inside a vehicle?
The teenager had been transported to the hospital and the mother was inside the house. Was there a third victim?
The blood drops on the grass stopped at a gate. It was unlocked. She eased it open, found a bloody handprint on the wood.
Inside the woods, footwear impressions moving up a steep incline blanketed with dead leaves and pine needles.
‘Put on a pair of furry ears and you’d look like the Easter Bunny,’ Pine said.
She turned and saw him standing just a few feet away, the underarms of his white shirt dark with sweat. He reeked of cigar smoke.
‘It’s been, what, three years since I last saw you?’
‘My mother’s funeral,’ Darby said. ‘What’s going on with the teenager? I heard he’s at a hospital.’
‘Physically he’s fine. He’s in some sort of shock. One of the ER docs tried to give him a sedative and he freaked. We’re giving him some space to calm down. I’ve got people guarding his room at St Joe’s, so there’ll be someone there when he’s ready to talk.’
St Joseph’s was Belham’s main hospital. ‘The news said he was at Mass. General.’
Pine’s hound-dog eyes twinkled with delight. ‘Yeah, that’s what I told the press. Figured we’d get the vultures to head to Boston. Most of them did. Some of them, as I’m sure you saw on your way in, are still camped out front.’
‘John Hallcox. Mother’s name is Amy Hallcox – we found her Vermont licence in the handbag. Neighbours say she and her kid came here about a week or so ago. They don’t know his name. They pretty much kept to themselves. Some of the neighbours saw them flitting about the house but mostly they stayed inside. Woman drove a red Honda Accord. Got the plate number all over the radios but so far nobody’s seen a damn thing. You see the drag marks in the kitchen hall?’
Darby nodded.
‘My guess is someone dragged a body and drove away,’ Pine said. ‘As far as we can tell, it was only the woman and her kid. We don’t know anything about this third person.
‘House belongs to an elderly couple named Martin and Elaine Wexler. Guy’s a retired doctor. Must’ve done well ’cause he’s vacationing somewhere in the South of France, from what we’re told. We’re trying to pin their location down.’
Darby shut off her flashlight. ‘Why didn’t you tell operations about the amount of damage in there? I could’ve had more people working here before I arrived.’
‘I didn’t make the call. I know who did – don’t worry, I’ll tear him a new one. Sorry I couldn’t talk when you called. It’s been a madhouse here.’
Darby felt the heat of the night and her exhaustion move through her and press against the back of her skull. She didn’t want to waste what energy she had left arguing.
‘As you can see, I checked the woods.’ Pine pointed to the mud caked on his shoes and trouser cuffs. ‘No need to go back there. I followed the footprints – don’t worry, I didn’t disturb a thing – I followed them all the way to Blakely Road. That’s where they ended. Whoever ran back there is long gone.’
Darby wondered if a vehicle had been parked on the dirt shoulder of the road. She made a mental note to check for tyre tracks.
‘I take it you’ve been inside the house.’
‘Oh yes,’ Pine said. ‘I won’t be forgetting what I saw in there for a while.’
‘Who else has been in there besides you?’
‘Just the first responding officers, Quigley and Peters. That would be them standing over there in the corner. I kept them here in case you had any questions.’
‘Did they search the entire house?’
‘That’s their job.’
She knew that but didn’t like it. Imagined some key piece of evidence stuck to the bottom of a boot and then lost somewhere outside now, gone. ‘Did they track mud up the deck steps?’
‘Let’s go ask them.’
‘I’ll be right there.’ Darby clicked on her flashlight and turned back to the gate. She could hear Pine grunting as he waddled away.
She stepped into the woods and found two compost piles of dead grass clippings a few feet from the back fence. Mosquitoes whined against her ears and danced in the beam of her flashlight.
Moving up the incline, she thought about how much she hated these woods. Five years ago she had discovered a buried set of female remains – another victim of Daniel Boyle and… the other one, Boyle’s mentor and killing partner, Traveler. A lot of their victims – the missing women, men and children, her childhood friend Melanie Cruz – had never been found, buried somewhere out here –
Darby stopped walking, and listened to the sound of a mobile phone ringing somewhere in the darkness ahead.
6
Darby ran up the incline, boots sinking deep into the wet ground, the beam of her flashlight zigzagging through the darkness. She reached the top quickly and without much effort.
The ground levelled off to a bumpy, uneven area of half-buried boulders and downed tree limbs and branches. The phone rang again, a soft, pleasant sound that reminded her of wind chimes. It came from somewhere straight ahead. She moved quickly, ducking underneath limbs, dried branches crunching and snapping underneath her boots.
A third ring, very close.
There, a small square of light glowing in the darkness about thirty or so feet ahead. She moved her flashlight to it. A BlackBerry, judging by its size and shape. She reached into her back pocket for an evidence bag.
Branches snapped in the darkness somewhere ahead of her. She swung her flashlight to the sound, the beam whisking past trees and another steep incline leading up, up.
A man dressed head to toe in black tossed something into the air. Before he ducked behind a tree she caught sight of the night-vision goggles strapped across his shaved pale head, a gloved hand clutching a sub-machine gun against a tactical vest holding grenades.
Darby dropped her flashlight and ran, knowing what was coming.
An explosion followed by a blinding light that lit up the woods.
The light died away. She stripped out of her bunny suit. She couldn’t hide wearing white, couldn’t run in the coveralls.
Voices shouting from the backyard, footsteps cracking branches close by, bodies whisking past leaves and branches.
SIG in hand, Darby flicked the switch for the tactical light and swung around the tree. Through the gaps between the branches and tree limbs she caught sight of two men hauling a body up the incline. Two white males wearing suits. The body also wore a suit. White male, white shirt covered in blood, a blue latex-covered hand bumping across the ground as he was dragged away.
‘
Automatic gunfire muted by a silencer tore into the bark above her head.
Darby dropped to her knees, hugging her body close to the tree trunk. Voices shouting
