Free Fear the Dark by Chris Mooney Page B

wheel in the front. As far she could tell, it was the only thing open in downtown Red Hill besides the Silver Moon Inn.
    The country’s never-ending economic recession seemed to have hit Red Hill especially hard. Taped to the inside glass windows of virtually every business she’d passed on the way here were signs and handwritten messages on poster boards that read OUT OF BUSINESS or CLOSED PERMANENTLY . She hadn’t seen a single Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts; there were no chain restaurants or big box supermarkets, hardware or department stores. Either gentrification had somehow bypassed Red Hill or big business wasn’t interested in creating anything here, viewing the town as the equivalent of a toxic-waste dump, a place where nothing would thrive.
    Darby placed the cardboard box of evidence files on her bed. Then she went back into the hall to retrieve her suitcase, forensics kit and briefcase, and used her foot to shut the door.
    Her room had crimson-painted walls and a headboard and bedframe crafted from birch logs. It had recently been cleaned; she could smell lemon-scented furniture polish, and the vacuum cleaner had left tread marks in the soft carpet. The pair of windows on the far wall overlooked what appeared to be a dense section of woods, but it was too dark out there to see.
    Darby hung her jacket inside the small closet and slipped out of her boots. She opened up the box, picked up a random file and opened it – the Connelly family, who had been murdered last month. She flipped through the thick stack of pages, pleased to find that the Denver state lab hadn’t skimped on crime scene photos.
    Her encounter with Deputy Sheriff Lancaster hung in her mind like an uninvited houseguest. The only way to get him to leave before he took up permanent residence was to focus her attention on something else – something productive. She sat cross-legged on the bed and removed the remaining evidence files.
    The first murders had occurred just over a year ago, on 4 January. Eighteen-year-old Cynthia Gardner, home for the Christmas holidays, had stayed the night at a friend’s apartment in Denver. When she went to her parents’ house the next morning she found them seated across from each other in kitchen chairs placed at the foot of their bed. Her mother had been strangled, the T-shirt that she slept in ripped open to expose her breasts. A black garbage bag had been tied around her father’s head. The Red Hill Ripper had waited until spring to kill the Bowden family. The Brazilian woman they employed to clean their house every two weeks had used the key given to her to enter. When she stepped over the threshold, an odour like spoiled meat and sewage hit her like a fist. After she vomited in the bushes, she used her cell to call the police. Martin and Heather Bowden had been killed the same way as the Gardner family.
    Talk of a possible serial killer had spread through thesmall town. Jim and Elaine Lima had installed new locks on their doors to protect them and their twin sons, Brad and Alex, who were in their senior year at Brewster High. Brad hadn’t been home that night; he had been away on a ski trip when the Red Hill Ripper killed his brother and parents the week before Thanksgiving.
    Three weeks later, John and Lisa Connelly and their sixteen-year-old daughter, Stacey, were found dead by John’s sister, who had arrived from San Diego to spend Christmas and the New Year with her brother’s family.
    No semen was found at any of the crime scenes or on the bodies. The medical examiner found no evidence of penetration. The breasts of the female victims showed extensive bruising, the result of having been pinched and twisted.
    Darby spent most of her time on the bedroom pictures. With the exception of the victims, the crime scenes were nearly identical: same plastic bindings and duct tape; same seating arrangement; and the same black garbage bag tied around the father’s or husband’s head. The killer had entered