The Secret Friend

by Unknown

  You cared for them, I know you did. Why did you keep them alive for so long only to turn around and kill them?

  Darby wondered if the killer was possibly schizophrenic. Most schizophrenia was based on a specific delusion – UFOs, secret government organizations implanting microchips in people’s brains to eavesdrop on their thoughts. A lot of schizophrenics believed God, Jesus or the devil spoke directly to them.

  With Hale and Chen, there seemed to be an organizational element at work in the way both women were killed and dumped in water. And then there was the length of time between the abductions. Emma Hale had been held somewhere for roughly six months – half a year, Jesus – her body discovered in early November. Chen’s body was found two days ago. It was February. Her stay had lasted only a couple of months.

  As a general rule, schizophrenics weren’t organized offenders. They were impulsive killers. The crime scenes were sloppy. With Hale and Chen, there was no crime scene.

  Emma Hale, the first victim, had left a party at her friend’s Back Bay apartment. It wasn’t a long walk home but it had been snowing, so Emma had called a cab. She grabbed her coat and went outside to smoke. Twenty minutes later, the cab pulled up to the apartment building but Emma Hale wasn’t there.

  Judith Chen had studied late into the evening. She left the library and somewhere on her way home had disappeared.

  Both women had not made it home. Had they been abducted by force? If a strange man had tried to grab Hale or Chen, both women would have tried to fight. They would have kicked and screamed. No witnesses had come forward to indicate this had happened.

  Darby felt certain the killer didn’t do this – he wouldn’t want to draw attention to himself. He was more cunning. He needed these women. Before approaching them, he would have a plan in place to get them quickly inside his car as quietly as possible. Had the killer driven up to them and offered a ride? Darby considered the possibility. If this had happened, the killer wouldn’t drive a clunker or a van – vans always sent a message of danger. Appearances would be important.

  Both women were smart and well educated. Darby felt confident that neither of them would have accepted a ride from a stranger. Either they knew him or he had acted in such a manner as to make them feel comfortable about getting into his car. To do that, he would need to have known something about his victims. Had he followed them, observing their habits and routines, their friends and class schedules? Or were they randomly selected?

  Random selections were desperate. If these women were randomly selected, they would be used and discarded. They wouldn’t be kept somewhere for months. Maybe they were victims of opportunity. Maybe the killer simply approached a variety of women to see which one would climb inside his car. Maybe he had posed as an undercover cop and used a fake badge to lure them. Or maybe everything she was thinking right now was a complete waste of time and energy.

  Darby spotted a Starbucks and pulled over. She was walking back to her car when her cell phone rang. The caller ID window said unknown caller. She waited until the fourth ring to pick up, just to be sure.

  ‘Are you ready to discover the truth?’ Malcolm Fletcher asked.

  46

  ‘I spoke to Tina Sanders,’ Darby said.

  ‘Did she tell you about her daughter?’

  ‘She did. For some reason, the woman is under the assumption that I know what happened to her. Is there something you’d like to tell me?’

  ‘If you want to know what happened to Jennifer Sanders and the others, drive to Sinclair,’ Fletcher said. ‘This time, I want you to come alone.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve decided I want you all to myself.’

  Click.

  The phone call was short, less than thirty seconds. Did Fletcher know the call was being traced? This time he had asked her to come alone. Had he somehow already spotted the surveillance or was he merely anticipating it?

  Darby pulled onto the highway and called Bryson. He promised to call her back and did, twenty minutes later.

  ‘I just got through talking with Bill Jordan, the man heading up your surveillance,’ Bryson said. ‘Fletcher wasn’t on long enough. They couldn’t lock on to his signal.’

  ‘Is there any way he could have found out about the trace?’

  ‘No. My guess is he’s playing it safe, trying to hedge his bets. I’ve got to run and coordinate with Jordan. He’s still scrambling to get his people together.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘It’s like you said – he left us the same Virgin Mary statue we found in Chen’s and Hale’s pockets. It’s hard to ignore that fact.’

