Her voice echoed and died.

Darby strained to listen. Heard nothing but the wind howling and shaking the nearby trees, the branches creaking and splitting. She examined the hardwood staircase in front of her. There were seven steps leading to a small landing, where she spotted a puddle. Melted snow from boots – the Red Hill Ripper’s boots. There was a second set of steps hidden from view behind a wall.

First, she had to clear the downstairs. For the next forty minutes she worked systematically clearing each of the rooms, including the attached garage. She watched where she stepped and moved slowly and checked everything and found nothing suspicious or out of the ordinary.

At least not yet, she thought, returning to the base of the stairs. If the Red Hill Ripper had laid a trap, chances are it would be somewhere on the next floor.

Again, Darby called up into the darkness. ‘I’m alone, just as you asked.’

Again, there was no answer.

Because they’re all dead, Coop had said. You know that.

Her skin was soaked with sweat, and her shirt and jeans felt glued to her skin as she moved up the staircase quietly, taking one step at a time. The scrape of her thick-soled boots on the hardwood echoed throughout the house. She reached the landing. The door opposite the top of the stairs was the only one that was closed.

Darby climbed the remaining steps, shivering. The air was cold because all the windows upstairs had been opened. She could hear the wind blowing through the screens and she could see plumes of breath in the torch’s halo of light. She thought of the metabolic disorder she’d read about on the web, TMAU or whatever it was called; then she thought about what the Tuttle woman had said about her client, the man named Timmy who reeked of garbage, and Darby surmised that the killer had opened all the windows to remove the stench of fish that seeped from his pores.

Darby systematically started to clear every room on the floor: the upstairs bathroom; a boy teenager’s bedroom, judging by the posters of Pearl Jam and Bob Marley; and a smaller room that was used as a home office, the two opened windows blowing papers across the floor. By the time she returned to the closed door opposite the top of the steps, she had sweated through her shirt, and her mouth was as dry as paper.

She got down on her knees and ran the beam of light underneath the quarter-inch gap at the bottom of the door. The only thing she could see was a carpet. She got back to her feet and then she turned the doorknob slowly, checking for resistance of any kind. She encountered none. Body tense and sweat dripping down the small of her back, she gently placed her hand on the door, wondering if it had been booby-trapped in some way. Assume it is, she thought. Assume the absolute worst until you can rule it out. She opened the door a crack, checking for wires or rope, and didn’t see any – but something was behind the door, something had happened inside this bedroom.

Slowly she released her grip on the doorknob and backed against the wall. She reached out with one hand, placed it on the door and inched it open further. She couldn’t see the bedroom windows but knew they were open; wind blew past her hand and punched the door, almost forcing it shut. Now she could see part of the bedroom: a beige carpet and an opened door leading to a walk-in closet where women’s clothing hung neatly above shoes displayed on racks.

She inched open the door further, then stopped to check. Now a floor-to-ceiling bookcase came into view. Tensing, she pushed open the door a few more inches and kept looking. Finally, she had the door all the way open. Nothing happened. It was time to go inside.

Darby raised her nine. Don’t mash the trigger, breathe and squeeze – and, looking down the target site, she swung around the doorway.

51

In the tactical light’s bright white halo Darby saw a pair of chairs at the foot of the bed. A man dressed in boxers and a dingy white T-shirt with coils of grey and white hairs sprouting out of the V-neck was bound to one, his head covered by a black plastic bag. The man’s son, also dressed in boxers and a long-sleeve T, had been tied to a chair on the far right, and, like his father, he had a plastic bag wrapped around his head.

The mother, Clara, dressed in a dark flannel nightgown, sat between husband and son, her face the colour of an eggplant. She had been strangled to death, and this time the killer had left the rope tied around her neck. A cell phone sat on the woman’s lap. The screen was glowing and a tiny green LED pulsed.

The killer had never before left behind a phone, and he had changed the chair arrangement. All three chairs had been positioned against the far wall and they faced the bedroom door – faced her – like a small, private jury.

Darby closed the door behind her. She crept forward, searching the neatly made bed, the carpeted floor and the tops of the bureaus and nightstands for anything odd. There was no computer or iPad in here, the sole electronic device belonging to the phone resting on the woman’s lap. Did it have a camera? Was the killer listening or watching or both right now?

There was an opened door to her left, for the bathroom, and she had to clear it. She spun around the doorway, the beam of light revealing a tiled floor and marble vanity.

It was clear.

Darby searched under the bed, looking for anything unusual, found nothing. Then she moved to the chairs and placed a finger on the man’s neck, her attention fixed on the phone. She didn’t see any wires.

The man didn’t have a pulse. Darby knew the woman was dead but she checked for a pulse anyway and then she did the same for their son. All three were dead and the killer was nowhere to be seen.

Darby’s attention shifted back to the dead woman. She was looking at the cell, at its pulsing green light, when the bedroom lights turned on.

She started, her heart leaping in her throat, moved back to the bedroom door and opened it. The hallway lights were on, and she could see that some of the downstairs lights were on too.

The house must have lost power because of the storm, Darby thought. Now it’s back on.

Darby placed a wicker hamper against the door to keep the wind from blowing it shut. She stepped into the hall, shivering, and unclipped her satphone.

‘He’s not here,’ Darby said.

‘The family?’ Robinson asked.

‘Dead. The husband and wife and their son. I haven’t found the daughter. He opened almost every window inside the house, and he left a cell on the woman’s lap.’

‘Why?’

‘To listen in and watch me? Us? Who knows? Does Brewster have a bomb squad?’

Darby heard the man’s breath catch in his throat. She could also hear phones ringing in the background.

‘What makes you think the phone is a bomb?’ the chief asked.

‘I don’t know what to think. He left the phone here for a reason, but I’m afraid to touch it.’ Darby rubbed the sleeve of her shirt against her forehead. She couldn’t stop shivering. ‘All the lights just came back on.’ ‘Power’s going on and off all over town, on account of the storm. You find anything else beside the phone?’

‘No, just the phone.’ Darby was looking at it from the hall.

‘So there’s nothing in there.’

‘At least nothing I can see. Maybe he just summoned me here to screw with my head – to screw with all of us.’

‘But?’

‘It doesn’t feel right. I can’t put a finger on it.’

The dead woman’s eyes stared accusingly at Darby. You did this, her gaze said. I’m dead and my husband and son are dead because of you. You did this.

‘Is it safe to send my people in there?’ Robinson asked her.

‘I don’t know. Contact Coop and Hoder,’ she said as she moved down the stairs to retrieve her jacket. ‘Tell them what I found and ask them what they think.’