The Secret Friend

by Unknown

  The wet snow was coming down at a fast clip. Walter drove slowly, carefully, with both hands gripping the wheel. A lot of cops would be out tonight.

  As he drove, Walter kept glancing at the statue on the dashboard. Mary’s voice was clear in his head. His Blessed Mother told him not to worry.

  6

  The dead woman lying on the autopsy table didn’t look like a woman any more – she didn’t look human, in fact, but more like one of those creatures from an old black-and-white horror movie, a frightful, angry thing that had clawed its way out from a grave. The teeth were bared, the lips and surrounding facial tissue and missing eyes picked away by postmortem fish feeding. The rest of the body was covered by a blue sheet. A white card with a case number was placed under her chin.

  The face was unrecognizable. Darby wondered if the woman was Judith Chen.

  A heavyset man from ID, the section of the lab that dealt exclusively with crime scene photography, took close-up pictures of the bloated face. Coop stood behind him, watching. The small white-tiled room reeked of disinfectant mixed with the overpowering metallic odour of the Boston Harbor.

  Darby had already taken her own set of pictures. As she waited, she reviewed what little she knew of the case, most of which came from newspapers.

  Two and a half months ago, on a Wednesday night during the first week of December, Judith Chen, a freshman at Boston’s Suffolk University, was studying for her chemistry midterm at the campus library. Five minutes shy of 10 p.m., Judith, dressed in pink nylon running pants, a pink sweatshirt and Nike sneakers, decided to call it a night. Somewhere between the library and the apartment she was renting in Natick, the nineteen-year-old chemistry major disappeared.

  It was now mid-February and the body lying on the table wore the same clothing.

  The ID man gave her the nod. Darby, dressed in scrubs, put on a surgical mask and a face shield and approached the body.

  The woman’s pink sweatshirt and pink nylon running pants were wet, caked with mud and twigs. The feet, still laced with sneakers, hung over a sink dripping with water. Darby was glad to see Bryson had tied paper bags around the woman’s hands.

  The right running-pant pocket was sewn shut with the same black thread used on Emma Hale’s dress pocket. Darby peeled back the waistband, and through the transparent pocket lining she saw the same five-inch statue of the Virgin Mary she had held in her hands at the lab.

  On the back of the woman’s head was a puckered hole – the muzzle stamp from a handgun. There was no exit wound. Darby recalled that the .22 calibre slug found in Emma Hale’s skull hadn’t produced an exit wound either.

  Coop removed the paper bags and examined the woman’s hands. The fingers were gnarled into claws, and the skin, white and puckered with wet wrinkles known as washerwoman’s syndrome, had started to slough off the body. The fingernails were painted a bright pink.

  ‘They’re pretty shrivelled,’ Coop said.

  ‘Which way should we go? Tissue builder? Injecting water under the skin?’

  ‘Since the body’s already showing epidural detachment, the best method would be to use the glove technique. Your hands are roughly the same size, so we can print her here.’

  Darby collected grit and fingernail samples. After she finished, Coop slid the skin off the right hand and transferred the ‘skin glove’ to a dish holding alcohol.

  She didn’t see any evidence to indicate the body had been weighted down. It didn’t matter, really – the putrefaction gases would cause even a weighted body to float to the surface eventually. Did the killer know this?

  Darby plugged in the portable Luma-Lite and waved the alternate light source across the clothing. She found several hairs. After she collected them, she adjusted the wavelength and found stains that fluoresced – blood or semen. She marked the areas and then cut off the clothes.

  The saturated bloodstains on the back of the sweatshirt resembled the same pattern she had seen on Emma Hale’s jacket and dress. Like Emma Hale, this woman had lain in her blood for a period of time before she was dumped into the river.

  Darby unlaced the sneakers and carefully removed them. River water, sand and grit fell into the sink. She cut off the socks. The toenails were painted the same bright pink as the fingernails. She packed each item of clothing into its own bag and then, using a hand-held magnifier, examined the Virgin Mary statue. It was the same size and colour. ‘Our Lady of Sorrow’ was stamped on the bottom.

