‘Anyway, not much is going to happen for a few days, so if you ladies want to explore NOLA, go ahead.It’s only-’ Fields checked his watch - ‘2PM, so go hit up the Italian place down the block.I’d come with you, but I’m up to my neck in dead women in alleyways.’
‘Yeah, come on,’ Ripley said to Ella.‘I haven’t eaten since I left the house, and that feels like days ago.’
Ella looked at Fields.‘Actually, do you have the case files on Doyle?Anything the NOPD put together?’
‘Sure, but it’s a mess.Creed and Doyle got folded into the same pile when the FBI took an interest.You want to go through it?’
‘If you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all.Take a seat in one of the side offices.I’ll bring everything through.’He turned and started down the corridor.‘Follow me.’
Ripley waited until Fields was four steps ahead, then turned to Ella with a look that could have stripped paint.It was the specific expression of a woman who had been promised a meal and had it snatched away, and who wanted that fact acknowledged before she was willing to move on.
Ella mouthedlaterand gestured after Fields.
Ripley’s expression didn’t change.She held it a beat longer to ensure the message had landed, then followed.
***
Ella sat in a side office with two folders in front of her.The NOPD had been thorough with their documentation of Lindsey Doyle’s house.There were over 300 shots covering every room, close-ups of surfaces, backs of cupboards and spaces under beds.
But it was all a load of nothing.Or rather, nothing that told Ella anything she didn’t already know about Lindsey Doyle, which was that the woman had been meticulous about leaving as little of herself behind as possible.
She set the Doyle photographs aside and picked up the Creed file.
Ella had never been to Austin Creed’s alligator farm.She’d built the entire case against Austin Creed based on behavioral profiling and had never once set foot on his property.Looking at the photographs now, she felt the strange disjunction of seeing a place that had been central to her professional life and finding it completely alien.
The farm was about twenty miles outside the city.The NOPD shots showed a property that had been left to nature quickly and without ceremony.The holding pens ran along the left side of the main compound; long, low concrete enclosures with rusted gate hinges and standing water gone dark and still.A chest freezer sat outside the nearest pen with its lid propped open.Beside it stood a row of feeding poles stacked against the fence like javelins.There was a skinning table under a corrugated iron lean-to.Heavy wading boots, size twelve or thirteen, were still parked at the back door as though their owner had just stepped out of them.
The hatchery building was a low concrete block near the rear of the property.Inside, the incubation units sat empty on their shelving.A hand-drawn temperature log was still pinned to the wall.Someone had been meticulous about that, at least.
She worked through the shots one by one and spent considerable time on each.After all, she had all the time in the world.
The farmhouse interior was sparse.Austin Creed had lived alone and didn’t care about it.His farmhouse was vast judging by how many different rooms appeared in the photos.The kitchen had a single plate still in the drying rack.There was a cast iron skillet on the stove still with old grease in it.A bottle of hot sauce sat on the shelf.The counters were tea-stained, and Ella thought it was odd that her and Austin Creed could actually have something in common.
Ella worked through the other rooms.In what she guessed was the living room, a beaten-up sofa faced a television.The hallway had a row of coat hooks and none of them were occupied.Two spare rooms appeared to have been used for storage, both of which housed boxes and bags of animal feed.There was a pair of thick rubber gloves on the floor beside the bags.
Then came a utility room with a chest freezer.Next to it was head-height metal shelving holding wire mesh and rolls of plastic sheeting.There were some overalls in plastic packaging, and Ella paused on that photograph a little longer than the others.
Curiosity satisfied, next up was Austin Creed’s bedroom.His bed was still a mess from when he’d slept in it the night before she’d captured him.On his bedside table sat a box of painkillers, a penknife, two receipts and a music box with a pelican sitting on top.After the bedroom room came what Ella could only describe as an office, though it felt too generous a word for it.A desk pushed against the wall, a cheap swivel chair, a computer tower that the NOPD had clearly already seized –the power cable was still there but the unit was gone.There was a corkboard on the wall above it, the kind used for pinning invoices and delivery notes, and it still had a few on it – feed suppliers, a vet’s business card, what looked like a permit renewal from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.In the corner of the room, propped against the wall, was a rifle in a soft case.Legal, almost certainly.Half the properties in the parish would have one.Ella looked at it anyway.
The office door opened.Ripley stepped in with two shop-bought coffee cups.She said, ‘Since you deprived me of dinner, this is the next best thing, even though you don’t deserve it.’
‘Thanks, partner.’Ella took one.‘You didn’t waste any time.’
‘Neither did you.Why do you want to look through that file?’
‘Not sure.We never went to Creed’s farm, and I was always curious about it.’
‘I’d ask if there’s anything interesting in there but I already know the answer.’
‘The place is a wreck, and it’s full of old junk and animal food.I guess Ed Gein set the gold standard for serial killer farmhouses of horror and no one is ever going to come close.’
‘Not even a single bowl made from a human skull,’ Ripley said.‘What about Doyle’s house?’
Ella went back to the first batch of photos and slid a few across the table, but Ripley seemed uninterested.‘Conveniently barren.I was looking for pictures of her family but there aren’t any.’
‘Because she was smart enough to get rid of them.She’d have known the cops would have descended on her house eventually.’Ripley slid the pictures back to Ella.‘So, we came all this way to look at pictures of an empty house and a farm full of alligator food.’
