by Chris Mooney
‘IT’S A WASTE OF TIME.’
Darby had drawn the attention of nearby people. She scooped up her new satphone, stuffed it inside her jacket pocket, inched closer to him and, leaning forward, crossed her arms against the bar, their shoulders touching.
‘Don’t you see what he’s doing, Coop? The bullshit with the photos, tracing the cell signal, calling the pharmacy, leaving the rope – the second this guy does something, we all jump. He wants us to keep spinning our wheels until we fall over exhausted or until we’re forced to leave, whichever happens first. Finally we’ve got a lead on this guy, and you want to waste time turning my rental into a crime scene?’
Coop saw her point. His face softened a bit, but the anger was still in his eyes.
‘Look, I’m sorry for what happened with Lancaster,’ she said. ‘And maybe I should have called after what went down at the pharmacy.’
‘Maybe? Are you serious?’
‘While I was driving, I kept checking my mirrors to see if I was being followed. There’s no way he tailed me.’
‘Maybe you couldn’t see him through the snow.’
Darby shook her head. ‘That’s what I thought at first,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t see a single car light behind me during the entire ride – and he had to have had his lights on because almost every road I took was pitch-black, not a single street light on anywhere. And I passed hardly any cars.’
‘So how did he know you were at the pharmacy?’
‘I asked myself the same question,’ Darby said. ‘What’s the best way to follow someone in today’s high-tech world without being seen?’
‘He put a GPS tracker on your car?’ Coop asked.
Darby nodded. ‘I immediately checked my car after I left the pharmacy. Found it wired in right near the engine block. It’s one of those hundred-dollar units that send out their location every couple of minutes to a smartphone or laptop. He didn’t have to tail me because he knew where I was going.’
‘I love it when the pervs go high-tech.’ Coop sighed. ‘This tracker, where is it?’
‘Still there. I don’t want him to know I found it. If we can get its frequency, we might be able to lock on to it and track him down. Hoder told me you brought the equipment from Denver.’
Coop nodded. ‘He swept our rooms for bugs and didn’t find any, by the way. Yours was the only one.’
‘Where’s Hayes now?’
‘Back at the MoFo working on the computer traces for Hoder. Nothing yet.’
‘We should check all of our other vehicles, see if anyone else has been tagged with a tracker.’
‘Sure.’ Coop pinched his temples and then rubbed the corners of his eyes. He stared down at the bar top for a moment, his anger seemingly abated. He looked hollow-eyed and sullen. ‘Anyone here know anything about this Timmy guy?’
‘No. If he doesn’t live in Red Hill, he’s got to be living somewhere nearby. Someone knows him. A person with a metabolic disorder or skin condition or whatever it is that makes him smell like a walking dumpster – a guy like that is going to stand out like a turd in a punch bowl.’
‘You always knew how to turn a phrase.’
‘There’s something else, Coop.’
‘What?’
‘Nobody in this town wants to talk about the Red Hill Ripper.’
‘And that surprises you? It’s a small town. They’re wary of outsiders.’
Maybe, Darby thought, picking up a plastic drinking straw and twirling it between her fingers.
‘Look at where I grew up,’ Coop said. ‘In Charlestown, when you saw someone doing something illegal, stealing, mugging, shooting – whatever was going down, you never called the cops, and you kept your mouth shut when they came round asking questions.’
‘The whole “code of silence” bullshit.’
‘I’m not saying it’s right; I’m saying how it was. Charlestown, East Boston, Southie – they all had that small town, tribal mentality. That’s why a gangster and serial killer like Whitey Bulger was able to get away with all that shit for so long.’
