Darby shot him a look.

‘Sorry, I know how much you hate that word,’ he said. ‘I meant to say “broad”.’

‘Much better.’

Coop was joking the way he always did – his expression and tone dancing along the edge of a smirk, using sarcasm to cover up his true feelings.

The last time they’d worked together was well over two years ago: the Soul Collectors case. In the aftermath, words were exchanged. Promises made. She returned to Boston, and Coop flew back to London to break it off with his live-in girlfriend.

When days turned into weeks, Coop waiting for his girlfriend to return home from a business trip, Coop waiting for the right moment to drop the bomb, Darby realized that there was nothing to keep her in Boston any more. Her job at the Crime Lab was gone, her parents were dead, and Coop … she loved him but she didn’t want to own him. She decided to sell her condo and all its furnishings, and then, using a small portion of her considerable savings, purchased the best motorcycle ever made: a Triumph Bonneville T100 Special Edition, inspired by the one Steve McQueen drove in the movie The Great Escape. The Triumph was the only thing she owned now, her life condensed into whatever she could fit inside the bike’s small rear trunk and pair of hard-shell saddlebags. She lived her life out of motels and hotels.

Darby remembered the cloudless autumn day she drove out of the city. She could go anywhere and do anything. She was bound to nothing and to no one. She had the power to choose.

‘You know,’ Coop said, ‘I find it very, very sad that the only way I can get to see you in person is for me to dangle a sexual sadist in front of you.’

‘A very organized sexual sadist. I come out only for the best. Coop, when we spoke yesterday, you didn’t mention anything about ViCAP.’ The FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program was the largest database of violent crimes in existence; it held and analysed information about homicides – especially unsolved sexual assaults.

‘That’s because we didn’t find anything about a killer who ties up families, murders them and makes the bed before leaving,’ Coop said. ‘Sure, we found some unsolved cases in the state where a family was tied up and/or killed, either shot or stabbed to death. Those, though, were all burglaries – or staged to look like burglaries. No sexual elements.’

‘I read the articles posted on Colorado news websites and didn’t see anything mentioned about the killer making the beds.’

‘The locals kept that detail to themselves to weed out the copycats.’

Good, Darby thought. ‘What else did they keep out of the papers?’

‘Guy doesn’t leave the rope behind. Lab’s taking a look at the ligature marks and trying to see if they can ID the type of knot he uses. The locals are calling him the Red Hill Ripper.’

‘Your guy strangles his victims,’ Darby said. ‘He doesn’t mutilate them with a knife or a similar weapon.’

‘Reporter who broke the first story thought “Red Hill Ripper” would play and sound better than the “Red Hill Strangler”.’

‘Ah … How’d Red Hill PD react to you guys being brought in?’ The police chief, Coop had told her, had called Investigative Support. But that didn’t mean the chief’s people would roll out the welcome wagon for the detectives assigned to the case.

‘They practically threw us a parade,’ Coop said. ‘These guys want us here, which isn’t surprising, given the incorporation.’

‘The what?’

‘Red Hill’s an un-incorporated town. Means it doesn’t have a self-ruling government.’

‘No mayor or city council.’

Coop nodded. ‘It also means that the town doesn’t have any money for schools and other services. Real-estate market didn’t recover from the crash, which is great news for the developers, who are itching to come in and buy a whole bunch of properties and level them to the ground to make way for strip malls. I’m not for gentrification, but this town needs something, because it’s practically in rigor mortis. No one’s moving in because there aren’t any jobs – they all went to China or India or whatever – and manufacturing’s dead. With no one moving in and without Red Hill having the money to attract doctors and teachers –’

‘The town’s in a terminal spiral,’ Darby finished.

‘Which is the reason why the state wants to incorporate Red Hill with the neighbouring town of Brewster. Sheriff’s office is located there.’ Coop turned to her and added, ‘And it’s not going anywhere.’

‘So once the incorporation goes through, Red Hill PD will be no more.’

‘Exactly. It’s a skeleton crew as it is. The police chief called us because he’s hoping we can help his people catch the Ripper. You know how it goes with a serial case – whoever catches the bogey man wins the prize. Brewster sheriff’s office is staffed with better talent, but if Williams – that’s the detective spearheading the task force, Ray Williams – if he and his people net this douchebag first, chances are good they’ll have a place in the new regime.’

Darby had worked her fair share of high-pressure cases where the usual assortment of assholes – administrators, bureaucrats and politicians seeking re-election – demanded a case be closed in days instead of weeks, if not months. Oh, and bad news, kids: we haven’t budgeted any funds for overtime, so go on out there and catch the bad guy on your own time – and pronto. But she had never worked a case with the Sword of Damocles hanging over her head.

A cell phone rang. Not hers; it was coming from a BlackBerry tucked away in a dashboard cubbyhole.

Coop picked it up and glanced at the screen. ‘It’s Hoder,’ he said, and then answered the call. ‘I’m on my way back with the good doctor.’

Darby couldn’t hear what Hoder was saying on the other end of the line, but Coop’s face had gone slack. You didn’t have to read page one of Detective Work for Dummies to know some piece of bad news had just been delivered.

‘You’re breaking up again,’ Coop said, and gave the Jeep a little more gas. ‘What? Yeah, I got the address, we’ll meet you there in forty.’

Darby watched the speedometer’s needle ease its way past eighty-five.

‘Can you hear me, Terry? Terry? Goddamnit.’ Coop hung up, sighing heavily.

‘What’s up?’ Darby asked.

‘They’ve just found another dead family.’

3

Multiple homicides in Boston were almost always three-ring-circus affairs. Caravans of patrol cars with their flashing blue-and-whites would block off the main and surrounding streets while patrolmen worked crowd control near the crime scene; a couple of blues would shout orders over bullhorns; and everyone would scramble to keep the herds of reporters, TV cameramen and curious neighbours corralled behind sawhorses.

When Coop turned right on to Salem End Road, the address of the crime scene, Darby saw yet another street that resembled all the others she’d passed on the way here: quiet and ordinary, a long stretch of pavement that looked like it had been carved through the middle of the forest, the modest single-family homes sprinkled along a string of big plots, all of which were set far back from the street and were slightly obscured by trees, as if trying to hide.

Darby didn’t hear any bullhorns and she didn’t see any flashing police or emergency lights. As they drew closer, the GPS, with its mechanical female voice speaking in a slight British accent for some reason, announced that their destination was coming up on the right, a mere 400 feet away. There wasn’t a single person, cop or otherwise, out on the sidewalk.

‘I don’t know, Coop. All this chaos, I’m not going to be able to think clearly.’

‘Welcome to Hicksville,’ Coop said, as he pulled up against the kerb and parked behind a white Chevy pickup with an extended cab and mudguards. He killed the engine and pocketed the keys.

Darby, stepping out of the Jeep and on to the sidewalk, saw a black Honda Accord with tinted windows parked in front of the truck. The driver’s door swung open.