The Secret Friend

by Unknown

  Watts nodded, sweat dripping down his face. The hallway was uncomfortably humid from the steam. Bryson slipped the key inside the lock and held his breath for a moment before turning the handle. Don’t throw the door open. If it banged against the wall, the sound would alert Fletcher, might give him enough time to reach for his gun. Okay… now.

  56

  Snapshots in the candlelight – a massage table in the corner, clothes piled on a fabric-covered bench, the assortment of toys, handcuffs and bottles of lotion lying on a shelf next to folded towels.

  Clear. Bryson turned to the bathroom, the light on, relieved to see the door was cracked open. He threw his shoulder into the door and rushed into the thick steam. Clear. Watts moved past him and yanked the shower curtain aside.

  The showerhead was running hot, steam everywhere, but nobody was standing under the water.

  On the floor was a metal canister shaped like a soda can only it had the kind of handle and pin seen on a grenade. Underneath the pounding water Bryson heard a hissing sound.

  From the bathroom doorway came a muzzle flash. Watts was hit in the back. He fell inside the shower as Bryson turned around to fire – a second flash and Bryson felt a force like a hot, metal fist slam into his stomach.

  Bryson fell against the bathroom wall, gasping for air, saw the third flash from the doorway and the fist hit him again high in the chest as he tripped over Watts and crashed sideways into the shower stall.

  Bryson’s heart was pounding but his lungs felt as though they had shut off. He couldn’t breathe. The gun was still gripped in his hand. Gasping for air, he brought the gun up, about to fire into the steam when a black-gloved hand gripped his wrist and twisted, snap. Bryson tried to scream but no sound came out. The Beretta fell. He tried to reach for it. The fabric of a pair of black pants whisked past his face and a foot kicked him in the stomach.

  He threw up his coffee and parts of a bagel. A boot pressed his face against the shower floor. His arms were yanked behind his back, his fists bound with what felt like Flexicuffs. Bryson felt the plastic biting his skin, his eyes on the canister lying sideways on the floor, hissing.

  Next his ankles were bound and then the gloved hand ripped the lapel mike from his coat. The hands grabbed him by the hair. Bryson felt a needle plunge into his neck. He tried to pull away, couldn’t, felt a long, slow burn and then he was tossed out of the shower stall and onto the bathroom floor.

  Bryson lay on his side, every muscle in his body straining as he dry heaved. Something was wrong. His eyes were burning and he felt another wave of nausea running wild through his stomach.

  Fletcher dragged him into the adjoining room. Watts lay on the shower floor, hogtied by Flexicuffs, the water spraying his bloody face as he threw up onto the floor.

  A fire alarm sounded. Fletcher shut the bathroom door and dragged Bryson across the floor, the carpet burning his cheek as he kept dry-heaving. Then the burning stopped and his face was lying against the cool tile in the hallway. Men and women in towels and bathrobes were standing around to see what the commotion was.

  A small, cylindrical object trailing thick grey smoke rolled down the hallway. A hissing sound behind him and then Bryson saw the same canister from the bathroom rolling across the floor as he was dragged into an elevator.

  A whine of the motor and the clank of gears as the elevator lifted. Timothy Bryson lay on his stomach on the elevator floor of dirt and grime. He turned onto his side, dry-heaving, and looked down at his stomach. No blood.

  That didn’t make sense. He had seen the muzzle flash, had felt the gunshot tear through his stomach and then his chest. He should be bleeding.

  Malcolm Fletcher stood above him, his voice muffled behind a small mask covering his mouth and nose.

  ‘Do you know who I am, Detective?’

  Bryson nodded then dry-heaved again.

  ‘Then you know why I’m here.’

  Bryson didn’t answer. Fletcher took off the mask and tucked it inside his jacket pocket.

  The elevator stopped. The doors slid open, the hallway dark.

  Malcolm Fletcher flipped the emergency stop button. A hunting knife was gripped in his gloved hand.

  Bryson felt a surge of panic and then, strangely, the feeling vanished behind an odd sense of calmness. He knew he should be scared but his body seemed completely unaware of the danger.

  ‘If you’re a good boy and tell the truth, Timmy, I’ll let you go. But if you don’t tell the truth, if I don’t feel you’re truly sorry for your sins, well, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.’

  The blade cut through the bindings on his ankles.

  Fletcher helped him to his feet. Bryson coughed, tried to catch his breath. Hands cuffed behind his back, it was difficult to stand.

