The Secret Friend

61

Darby was placed in charge of the crime scene. The remaining members of the lab were called to the nightclub. It took considerable time to locate additional gas masks.

At 6 a.m., bleary-eyed and weary, she entered the lab and started logging the evidence. Neil Joseph called. He asked her to come to the morgue.

Her office door was open, the light on, spilling into the hallway. Darby heard the voice of a reporter.

'… don't know any details yet. Detective Timothy Bryson was the lead investigator for Boston Police's newly formed Criminal Services Unit, which was working on the murders of Emma Hale and Judith Chen. Both women were abducted and disappeared for several weeks before their bodies were found. Both women were shot execution-style in the back of the head. While the police have been uncharacteristically quiet on the murder of these two college students, Channel Seven has uncovered through a source close to the investigation that Hannah Givens, a sophomore at Northeastern University, is, in fact, missing and may be the next victim of this Boston-based serial killer. Boston Police Commissioner Christina Chadzynski is scheduled to hold a press conference sometime this afternoon. Stay tuned for more details.'

Darby stepped into her office and saw Coop and Woodbury sitting in chairs, watching a live newsfeed on the internet.

'Have they mentioned Malcolm Fletcher?' Darby asked.

Coop answered the question. 'I didn't hear anything, and I haven't had a chance to read the papers. We just got back from Sinclair.'

'Did the news mention anything about the remains?'

Coop shook his head. His eyes were puffy and bloodshot.

'The remains are at Carter's office,' he said. 'Keith and I are going to get started on the duct tape and clothes.'

'Okay, good.'

'The Sony player you found is a new model, one of those combo devices – radio, cassette, and CD player. There's even a jack to hook up an mp3 player. Did you notice anything strange about it?'

'It was the only thing inside that room that wasn't covered in dust.'

'Right,' Coop said. 'So either Malcolm Fletcher brought it there or the killer did.'

'The killer brought the radio there?'

'We found the box of Virgin Mary statues, and that statue of her inside the chapel was clean. We know this guy goes there, so while he's there, I don't know, talking to the Virgin Mary or whatever, maybe he goes inside that other room and listens to the tape so he can relive what he did to Sanders. That's what these perverts do, right?'

'Sometimes,' Darby said.

'But you don't buy it.'

'You saw the remains. The pants were pulled down. That woman, whoever she is, was most likely raped, maybe even tortured.' Darby recalled portions of the recording – the man grunting as the woman cried out in pain and fear, begging for it to stop. 'If it's the same killer, I don't see how he would evolve from rape to abducting women, holding them for weeks and then, after shooting them, dumping their bodies in water with a statue of the Virgin Mary sewn in their pockets.'

'Hale and Chen were held someplace for weeks. We don't know what this guy did to them.'

'You're right, we don't,' Darby said. 'If the killer didn't bring the cassette tape, that leaves only one other person – Malcolm Fletcher. Don't ask me why, I have no idea.'

'The cassette is old. The manufacturing stamp on the plastic is PLC. I forget what it stands for, but I remember buying them at record stores during the eighties. They were the cheapest tapes around. I'm pretty sure they don't manufacture them any more, but we'll run it down.

'As for analysing the tape – trying to isolate or enhance certain sounds, lift background noises – we don't have that kind of equipment, so we can either send it out to a private company or we can call the FBI,' Coop said. 'The Feds will probably turn it over to one of the audio wizards at the Secret Service.'

Woodbury said, 'I'd recommend using the Aerospace Corporation in Los Angeles. They're the ones who worked on the mother's 911 call in the JonBenet Ramsey case. Aerospace had better luck than the Secret Service.'

'Make the call,' Darby said. 'Can you make me a copy of the tape?'

'I can probably make an mp3 file and burn it to a CD.'

'That's fine. What's going on with the unknown makeup sample?'

'I'm still working on it with my friend at MIT,' Woodbury said. 'I was planning on heading there today, but given what's going on, our time and resources are going to be spread pretty thin.'

'Which is probably what Fletcher wants,' Coop said. 'He's burying us in evidence. It's probably going to take us the rest of the week, including overtime, to process what we found inside the hospital.'

'I want our focus on Hannah Givens,' Darby said. 'She's our top priority. Neil Joseph is working on Bryson's case. Fletcher is his responsibility now.'

'Keith and I lifted a partial latent print on Judith Chen's pant pocket,' Coop said. 'It's running through AFIS.'

'What about the thumbprint from her forehead?'

'It didn't find a match. The ballistics report came back. The slug retrieved from Chen's skull was fired from the same gun that killed Hale. What about your end? What's going on?'

Darby told them about the basement level of Instant Karma, an upscale members-only bathhouse where any sexual appetite could be indulged. The man who ran the operation, Noah Eckart, preferred the term 'private gentleman's club'. The yearly fee was $5,000. Malcolm Fletcher had joined the club two days ago, paying in cash, under the name Samuel Dingle. The paperwork listed an address in Saugus. Darby wondered if, during that initial meeting, Fletcher had planted the 'non-lethal' shotgun Watts had described. Had Fletcher planned all along to lure Bryson to his death?

The private club had no security cameras. Members flashed their ID and signed a sheet. The name Sam Dingle was on the list.

Fletcher had specifically requested room 33, which was conveniently located next to the elevator. His companion was an as-yet-unidentified young woman with long dark-red hair.

Eckart had escorted Bryson and Watts to the room, and when he heard the gunshots, he ran away and called security instead of the police – 'I wanted to handle the matter privately, as I'm sure you can understand,' he told Neil Joseph. Thick, grey smoke had started to fill the rooms and Eckart, believing there was a fire, had no choice put to pull the fire alarm.

Witnesses were hard to come by. Neil found two men who, after considerable prodding, reported seeing a man matching Bryson's description being dragged into the private elevator before a smoke grenade and aerosol container laced with a nausea-inducing chemical flooded the hallways.

'The aerosol and smoke grenades are used by SWAT teams in hostage situations,' Darby said. 'Both grenades contain serial numbers. The companies that manufactured them can use the serial numbers to find out which police agency purchased them.'

Malcolm Fletcher, Darby was sure, had most likely obtained the grenades from either a black-market dealer or at a gun show in a state where laws were lax and anything could be purchased for cash.

The blue pellets covering the bathroom floor came from three shell casings which also contained serial numbers. Neil Joseph was saddled with the unfortunate task of having to devote a significant amount of manpower to chasing down these leads which would most likely prove to be worthless.

'You think Fletcher is still lingering around Boston?' Coop asked.

'If he is, he won't be for long. He just killed a cop. Everyone in the state is going to be looking for him.' Darby checked her watch. 'I have to get to the morgue.'

Waiting for the elevator, Darby wondered why Malcolm Fletcher had decided to make a public spectacle of Bryson's death. Doing so ensured intense media coverage. Maybe he wanted Bryson's sins to have a national audience. Chadzynski was probably already meeting with her media advisor, working on spin control.

Darby couldn't blame her. If what Tina Sanders said was true – that Tim Bryson had thrown a critical piece of evidence in exchange for money – what other cases had he contaminated? Had he planted, destroyed or removed evidence on the Emma Hale case?