Chris Mooney - The Secret Friend

Darby gripped the door, surprised to find it opened without effort.

She didn't know what she had expected to find but she hadn't expected this – an old chapel holding a dozen wooden pews covered in dust and debris. Some of the pews had been crushed from where the ceiling had caved in, and she saw a steel beam resting through what was probably a confessional.

To her left, dozens of footprints led down an aisle. At the end, inside an alcove, was a life-size statue of the Virgin Mary sitting on a bench, her son, Jesus, sprawled across her lap. The Blessed Mother was dressed in flowing white and blue robes, her facial expression frozen in eternal sorrow as she looked down at bloody holes in her dead son's feet and palms from the nails that had pinned him to the crucifix.

The Virgin Mary was clean – no dust, no grime.

Moving the beam of her light around the statue, Darby spotted rags and a bucket of water holding a sponge.

She carefully made her way to the centre aisle, not wanting to disturb the footprints. They appeared to be recent. The marks belonged to a boot or sneaker.

When she reached the centre aisle, Darby saw another set of footprints which were distinctly different. These shoeprints bore a strong resemblance to the one she had found on the floor inside Emma Hale's spare bedroom.

A woman cried out for help.

Heart leaping high in her chest, Darby swung around and in the beam of light saw an altar covered in debris. The wooden pulpit was crushed. A large statue of Jesus hanging on the cross lay on the floor in pieces.

There was no one here. She hadn't imagined the sound, she was sure of it.

Darby made her way to the aisle on the far right. No footprints. She moved down the aisle and heard a woman screaming, the sound faint, coming from the altar.

Darby ducked under the beam. Jesus' head, crowned in bloody thorns, lay on the floor, his sorrowful eyes staring at her as she moved up the altar steps. The woman's painful cries grew louder.

A broken door was behind the altar. Darby slipped inside as a man moaned, the sound mixed with the woman's pleading, begging for the pain to stop.

The adjoining room was not much bigger than the maintenance closet and held dusty shelves stacked with the same bibles and hymn books. The ceiling was intact.

On the floor was a cardboard box full of small plastic statues of the Virgin Mary – the same statues she had found sewn inside Emma Hale and Judith Chen's pockets. The same statue Malcolm Fletcher had left inside the vent and on the windowsill of the room.

Shoeprints stopped in front of a brick wall. At the bottom was a large, wide hole. The dust and dirt on the floor had been disturbed, as though someone had recently stood here.

A man laughed. Darby knelt on the floor, away from the footprints, and shined the beam of her flashlight inside another room. Lying against the debris was a skeletal set of remains.

Jonathan Hale stared at his daughter's pictures, searing Emma's face into his mind's eye, wanting to preserve every angle to keep her from fading.

But she would fade. The mind, he knew, was the most cunning prison, a ruthless warden. It would take these memories of Emma and, like Susan, blur them over time while torturing him with this singular, inescapable fact: he had taken each of these moments for granted.

His girls, the two most important people in what he had come to realize was a completely insignificant, hollow life, smiled at him. Husband and father. Now he was a widower, the father to a dead child.

Daddy.

Hale, drunk and numb, looked up and saw Emma sitting in the leather armchair. Her hair wasn't wet and mangled with twigs; it was neatly combed, thick and beautiful. Her face was alive, full of colour.

'Hey, baby. How are you doing?'

Mom and I are fine now.

'What are you doing here?'

We're worried about you.

Hale's eyes were hot and wet. 'I miss you so much.'

We miss you too.

'I'm sorry, baby. I'm so, so sorry.'

You didn't do anything wrong, Dad.

Hale buried his face in his hands and cried. 'I don't know what to do.'

You already know what to do.

'I can't.'

God answered your prayers. He sent someone to help you.

Yes, he had prayed to God for the truth, and the messenger was like a creature spawned from the Catechism books from his childhood – a man with strange black eyes holding terrible secrets, a man who had killed two federal agents and God only knew who else; a man who had given him the name and face of his daughter's killer.

Now that he knew the truth, he wished God would take it away. He didn't want to know. He didn't want to know.

It's not just about me any more, Daddy. You know about what happened to the others.

Hale checked his watch. He could still make the call. He still had time.

They can't speak for themselves. They need you to speak for them.

Hale stumbled across the room and scooped the cell phone from his desk.

You can't let them suffer in silence.

He dialled the number.

Look at me, Daddy.

He felt numb as Malcolm Fletcher answered the call.

'Yes, Mr Hale?'

Daddy, look at me.

Hale looked at the armchair where Emma sat, legs crossed, hands folded on her lap.

Think about the parents of all those young women. Don't they have a right to know the truth? Don't they deserve justice?

'Have you changed your mind, Mr Hale?'

You've been given an amazing gift, Daddy. God heard and answered your prayers. Are you going to refuse him?

Hale rubbed the whiskers along his face. 'Do it.'

'You are aware of the potential risks.'

'That's why I employ the best lawyers in the state,' Hale said. 'I want the son of a bitch to pay for what he did. I want him to suffer.'

Tim Bryson crunched a Rolaids between his teeth as traffic crawled past the Tobin Bridge tolls. Cliff Watts had the window down so he could smoke.

A battered plumber's van, complete with a ladder fixed to the top, was waiting in the left lane, two car lengths behind the Jag.

Bryson's phone rang. It was Lang, the man driving the plumbing van.

'I ran the plates. The car's registered to a man named Samuel Dingle from Saugus. I've got an address.'

Bryson felt a sick feeling crawling underneath his skin. 'Is it stolen?' he asked.

'If it is, nobody has reported it,' Lang said.

'Send someone over to the house. Call me back when you find out.'

The Jag drove fast across the new Zakim Bridge, heading for Boston's southeast expressway. So close, Bryson thought. Too close.

Fletcher merged onto Storrow Drive, heading west. A few minutes later he took the Kenmore exit.

The problems of tailing someone in a city without being spotted were numerous – the traffic lights, the maze of oneway streets and, in the case of Boston, the never-ending headaches of the Big Dig. If you didn't stick close to your mark, you could lose him.

Malcolm Fletcher wasn't acting like someone who knew he was being shadowed. No sudden turns down a narrow street, he didn't change direction – he wasn't doing any of the normal counter-surveillance manoeuvres to shake off a tail. The man stuck to the main roads and kept up with the flow of traffic.

Fenway Park was dark and deserted. Without the Red Sox playing, the place was dead. Traffic was light. Watts kept a good, safe distance.

Fletcher put on his blinker and turned left into a parking lot. Watts drove past him. Bryson turned in his seat, wondering if Fletcher had spotted the tail.

A guard rail lifted into the air. Fletcher pulled inside the parking lot.

Watts banged a U-turn at the lights and found an empty spot along the side of the street, in front of a fire hydrant. He killed the lights but not the engine. Bryson already had the binoculars in his hands.