Fear the Dark

by Chris Mooney

  Brad smiled at the memory. I cut the hair on all her Barbie dolls and flushed the evidence down the toilet. Maggie, with her big fat mouth, was a tattletale bitch. So he breezed right past the brother and sister and entered the storeroom. When he punched in, it was 9.19 a.m.

  At 9.24 a.m. Joan Hubbard had her new sheets in hand. She went to collect Nicky, only to find that her daughter was no longer looking at the Cabbage Patch dolls.

  She’s probably wandered off to look at some other toy, Joan thought. With a frustrated sigh, she went to find Nicky, who would be spending the rest of the day inside the house, grounded, for breaking her promise not to wander off.

  The frustration turned to a slow but growing fear when she failed to find the child anywhere in the toy department.

  The kids’ clothing section was nearby. But Joan couldn’t see her daughter anywhere among the racks.

  Had Nicky gone to look for her? Had she hurt herself? Joan dropped her bedding items on a nearby display table and hurried off to the customer service department at the front of the store. She bypassed the people standing in line to return items and with her voice rising in panic told the young girl working the counter that she couldn’t find her daughter.

  The counter girl called the manager over the loudspeaker. Joan, hysterical with nightmarish thoughts about her daughter, about her being lost or hurt or – Don’t say it, don’t say it or it will come true – darted behind the counter and pressed the microphone button.

  ‘Nicky. Nicky, it’s Mom. Come to the front of the store, Nicky. Mom is at the front of the store. My daughter’s name is Nicky Hubbard. She’s wearing a yellow sundress and sandals. She has blonde hair. Her name is Nicky Hubbard.’

  The Carter & Sullivan store manager acted quickly and promptly. He announced Nicky’s name and physical description over the loudspeaker, and told his employees to stand by all the store exits and stop any little blonde girl from leaving. It was now 9.56 a.m.

  Brad Fisher hadn’t heard any of the announcements. He was outside, standing in the unbearably hot Kansas sun, doing the same thing he did every morning: using a utility razor to break down the mountain of empty cardboard boxes stacked next to the dumpster. He returned to the storeroom a few minutes after ten, surprised to find it empty. Usually there were employees going in and out to stock the shelves or to take one of their allotted ten-minute breaks. He ducked into the staff bathroom and splashed cold water on his face.

  The moment Brad stepped back into the store he knew something was wrong. Customers were huddled together and speaking in hushed tones. Others were moving swiftly through the aisles, searching the clothing racks and looking underneath the display tables, concern and dread etched in their faces. Carter & Sullivan employees were posted near the store exits.

  When Brad found out what happened, his stomach turned to ice. He would never forget that feeling or the way the polished white linoleum floor seemed to dip and sway in his vision, or how he wanted to slip inside a black hole and disappear. Brad was eighteen years old and felt like crying.

  What would always come back to him – what would continually haunt him – was that moment in the toy aisle when the boy had grabbed the little girl’s wrist. How the brother’s smile hadn’t been, in fact, brotherly at all but something more sinister, something more in line with the way Brad’s father smiled when he discovered a raccoon caught inside a steel trap.

  I should’ve done something, Brad Fisher would later tell himself, as he took another slug of beer stolen from his father’s workshop refrigerator.

  If only I had said or done something, he would later tell himself as he took another hit off the bong.

  If I hadn’t been so spineless, so selfish, maybe she wouldn’t have been taken, he would later tell himself as he rode the needle; heroin was the only thing that banished the images from that day, the only thing that offered him comfort.

  Over the ensuing years, Brad discovered that no amount or combination of heroin, booze or pills could stop him from wondering what had happened to Nicky Hubbard. Only God knew.

  Sometimes he would ask God: Why didn’t you help her?

  Sometimes God replied, but His answer was always the same:

  Why didn’t you help her? You were there, not me. You could have stopped it from happening, and you didn’t.

  Darby stopped reading and skimmed the rest of the file, glancing at its meagre offerings – the pithy investigative notes and false leads, the lack of evidence. When she reached the last page, she looked up at Coop.

