‘You have any pictures of him? Anything he might have given to you as a gift?’ Darby was hoping for a fingerprint.

‘No and no,’ Rita said. ‘He was six feet, maybe five eleven. Looked like a guy who spent his whole day in front of a computer – flabby, bald, weak chin, all that.’

Darby’s gaze dropped to her notebook. She doubted Red Hill PD had a sketch artist on staff. Brewster probably did, but he or she wouldn’t be as talented as the federal agents who worked in the forensics facial imaging lab. Hoder could rustle one up with a single phone call. Put the guy on Skype and have the Tuttle woman talk to him over the MoFo’s secure satellite feed.

‘We about done here?’ Rita asked.

‘I’d like you to talk to a sketch artist.’

‘How long will it take?’

‘Five families are dead, Rita – it’ll take as long as it takes.’

‘See, this is why people like me don’t like helping people like you.’ Rita’s eyes were smiling again. ‘You guys are always taking advantage of someone’s generosity.’

‘So why did you come forward?’

‘Because I happened to be talking to a friend who shall remain nameless, and this friend, this person, was telling me about how you guys have been running all over Red Hill and Brewster, some of you even making calls to Denver where a lot of us work, asking questions about BDSM guys who are heavily into knots and tie up women to chairs and shit. I thought of Timmy and placed a call. When Officer Dipshit showed up on my doorstep, I told him everything and yet he insisted on dragging me here.’

‘Did Timmy scare you? Hurt you?’

‘No, he was very considerate. Even gave me a special collar for my neck so he wouldn’t leave any rope burns.’

A true gentleman, Darby thought. ‘If he was so considerate, why you here ratting him out? That can’t be good for business.’

‘The reward money. Duh. If Timmy ends up being the perv you guys are looking for, then I get the hundred grand, right?’

‘That why you waited all this time to tell us about your client? Original reward money not good enough?’

‘Number one, I already told you Timmy was a former client. Number two, I just found out about the reward money today.’

Bullshit, Darby thought. You’re lying. I can see it in your eyes.

‘Anything else you can tell me about Timmy?’ She asked. ‘Any distinguishing features or characteristics?’

‘He wore a brown suit from J. C. Penney’s and Hush Puppies. Look, you want me to do this sketch artist thing, let’s get the show on the road. And I want to use a phone right now so I can talk to my pilot, see the latest time we can fly out. There’s a big storm rolling in tonight and I don’t wanna get stuck in this shithole.’

43

Darby spoke with Rita Tuttle for another fifteen minutes, trying to get specifics on her former client’s skin condition. Rita said she didn’t know. The man named Timmy refused to discuss it with her, and he never took off his clothes.

When Darby flipped shut her notebook and left the interrogation room, she locked the door behind her in case Rita Tuttle had a sudden change of heart and decided to make a break for the private plane waiting to take her to Barbados. She headed to Williams’s office to use his computer. It took only a few minutes to find what she was looking for.

Then she sorted through the case files tucked into her backpack. After she finished, she went to find Officer L. Griffin.

She found him standing outside the station’s front doors, pacing and chain-smoking under the porte-cochère. The sky was pitch-black, and it had already started to snow. A fine white dust covered the parking lot and cars.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Whaddya think of Rita?’

‘She’s got some solid info. What’s her story?’

‘Local, born and bred. No record, not even a parking ticket. We went to high school together. She was a couple of years ahead of me and had a reputation for being wild and uninhibited. Supposedly she arranged a private gangbang for our football team and made five hundred bucks.’ Griffin raised his hands. ‘Hey, I’m not judging.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Twenty-six. She’s been entrepreneurial since day one. Left here when she was eighteen, and from what I’ve heard she makes a pretty good living servicing rich old guys who live out on the coasts.’

‘She mentioned a woman named Jean Derry.’

‘Yeah, Rita told me about her. Her last-known address is in Brewster. Rented an apartment there. Heard she had a thing for nose candy, did a couple of rehab stints.’

‘I’d like to talk to her.’

‘I figured as much – I’ll run her down for you.’ Griffin dropped his cigarette and stubbed the butt out underneath his thick, black-soled boot. ‘Anything else I can help you with?’

‘You mind taking Rita’s statement for me?’ Darby needed to talk to Hoder about getting a sketch artist.

‘Sure thing,’ Griffin replied. ‘Just do me a favour: if anything comes of this lead, I’d appreciate it if you put my name out there. It’ll go a long way with all this transition shit.’

‘You got it.’

‘Wait, before you go, I spoke to Ray. He wanted me to tell you about Nelson.’

‘What about him?’

‘The disposable camera Lancaster said he found on him? Nelson’s prints were all over it. Chief pressed him on it, and Nelson finally copped to taking pictures inside the Downes house last night.’

So Lancaster had been telling the truth.

‘He also admitted to taking Ray’s cell phone,’ Griffin said. ‘There was an incident last month, in December, with the Connelly family.’

‘Ray told me about it.’

‘There won’t be any charges. Chief wants this to go away quietly, so Nelson agreed to submit his resignation. It was coming anyway. He and his wife have been thinking about moving to the north-east – New Hampshire, I think. His father-in-law is some big-time builder, offered Nelson a construction job.’

‘Where’s Ray now?’

‘In Brewster with the chief. Some meeting, I don’t know what it’s about.’

‘Ray say anything else?’

‘You mean beyond you having a mean left hook?’ Griffin grinned broadly.

Darby found Hoder inside the squad room, talking to the reporter, Levine, who seemed to be on his way out. The cameraman was already gone.

Hoder caught Darby’s urgent expression, then shook the man’s hand and joined her. He looked especially haggard, his thoughts and emotions veiled. She wondered if he knew about what had happened with Lancaster.

Darby told him about her conversation with Rita Tuttle.

‘She identified the knot?’ Hoder asked after she finished.

Darby nodded. ‘There’s something else,’ she said. ‘Downes’s secretary, Sally Kelly, told me she overheard Samantha talking to her father about a guy in her class who smelled like garbage. This guy was only there for one class, though. Remember that antibiotic I found on the bedroom floor?’

‘The neomycin. That reminds me: Hayes spoke to the family’s physician. He never prescribed it.’

‘It’s used to treat severe cases of liver disease, hepatic coma, intestinal infections, by targeting certain types of bacteria in the gut, prevents them from producing ammonia and some protein they need to survive. Turns out it has other uses.’ Darby flipped her notebook open. ‘Type “neomycin” and “fish odour” into Google and it comes back with this rare genetic metabolic disorder called –’ She looked at her notes. ‘It’s called trimethylaminuria, or TMAU, otherwise known as “Fish Odour Syndrome” or “Fish Malodour Syndrome”.’

Hoder’s eyes narrowed in thought.

Darby continued. ‘People who inherit this condition have a defect in the production of some enzyme called FMO3,’ she said. ‘What happens is trimethylamine builds up in the person’s system, then it’s released through sweat, breath and urine, giving off a strong fishy or garbage-like body odour. There’s no cure for this thing. If you’re born with it, you’re stuck with it.’