The Secret Friend

'I needed the money for my daughter's treatment,' Bryson said. 'I couldn't get any more loans, we were already maxed out. We couldn't borrow any more money. I was desperate. My daughter was looking to me to save her life and when Dingle's father agreed to pay, I made him promise me to get his son treatment at a psychiatric hospital. He went to Sinclair.'

'You son of a bitch,' Tina Sanders said. 'You rotten son of a bitch.'

'Emily was eight, she was only eight years old, and this treatment was supposed to save her life. She couldn't do any more chemotherapy, her body -'

Fletcher moved the phone away and pressed it against his ear. 'Hello, Miss Sanders… yes, it's me. Now about Detective Bryson, have you given any thought about our previous discussion?… I see. That is, of course, your choice. I'll call you back shortly.'

Malcolm Fletcher flipped the phone shut. Bryson ran.

57

Bryson took one step and his legs buckled.

Lying on the roof, hands cuffed behind his back and sirens blaring in the cold night air, he stared up at the sky bursting with the kind of bright stars that made him think of the warm summer evenings when Emily, as an infant, was cradled in his arms. He held her bottle, rocking back and forth on the front porch, back and forth until she finally fell back asleep.

Then he saw Malcolm Fletcher looming above him, his eyes as black as the night sky.

'I didn't kill her daughter,' Bryson said. His voice sounded so far away.

'Oh but you did,' Fletcher said. 'That belt would have sent Mr Dingle to jail or, depending on his legal representation, permanently confined him to a mental asylum like Sinclair. If you did your job, Jennifer Sanders would still be alive.'

'I'm sorry.'

'The sympathy in your voice is overwhelming.'

'I didn't have a choice.' In his mind's eye Bryson saw his bald daughter lying in the hospital bed, skin ashen from the chemotherapy, arms bruised from the IV lines. He saw Emily sucking on ice chips. Emily throwing up in a pail and Emily crying out for her mother and Emily screaming as the nurse injected her with morphine to take away the pain.

'I didn't have a choice,' he said again.

'What day was Sammy released from Sinclair?'

'I don't know.'

'You didn't keep a close eye on him?'

'No.'

'Did you look for Sammy after his discharge?'

'No.'

'I didn't think so.' Fletcher picked him up by the arms. 'You know Sammy killed those women. Since Sammy voluntarily admitted himself under the guise of having a nervous breakdown, you knew he could release himself whenever he wanted, or at least until his parents stopped paying the hospital bill, which they did, incidentally, six months later.'

'I did what you asked. I told the truth.'

'You did, and I'm very proud of you. See the fire escape at the end of the roof?'

'Barely,' Bryson said. Everything was blurry.

'I'm going to escort you there now.' Fletcher helped him across the roof. 'That's it, watch your step. I wouldn't want you to trip and hurt yourself.'

Bryson wanted to get out of this terribly cold air. He couldn't stop shivering.

'In case you're wondering, Sammy wandered across the country performing menial construction and landscaping jobs,' Fletcher said. 'He did, however, manage to return east once to collect his portion of his parents' rather meagre estate. During his visit, he raped and tortured Jennifer Sanders over a period of days before strangling her and leaving her body to rot.'

Bryson wanted to close his eyes and go to sleep.

'Like you, Detective, I knew Sammy had killed those women he dumped along the highway. Unlike you, I never stopped searching for him. It took me years to find him, but I never gave up hope. I finally found him last year in Miami, where he had resumed his nocturnal activities. Sammy couldn't recall where he dumped their bodies, but he did remember all the names of his victims and could recall, in vivid detail, how he had killed them. I think his memory was aided by the recordings I found in his home. Sammy taped his… experiences with each of his victims. I'll spare you the grisly details. I would hate to place an additional burden on your conscience.'

Bryson closed his eyes and saw himself at ten climbing the big oak in the backyard, he wants to reach the top and watch the homes on Foster Avenue, brick-faced houses with three-car garages and big backyards of nice lawns and swing-sets and dollhouses where kids in nice clothes played under the supervision of their nannies and au pairs – he feels like the way God must feel looking down on them, watching, learning their secrets. He almost reaches the top when he slips and falls, branches whisking past his face and flailing arms as he tumbles through the leaves, limbs pounding him before he comes to a hard, sudden stop. He is lying on the ground and he can't breathe. His ribs are broken and he can't call for help. His mother is standing at the kitchen window, washing her hands in the sink. He opens his mouth to scream but can't draw a breath, he is gasping for air. She doesn't see him, just keeps washing her hands, her apron streaked with flour.

'Wake up, Timmy.'

Bryson stood at the edge of the roof, near the fire escape. From this height, the parked cars and fire trucks looked like toys. People were streaming out into the street as firemen moved inside the club. Bryson wanted to wave to them but his hands were cuffed behind his back.

Directly below was the surveillance van. It was blocking the alley. He didn't see Lang or any of his men. They must be inside the club now, looking for me.

'Before I remove your cuffs, I want you to deliver this to Darby McCormick.' Fletcher stuffed something inside Bryson's coat pocket. 'Make sure you give that to her.'

'I will.'

'You promise?'

'Yes.'

'Thank you,' Fletcher said and shoved Bryson off the roof.

Falling through the cold air with his hands cuffed behind his back, Bryson screamed as he watched the roof of the surveillance van coming closer… closer… too close, his head landed on the roof, neck snapping as his body fell against the van in a sickening thud, denting the steel and shattering glass.

Bryson stared up at the building's roof. Malcolm Fletcher waved good-bye and disappeared.

Blurred faces crowded around him. One face came closer.

'Help is on the way.' A woman's voice. She gripped his hand, squeezed. 'I'll stay right here with you. What's your name?'

The woman's voice was soft and reassuring, like his mother's. The day he fell from the tree, he lay on the ground thinking he was going to die and here came his mother running out of the back door, running as fast as she could in her high-heeled shoes, her apron streaked with flour and cake frosting. 'The ambulance is on its way,' she said, kissing his forehead. Bryson watched the colourful leaves blow across the lawn. 'Relax, Timmy, just lie there and relax. Everything's going to be all right now. You'll see.'

58

Darby received the news from Bill Jordan, the man heading up her surveillance. He was waiting for her on the front steps of the hospital.

Jordan quickly filled her in on the Jaguar and Tim Bryson's last conversation with Mark Lang, an undercover narcotics detective and driver of the second surveillance van. Lang had followed Bryson into Boston. Bryson had entered the club along with his partner Cliff Watts, who had provided the details of the events inside the club's private basement but couldn't explain why Bryson was cuffed and dragged away or how Bryson had ended up on the roof of the second surveillance van. Jordan was taking his men into the city.

Darby stood alone in the dark, hands deep in her pockets as she stared off into the woods, allowing the news to sink past her skin. She had to deal with this. Now.

She left Coop in charge of the crime scene and drove to Boston.

One hand steady on the wheel, the Mustang's engine booming as she tore down the highway, she dialled the commissioner's home phone number.