The Secret Friend dm-2

by Chris Mooney

  'Fletcher didn't break into Emma Hale's home; he had a key.'

  'Have you considered the possibility that maybe Fletcher's working for Tina Sanders? Fletcher's spoken to her several times. Maybe I should put her under surveillance.'

  'I would.'

  'You can make your recommendations to the federal task force,' Chadzynski said. 'Have you found any indication that Bryson tampered with evidence on either the Hale or Chen case?'

  'Both Neil and I reviewed the chain of custody on all the evidence. It doesn't appear Bryson tampered with any of our cases. I can't say what happened in Saugus.

  'I got the state lab's report on the two Saugus women. Both were raped and strangled. There were no traces of semen, no blood under the fingernails, but they found a lubricant that's used with some condoms. Coop's reviewing the evidence files right now.

  'NCIC doesn't contain any listing for Samuel Dingle,' Darby said. 'There is no DNA profile in CODIS under that name. Same goes for AFIS. Dingle could possibly be using an alias.'

  'I heard something about a fingerprint being recovered from the duct tape used to bind Sanders' wrists.'

  'It's a palm print. Have you spoken to Dr Karim?'

  'I did this morning. He was very cooperative. He didn't have anything new to add.'

  'Maybe we should dig a little deeper.'

  'What's going on with Hannah Givens? What new developments do you have?'

  'I don't have anything at the moment. Neil told me Bryson did, in fact, pay for an experimental stem-cell treatment for his daughter.'

  'I want your focus on Givens.'

  'I'm at her place right now.'

  'Good. I need to get going. We're holding another press conference. We can talk more after Bryson's wake.'

  'I'm going to stick around here for a while.'

  'Keep at it,' Chadzynski said. 'I believe you have a real talent for this.'

  Darby hung up. From behind the closed bedroom door she heard the TV playing down the hallway, the murmured voices of Hannah's parents. They were parked in the living room hoping for a phone call from their daughter's kidnapper.

  For the next hour Darby walked around the bedroom examining Hannah's things, feeling certain she had overlooked something valuable. That feeling, she knew, was her frustration speaking. There was nothing here.

  Darby put on her coat. She opened the door and walked down the hallway to the living room where Hannah's parents were waiting.

  67

  Hannah's parents sat on the couch watching a recording of last night's Nancy Grace show. The so-called victim's rights crusader was talking about the abduction of Hannah Givens, the apparent third victim of a Boston-based serial killer who abducted college women and, after holding them for a period of weeks, shot them in the back of the head and dumped their bodies.

  After rehashing the gory details of Emma Hale and Judith Chen's murders, Nancy Grace consulted a criminal psychologist and a former FBI profiler, both women, and asked them if Hannah's abductor, given the heightened media attention, might panic and decide to kill her. There was much discussion about the possibility.

  Tracey Givens, her eyes bloodshot and puffy from crying, turned away from the TV, saw Darby and stood.

  'You find anything in my daughter's bedroom, Miss McCormick?'

  'No, ma'am, I didn't.'

  Hannah's mother seemed surprised. Hannah's father stared at the stains in the well-worn carpet.

  'You were in there an awfully long time today, I thought you…'

  'I wanted to get to know your daughter better,' Darby said.

  Tracey Givens glanced back to the TV where Nancy Grace was shouting at Paul Corsetti, the media rep for the Boston police. By not telling the truth to the public, Nancy Grace yelled to the camera, Boston PD had put Hannah's life in danger.

  No, you dumb, self-centred piece of shit, you're the one who's putting Hannah's life in danger.

  Darby couldn't stomach it any more. 'Thank you for allowing me to examine Hannah's things,' she said, opening the front door. Hannah's father followed.

  Michael Givens had the face of a man who had spent too many years in the sun. His skin, sagging and leathery, was carved with deep grooves. He looked frail in the afternoon light. The street was quiet now. The Boston media and national tabloids were downtown at Chadzynski's press conference.

