Fear Nothing: A Detective

  ALSO BY LISA GARDNER

  NOVELS

  The Perfect Husband

  The Other Daughter

  The Third Victim

  The Next Accident

  The Survivors Club

  The Killing Hour

  Alone

  Gone

  Hide

  Say Goodbye

  The Neighbor

  Live to Tell

  Love You More

  Catch Me

  Touch & Go

  SHORT WORKS

  The 7th Month

  DUTTON

  —est. 1852—

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

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  A Penguin Random House Company

  Copyright © 2014 by Lisa Gardner, Inc.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Gardner, Lisa.

  Fear nothing : a detective D. D. Warren novel / Lisa Gardner.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-525-95308-1 (hardback)

  ISBN 978-0-698-14852-9 (eBook)

  1. Warren, D. D. (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Police—Massachusetts—Boston—Fiction. 3. Serial murderer—Boston—Fictiion. 4. Boston (Mass.)—Fiction. 7. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3557.A7132F43 2014

  813’.54—dc23 2013037180

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Also By Lisa Gardner

  Title Page

  Copyright

  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

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Rockabye, baby, on the treetop . . .

  The body was gone, but not the smell. As Boston homicide detective D. D. Warren knew from experience, this kind of scene could hold the stench of blood for weeks, even months to come. The crime scene techs had removed the bedding, but still, blood had a life of its own. Seeping into drywall. Slipping behind wooden trim. Pooling between floorboards. Twenty-eight-year-old Christine Ryan used to have approximately 4.7 liters of blood pumping through her veins. Now most of it saturated the bare mattress occupying center stage of this grim, gray space.

  When the wind blows, the cradle will rock . . .

  The call had come in shortly after 9:00 A.M. Good friend Midge Roberts had grown concerned when Christine hadn’t answered the knocks on her front door or the texts to her cell phone. Christine was the responsible kind. Didn’t oversleep, didn’t run off with a cute bartender, didn’t come down with the flu without providing a heads-up to her best bud, who picked her up promptly at seven thirty each weekday morning for their joint commute to a local accounting firm.

  Midge had contacted a few more friends. All agreed no one had heard from Christine since dinner the night before. Midge gave in to instinct and summoned the landlord, who finally agreed to open the door.

  Then vomited all over the upstairs hall upon making the find.

  Midge hadn’t come up the stairs. Midge had stood in the foyer of the narrow duplex, and, as she’d reported to D.D.’s squad mate Phil, she’d known. Just known. Probably, even from that distance, she’d caught the first unmistakable whiff of drying blood.

  Rockabye, baby . . .

  Upon her arrival, the scene had immediately struck D.D. with its marked contrasts. The young female victim, sprawled spread-eagle on her own bed, staring up at the ceiling with sightless blue eyes. Pretty features appearing nearly peaceful as her shoulder-length brown hair pooled softly upon a stark white pillow.

  Except then, from the neck down . . .

  Skin, peeled off in thin, curling ribbons. D.D. had heard of such things. At eleven this morning, she got to see them firsthand. A young woman, flayed in her own bed. With a bottle of champagne on her nightstand and a single red rose placed across her bloody abdomen.

  Next to the bottle of champagne, Phil had discovered a pair of handcuffs. The kind purchased in high-end sex shops and fur lined for comfort. Taking in the cuffs, the sparkling wine, the red rose . . .

  Lovers’ tryst gone awry, Phil had theorized. Or, given the level of violence, a jilted boyfriend’s final act of vengeance. Christine had broken up with some sorry sucker, and last night, the sorry sucker had returned to prove once and for all who was in charge.

  But D.D. wasn’t on board. Yes, there were handcuffs, but not on the victim’s wrists. Yes, there was uncorked champagne, but none poured into waiting flutes for drinking. Finally, sure, there was the rose, but not in a florist’s wrap for gifting.

  The scene felt too . . . deliberate to her. Not a crime of passion or a falling-out between consenting adults. But a carefully staged production that involved months, years, perhaps even a lifetime of careful planning and consideration.

  In D.D.’s opinion, they weren’t looking at just a crime scene. They were looking at a killer’s deepest, darkest fantasy.

  And while this might be the first scene they were investigating, a homicide this heavily ritualized was probably not the last.

  When the wind blows . . .

  D.D.’s squad, the crime scene techs, the ME’s office, not to mention a plethora of other investigators, had spent six hours working the space. They’d documented, dusted, diagramed and discussed until the sun had set, the dinner commute was on and tempers were flaring. As lead detective, D.D. had finally sent everyone home with orders to refresh, then regroup. Tomorrow was another day, when they could search federal databases for other murders matching this description, while building the profiles of their victim and killer. Plenty to do, many angles to investigate. Now get some rest.

