by Chris Mooney
‘Does that thing still work?’
‘Absolutely. There’s a company in Iowa that adapts all the old phones so they’ll work with the new technology.’ Then with a sly grin, she added, ‘But don’t worry, everything in the room is completely modern. My name’s Laurie Richards. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you need anything, Miss McCormick.’
Darby entered her hotel room, tired and sore, and wanting two things – a long shower followed by a stiff drink.
The stiff drink wasn’t an option, at least at the moment. The room didn’t have a mini-bar, but there was a bar across the street, a place with a big wagon wheel in the front. As far she could tell, it was the only thing open in downtown Red Hill besides the Silver Moon Inn.
The country’s never-ending economic recession seemed to have hit Red Hill especially hard. Taped to the inside glass windows of virtually every business she’d passed on the way here were signs and handwritten messages on poster boards that read OUT OF BUSINESS or CLOSED PERMANENTLY. She hadn’t seen a single Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts; there were no chain restaurants or big box supermarkets, hardware or department stores. Either gentrification had somehow bypassed Red Hill or big business wasn’t interested in creating anything here, viewing the town as the equivalent of a toxic-waste dump, a place where nothing would thrive.
Darby placed the cardboard box of evidence files on her bed. Then she went back into the hall to retrieve her suitcase, forensics kit and briefcase, and used her foot to shut the door.
Her room had crimson-painted walls and a headboard and bedframe crafted from birch logs. It had recently been cleaned; she could smell lemon-scented furniture polish, and the vacuum cleaner had left tread marks in the soft carpet. The pair of windows on the far wall overlooked what appeared to be a dense section of woods, but it was too dark out there to see.
Darby hung her jacket inside the small closet and slipped out of her boots. She opened up the box, picked up a random file and opened it – the Connelly family, who had been murdered last month. She flipped through the thick stack of pages, pleased to find that the Denver state lab hadn’t skimped on crime scene photos.
Her encounter with Deputy Sheriff Lancaster hung in her mind like an uninvited houseguest. The only way to get him to leave before he took up permanent residence was to focus her attention on something else – something productive. She sat cross-legged on the bed and removed the remaining evidence files.
The first murders had occurred just over a year ago, on 4 January. Eighteen-year-old Cynthia Gardner, home for the Christmas holidays, had stayed the night at a friend’s apartment in Denver. When she went to her parents’ house the next morning she found them seated across from each other in kitchen chairs placed at the foot of their bed. Her mother had been strangled, the T-shirt that she slept in ripped open to expose her breasts. A black garbage bag had been tied around her father’s head. The Red Hill Ripper had waited until spring to kill the Bowden family. The Brazilian woman they employed to clean their house every two weeks had used the key given to her to enter. When she stepped over the threshold, an odour like spoiled meat and sewage hit her like a fist. After she vomited in the bushes, she used her cell to call the police. Martin and Heather Bowden had been killed the same way as the Gardner family.
Talk of a possible serial killer had spread through the small town. Jim and Elaine Lima had installed new locks on their doors to protect them and their twin sons, Brad and Alex, who were in their senior year at Brewster High. Brad hadn’t been home that night; he had been away on a ski trip when the Red Hill Ripper killed his brother and parents the week before Thanksgiving.
Three weeks later, John and Lisa Connelly and their sixteen-year-old daughter, Stacey, were found dead by John’s sister, who had arrived from San Diego to spend Christmas and the New Year with her brother’s family.
No semen was found at any of the crime scenes or on the bodies. The medical examiner found no evidence of penetration. The breasts of the female victims showed extensive bruising, the result of having been pinched and twisted.
Darby spent most of her time on the bedroom pictures. With the exception of the victims, the crime scenes were nearly identical: same plastic bindings and duct tape; same seating arrangement; and the same black garbage bag tied around the father’s or husband’s head. The killer had entered the home by cutting a hole through a window or sliding glass door.
