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‘Ripley,’ she calledsoftly, hesitating just a moment as the older woman finished her conversationand hung up the phone. There was a warmth in Ripley's eyes, a lightness to herbeing that Ella couldn't help but envy, even as it pained her to acknowledgethe emotion. ‘I'm stepping out for a bit.'
Ripley glanced up..‘Everything alright?’
‘Need to clear myhead,’ Ella replied, managing a half-hearted smile. ‘Maybe a walk will help mesee things from a new angle.’
‘You want to head tothe hotel?’ Ripley asked. 'It's getting late.'
'I'm good to keepgoing. You know I won't sleep with all these setbacks.'
'Same. I'll keepworking here. Just going through the autopsy reports then I've got to updateEdis before the night is out.'
'Got it. I'll be backsoon,' Ella said. She made her way out of the precinct. Outside, the nightstretched out before her, a blank canvas on which to plot her next move. Thecase, with all its dead ends and unanswered questions, still waited for her, apuzzle only she could solve.
And she would, Ellaresolved, not just for the three dead therapists, but for herself, to provethat she was not defined by the shadows she chased, nor by the light she feltslipping through her fingers.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Ella stopped walking,standing just at the edge where the land met Lake Michigan, fixed on thehorizon where the water kissed the sky. It should have been beautiful, a momentof peace, but the scene before her was tainted, stained by the memories of casespast.
Every body of waterheld a story, a secret, a tragedy. Lakes, rivers, the endless expanse of theocean – they were all graveyards in her line of work, final resting places forsecrets too dark for the light of day.
Ella's hands found thepockets of her coat, her fingers curling around the fabric as she wrestled withthe images that tainted her appreciation for the landscape. It was a crueltwist that even here, in this place of natural splendor, the specter of deathlingered.
The case at handclawed its way to the forefront of her thoughts, demanding attention with itsperplexing details. A killer was at large, one whose methodical approach tomurder was as disturbing as it was precise.
Ella began to mentallydissect the killer's modus operandi. The perp's focus was female therapists,and he favored the midday lull, slipping into these sanctuaries of mentalhealing under the guise of a pseudonymous client. Once inside, he spoke withhis therapists before lashing out and suffocating them with his bare hands.
Strangulation—a methodso personal, so invasive, it spoke volumes of the killer's intent withoututtering a single word.
Yet, the absence of asexual component defied the usual patterns associated with such killings. Itwas an enigma that twisted the typical profile out of shape, leaving a questionmark where there should be an exclamation point. The contradiction didn't makesense to her. How could such primal brutality lack the element that typicallydrove killers to choose such an intimate method of execution?
Her mind replayed thecrime scenes, the brutal tableau etched into her memory: each therapist, lifeextinguished, left untouched after their last breath had been stolen. Noattempt to hide the bodies, no effort to erase what had been done; only chaosleft in the wake—a storm of paper, shattered keepsakes, and overturnedfurniture. It was a pattern of rage, yet oddly punctuated by precision.
The specificity waschilling—a killer fixated on women who shared a similar age, blonde hair andgreen eyes. Lust killers often hunted with such criteria, but there was no lusthere, only fury and a message encoded in every ransacked office.
Ella pondered thedichotomy between the killer’s rage and his meticulous victim selection.Usually, the blinding nature of such anger led to less discernment, not more.The paradox troubled her, the neat boxes of criminal profiling falling apartlike cardboard in the rain.
She considered thepossibility of a deep-seated vendetta, a personal vendetta so ingrained that ithad morphed into a singular, obsessive focus. Could it be that these women, intheir professional roles, represented something more to the killer? A figurefrom his past, a catalyst for his rage, crystallized into a specific image henow sought to destroy over and over again.
The destruction of theoffices post-murder was another piece of this confounding puzzle. It wasn'tenough for the killer to end the lives of these women; he had to obliteratetheir professional sanctuaries, spaces of trust and healing. It was as if he aimedto erase their impact, their very existence, leaving behind a path ofdestruction so absolute that nothing could be salvaged.
But why? What drovesuch hatred, such a need for obliteration? Was it a past trauma, a perceivedbetrayal that had rooted itself so deeply within the killer's psyche that itnow drove him to this specific, repeated act of violence?
Next, she thought ofthe tape recording she'd unearthed in Donna Shepherd's office.
The haunting words ofthe killer played over in Ella's mind.
I've killedsomeone, and I want to do it again.
Until now, the tapehad been a dead end, a voice without a face, without a name to anchor it toreality. The forensic audio analysis had yielded nothing; the voice didn'tmatch any in the existing databases, and no background noise could be isolatedto provide a clue to the location. It was as if the killer had vanished intothin air after leaving behind this accidental auditory proof of his crimes.
The killer claimed hehad killed before. That wasn't just a threat; it was a confession, a piece ofthe puzzle she hadn't fully appreciated until now. Ripley thought it might havebeen an intimidation tactic, but what if Donna had managed to escape the killer'sclutches and report him? This threat would have become a much largerinvestigation. If Ella knew serial killers, they only pointed out their murderswhen they had nothing left to lose. At the point of this confession, the unsubhad a lot to lose.
Then, amidst thecycling cadence of the recording replaying in her mind, a spark ignited in thedepths of her analytical prowess. An idea, embryonic and unformed, began totake shape.
The profile of thekiller, a meticulously cruel puppeteer, played over in her head. His victims,all mirror images of a singular archetype: women in their forties, blonde hair,green eyes. It was an intricate pattern, woven with precision, each victim a threadpulled taut by obsession.
As she looked out overthe lake, her focus narrowed, honing in on the unsub's ritualistic behavior. Hekilled not just with his hands but with intent, replaying a scenario that waspersonal, maybe even symbolic. It was as if he sought to exorcise a demon thattook the same form each time it manifested—a demon that had first materializedas someone specific. Ella scanned her memory bank for historical cases alongthe same lines; Glen Rogers killed redheads and left them in bathtubs, eachvictim a surrogate for his own mother. Ted Bundy killed brunettes with middleparts because they reminded him of the first girl who rejected him. DavidBerkowitz fixated on women with long dark hair because they reminded him of awoman he couldn’t have.
