Darby McCormick: Fear The Dark Part 34

'The front door was unlocked,' I tell him. 'I stepped inside and saw Kelly and Lancaster dead on the floor. But it was too late. Savran must've been standing behind the door, because that's when he attacked me. I didn't see him.'

I feel myself drooling and wipe at my mouth again. 'When I woke up, he had me tied down to the chair in the kitchen. He wanted to know how we found him. Savran. Wanted to know what we knew. He was using a billy club on me when we heard someone pull into the driveway. Then he hit me again and I was out. Next thing I know, patrol is inside the house, cutting me from the chair.'

'And Darby, where was she?'

'I'm not following.'

'Did you see her come inside the house?'

'No. What's going on?'

'I think Savran took Darby.'

He didn't, Agent Cooper. I did. And after I'm done playing with her, Sarah and I are going to move far, far away and start a new life together.

'Did you hear Savran say anything?'

'No,' I say. 'Nothing.'

Cooper looks like a man who has been forced out of a plane without a parachute. I want to smile. Instead, I stare at him blankly, pretending to be horrified.

'We'll find her,' I say.

'What were you doing at Kelly's house?'

'Teddy called me.'

Which is entirely true. Teddy did call me while I was on my way to the river. Up until that moment, I too believed Eli Savran was, in fact, the Red Hill Ripper. I knew that the Red Hill Ripper had surrept.i.tiously recorded himself killing the families had, in all probability, recorded me down on my hands and knees, wiping down the wall and floor in the corner of the Downes bedroom. When I tossed Savran's MacBook and computer paraphernalia into the water, I truly believed I was halfway home to saving myself. All I had to do was to find Savran before anyone else did and, G.o.d-willing, kill him a definite long shot, which was why I had Sarah shadowing me in case we needed to run. I had finally shared with Sarah the horrible truth of the mistake at the Downes house that morning.

'Teddy wanted me to talk to Kelly,' I say.

'About what?'

'Kelly said she had something on Savran, but she would talk only to me.'

This too is true. Teddy called and used those exact words. When I arrived at Kelly's house, I had no idea Teddy Lancaster was the Red Hill Ripper that it was he, and not Savran, who had been recording the families. Teddy greeted me warmly at the door, and when I entered, on my way to the kitchen to talk to Sally Kelly, he smacked me over the head with his billy club. Kept hitting me until I blacked out. It wasn't until after I woke up and found myself bound to the chair that I learned of the monster living inside Teddy Lancaster.

'I walked inside and then this happened,' I say, and point to my face. 'That's all I remember.'

'Think for a moment. Maybe you thought you heard Darby or Savran talking.'

I heard all sorts of things, Agent Cooper. I can tell you that Teddy Lancaster killed the families because they were standing in the way of the town's incorporation. The state had developers all lined up, but the families refused to sell their properties for well below fair market value, and unless they sold the incorporation wouldn't go through. The state was in thrall to the developers, who would help it to meet all its costs and line any number of individuals' pockets as well of course. Teddy's power base would expand as a result, and he and his state cronies the ones who had made all the financial arrangements would receive kickbacks galore. Teddy disguised the murders to look like the work of a serial killer, so he and his politician friends could get rich turning Red Hill into a strip mall. Oh, and Eli Savran is dead. Teddy killed him, and I heard him say where Eli's body is.

'Can you tell me anything?' Cooper asks. He's barely able to conceal the beautiful hopelessness in his voice. 'Anything at all?'

Yes, Agent Cooper. I can tell you I made a mistake that morning. I fully admit that. When I stepped inside the Downes bedroom and found them all dead, my first thought was to protect Sarah. I couldn't risk your finding any lingering traces of Nicky Hubbard's blood because you and I both know that forensic DNA identification has evolved light years since 1983.

'Ray?'

Teddy doesn't know about Nicky Hubbard or what I did to her in that bedroom a long, long time ago. About how, when I was strangling her, she cut her head and started to bleed everywhere you know how cuts on the head are. But Teddy knew I was up to something, because he had recorded me cleaning up that area which is why he wanted me to go to Kelly's house, why he tied me up to the chair. He wanted to know all about the fingerprint because he had run out of time because you and the FBI refused to leave, and Teddy didn't want to leave any loose ends. I refused to tell him, which is why he tried valiantly to redecorate my face. He doesn't know about Nicky Hubbard or any of the others and neither will you, Agent Cooper neither will you.

