by Chris Mooney
A wink of metal in the light. She ducked underneath the deck and saw an evidence cone next to an expended round; Banville had already photographed it. Using a pen, she picked up the shell casing. The words ‘44 REM MAG’ were stamped on the round metal ‘spark plug’.
.44 Remington Magnum ammo. A single shot could put down a bear.
Darby eased the casing back on the crushed rocks and searched the area around the deck. She didn’t find any other casings.
She moved back to the steps and ran the beam of her flashlight across grass yellowed by the sun, bald patches full of muddy rainwater.
There, fifteen feet away from the stairs – blood on blades of grass.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Pine and the two patrolmen heading her way.
‘Boyos,’ Pine said. ‘Let me introduce you to –’
‘Stay where you are,’ Darby said. She dropped an evidence marker and continued her search, thinking back to the drag marks in the kitchen hallway. Two straight parallel lines, the kind made by dragging a body. A bloody smear leading down the garage steps and across the garage floor and then no more blood. Had a body been hauled inside a vehicle?
The teenager had been transported to the hospital and the mother was inside the house. Was there a third victim?
The blood drops on the grass stopped at a gate. It was unlocked. She eased it open, found a bloody handprint on the wood.
Inside the woods, footwear impressions moving up a steep incline blanketed with dead leaves and pine needles.
‘Put on a pair of furry ears and you’d look like the Easter Bunny,’ Pine said.
She turned and saw him standing just a few feet away, the underarms of his white shirt dark with sweat. He reeked of cigar smoke.
‘It’s been, what, three years since I last saw you?’
‘My mother’s funeral,’ Darby said. ‘What’s going on with the teenager? I heard he’s at a hospital.’
‘Physically he’s fine. He’s in some sort of shock. One of the ER docs tried to give him a sedative and he freaked. We’re giving him some space to calm down. I’ve got people guarding his room at St Joe’s, so there’ll be someone there when he’s ready to talk.’
St Joseph’s was Belham’s main hospital. ‘The news said he was at Mass. General.’
Pine’s hound-dog eyes twinkled with delight. ‘Yeah, that’s what I told the press. Figured we’d get the vultures to head to Boston. Most of them did. Some of them, as I’m sure you saw on your way in, are still camped out front.’
Nice move, Artie. ‘What’s the kid’s name?’
‘John Hallcox. Mother’s name is Amy Hallcox – we found her Vermont licence in the handbag. Neighbours say she and her kid came here about a week or so ago. They don’t know his name. They pretty much kept to themselves. Some of the neighbours saw them flitting about the house but mostly they stayed inside. Woman drove a red Honda Accord. Got the plate number all over the radios but so far nobody’s seen a damn thing. You see the drag marks in the kitchen hall?’
Darby nodded.
‘My guess is someone dragged a body and drove away,’ Pine said. ‘As far as we can tell, it was only the woman and her kid. We don’t know anything about this third person.
‘House belongs to an elderly couple named Martin and Elaine Wexler. Guy’s a retired doctor. Must’ve done well ’cause he’s vacationing somewhere in the South of France, from what we’re told. We’re trying to pin their location down.’
Darby shut off her flashlight. ‘Why didn’t you tell operations about the amount of damage in there? I could’ve had more people working here before I arrived.’
‘I didn’t make the call. I know who did – don’t worry, I’ll tear him a new one. Sorry I couldn’t talk when you called. It’s been a madhouse here.’
Darby felt the heat of the night and her exhaustion move through her and press against the back of her skull. She didn’t want to waste what energy she had left arguing.
‘As you can see, I checked the woods.’ Pine pointed to the mud caked on his shoes and trouser cuffs. ‘No need to go back there. I followed the footprints – don’t worry, I didn’t disturb a thing – I followed them all the way to Blakely Road. That’s where they ended. Whoever ran back there is long gone.’
Darby wondered if a vehicle had been parked on the dirt shoulder of the road. She made a mental note to check for tyre tracks.