And it certainly didn’t hurt that the FBI had been watching his back the entire time, Darby thought. For two decades – while Whitey and his gang flooded cocaine into Boston’s neighbourhoods, murdered their competition and smuggled guns across the sea to the IRA – he and his long-time business partner, Stephen ‘The Rifleman’ Flemmi, also worked as federal informants for the FBI’s Boston field office. In exchange for information about the Italian Mafia operating in Boston and Rhode Island, their federal handlers gave them tips about wiretaps – and about criminal rivals, who were later killed by Whitey’s gang. A witness who had come forward with information on Whitey’s illegal activities was brutally murdered. Others mysteriously vanished, never to be heard from again. The corruption grew, the bodies piled up; yet, when sealed indictments were about to come down, Bulger’s handlers ensured that he had plenty of time in which to leave town. For the next sixteen years, twelve of which were spent on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List, he and his common-law wife lived as fugitives, until a call on a tip line revealed that the octogenarian couple were in an apartment complex in Santa Monica, California. The whole sordid affair read like a thriller – except that it was true.
She didn’t need to tell any of this to Coop. Not only had he grown up during the Bulger era, he had barely survived it.
‘Your people,’ Darby said, catching how Coop bristled at the words, ‘the people living in Southie and East Boston – they didn’t protect Whitey because he was keeping the streets safe and free of drugs.’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘Evil doesn’t operate in a vacuum.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning nobody in this town is afraid of the Red Hill Ripper.’ Darby tossed the straw back down on the bar top, then turned her head to him. He looked as exhausted as she felt. ‘What if we’re approaching this the wrong way? What if there’s another component at work here? Something that isn’t sexual?’
‘You saying this guy isn’t a sexual sadist? Because what we saw inside the bedroom yesterday says otherwise.’
‘No. This guy’s a textbook sadist. But not one of the female vics was raped. If we take away sex, what are we left with for motives?’
‘Money and power. Revenge.’
Darby nodded. ‘Here’s another question: why is the killer only targeting families living in Red Hill?’
A cell phone trilled. ‘That’s me,’ he said, and straightened. He reached inside his jacket pocket, came back with the satphone and flatted a palm against his other ear. ‘Cooper.’
She saw him swallow, saw the alarmed expression on his face when his gaze cut sideways to her; then, with his head, he motioned to the front door and quickly headed towards it. Darby followed behind him, walking through the space Coop left in his wake, the pulse racing in her neck. Another family is dead, she thought as she stepped outside, on to the enclosed porch. The son of a bitch watched that interview I did and he decided to kill another family.
‘Right around the corner,’ he said into the phone as he moved down the steps. A blast of wind howled past them, temporarily blinding her.
Coop hung up. ‘He called looking for you,’ he said, fishing the car key out of his jacket pocket. ‘Said he’ll call back in ten. We’ll take my car.’
‘What does he want?’
‘Don’t know yet. He told the dispatcher – this is a direct quote – he said, “Tell her fifteen minutes or I’ll kill them all.” ’
She buckled herself into the passenger’s seat and set the stopwatch function on her digital watch.
46
Darby entered the lobby of the police station expecting to find cops gathered in anxious crowds, pacing and drinking coffee and talking among themselves, wondering aloud and privately if the Red Hill Ripper was just minutes away from butchering another family. That had been her experience back in Boston. Instead, she found the lobby peacefully quiet and most of the nearby offi
ces dark. A phone rang from somewhere down the hall.
She glanced at her wrist as she followed Coop into the squad room and saw that she had a little over twelve minutes until the Red Hill Ripper called back.
Hoder sat on the edge of his desk, rubbing the sleep from his face. His tie was gone, but he was wearing the same clothes she had seen earlier. Police Chief Robinson was with him, dressed in a pair of badly wrinkled khakis and a grey sweatshirt with frayed cuffs. His boots were damp, flecked with melting snow.
The chief eyed her coldly. Hoder too seemed to be looking at her differently now, not with contempt but with disappointment and, she thought, sadness.
‘He called 911 from a payphone in downtown Red Hill,’ Hoder said. ‘Chief Robinson sent a couple of cruisers. They’re still there, dusting it for prints. When this guy calls back – if he calls back – the chief’s got all his people standing by. Most of ’em got vehicles with four-wheel drive, so hopefully that will help their response time.
