Ella believed her.The house said as much.This had been a small life shared between two people who paid attention to each other.
‘Is there anything else you can tell us about your daughter?We’re going to do everything we can to find who did this.’
Carol pushed to her feet, arms wrapped tight around her middle like she was physically holding herself together.‘No.Nothing.’
She caught Ripley’s eye.Ripley gave her nothing back, which was Ripley’s way of saying they had nowhere else to go from here.
‘We’ll get out of your hair, Miss Holloway.Thank you for your time.If you think of anything else-,’
‘I won’t,’ she said flatly.
Ella and Mia showed themselves out.The sound of muffled crying followed them all the way to the car.
CHAPTER TEN
Ella and Mia always kept their desks pushed together, facing each other, mostly because it made passing paperwork easier.But also because an old cop superstition said that thoughts traveled in a straight line from the forehead, and while Ella didn’t buy it, she didn’t want to risk being wrong either.So, she wanted Ripley positioned to intercept anything she forgot to say out loud.
They’d been sitting in silence for an hour when Ripley asked, ‘Got anything?’
‘Not a damn thing.’
‘You been through the finer details?’
‘Everything, even God damn tax returns.’
‘Tax returns?Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ella admitted.
‘What about bank statements?Consumerism is all the rage these days, especially with twenty-somethings.’
Ella consulted the paper in front of her.‘Nothing out of the ordinary for Amber.Just your typical twenty-something purchases.Clothes, makeup, booze.’She squinted at a line item halfway down the page.‘Looks like she had a thing for scented candles.Lot of charges to Yankee Candle in here.’
‘How about Rose?’
‘Same deal.Except swap out the candles for Starbucks.’Ella tossed the statement onto the growing pile of dead ends.‘I’m telling you, Mia, these two didn’t orbit anywhere near each other.They were both party girls, but they didn’t hit the same places.’
Ripley grunted.‘What about their socials?Any mutual friends, groups in common?’
‘Nope.I ran their profiles through every platform I could think of.Not a single point of overlap.Maybe these two victims aren’t connected at all.’
‘You don’t really believe that.’
Ripley was right, she didn’t believe that.The figurines, the staging and the consistent victimology.These girls must have had at least one thing in common.Somewhere between Amber Holloway and Rose Michaels was a purpose.
Ella blew out a gusty sigh.‘No, but I’ve officially come up short.Anything on that deadbeat ex-husband of Amber’s?Ryan Grimshaw?’
‘Not yet.Fields checked his house but he wasn’t home, so now he’s tracking his license plate.I’ve sent some pictures of the figurines to Amelia at HQ.She’s going to run some image recognition on them.’
Ella shot out of her chair, needing to pace, to feel the circulation in her legs.‘The vics’ cell phones?Do we have access yet?’
‘You know how long clearance takes for that, Dark.’
She certainly did.Clearance to access victims’ tech items seemed to get longer every week.She longed for the days that the old-timers told her about, when they could snatch a cell phone from a crime scene and devour the contents right there.‘Damn privacy laws.’
‘If people didn’t keep their entire lives on their phones, it wouldn’t be such a problem.’
‘Thanks a lot, Big Tech.I don’t see why we can’t just swipe it out of evidence.Those phones are just sitting on the table.I saw them.’