Darby arranged the bedroom photographs on the quilt and stared down at them, willing a thought to come to her. She paced around the room, thinking. She could see only carnage and desperation.
Darby pinched the bridge of her nose and blinked her eyes several times, trying to get some moisture into them. Then she arched her back and stretched. She was thinking about heading into the shower when she recalled the bar across the street, the one with the big wagon wheel out front. Samantha Downes had worked at a bar called the Wagon Wheel Saloon.
The shower could wait. Darby picked up her jacket and headed back out.
17
The Wagon Wheel Saloon was one of those local tourist traps designed to give people an authentic old-time cowboy experience: duckboards covered with green sawdust; oak timber beams and wood walls festooned with antique six-shooters; and black and white pictures of cowboys, miners and settlers; wood-bladed ceiling fans; and a long, handcrafted mahogany bar with brass poles, its top polished to a high shine.
The dining area, which made up the entire left side of the room, consisted of a dozen or so tables covered with red and white checked tablecloths. About half were occupied, either by elderly couples eating in silence or by haggard-looking couples who were unwinding after work or enjoying some peace and quiet away from their kids. They all looked like what she called the ‘God Bless America Crowd’ – people who, she suspected, listened to country music and went to church every Sunday, organized bingo fundraisers and did potluck get-togethers with other couples. An archway in the corner led to a room with a pool table, and, on the other side of it, a jukebox swirling with neon colours.
Darby approached the lone man standing behind the bar, at the far end, loading draught beers on to a waitress’s circular carrying tray. He had a bowling-ball-shaped head and greying brown hair thick with some sort of styling product designed to give him that I-just-got-out-of-bed look.
She leaned against the bar, waiting for him to finish, and out of the corner of her eye she saw a group of men seated at a nearby table stop their conversation and take turns checking her out. They didn’t go about it surreptitiously, either. All five of them turned and gawked. Three continued to stare brazenly, one pretended to be busy with his phone, while another raised his beer in salute and winked at her. He had cold blue eyes and a promising future as a wife beater.
Had the Ripper sat at one of these tables, watching Samantha Downes delivering drinks and food? Had she ever waited on him? Had they talked? Or had he, like the majority of sexual predators, watched her covertly, circling her like a shark and collecting information?
The bartender stepped up to her. He wore a black polo shirt, the sleeves stretched around biceps the size of grapefruits, and he had a blue and red tattoo of a snake along his right forearm.
‘If you’re here to eat, you can go on and grab a seat.’
‘The owner around?’ Darby asked.
‘Why, you looking to buy?’
Darby showed him her federal ID.
The man sighed heavily. ‘I was wondering when you guys were going to show up,’ he said.
‘Why’s that?’
‘You’re here to talk to me about what happened to Sammy Downes, right?’
‘You already heard what happened?’
‘Yeah,’ he said sadly.
‘From who?’
‘Everyone’s talking about it. And it’s posted on the Item’s website. That’s our local newspaper, the Red Hill Evening Item.’
Then she remembered: a young-looking photographer had snapped pictures of the black body bags bein
g removed from the house while a reporter from the Red Hill Evening Item, a chubby man with a full beard and a tweed jacket, got a brief statement from Ray Williams. They had been the only two onlookers who had showed up at the house.
‘I am the owner, by the way. J. D. James Doherty.’
She shook his hand. ‘Darby McCormick. How well did you know Samantha Downes?’
He shrugged. ‘As well as an employer can know his employee, I guess. She worked for me for … five months? She was …’ His thoughts drifted for a moment. Then he leaned forward and gripped the edge of the bar. ‘Sammy was the kind of kid you’re always rooting for, you know? Smart, worked hard, had her shit together. Good kid, quiet, kinda kept to herself.’
‘And pretty.’
‘That too.’ He sighed heavily and then was quiet for a moment, locked on a private thought. ‘Goddamn waste.’
‘Any guys ever bother her?’
