The daughter, Darby thought, removing her sunglasses. Please don’t let her be in here.

Darby looked to the archway on her left. The walnut dining-table seated six. The pair of head-of-the-table carver chairs were gone as well as one of the side chairs.

A man in a navy-blue suit appeared at the end of the short hall leading into the kitchen. He wore white booties over his shoes and his hands were covered in latex. He also held a clipboard.

‘Darby,’ Coop said, placing his gear on the floor, ‘meet Ray Williams. Ray is lead detective on the Ripper investigations. Ray, this is Darby McCormick, the forensics consultant I was telling you about.’

Williams was an inch or two shy of six feet and had dark brown eyes and thick black hair that was parted razor sharp on the side. He was also ruggedly handsome – the kind of man, Darby suspected, who chopped his own firewood, was comfortable with tools and drank good Scotch. She felt her pulse quicken.

Even better, he wasn’t a sloppy hick cop who didn’t know his way around a crime scene. Wary of disturbing any potential footwear evidence the killer may have left in the hallway, Williams hugged a wall as he moved towards them, avoiding the main area of foot traffic along the floor.

He looked her up and down – not in an overtly sexual way, but more with a look of a surprise, as if he’d been expecting someone entirely different. Then she realized that she looked like she’d just climbed off a Harley – snug black leather motorcycle jacket, jeans and chestnut-brown harness boots. All I’m missing is a helmet and some tats.

Coop had picked up on it. ‘This is how PhDs from Harvard dress these days.’

‘Ray Williams,’ he said, his voice a deep, smooth purr. He had a firm handshake and rough, callused palms. He also had about a day’s worth of stubble; Ray Williams was in that category of men who always had a permanent case of five o’clock shadow no matter how many times a day they shaved. ‘Thanks for coming, glad to have you here.’

Williams sounded genuine. That wasn’t always the case with detectives. They were, by nature, as territorial as a junkyard dog, and about as friendly.

Darby nodded to the stairs. ‘How many we got?’

‘Hoder didn’t fill you in?’ Williams asked.

Coop answered the question. ‘He tried, but the signal dropped out. Again.’

Williams nodded. Looking at Darby, he said, ‘Cell phones don’t work too well here. Not enough towers.’ He flipped open his pad. ‘Vics are David and Laura Downes, and their daughter, Samantha. That’s her right there.’ Williams pointed to the photos hanging on the wall and Darby felt something inside her tear. ‘Samantha’s twenty-two. Moved back in with her parents last year after graduating from college, works at the one and only bar that’s still open downtown – Wagon Wheel Saloon, across from the place where you guys are staying. David’s forty-seven. Lawyer, specializes in real-estate law. Laura’s forty-eight. Former schoolteacher.’

‘Same as the previous four families?’ Darby asked.

‘Same plastic bindings, duct tape, all of it.’

‘Beds?’

‘Both of ’em look as though they were made by Martha Stewart herself. Daughter’s bedroom is on the first floor, off the kitchen.’

Coop said, ‘Who found them?’

‘I did,’ Williams said. ‘Downes’s secretary, a woman named Sally Kelly, called the station this morning. Downes didn’t show up for work yesterday, didn’t call her or send an email. When she still hadn’t heard back from him this morning, she asked if we could send someone over. Said she tried calling Downes at home and on his cell – even tried the wife’s cell. I was at the station there when the call came in, so I decided to swing by to check it out. Found both cars parked in the garage and the front door unlocked. No tool marks or forced entry, but there’s a hole cut in the sliding glass door off the living-room.

‘I got about halfway up the stairs when I smelled them. They’re all in the main bedroom. Go to the top of the stairs and hook a left. I didn’t enter either bedroom and I stayed away from the main traffic areas – not that I think we’re going to find any footwear impressions. This guy is too slick. My notes are here if you want ’em, underneath the sign-in sheet.’ Williams held up his clipboard and then placed it by the door. ‘Until this place has been worked over, I don’t want anyone in here besides the three of us.’

Darby said, ‘I noticed there aren’t any patrol cars here.’

‘A couple of units are on their way here to secure the perimeter, but I doubt this place is gonna turn into a sideshow.’

‘What I meant was, why don’t you have people doing door to door, talking to the neighbours?’

‘There aren’t any. You’re standing in the only house on the street that’s currently occupied. Rest of ’em are vacant – have been for quite a while.’

Coop said, ‘Brewster’s sheriff’s office getting involved?’

‘I haven’t notified them. Don’t plan to either.’ Williams let his words linger in the air for a moment. ‘Hoder told me he’s sending up some sort of mobile lab. Said you guys could handle the forensics stuff, which is what I’d prefer anyway. State lab’s backed up like a toilet. We wouldn’t get test results for weeks.’

Then Williams turned to Darby and said, ‘Coop tell you about the incorporation?’

Darby nodded.

‘The guy in charge of Brewster’s sheriff office, Teddy Lancaster, is of the belief that me and my people, what few of ’em I’ve got left, are incapable of finding the Red Hill Ripper ourselves – if we had any talent, he said, we would’ve found the son of a bitch by now. Ted’s been heavily lobbying the pencil-pushers with a view to getting the cases pulled from us.’

‘Is he conducting his own investigation?’

‘Oh, I’m sure he is. He’s got access to all the case files – I’m required to forward copies of everything to him. But I’m not required to call him about what happened here, and since this is still my case there’s no reason for him to participate. I want to keep it that way as long as possible. I don’t know if Coop told you, but if Lancaster finds the Ripper before me and my people do, it’ll pretty much seal the argument that none of us Red Hill folk will be needed in the new regime. And the state will jump on it because it’ll save them a good chuck of dough. They’ll pass some of the savings Teddy’s way, so he can promote his people, maybe build a new deck on his house, or whatever.’

‘How many homicide detectives does your department have?’ Darby asked.

‘You’re looking at him. I’ve got to call the ME. Anything you guys need, ask. I could really use a win here.’

Williams left, shutting the door softly behind him.

‘No pressure or anything,’ Coop said, slipping out of his coat.

Darby pulled her hair behind her hand and secured it with a rubber band as she looked up the stairs. She didn’t want to meet the wide-eyed dead just yet. First, she wanted to get a sense of how the family had lived.

5

Dressed head to toe in a white Tyvek ‘bunny’ suit and wearing a facemask and clear goggles, Darby gripped a clipboard in one hand, the ALS unit in the other, and moved across the hall and into a small kitchen with a cream-coloured tiled floor and white appliances set against cherry cabinets. Clean dishes and glasses were stacked in a plastic drying rack on a black-and-brown-speckled granite countertop, and a glass coffeepot was full.

It must have been set to an automatic timer the night before, Darby thought, her gaze cutting to the edge of the kitchen counter, where she found a prepaid Netflix envelope with an empty DVD sleeve on top of it. It was for the first season of Game of Thrones. The disk was probably still in the player. The mother probably left the sleeve here so it would be in her line of sight when she came into the kitchen in the morning. So she wouldn’t forget to collect the disk from the player and then mail it back.