'I've told you everything I know,' I say.

His crestfallen expression makes my heart surge. I can smell the fear and desperation bleeding from his pores.

I grab his wrist and squeeze. 'We'll find her.'

His satellite phone rings. As he answers the call, he removes a pen from his s.h.i.+rt pocket.

'Go ahead,' he says into the phone. He's patting down his pockets, searching for his notebook, when I hand him mine. He writes down an address and then hangs up.

'Did you find her?' I ask.

'Maybe. The guys in Denver traced the signal on her satellite phone.'

I make a show of trying to stand.

'No,' Coop says. 'You're still bleeding.'

'I'm coming with you.'

'You've suffered a major concussion, Ray.'

'I want to help. Darby, I don't want anything to happen to her.'

70.

Darby's satellite signal was coming from Route Six, near the Red Hill/Brewster line, a no man's land of endless forest and cliffs known as Dead Man's Curve. The patrolman who was driving Coop said the area had been named that because it was packed with so many roadside crosses it resembled a cemetery.

Then, for a reason Coop didn't understand, the patrolman added how Red Hill had lost count of the number of cars that had spun out of control every time the road was wet or icy; how they would crash into each other and into trees, some tumbling down the steep slopes on either side of the road, never to be found again, some having to be lifted out by a crane.

Coop saw the road ahead of them turn sharply to his left, no guardrail there, and when the road dipped steeply, like the first steep plunge of a rollercoaster, he felt his stomach drop. Drenched in sweat, his clothes stuck to his skin. His mouth and throat were parchment-dry, his chest tight, and his heart felt like it had been dunked in ice water.

She's not dead, he kept telling himself. She's a fighter. She knows I'm looking for her, she'll be okay.

Coop brought the phone back up to his ear. He had a guy named Lee from RCFL on the line, who was tracking Darby's signal and his.

'There's nothing out here but woods,' he told Lee.

'That's where the signal's coming from. You're right on top of it.'

Coop told the driver to pull over. He got out of the car and heard the roar of water. Dread swam through him as he spoke into the phone: 'Tell me where to go.'

'North-east, about 500 yards.'

Coop made his way up an embankment of ploughed snow. An ambulance and uniformed deputies from the Brewster sheriff's office had just pulled on to the road and parked, their lights cutting through the dark, cold air. He could see, directly below, a river bursting with rapids.

'DARBY!'

He made his way into the woods. Because of the tree cover, the snow wasn't as deep here. But it came up his boots, thick and wet, soaking his trousers. He ran as fast as he could with the flashlight gripped firmly in his hands, the beam zigzagging everywhere, searching for her.

'DARBY!'

His voice echoed and died.

She's alive, Coop told himself. He kept screaming out her name, knowing she would answer him any second now. She couldn't hear him and he couldn't hear her, because their voices were drowned out by the roars of wind and water.

He brought the phone back up to his ear. 'I don't see her.'

There was a slight pause, and then Lee said, almost sadly, 'You're right on top of her signal.'

Which meant the satellite phone he had given her was buried somewhere in this snow. Not Darby, just the phone. Savran must have tossed it out the window.

The woods took on a surreal, dreamy quality, as though this were a nightmare from which he would wake up at any moment, the normal flow of life restored.

Or she dropped it, Coop thought. She fought off Savran and escaped: she was running through these woods and she dropped the phone. She's alive. All I've got to do is find her.

Coop moved more deeply into the woods, screaming out her name.

71.

He put me in a chokehold. Ray Williams.

The words ran through Darby's mind as she fluttered awake.

Ray Williams, the lead detective on the Ripper case, had put her in a chokehold. She remembered that, and she remembered how she had helped him to his feet and then he had put her in a chokehold until she pa.s.sed out. Next came a foggy memory of waking up on Kelly's couch with her hands cuffed behind her back and Williams pressing her against the plastic-covered cus.h.i.+ons. Williams had been talking to someone. A woman. Darby couldn't remember what they had said or the content of their conversation, but she remembered he had stuck a needle into her neck, and whatever he had injected into her had burned. Then the drug kicked in and she had blacked out and she was where? Where was she?

Her good eye blinked open to a darkness as thick as paint and she felt cold all over. Fear seized her, but her heart continued to beat at its normal resting rate.