‘There were guys who hit on her – guys her own age. If someone was bothering her, she never mentioned it to me.’
‘What about an older guy, forties or fifties, who came in here alone and asked to be seated at one of her tables, maybe asked questions about her? Someone who might’ve given you or one of your employees or customers a bad vibe?’
J. D. was shaking his head the entire time. ‘I’ve been racking my brain about that all day,’ he said. ‘Is it possible someone like that was in here? Sure. But if he was, I didn’t see him. Believe it or not, this place gets hopping, and when it does I’m balls-to-the-wall. You should ask Evelyn. She’s one of my waitresses. Evelyn Roy.’
He pointed to a short woman dressed in tight black jeans and a black polo-style shirt who was in the process of transferring red baskets of onion rings and barbeque chicken wings with cups of blue-cheese dipping sauce from her carrying tray to a table where two middle-aged women were seated. Both women had round faces and wore oversized sweaters to hide their ample curves.
‘Evelyn can give you a better idea about Sammy,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know her beyond the employer–employee relationship. She was a great worker, showed up on time, never gave me any guff.’
‘What about the Red Hill Ripper? What’s the scuttle-butt around town?’
‘The scuttle-what?’
‘The gossip. Your employees and regular patrons, friends, people you talk to, what are they saying?’
‘I hear some people are trying to take out home equity loans to get burglar alarms installed. God knows I’ve changed my locks. I’ve got two kids. My wife makes me sleep with a baseball bat next to the bed.’
‘What about you? What do you think’s going on here?’
He shrugged. ‘Who knows? I haven’t given it much thought. The main thing on my mind is how to keep my head above water, financially. I know that sounds cold, but, well, I’m being honest. Something to drink?’
Darby ordered a Maker’s Mark. When he returned with the glass, she gave him her business card, along with a twenty, and told him to keep the change.
The waitress, Evelyn Roy, was twenty-two and wore a lot of foundation to try to hide her blemished skin. She had a degree in English and, like Samantha Downes, was having trouble landing what she called ‘a real job’. The young woman couldn’t recall seeing any older men who had given Samantha trouble or had come in there alone and watched her.
Evelyn said she didn’t know Sammy that well. ‘She was kind of … not shy but private,’ she said. She had a high-pitched nasal voice and a small chip along the bottom of a front tooth. ‘I kinda got the feeling she was under a lot of pressure.’
‘About what?’
‘Money? A boyfriend? Who knows?’ The young woman shrugged. ‘Like I said, she was private.’
Darby gave the woman her card and then took her glass to a bar stool near the front windows. She sipped her drink, trying to sort out her thoughts about the day; but they were scattered, like pieces of a ceramic jar that had been dropped from a great height. She couldn’t find enough shards and fragments to form a coherent thought.
She watched an older couple sitting at a nearby table. They were huddled together, sharing an iPhone and looking at the screen where a toddler was holding up what looked like a crayon drawing. At first Darby thought the couple were looking at a picture; then she realized they were talking via Skype or FaceTime.
Seeing the toddler made Darby think about David Downes again, that moment when he realized that he was going to die listening to his daughter begging for her life. Darby finished the rest of her drink and then went back to the hotel to make a careful study of the case files.
18
Darby had been going through the files for an hour when the hotel phone rang.
‘Hello?’
‘We’ve got a debrief scheduled tomorrow morning at eight,’ Ray Williams said. ‘Autopsy’s at 2.30, in Brewster. It’s about a 45-minute drive to the ME’s office.’
Darby filled him in on her conversation with Sally Kelly.
‘Guy with a bad smell, huh?’ Williams said. ‘That’s a great tip. We’ll put out an APB on a fart.’
‘I met Lancaster tonight.’
‘My condolences. Where did you meet him?’
‘Inside the Downes house.’ Darby explained what had happened.
A long silence followed after she finished talking.
‘Your guy Nelson was scared shitless,’ Darby said. ‘I wouldn’t be too hard on him.’
