06 Every Three Hours Read online

  Chris Mooney

  * * *

  EVERY THREE HOURS

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  EVERY THREE HOURS

  Chris Mooney is the internationally bestselling author of the Darby McCormick thrillers. His third novel, Remembering Sarah, was nominated for an Edgar for Best Novel by the Mystery Writers of America. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He teaches writing courses at Harvard and the Harvard Extension School, and lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with his wife and son.

  Books by Chris Mooney

  THE DARBY MCCORMICK THRILLERS

  The Missing

  The Secret Friend

  The Dead Room

  The Soul Collectors

  Fear the Dark

  Every Three Hours

  OTHER WORKS

  Deviant Ways

  World Without End

  Remembering Sarah

  The Killing House

  For Ron and Barbara Gondek

  It’s so odd, how I don’t feel scared right now, not even nervous. All those months spent rehearsing, going through every conceivable scenario, and now, as I watch the taxi turn the corner, knowing the moment is upon me, I don’t feel scared or nervous or have the urge to walk away or have any reservations.

  It feels right, what I’m about to do.

  I know it’s right.

  After I climb into the back of the cab, shivering from the cold, I lean close to the small window separating the driver from the back seat, my gloved hand gripping my throat, which is bundled in a scarf. The black hoodie is tied tightly around my head and my eyes are covered with sunglasses.

  ‘One Schroder Plaza,’ I rasp.

  The driver looks like an old dockworker, someone who has spent too much time in the elements, his gaunt face cragged and peppered with deep grooves and, I’m guessing, all sorts of skin cancers. He leans his head closer and cocks an ear to me and says, ‘Sorry, I didn’t hear you?’

  I make a practice show of how painful it is to talk. ‘One Schroder Plaza,’ I rasp. ‘Boston Police Department.’

  The driver nods, puts the car in gear.

  ‘You getting over a bad cold? The flu?’

  I nod eagerly and lean back in my seat, the back of the cab wonderfully warm. I don’t take off my hat or gloves. I don’t want him to see my face, to describe me later to the police and FBI.

  ‘Bad flu season this year,’ the driver says. ‘My nephew, he’s thirteen? Kid’s a star athlete – basketball and football – works out like a fiend, eats real healthy, takes his vitamins and everything. He gets the flu and ends up in the hospital for a week, can you believe that?’

  I stare out my side window, watching the early morning traffic under the grey sky –

  ‘And today we’re going to get hit with another snowstorm, and I’m saying to myself, “Mike, the hell are you living here for? They got cab drivers in Florida, ya know.” ’

  The cab driver keeps talking. I drown out his voice, losing myself in my thoughts, about how we all lead two lives – the one we present to the world, and the one we live behind our eyes. This isn’t a profound thought, I know. I’m sure some philosopher or hack songwriter already said something like that – and probably said it better, too – but I don’t have the benefit of a college education, and I’m not all that well read. The one thing I know – that I’m sure of – is that at the end of the day we want to know the real person, the one he or she keeps hidden from everyone. The one where you find out that your next-door neighbour, Mr Vanilla, a man who volunteered at a suicide hotline and did animal rescue work, who never had a bad word to say about anyone and was shy and quiet and extremely nice, liked to prance about his house wearing clothes belonging to the dozens of women he’d killed and buried in his basement, or something. We want to know the real person – what made him that way, how he kept so secret for so long. We need to know the things we hide from everyone but ourselves, because that’s where the real truth lies.

  1

  – 00.45

  ‘I don’t want to do this,’ Darby said.

  Coop drank deeply from the cup of coffee he’d made quickly back in his hotel room. They were both staying at the Bunker Hill Inn right around the corner from Mass. General, and directly across the street from Beacon Hill, the place she had called home for ten years before deciding to sell everything off and live as sort of a vagabond forensic consultant. No home, all of her possessions whittled down into a four-by-six hardtop motorcycle suitcase that fit nicely on the back of her Triumph.

  It was coming up on eight on Monday, the start of the work week, and they were sitting in the back of a cab, Darby wearing sunglasses even though the early morning sky was overcast. Last night’s wedding reception had run into the early morning hours, and she’d had a little too much bourbon and too little sleep and she was paying for it this morning. She pinched her temples between her fingers and then rubbed the skin above her eyes, trying to massage away the hangover while she gazed out the window at the Boston streets packed bumper-to-bumper with traffic.

  ‘You were the one who volunteered our services, not me,’ Coop said.