‘I take it you’ve been inside the house.’
‘Oh yes,’ Pine said. ‘I won’t be forgetting what I saw in there for a while.’
‘Who else has been in there besides you?’
‘Just the first responding officers, Quigley and Peters. That would be them standing over there in the corner. I kept them here in case you had any questions.’
‘Did they search the entire house?’
‘That’s their job.’
She knew that but didn’t like it. Imagined some key piece of evidence stuck to the bottom of a boot and then lost somewhere outside now, gone. ‘Did they track mud up the deck steps?’
‘Let’s go ask them.’
‘I’ll be right there.’ Darby clicked on her flashlight and turned back to the gate. She could hear Pine grunting as he waddled away.
She stepped into the woods and found two compost piles of dead grass clippings a few feet from the back fence. Mosquitoes whined against her ears and danced in the beam of her flashlight.
Moving up the incline, she thought about how much she hated these woods. Five years ago she had discovered a buried set of female remains – another victim of Daniel Boyle and… the other one, Boyle’s mentor and killing partner, Traveler. A lot of their victims – the missing women, men and children, her childhood friend Melanie Cruz – had never been found, buried somewhere out here –
Darby stopped walking, and listened to the sound of a mobile phone ringing somewhere in the darkness ahead.
6
Darby ran up the incline, boots sinking deep into the wet ground, the beam of her flashlight zigzagging through the darkness. She reached the top quickly and without much effort.
The ground levelled off to a bumpy, uneven area of half-buried boulders and downed tree limbs and branches. The phone rang again, a soft, pleasant sound that reminded her of wind chimes. It came from somewhere straight ahead. She moved quickly, ducking underneath limbs, dried branches crunching and snapping underneath her boots.
A third ring, very close.
There, a small square of light glowing in the darkness about thirty or so feet ahead. She moved her flashlight to it. A BlackBerry, judging by its size and shape. She reached into her back pocket for an evidence bag.
Branches snapped in the darkness somewhere ahead of her. She swung her flashlight to the sound, the beam whisking past trees and another steep incline leading up, up.
A man dressed head to toe in black tossed something into the air. Before he ducked behind a tree she caught sight of the night-vision goggles strapped across his shaved pale head, a gloved hand clutching a sub-machine gun against a tactical vest holding grenades.
Darby dropped her flashlight and ran, knowing what was coming. Whatever you do, don’t turn around, don’t turn –
An explosion followed by a blinding light that lit up the woods. Stun grenade, she thought, ducking behind a tree.
The light died away. She stripped out of her bunny suit. She couldn’t hide wearing white, couldn’t run in the coveralls.
Voices shouting from the backyard, footsteps cracking branches close by, bodies whisking past leaves and branches. How many people are in here?
SIG in hand, Darby flicked the switch for the tactical light and swung around the tree. Through the gaps between the branches and tree limbs she caught sight of two men hauling a body up the incline. Two white males wearing suits. The body also wore a suit. White male, white shirt covered in blood, a blue latex-covered hand bumping across the ground as he was dragged away.
‘Freeze. Boston –’
Automati
c gunfire muted by a silencer tore into the bark above her head.
Darby dropped to her knees, hugging her body close to the tree trunk. Voices shouting Get down and Take cover. She thought she heard Pine’s voice in the mix. She swung around the other side of the tree and brought up her weapon.
Flashlights crisscrossed through the darkness and she could see thick clouds of grey and white drifting through the trees near the first incline. The man who had thrown the stun grenade, the one with the shaved head and night-vision goggles, had moved out of his hiding spot. He stood near the spot where she’d found the phone.
He threw another grenade into the air, in the direction of the backyard. Darby turned away from it and closed her eyes, waiting. Automatic gunfire erupted from somewhere above her.
When she heard the explosion, she opened her eyes and, using the trees for cover, started moving to the bald man.
He darted up what looked like a second incline and disappeared from her view.