  The evidence packed and sealed, Darby turned her attention to the body.

  The veins were a dark purple and stood out against the bleached white skin. Darby examined the facial abrasions. There was no way to tell with any certainty if the abrasions were postmortem or antemortem.

  When a body sinks in water, it’s knocked around the ocean or river floor. The head is battered against rocks, and fish and crustaceans pick apart the soft flesh in the face. When the body finally surfaces, it is most often mangled; the face, like this one, is practically unrecognizable.

  Above the right breast was a moon-shaped tattoo. The colour was from chromogenic bacteria – Bacillus prodigiosus and Bacillus violaceum. They invaded the dermis and produced patterns resembling tattoos.

  Part of a Snickers candy wrapper was stuck to the inside of the thigh. Darby bagged it and then swabbed the vagina and anus for possible DNA evidence. She ran a comb with wool through the woman’s pubic hairs and transferred it to an evidence bag.

  Darby had finished making her notes when Coop signalled for her.

  She carefully fitted the woman’s loose skin over her gloved hand. Then she pressed each fingertip against the inkpad and transferred the prints to the print card.

  ‘There’s no hair growth on the legs or under the arms,’ Darby said. ‘Her pubic hair is also trimmed.’

  ‘So her killer allowed her to shave before she died?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You think the perp might have done it? I ask because there was this case not so long ago, in Philly, where this guy washed his victims in his bathtub after he raped and strangled them. He shaved their legs, arms, even their heads.’

  ‘To remove evidence,’ Darby said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘A true psychopath doesn’t have empathy for his victims. They’re objects, a means to fuelling a fantasy that’s often based on sadism. Women who are used as sexual objects are tossed like trash. They’re not allowed to shave their legs and put on nail polish. He cared for this woman.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Coop said.

  Darby fitted a headset equipped with a magnifier lens and light and examined the body for any trace evidence. What she found was mostly silt and twigs.

  ‘Darby?’

  She looked up from the body.

  ‘Twelve-point match,’ Coop said. ‘It’s Judith Chen.’

  Darby felt a hot, tearing sensation work its way through her chest as she went back to work.

  Like Emma Hale, Judith Chen had disappeared for weeks, being held somewhere until her captor decided to put a bullet in the back of her head. Like Emma Hale, Judith Chen had been dumped in the water dressed in the same clothes she was last seen wearing, a small statue of the Virgin Mary sewn into one of her pockets.

  ‘I’ll tell Bryson,’ Darby said.

  7

  Darby found Detective Tim Bryson standing in the hallway, talking on his cell phone and looking magazine-cover slick in a camel wool topcoat buttoned over a sharp navy blue suit. Clothing aside, it was impossible not to take notice of him.

  The majority of men she knew in their early fifties had gone to seed – big beer bellies and jowls; greying, receding hairlines. Bryson had a sharp jaw line and a youthful face that gave him the look of a man somewhere south of forty. She had seen him at the police gym on more than one occasion. Like Coop, he was a health nut with an amazing body – lean and muscular. In addition to the gym routine and running, she had heard Bryson did yoga once a week at a studio in Cambridge.

  Bryson saw
her. ‘I’ll call you back,’ he told the caller and hung up.

  ‘It’s Judith Chen.’

  Bryson nodded and stared at the floor for a long moment. He seemed disappointed, as though he had been holding out hope.

  ‘I think we should check for any recent abductions or missing persons involving female college students,’ Darby said. ‘It also wouldn’t hurt to warn the local colleges.’

  ‘That’s the commissioner’s call.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her about it.’

  Bryson took a long breath through his nose. Times may have changed in terms of equal opportunities for women, but the Boston Police Department still had a frat-house mentality, and Darby knew her new role would rankle many of the boys. She wondered if Bryson felt that way. Time to find out.

  ‘You have a problem with me being appointed to your unit?’

  ‘It wasn’t my call,’ Bryson said.

  ‘So that would be a yes.’

  ‘Everyone says you’re one hell of a lab rat.’

