There’s got to be a way to fix this, I tell myself, sipping my coffee. There’s got to be a way out.

As I watch Sarah pick up strips of bacon with a fork and lay them on a plate covered with a paper towel, I feel a tight band of pressure around my head. She sees me watching and gives me a shy smile and the pressure intensifies. I scratch my eyebrow with a knuckle and watch her cook and think about how she does the laundry and washes the dishes and cleans the house and irons my shirts and wakes up at the same time as I do every morning and she doesn’t complain and she doesn’t ask questions or talk back – so why does my chest feel so tight and why won’t my heart stop racing? Why do I feel like I’m suffocating to death?

‘Baby?’

I look up and find Sarah staring at me in alarm.

‘You’re burning up,’ she says.

I drink my coffee. Sweat pours in rivulets from my brow. My armpits are soaked.

‘You feeling okay?’ she asks.

STOP ASKING ME THAT.

‘Fine,’ I reply, gripped with a sudden, inexplicable urge to pick up the kitchen chair and smash it against the table. Instead, I get up so quickly that I almost knock over the chair. I collect my briefcase and grab my coat from the foyer closet.

I’m about to head out when Sarah calls to me from the kitchen: ‘She’s beautiful.’

When I return, I find her standing at the table, sipping coffee and looking down at six folded and creased pieces of paper – colour printouts of the women I’ve researched.

‘She’s beautiful,’ Sarah says again, and points to a picture of Tricia Lamont coming out of her parents’ home. ‘Is this Tricia?’

I don’t answer: my mouth is as dry as bone. Bacon sizzles in the skillet and the weatherman on the radio is talking about an upcoming storm that could dump three to five feet of snow through central Colorado.

‘But this one,’ Sarah says, tapping a finger against the picture of 37-year-old Angela Blake, a tall woman with blonde hair and wide hips and fair skin. She wears perfume that smells like fresh citrus and when you get up close to her you can see the fine spray of freckles along her nose and shoulders. ‘This one is … what’s her name again?’

‘Angela.’

‘Angela,’ Sarah repeats, almost dreamily. She sips her coffee while she studies the women, appraising each face as though it were a painting in a museum.

Then she places her mug on the table and picks up the sheet of paper holding Angela’s picture. Sarah folds it as she shuffles towards me, her slippers scraping against the floor.

‘This one,’ she says, and tucks the paper in my coat pocket.

‘Why?’ My voice is thick and wet in my throat.

‘Because she looks like a fighter. You like the ones who fight back.’

Then Sarah raises herself on her toes and, touching me lightly on the neck, kisses me goodbye.

19

‘You think he might’ve recorded himself in the act?’ Terry Hoder asked, his voice flat, almost dismissive.

Darby swallowed her coffee. ‘Don’t you?’

Hoder finished pouring coffee into a paper cup. It was 7.35 a.m., and they were the only ones inside Red Hill PD’s break-room. Bright morning sunlight flooded through the small window, a welcomed presence in the grey surroundings.

He leaned the small of his back against the counter; the hand gripping his cane was white-knuckled. ‘I know that type of software exists for home computers, but I don’t know anything about iPads and tablets. Totally different operating system and different software, right?’

‘Right. And, yes, the software exists for both iPads and iPhones. The iPads, phones and the laptops in the bedroom photos all had cameras and microphones. He could stream the video to his own phone or a laptop halfway around the world if he wanted to, and replay it at his leisure. All he’d need was the family’s network name and password. They all had Wi-Fi in their homes, I’ve checked.’

‘It’s an interesting theory. Solid.’

Hoder seemed distracted. Lost in thought.

Then he stared out the window, at the snow-capped mountains in the distance. The sky was a ceramic blue and cloudless, the perimeter of the empty parking lot dotted with aspens and tall pines that creaked and swayed in the wind.

Darby had heard the stories about the man’s two broken marriages; the grown son and daughter who barely spoke to their father, a relentless workaholic who had suffered a nervous breakdown and almost died from encephalitis. With a little over a year to go from the FBI’s mandatory retirement age of fifty-seven, Hoder should have been at home resting, recovering from his knee surgery or coasting through his remaining time. He had certainly earned it.

Instead, he was here in Colorado. Why? Because he had nothing left in his life. As Darby drank her coffee, she felt a vague and uncertain horror about her future. She was at the halfway point in her life where the finish line was no longer hidden behind the fog of youth; it was real, it was approaching, and there was no turning back. Looking at Hoder, she felt as though she were being paid a visit from her own Ghost of Christmases Yet to Come.

‘It can’t be a coincidence that in all the crime scenes there was an electronic device with a camera pointed at bound family members,’ Darby said.

‘Agreed. I’m afraid I have a rather embarrassing confession.’ When Hoder looked at her, his eyes were bright and full of mirth. ‘Don’t tell anyone this, but I’m somewhat of a technophobe. Computers and smartphones and now these tablets – frankly the whole thing gives me a headache. I can’t keep up with it, nor do I want to keep up with it.’

‘I feel the same way.’

Hoder chuckled. ‘I doubt it. All these gizmos and programs, they make me feel … old. Obsolete.’

‘Technology and software changes from day to day. You’ve got to be a full-time geek to keep up with this stuff. The rest of us are left in the dust.’

Darby refilled her cup. The coffee was bitter, but it would do the job. ‘Let’s start with Wi-Fi. You know what that is?’

‘Wireless internet connection.’

‘See, you’re not as bad as you think.’

‘My seven-year-old grandson had to tell me what it meant.’

‘Then I take back what I just said.’ Darby smiled over her cup.

‘If what you’re saying is true – that the Ripper recorded his interactions with the families – then can I assume he may have been watching or listening or both yesterday, when you, Cooper and Williams went inside the bedroom?’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me.’

‘How could he do that? Do you need some sort of special software?’

‘That I don’t know. The RCFL guys –’

‘Who?’

‘Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory out of Denver. Forensics geeks who specialize in phones and computers. Coop is going to meet with them first thing this morning, at nine.’

‘You spoke with him?’

‘This morning, about five.’ Coop had been up all night with four other agents on loan from the Denver office.

‘Did he have anything to say about the evidence he brought to Denver?’

‘No prints were recovered from the plastic bag, duct tape or plastic bindings. But there are a few potential bright spots.’

‘The blood Coop recovered from the bedroom flooring.’

Darby nodded. ‘There’s also a chance our man left either sweat or skin cells on that piece of latex stuck to the duct tape – and we have that fingerprint pressed into the polyurethane while it was still in the process of drying.’

‘Wouldn’t it be nice if our man was in our databases?’

‘It certainly would be,’ Darby said, although she wasn’t pinning her hopes on it.

While there was a fighting chance the fingerprint might find a match on IAFIS, the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, CODIS, the Bureau’s Combined DNA Index System, was another matter. The majority of DNA samples stored on that database belonged to unsolved violent crime investigations. If the blood found on the floor, or skin or sweat from the duct tape, did, in fact, belong to the Ripper, and if he had left a matching DNA sample at another crime scene, a link would then have been established. If, if, if, Darby thought. She could count on one hand the number of cases where CODIS came back with a match linked to a known offender.