Williams said nothing. She could hear him breathing heavily on the other end of the line.
‘I talked to Nelson afterwards,’ Darby said. ‘A few minutes after I left, Lancaster came up and cornered him. Told Nelson he was going inside to take a look around, and that if Nelson called you or opened his yap to anyone he’d find himself on the breadline with his pregnant wife. That’s a direct quote. Guy’s a class act.’
‘That he is.’ Williams sounded like someone was squeezing his windpipe.
‘Bottom line is that Lancaster took advantage of the situation and bullied his way inside,’ Darby said. ‘If you’re going to be pissed at anyone, it should be me. I shouldn’t have lost my cool.’
‘Teddy brings out the best in people.’ Williams sighed. ‘Forget about it. You get the copies of the forensics reports?’
‘I’m going through them right now.’
‘You eaten dinner yet? There’s a place across the street from your hotel, the Wagon Wheel Saloon, that ain’t half bad. Got good burgers.’
‘I was just there.’
‘How about a drink?’
‘I think I’m going to call it a night,’ she said. ‘How about a rain check?’
‘Sure.’ He sounded disappointed. ‘You change your mind or if you need anything, call me at the station. I’ll be here for at least a couple of hours doing paperwork. You got my numbers?’
‘Coop gave ’em to me.’
‘Well, goodnight, then.’
‘Goodnight.’
Darby hung up. She sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her face, thinking about Ray Williams, with his strong jawline and soft brown eyes and rough masculine hands. It was her first pleasant thought of the day, the only one that didn’t remind her of death.
She also realized something else about the man, another thing he had in common with Coop: Williams hadn’t treated her any differently because she was a woman. That wasn’t always the case with male cops – and it was especially true when it came to sexual crimes. Some men were simply embarrassed to talk about the subject in the presence of a woman; they smiled tightly and chose their words carefully and then excused themselves to have whispered conversations with the other males in corners and behind closed doors.
The good majority, though, still carried a deep resentment at the whole politically correct and liberal diversity movement that had allowed women into what was still considered to be, even in the twenty-first century, a boys’ club.
She fished Williams’s card out of her back pocket and dialled his direct number.
‘How a
bout I buy you a drink?’ Darby asked.
‘What time?’
‘I’ll meet you across the street in fifteen.’
‘See you then.’
Darby went into the shower and scrubbed the stink of slaughter off her skin and hair under the hot water. She kept seeing the faces of the dead.
She reached for something more pleasant and relaxing – Siesta Key. She had been in a motel in Pittsburgh, thinking about going someplace warm, when the name popped into her head. She had never been there before but had heard how beautiful the barrier island was – eight miles long and just offshore of Sarasota, the Gulf water a pale blue and warm, even during the winter. She had pulled out her iPhone, plugged ‘Siesta Key’ into Google, and seconds later had an endless supply of links, photos and videos to choose from. A website for a sidewalk café whose name she couldn’t recall offered a live streaming webcam for the Siesta Key beach. She remembered lying on her hotel bed, with its hard mattress and stiff, starched sheets, and thinking about how she could reach Siesta Key in just under seventeen hours.
How had the Ripper watched the Downes family?
Darby shut off the water and dried herself quickly. She ran a comb through her hair, pulled her hair behind her head and fastened it with an elastic band as she moved into the bedroom. She slipped into a clean pair of underwear, picturing the son of a bitch parked in some dark driveway and watching them through a pair of binoculars, waiting for them to leave so he could get inside the house. Did you watch them through binoculars or did you do it another way?
How else could he watch?
Darby fastened her bra, thinking. There were so many different ways nowadays. You had cameras installed in cell phones and tablets and laptop computers. Like the parents she had seen inside the bar, you could have a face-to-face conversation on your phone with your kid or with someone halfway around the world using programs like Skype and apps like FaceTime and ooVoo. You could watch a beach in Florida, day or night, any time you wished.