‘The woman who spoke to him, Betty, said his voice seemed altered. He identified himself as the Red Hill Ripper and asked to speak to you. When she said she’d have to put him on hold, he replied, “Tell her or I’ll kill them all.” Then he hung up.’
‘Where’s the call centre?’ Darby asked.
‘Right down the hall. We may have a lead on this Timmy person.’ Hoder turned his attention to the police chief.
Robinson said, ‘Like every other station, we hire a cleaning crew to come in during the night and empty the trash and clean up our holding cells. Outfit called RBG Cleaning, operates out of Brewster. Services them, us and a good number of the surrounding towns. Until about two years ago, they used to come in every night. Now we’ve only got ’em twice a week.’
Darby glanced at her watch again. Just under ten minutes left. The snow on her head had melted, making her scalp itch, and she felt sweat gathering along the small of her back.
‘Reason I bring it up,’ Robinson said, ‘is because a year ago, maybe a year and a half, the people working the night shifts complained about the halls stinking like rotten food. Couple of ’em said it smelled like fish. This was during the summer, so we thought that maybe someone dropped food somewhere or left it in a trashcan and it spoiled. We were bleaching all of our buckets. This went on for about a month or so and then it stopped.
‘Terry told me about the interview you two had with the hooker, escort, whatever she is, how this Timmy guy smelled, and it got me thinking, so I talked to Ray about it. He’s on his way to Brewster to talk to Ron Gondek, the guy who owns the cleaning company, to see if he employed someone matching Timmy’s description.’
‘If he did, it means Timmy was in here before the killings started. Do the janitors have access to the offices?’
Robinson nodded, knowing where she was heading. ‘All the cabinets and desks are locked up every night – at least mine are,’ he said.
‘Computers?’
‘Password protected, every last one of them – and not with those rinky-dink passwords you can guess, shit like your birthday or your pet’s name.’
Darby’s attention had drifted to the pictures of the dead women on the whiteboards. For a moment the only sound she heard was Robinson jingling his change and car keys in his pockets.
Hoder said, ‘The guy from our facial-imaging lab finished up with the Tuttle woman about half an hour ago. He should be emailing the sketch to us any minute now.’
She nodded absently, still looking at the pictures. ‘You said he called the call centre’s emergency number?’
‘That’s right.’
‘That number in the phone book? On the internet?’
‘No, it’s a private line used only by cops.’
‘So somehow he got that number. And we know he got all of our cell phone numbers, because he sent out those pictures of me earlier today.’
Darby glanced at her watch. Six and a half minutes left. Plenty of time, she thought, and moved to the door.
‘Where are you going?’ Coop asked.
‘To check Williams’s office. Be right back.’
His light was still on. The computer was a tower unit; it stood on the floor, underneath the desk. She took out her penlight, got down on the linoleum and examined its back. It took her a only moment to find what she was looking for.
When she returned to her feet, she found Coop standing in the doorway, looking at her expectantly. She moved into the hall, motioning for him to follow, and checked her watch again. Three minutes and forty seconds left.
‘There’s a small USB key installed in the back of the tower,’ Darby said as they walked. ‘Those things have PC-monitoring software on them. You plug them into someone’s computer and bingo, you have access to emails, contacts, every single thing on their computer – and you can do it all remotely.’
‘You got all of that from looking at a USB stick?’
‘The words “Spy Cobra Delux” are printed along the side.’
‘Well, that’s a clue, sure.’
‘How he got his hands on everyone’s cell phone numbers has been nagging at me all day. Using a device like that makes sense since our man likes computers.’
‘And bugged your phone,’ Coop added. ‘That USB spy device, I wonder why he left it there.’
‘Maybe it does double-duty as an audio bug. We’ll run the name through Google and find out what it does.’