  ‘He wants to meet me alone.’

  ‘Jordan’s using some undercover narcotics detectives. They’ll pose as Reed’s security people and escort you inside.’

  ‘Tim, if Fletcher does, in fact, know something, maybe I should go in there alone.’

  ‘I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.’

  ‘If the man wanted to hurt me, he’s had ample opportunity,’ Darby said. ‘What does Fletcher have to gain by killing me?’

  ‘If I let you go inside the hospital without any sort of protection, the commissioner will have my ass. If something happens to you – if you go in there and stub your toe, the city would be liable. You could sue me, the city.’

  ‘You want me to sign a waiver?’

  ‘I’m not going to debate this with you. You want to drive up to Sinclair, then go, but we’re going to be there.’

  ‘I’m driving there now.’

  ‘Okay. We’ll make sure all the exits are covered.’

  ‘How many are there?’

  ‘A lot,’ Bryson said. ‘This past weekend Reed showed me all the different places people can sneak inside. His security can only cover so much of the campus at any given time. When Fletcher calls, keep him on the phone and we’ll do the rest. Is your phone fully charged?’

  Darby checked the battery level. ‘It’s still got some juice,’ she said. ‘I have a charger in my car.’

  ‘Good. Everyone will be in position by the time you arrive.’

  ‘What if he leads me into the basement? The cell won’t work down there.’ They had discovered that during their weekend search. The basement was too far underground, the walls too thick. The signals either dropped or cut out completely.

  ‘I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that,’ Bryson said.

  47

  Jonathan Hale sat on his office floor, elbows propped on his knees and hands buried in his unwashed hair as he stared at the pictures of Emma and Susan scattered across the rug.

  All day Saturday he had scoured the house for the photo albums and removed each and every picture and arranged them on the floor. It was now Monday evening. He had spent the entire time holed up in here in his office drinking bourbon and reliving the memories buried in each of the pictures. Some were clear but most had either faded or dulled.

  When he nodded off, sometimes he had flashes, clips of memory that didn’t make much sense or carry any significant weight – Susan kneeling on the boat dock, rubbing sunscreen on Emma’s pudgy little arms; Emma cutting off her doll’s hair then crying after Susan told her it wouldn’t grow back; Susan at a Rolling Stones concert sipping beer from a paper cup while Mick Jagger belted out ‘Sympathy for the Devil’.

  A phone rang. He thought it was his office phone, and when he stood, he realized the ringing was coming from inside his suit jacket. He only carried one phone with him now; the one Malcolm Fletcher had given him.

  ‘Have you looked at today’s mail?’ Fletcher asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I placed an envelope inside your mailbox,’ Fletcher said. ‘Inside you’ll find a DVD containing the garage surveillance video of the man who killed Emma. Call me after you’ve seen it.’

  Hale opened his office door. His assistant had placed the day’s mail inside the leather tray sitting on the small table, along with a new bottle of Maker’s Mark bourbon. A small padd
ed brown envelope was tucked into the bottom. Malcolm Fletcher’s name was written as the return address. The envelope, Hale noticed, didn’t contain any postage.

  Standing at his desk, Hale grabbed the envelope’s tab and ripped it open. A shiny silver DVD slid onto his blotter.

  His office had a TV with a DVD player. He made sure the door was locked, then slid the disk inside the player and waited.

  The garage surveillance tape is a grainy haze of colour without sound. On the TV screen, a man wearing jeans, a baseball cap and a windbreaker runs across the garage to the private elevator. He presses the button and then bows his head, his gloved hands making fists by his sides. His back is toward the camera.

  The elevator doors open. The man steps inside. He doesn’t turn around, just stands there with his head bowed. He knows the cameras are watching and recording.

  The doors start to slide shut. He whips his head around and the camera catches a brief glimpse of his face as he presses the number for Emma’s penthouse suite.

