waiting for her inside their office.
'Where's Keith?' Darby asked.
'He went home to have dinner with the wife and kids and then is coming back to the lab to help us process the room. Let's take a look at the photograph first.'
After taking pictures, Coop examined the paper. It didn't contain any marks or distinguishing characteristics.
'The woman in the picture, with the hairstyle and clothes, I'm guessing it was taken in the early eighties,' Darby said. 'What are you going to use to treat the paper?'
'Ninhydrin mixed with heptane,' Coop said, flicking the switch for the ventilation unit.
Darby put on the safety goggles and a breathing mask. Coop, wearing a pair of nitrile gloves, sprayed the back of the paper. It turned purple. They both examined the paper, waiting for the ninhydrin to react with the amino acids left by the human hand.
There were no fingerprints.
Coop sprayed the side holding the photograph.
'No prints,' Coop said. 'Lucky for us we already know who he is.'
33
Hannah Givens sat on the bed with the tray of food – toast and eggs – that the man named Walter Smith had left inside the sliding food carrier. She didn't have a clock or a calendar, but this was her second breakfast. Today must be Sunday.
She didn't have windows, either, but she did have plenty of light. Two pretty Tiffany-style lamps were inside the room – one on the nightstand next to the bed, the other set up on a small reading table full of thumbed- through issues of People, Star, Us, Cosmopolitan and Glamour.
The most interesting item was the big white armoire. The shirts were small and mediums; Hannah was a large, a size 12. Shoes were arranged neatly at the bottom – Prada, Kenneth Cole and two pairs of Jimmy Choos, all of them a size six. Hannah wore a size ten. Clearly the shoes and clothes hadn't been picked out for her.
Hannah thought about the clothes and magazines with their wrinkled pages and again wondered if another woman had lived in here before her. If so, what had happened to her? The question left a cold space in her stomach.
She wrapped the down comforter around her even though the room was warm. The fear was still there but it wasn't holding her hostage any more. It had drifted to some other place and, for a reason she couldn't quite explain, she didn't feel the need to cry or scream. She had done all of that, anyway.
Waking up in the dark for the first time, her head foggy, Hannah had a brief moment where she believed she was at home. Then the memory of what had happened descended on her like scalding water and she was out of the bed and stumbling through the strange dark, bumping into foreign objects as her fear reached a hysterical pitch and then she was screaming, screaming it all out until her throat was raw.
Finally, she summoned the nerve to face the dark and searched the room as a blind person would – slow, cautious steps; hands feeling over each object to register its shape. Here was a table. Here, a chair – leather, judging by its cool, smooth feel. Next a nightstand, and what was this? It felt like a lamp. She found the switch and turned it on.
The first thing she noticed was her pyjamas – soft, pink flannel. They were her size but these weren't her pyjamas. The man named Walter had undressed her. He had come in here while she was unconscious and taken off her jacket and clothes. He had seen her naked.
Walter, Hannah was sure, hadn't raped her. The two times she had had sex, she had woken up the next morning feeling slightly sore. Walter hadn't raped her but he had undressed her. Had he touched her? Taken pictures? What? What was he going to do to her? Why did he want her?
One thing was clear: Walter didn't want her to leave. The room had one door but no doorknob. Mounted on the wall was a keypad unit much like the ones she had seen in office buildings; you needed a keycard and a code to open it. Drilled into the door was a oneway peephole. Walter could see in but Hannah couldn't see out.
Clearly Walter wanted her to feel comfortable. The room was the size of a small studio apartment, windowless, with a small kitchenette and walls painted a warm yellow. A beautiful red cashmere throw blanket was draped over the back of a leather reading chair with matching ottoman. Behind the chair was a bookshelf holding well-read paperback romance books. A cloth shower curtain hid a toilet but there was no bath or shower. The room even had its own thermostat.
The two cabinets above the kitchen sink held boxes of cereal and Saltine crackers. There were no dishes. No stove. The drawers didn't contain any silverware or anything sharp, just paper and sanitary napkins, tampons and an odd assortment of makeup. The refrigerator was stocked with cartons of milk, orange juice, yogurt, plastic bottles of Poland Spring and almost every type of soda – Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Dr Pepper and Slice.
Hannah's attention shifted to the centre of the room, to the white roses in a plastic vase sitting on top of the small, circular dining table. The petals had started to wilt.
A rapist wouldn't leave flowers for her. A rapist would come in and have his way with her.
Walter hadn't come into her room (yet, she reminded herself). Every time he brought her meals (three times a day) he placed a plastic tray in the food carrier and slid it through without saying a word. For lunch (or was it dinner?) he had made chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy.
Hannah rolled over in her bed and shut her eyes. Her roommates had to be wondering why she hadn't returned home. Monday morning she was scheduled to work the early shift at the deli. If she didn't show up, the owner, Mr Alves, would call her at home and leave a nasty message on the answering machine. Robin or Terry would hear the message and call her parents. Her parents would call the police. People would start looking for her. She needed to find a way to hold on and survive until she was found.
What if they couldn't find her? Wouldn't there come a point where the police would stop looking?
She couldn't think about that. She needed to stay positive, as impossible as it seemed, and keep her head clear so she could think.
Yesterday, after breakfast, Hannah searched the room for something she might be able to use as a weapon. No microwave or coffee pot. The small colour TV was bolted to its small wooden stand. No hot water in the sink, only cold. The refrigerator's produce drawers had been taken out. Apparently Walter was afraid of her using one of the drawers to try and knock him over the head or something. He had used chains and padlocks to secure the two dining chairs to the table legs. She could move the chairs out to sit but she couldn't use them as weapons. Walter had foreseen that option. The table legs were too thick and sturdy; she couldn't break one off unless she had a saw.
At some point Walter would want to have his way with her and she needed to be prepared. Taking a deep breath, Hannah forced herself to look at the room again.
34
Okay, Hannah thought. What places haven't I searched?
The mattress and chair cushions.
Needing to do something, Hannah got out of bed and moved her hand between the mattress and box spring. Failing to find anything, she moved to the leather chair, removed the seat cushions and searched the dark crevices with her fingers. They bumped up against something hard. Please God let it be a knife, she thought, and pulled the item into the light.
It was a small spiral memo pad, the kind that could easily be tucked inside a shirt pocket. Hannah opened the notebook and saw pages written in faded pencil. She read the first page. I found this notebook on the floor under the bed. A small pencil was tucked inside the spiral. Walter must have dropped it – when, I don't know. Maybe during one of the times we fought. The notebook must have slipped out of his pocket or shirt and he forgot about