  'The experts on TV, they're saying all this attention Hannah's getting might egg this man on – might encourage him to, you know, do something,' he said. 'But those TV people, these so-called experts, they're looking at it from the outside. You're on the inside, Miss McCormick. You've got all the facts.'

  Darby waited, not sure what the man was asking.

  'They said on the news you worked on the other two cases where the women disappeared.'

  'I've only read the case files.'

  'Those two girls… they were gone for a long time, right?'

  'Mr Givens, I'm going to work day and night to find a way to bring your daughter home. That's a promise.'

  Hannah's father nodded. He was about to open the door when he decided to lean against the doorway. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked to the corner of the porch, at the recycling bins filled with beer cans.

  'Hannah… she wanted to stay home with us and go to a local school, a community college about ten minutes away,' Michael Givens said. 'Schools in the northeast are real good. Hannah got this real nice financial aid package from Northeastern, so I pushed her. Sometimes you've got to push your kids. You've got to give them a shove 'cause sometimes that's the only way to help them.

  'I told Hannah I couldn't afford to send her to the local college, which was the truth. We don't make much. Getting a degree up here would open all sorts of doors for her. Hannah didn't like it much – she missed her friends, didn't care for the weather here. Too cold, she said. My wife, she sort of relented, said she'd pick up an extra job to help see Hannah through a local college but I said no. I kept pressing Hannah to come here. My daughter's shy – she's been that way since she was wee-high – and I thought, my thinking was being up here, surrounded by all these smart people, it would do Hannah a world of good, help break her out of her shell. She may be shy but she's a persistent bugger when it comes to studying.

  'Hannah kept on telling me how unhappy she was, how she wanted to come home, and I kept telling her no. I'd hang up and every time there'd be a knot in my stomach. I always shook it off. Maybe God was trying to tell me something.'

  'Mr Givens, I know this is easy for me to say, but you can't blame yourself for what's happened. Sometimes…'

  'What?'

  Sometimes things just happen, Darby said to herself. Sometimes God doesn't care.

  'We're all working real hard on this, sir.'

  Michael Givens stood with his hands in his pockets, unsure of what to say or where to look.

  'What do you think of her?' he asked.

  'I think your daughter is -'

  'No, I meant Nancy Grace. She wants us to come on TV and talk about Hannah, says it will help find her. My wife wants to do it, says anything we can do to help Hannah we ought to. Truth be told, I don't feel too good about it. There's something about the way that woman carries on that gives me a bad feeling all over. If we go on TV, you think it will make this person who's got Hannah decide to… hurt her?'

  Darby told him the truth. 'I don't know.'

  'What would you do, if you were in my situation?'

  'I think you should do what you feel is right.'

  'What's your opinion of that Nancy Grace woman?'

  'Personally, I think the only thing she gives a shit about is ratings.'

  'You're blunt. I admire that. You and Hannah would get along real good. Thank you, Miss McCormick.'

  Hannah's father turned around but he didn't open the door.

  'She's our only child. We couldn't have any other children. It was a miracle we had her. I don't know what we'd do if she… Just bring my baby girl home, okay?'

  Hi
s hands fumbled for the doorknob. Michael Givens stumbled back inside, forgetting to shut the door behind him. He took the seat next to his wife and stared at the phone, willing it to ring.

  68

  Keith Woodbury had taken the cassette tape and created an mp3 file which he burned onto a CD.

  The first time Darby had listened to it she had to excuse herself. She went outside and walked around the building several times until the fresh air had purged the sick, clammy feeling that wrapped itself around her skin.

  The second time was just as difficult, but with the initial shock over, Darby concentrated on the recording, forcing herself to ignore the woman's screaming and listen for background noises. Darby listened to the CD again as she drove back into the city.

  Jennifer Sanders screamed out in pain, screamed for it to stop, begged for it to stop. The man on the tape grunted and moaned. Sometimes he laughed. He didn't speak. If he had said something, then maybe Dingle's sister could have identified her brother's voice. At least then Darby would know for sure that the man on the tape was, in fact, Sam Dingle.