  Everyone had listened. E
xcept, of course, D.D.

  It was nearly 10:00 P.M. She should be returning home. Kissing her husband hello. Checking in on her three-year-old son, already tucked into bed at this late hour. Working on her own good night’s sleep, versus hanging out at a darkened crime scene with her toddler’s current favorite nursery rhyme running through her head.

  But she couldn’t do it. Some instinct—insight?—had driven her back to this too-quiet town house. For most of the day, she and her fellow detectives had stood here and debated what they saw. Now she stood with the lights out, in the middle of a blood-scented room, and waited for what she could feel.

  Rockabye, baby . . .

  Christine Ryan had already been dead before the killer had made his first cut. That much they could tell from the lack of anguish stamped into her pale face. The victim had died relatively easily. Then, most likely as her heart emitted a final few pumps, the killer had delivered his first downward slash across her right flank.

  Meaning the murder hadn’t been about the victim’s pain, but about . . .

  Presentation? Staging? The ritual itself? A killer with a compulsion to skin. Maybe as a kid, he’d started with small animals or family pets, then, when the fantasy had refused to abate . . .

  The ME would check for hesitation marks, if determining jagged edges was even possible given the mounds of thin, curling skin, as well as test for evidence of sexual assault.

  But once again, D.D. suffered a nagging sense of discomfort. Those elements were the things a criminal investigator could see. And deep inside, D.D. already suspected that was the wrong track. Indulging, in fact, in exactly what the killer wanted them to focus on.

  Why stage things just so, if not to manipulate your audience into seeing exactly what you wanted them to see?

  Then it came to her. The thought she’d had in the back of her head. The first and foremost question worth pursuing and the reason she now stood in the dark, her vision deliberately obscured: Why set a scene?

  A sound. In the distance. The town house’s front door, easing carefully open? A creak of the stair riser as a heavy foot found the first step? The groan of a floorboard just down the hall?

  A sound. Once distant, now closer, and that quickly, Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren realized something she should’ve figured out fifteen minutes ago. Jack’s favorite lullaby, the children’s song she’d been humming under her breath . . . That tune wasn’t coming from solely inside her head.

  Someone else was singing it, too. Softly. Outside the bedroom. From elsewhere in the dead woman’s apartment.

  Rockabye, baby, on the treetop . . .

  D.D.’s hand shot to her sidearm, unsnapping the shoulder holster, drawing her Sig Sauer. She whirled, dropping into a crouch as her gaze scanned the corners for signs of an intruder. No shifts in the blackness, no shadows settling into the shape of a human form.

  But then she heard it. A creaking floorboard elsewhere in the apartment.

  When the wind blows, the cradle will rock . . .

  Quickly, she crept from the bedroom into the darkened hall, leading with her weapon. The narrow corridor didn’t offer any overhead lights. Just more shadows from the glow of neighbors’ apartments casting through the uncovered windows. A wash of lighter and darker shades of gray dancing across the hardwood floor.

  But she knew this house, D.D. reminded herself. She’d already trod this hall, judiciously avoiding the pools of vomit, while noticing every pertinent detail.

  She reached the top of the stairs, still looking from side to side, then peering down into the inky pool that marked the landing below. The humming had disappeared. Worse than the singing was the total silence.

  Then, from out of the darkness, low and lilting: “Rockabye, baby, on the treetop . . .”

  D.D. halted. Her gaze ping-ponged reflexively, trying to determine the location of the intruder as the singing continued, slow and mocking: “When the wind blows, the cradle will rock . . .”

  She got it then. Felt her own blood turn to ice as the full implication sank in. Why do you stage a scene? Because you’re looking for an audience. Or maybe one audience member in particular. Say, a hardworking detective stupid enough to be found after dark at a crime scene all alone.

  She reached belatedly for her cell.

  Just as a fresh noise registered directly behind her.

  She spun. Eyes widening.

  As a figure darted out of the shadows, heading straight for her.

  “And when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall . . .”

  Instinctively, D.D. stepped back. Except she’d forgotten about the top of the staircase. Her left foot, searching for traction, found only open space.

  No! Her phone, clattering down. Her Sig Sauer, coming up. Trying belatedly to lean forward, regain her balance.

  Then . . . the shadow reaching out. Herself falling back.

  Down, down, down.

  At the last second, D.D. squeezed the trigger. An instinctive act of self-preservation. Boom, boom, boom. Though she knew it was too little, too late.

