The Secret Friend Read online

  ‘But you don’t have a security camera on the alley.’

  ‘No. I know where you’re heading. This person you met, whoever he is, he might have left by the fire escape but he couldn’t have gained access that way. You can’t stand on top of the dumpster and reach the ladder. It’s too high.’

  ‘Let me ask you this. If you wanted to get inside the building without being seen, how would you go about doing it?’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘How do you gain access to the parking garage?’

  ‘You need a garage door opener.’

  ‘So if I had one and drove up to the door, I could open it.’

  ‘Well, yeah, in theory,’ Marsh said.

  ‘And if I have a garage door opener and entered the garage, you wouldn’t see me.’

  ‘No, but I’d see your car on the monitor.’

  ‘Do you know the make and model of every car?’

  ‘You have to register your car at the front desk.’

  ‘Do you know the make and model of every car?’

  ‘I’ve got a pretty good idea. Twenty-two people live inside the building. About half of them have cars.’

  Darby looked at the security monitor aimed at the garage door. ‘That camera is pointed at a passenger’s side window,’ she said. ‘If a car pulled up to the garage, you wouldn’t be able to see who is behind the wheel.’

  Marsh didn’t answer.

  Darby turned to him. The man was staring at the monitor, rubbing his tongue over his teeth.

  ‘Mr Marsh?’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t see who was behind the wheel.’

  ‘Can you hear the garage door open?’

  ‘I watch those monitors very carefully, Miss McCormick.’

  ‘I’m not questioning your dedication to your job or your abilities. Every security system has a flaw, and the person who entered Emma’s penthouse tonight found it. Now, can you hear the garage door open?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have someone posted inside the garage checking people as they come in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And if you were occupied with something else, like a delivery or a phone call, you wouldn’t necessarily see someone who entered through the parking garage.’

  ‘I guess it’s possible.’

  ‘And if I didn’t have a garage door opener and was, say, hanging out around the corner of the building, I could sneak inside once the garage door went up, correct?’

  ‘I suppose,’ he said.

  ‘Does the security camera inside the garage record what goes on in there?’

  ‘Yes, it does.’

  ‘Okay. Now if I was a resident, after I parked my car, how would I get to my unit? Do I have to come back out and come through the front door?’

  ‘There’s a private elevator inside the garage which takes you up to your floor.’

  ‘That would be the delivery elevator I saw at the end of Emma’s hallway.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is there a camera installed inside the elevator?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about on the individual floors?’

  ‘We just monitor the outside of the building.’ ‘That’s what I thought,’ Darby said. ‘Thank you for your help, Mr Marsh.’

  16

  Walter Smith woke during the early hours of Saturday morning trembling with anticipation. So much to do, so much to do; he threw off the covers and raced out of his room.

  The spare bedroom, stacked with barbells and weight benches, was dark. The shades were always drawn to block out the sunlight. He didn’t turn on the lights. He could see well enough.

  For the next hour he worked out in the dark with the heavy weights slowly, feeling the muscles burn. Despite the scarring and multiple corrective surgeries, he had achieved decent definition in his chest, arms and shoulders. He thought his legs had improved dramatically.

  Sweating and fatigued, he stepped into the dark bathroom and took a long shower. He dried himself off, wrapped the towel around his waist and stood on the damp bathmat.

  This was the part he hated. Looking in the mirror always upset him.

  Walter summoned his courage and turned on the light.

  Ropes and mats of brown and maroon-coloured scars covered his entire chest. Scars did not have any elasticity; they had halted his best efforts at building significant muscle definition.

  The fire had burned over ninety per cent of his body. The remaining healthy skin had been used to rebuild his eyelids. The plastic surgeons had done what they could.

  Walter had replaced the toupee provided by the Shriners Burn Center with an expensive and realistic-looking hair system. His left ear had been rebuilt using pig cartilage. His left hand didn’t work, the tendons permanently damaged, his fingers nothing more than a claw.

  A wave of despair gripped him. His Blessed Mother reminded him that Hannah would never see most of these scars, just his face.

  Still, his face needed a lot of work.

  The makeup artist at Shriners was very patient. She had shown him the best methods to hide what he really was.

  First, he applied a special moisturizer that provided oxygen to the skin. It was very important to let the medicine work its way into the scar tissue, so he sat down on the toilet and flipped through the latest issue of Details.

  Walter studied the advertisements of good-looking male models posing in expensive underwear; in nice jeans and T-shirts; in suits. For inspiration he had taped some of the ads to the wall of his workout room.

  As he flipped through the glossy pages, staring at the tanned faces with sharp jaw lines, perfect noses and piercing eyes, he wished for exercises to improve the appearance of his face. For that he had to rely on makeup.

  Walter checked his watch. Half an hour had passed. He tossed the magazine on the floor, stood and grabbed the bottles he needed from the medicine cabinet.

  The oil-based foundation took a long time to apply because he only had one good hand to work with. While the makeup dried, he took out a jar of American Crew pomade and worked the waxy substance through his black hair. The pomade gave his hair the same wet, messy look he had seen in the magazines. It took a bit of time, but the result was worth it.