  ‘Aren’t you going to read the rest of it?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t need to.’

  ‘I didn’t realize you were already familiar with the case.’

  ‘Nicky Hubbard is the nation’s poster girl for missing children. She’s the reason why Congress created the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in ’85. People wrote books about what they think happened to her, they made a TV movie of the week.

  ‘Why did you give me this?’

  ‘The plastic print I found in the polyurethane along the Downes bedroom skirting board – the database came back with a match,’ Coop said. ‘That fingerprint belongs to Nicky Hubbard.’

  57

  Darby’s mouth and throat went dry.

  No one knew what had happened to Nicky Hubbard – no one except her killer, who had never been caught. And now Coop was telling her he’d found Hubbard’s fingerprints more than three decades later at the scene of a recent triple homicide in another state.

  ‘I examined the print myself,’ he said, and reached inside his rumpled, blood-stained overcoat. ‘There’s no question: it belongs to her. But don’t take my word for it.’

  He came back with another folded set of papers and handed them to her. It was the forensics report on the plastic fingerprint he had recovered from the skirting board.

  The FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System had found four possible matches. The one with the highest probability belonged to Nicky Hubbard. Wichita PD had collected the girl’s fingerprints from items inside her bedroom and they had been loaded into IAFIS when it was officially launched on 28 July 1990.

  Someone at the federal lab had pulled Hubbard’s original prints and emailed them to Coop, who performed a visual side-by-side comparison with the plastic print recovered from the Downes home. The evidence was conclusive. Nicky Hubbard, the seven-year-old missing girl who had been adopted by the nation had, at some point in time, been inside the bedroom where David and Laura Downes and their daughter had died. It was impossible to tell when Hubbard had been in there; fingerprints couldn’t be dated. There was no known method to determine how long a print had been on a surface.

  ‘This came through about five minutes ago,’ Coop said, pointing to the forensics report in her hand. ‘The IAFIS office called to tell me. No one else knows yet.’

  ‘Where d’you print these out?’

  ‘Robinson’s office. Williams is letting me use it.’ Then Coop’s face clouded, and he added, ‘Robinson is at Brewster General too. Heart attack. At the moment he’s in a stable condition.’

  Darby placed the pages on her lap. She leaned back against her pillow and stared out the door, at the brightly lit hallway. Her mind felt empty, her body devoid of any feeling, as though she had been disconnected from everything that had happened since her arrival in Red Hill. It was as if her blood had been replaced with Novocain.

  ‘How old were you when it happened?’ Coop asked.

  ‘Eleven. You?’

  ‘Thirteen. You remember what that time was like?’

  Darby nodded. ‘You couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing Nicky Hubbard. She was on the front page of every major newspaper, magazine and supermarket tabloid. Parents were suddenly terrified their kids were going to get snatched in broad daylight. After she disappeared, my parents never let me out of their sight.’

  ‘My mother was the same way with me and my sisters,’ Coop said. ‘Forget about leaving the h
ouse after sundown. Suddenly I couldn’t walk or ride my bike anywhere or play hoops without her chaperoning me.’

  Darby’s gaze dropped back to her lap. Nicky Hubbard smiled up at her. The now-famous photograph, Darby had remembered reading, was the last picture Joan Hubbard had taken of her daughter.

  ‘The Hubbard case was really the first of its kind,’ he said. ‘A real watershed moment for the nation and for law enforcement.’

  Coop wasn’t exaggerating. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children hadn’t existed in 1983, and the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program was still years away. In 1983 there was no Megan’s Law requiring law enforcement agencies to inform the public about registered sexual offenders living in or around their neighbourhoods. No internet or email, just Teletype and fax machines. In 1983 it was easier to find a missing horse than an abducted or missing child.

  ‘Now we know why he cleaned up that area in the bedroom,’ Coop said. ‘That blood we found wedged between the hardwood floorboards must’ve belonged to her.’

  ‘I wonder why he didn’t try to remove the fingerprint.’