  The traffic leading into Boston was awful. There was some sort of road construction. Darby took the nearest exit, her mind focused on the sounds playing over her car speakers. She didn't hear anything in the background. The tape needed to be analysed by an audio expert, a process that would take months.

  Half an hour later she found herself driving through the Back Bay. Trinity Church, one of the oldest in Boston, stood in the shadow of the Prudential Center. Every Christmas season, for as long as Darby could remember, her mother had brought her here to Copley Square for the candlelight carols. Sometimes the Trinity Chamber Choir sang.

  Darby spotted an empty parking space and, without a moment's thought, pulled in as daylight died behind the Prudential Tower.

  A Catholic church is a sinister place. Sin and salvation. A life-size statue of Jesus hanging on the cross was mounted on the wall behind the altar. In the dim light Darby saw the painted drops of blood running from his crown of thorns and the nails driven through his palms and feet.

  The original church, founded in 1733, was burned in the Great Boston Fire of 1872. The architect H. H. Richardson rebuilt the church in the style which became popular in a number of European buildings – massive towers of stone with clay roofs and arches. Darby was always mesmerized by the stained-glass windows behind the altar. She saw David's Charge to Solomon, designed in 1882 by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris.

  Darby sat in a pew, wondering about the generations of people who had sat in this same spot and prayed to God out of desperation and fear. Please, Jesus, my son has cancer. Please help him. Mary, Mother of God, please keep my children safe. Please don't let anything happen to my family. Please help me, God. Jesus, please help me.

  Did God hear their prayers? Did he listen? If he did, did he pick and choose at random? Did he even care?

  Did the victims go to church?

  Darby set her backpack on the pew and removed the copy of Emma Hale's murder book. She hunted through the text with the aid of a pen light.

  Emma Hale was born and raised Catholic. She went to Mass every Sunday with her father. What about Judith Chen? She, too, had been raised Catholic. Her roommates didn't know if she attended church.

  Darby called the number for Hannah's apartment. Michael Givens answered.

  'What is your daughter's religious affiliation?'

  'We raised her Catholic,' Hannah's father said. 'That was my wife's doing. Me, I didn't really have much use for it.'

  'What about Hannah?'

  'She went through the motions for her mother, but I don't think it really took hold.'

  'Do you know if Hannah ever attended Catholic services in or around Boston?'

  'Hold on.'

  Michael Givens conferred with his wife for a moment. Tracey Givens mumbled something to her husband and then she came on the line.

  'Hannah hasn't attended church for a while now. I wasn't too happy about it, but Hannah wasn't afraid to speak her mind. She wasn't real religious, and whatever faith she had left went out the window when that awful sexual abuse scandal broke out here – you know the one I'm talking about, where the priests molested those boys and Cardinalwhat's-his-name covered it up?'

  'Cardinal Law,' Darby said. 'What about any local charity work?' Bryson hadn't investigated that item.

  'My daughter didn't have a lot of free time between her classes and two jobs – Hannah kept complaining about it to both me and her father, saying she wished she had more of a personal life. If she was doing any charity work, she didn't tell me.'

  'What about a boyfriend? Was she seeing anyone?' Darby felt desperate, reaching for straws.

  'Hannah was seeing a nice boy back home but that fell by the wayside after Hannah left for college,' Tracey Givens said. 'She wasn't dating anyone here. It was a real sore spot for her.'

  'Thank you for your time, Mrs Givens.'

  Darby stared at Jesus' sorrowful expression and for some reason her thoughts drifted to Timothy Bryson. His body was lying inside a casket at a funeral home in Quincy. Tomorrow morning he would be buried. She wondered who had made the arrangements.

  Darby recalled the framed picture of his daughter and held it in her mind's eye while she examined her feelings.

  I'm sorry for what happened to your daughter, that cold, analytical part said. But I don't feel sorry for what happened to you, Tim. I know I should, but I don't.