  To complete the transformation, he used a pressed-powder, applying it with a brush.

  Walter stepped back from the mirror. The face staring back at him in the unforgiving light wasn’t as scary. Not as good looking as the male models in the magazines, but not frightening. He looked human.

  Walter fussed with his appearance for a few more minutes, studying his face from different angles, applying touch-ups where needed. He checked to make sure his hair covered his missing ear and then put on a pair of Diesel jeans and a long-sleeve black shirt. He checked himself in a full-length mirror that didn’t show his face. He looked good. Very stylish. He slipped on a pair of black Coach loafers and headed downstairs to the kitchen.

  The basement door was open. He could hear Hannah crying.

  Walter so very badly wanted to go down there and hold Hannah, tell her everything was going to be okay. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. What happened last night was an accident.

  Mary told him to leave Hannah alone. It was best to wait, Mary said. Let Hannah cry and scream out her anger and fear, get it all out of her system.

  He needed to pray for strength. He opened the closet door, got down on his knees and lit the candles. Dozens of statues of the Blessed Mother looked down on him, smiling, arms wide open, accepting. Walter made the sign of the cross, closed his eyes, and with his hands pressed firmly together, prayed to his Blessed Mother for thanks.

  17

  Saturday morning. Darby stood at her kitchen window, sipping coffee and watching a snowplough trudging its way down Cambridge Street under a bright, clear sky. According to the news, yesterday’s storm dumped two and a half feet of snow along eastern and northern Massachusetts. New Hampshire got the worst of it – as much as three feet in so
me areas.

  Coop was still in the shower. Darby checked her watch. It was almost noon. She was itching to get to the lab to see if AFIS, the FBI’s Automated Fingerprint Indexing System, had found a match on the single latent print lifted from Emma Hale’s jewellery box.

  They had spent last night and a good part of the early morning hours examining every inch of Emma’s home, paying close attention to the walk-in closet and the spare bedroom where the intruder had escaped. The only evidence the man had left was a wet shoeprint which Darby had lifted from the floor in front of the window.

  How had the intruder gained access to the penthouse? Darby wondered if Bryson had discovered anything on the building’s security tapes. Finding the man on one of the tapes would answer the question of how he had accessed the penthouse but it wouldn’t explain what he was doing there or what he was looking for.

  The serial number for the Beretta was traced back to Joshua Stein from Chicago. His home was broken into in 1998. The thief stole crystal and a lockbox holding cash and a Beretta. It was possible that last night’s intruder was a thief – finding a way to slip inside Emma’s home undetected was by no means an easy task – but the more likely scenario was that the man with the strange eyes had purchased the handgun from a pawn shop. Some pawn shop owners dealt stolen handguns as a side-business, based on referrals. It was also possible the intruder had bought the Beretta second-hand on the street or through a private dealer. The list of possibilities was endless. The handgun was a dead end.

  With the exception of the missing locket, every item listed in the CSU inventory was found inside the penthouse. Emma Hale’s abductor had come back for the necklace but he apparently hadn’t taken anything else. Did he wear gloves to hide his fingerprints? Had he touched any of the other jewellery? Coop was planning on spending the rest of today fuming each piece of jewellery inside a superglue chamber to see if Emma’s abductor had left behind any partial latent prints. With luck, they would find one and a matching print in AFIS.

  Pouring herself another cup of coffee, her mind turned to the question that stood above the others: Why would Emma’s abductor risk breaking into her home and risk being caught to retrieve a locket?

  Darby didn’t have a definitive answer, but she had several theories, all of which pointed back to her original assumption that the man who had abducted these two women and kept them alive for months had, in fact, cared deeply for them.

  Darby carried her coffee mug through the living room, on her way to her office. Coop was no longer in the bathroom. Her bedroom door was cracked open a few inches. She moved down the hallway in her socks, about to knock on the door to tell him that the coffee was ready, when she saw Coop, shirtless, slipping into his jeans.

  She told herself to look away but kept staring. The hard, knotted muscles in his chest and stomach rippled under his smooth, pale skin as he buttoned his jeans in the bright sunlight pouring through her windows. It was easy to see why so many women took notice of him – the hard body and perfect outline of his jaw; blond hair and blue eyes. But she had seen his other side, the one he kept buried under the charisma and constant joking. She had spent many weekend afternoons with Coop, just the two of them, drinking beer and watching football.

  They were friends, she reminded herself and, feeling embarrassed for gawking, quickly ducked into her office.

  Emma Hale and Judith Chen hung on the wall, the two young women happy, smiling, eyes bright with hope. Darby was staring at the pictures when her cell phone rang. She removed it from the charger and answered the call.

  ‘I’ve finished reviewing last night’s security tapes,’ Tim Bryson said. ‘Your friend slipped in through the garage at eight thirty-three and took the delivery elevator to the penthouse.’

  ‘There was no sign of forced entry on the door or the deadbolt.’

  ‘Either he had a key or he picked the lock. There are devices on the market that you can use to slip inside the keyhole and rake the locks. If you know what you’re doing, you can open them in a matter of seconds. Or maybe he bumped the lock.’

  ‘Bumped it?’

