Part 8 (1/2)

'Goodnight.'

Darby hung up. She sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her face, thinking about Ray Williams, with his strong jawline and soft brown eyes and rough masculine hands. It was her first pleasant thought of the day, the only one that didn't remind her of death.

She also realized something else about the man, another thing he had in common with Coop: Williams hadn't treated her any differently because she was a woman. That wasn't always the case with male cops and it was especially true when it came to s.e.xual crimes. Some men were simply embarra.s.sed to talk about the subject in the presence of a woman; they smiled tightly and chose their words carefully and then excused themselves to have whispered conversations with the other males in corners and behind closed doors.

The good majority, though, still carried a deep resentment at the whole politically correct and liberal diversity movement that had allowed women into what was still considered to be, even in the twenty-first century, a boys' club.

She fished Williams's card out of her back pocket and dialled his direct number.

'How about I buy you a drink?' Darby asked.

'What time?'

'I'll meet you across the street in fifteen.'

'See you then.'

Darby went into the shower and scrubbed the stink of slaughter off her skin and hair under the hot water. She kept seeing the faces of the dead.

She reached for something more pleasant and relaxing Siesta Key. She had been in a motel in Pittsburgh, thinking about going someplace warm, when the name popped into her head. She had never been there before but had heard how beautiful the barrier island was eight miles long and just offsh.o.r.e of Sarasota, the Gulf water a pale blue and warm, even during the winter. She had pulled out her iPhone, plugged 'Siesta Key' into Google, and seconds later had an endless supply of links, photos and videos to choose from. A website for a sidewalk cafe whose name she couldn't recall offered a live streaming webcam for the Siesta Key beach. She remembered lying on her hotel bed, with its hard mattress and stiff, starched sheets, and thinking about how she could reach Siesta Key in just under seventeen hours.

How had the Ripper watched the Downes family?

Darby shut off the water and dried herself quickly. She ran a comb through her hair, pulled her hair behind her head and fastened it with an elastic band as she moved into the bedroom. She slipped into a clean pair of underwear, picturing the son of a b.i.t.c.h parked in some dark driveway and watching them through a pair of binoculars, waiting for them to leave so he could get inside the house. Did you watch them through binoculars or did you do it another way?

How else could he watch?

Darby fastened her bra, thinking. There were so many different ways nowadays. You had cameras installed in cell phones and tablets and laptop computers. Like the parents she had seen inside the bar, you could have a face-to-face conversation on your phone with your kid or with someone halfway around the world using programs like Skype and apps like FaceTime and ooVoo. You could watch a beach in Florida, day or night, any time you wished.

Darby was sliding into a pair of jeans when a cold, neutral voice that wasn't her own spoke inside her head: The Downes family owned two iPads.

So what? They also owned two laptops, and each family member had their own iPhone.

The iPads were standing upright.

Darby remembered seeing her reflection on the screen of Samantha's iPad.

The tablet was facing the young woman's bed, and it contained a camera.

And the iPad sitting on the nightstand in the master bedroom that camera was aimed at the three chairs seated at the foot of the bed.

Darby's skin turned cold and her hands trembled as she rooted through the evidence files, searching for the pictures of the bedrooms.

Here was a photo of the Connelly bedroom. A laptop sat on a bureau, the camera above the screen pointed at the carnage of the dead family.

Here was a shot of Jim and Elaine Lima and one of their twin sons, Brad, bound and taped and dead. An iPhone, tilted against a stack of books, was resting on a nightstand, its camera aimed at them.

Darby grabbed the cordless and dialled Coop's number.

'Cooper.'

'He was watching himself and the families and he was probably watching us today.'

'Watching how?'

'The iPad in the bedroom: it was sitting upright and the camera was pointed at the family. Same deal with the other four families. I'm looking at the pictures right now. In each bedroom there's a laptop, smartphone or iPad, and the cameras are aimed at the families.'

'Wouldn't the iPads and the other stuff have to be turned on?'

'I don't know. Maybe. But I don't think this is a coincidence.'

'I'll get the computer guys on it first thing in the morning.'

After Darby hung up, she threw on a s.h.i.+rt and then paced the rough carpet in her bare feet. The Red Hill Ripper had used those devices to watch himself, she was sure of it.

The phone rang and she realized she had forgotten about her drink with Williams.

'Sorry, Ray, I'm running late. I've found something about the Ripper how he's watching himself and the families.'

Williams didn't answer.

'Ray? You there?'

'You've got really nice t.i.ts. And I like those tight little boy shorts you just put on.'

The voice on the other end of the line was deep and guttural, almost a moan. It was also disguised by a voice-changer.

'I can't wait to get you in the rope.'

'Why wait? Why not '

'Goooooodbye.'

Darby was staring at the window when the line went dead.

Day Two.

My mother, whose name was also Sarah, was a slim woman with rough hands who wore too much makeup and smoked too much and dressed every day like she was going off to a country-club dance or a thousand-dollars-a-plate political fundraiser. She had wanted a girl and made no secret about it.

Boys confused her, she told me on several occasions. They ate like pigs, shovelling food into their mouths before bouncing outside with the boundless energy of a puppy, and spent each day rolling around and digging in dirt and getting into fistfights and playing sports. They came home covered in filth and sweat and reeked of BO. They wolfed down their supper and they put up a fuss when they were asked to wash their hands or take a shower.

Girls, my mother said, were the complete opposite in almost every way. They didn't come home smelling like they had spent their day swimming in a sewer. They enjoyed taking long baths and they wore clean clothes and they made an effort to look pretty. They were polite and had table manners. The biggest difference the most important one, my mother argued was when girls reached p.u.b.erty they didn't act like unneutered dogs, humping legs and bedposts, pillows, whatever got them off. Girls developed into ladies. Boys turned into monsters of fornication.

I don't know how my father felt about boys or girls or children in general because I'd never met him. My mother told me his name was Roy, just Roy, no last name needed, and the only contact I had with my father was through a small steamer trunk that sat in a dusty attic corner strung with cobwebs. Inside, I found an army uniform and a bayonet and a collection of detective magazines from the fifties and sixties. They had had the word 'detective' in the t.i.tles Real Detective, Spicy Detective and Gold Seal Detective and each cover featured a woman wearing a ripped dress or a skimpy bikini or just her underwear and bra. All the women were tightly bound with thick rope to chairs, posts, beds, tables and radiators, some gagged, some captured mid-scream with their teeth bared and their lips painted blood-red, every one of them frightened.