My destination tonight is two towns away, a place called Kelly’s Bar and Restaurant. I have no idea if Tricia’s working tonight; this trip is a last-minute idea, a way to clear my head and think. Still, my heart sinks into an acid pit of worry and fear at the idea of her not being there. I need to see her tonight or I won’t be able to sleep.

When I pull into the parking lot, I spot a white Honda Civic with a battered rear bumper and a University of Denver decal stuck to the rear window. The anxiety caged inside my chest uncoils, and I immediately feel myself start to relax.

The bar’s Christmas decorations are still up. A fake wreath hangs on the front door and, secured to a railing with a bungee cord, is a big, glowing plastic Santa that I’m pretty sure was rescued from a garbage dump. It’s scraped and stained; a chunk of plastic the size of my fist is missing from Santa’s head.

The interior is small, just a handful of tables sprinkled around a U-shaped bar of polished walnut, its edges decorated with white lights shaped like icicles. The warm, fetid air smells of fried food, even though the dining-room tables are empty, and there is only one person seated at the bar, an old timer wearing a red flannel shirt. His ruddy cheeks are peppered with patches of grey whiskers, and the remaining wisps of white, downy hair lie across his liver-spotted scalp like feathers.

Standing behind the bar and refilling his glass with cheap Scotch is the purpose of my visit: Tricia Lamont, a leggy marvel with a prominent nose and jawline, her dark brown hair with its expensive blonde highlights spilling across her shoulders and falling in tangles against the V-neck scoop of a black T-shirt embossed with the bar’s name and slogan – KELLY’S. WHEN YOU’RE HERE, YOU’RE FAMILY. The tee barely fits her. Whoever owns this place makes his ladies (he employs only women, each one no older than thirty) wear a tee one size too small so it hugs their firm and perky breasts. Every time one of them bends over or leans forward to pour a drink, as Tricia is doing right now, the bottom of the tee rides up just a wee bit to show a tantalizing flash of belly, every one of their stomachs as flat as a board.

I pull out a corner stool. I’m hanging my coat over the back when Tricia walks up to me, smiling brightly. She doesn’t know my name, and she has seen me only once – last month, the week before Christmas. The Connelly family – John, Lisa and their sixteen-year-old daughter, Stacey, who were, at that time, the Red Hill Ripper’s latest victims – had been laid to rest that afternoon, and I decided to stop by here for a drink. The family and whatever mistakes that might possibly have been made at the crime scene weighed heavily on my mind.

‘What can I get’cha?’ Tricia asks, her eyes seemingly alight with genuine pleasure.

‘You have Knob Creek bourbon?’

‘Sure do.’ She smiles. ‘You have great taste.’

‘Make it a double, neat.’

As she moves to the bottles, I watch her, lustfully conjuring up all sorts of wonderful scenarios of her lying naked in my bed, the soft moan that escapes her lips and caresses my ear as I enter her. The feel of her thighs sliding up against the sides of my chest and the moment when she presses the balls of her feet against the small of my back and pushes, begging me to go deeper …

Is Tricia a fighter? Or will she act like the others, mewing and crying and begging for it to stop?

Sarah never fights or cries. Even in the beginning when she first saw the rope, she did what I asked with a smile on her face.

Tricia comes back with my drink and places it on a napkin. She tucks her hair behind an ear, playful and sexy. I suspect – correctly, I think – that Tricia, with her beautiful looks and hard yoga body, belongs to that class of women who view men as walking wallets. A woman who wants to squirt out a kid or two, then hire a nanny so she can drive her new BMW to her Pilates class and then spend the afternoon inside a hotel screwing some young stud.

‘Want to start a tab?’

Absolutely. I want to stay here and drink and watch you and feed my growing hate and think about that moment when I slip the noose around your neck.

The phone behind the bar rings. ‘Excuse me,’ she says, and as she walks away I think about what an odd choice she is for me. The four other candidates I have in mind are nowhere near as attractive or as physically fit, but at least I’ve meticulously researched their backgrounds. Their routines, habits and schedules. I’ve been inside their homes and on their computers. I’ve slept in their beds.

That’s not the case with Tricia Lamont. I know she’s twenty-two, a graduate from the University of Denver with a degree in business communications. Like the good majority of recent college graduates trying to enter the workforce in this monstrous economy, she’s had a difficult time landing a job, which is why she’s most likely living back home with her parents, Rick and Jennifer, who own three dry-cleaning stores. Tricia works at one and supplements her income by bartending here. I don’t know if she has a serious boyfriend or if she’s playing the field or whatever these young whores call it these days. I haven’t read her texts or been on her computer yet.

My thoughts shift to the tools sitting inside my trunk. Everything I need to break inside her house is in there. I could leave here and, if her parents aren’t home, let myself in and play with her things for an hour or two. I’ve already cased her house. I know the best way to approach it without being seen, and I know the perfect spot where I can park my car.

It’s tempting. As I sip my bourbon, I actually consider it for a moment.

But I know better. Everything comes down to impulse control. That’s the key to not getting caught. You don’t strike or take any action when you’re fevered with bloodlust, as I clearly am right now. You plan meticulously and then you execute the plan so you don’t make any mistakes. And I can’t afford to make any mistakes, especially now that the FBI are in Red Hill.

The news has been circulating all over town for the past week. That’s the downside to living in a place as small as Red Hill; anything out of the norm instantly burns its way like a brushfire across the town’s grapevine. Terry Hoder, the famous monster hunter, is here in Red Hill to track down the Red Hill Ripper – it’s all anyone’s talking about.

I smile and sip my drink. The Red Hill Ripper. What a ridiculous name.

Tricia stands at the other end of the bar, her back to me as she talks on the cordless. I stare at her, marvelling at the way her dark jeans hug her ass, and wonder if she does that hot yoga thing, Bikram. Probably does that with her girlfriends and then they all go out afterwards to Starbucks and order low-cal scones and skim-milk cappuccinos and talk about how they use men.

I have plenty of time to find out. I can wait. Hoder can’t. At some point Hoder and his band of merry men will pack up and leave, and then I’ll decide when to take Tricia or one of the others. They’re not going anywhere, my candidates. All I have to do is wait and be patient. Then, when the time is right, I’ll choose one.

Maybe I’ll bring Sarah along with me. No matter what time of night, people aren’t afraid to open the door to a woman.

Tricia laughs. It’s a lovely sound.

I wonder what her screams would sound like.

Just a glimpse, I promised myself. And now I’ve had it. Besides, there’s one other thing I need to do before I go home. I knock back the rest of my bourbon and place a ten on the table. I pick up my coat, feeling warm and comfortable and satisfied. Hopeful.

12

By 6 p.m. they had finished processing the master bedroom and bath, Samantha Downes’s bedroom, the living-room floor and the back deck off the sliding glass door. Darby’s lower back ached and her mind felt cramped from hunger and the fatigue that was working its way through her limbs.