Coop took her to the call centre, a warm, boxy room with long counters along the walls that served as desks. The dispatcher, Betty, a mountain of a woman poured into a tight-fitting black fleece sweatshirt, sat in front of a bank of three computer monitors. She kept shifting in her seat and swallowing nervously, like someone waiting for a bomb to go off.
The woman gave Darby a headset; everyone else had headphones so they could listen in when the Ripper called.
While they waited, Darby explained what she had found to Hoder and Chief Robinson.
Darby was checking her watch when a 911 call came through.
47
Betty spoke into her headset. ‘911, what is your emergency?’
On the end of the line Darby heard rapid breathing.
Crying.
Her attention was fixed on the monitor with the ANI/ALI screen. The software had caught the incoming number but there was no address.
Land-line calls were traced in a matter of seconds. Call from cell phones took longer; the software had to triangulate the signal as it bounced between towers. Betty moved her computer mouse with one hand and punched her keyboard with the other.
Now a frightened woman’s voice: ‘He’s got us tied up in the bedroom. Me and my family.’
Darby felt cold all over. She leaned forward in her chair, elbows on her knees, and stared down at the scuffmarks on the floor. The voice had a slight echo to it. She’s on a speakerphone, Darby thought.
‘There’s a rope tied around my neck,’ the woman sputtered.
From the corner of her eye Darby could see Coop looking at her, and she recalled what he had said to her before she went into the squad room to do the interview: I saw the list of questions and answers the two of you came up with. You go on the record saying those things, you might as well be jamming a stick of dynamite up this guy’s ass. Once you light the fuse, who the hell knows how he’s going to react? Maybe he’ll decide to take his aggression out on someone else instead of you. ‘Is the intruder inside the room with you?’ Betty asked. While she had been taught to keep her emotions in check, to speak clearly and calmly, Darby caught a slight hitch in the woman’s reedy voice.
The woman on the phone didn’t answer. He’s listening in on the conversation, Darby thought. He’s telling her what to say.
‘Ma’am, are you still there?’ Betty asked.
‘Yes,’ the woman sputtered. ‘Yes, he’s here with me. With us.’
‘Where do you live, ma’am?’
Another pause. Darby pictured the killer whispering the answer into the woman’s ear. She looked
again at the ANI/ALI screen. Still no address.
‘He said to put her on the line. Darby McCormick.’
‘I’m right here,’ Darby said.
Then the woman broke down, sobbing hysterically. ‘He just put a bag over my husband’s head, please, you’ve got to help us. Twenty-two –’
The woman started choking.
He’s strangling her. Darby hit the mute button on her headset and whipped round to Betty. ‘Why’s the address taking so goddamn long to trace?’
Betty’s eyes didn’t move from the screen. Police Chief Robinson answered the question. ‘We don’t have the software to trace cell signals,’ he said. ‘Only the state police can do that, system called One-Click.’
The woman’s choking filled their headsets.
Robinson continued. ‘Betty already bumped up the call to them. They can’t pinpoint a cell signal’s exact location, but they can give us co-ordinates, longitude and latitude. We’ll be able to get an address with that.’
‘How long is this gonna take?’
Robinson didn’t have an answer. Over her headphones Darby thought she heard the crinkling sound of a plastic bag and her heart leapt high in her chest. She got back on the line, reminding herself not to beg: begging was the lifeblood of a sadist, what fed their need to torture. Beg and he’d start to kill everyone.
‘You wanted to talk to me,’ she said into the microphone. ‘I’m here. Tell me what you want.’
Silence. Still no address listed on the screen.
‘Tell me what you want,’ Darby said again.
Then a gulping and gasping sound roared over their headphones, like the noise of someone breaking to the surface of the water after having been submerged.
‘Alone,’ the woman managed to say. Her wretched coughs exploded over the line for what seemed like minutes. ‘Come alone and he’ll won’t kill us.’
‘I’ll come alone; you have my word,’ Darby said. ‘Tell me where you live.’
Hysterical sobbing. ‘Please help us.’
‘I’m coming. Alone. Give me your address –’
