and movies but he seemed distracted. Maybe he was concentrating on the road. The snow was bad, and the roads were pretty slippery. She spotted more than one accident.
Walter took the Allston exit. Ten minutes later he pulled into a small strip mall with a Radio Shack and two other buildings that looked abandoned. The parking lot was empty. He drove behind the building and parked in front of a loading dock. Crates and trash were stacked up next to several back doors. There was nobody back here.
'Dave must be waiting inside,' Walter said. 'Reach inside the glove compartment and grab the yellow sheet of paper. It has Dave's cell number on it.'
Hannah leaned forward and opened the glove compartment. Walter smashed her face against the dashboard.
'I'm sorry,' Walter Smith said as he pressed a bandana against her nose and mouth.
At first Hannah thought he was trying to wipe away the blood; then she inhaled some bitter odour that smelled of spoiled fruit. She struggled to move away but she was caught against the seatbelt.
'I didn't mean to hurt you.' His voice trembled, and he started to cry. 'I'm sorry.'
She grabbed his wrist with both hands and tried to yank it away, but Walter Smith's grip was too strong. She could taste blood – her blood – on the back of her throat and she started to gag.
He was crying harder now. 'I'll make it up to you, Hannah, I promise. I'm going to make you very happy.'
Hannah slumped back against the seat, hearing the windshield wipers going back and forth, back and forth, the Virgin Mary's mournful eyes looking at her with arms wide open, ready to comfort.
5
Walter Smith popped the trunk. He unfastened Hannah's seatbelt and then headed out into the wet, heavy snow, quickly making his way to the passenger's side.
Hannah was heavier than Emma and Judith, and considerably taller. Instead of picking Hannah up and cradling her in his arms, Walter gripped her under the armpits and dragged her to the back of the car. The blankets were already set up.
Walter placed her in the trunk. He brushed the snow from her face and tucked a pillow under her head. Hannah's nose was bleeding in a slow, steady trickle. He hoped it wasn't broken.
From his pocket he removed the baggie holding the tiny Ambien pills he ordered online from Mexico and wedged three of them down her throat. Hannah moaned, swallowed. Good. He moved her arms behind her back and handcuffed her wrists. Then he handcuffed her ankles.
Walter stared down at Hannah. Her face was remarkably warm and open. Her face was what had attracted him. He had seen her waiting for the bus and Mary spoke to him, told him Hannah Givens was THE ONE and Mary was right, she was always right.
Walter rolled Hannah onto her side so the blood wouldn't trickle down her throat and make her sick. He'd have to stop and check on her at some point.
Walter tucked a blanket under her chin. He kissed Hannah on the forehead, then shut the trunk and got back behind the wheel.
The wet snow was coming down at a fast clip. Walter drove slowly, carefully, with both hands gripping the wheel. A lot of cops would be out tonight.
As he drove, Walter kept glancing at the statue on the dashboard. Mary's voice was clear in his head. His Blessed Mother told him not to worry.
6
The dead woman lying on the autopsy table didn't look like a woman any more – she didn't look human, in fact, but more like one of those creatures from an old black-and-white horror movie, a frightful, angry thing that had clawed its way out from a grave. The teeth were bared, the lips and surrounding facial tissue and missing eyes picked away by postmortem fish feeding. The rest of the body was covered by a blue sheet. A white card with a case number was placed under her chin.
The face was unrecognizable. Darby wondered if the woman was Judith Chen.
A heavyset man from ID, the section of the lab that dealt exclusively with crime scene photography, took close-up pictures of the bloated face. Coop stood behind him, watching. The small white-tiled room reeked of disinfectant mixed with the overpowering metallic odour of the Boston Harbor.
Darby had already taken her own set of pictures. As she waited, she reviewed what little she knew of the case, most of which came from newspapers.
Two and a half months ago, on a Wednesday night during the first week of December, Judith Chen, a freshman at Boston's Suffolk University, was studying for her chemistry midterm at the campus library. Five minutes shy of 10 p.m., Judith, dressed in pink nylon running pants, a pink sweatshirt and Nike sneakers, decided to call it a night. Somewhere between the library and the apartment she was renting in Natick, the nineteen-year- old chemistry major disappeared.
It was now mid-February and the body lying on the table wore the same clothing.
The ID man gave her the nod. Darby, dressed in scrubs, put on a surgical mask and a face shield and approached the body.
The woman's pink sweatshirt and pink nylon running pants were wet, caked with mud and twigs. The feet, still laced with sneakers, hung over a sink dripping with water. Darby was glad to see Bryson had tied paper bags around the woman's hands.
The right running-pant pocket was sewn shut with the same black thread used on Emma Hale's dress pocket. Darby peeled back the waistband, and through the transparent pocket lining she saw the same five-inch statue of the Virgin Mary she had held in her hands at the lab.
On the back of the woman's head was a puckered hole – the muzzle stamp from a handgun. There was no exit wound. Darby recalled that the.22 calibre slug found in Emma Hale's skull hadn't produced an exit wound either.
Coop removed the paper bags and examined the woman's hands. The fingers were gnarled into claws, and the skin, white and puckered with wet wrinkles known as washerwoman's syndrome, had started to slough off the body. The fingernails were painted a bright pink.
'They're pretty shrivelled,' Coop said.
'Which way should we go? Tissue builder? Injecting water under the skin?'
'Since the body's already showing epidural detachment, the best method would be to use the glove technique. Your hands are roughly the same size, so we can print her here.'
Darby collected grit and fingernail samples. After she finished, Coop slid the skin off the right hand and transferred the 'skin glove' to a dish holding alcohol.
She didn't see any evidence to indicate the body had been weighted down. It didn't matter, really – the putrefaction gases would cause even a weighted body to float to the surface eventually. Did the killer know this?
Darby plugged in the portable Luma-Lite and waved the alternate light source across the clothing. She found several hairs. After she collected them, she adjusted the wavelength and found stains that fluoresced – blood or semen. She marked the areas and then cut off the clothes.
The saturated bloodstains on the back of the sweatshirt resembled the same pattern she had seen on Emma Hale's jacket and dress. Like Emma Hale, this woman had lain in her blood for a period of time before she was dumped into the river.
Darby unlaced the sneakers and carefully removed them. River water, sand and grit fell into the sink. She cut off the socks. The toenails were painted the same bright pink as the fingernails. She packed each item of clothing into its own bag and then, using a hand-held magnifier, examined the Virgin Mary statue. It was the same size and