  ‘You take a key, place it inside the lock then slam it with a hammer, rock, shoe, whatever, and break the lock drum. It’s called lock bumping. I’ll have someone from burglary take a look. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at home. I’ll be at the lab in about half an hour.’

  ‘Do you have internet access? I want to email you a picture.’

  Darby told him to send it to her lab’s email address. She could access her account from home.

  Her laptop had broadband access. In less than a minute, she was logged on to her Outlook account. She saw Bryson’s email with a jpeg attachment and downloaded the picture.

  On the screen was a colour headshot of a man with short black hair and pale skin. He had the same black, cadaverous eyes as the man she had met last night.

  18

  ‘Where did you get this?’ Darby asked.

  ‘Is this your man?’

  ‘It’s him, no question. Who is he? Do you know?’

  ‘His name is Malcolm Fletcher. Does the name ring any bells?’

  ‘No. Should it?’

  ‘Fletcher is a former profiler from back when the Investigative Support Unit called itself Behavioral Sciences,’ Bryson said. ‘He’s also the FBI’s number four man on their Most Wanted List.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘According to what I’ve read on the internet, Fletcher attacked three federal agents in eighty-four. One is brain dead. The other two disappeared. Their bodies were never recovered. The interesting thing is the Feds didn’t place Fletcher on their Most Wanted List until 2003.’

  ‘What’s the reason for the delay?’

  ‘Good question. If I had to guess, I’d say the Feds wanted to handle the matter internally.’

  What a surprise, Darby thought. ‘How did you find him?’

  ‘My first job out of the academy was as a beat cop for Saugus. There was this case back in eighty-two where the bodies of two strangled women were dumped along Route One. The detective in charge of the case, this guy named Larry Foley, called the Behavioral Sciences Unit, and BSU sent a profiler to study the cases. I never met Fletcher personally, but his name was tossed around a lot – everyone kept commenting on his strange, black eyes. I was on my way into the station when I remembered his name and thanks to the power of Google, there he was on the Most Wanted List.’

  ‘What’s the deal with his eyes? Is it some sort of hereditary condition?’

  ‘I have no idea. Like I said, I never met the man. I have a federal friend in the Boston office. I’m going to call him and see what I can find. Maybe he can give us some idea as to what the hell Fletcher is doing here.’

  ‘Do you trust this person?’

  ‘You’re worried the Feds might decide to get involved?’

  ‘The thought crossed my mind.’

  ‘Mine, too,’ Bryson said. ‘Let’s talk to the commissioner and see how she wants to play it.’

  ‘I’d like to review the Saugus cases you mentioned.’

  ‘Hold on, I’ve got another call.’

  Coop stepped into her office wearing a T-shirt that said ‘I Like Boobies’.

  ‘How old are you again?’ Darby asked.

  ‘My mother gave me this for my birthday.’ Coop rubbed a hand over his wet hair and looked at the pictures hanging on the wall. ‘I’m glad to see you’re not taking your work home with you.’

  Bryson came back on the line. ‘That was Jonathan Hale. He wants to talk about what happened last night.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I told him you and I would meet and discuss the matter with him at his home at two. He lives in Weston. I’m at the station right now. You want me to swing by and pick you up?’

  Darby gave Bryson her address. She hung up and filled Coop in on Malcolm Fletcher.

  Coop sat in the leather chair by the window, squinting in the sunlight. ‘I think it
would be wise if I stayed with you for a bit,’ he said.

  Darby felt relieved. She didn’t want him to go home. Not yet.

  ‘I’ll swing by my house and pick up some stuff,’ Coop said.

  ‘Are you going to wear any more of those ridiculous T-shirts?’

  ‘It’s either that or I sleep in the nude.’

  A snapshot of him slipping into his jeans flashed through her mind. Her face reddened.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Don’t fight me on this.’

  ‘You can take my car.’ Darby opened her desk drawer and removed the spare set of house and car keys. She tossed them and stood. ‘I’m not going to cook for you.’

  ‘What about backrubs?’

  ‘Keep dreaming.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ Coop said.

  19

  Weston is Boston’s suburban version of Nantucket, an exclusive enclave of predominantly rich whites who live in jaw-dropping multimillion-dollar mansions surrounded by acres of beautifully manicured lawns and woods. The town’s poorest residents live in million-dollar shacks in order to take advantage of the school system, the best in the state of Massachusetts. Almost every high-school graduate is guaranteed acceptance into a top-tier Ivy college.

  Jonathan Hale lived at the end of a private road. His mansion, a sprawling mass of modern architecture, sat on top of a hill. Workers sitting on John Deere lawnmowers equipped with ploughs were clearing snow from the long driveways.

  A limo was parked in front of a garage, its bay door open, the interior lights on. Darby spotted a vintage Porsche, a convertible BMW and a car that looked like a Bentley.

  ‘What do you think?’ Tim Bryson asked as he pulled his old diesel Mercedes up to the front gate.

  ‘Seems awfully cold,’ Darby said.

  ‘I was referring to the house.’

  ‘I know.’

  Bryson rolled down the window and pressed the intercom button.

  A crackle of static, then a woman’s voice said, ‘Hello?’