  The term was meant as an indirect slap. Bryson was saying she belonged to the lab.

  ‘I’m not interested in playing the whole alpha-dog game,’ Darby said. ‘It’s boring and counterproductive.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Save the swinging dick routine for the locker room.’

  ‘You talk to your boyfriend like this?’

  ‘I’m not as polite. I’m trying to be more sensitive to your male sensibilities.’

  Darby moved closer, invading his personal space, and saw the fine web of lines around his eyes. ‘I know the papers have been pissing all over you for not finding Emma Hale. For the record, I think they’re wrong.’ She kept her voice calm. ‘When we find this asshole, if you want to be the poster boy for the department and smile and wave to the cameras and get the credit, be my guest. Until that moment comes, we need to work together on this. If you don’t want to, then by all means keep playing the passive-aggressive victim. It’s your choice.’

  Bryson didn’t answer. Darby left him standing in the hallway.

  Darby arrived at the lab and hung Judith Chen’s wet clothes inside the drying chamber where they would stay during the weekend. She wasn’t holding out hope of finding anything significant. All that time spent underwater had, as with Emma Hale’s clothing, washed away anything of value.

  Sitting on her desk was a cardboard box containing copies of the murder books and pictures. Darby wanted to get caught up but wanted to read without being distracted. She decided to go home. Coop stayed behind at the lab to work on the statue. He promised to call her later.

  By the time she reached her Beacon Hill condo, a good foot of snow had already covered her street. Darby opened the door, placed the box on her couch and deactivated her alarm. She took a long shower, standing under the hot water until it ran cold, and then dressed in jeans and her father’s old U-Mass sweatshirt.

  Inside the kitchen, she poured herself a generous glass of Booker’s bourbon. Her windows faced Suffolk University. The college was directly across the street. Last fall, Judith Chen had been attending classes inside that building. Now her corpse was lying inside the cold room waiting to be autopsied.

  Darby took a long sip of bourbon. She refilled the glass and carried it to her office.

  The former occupants had used the space as a nursery; one wall was still painted a light blue with clouds. She had only lived here for three months, and during that time, she had purchased an L-shaped desk for the corner, a bookcase and comfortable leather chair she set up by the window overlooking her back porch and the neighbour’s tiny backyard.

  Darby grabbed the box from the couch, set it up on her desk and removed a copy of Emma Hale’s murder book.

  8

  Darby took out the autopsy pictures and crime-scene photographs and tacked them to one side of the wall. On the other side she tacked the pictures she had taken of Judith Chen along with the copies ID had given her. Chen’s murder book was incomplete. Tim Bryson was at the station filling out the report.

  Vaginal and anal swabs for Judith Chen had tested negative for semen. All that time spent underwater had washed away trace evidence and DNA – if there was any DNA to be found. There was no way to tell for certain if Chen’s abductor had sex with her. With floaters, the usual evidence – tearing and abrasions – was gone, devoured by decomposition.

  The good majority of crimes involving women more often than not contained some underlying sexual component. If that was the case here – and from a statistical point of view, it should be – then why did he sew a Virgin Mary statue in their pockets?

  Maybe this wasn’t about sex. Maybe these two college girls were chosen to fill some psychological need. Darby grabbed the murder books and settled into the chair with her bourbon, the dead women hanging on the wall behind her, looking down, watching.

  Judith Chen was nineteen, the youngest daughter of a middle-class family from Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. Her father was a plumber. She decided to attend Suffolk University because the college had offered the best financial aid package. Boston was an expensive city to live, and with student housing tight, Judith Chen and a roommate rented one half of a duplex in Natick – a forty-minute commute by train. She took out a college loan and paid for her living expenses with the money she earned from her two jobs – the first as a waitress at a Legal Seafood restaurant in Boston’s theatre district, the second job as a sales assistant at the Abercrombie & Fitch store at the Natick Mall.

  Emma Hale was also nineteen, the only child of Jonathan Hale, Boston’s top real-estate developer. Emma lived in a multimillion-dollar Back Bay penthouse with its own parking garage for her convertible BMW. A pop star from the eighties lived in the second penthouse suite.

