‘See?This is what I’m talking about with you.You’re getting real rogue, Dark.’
‘What?You think it’s a bad idea?’
‘I think it’s a great idea, but it doesn’t work like that.So you swipe a phone, find something useful, then how do you explain that in your report?’
Ripley’s cell chose that moment to erupt in a burst of tinny music.Ripley stuck it to her ear.
‘Talk to me, Fields.’A beat.‘He’s where?You’re kidding me?Since when?’
Ella identified the story beats from Ripley’s expression alone.The wider she flared her nostrils, the worse the news, and right now she could fit a rolling pin up there.
‘No, great job.Yeah, I’ll tell her.’Ripley jabbed her phone and dropped it back on the table.‘Bad news.’
‘You’re not kidding.What?’
‘FIelds got a hit on Ryan Grimshaw.In Baton Rouge.Since last week.’
Ella fought the urge to grab a pen and throw it at the wall.‘Freaking Baton Rouge.I never liked that place.’
‘Working construction over there, which means he was nowhere near New Orleans last night.’
‘Guess it wasn’t the husband.’
‘Every rule has an exception.Since we’re up slack alley, why don’t we go visit Rose’s house?Her file says she lives with her sister.’
Ella chewed her lip, considering.She spat out a piece of dead skin.‘Worth a shot.Better than sitting here fondling dead trees.Just let me grab the ballet dancer we found on Rose’s body, see if she recognizes it.’
Ella snatched up the evidence bag and shoved it in her pocket.The desk in front of her was buried under paper that told her precisely nothing.Two women with no connection, two figurines nobody could explain, and a killer out there somewhere who apparently had the decency to leave calling cards but not the courtesy to make them legible.
Carol Holloway hadn’t recognised the snowman.Rose’s sister might not recognise the ballet dancer.And if that happened, Ella would be exactly where she’d started.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
He slid his car to a stop at the bottom of the lane.This was right on the edge of suburbia, where the houses grew fewer and farther between, but the yards expanded to compensate.Prime real estate, if you liked your space.He knew his target did.This street was for those who valued privacy and seclusion, and he had plenty of both in this spot.There might be a few cameras and nosy neighbors around, but he had all the hotspots staked out in advance.
Right now, it was just him and the jitters – the ones that hadn’t dissolved since last night.Perverse as it sounded, he hoped that stayed with him for the rest of his life, because those shaky hands and oiled guts made the eventual consequences worth it.Last night still felt like a fever dream, but driving past that alley on Natkin Way this morning had all but confirmed this was very real.
He hadn’t intended to take two lives in one night, but fortune had rained down upon him and forced his hand.After leaving the redhead dead by the river, he’d driven around in a state of frenzy, and some unconscious prompt had taken him towards his next target’s house.As though something else, some kind of unseen force, had guided him there.
Then, this same force had dropped a divine gift in his lap – Rose Michaels, his next target – walking alone through the midnight streets in that pretty little sundress.He hadn’t been able to resist, and before his conscious mind had caught up with his body, he had his hands around her neck and her life in his hands.
And since then, those sixteen or seventeen hours ago, he’d played both scenes in his head on a loop.He’d met plenty of junkies in the big house and they’d always said that when you discovered a new drug, you couldn’t think of anything else.He’d laughed them off at the time, but after last night, he understood.
His mentor had been right.This was his calling.The mentor hadn’t put it in those exact words, of course, but they’d seen his pain and named his rage and told him to put it somewhere before it ate him alive.
‘The pain is a part of you.A manifestation of unresolved trauma.That void in your chest is aching to be filled.’
Initially, it had sounded like psychobabble, but the comments had followed him back to his bunk and sat with him in the dark and slowly, over weeks, they’d started to make sense.The good mentor had talked about meaning and creating something bigger than yourself and most importantly, preventing other people from enduring the same pain.
‘Pure empathy,’the mentor had called it, and then they’d talked aboutexternalizingthe trauma,transference, projection.
And then the mentor had asked, ‘If you could, how would you help someone in your position?’
The jigsaw pieces had begun to align at that point.
He killed the engine.There was no sense announcing his arrival.By now he knew the rhythm of the neighborhood.Mrs.Kowalski next door would be engrossed in soap operas, the Coogans across the street were on vacation in California, and the retiree two doors down only unglued himself from his chair to hit the bathroom.For this brief window, the street was his and his alone.
Reaching under his collar, he clutched the object that never left his neck.This was all that remained of his old life, the life that seemed a million years ago now.But he had to keep those memories close, to remind himself what all this was for.
