‘About what?’

‘Money? A boyfriend? Who knows?’ The young woman shrugged. ‘Like I said, she was private.’

Darby gave the woman her card and then took her glass to a bar stool near the front windows. She sipped her drink, trying to sort out her thoughts about the day; but they were scattered, like pieces of a ceramic jar that had been dropped from a great height. She couldn’t find enough shards and fragments to form a coherent thought.

She watched an older couple sitting at a nearby table. They were huddled together, sharing an iPhone and looking at the screen where a toddler was holding up what looked like a crayon drawing. At first Darby thought the couple were looking at a picture; then she realized they were talking via Skype or FaceTime.

Seeing the toddler made Darby think about David Downes again, that moment when he realized that he was going to die listening to his daughter begging for her life. Darby finished the rest of her drink and then went back to the hotel to make a careful study of the case files.

18

Darby had been going through the files for an hour when the hotel phone rang.

‘Hello?’

‘We’ve got a debrief scheduled tomorrow morning at eight,’ Ray Williams said. ‘Autopsy’s at 2.30, in Brewster. It’s about a 45-minute drive to the ME’s office.’

Darby filled him in on her conversation with Sally Kelly.

‘Guy with a bad smell, huh?’ Williams said. ‘That’s a great tip. We’ll put out an APB on a fart.’

‘I met Lancaster tonight.’

‘My condolences. Where did you meet him?’

‘Inside the Downes house.’ Darby explained what had happened.

A long silence followed after she finished talking.

‘Your guy Nelson was scared shitless,’ Darby said. ‘I wouldn’t be too hard on him.’

Williams said nothing. She could hear him breathing heavily on the other end of the line.

‘I talked to Nelson afterwards,’ Darby said. ‘A few minutes after I left, Lancaster came up and cornered him. Told Nelson he was going inside to take a look around, and that if Nelson called you or opened his yap to anyone he’d find himself on the breadline with his pregnant wife. That’s a direct quote. Guy’s a class act.’

‘That he is.’ Williams sounded like someone was squeezing his windpipe.

‘Bottom line is that Lancaster took advantage of the situation and bullied his way inside,’ Darby said. ‘If you’re going to be pissed at anyone, it should be me. I shouldn’t have lost my cool.’

‘Teddy brings out the best in people.’ Williams sighed. ‘Forget about it. You get the copies of the forensics reports?’

‘I’m going through them right now.’

‘You eaten dinner yet? There’s a place across the street from your hotel, the Wagon Wheel Saloon, that ain’t half bad. Got good burgers.’

‘I was just there.’

‘How about a drink?’

‘I think I’m going to call it a night,’ she said. ‘How about a rain check?’

‘Sure.’ He sounded disappointed. ‘You change your mind or if you need anything, call me at the station. I’ll be here for at least a couple of hours doing paperwork. You got my numbers?’

‘Coop gave ’em to me.’

‘Well, goodnight, then.’

‘Goodnight.’

Darby hung up. She sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her face, thinking about Ray Williams, with his strong jawline and soft brown eyes and rough masculine hands. It was her first pleasant thought of the day, the only one that didn’t remind her of death.

She also realized something else about the man, another thing he had in common with Coop: Williams hadn’t treated her any differently because she was a woman. That wasn’t always the case with male cops – and it was especially true when it came to sexual crimes. Some men were simply embarrassed to talk about the subject in the presence of a woman; they smiled tightly and chose their words carefully and then excused themselves to have whispered conversations with the other males in corners and behind closed doors.

The good majority, though, still carried a deep resentment at the whole politically correct and liberal diversity movement that had allowed women into what was still considered to be, even in the twenty-first century, a boys’ club.

She fished Williams’s card out of her back pocket and dialled his direct number.

‘How about I buy you a drink?’ Darby asked.

‘What time?’

‘I’ll meet you across the street in fifteen.’

‘See you then.’

Darby went into the shower and scrubbed the stink of slaughter off her skin and hair under the hot water. She kept seeing the faces of the dead.

She reached for something more pleasant and relaxing – Siesta Key. She had been in a motel in Pittsburgh, thinking about going someplace warm, when the name popped into her head. She had never been there before but had heard how beautiful the barrier island was – eight miles long and just offshore of Sarasota, the Gulf water a pale blue and warm, even during the winter. She had pulled out her iPhone, plugged ‘Siesta Key’ into Google, and seconds later had an endless supply of links, photos and videos to choose from. A website for a sidewalk café whose name she couldn’t recall offered a live streaming webcam for the Siesta Key beach. She remembered lying on her hotel bed, with its hard mattress and stiff, starched sheets, and thinking about how she could reach Siesta Key in just under seventeen hours.

How had the Ripper watched the Downes family?

Darby shut off the water and dried herself quickly. She ran a comb through her hair, pulled her hair behind her head and fastened it with an elastic band as she moved into the bedroom. She slipped into a clean pair of underwear, picturing the son of a bitch parked in some dark driveway and watching them through a pair of binoculars, waiting for them to leave so he could get inside the house. Did you watch them through binoculars or did you do it another way?

How else could he watch?

Darby fastened her bra, thinking. There were so many different ways nowadays. You had cameras installed in cell phones and tablets and laptop computers. Like the parents she had seen inside the bar, you could have a face-to-face conversation on your phone with your kid or with someone halfway around the world using programs like Skype and apps like FaceTime and ooVoo. You could watch a beach in Florida, day or night, any time you wished.

Darby was sliding into a pair of jeans when a cold, neutral voice that wasn’t her own spoke inside her head: The Downes family owned two iPads.

So what? They also owned two laptops, and each family member had their own iPhone.

The iPads were standing upright.

Darby remembered seeing her reflection on the screen of Samantha’s iPad.

The tablet was facing the young woman’s bed, and it contained a camera.

And the iPad sitting on the nightstand in the master bedroom – that camera was aimed at the three chairs seated at the foot of the bed.

Darby’s skin turned cold and her hands trembled as she rooted through the evidence files, searching for the pictures of the bedrooms.

Here was a photo of the Connelly bedroom. A laptop sat on a bureau, the camera above the screen pointed at the carnage of the dead family.

Here was a shot of Jim and Elaine Lima and one of their twin sons, Brad, bound and taped and dead. An iPhone, tilted against a stack of books, was resting on a nightstand, its camera aimed at them.

Darby grabbed the cordless and dialled Coop’s number.

‘Cooper.’

‘He was watching himself and the families and he was probably watching us today.’

‘Watching how?’

‘The iPad in the bedroom: it was sitting upright and the camera was pointed at the family. Same deal with the other four families. I’m looking at the pictures right now. In each bedroom there’s a laptop, smartphone or iPad, and the cameras are aimed at the families.’