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‘Ripley,’ she finally said, hervoice resolute despite the setback, ‘double-check these with Puder's boss. Makesure they're legit.’
‘Already on it,’ Ripley replied,her response terse and efficient.
As Ella handed back the clockcards, the weight of the investigation pressed anew against her shoulders. Shemet Puder's glare, reading the triumph in his heated gaze while grappling withthe frustration of having to return to the drawing board.
‘Seems you're off the hook... fornow,’ Ella conceded, her words deliberate, leaving room for the tides to turnyet again.
‘Fantastic police work, Detective,’Puder sneered, venom dripping from his words like poison from a fang.
‘Job's not done, Puder. And neitherare you, if we find anything else,’ Ella shot back, locking eyes with him.
The exchange was terse, fraughtwith unspoken threats and the promise of continued scrutiny. Ella stepped awayfrom the cell, a wave of disappointment punching her in the stomach.
Daniel Puder wasn't her man.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ella was lost in the corkboard thatdominated one wall of her office. The board was a patchwork of color-codednotes, grainy photographs, and yarn tracing the sinuous pathways of logic andevidence. She had been so sure about Daniel Puder, with his history of violenceand his proximity to the victims. But now, that certainty crumbled away likeashes.
The door creaked open, and Ripleystormed inside. She slumped in the chair across from Ella, flipping open hernotepad.
'His clock cards check out Dark, sowe're shit out of luck,' Ripley said.
Ella felt the frustration knot inher stomach, but she didn't let it surface. Instead, she nodded slowly,accepting this new dead end with a seasoned resilience.
‘And the rest?’ she asked.
‘Officers are combing through anypossible leads—eyewitnesses, CCTV footage. We're looking for any chance Pudermight've slipped away during his shift.’ Ripley's lips pressed into a thinline. ‘But between you and me, it feels like clutching at straws.’
‘Straws are better than nothing,’Ella said. She turned back to her desk, a landscape of papers and files. Herfingers traced over Rebekah Holden's client list, then moved to DonnaShepherd's. The two therapists' worlds collided here, in the aftermath of theirdeaths, their clientele a tangle of names and potential motives.
‘Nothing else in the client lists?’Ripley asked.
‘Nothing concrete,’ Ella admitted.She picked up the lists, scanning them yet again. Each name had beenscrutinized, each connection mapped out, yet the killer remained a shadowbeyond reach. ‘But I'll keep digging.’
Ella's fingers hesitated over thelists, the edges of the papers now worn from relentless scrutiny. Her mind, arelentless engine churning through facts and possibilities, snagged on aninconsistency that hadn't been apparent before.
Rebekah's notes weremeticulous—dense paragraphs detailing her clients' fears, dreams, and grimmestconfessions. But Donna's list stood barren in comparison—just names, noaccompanying insights, no scribbled breadcrumbs to follow into the labyrinth ofa troubled psyche.
‘Something isn't right,’ Ellacontinued.
Ripley straightened up. ‘Lots ofthings about this case aren't right,' she said.
‘Donna Shepherd,’ Ella said,tapping the edge of the paper as if to beckon the absent notes to appear. ‘Shedidn’t leave anything behind about her sessions. No observations, no remarks.How did she operate without any record of her thoughts?’
‘Maybe she had a photographicmemory,’ Ripley proposed. 'I've never seen you write anything down either.'
‘Even so,’ Ella countered, ‘whyseparate client names from other details? It’s... disjointed.’ Her eyes neverleft the paper, as if by sheer will she could coax out the answers from itsfibers.
‘Could be she wrote somewhereelse,’ Ripley offered, stepping closer to survey the documents strewn acrossthe desk. ‘A personal journal, hidden files, something off the books.’
‘An office with no computer,nothing digital,’ Ella added, half-thinking aloud, half-posing a question. Thevery nature of their profession demanded documentation, a trail of therapeuticencounters. Yet here they were, grappling with a void where they expected tofind a trove of information.
‘Or,’ Ripley interjected, her voicedropping to a conspiratorial whisper, ‘maybe someone made sure her notes wouldnever be found.’
‘Seems to me we need to dig deeperinto Donna's methods. There has to be something we're missing.’
‘Agreed,’ Ripley nodded sharply.‘But where do we start? The client list was all Caldwell found in Donna'soffice. Maybe she logged everything on a computer?’