Darby gave chase. For the past week she had run in this oppressive heat with a sixty-pound backpack full of sand strapped to her back. She wasn’t weighed down now. Even in the mud, she ran fast and well.
The man had a good lead. There was no way she could close the gap. She debated about stopping to fire when he disappeared from her view.
A car door slammed shut. Tyres peeled away in a squeal of rubber. By the time she reached the top, all she found was a pair of dimming red tail lights coming from a car far down the dark road. In the distance she could hear the wail of multiple police sirens. Someone had radioed for back-up and the Belham dispatcher had sent out several units.
As impressed as she was by the quick response time, it wouldn’t do any good. Blakely Road, she knew, connected to Route 135. From there the car could jump on to the main highway, Route 1, and disappear.
Worse, she couldn’t offer up a description. She hadn’t seen the car or a licence plate. As for the men, the only thing she could say with any certainty was that all three were white. No, make that four. The body was that of a white male.
Darby holstered her weapon and made her way back down the incline, her legs wobbly from adrenalin. Dozens of flashlights moved through the thick haze of grey and white smoke filling the woods. Everywhere she heard men coughing.
She cupped her hands over her mouth. ‘Stand down. I repeat, stand down.’
A group of patrolmen rushed to her with their guns raised, their eyes red and watery from the smoke. They tried to hold their arms steady as they coughed.
One of them saw the gold shield clipped to her belt clip and the laminated ID badge hanging around her neck. He motioned for the others to lower their weapons.
Darby addressed the group. ‘Is Detective Pine back here?’
The tall one with the cleft chin nodded, wiping at his eyes. He could barely keep them open.
‘Find him and tell him the shooters are gone,’ Darby said. ‘Tell him to meet me in front of the house – and tell him to get everyone the hell out of the woods until the smoke dissipates. Call for an ambulance and make sure they bring plenty of oxygen. Get going – wait, not you.’ She grabbed the soft, flabby arm of a short patrolman with a pot belly. ‘I need to borrow your flashlight.’
He handed it over and stumbled away, gagging.
It took her a few minutes to locate the spot where she’d first seen the man who had tossed the stun grenade. The area offered a lot of tree cover. A perfect place to hide – and watch. From this location she could see the backyard.
Her eyes started to water and her throat burned as she ran the beam of light across the ground. She found several footwear impressions – none of them useful – and a single aluminium-foil blister pack.
Ducking underneath the branches, she moved across the soft ground covered with pine needles and leaves. She threw an evidence cone next to the blister pack. Voices shouted to move out of the woods. One kept calling her name.
‘Coop. Coop, I’m fine. Meet me in the backyard.’
She made her way back to the incline and saw that most of the flashlights had been shut off. The ones still on were moving away, retreating back to the house.
A patrolman was on his hands and knees, struggling to breathe. Darby helped him to his feet, then wrapped his arm around her shoulder. She grabbed the last evidence cone from her pocket and slowly retraced her footsteps back to the spot where she’d found the mobile phone. It was gone.
7
An hour later Darby walked to the corner of the backyard where Pine stood running water from a hose over his face. He had breathed in too much smoke. She could hear his laboured wheezing over the water splashing against the flagstone walkway. He didn’t care about getting wet. His clothes were already soaked and covered in mud.
Coop was also in the backyard. He stood alongside Michael Banville, watching the photographer taking bracketed shots of the back gate. There was no reason for Coop to be out here supervising photography. Darby knew the real reason: he was pretending to be busy so he could keep an eye on her.
Both Coop and the photographer wore protective goggles and breathing masks. Grey and white clouds of smoke drifted through the woods and into the backyard. On her way out, she had found a grenade still hissing smoke. The grenades had a slow burn rate. It would be at least another hour before anyone could go back inside the woods.
By some miracle of God none of the officers had disturbed the bloody handprint during their mad rush into the woods. The same couldn’t be said for the blood she’d found on the grass. The evidence markers had been trampled.
