
Darby shook her head.
‘I’ve been on my own my whole life. You reach a certain age and you learn to shut out certain things or you’ll spend the remainder of your life in a constant state of paralysing fear.’ There was no anger or remorse in her voice or expression, just a sad acceptance. ‘I purposefully don’t follow the news any more because I find it too upsetting, too violent. I’m not naive, but that doesn’t mean I have to invite it into my life. And I certainly don’t want to carry such thoughts with me into bed each night.’
They had reached the front door. There was no peephole or deadbolt, just a cheap rickety security-door chain that had probably come with the house. It looked old, and the brass plating had chipped away over time.
‘It’s an exercise in futility, isn’t it?’
‘What is?’
‘Evil. Trying to understand it, trying to stop it. It will have its way with you if it wants, won’t it?’
Sally Kelly seemed to be waiting for an answer. Darby didn’t have one to give her.
16
The Silver Moon Inn resembled one of those old-time prosperous banks built during the height of the mining boom – thre
e floors of weathered brick and Victorian-style windows, each with a fleur-de-lis above the keystone. Parking was in the back.
Darby stepped inside the dimly lit lobby and felt as though she had just slipped through a portal into an early-nineteenth-century gentlemen’s club, the kind where old white men wore three-piece suits and carried pocket watches and sat around discussing politics and the matters of the day while smoking cigars and drinking single-malt Scotch served to them by white-gloved waiters. The ornate chandelier hanging over the well-worn leather club chairs looked like it had been rescued from some dank English castle. The small reception desk was made of old wood. Mounted on the wall behind it was an old-fashioned cabinet of pigeonholes, used to store the individual room keys. A banker’s lamp glowed from the corner of the front counter.
Darby placed her box of files on the counter. Apparently the owner wanted to keep the whole Boardwalk Empire motif going, because she didn’t find a computer, just a thick ledger, and, lying on its top, an antique-looking fountain pen and a small, pear-shaped bottle of black ink with a tuxedoed penguin on the front. The blue and red sticker for ‘J. D. Humphrey Ink’ had cracked and yellowed over time, and its edges had curled.
Darby found the hotel bell, but there was no need to press it; the door behind the reception counter had swung open. The woman who lumbered out had a braided grey ponytail and wore lots of silver jewellery. She looked exhausted, the bruised skin under her eyes hanging like black curtains. Darby assumed she slept in the back office: she had spotted a cot propped up against the wall before the door shut.
‘Welcome to the Silver Moon Inn, Miss McCormick.’ The woman saw the question mark in Darby’s face and said, ‘The FBI told me you’d be coming in sometime today. You’re on the ground floor, Room 8.’ She reached into a pigeonhole and came back with a key.
‘An actual, physical key,’ Darby said with a grin. ‘I can’t remember the last time I was at a hotel that used one of those.’
‘The owner is real intent on maintaining the hotel’s Old World charm.’ The woman stepped aside and, turning, pointed to a rotary phone mounted on the wall behind her. ‘That’s the hotel’s original phone.’