The drug, she thought. Whatever drug he used is still in my system. She couldn't feel the pain from the stapled wound on the left side of her head or on the split ear where Lancaster had pistol-whipped her. She couldn't, in fact, feel anything, but the voice in her mind was awake, and it was telling her about Lancaster, how he had admitted to being the Ripper, how he had been killing families who had been standing in the way of the incorporation. And then Ray Williams had put her in a chokehold.

Had they been working together? If so, why had Lancaster tied Ray to the chair? And who was the woman who had entered the house to help Williams?

Darby saw that she'd been placed on her right side, on top of something soft, her head on a pillow and her hands tied behind her back not with metal handcuffs but something thin and hard that bit into her wrists. Plastic cuffs. She tried to move her arms and legs, but they wouldn't respond. She couldn't move anything.

Her ankles too had been bound with plastic cuffs. She managed to wiggle her toes it seemed to take an enormous effort and she felt the sole of her foot. Her socks were gone, which meant her boots had been removed, and right then she realized why she felt cold all over: Ray Williams had removed her clothes.

And he had placed something thick and tight around her neck.

Fear exploded through her and then vanished behind the drug, her heart still oblivious to her predicament, still snoozing. She could breathe and she had no problems swallowing, not yet. She knew she should be terrified but she wasn't, because she was doped up to the gills. She felt herself sinking, her good eye fluttering shut as part of her said, That's it, go back to sleep.

Darby didn't want to go back to sleep. Knew it was stupid and foolish.

If you're asleep, he can't hurt you. Go back to sleep and A dim light came on. Darby forced her eye back open. The dim light came from a battery-operated camp light made of plastic. It sat a few feet away, on a concrete floor.

She couldn't move her body, but she could move her eye, and she saw that she was lying sideways on a bare mattress. Then she heard what sounded like soft footsteps, and when they stopped in front of her she saw a pair of fuzzy pink slippers.

The person set a plastic bucket on the floor. Darby couldn't see the woman's face yet but it was a woman because the hands that were wringing out the wet facecloth were feminine. The woman set the facecloth on the edge of the bucket. Darby licked her dry lips, wanting to speak, but the woman stood and moved away, out of the cell.

I'm inside a prison cell, Darby thought, staring at the iron bars. This wasn't a jail cell but someone's personal holding tank. Ray Williams's personal holding tank. He had brought her here and tied her up and she had no idea why, not yet.

Then she caught a flash of khaki and polished loafers clicking across the floor, heading her way. Ray Williams picked up the facecloth and, kneeling, rubbed Darby's bare arms, the cloth warm and wet against her skin.

'You're so beautiful,' Ray said. 'But you already know that.'

Again, Darby licked her dry lips. When she spoke, her throat raw, the words came out sounding dry and brittle, like paper crackling. 'I saved your life.'

'And I thank you for that,' Williams replied. He kissed her gently on the forehead and went back to was.h.i.+ng her.

Darby moved her good eye to track the other woman but she couldn't see her. Where did she go? Was she a part of this and who was she? Then Darby's gaze dropped to the concrete floor, to the dried, jagged lines of blood and the fragments of torn skin and broken fingernails. Someone had clawed at the floor.

Ray saw where she was looking and said, 'Sherrilyn gave up too quickly.'

'Sherrilyn?' Darby's eye darted back to him.

'Sherrilyn O'Neil, the previous occupant. From Utah,' Ray said, dipping the facecloth back in the bucket. 'I only hunt in other states.'

Nicky Hubbard's fingerprint, how Darby had told Coop that the Red Hill Ripper wouldn't return to a previous crime scene it all swam through her. The Red Hill Ripper hadn't killed Hubbard inside the Downes bedroom; someone else had.

'Nicky,' Darby croaked.

'Dead. Gone. You don't need to worry about her any more.'

Ray ran the washcloth over her chest, paying close attention to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

'You,' Darby said, voice barely above a whisper. She so badly wanted to go back to sleep. 'It was you who washed down that area. Lancaster filmed you.'

'It's all over now.'

There were two serial killers here in Red Hill: Teddy Lancaster, who had been killing families standing in the way of the town's incorporation; and Detective Ray Williams, who had just admitted to hunting in other states.

'Women,' Darby said, voice coa.r.s.e. 'How many?'