Fear the Dark Read Free Page A

there in forty.’
    Darby watched the speedometer’s needle ease its way past eighty-five.
    ‘Can you hear me, Terry? Terry? Goddamnit.’ Coop hung up, sighing heavily.
    ‘What’s up?’ Darby asked.
    ‘They’ve just found another dead family.’

3
    Multiple homicides in Boston were almost always three-ring-circus affairs. Caravans of patrol cars with their flashing blue-and-whites would block off the main and surrounding streets while patrolmen worked crowd control near the crime scene; a couple of blues would shout orders over bullhorns; and everyone would scramble to keep the herds of reporters, TV cameramen and curious neighbours corralled behind sawhorses.
    When Coop turned right on to Salem End Road, the address of the crime scene, Darby saw yet another street that resembled all the others she’d passed on the way here: quiet and ordinary, a long stretch of pavement that looked like it had been carved through the middle of the forest, the modest single-family homes sprinkled along a string of big plots, all of which were set far back from the street and were slightly obscured by trees, as if trying to hide.
    Darby didn’t hear any bullhorns and she didn’t see any flashing police or emergency lights. As they drew closer, the GPS, with its mechanical female voice speaking in a slight British accent for some reason, announced that their destination was coming up on the right, a mere 400 feet away. There wasn’t a single person, cop or otherwise, out on the sidewalk.
    ‘I don’t know, Coop. All this chaos, I’m not going to be able to think clearly.’
    ‘Welcome to Hicksville,’ Coop said, as he pulled up against the kerb and parked behind a white Chevy pickup with an extended cab and mudguards. He killed the engine and pocketed the keys.
    Darby, stepping out of the Jeep and on to the sidewalk, saw a black Honda Accord with tinted windows parked in front of the truck. The driver’s door swung open.
    Terry Hoder was as tall and slim as Darby remembered, but his hair, once jet-black, had gone entirely grey, and he wore the full weight of his fifty-six years in his face. In his ill-fitting suit and bland tie, he looked like a tired professor who had been coerced out of retirement to give one last, important lecture.
    But his appearance was disarming. Behind his rumpled façade – his drowsy eyes and soft voice that still carried traces of his Texas accent – lurked one of the brightest and fiercest minds the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit had ever produced.
    Hoder leaned on a cane, and he saw her staring at it as she drew closer to him. ‘Had my knee replaced the week before Thanksgiving,’ he said. ‘Still on the mend, and the cold makes it throb like a mad bastard, to use one of my father’s old sayings. Pleasure to meet you, Dr McCormick.’
    ‘Darby.’ She shook his hand. ‘We’ve met before, actually. Long time ago, I don’t expect you to remember.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Quantico. I took your course “The Motivational Models of Sexual Homicide”.’
    ‘Well, I hope it comes in handy here, since our man likes rope.’ Hoder smiled wryly. ‘Thank you for joining us. It’ll be good to have another pair of eyes on this.’
    Then his brow furrowed, his gaze narrowing slightly. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the people in Investigative Support. They’re all fine men and women.’
    Darby was surprised to hear her thought spoken out loud.
    ‘The problem is that, at the core, they’re all academics,’ Hoder said. ‘I don’t mean that disparagingly; I include myself in that group. Over the past two decades, ISU has, unfortunately, been denigrated to an advisory role. Law enforcement either visit us or they send us their case files, and then I sit around a big conference table with my people, studying files and crime scene photos, tossing theories back and forth about what kind of offender we’re looking for.
    ‘Have our profiles helped? Yes, absolutely. But it’s mostly after the fact.