A hand came up and clamped a foul-smelling cloth over her mouth.

Carol turned away, clawing at the man’s wrist as he tried to carry her back inside the kitchen. Her foot hit the wall and, using it as leverage, she kicked the man backward against the doorjamb. He let her go. She dropped to the floor.

Dizzy, she felt dizzy because there was something on the rag. She could barely move, but she saw the rag on the floor. The man reached into his pocket and came back with a small envelope and a plastic bottle.

He dropped a tiny piece of string or something on the floor, near the kitchen door, and then took the plastic bottle and squirted some cold red liquid onto her fingers. It looks like blood, she thought as he took her hand and used it to smear the red liquid across the hallway wall.

The man picked up the rag. Carol drew in a breath to scream, sucked in chloroform and heard a crack of thunder rumble and die.

Chapter 7

Darby McCormick stood on the back porch of the Cranmore home, running the beam of her flashlight over the door, a reinforced steel model with two deadbolts. The thunderstorm had stopped, but the rain hadn’t tapered off, still coming down fast and strong.

Detective Mathew Banville of the Belham police had to yell over the noise, in a tone that left little doubt he was running thin on patience.

‘The mother, Dianne Cranmore, came home around quarter of five because she forgot her checkbook and needed it for when she swung by the bank later today to pay the mortgage. When she pulled in, both doors were open and then she saw this –’ Banville used his penlight to point to the bloody hand print on the hallway wall. The mother didn’t find her daughter, but she found her daughter’s boyfriend, Tony Marceillo, slumped on the stairs and immediately called nine-one-one.’

‘Besides the mother, who else has been inside?’

‘The first responding officer, Garrett, and the EMTs. They all went in through the front to get to the boyfriend. The mother gave Garrett the keys.’

‘Garrett didn’t come in this way?’

‘He didn’t want to destroy any evidence so he sealed the place off. We’ve issued an Amber Alert, but so far nothing.’

Darby glanced at her watch. It was coming up on six a.m. Carol Cranmore had been missing for several hours, enough time for her to be well out of Massachusetts.

On the gray carpet was a single tan fiber. Darby placed an evidence cone next to it.

‘There’s no sign of forced entry. Who else has keys to the house?’

‘We’re talking to the ex-husbands,’ Banville said.

‘How many she have?’

‘Two, and that’s not including the biological father. They were married for about fifteen minutes back in ninety-one.’

‘And does this fine gentleman have a name?’ Darby checked the kitchen floor, glad to see it was made of linoleum. It was an ideal surface for picking up footwear impressions.

‘Mother called him “the sperm donor.” Said he went back to Ireland right after he found out he was going to be a daddy. She hasn’t heard from him since.’

‘And they say all the good ones are taken.’ Darby rummaged through her kit.

‘The other two ex-husbands, one lives in Chicago, and the other lives here, in the wonderful city of Lynn,’ Banville said. The dipshit from Lynn is the most interesting of the bunch. Street name is LBC, short for Little Baby Cool – don’t ask me what that means. LBC’s biological name is Trenton Andrews, did a five-year stretch in Walpole for the attempted rape of a minor – a fifteen-year-old girl. The Lynn police are looking for Mr Andrews right now. We’re looking for registered sex offenders who live in the area.’

‘I’m sure it will be quite a list.’

‘You need anything else or can I go?’

‘Hold on a moment.’

‘Let’s hurry it up.’

Darby didn’t take Banville’s clipped tone personally; he spoke to everyone this way. She had worked with him on two previous crime scenes and found him to be a thorough investigator; but his personality was gruff, to say the least, and he generally avoided eye contact. He also made sure people didn’t stand too close to him – like now, he was leaning against the porch railing, a good five feet away.

She grabbed another flashlight, the heavy-duty Mag-Lite, and laid it down on the kitchen floor, angling the light until she found what she was looking for – a series of wet latent footwear impressions.

‘Sole pattern looks like a men’s boot, around a size eleven,’ Darby said. ‘Looks like our man came in through here and left through here. You might want to check and see what LBC favors for footwear.’

‘Anything else?’

‘You’re free to go.’

Banville bolted down the stairs. Darby went to work bracketing off the boot impressions with tape. When she finished, she placed evidence cones next to the best impressions, then grabbed her kit and umbrella and stepped into the rain.

Across the driveway, seated at a table behind the kitchen window at the next-door neighbor’s house, was Carol’s mother. Dianne Cranmore pressed a wadded-up tissue against her eyes as she talked to a detective writing in a notepad. Darby looked away from the mother’s broken expression and hustled to the front door.

The busy street was lit up by flashing blue and white lights. Police were standing out in the rain, directing traffic and keeping the crowds of reporters behind the sawhorses blocking off the street. The entire neighborhood was awake. People were standing out on their porches and watching from behind windows, wanting to know what was going on.

Darby slipped a pair of disposable booties over her shoes and stepped inside the foyer. Her partner, Jackson Cooper, who was known to everyone simply as Coop, was hunched over a well-muscled young male dressed in a tight pair of black bikini briefs. The body was slumped at an awkward angle against the wall on the carpeted landing between the two sets of stairs. Blood had pooled under him, soaking into the carpet. Darby counted three shots – one in the forehead, two in a tight pattern on the cougar tattooed above the heart.

Coop pointed to the tight shot pattern on the teenager’s chest. ‘Double tap.’

‘I’d say our guy’s a trained marksman,’ Darby said.

‘If I had to guess, I’d say the boyfriend heard something and decided to come downstairs to investigate. He comes down these steps to check the front door, finds it locked, and on the way back up gets shot twice in the chest. Then he falls, lands here and gets one planted in the forehead to make sure he doesn’t get back up.’

‘Which means our guy is used to shooting in the dark.’

Coop nodded. ‘No scratches on his hands or arms. He didn’t get a chance to fight.’

‘But his girlfriend did,’ Darby said, and told him about the bloody handprint.

‘What’s Banville’s take on this?’

‘He’s starting with the ex-husband angle.’

‘Why add murder to kidnapping?’

‘Who knows?’

‘That doctorate in criminal psychology is really paying off for you,’ Coop said. ‘ID here?’

‘Not yet.’ Darby told him about the footwear evidence in the kitchen. ‘I’m going to take a look around, and then we can do the preliminary walkthrough.’

Light gray carpeting covered the stairs and the tiny hallway leading to a spacious TV room with mint-green walls and a brown couch and a matching chair mended by strips of duct tape. The mother had tried to brighten the place up with decorative throw pillows, a good area rug and assorted knickknacks.

An archway separated the TV room from the dining room. On the table were several paperback romance novels by Nora Roberts and stacks of coupons. The two rooms had the stale, soiledwrapper feel of too much fast food and the fading odor of dope.

Stretching across the upstairs wall were dozens of pictures of Carol and her achievements. Here was one of Carol as a toddler holding a paintbrush. In another one, Carol was wearing Mickey Mouse ears at Disney World. An expensive-looking frame held a certificate from Belham High School for the distinction of being a straight-A student. Then another framed certificate, this one for her leadership abilities on the student council. Here was a framed watercolor of the ocean, a ribbon pinned on it. Carol had won first place in an art contest.