  Jonathan Hale shifted his attention to the bottom right-hand corner of the TV screen, to the bold white lettering holding the date and time of the recording: July 20: 2:16 a.m. Emma had been missing for two months. The man who had abducted her had decided, for a reason known only to God, to come back to her home to retrieve a necklace.

  Why? Why would this monster risk everything for a necklace? Why would he perform this seemingly kind act only to turn around and kill her?

  The tape ended. The TV went dark.

  Hale stared at the screen and imagined his daughter trapped in some rundown room with no windows or light, Emma alone, confused and scared, forced to do things only God could see. When she cried out in pain, when she asked God for comfort, did he listen or turn his back? Hale already knew the answer.

  Fact: the man had entered in through the garage.

  Fact: he had waited for the garage to open and then snuck inside.

  Fact: Detective Bryson said he had people posted in front of the building. Why hadn’t his people seen this man? If Bryson’s men had done their goddamn job, they would have seen this man and caught him and Emma would be alive.

  Fact.

  Hale started the DVD again, pierced by a memory of Emma sitting in this same chair watching The Sound of Music. After Susan died, Emma watched the movie over and over again, insisted on watching it in here, in the office, so she could be close to him. Only now did he understand the connection – the mother died and the children found a new mother in the nanny. Emma must have watched the movie for comfort because I was unavailable.

  Now Hale watched a movie for comfort. Again he watched the man who killed his daughter, the man who was last to see Emma alive, to speak with her, the last man to touch her.

  Hale gripped the armchair as a new memory came to him: Emma, a little over a year old, sitting on his lap while he is talking on the phone. He doesn’t remember what the call was about, although it was probably business related. What he remembers now, clearly, vividly, is the smell of his daughter’s clean hair, the curve of her plump and downy cheek pressed up against his neck. He remembers the way Emma’s mouth hangs open as she studies his pen. She holds it in her tiny hands, her eyes wide, amazed.

  Hale knew he would spend the good part of whatever was left of his life wishing he could go back in time to that moment. If God would somehow grant him this impossible power to go back through time, he would hang up the phone and just stare at Emma playing with the pen. He knew he could stay wrapped up in that memory forever and be happy.

  48

  Malcolm Fletcher stood in front of a glassless window inside the dark, dusty remains of Sinclair’s top floor, watching the main road. He had selected this location for its strong cellular signal and its sweeping view of the campus, one aided by the use of a pair of excellent night-vision binoculars equipped with infrared technology. With the flick of a switch he could locate the heat signatures of anyone sitting inside a car or van, conducting surveillance.

  The binoculars pressed to his eyes, Fletcher surveyed the area. Reed’s security staff patrolled the campus in shifts, focusing their attention on some of the more unorthodox ways one might enter the hospital. There were several points of entry, and many ways in which one could escape without being seen.

  As he continued his campus search, Fletcher thought about the man he had seen on Emma Hale’s garage surveillance tape. The man had made one critical mistake: he had turned around before the elevator doors shut. The security camera caught a brief glimpse of the man’s face. It was enough. Fletcher captured the frame on his computer. The video-enhancing software did the rest.

  The man who had retrieved the necklace from Emma Hale’s home bore a striking resemblance to a patient named Walter Smith, a twelve-year-old paranoid schizophrenic burned in a gasoline fire. Drifting back through time, Fletcher replayed his first encounter with Walter.

  The young boy sat on the bed inside his hospital cell, his head a hairless, red-clay mask of strips of scars and stitches and healing skin. A pair of glasses with thick lenses magnified the severe damage to his left eye. It was wide-open, unblinking.

  Walter’s arms were wrapped around his stomach. When he wasn’t dry-heaving into the wastebasket, he gnawed on his tongue as he rocked back and forth, back and forth, trying to stop the trembling.

  ‘I need Mary,’ Walter said, pleading. ‘I need you to take me to her.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘At the chapel. Please bring me there so Mary can take away the pain.’