Only one patrolman had been seriously injured in the skirmish. A stun grenade had exploded near his head.
‘Christ, this shit stings,’ Pine said. ‘What the hell is it?’
‘Hexachloroethane. It’s a chemical used in smoke grenades. Keep flushing out your eyes.’
‘My lungs feel like they’re on fire.’
‘You should get to one of the ambulances for some oxygen.’
‘In a minute.’ Pine rubbed his eyes under the running water. ‘Something exploded in front of me. There was this bright light and then I couldn’t see.’
‘That was a stun grenade. It causes momentary blindness.’
‘How do you know so much about this shit?’
‘SWAT training.’
Pine drank from the hose, wincing as he swallowed.
‘The guy you saw, the one wearing those night-vision glasses?’
‘Goggles,’ Darby said.
‘Whatever. You get a good look at him?’
‘No. I just saw a flash before he ducked behind the tree. Black clothing and black gloves, a tactical vest holding grenades.’
‘Any way you can trace them?’
‘The stun grenades explode on impact. If we find enough fragments, we might be able to locate a serial or model number. As for the smoke grenades, we can give the numbers to the manufacturer and see where they were sold. Maybe they were stolen from a munitions locker at a police station or an army base.’
‘You don’t sound too confident.’
‘You can buy them on the black market. Go to any gun show in the South and you can have your pick. A lot of weekend-warrior types collect them. We’ll run the numbers but most likely it’s going to lead to a dead end. The guy with the night vision is too smart to leave us something to trace.’
‘How do you know this guy is smart and not some sort of Rambo douche bag?’
‘He came prepared.’
‘For what? A shootout in the woods?’
‘He came prepared for a fight. Artie, what time did the 911 call come through?’
‘Ten twenty.’
‘And how long before the first responding officers arrived?’
‘Ten thirty-three. There was a unit in the area.’
‘Did the officers search the woods?’
Pine shook his head under the running water. ‘I was the only one who went back there.’
‘What time was that?’
He thought about it for a moment.
‘I’d say around quarter past eleven, give or take.’
‘So we’re talking almost an hour between the 911 call and the time you entered the woods,’ Darby said. ‘If those men had been back there watching the house, they would’ve had plenty of time to haul away the body.’
‘But you saw it.’
‘He had a lot of blood on his shirt. If this person got shot with one of the Magnum rounds, you’re talking a massive amount of blood loss in a short amount of time. He could have bled out while running through the woods.’
‘And somehow his buddies found him.’
‘Which leads me to believe he placed a call before he passed out,’ Darby said.
Pine dropped the hose. He shut off the tap and reached inside his pocket.
‘You thinking these guys arrived the same time you did?’ he asked, mopping his face with a handkerchief.
‘They were in the woods when we were talking by the back gate. I think they were waiting for us to leave before they started to haul the body. If they’d started moving around, they would have made too much noise. We would have heard them.’
‘When I went through the woods, I didn’t see a body back there. There was no one back there.’
‘Maybe the guy with the bloody shirt found a place to hide. I don’t think the others were there when you were. The guy with the night vision? He was carrying what I’m sure is a compact HK MP6. It definitely was a sub-machine gun. And I know I saw a scope. If he had been back there when you were, he could’ve taken you down with a single shot to the head. He planned to come out of hiding, find the phone and leave. Nobody would’ve heard a thing.’
‘You’re saying all of this was for a goddamn phone?’
‘It’s gone, isn’t it?’
Pine didn’t answer. His eyes were red and puffy, his face pale.
‘A phone is a key piece of evidence,’ Darby said. ‘You’ve got logs of incoming and outgoing calls, maybe even an address book full of contacts. Who knows what we would’ve found? Night-vision man certainly thought it was important enough for me not to get my hands on it. He came out of his hiding spot to treat me to a stun grenade. Then he covered the woods with HC smoke canisters and gunfire to keep everyone back.’