Pine looked at the evidence bag gripped in her hand. ‘What did you find?’
‘A blister pack for nicotine gum. The guy with the night vision is apparently concerned about his long-term health. You should be too. You’re looking a little unsteady on your feet.’
‘I haven’t run like that since… well, it’s been a long time.’
‘Let me help you to the ambulance.’
‘I can manage.’ Pine opened the gate to a carnival of blinking red, white and blue lights.
‘Artie, have the Feds come to see you?’
‘About what?’
‘About any ongoing case in Belham, surveillance, anything along those lines.’
‘No.’ Pine’s mouth parted and his brow crinkled with thought. ‘Wait, are you suggesting the Feds are involved with what happened here tonight?’
‘I’m saying it’s a possibility. The guys I saw hauling the body away? They wore suits. The guy with the night vision had a tactical vest with stun and smoke grenades, and he was carrying the kind of machine gun used by Hostage Rescue. He’s not a weekend warrior. He knew exactly what he was doing.’
‘That’s one hell of an assumption.’
‘Maybe. But he could easily have taken me down while I was back there – he had several opportunities before I reached the phone. And I think he deliberately shot at the tree above my head. He didn’t want to kill me, just wanted to pin me down until he got to the phone. You see the muddy footprints on the deck?’
Pine nodded, dabbing his eyes with the handkerchief. ‘I talked to the patrol guys. They didn’t leave ’em.’
‘They’re also on the living-room carpet in front of the sliding glass door. I think someone ran across the backyard, tracked mud up the steps and then shot their way inside the house. I found two holes in the opposite wall. Who would want to shoot their way inside a house?’
‘The person who killed and tortured that woman.’
‘One person can’t subdue two people and then ransack an entire house, especially one this size. We’re talking two people at the very least – and they sure as hell wouldn’t have shot their way in. They had to find a way to get inside quietly, without being detected. They needed time to subdue the mother and son, and they needed time to search the house. Shooting your way inside isn’t quiet or subtle. It’s more in line with a rescue attempt, don’t you think?’
Pine thought it over, rubbing his tongue along his bottom teeth.
‘All I’m saying is that I wouldn’t put it past the Feds,’ Darby said. ‘We should look at every possible angle.’
‘I’ll dig around.’
So will I, Darby thought.
8
Darby used one of the clean towels she kept in the back of the crime scene vehicle to wipe the mud from her face, arms and hands. The muggy night air smelled of car exhaust and her clothes reeked of cordite.
Everywhere she looked she saw faces lit up by revolving emergency lights. Faces behind TV cameras, faces behind cameras exploding with bright flashes. Voices spoke behind the crackle of police radios and the rapid machine-gun click of camera shutters snapping. The sounds grated on her already scorched nerves. Too close. Too much commotion, too much goddamn noise and too many people crowding the streets. She wanted to send everyone away. She wanted a cold shower and a stiff drink. She wanted some time alone to quiet her mind before heading back inside the house.
That wasn’t going to happen. It was time to make a careful study of the house.
Darby wiped the last of the mud from her boots. She threw the towel on the front floor of the Explorer and changed into a clean bunny suit. From the hatchback she grabbed the new Canon digital SLR camera, which created a digital negative – a raw file that couldn’t be doctored in any way. She walked across the front lawn tucking her wet hair underneath her hood. Thunder rumbled in the distance. She hoped the Wonder Twins arrived before the rain. She’d have to send them directly into the woods. She couldn’t wait.
She put on a pair of latex gloves, stepped inside the foyer and studied the walls. No bullet holes. She checked the dining room and kitchen. No bullet holes.
Coop looked up from his clipboard.
‘I’ll be upstairs,’ she said.
He nodded and went back to making notes. He made no attempt to follow. They had worked together for so long he knew she preferred to go through a crime scene alone first so she could think. She couldn’t do that with someone looking over her shoulder, taking notes and constantly asking questions.
Darby stood alone on the first-floor landing. Cool air rushed down on her from an overhead vent. Her damp clothes clung to her skin. She couldn’t stop sweating.
Five doorways, each door opened, the lights turned on. Clothes had been tossed into the hall. Bathroom items were scattered across the blond oak hardwood flooring in front of her – a tube of hair gel, hairspray, tampons and pills.
Looking into the bathroom, she saw a medicine cabinet, its doors open, the shelves wiped clean. Mouthwash, shampoo and pill bottles lined the bathtub. Each bottle had been emptied and searched. Two prescription bottles were floating inside the toilet.
They were looking for something small. A key maybe.
Across the hall was a small, carpeted room used as a home office. Shades drawn, desk overturned and closet shelves emptied. Every inch had been methodically searched.
Had the house been broken into before the mother and son arrived? Then, frustrated at failing to find whatever it was they needed, had they started to torture the mother for information?
Fingers pulled back, broken.
Tell me where it is.
Fingers cut off one by one.
Tell me where it is.
Did she tell? Did she know anything? Darby moved to the two rooms at the end of the hall.
The first, long and airy, contained only a sewing machine and a chair. Shades covered the windows.
The mattress in the second room had been pulled from the bed, cut with a knife and searched. No shades covering the windows; she could see members of the Photography Unit still taking pictures of the back gate. Clothes on the floor, the kind a male teenager would wear – Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts and jeans, athletic shorts, sneakers and flip-flops. She found an empty red duffel bag with a shoulder strap, the kind used for travelling, lying underneath an overturned nightstand.
Darby took pictures, then moved down the hall and stepped into the master bedroom, surprised to find it neat and orderly. A big-screen plasma TV hung on the wall across from a king-sized sleigh bed. The twin cherry-stained chests-of-drawers hadn’t been overturned or searched; the drawers were still intact. Like all the rooms with windows facing the street, the shades had been drawn.
The only item in here that had been disturbed was a suitcase sitting on top of a leather footstool. Clothes inside, a few tossed against a leather club chair set up in the corner.
Had the search been interrupted? Had someone been standing here when the gunshots went off?
Darby found a small piece of blue latex caught on a zipper’s metal teeth. In her mind’s eye she saw the dead man from the woods, latex gloves covering his hands.
Did you touch this suitcase?
She pictured him standing here, his gloved fingers searching through each pocket when the first gunshot rang out. She saw him reaching under his suit jacket for his sidearm and then rushing for the stairs, heading downstairs into the kitchen and seeing… what? What did you see?