Chris Mooney - The Secret Friend

'To remove evidence,' Darby said.

'Exactly.'

'A true psychopath doesn't have empathy for his victims. They're objects, a means to fuelling a fantasy that's often based on sadism. Women who are used as sexual objects are tossed like trash. They're not allowed to shave their legs and put on nail polish. He cared for this woman.'

'If you say so,' Coop said.

Darby fitted a headset equipped with a magnifier lens and light and examined the body for any trace evidence. What she found was mostly silt and twigs.

'Darby?'

She looked up from the body.

'Twelve-point match,' Coop said. 'It's Judith Chen.'

Darby felt a hot, tearing sensation work its way through her chest as she went back to work.

Like Emma Hale, Judith Chen had disappeared for weeks, being held somewhere until her captor decided to put a bullet in the back of her head. Like Emma Hale, Judith Chen had been dumped in the water dressed in the same clothes she was last seen wearing, a small statue of the Virgin Mary sewn into one of her pockets.

'I'll tell Bryson,' Darby said.

Darby found Detective Tim Bryson standing in the hallway, talking on his cell phone and looking magazine-cover slick in a camel wool topcoat buttoned over a sharp navy blue suit. Clothing aside, it was impossible not to take notice of him.

The majority of men she knew in their early fifties had gone to seed – big beer bellies and jowls; greying, receding hairlines. Bryson had a sharp jaw line and a youthful face that gave him the look of a man somewhere south of forty. She had seen him at the police gym on more than one occasion. Like Coop, he was a health nut with an amazing body – lean and muscular. In addition to the gym routine and running, she had heard Bryson did yoga once a week at a studio in Cambridge.

Bryson saw her. 'I'll call you back,' he told the caller and hung up.

'It's Judith Chen.'

Bryson nodded and stared at the floor for a long moment. He seemed disappointed, as though he had been holding out hope.

'I think we should check for any recent abductions or missing persons involving female college students,' Darby said. 'It also wouldn't hurt to warn the local colleges.'

'That's the commissioner's call.'

'I'll talk to her about it.'

Bryson took a long breath through his nose. Times may have changed in terms of equal opportunities for women, but the Boston Police Department still had a frat-house mentality, and Darby knew her new role would rankle many of the boys. She wondered if Bryson felt that way. Time to find out.

'You have a problem with me being appointed to your unit?'

'It wasn't my call,' Bryson said.

'So that would be a yes.'

'Everyone says you're one hell of a lab rat.'

The term was meant as an indirect slap. Bryson was saying she belonged to the lab.

'I'm not interested in playing the whole alpha-dog game,' Darby said. 'It's boring and counterproductive.'

'Excuse me?'

'Save the swinging dick routine for the locker room.'

'You talk to your boyfriend like this?'

'I'm not as polite. I'm trying to be more sensitive to your male sensibilities.'

Darby moved closer, invading his personal space, and saw the fine web of lines around his eyes. 'I know the papers have been pissing all over you for not finding Emma Hale. For the record, I think they're wrong.' She kept her voice calm. 'When we find this asshole, if you want to be the poster boy for the department and smile and wave to the cameras and get the credit, be my guest. Until that moment comes, we need to work together on this. If you don't want to, then by all means keep playing the passive-aggressive victim. It's your choice.'

Bryson didn't answer. Darby left him standing in the hallway. Darby arrived at the lab and hung Judith Chen's wet clothes inside the drying chamber where they would stay during the weekend. She wasn't holding out hope of finding anything significant. All that time spent underwater had, as with Emma Hale's clothing, washed away anything of value.

Sitting on her desk was a cardboard box containing copies of the murder books and pictures. Darby wanted to get caught up but wanted to read without being distracted. She decided to go home. Coop stayed behind at the lab to work on the statue. He promised to call her later.

By the time she reached her Beacon Hill condo, a good foot of snow had already covered her street. Darby opened the door, placed the box on her couch and deactivated her alarm. She took a long shower, standing under the hot water until it ran cold, and then dressed in jeans and her father's old U-Mass sweatshirt.

Inside the kitchen, she poured herself a generous glass of Booker's bourbon. Her windows faced Suffolk University. The college was directly across the street. Last fall, Judith Chen had been attending classes inside that building. Now her corpse was lying inside the cold room waiting to be autopsied.

Darby took a long sip of bourbon. She refilled the glass and carried it to her office.

The former occupants had used the space as a nursery; one wall was still painted a light blue with clouds. She had only lived here for three months, and during that time, she had purchased an L-shaped desk for the corner, a bookcase and comfortable leather chair she set up by the window overlooking her back porch and the neighbour's tiny backyard.

Darby grabbed the box from the couch, set it up on her desk and removed a copy of Emma Hale's murder book.

Darby took out the autopsy pictures and crime-scene photographs and tacked them to one side of the wall. On the other side she tacked the pictures she had taken of Judith Chen along with the copies ID had given her. Chen's murder book was incomplete. Tim Bryson was at the station filling out the report.

Vaginal and anal swabs for Judith Chen had tested negative for semen. All that time spent underwater had washed away trace evidence and DNA – if there was any DNA to be found. There was no way to tell for certain if Chen's abductor had sex with her. With floaters, the usual evidence – tearing and abrasions – was gone, devoured by decomposition.

The good majority of crimes involving women more often than not contained some underlying sexual component. If that was the case here – and from a statistical point of view, it should be – then why did he sew a Virgin Mary statue in their pockets?

Maybe this wasn't about sex. Maybe these two college girls were chosen to fill some psychological need. Darby grabbed the murder books and settled into the chair with her bourbon, the dead women hanging on the wall behind her, looking down, watching.

Judith Chen was nineteen, the youngest daughter of a middle-class family from Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. Her father was a plumber. She decided to attend Suffolk University because the college had offered the best financial aid package. Boston was an expensive city to live, and with student housing tight, Judith Chen and a roommate rented one half of a duplex in Natick – a forty-minute commute by train. She took out a college loan and paid for her living expenses with the money she earned from her two jobs – the first as a waitress at a Legal Seafood restaurant in Boston's theatre district, the second job as a sales assistant at the Abercrombie amp; Fitch store at the Natick Mall.

Emma Hale was also nineteen, the only child of Jonathan Hale, Boston's top real-estate developer. Emma lived in a multimillion-dollar Back Bay penthouse with its own parking garage for her convertible BMW. A pop star from the eighties lived in the second penthouse suite.

Jonathan Hale was a powerful man with a Rolodex full of important names eager to provide favours. When his only child was reported missing, the operating theory was a possible kidnapping. Boston police acted swiftly and contacted the FBI.