  Darby thought of her own mother. Out of habit, or maybe out of faith, she knelt, and with her back ramrod straight, just as the nuns at St Stephen's had taught her, made the sign of the cross and closed her eyes. First she said a prayer for Sheila. Then she prayed for Hannah.

  Her phone vibrated against her hip. The display said unknown caller. Darby let her phone ring three more times before she answered.

  69

  'Are you praying to God to help you find Hannah?' Malcolm Fletcher asked.

  Darby reached inside her coat pocket and undid the strap of her shoulder holster as she looked around the church. The pews were empty, the walls with their stained-glass depictions of the stations of the cross covered in shadows.

  'I didn't think I'd hear from you again, Special Agent Fletcher.'

  'That was a long time ago.'

  'Jonathan Hale told us everything.'

  'A clever lie,' Fletcher said.

  'I know what you're doing. I know why you're here.'

  'Aren't you going to ask me about Detective Bryson?'

  'You're admitting you killed him?'

  'I did you a favour. Who knows what sorts of schemes he was planning? You might want to check your evidence locker.'

  'Why didn't you just tell me?'

  'I wanted Timmy to deliver a message and decided to send it air mail.' Fletcher laughed, a deep, guttural sound that made her feel cold all over. 'Aren't you glad he's dead?'

  'I don't think he deserved to suffer.'

  'Another lie. That's part of the reason you're at church now, isn't it? You wanted to lay down your guilt at the altar and beg the Almighty for mercy. I forget how much you Catholics enjoy the rack. Did He decide to end his insufferable reign of silence and answer your prayers?'

  'I'm still waiting.'

  'Don't you know your god deals in silence and ash?'

  'We identified the remains.'

  'I'm sure Tina Sanders is relieved. She's been praying for this moment for a long time.'

  'She still won't speak to us.'

  'I wonder why.'

  'Let's talk about Sam Dingle.'

  'I'm afraid I'm going to have to end this conversation. I don't entirely trust the phone. You never know who might be listening in. Oh, and Darby?'

  'Yes?'

  'Despite what you've read or heard about me, I have no intention of harming you now or anytime in the future. Hannah is in excellent hands. I hope you find her soon. Goodbye, Darby.'

  Click.

  Darby was standing outside the c
hurch, looking around the streets when her phone rang again. It was one of the surveillance technicians.

  'We couldn't trace his call,' the tech said. 'If he calls again, just keep him talking. At some point he'll slip and we'll find him.'

  'Don't bet on it,' Darby said.

  70

  Hannah Givens was thinking about the letter again, wondering if she had made a mistake.

  Three days ago Walter had presented her with a nice sheet of stationery and matching envelope with postage. He gave her a pen and told her to write a letter to her parents. He promised to mail it.

  Hannah knew full well Walter would never mail the letter. It was too risky. The way forensics worked now, the police could trace a postage stamp to the exact post office where it had been purchased. She had seen it done on a TV show.

  The letter, Hannah knew, was a peace offering, a way to get her to speak. Walter needed her to talk. He had tried to get her to open up by sharing a horrible story about how his mother had almost burned him to death and then followed it up with all that religious talk about the importance of forgiveness.

  When she didn't speak, when she continued to sit there, silent and staring, she could tell he wanted to hurt her. To his credit, he didn't, but that didn't mean Walter would wait forever. He'd hurt her once. There was no question in her mind he'd do it again.

  Walter had left the felt-tipped pen. For a good amount of time she had played with the idea of using the pen as a weapon – stab him in the throat, if possible. At the very least, she could take out an eye. She had played through the scenarios in her mind and noticed that not once did she feel any fear. She had never injured another human being before but felt certain, if and when the time came, she could do it.

  Walter, though, was smart. He wouldn't forget the pen. At some point he would ask for it back.

  Another idea had taken root in her mind, one with possibly even greater potential: What if she could use the letter as an opportunity to gain some leverage? The question consumed her waking thoughts.