  ‘He probably didn’t see it. Christ, we could barely see it with the ALS machine.’

  ‘How many blood samples were in the trailer?’

  ‘All of them. They’re gone.’

  Darby smoothed out the wrinkles on her sheets, thinking.

  ‘I think you were right about what you said to me at the bar,’ Coop said.

  ‘I said a lot of things last night.’

  ‘I’m talking specifically about what you said about him running us around to exhaust us. I’m on Day Three with a total of maybe five hours of sleep and my head feels like it’s stuffed full of cobwebs. I can’t think straight. I want to shut my eyes and not wake up for a week.

  ‘But the truth is, we haven’t been able to conduct a full investigation,’ Coop continued. ‘We haven’t been able to examine the other homes – all of which, by the way, are vacant. Including you and me, we had a total of five federal investigators here. Ray Williams is the only detective. Ever since we arrived, the perp has been taxing our resources. Why? Because of the blood he left behind. Can you imagine what would happen if it got out that Hubbard’s blood was found thirty years later at the scene of a triple homicide? This place would turn into a geek show. Every reporter, retired cop and private investigator would be crawling through town. We wouldn’t be able to get work done, and this guy would bolt – has probably already bolted. What, you disagree?’

  ‘No. No, I’m with you.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Why not just lay low or, even better, pack up and get out of town? Why stick around?’

  ‘I had the same question.’

  ‘And if the Red Hill Ripper brought Nicky Hubbard to the Downes house three decades ago, why would he go back there and kill the Downes family?’

  ‘Another excellent question. We’ll have to ask Eli Savran.’

  ‘Who’s Eli Savran?’ Darby asked.

  ‘Our man Timmy,’ Coop replied.

  58

  ‘His full name is Eli Timothy Savran,’ Coop said. ‘Remember the cleaning crew Robinson told us about last night, the one from Brewster that services the police stations and the sheriff’s office?’

  Darby nodded. ‘Robinson said Williams was going to talk to the guy who owned it, Ron something.’

  ‘Ron Gondek. Williams did, last night. Turns out Gondek hired Timmy – and that’s what he prefers to be called, Tim or Timmy, not Eli. Timmy’s forty-seven, and he worked for the cleaning company for about two months and then he quit.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He told Gondek his mother had died and left him a good sum of money and a mortgage-free house. He was going to go back to school to get a degree in business or computer science, Gondek couldn’t remember which. But he did remember that Timmy cleaned the Red Hill station and that Timmy suffered from a rare metabolic condition known as TMAU, also known as Fish Odour Syndrome.’

  ‘Williams get an address?’

  Coop nodded. ‘Timmy lives right here in Red Hill. Williams is petitioning a judge for a warrant to search Timmy’s house as we speak. I sent that sketch of Timmy to Williams, by the way. Williams pulled up Timmy’s licence photo and compared it with the sketch. It’s a near-match.’

  ‘Did you talk to RCFL to see if Timmy watched the interview?’

  ‘I did, and he didn’t. Which tells me he was already planning to go after the French family.’

  ‘You said Timmy Savran lives in Red Hill.’

  ‘That’s what Williams told me,’ Coop said. Williams said Timmy told Gondek that he came back to Red Hill to take care of his mother – she had cancer, needed radiation and chemo. Her son helped her out, and when it became a terminal situation – hospice and all that – Timmy started to look for work. He’s been in town for about three years.’

  ‘So he’s been here for three years and no one in town knows this guy?’

  ‘From what I was told, Timmy –’

  ‘And let’s stop with the Timmy shit. It sounds like we’re talking about a five-year-old kid.’

  ‘Okay, Eli was very sensitive about his condition. He dropped out of high school and started working odd jobs – nightshifts at factories and after-hours janitorial work where he wouldn’t have to interact with a lot of people. Guys like that live like vampires, they’re not around in the daylight.’

  Maybe, Darby thought. Everything Coop had said sounded completely logical. So why was it eating at her?

