‘Of course he is.’

‘Then why did he try to kill you?’

‘I don’t want to talk about this any more. You’re upsetting me, and I’m very tired.’

‘We found your fingerprint in the bedroom.’

‘I know. Ray told me. He tells me everything.’ She smiled in sour triumph.

‘The FBI will find you,’ Darby said.

Hubbard said nothing. She didn’t have to; her fearful expression confirmed Darby’s suspicion.

‘Everyone in the world has been looking for you,’ Darby said. ‘Your mother –’

‘My mother is dead.’

‘She’s alive. If you don’t believe me, go on the internet and look.’

‘Ray doesn’t let me use it.’

Of course he doesn’t, Darby thought. ‘Tell me what happened and I promise I’ll be good,’ she said. ‘Then we can watch The Tudors together, just like you wanted. We’ll have a nice day together.’

‘You promise?’

Darby nodded.

Hubbard composed herself. When she spoke, the words came out in a rush, as though they were poisoned and she had to get them out of her throat or she’d die. ‘Ray told me he was jealous of all the attention his mother was giving me, so one night he brought me to that house so we could play hide-and-seek, okay? And then he got … got mad and shoved me and I must’ve split my head on the floor or something. And he said I was bleeding everywhere and when I wouldn’t stop crying he started to … He just got really, really mad, and he started … He had to make me be quiet.’

‘Did he strangle you? Hit you? What?’

‘It doesn’t matter. What matters is he stopped. He stopped because he loves me, and I love him.’

‘If he loves you so much, why does he bring women here and strangle them?’

‘I answered your question.’ Hubbard’s voice trembled, and her eyes threatened tears. ‘Now, you promised to be good. No more talking.’

‘You didn’t answer my question.’

‘I just did!’

‘You told me Ray’s version of what happened. I want to hear your version. I want to hear you tell me what happened.’

‘I don’t remember. I was too young to remember.’

Darby wondered if that was true. Had Hubbard managed to bury that traumatic event in order to function? To survive living with a sadist?

‘I study people like Ray for a living,’ Darby said. ‘He’s a psychopath – a very smart one.’

‘No. More. Talking.’ Her voice trembled and her eyes threatened tears. ‘You promised.’

‘The FBI are looking for you. They’re going to find you – and him.’

Hubbard brought the remote up to Darby’s face. Her hand shook in anger – or was it fear?

Darby knew she had to keep pressing her. ‘Ray is going to kill you.’

‘I’m turning the dial up to eight.’

‘He has to kill you because everyone in the world will be looking for you. You’re going to die, and he’s going to escape. He’s going to –’

‘You think you’re so special because you’re pretty and have a beautiful body. But whores like you are a dime a dozen. That’s why he always comes back to me. He loves me. Only me. I share his bed because I’m the only one who knows how to satisfy him.’

‘I know he doesn’t love you,’ Darby said. ‘If he did, I wouldn’t be here, would I?’

Darby saw that her words had hit home. She braced herself for another shock, but Hubbard, red-faced with anger and her eyes bright with tears, had turned to the ladder.

Hubbard stormed up the rungs. When Darby heard the trapdoor slam shut, she moved the steel cord to the front of her face. She curled it around a fist and climbed a foot; she didn’t need to reach the top. She swung back and forth a couple of times to get some momentum, the cord digging into her skin; and then she raised her knees to her chest and pushed her legs up until the soles of her bare feet landed on the rough concrete ceiling.

Now she had leverage. Now she was standing on the ceiling, blood rushing into her head. Now, just as she had done every time she was alone in her cell, she wrapped both hands around the cord and pulled, muscles straining, hoping that this time she would somehow manage to break it, and have a fighting chance of defending herself.

76

Like most men, Coop had a complicated relationship with emotions. His father, when the guy was actually around and pretending to be a parent, his uncles and his male older cousins all attacked life’s emotional turbulences and soul-crushing losses in the way that Clint Eastwood did in his Westerns: keep your cool, shoot straight and if you go down, go down swinging. And never, under any circumstances, let them see you sweat or give the slightest indication that you’re hurting.

Coop was worried sick about Darby, a woman he had worked with since he was twenty-five. Not only did he admire her, he loved her. Darby was honest and loyal and never afraid.

And now she was missing – missing being the operative word. Missing didn’t mean dead. Missing meant there was still hope.

Denver’s FBI office had taken over the Savran investigation. Special Agent in Charge Howard Scott and his agents had commandeered Red Hill PD’s squad room, transforming the former Ripper task force centre into a hybrid hotline/command post. Additional phone lines had been installed for the tip lines. Savran, a fugitive who had murdered two federal agents, had gone platinum. The federal government had ponied up $100,000 for information leading to his capture and arrest, an increase of fifty grand on the original reward money. The US Marshals Service was involved in the manhunt, and Savran’s name and face had been forwarded to every national news outlet, state police headquarters and law enforcement agency. Everyone in the world was looking for him right now.

So where was he?

Coop thought the answer was hidden in the thick stacks of papers scattered on his desk. He sat in a corner of the room, sifting through Savran’s background information while trying to drown out the ringing telephones and the noise of agents, marshals and troopers who, along with Red Hill PD and uniformed deputies from Brewster, kept trekking in and out of the room, talking to each other on their cell and land-line phones.

Eight days had passed since Savran had shot and almost killed Hoder, and still no one had seen him or his Ford Bronco. The last time Savran had used his credit card was during the beginning of the month, a $48.45 purchase at Amazon. He had $62,345.23, courtesy of his mother’s estate, parked in a current account at the local bank. He hadn’t touched a cent of it since his Amazon purchase.

So why would a skilful, organized killer who had murdered five – no, make that six families – why wouldn’t he clean out his account when he might have to blow Dodge at a moment’s notice?

Answer: You couldn’t apply logical thinking when it came to a psychopath. Doing so, Darby had once told him, was about as useful as sticking your hand inside a clogged toilet.

Here’s what he did know. Savran’s medical records confirmed the 47-year-old had been born with the rare metabolic condition known as trimethylaminuria. People who suffer from TMAU have an impaired FMO3 enzyme; the odorous TMA can’t be oxidized into the non-odorous TMA-oxide. The TMA builds up in the person’s system, causing a fishy or garbage-like odour that is secreted through the person’s sweat, urine and breath. For the past four and a half years, Savran had been trying to mitigate the intensity of the smell by using the oral antibiotic neomycin.

A victim of bullies and merciless teasing from classmates because of his fish odour syndrome, Eli Savran, unsurprisingly, had a long and well-documented history of anger issues. Thelma and Douglas Savran had officially divorced when Eli was six. At thirteen, he had been expelled from Red Hill High School for breaking a classmate’s nose and jaw. He went to live with his father, who was working on oil rigs in New Orleans, for the next year and got into several scrapes, one of which, an assault and battery charge, had landed him a six-month stint in a juvenile detention centre. He bounced back and forth between his childhood home in Red Hill and wherever his father was working at the time. Eli dropped out of high school and took up menial work and odd jobs, mostly at night, when he could keep interaction with people to a minimum. At twenty-four, he had nearly beaten a man into a coma, earning Eli a level-3 A & B charge. The victim, for reasons unknown, later dropped the charge, and Eli was sentenced to community service.