  Hanging on the walls were pieces of construction paper holding remarkable, detailed drawings done in crayon and magic marker of a young boy free of scars and disfigurement holding the hand of or hugging a woman dressed in long, blue flowing robes with a red heart painted on the front of her white tunic.

  ‘Mary’s gone,’ Walter said, his voice strangling on tears. Clutched in his good hand was a small plastic statue of the Blessed Mother of God. ‘Dr Han put the medicine in my veins and it sent Mary away again. I need to talk to my mother, I’m lost without her. Please bring me to the chapel.’

  Fletcher was snapped from the memory by the vibration of his cell phone. He answered the call but didn’t take his eyes away from the binoculars. The heat signatures of four men were running through the woods, heading for Reed’s heated trailer.

  ‘Yes, Mr Hale?’

  ‘I watched the DVD.’ Hale’s voice was thick with bourbon. ‘Is this the man who killed my daughter?’

  ‘I believe it is. His name is Walter Smith.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘I met Walter while he was a patient at the Sinclair Mental Health Facility in Danvers. He’s a paranoid schizophrenic – the worst type, actually. His particular delusion is difficult to treat even with the proper medication, which, I’m sure, Walter is no longer taking. The medicine prevents him from hearing Mary.’

  ‘Who’s Mary?’

  ‘The Virgin Mother of God,’ Fletcher said. ‘Walter believes the Blessed Mother speaks to him. Walter’s real mother poured gasoline on him while he was sleeping. The burns covered over ninety per cent of his body, including his face. His mother died in the fire, and Walter was brought to the Shriners Burn Center in Boston for treatment.

  ‘Walter survived two burns. His left hand was severely disfigured the previous year, when she put his hand into a pot of boiling water after she caught him masturbating. She didn’t bring her son to the hospital. She treated him at home, where he was home-schooled.

  ‘When it became clear that Walter was schizophrenic, he was placed at Sinclair. He was a patient there for many years. When it was forced to shut its doors, my guess is Walter was released into either a low-risk group home or back into the general population.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘I came to know Walter through his friendship with a sociopath named Samuel Dingle, a man the Saugus police believed to be responsible for the deaths of two women who were strangled and dumped alon
g Route One. Saugus police asked me to interview Dingle because they had misplaced a key piece of evidence, a belt used to strangle one of the women. I had several sessions with Sammy. At the time, he wasn’t ready to confess his sins. I had to wait until we spoke again, years later, in a more private setting.’

  ‘How can you be sure the man on the tape is Walter Smith? It could be someone else.’

  ‘Walter’s been to Sinclair recently.’

  ‘Why? The hospital is abandoned – I tried to buy the property years ago but it was tied up in legal tape. Why would he go there?’

  ‘To visit Mary, his one true mother,’ Fletcher said.

  ‘Walter goes there to talk to the Virgin Mary?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve been to the hospital?’

  ‘Yes. In fact, I’m here right now, waiting for the police to arrive.’

  ‘How did they find out about Sinclair?’

  ‘I called them here.’

  ‘You called them?’

  ‘They’re already here.’

  ‘Do they know about Walter Smith?’

  ‘No. Mr Hale, I want you to listen to me very carefully.’

  For the next ten minutes, Fletcher explained to Hale what was going to happen. When he finished, Hale was silent.

  ‘There is no way the police will be able to connect you to this, but I can’t prevent them from focusing their attention on you.’

  ‘Does Karim know?’ Hale asked.

  ‘We’ve discussed the matter at length.’

  ‘He approves?’

  ‘He does. However, since we have no choice but to involve you, Dr Karim and I both agree that the decision is yours. If you change your mind, you know how to reach me, but don’t take too long. The preparations have already been made.’

  ‘How long do I have?’

  ‘An hour,’ Fletcher said. ‘I’d suggest you leave for New York this evening. Dr Karim has searched through a national patient database called the Medical Information Bureau. Walter sees a doctor at the Shriners Burn Center, but the MIB contains an old address.’