  ‘There’s something else I need to tell you,’ Coop said. ‘Once the Bureau finds out what happened to Hoder, Otto and Hayes, they’re going to pull the plug on us.’

  ‘Not if you tell them that you’ve recovered Nicky Hubbard’s fingerprint they won’t,’ Darby said. ‘They’re not going to tell us to pack up and leave, not if you dangle the chance of all that great press under their noses.’

  ‘They’ll send in new people – senior people – to investigate what happened to the trailer. They’ll shake our hands, say thank you, send us packing and go to work. Before any of that goes down, they’ll want a full report from me – which will be hard to do, because my cell phone is infected and I can’t carry it with me at the moment. But the snow storm will buy us some time.’

  ‘How much time, you think?’

  ‘Forty-eight hours, if we’re lucky,’ Coop said.

  A phone trilled from the corner of the room. Coop got up, fished the phone out of his coat pocket and answered the call.

  ‘Cooper.’ He listened for a moment and then he moved the mouthpiece away and said to Darby, ‘It’s Williams. He’s got the warrant.’

  Coop turned back to his conversation. Darby sat up again, slowly, and, as she waited for the dizziness to pass and the throbbing to ease to a manageable level, she thought about what had happened last night at the French house, about why the Ripper had gone to such lengths to try to kill them when he could have simply faded back into the woodwork or, better yet, disappeared before the storm. Why stick around when he might be driving through some other state by now?

  Darby was getting to her feet when she heard wet shoes squeaking outside her room. Deputy Sheriff Lancaster was storming through the corridor, heading her way.

  59

  Lancaster’s face didn’t seem friendly, though it was hard to tell. The right side was swollen, and Darby could see the beginnings of an eggplant-coloured bruise already at work beneath both eyes. The bridge of his nose was covered with a row of stitches.

  Coop spoke into the satphone. ‘I need to call you back,’ he said, and rang off.

  Snow lined the brim of Lancaster’s hat, and his wet boots squelched until he reached the foot of the bed. He didn’t take off his hat or gloves.

  Bloodless greetings were exchanged.

  Darby had returned to bed, and Lancaster leaned towards her slowly, deliberately, the way you did when you were about to impart a particularly harsh life lesson to a child. His
cheeks were smooth, and she saw a small nick along his jawline. Apparently in the midst of all the chaos he had found the time to shave.

  ‘You’re goddamn lucky I’m not bringing you up on criminal charges,’ Lancaster said to her.

  ‘You had your chance yesterday,’ Darby said.

  ‘I’m talking about that interview you and Hoder set up. You deliberately provoked this guy, and for what? Two of your people are dead, one’s clinging to life, and I’ve got another butchered family. Their deaths are on you.’ Lancaster pointed at her as he said it.

  Darby said nothing.

  Coop had something to say. ‘Chief Robinson signed off on it.’

  ‘Which is exactly why we’re having this conversation.’

  Darby swore she saw a grin tugging at the corner of Lancaster’s mouth.

  ‘Effective immediately, all current and past Red Hill Ripper investigations have been transferred to my office,’ Lancaster said. ‘That means Red Hill is no longer involved in any way, shape or form. That also includes you two.’

  The hospital phone on her bed rang. Darby ignored it.

  ‘Pick it up,’ Lancaster said to her. ‘It’s for you.’

  She brought the receiver up to her ear. Her good eye never left Lancaster’s face.

  ‘McCormick.’

  A deep, rumbling voice spoke on the other end of the line: ‘Dr McCormick, my name is Tom Sutherland. I’m the attorney general for the state of Colorado, and this is a courtesy call to let you know that your services, as well as the FBI’s, are no longer required in Red Hill. You are not to involve yourself in any investigation. Fail to comply and we’ll be forced to file an obstruction of justice charge – and that’s just the appetizer. Do we have an understanding?’

  ‘No,’ Darby said into the receiver. ‘We don’t.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  Darby hung up. ‘Anything else, Teddy?’

  ‘Stay the hell out of my investigation,’ Lancaster said. ‘The second this storm ends, you two are on the next plane outta here.’