‘So go on.Enthrall us,’ Ella said.
‘Typical Ella, always trying to play it cool in spite of that screaming voice in your head.How many people are listening to this call?Five, six?’
Typical Ella.Not Agent Dark, or detective.Ella.Like they were old friends catching up over coffee.
‘None.Just me,’ Ella lied.‘This body.Where is it?’
‘Come on, Ella.I bet Mia Ripley is there right now.The woman who desperately wants to retire but doesn’t have much else going on in her life.And what about Luca Hawkins?I heard he had a close call recently.’
Ripley and Ella exchanged a concerned look.Confusion, panic, offense.Who was this person – and how did he know such details about Behavioral’s inner circle?
‘You seem to know a lot about us.’
‘I do, but I know most about you, Ella.Someone’s told me all about you.Are you still working yourself to the bone because someone killed your dad thirty years ago?’
Ella bit her lip so hard she nearly drew blood.Words formed on her tongue but none would escape her mouth.She wanted nothing more than to reach through the phone and drag this guy inside-out through his own rear end.
‘Did I hit a nerve there, Ella?Maybe if you’re lucky, you won’t ever have to think about retirement because a bullet will decide for you.That’s what you want, isn’t it?Someone to put you out of your misery?’
That was it.She couldn’t hold back.
‘You think you know me?Been watching me?Or did you just read the news like all of the other creeps who think they know me?’
‘Neither.’
‘Well listen here, you sick f…’
‘The gates,’ the caller snapped.‘South of the parish line.The canal with the lock that nobody uses anymore.You know what a lock keeper does, Ella?He opens things up so other people can pass through.That’s what I did for him.I opened the door.Just like someone else did for me.’
Her veins turned to ice.‘What?What do you mean?’
One minute forty.Ella glanced at Ripley, who held up two fingers.Two minutes for the trace.They needed more time.
‘I think we’ve been on long enough.Just one more person to save, then this little game comes to an end.’
Click.
The line went dead.
Ella stared at the unblinking light on the phone and willed it to turn red.Ripley smashed her fist onto the table.
‘Goddammit.Not even two minutes.We don’t have a trace, Dark.’
Fields said, ‘We got a ping in the Ninth Ward, but the Ninth Ward is massive.’
‘That narrows it down to about seven thousand people.’
Fields begun pacing the room.As he strode from wall to wall, he asked ‘Who is this guy?How’s he know about you two?’
But Fields’s words were a million miles away, because she was replaying every word the killer had said.
The canal with the lock that nobody uses anymore.
The bayou gates.The canal lock nobody uses.The lock keeper.
The wooden man holding the oversized key.
She’d been staring at the answer since last night and it had taken a phone call from the killer to make her see it.
