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'Who was this firstvictim?' Ella muttered to herself.
The image of awoman—his prototype—began to coalesce in Ella's mind's eye, her features anamalgam of the victims' photographs that littered Ella's desk back in heroffice.
This prototype, thisoriginal source of his festering hatred, must have been someone significant inhis life, someone who left an indelible mark on his psyche. A mother, a lover,a therapist who failed him? The exact identity was still a mystery, but theconnection was undeniable. This woman had shaped the killer's twistedperception, becoming the blueprint for his subsequent series of violentreenactments.
She needed to act, totransform this newfound understanding into a strategy. If the killer was indeedrecreating the murder of a significant figure from his past, then understandingwho that person was could be the key to predicting his next move, to preventingfurther loss of life.
Somewhere, buriedbeneath layers of trauma and violence, was a woman who had unwittingly becomethe face of death for others.
The realization hitElla like a cold wave as she turned back toward her car, her mind burning withthe implications of her epiphany. The killer's actions, his specific choice ofvictims, it was all a twisted homage to this first, unknown woman. She representedthe genesis of his rage, the turning point that had set him on this dark path.
She thought again ofhistorical killers with similar psychopathologies; Glen Rogers, Ted Bundy,David Berkowitz, Harold Shipman, Edmund Kemper.
And there was onecommon denominator.
The killer always hada personal connection to the first victim.
She pulled out herphone, dialled her tech guy back at the FBI offices. It was late, but Marcuswas a night owl.
The phone rang once.
Twice.
'Ella,' the voicesaid. 'It's nearly midnight.'
She reached her car,jumped in and started up the ignition. 'Marcus, sorry to bother you so late,but I need something.'
'I might be able tohelp if you make it quick.'
Ella didn't know whothis unknown first victim was, but one thing was for sure.
She'd been in herforties, with green eyes and shoulder-length blonde hair.
'I need access to thefacial recognition software,' she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Ella sat rigid, herspine curved into a question mark over the luminescent glow of her laptop. Thesmall desk in her cramped office was littered with case files andcoffee-stained reports, but none so crucial as the digital gateway before her.Marcus had come through, granting her access to the FBI's image recognitionsoftware—a tool not without its flaws.
Marcus had warned herabout the software's quirks, its propensity to chase ghosts through the digitalunderbrush. But still, she leaned forward, initiating the sequence with adecisive click.
‘Come on,’ shewhispered, urging the machine to life. She'd used the software before, butwasn't allowed direct access to it herself. It was only useable by the FBI'stech department, and most matches had to be verified through a facialrecognition expert before data could be passed onto field agents. Thankfully,Marcus was a get results now, fill in paperwork later kind of worker.
The software wascapable of astounding precision, but it could equally spit out false positiveslike a slot machine run amok. Still, this was a gamble she was willing to take.Ella initiated the search protocol, feeling the thrum of the hard drive mirroringthe pulsation of blood through her veins.
The program whirred tolife, putting her laptop under strain. If the enigmatic killer's confessionheld any weight, there was another victim out there—Donna Shepherd wasn't thestarting point. This predecessor could be anywhere: filed away under accidents,buried in the suicides list or lost amongst the missing persons.The magnitude of possibilities was daunting.
She uploaded images ofthe three victims into the software. She input the parameters with surgicalcare: women who had died or disappeared between the ages of forty and fifty.Ella initiated the search and leaned back, the muscles in her neck tensed as ifbracing for an impact.
She reached for a coldcup of coffee, the liquid dark and bitter as the abyss she felt herself staringinto. With each passing second, the specter of doubt loomed larger. Had she ledherself astray with her theories? The silence in the room grew louder, punctuatedonly by the hum of the laptop fan working overtime.
Ella's gaze remainedfixed on the progress bar crawling across the screen, a digital lifelineinching towards revelation or disappointment. She thought of the victims, theirstories unfinished sentences that ended abruptly on the page. She felt akinship with them, an understanding that their lives were more than the sum ofpolice reports and autopsy findings. They deserved justice, and she was theconduit through which it must flow.
The cursor blinked inthe corner of the screen, a heartbeat waiting for the floodgates of data toopen. Ella straightened her posture, her hands set firmly on the desk, ready tosift through the sea of faces soon to be at her disposal. She didn't just hopeto find a connection; she needed to.
It was a hunt, and shewas both the hunter and the hound, tracking a scent that might only exist as awisp of a clue in a digital ether. But as every good detective knows, sometimesall it takes is one thread to unravel the entire tapestry of a crime. Ella Darkwas ready to pull.
The software churnedthrough data, its algorithms dissecting and cross-referencing with anindifference to the urgency of human need. Ella watched the progress bar inchforward, her lips pressed into a thin line. Her heart thrummed against herribcage, each beat a drum roll leading up to the crescendo of discovery. Shecould almost hear the whispers of the lost souls, their fates entwined with theoutcome of this digital gamble.