  Her head connected with the hardwood landing. A crack. A shooting pain. The final lyric, whispering through the dark:

  “And down will come baby, cradle and all . . .”

  Chapter 1

  MY OLDER SISTER discovered my condition when I was three years old. Our foster mother walked in on her wielding the scissors, while I stood there, bare arms obediently held out, blood dripping from my wrists onto the olive-green shag carpet.

  My six-year-old sister said, “Check it out, she doesn’t even care.” And slashed the scissors across my forearm. Fresh blood welled.

  The woman screamed, then fainted.

  I peered down at her, wondering what had happened.

  After that, my sister went away. And I was taken to the hospital. There, doctors spent weeks running various tests that should’ve hurt more than my sister’s sharp-edged ministrations, except that turned out to be the point: Due to an extremely rare mutation of my SCN9A gene, I don’t feel pain. I can feel pressure. The scissors, pressing down against my skin. I can feel texture. The smoothness of the freshly sharpened blades.

  But the actual sensation of my skin splitting, blood beading . . .

  I don’t feel what you feel. I never have. And I never will.

  • • •

  AFTER SHANA CARVED UP MY ARMS with sewing shears, I didn’t see her for another twenty years. My sister spent most of that time in various institutions, gaining the distinction of being one of Massachusetts’s youngest kids ever placed on antipsychotic meds. She attempted her first murder at eleven, then succeeded at fourteen. Our own peculiar family legacy.

  If she became another casualty of the system, however, then I became the state’s poster child for success.

  Given my diagnosis, the doctors were not convinced foster care could adequately meet my needs. After all, babies born with the same genetic mutation had been known to chew off their tongues while teething. Then there were the toddlers who suffered third-degree burns by placing their hands on red-hot burners and leaving them there; not to mention the seven-, eight-, nine-year-olds who ran for days on shattered ankles or keeled over from burst appendixes they never knew were inflamed.

  Pain is very useful. It warns you of danger, teaches you of hazards and provides consequences for your actions. Without it, jumping off the roof can sound like a great idea. Same with plunging your hand into a vat of boiling oil to grab the first fry. Or taking a pair of pliers and ripping out your own fingernails. Most kids with congenital insensitivity to pain report that they’re acting on impulse. It’s not a matter of why, but of why not?

  Others, however, will tell you, a note of longing in their voices, that they did it to see if it would hurt. Because to not feel something known by so many can turn it into the Holy Grail of your entire life. A singular driving force. A re
lentless obsession. The pleasure of finally feeling pain.

  Children who suffer from pain sensory disorders have a high mortality rate; few of us live to adulthood. Most require round-the-clock care. In my case, one of the geneticists, an older man with no wife and kids, pulled some strings and brought me home, where I became his beloved adopted daughter as well as his favorite case study.

  My father was a good man. He hired only the best caretakers to monitor me 24/7, while dedicating his weekends to helping me manage my condition.

  For example, if you cannot feel pain, then you must find other ways to register potential threats to your physical well-being. As a small child, I learned boiling water equaled danger. Same with red-hot burners on stoves. I would feel an item first for texture. Anything that registered as sharp, I was to leave alone. No scissors for me. Or hard-edged furniture. Or kittens or puppies or any life-form with sharp claws. Walking only. No jumping, no sliding, no skipping, no dancing.

  If I went outside, I wore a helmet and appropriate padding at all times. Then, upon my reentry, my armor would be removed and my body inspected for signs of damage. Including the time my caretaker went to remove my shoe and my foot twisted around a full one-eighty. Apparently, I had ripped out all the tendons walking down to the gardens. Or another time when I arrived covered in bee stings. I had stumbled upon a hornet’s nest and, with a five-year-old’s naïveté, assumed they were dancing with me.

  With age, I learned to conduct my own physicals. Daily temperature checks, so I can judge if I have a fever, which might indicate my body is suffering from some kind of infection. Nightly inspections, standing naked before a full-length mirror, where I study every inch of my skin for bruises and lacerations, then inspect my joints for signs of swelling or stress. Next, on to my eyes: A red eyeball is an angry eyeball. Checking my ears: Blood in the ear cavity could indicate a ruptured eardrum and/or possible head injury. Then my nasal passageways, the inside of my mouth, teeth, tongue and gums.

  My body is a vessel, a useful item, to be inspected, managed and tended. I have to take extra care of it because the lack of molecular channels to direct electrical impulses from pain-sensing nerves to my brain means my body can’t take care of itself. Someone with my condition can’t afford to trust what I feel. Instead, I need to go by what I can see, hear, taste and smell.