'He said you would tell me the truth.'
'I am telling you the truth. If the remains we found belong to your daughter, I'll tell you. I promise I'll tell you everything.'
'Have you found Sam Dingle?'
'Who?'
Tina Sanders turned her head and stared out the window.
'Who's Sam Dingle?' Darby asked.
The woman didn't answer. Her blank expression reminded Darby of her mother – Sheila staring at Big Red's coffin, not believing he was lying in there, dead and waiting to be lowered into the ground as the priest talked about God's divine plan for all of us; Sheila looking inside the closet, afraid to touch Big Red's clothes; Sheila wandering around the house in the months after he was buried, wondering what went wrong, how she got to this place.
'He put Detective Bryson on the phone.'
Surprise bloomed on Darby's face. 'You spoke to Detective Bryson?'
Jennifer's mother nodded.
'When did you speak to him?'
'Tonight,' Sanders said. 'He confessed to everything.'
'How do you know you spoke with Detective Bryson?'
'I recognized his voice.' The woman's voice was eerily calm. She squeezed the crucifix in her hand and closed her eyes. 'I know the truth now. You people can't hide it any more. I won't let you.'
Darby's head was spinning. She wanted roll down the window for air. 'What did Detective Bryson tell you?'
'All these years… all these years I prayed to God to tell me what happened to Jenny. If I knew the truth, then at least I could grieve and move on, maybe get to some place where remembering Jenny wouldn't hurt as much. That need to know the truth – time doesn't take it away. It only sharpens the edges.'
Darby thought back to Fletcher's warning. What had he said? I shouldn't have to warn you, of all people, that the truth is, more often than not, a terrible burden. You may want to give that some thought.
'After I left the police station, I was angry,' Tina Sanders said. 'I didn't want to carry that hope again – that hope of finally coming close to knowing the truth. It's happened too many times over the years. I went to church and prayed to God to take it away. Father Murphy told me to have faith. 'God will send his angels, Tina.'
'And then this man Malcolm Fletcher called me and he put Detective Bryson on the phone and he told me how Sam Dingle killed these women – Detective Bryson knew it and yet he went to Dingle's father and said he would throw away the evidence because he needed money to pay doctors to treat his daughter. He let Dingle go and then Dingle came back and killed Jenny. The man raped my daughter for days inside that basement and then he strangled her and left my baby to rot.'
'Detective Bryson told you this?'
Tina Sanders looked back to her rosary beads. 'Father Murphy said if I ever met the man who killed Jenny, I had to forgive him. It was the only way to let go of the hate. I had to forgive him.
'Malcolm Fletcher asked me how Detective Bryson should be punished. I said it was for God to decide. That's what I said. Those were my exact words.' She squeezed the rosary beads in her hand and closed her eyes. 'Is he dead?'
'Yes.'
'Did he suffer?'
Darby told the woman the truth. 'Yes,' she said. 'Yes, he did.'
Jennifer's mother took a deep breath. Opening her eyes, she exhaled slowly, choking back tears, and stared back out the window.
She refused to speak again.
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