  He was right. Last night at the reception, Anna Lopez, a mutual friend and former coworker who was now the head of the city’s Criminal Services Unit, had asked Darby if she and Coop would be willing to stop by BPD’s main headquarters this morning, Monday, to consult on the murders of a pair of retired Boston homicide detectives from last year. Both men were victims of what appeared to be a home invasion. Both men were in their late sixties and lived alone – one a longtime divorcee, the other a widower. The killer tied both men to either a kitchen or dining room chair with duct tape and, after working them over with a heavy, blunt object for several hours, tied a plastic shopping bag around their heads, suffocating them.

  T
hat was all the information Darby had. The fine details of a double-homicide were not generally discussed during the reception and cocktail hour, even if the groom and half of the wedding guests were Boston cops and people from the crime lab.

  ‘It’s the right thing to do,’ Coop said. ‘I know you don’t want to go back there – and I don’t blame you – but we’re talking about Lopez here. How many times did she cover your ass back when you were head of CSU?’

  Too many to count, Darby thought.

  ‘How many all-nighters did she pull? How many weekends did she give up for you?’

  ‘You’ve made your point,’ she said.

  ‘And you’ve learned a valuable lesson, which is never, ever make decisions or agree to anything while drinking. Really, you need to be more mature.’ He grinned. His smile disappeared when he glanced out the front window and saw the dead-stop traffic. ‘We should’ve taken the T. Would’ve been quicker – cheaper, too.’

  He was right, of course. But when you had a hangover and less than five hours of sleep, a taxi was the only way to go.

  She was glad for the hangover, though; it would create a good distraction from her feelings. She didn’t want to go anywhere near the BPD. She had put that life behind her – and for good reason.

  She thought she did okay last night at the reception.

  ‘Let’s walk,’ Coop said.

  ‘It’s fifteen degrees out.’

  ‘We’re not that far away, and the fresh air will do us both some good.’ Coop didn’t wait for her answer; he handed the driver a twenty through the window and asked the guy to pull over.

  Outside, Coop tossed his cup into a nearby city trashcan. Despite her foul mood, Darby couldn’t help but marvel at how he not only didn’t seem to age the way normal men did – he was in his mid-forties but could have easily passed for someone a decade younger – but also how he managed not to look even the slightest bit tired after late nights of drinking. Coop was like a Chanel suit: classically good-looking year-after-year, and never went out of style.

  He pulled his phone out from his pocket and read the screen. ‘They cancelled our flights,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not even snowing yet.’

  ‘Weathermen are saying the storm will be here this afternoon around two or so.’ He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his long camel-hair overcoat and began to walk next to her, his head tilted into the wind. ‘What sort of info did Lopez give you about these cases?’

  ‘Just the basics. She say anything to you?’

  ‘She told me she talked to you and asked that I tag along.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you need constant monitoring and supervision,’ he replied playfully.

  They turned right on to Ruggles, the corner taken up by a brick-façade apartment building. The kerbs here, like all the others, were crusted with small mounds of ice and snow, and the small city trees planted along the concrete sidewalks were stripped of their leaves, their fragile, gnarled limbs still strung with Christmas lights.

  ‘It’s weird being back here, back in the city,’ he said. ‘You miss it?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Bullshit. You have to miss it a little. You grew up here. We both did.’

  But she didn’t miss it. Too many ghosts, she thought.

  Her father had died when she was twelve – shot by a schizophrenic drug addict. Three years ago, she had discovered the real killer: cops inside the Boston Police Department – the so-called Blue Brotherhood. They had killed him and framed an innocent man, who later died in prison, to protect the head of Boston’s Irish mob during the late seventies and early eighties, a man named Frank Sullivan who was in reality an undercover federal agent.

  Ruggles ended at a streetlight. They turned right, on to Tremont. The main headquarters for the Boston Police Department, a squat and rectangular-shaped glass castle set on top of concrete, took up nearly six blocks. Darby felt her pulse quicken. She squeezed her hands into fists inside her jacket pockets as she watched the three flags set up in front of One Schroder Plaza snap like canvas sails in the wind. From behind the green tint of her Ray-Ban sunglasses, she stared at the flag holding the Boston Police crest and rode the greasy swell of her hangover, the building growing taller and wider, like it was coming to life, about to devour her.

  2

  – 00.25

  ‘You have a good time at the reception?’ Coop asked.

  Darby nodded. ‘You?’

  ‘Absolutely. Jimmy was fun, as always. Can’t believe he’s married, though. Last of our bachelor friends from BPD. How did it feel seeing your ex get married?’

  ‘We only dated for six, maybe eight months.’

  ‘He proposed to you, didn’t he?’

  ‘He was working up to it, I think.’

  ‘You told me you were in love.’

  ‘No, I told you he was in love with me.’

  ‘So why’d you call it off?’

  ‘He’s a good guy, fun, but when it comes to relationships he’s pretty much a spineless limp dick who’s looking for someone to replace his mother.’

