‘Tell me,’ Darby said.

‘She kept saying “Put away the knife, please don’t cut me anymore.”’

Images flashed through Darby’s mind – Mel’s terrified face, the black tears from her mascara running down her cheeks. Stacey Stephens lying on the kitchen floor, blood spurting between the fingers clutched against her throat. Mel screaming as the man from the woods cut her.

Folding her arms around her chest, Darby stared out the window at the fast-moving traffic and thought back to that cold winter evening in the Serology Lab. The box of evidence from the Grady case sat on the counter. She remembered holding the rag that had been used on Melanie – the rag that would have most likely been used on her if she had gone downstairs.

‘If you decide to go ahead and examine Grady’s case for your dissertation, let me know,’ Evan said. ‘I’ll make you copies of everythingwe have, including the audiotapes.’

‘I may take you up on that offer.’

‘Tell me about your conversation with Rachel Swanson.’

For the next twenty minutes, Darby took him through her first encounter under the porch, finishing with what had happened in the hospital room.

Evan didn’t speak. He seemed preoccupied with his thoughts. Darby could feel the man’s fierce intelligence at work. To be so freakishly smart might be a gift, but Darby was sure it was a lonely one.

‘Banville is mulling over the idea of using a reporter to set up a trap,’ Evan said.

‘You don’t sound convinced.’

‘If we blow the trap and he slips away – if he suspects we’re on to him – he won’t wait to kill Carol Cranmore.’

Chapter 34

Since 9/11, every package and letter coming inside Boston Police headquarters was taken downstairs to the basement levels and X-rayed.

Darby paced the well-lit marble lobby full of patrolmen and detectives. The pacing helped keep her mind clear and focused.

Twenty minutes later, she was running the package, a medium-sized brown padded mailer, up the set of stairs. She didn’t want to waste time waiting for the elevator.

Two white adhesive labels were on the front. The one in the center contained Dianne Cranmore’s name and mailing address. The label in the upper left-hand corner contained only two words: ‘Carol Cranmore.’

Both labels were the same size. Both had been fed into a typewriter – most likely one of those old-fashioned manual models that used an ink ribbon. Darby saw the spots where the ink had smudged on some of the words.

Coop had everything set up inside Serology. Waiting with him were Evan and Leland Pratt. Coop, clipboard in hand, stepped aside to give her some room.

Darby set the mailer on a sheet of butcher paper. After measuring the mailer, she took several pictures, first with the lab camera, then with the digital. The digital pictures would be emailed to the federal lab where Evan had people waiting.

Darby flipped the mailer over and looked for a manufacturer name or any unusual markings. All it said was ‘No. 7.’

‘Sometimes the manufacturer stamps its name inside one of the glued seams,’ Evan said. ‘Check when you take it apart.’

Darby pinched the pull tab between her gloved fingers and opened the mailer. Small gray particles – the shredded filler used for the padding – swam in the air. She turned the mailer over and gently shook out its contents.

A folded white shirt fell onto the butcher paper.

Darby pried open the mailer’s lip. There was nothing else in there.

She unfolded the shirt. A cold balloon of fear filled her stomach when she found the pictures, three in all.

Darby transferred the pictures to a separate sheet of butcher paper resting under the soft afternoon sunlight coming in through the windows.

Here was a picture of Carol Cranmore dressed in gray sweats, scared as she walked with her hands outstretched in a room of concrete walls and floors. There was a drain by her bare foot.

Here was Carol on the floor, stunned and frightened, staring up at the person behind the camera.

The last photograph was Carol stuck in a corner, a scream frozen on her face.

Evan stared down at the pictures with his cold and penetrating gaze. ‘Is Carol Cranmore blind?’

‘No, she isn’t,’ Darby said. ‘Why?’

‘The way she’s walking, bumping into the wall, I thought she might be blind. He must have surprised her in the dark, then.’

Darby held the first picture in her hand, staring at it as though it were a window into Carol’s dark prison cell. Seeing the terror captured on Carol’s face made Darby feel closer to the teenager.

She flipped the pictures over. Taped to the back of the third picture were several strawberry blond hairs. Carol’s hair.

Darby took in a deep breath. Okay. Let’s do this.

‘Coop, I have some writing on the back of the photo, bottom right-hand corner.’ Darby swung over the desk magnifier to read lettering. ‘H as in Henry, P as in Peter, one-seven-nine. There’s no processing stamp.’

Coop was standing next to her. ‘Could be a photo printer,’ he said. ‘The letters and numbers you found are probably the paper’s stock number.’

Darby checked the back of the second picture. Same writing in the same bottom corner.

‘Let’s get the hairs over to DNA,’ Darby said. ‘Coop, finish up with the mailer. I’ll work on the shirt.’

Evan left to listen to the tape alone in the conference room.

The white shirt, a man’s size large, hung on a hanger, suspended above a table covered with a sheet of butcher paper. Darby worked a spatula over the shirt, scraping for trace evidence that might have been stuck. It was tedious, painstaking work. The entire time she had to fight the urge to rush.

‘Got something,’ Pappy said.

Lying on the white paper, mixed in with the dirt and flecks of rust, was a single tan fiber. Darby grabbed it with a pair of tweezers and tucked it inside a glassine envelope.

Next, she moved the light magnifier over the trace evidence.

‘I have a black speck here, could be a paint chip,’ Darby said. ‘There are several of them.’

It was coming up on five. Evan had people standing by the federal lab for another hour. She gathered the glassine envelopes and distributed them through the lab before heading to check on the fingerprints.

Coop had used ninhydrin on the mailer. The paper was a dark purple. The mailer had been carefully cut open along the seams.

‘The outer shell is a mess of fingerprints,’ Coop said. ‘I have comparison samples from the woman who picked up the mailer. The inside of the mailer is clean. No fingerprints, but he did use latex gloves. I found a tiny piece of it stuck on the mailer’s self-adhesive lip but I didn’t find any prints.’

‘What about the pictures?’ Darby asked.

‘They’re absolutely clean. I may have some luck with the adhesive sides of the tape and the labels. I’m about to do that next.’

‘Okay, you have anything else?’

‘Just the name of the mailer – Tempest,’ Coop said. ‘It was stamped under a fold. That’s all I’ve got. Mary Beth just called. She’s down in Missing Persons. She has something on the two names Rachel Swanson mentioned.’

Chapter 35

Stomach grumbling from hunger, Darby pushed open the conference room door.

‘– wasn’t able to trace it,’ Banville was saying to Evan.

‘Trace what?’ Darby asked. She took the seat next to Leland and handed him a file folder.

‘Dianne Cranmore received a call at her home an hour ago,’ Banville said. ‘The answering machine picked it up. It was a message from Carol saying she needed to talk to her mother and would call back in fifteen minutes. She did but didn’t stay on long enough for a trace. Dianne Cranmore confirmed it was her daughter. One of my guys dropped off a copy of the tape. We were just about to listen to it.’

Banville hit the PLAY button on the tiny micro-cassette recorder and leaned back in his seat. Evan finished typing on his laptop. Darby folded her hands on the table and stared at the recorder sitting a few inches away.