But when Ella looked up, she saw a figure.A man was standing in the kitchen doorway at the end of the hall.He had a shotgun levelled at Ella’s chest.
‘Who are you?’
Ella raised her own pistol, but the man stepped forward.Ripley edged closer with her Glock trained on the man too.
‘Jared Novak?’Ripley called.
‘Who’s asking?Why are you in my house?’His gun darted from Ella to Mia, and Ella used the opportunity to scrutinize him from top to bottom, see if he fit the profile of someone who could kill two women.He was wide, stocky, solid muscle underneath a few layers of fat.Her immediate conclusion was that he could.
‘Because we want to talk about Amber Holloway and Rose Michaels,’ Ripley said.
Jared’s expression deflated.He lowered his gun a fraction.‘Rose?What about her?’
‘Why don’t you come with us and we’ll tell you,’ said Ella.
Jared began to shake.‘Is she… okay?’
Ella let the silence do the talking.Jared stared at her for a long moment, then the shotgun drifted downward until the barrel was pointing at the floor.He backed up until he found the kitchen doorframe and leaned against it, then dropped the shotgun to the floor.
She holstered her weapon.She looked at Ripley over Jared Novak’s broken shape and neither of them said a word, because there was nothing to say yet.Grief and guilt looked exactly the same from the outside, and right now Ella couldn’t tell which one she was looking at.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ella sized up Jared Novak through the two-way mirror.He sat at the interrogation table with his head hung low like a dog that had crapped on the rug.He propped his elbows on the scuffed laminate and raked his hands through his hair over and over again, as though any second the magic switch in his brain would flip and make him remember how the hell he got here.
‘Doesn’t exactly look comfortable in there, does he?’said Sergeant Fields.
‘Can’t blame him.I wouldn’t be either if the police burst through my door.’
Fields gave her the side-eye.‘Ripley said the figurine’s from a music box this guy gave his ex.That’s the connection?’
Ella watched Jared heave a ragged sigh and glance around the room, from the peeling walls to the lights, but he refused to land on the empty chair across from him.The chair reserved for her.
‘Jared Novak, 26, ex-boyfriend of Rose Michaels.He gave her a music box when they first got together, and that music box had a snowman on it.Rose donated it the box a few months ago after the custody battle.We don’t know where.The snowman from that music box turned up sealed to the necklace of Amber Holloway.’
‘He got a history?’
‘Nope.No priors, not even a parking ticket.On paper, he’s clean as a whistle.’
Ripley ambled closer with a steaming Styrofoam cup in hand.‘Doesn’t mean a thing.Everyone’s clean until their first.’
‘She’s right.Even Ted Bundy worked a suicide prevention hotline.’Ella adjusted the folder under her arm.‘We need to be careful what we say, because we can only hold this guy for 24 hours.I’ll go in and see what I can wrangle out of him.’
Ripley said, ‘What about the kid?’
‘He’s been with Novak’s mom since yesterday.’
It could mean nothing, because grandparents took kids all the time.Or it could mean that Jared Novak had cleared his schedule the night two women were strangled.
‘You want me in there?’asked Ripley.‘Or just watching from the bleachers?’
Ella considered.Ripley could be an effective battering ram when a perp needed softening up, but her presence ran the risk of making Jared shut down.She needed him talking, not turtling.
‘Let me take a run at him solo.He might be chattier if it’s just us youngsters.’
‘Keep dreaming.’
‘Hey, I’m only a few years older than his ex.If he’s the type I think he is, it’ll infuriate him that I was the one who brought him here.And fury means mistakes, and mistakes mean slip-ups.’