  Jonathan Hale was a powerful man with a Rolodex full of important names eager to provide favours. When his only child was reported missing, the operating theory was a possible kidnapping. Boston police acted swiftly and contacted the FBI.

  Commissioner Chadzynski ordered the CSU lab members to examine the penthouse. It was a ridiculous request – Emma Hale was last seen leaving the apartment of her friend, Kimberly Jackson. Darby knew the real reason behind the commissioner’s agenda. Thanks to the proliferation of hit TV shows depicting forensic technicians as gun-toting investigators who ran around interviewing suspects, their testimony carried a lot of weight with juries. Lawyers called it the ‘CSI effect’. Seeing TV footage of real crime scene investigators heading into the building would play well with the public, making it look as though everyone was cooperating, working hard and pooling their resources to find the missing Harvard student. It was great PR.

  Darby read through the pages listing all of Emma’s belongings – the walk-in closet full of designer dresses, shoes and handbags; the four jewellery boxes containing necklaces, earrings and bracelets purchased at upscale stores like Cartier and Shreve, Crump & Low. One box held nothing but watches.

  On paper, the two women appeared to live extremely divergent lifestyles. Emma was rich, Judith lower middle-class. Tim Bryson and his CSU team had produced an exhaustive list of the women’s movements and activities to see if they intersected at one common point – a bar, charity group, gym or dance club. Bryson had examined each woman’s computer to see if they belonged to a similar chat room or a social networking site like Facebook. No connection was found.

  Both women had shared the loss of a family member. Emma’s mother died of melanoma – the same skin cancer that had killed Darby’s mother. Emma was eight when her mother died. Judith’s older sister was killed by a drunk driver. Neither woman was seeing a local psychiatrist or campus counsellor.

  Both women were college freshmen. Bryson had investigated the possible connection that they had applied to the same college. Emma Hale had applied to Harvard, Yale and Stanford and was accepted to all three. Judith Chen hadn’t applied to those colleges.

  At the moment, the only common trait the two women had was that they had disappeared on their way
home. There were no witnesses to either abduction. Did they know their abductor, or had they, for some reason, accepted a ride from a stranger? Or were they both forced into his vehicle?

  Family and friends were interviewed. Darby read each interview carefully. When she finished, she read through them again, hoping to find a common thread. She didn’t find one.

  Darby put the murder books on the floor and went to the kitchen to refill her glass. She stepped back inside the office and turned her attention to the women hanging on the wall.

  Her gaze automatically shifted to the crime-scene photographs. The dead, she had discovered, were much easier to handle. Everything was black and white. The living contained too many shades of grey.

  The killer didn’t care how they looked dead. What drew him to these two college women was something in the way they lived.

  The physical differences between the two women were startling.

  Emma Hale was nearly model perfect, with a stunning face and body shaped by a strict diet and physical regimen overseen by a private trainer at the exclusive LA Fitness Club in the lobby of the Ritz Carlton on Tremont. She had a nose job a month after her sixteenth birthday. The Manhattan surgeon who performed the rhinoplasty also did her boob job when she was eighteen.

  Judith Chen was slim and flat-chested. She didn’t belong to a gym. Friends and family members described her as quiet and reserved, serious about her studies. She had graduated at the top of her high-school class. She had applied to and had been accepted to some of the top colleges in Massachusetts – Boston College, Boston University and Tufts. Those schools couldn’t offer the same financial aid package as Suffolk.

  According to the interviews, Emma Hale was the polar opposite. She was outgoing, popular and gregarious. The young woman wanted for nothing. Daddy provided everything – the penthouse, the clothes and jewellery, the convertible BMW.

  Darby felt the sting of class resentment – not because Emma Hale was born into a rich family but because the young woman didn’t have to work for anything. Darby had little use or patience for a pretty party girl who went through life shopping and going on European and Caribbean vacations; summers spent in Nantucket and weekend nights spent drinking at the clubs; long days recovering from her hangover on friends’ boats, her rich daddy picking up the entire tab.