decades, ago. There was no way the Red Hill Ripper could have left the print, but procedure dictated that Coop process the print anyway. He would use it later, in the courses that he taught at the FBI Academy, where students, forensic investigators and law enforcement officers learned how to identify and retrieve tricky prints from various surfaces.
The mobile lab’s satellite was down and could be fixed only in Denver. MoFo Coop, along with Otto and Hayes, would go there to work on the rest of the collected evidence.
Coop had another reason for wanting to go to Denver tonight: the Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, an FBI-sponsored and accredited full-service digital forensics laboratory and training centre that worked with law enforcement agencies in Colorado and Wyoming. RCFL had agreed to examine all the home and business computers and tablets belonging to the Downes family.
The Denver RCFL facility also had a cell phone kiosk that utilized a newly developed FBI technology called UFED, short for the Universal Forensic Extraction Device. It could download data from any cell or smart phone and collate it into a report, which could then beburned on to a CD or DVD in as little as thirty minutes. Use of the kiosk, however, was by appointment only, and Coop had booked a slot for tomorrow at 11 a.m.
It was now coming up on seven. Darby stood with Coop inside the kitchen, cataloguing evidence. Hoder, who had been on his feet most of the day, balancing his weight on his cane, had returned to the hotel so he could ice his swollen knee. He wouldn’t be making the trip to Denver.
‘I want you to stay here, in Red Hill,’ Coop said.
Darby looked up.
‘If Williams can get the autopsies scheduled for tomorrow, one of us should be here. Besides, I’ll have help in Denver.’
Darby felt relieved. She wanted to spend the evening going through the evidence files. A long-time sufferer from motion sickness, she had never been able to read or concentrate while in a car.
‘Sounds good,’ she said, and went back to writing.
‘Really?’ Coop asked in mock surprise. ‘Here I was expecting an argument.’ He handed her the keys to his rental and added, ‘You must be getting mellow in your old age.’
As Darby wrote, she thought about the plastic bag that had been stuck to David Downes’s face like a cobweb, his skin pale and sweaty beneath the bag, the thinning remains of his fine brown hair matted against his scalp and forehead. Several strips of duct tape had been wrapped around his mouth and the back of his head.
But it was the man’s eyes, wide and nearly bulging fromtheir sockets, that haunted Darby; how, after the bag had been removed, they had been locked on his daughter. Intimately familiar with the mechanics of death, she could feel the man’s terror – could feel the plastic bindings biting and then cutting through his skin as he thrashed about with the bag taped over his head, sucking in the last few breaths of precious oxygen through his nose and unable to see his wife or daughter but able to hear Samantha begging and pleading and screaming.
Coop was saying something to her.
‘Sorry, what’s that?’ Darby asked as she continued writing.
‘I said I hope there aren’t any surprises when this case goes to court. You know how lawyers can get.’
‘Which is why we should put this guy in a body bag.’
Darby caught Coop’s reproachful glare. ‘You can’t treat, let alone cure, a sexual sadist, Coop. There’s no therapy or psychotropic-medication regimen that will bring them anywhere near the neighbourhood of normal, that will allow them to feel remorse or empathy. If you don’t want a sadist to kill again, you either lock him up for life or you put him down.’
‘And you’re for putting him down.’
‘Why should taxpayers have to pick up the tab for someone who’s the mental equivalent of a rabid dog?’
Coop studied her face.
‘You don’t resolve evil, Coop. You extinguish
The mobile lab’s satellite was down and could be fixed only in Denver. MoFo Coop, along with Otto and Hayes, would go there to work on the rest of the collected evidence.
Coop had another reason for wanting to go to Denver tonight: the Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, an FBI-sponsored and accredited full-service digital forensics laboratory and training centre that worked with law enforcement agencies in Colorado and Wyoming. RCFL had agreed to examine all the home and business computers and tablets belonging to the Downes family.
The Denver RCFL facility also had a cell phone kiosk that utilized a newly developed FBI technology called UFED, short for the Universal Forensic Extraction Device. It could download data from any cell or smart phone and collate it into a report, which could then beburned on to a CD or DVD in as little as thirty minutes. Use of the kiosk, however, was by appointment only, and Coop had booked a slot for tomorrow at 11 a.m.
It was now coming up on seven. Darby stood with Coop inside the kitchen, cataloguing evidence. Hoder, who had been on his feet most of the day, balancing his weight on his cane, had returned to the hotel so he could ice his swollen knee. He wouldn’t be making the trip to Denver.
‘I want you to stay here, in Red Hill,’ Coop said.
Darby looked up.
‘If Williams can get the autopsies scheduled for tomorrow, one of us should be here. Besides, I’ll have help in Denver.’
Darby felt relieved. She wanted to spend the evening going through the evidence files. A long-time sufferer from motion sickness, she had never been able to read or concentrate while in a car.
‘Sounds good,’ she said, and went back to writing.
‘Really?’ Coop asked in mock surprise. ‘Here I was expecting an argument.’ He handed her the keys to his rental and added, ‘You must be getting mellow in your old age.’
As Darby wrote, she thought about the plastic bag that had been stuck to David Downes’s face like a cobweb, his skin pale and sweaty beneath the bag, the thinning remains of his fine brown hair matted against his scalp and forehead. Several strips of duct tape had been wrapped around his mouth and the back of his head.
But it was the man’s eyes, wide and nearly bulging fromtheir sockets, that haunted Darby; how, after the bag had been removed, they had been locked on his daughter. Intimately familiar with the mechanics of death, she could feel the man’s terror – could feel the plastic bindings biting and then cutting through his skin as he thrashed about with the bag taped over his head, sucking in the last few breaths of precious oxygen through his nose and unable to see his wife or daughter but able to hear Samantha begging and pleading and screaming.
Coop was saying something to her.
‘Sorry, what’s that?’ Darby asked as she continued writing.
‘I said I hope there aren’t any surprises when this case goes to court. You know how lawyers can get.’
‘Which is why we should put this guy in a body bag.’
Darby caught Coop’s reproachful glare. ‘You can’t treat, let alone cure, a sexual sadist, Coop. There’s no therapy or psychotropic-medication regimen that will bring them anywhere near the neighbourhood of normal, that will allow them to feel remorse or empathy. If you don’t want a sadist to kill again, you either lock him up for life or you put him down.’
‘And you’re for putting him down.’
‘Why should taxpayers have to pick up the tab for someone who’s the mental equivalent of a rabid dog?’
Coop studied her face.
‘You don’t resolve evil, Coop. You extinguish
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