  Fletcher gripped his arm and moved him into the hallway. As Bryson made his way up the stairs, wobbling like a drunk, that odd sense of calm transformed itself into something different, a feeling of bliss that took away the fear, the pain, everything.

  A door opened and Bryson saw a flat roof that seemed to stretch for miles. Three drunken steps and then Fletcher shoved him back against a brick wall and pressed the blade of the knife underneath his chin.

  ‘Say hello, Timmy. And remember our agreement.’

  Fletcher pressed a cell phone against Bryson’s ear.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Detective Bryson? This is Tina Sanders – Jennifer’s mother. We met at the police station.’

  Bryson heard a dim voice scream at him to run, run as fast as you can.

  ‘I was told you have information on the man who killed my daughter.’

  Where could he run? He wouldn’t get far, not with a knife pressed to his throat, not with this peaceful, drunken dreaminess that made him feel like he was an angel floating on air.

  ‘Please, I –’ Tina Sanders’ voice caught. She cleared her throat, collected herself. ‘I need to know what happened. I’ve been living with this so long, I can’t stand not knowing. Please tell me.’

  ‘I don’t know what happened to your daughter.’

  ‘I was told a man named Sam Dingle killed Jenny.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘This man… is he in jail?’

  Bryson shivered underneath his wet clothes, his teeth chattering as he scrambled to recall the pieces of carefully constructed lies he had stitched together over the years in case this moment ever came.

  Fletcher stuck the tip of the knife through his throat. ‘Make a choice, Timmy.’

  ‘My daughter was dying,’ Bryson said. ‘Emily had a rare form of leukaemia. My wife and I tried everything. The doctors wanted to give her an experimental treatment but my health insurance wouldn’t cover it.’

  ‘What’s this have to do with Jenny?’

  The truth floated to the surface. Bryson closed his eyes, surprised at how easily the words came.

  ‘Sam Dingle used his belt to strangle one of the women. We found a fingerprint. That was the only evidence we had. We had no witnesses, and Dingle’s mother said her son was with her the night those women disappeared. We were building a case against him when I approached Dingle’s father. I told him I could make the belt disappear for the right price.’

  In the distance was the sound of fire engines. Just keep talking. Lang knows you’re in here so just keep talking until he finds you.

  ‘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 mo
ved 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.

  Chadzynski had already received several updates about the events in Boston. At the moment, details were sketchy. Darby briefed the commissioner on what she had discovered inside the hospital’s chapel.

  ‘These Virgin Mary statues you found inside the box are the same ones found on Hale and Chen?’ Chadzynski asked.

  ‘They appear to be the same. I’m more interested in the Virgin Mary statue standing next to the altar.’ Darby told her about the rags she had found along the floor, the sponge
in the bucket of water. ‘The statue was spotless. He’s been there recently. After we’re done with the remains, I want to stake out the chapel, leave a couple of men inside there so we’ll be ready the next time he returns.’

  ‘You really think he’ll go back?’

  ‘He will as long as he thinks it’s safe.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll find someone to organize the stakeout.’

  ‘We can’t involve Danvers PD.’

  ‘Aren’t they already involved?’

  ‘They don’t know about the remains. I’d like to keep it that way.’

  ‘Darby, we can’t –’

  ‘I know we’re playing in their backyard. But the more people we bring into this, the greater risk we run of having the information slip out. If the media gets wind of the remains found inside that chapel and decides to run with it, the man who killed Chen and Hale won’t come back. If it’s the same man who has Hannah Givens, he might kill her and run.’

  ‘What about Reed’s people? How are you going to keep them quiet?’

  ‘We can’t. Bill Jordan and some of his men are already working with Reed’s people, so we’re containing the situation the best we can. Finding this chapel might be the break we needed. I’d hate for us to lose it.’

  ‘I’ll talk to Jordan. Call me when you know more about Bryson. I want to be updated at every turn.’

  Darby took the first empty parking spot she found on the street and ran the rest of the way, following the red, blue and white lights pulsing like distress beacons over the building rooftops on Lansdowne Street.

  The streets were blocked off with sawhorses and cruisers. It seemed as though every emergency vehicle in the city had been summoned to the area. Patrolmen were everywhere performing crowd control.

  Darby pushed her way past reporters and showed her ID to one of the patrolmen. A moment later she was snaking her way past cops, firemen and emergency medical technicians until she reached Tim Bryson’s body.