  ‘Good thing he didn’t ask you to make a toast last night.’

  The sidewalk ended. The road in front of them turned into a porte-cochères-like area for taxis and other vehicles that needed to drop off people for the main entrance into One Schroder Plaza.

  Coop held open the heavy glass door for her. As she stepped inside the warm lobby of brown-and-black speckled marble, her chest tightened and blood pounded in her ears like the roar of a crashing wave.

  Her father, long since dead, spoke to her: Never let the bastards grind you down.

  They killed you, she replied. They killed you, and when I finally exposed the people who did it – exposed them and their laundry list of corruption dating all the way back before I was born – they shoved me out the door.

  ‘You haven’t said anything about my date last night.’

  ‘She was nice.’

  ‘That’s it? Nice?’

  ‘I really liked her,’ Darby replied as they walked, the pathway sectioned off by raised marble planters bursting with ferns. She knew he was trying to distract her, keep her out of her head and away from her thoughts, and she loved him for it. ‘Not only could she count to ten without using her fingers, she knew all her A-B-C’s.’

  ‘That’s a little harsh – and she has a name, you know. Nevaeh.’

  The metal detector and X-ray machine, Darby noticed, had been upgraded since the last time she was here, and there were a lot more blue uniforms manning the checkpoint: a man and a woman to conduct pat-downs, three others standing behind the conveyor belt to open briefcases, backpacks and other packages. She had heard that BPD had beefed up their security after the Boston Marathon bombing.

  ‘Did she tell you what it means? Her name?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Darby replied, snaking around the corner and then breaking off to her right, to the back of the visitors’ line. ‘It’s “Heaven spelled backwards”.’

  ‘She has two million followers on Instagram.’

  ‘No, her ass has two million followers.’

  ‘Heaven-spelled-backwards is a fitness model.’ Coop grinned from ear-to-ear. ‘Did she tell you she was last year’s runner-up for Brazil’s Miss Bum Bum?’

  ‘Repeatedly.’ Darby unzipped her jacket. ‘Well, she’s certainly bright,’ she said, removing her Class 3 gun-carrying permit from her inner pocket. ‘You know Dan Carter?’

  ‘Dr Dan the Foot Man.’

  ‘She asked him what he did for a living. Dan tells her he’s a podiatrist, and Heaven-spelled-backwards says, “Oh, I love children!” ’

  The Hispanic woman standing in front of Darby and thumb-keying on a BlackBerry stifled a laugh. She was young and curvy and dressed in a sharp suit, and she looked familiar – a lawyer, Darby believed, from the federal court.

  ‘It was loud in there,’ Coop said. ‘Nevaeh probably thought he said paediatrician.’

  Darby took off h
er sunglasses. ‘Hmm, I don’t think so.’

  There was a holdup at the front of the line. A very pregnant woman who looked like she had a boulder taped to her stomach dropped her coat on the conveyor belt as she spoke to one of the guards, probably asking if she could have a pat-down instead of going through the metal detector. A lot of women still subscribed to the myth that metal detectors and the full-body scanners at airports gave off radiation that could harm their child. The man standing behind her, the one wearing a black rolled-up beanie drawn across his forehead and ears, swallowed back his impatience, his jaw muscles bunching. He reached for a backpack sitting on the conveyor belt, waiting to be examined by X-ray, and when his hand clutched the strap he decided to let go and wait. He didn’t look happy about it.

  ‘Dr Feet seemed like a real party,’ Coop said. ‘You two have a good time last night?’

  ‘He’s a nice guy,’ Darby replied, still watching the aggravated man in the black beanie standing behind the pregnant woman, watching as he unzipped the black hoodie he wore underneath his stylish black wool overcoat. He wore a suit jacket underneath the hoodie, a scarf knotted around his neck.

  Why would someone wear a hooded sweatshirt over a suit jacket?

  ‘Did you and Dr Feet do the dance with no trousers?’ Coop asked.

  Darby turned to him. ‘What’re you, twelve?’

  ‘Emotionally, yes. And the fact that you’re deflecting means you and Dr Dan –’

  ‘How about we talk about these mutant Barbie dolls you keep dating? Where do you find them? Do you hang outside eating disorder clinics?’

  ‘Not only is that not true, it’s hurtful. I’m just looking for love like everyone else.’

  Darby rolled her eyes. ‘What’s the longest relationship you’ve ever had?’

  ‘I dunno,’ Coop said. ‘Three, maybe four lap dances?’

  The Hispanic woman shook her head, looked like she wanted to make a comment, maybe join in on the conversation. She turned slightly so she could get a look at Coop from the corner of her eye. Like most women, she liked what she saw and responded to it. Smiled radiantly.

  The man wearing the black beanie removed a gun from underneath his overcoat.