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Sheriff Hale idly swung around in his chair and placed his hands back on his keyboard. He rolled the footage back to the timestamp in question. “This part? Why?”
“Just press play, and turn the volume up to the max.”
The sheriff obliged Ella’s request. Ashrill hiss echoed throughouttheroom, followed by the sound of fast-running water. The camera had picked up the sounds of the building, and so Ella prayed her hunch was correct. She could feel the reverberation coming off the computer speakers, but placed her good ear closer to them regardless.
On screen, the shadow knocked on the door of the storage unit, and Ella froze still, holding her breath.
Then it came.
Nameless…. Unright.
She tried to exhale but no breath would come. All she could say was, “Play that again.”
Ripley and Hale moved in for a closer listen too. Hale played it again.
The same words.
“You hear that?” Ella asked. “Our killer spoke to the victim.”
Sheriff Hale decreased the volume then rolled his chair around to face Ella. “How does that help?”
“We have his voice,” Ripley said, “and that’s preferable to a black smudge and some nondescript clothes. Good catch, Dark.”
But Ella wasn’t finished yet. “Play it again. What’s he saying? They don’t sound like real words.”
The sheriff repeated the process. Ella moved closer again and listened for any noticeable aspects of the speaker’s tonality, inflection, accent, nuance. Anything that might single this person out from a list of two-thousand townsfolk.
“What the hell is he saying?” asked Ripley. “Nameless, aimless, tameless?”
The words were muffled by the sounds of running water and clinking parts, but Ella was sure she could hear it right.
“Nameless and unright,” Ella said. “That’s what I’m hearing.”
“Unright? Is that even a word?”
Ella stepped back and cleared the fuzz from her ears. “I’ve never heard it. Seems unique, and that’s good for us. Could be something specific to him, or could relate to his mission.”
“Then we better get going,” Ripley said. “Dark and I will look into this footage. Sheriff, your guys are keeping an eye on the streets?”
“Yeah, my guys are patrolling. Charleston loaned us ten cops too. If we get a hit, you’ll be first to know.”
“Perfect.”
Ella readied herself for an evening of obsessive inspection, but there was something new clawing at her brain. An itch she couldn’t scratch, a lyric she couldn’t place, a persistent voice that seemed to be speaking in tongues.
Nameless and unright.
She wasn’t sure of much about this killer, but she was fairly certain she’d heard these words before.
CHAPTER TEN
As it turned out, unright was indeed a word, but Ella’s search of the bizarre string of words yielded nothing substantial. Ripley sat across from her at the desk, looking equally irritated at the lack of leads that the video had produced. She slammed her laptop shut and said, “For God’s sake, this is a kick in the nuts.”
It wasthe start of a balmyevening,the sun slowly sinking in the sky and casting a dusky hue over everythingittouched. A slight breeze rustled at the office window, carrying withita whisper of promise for whatwasto come.
Ella stayed composed, not matching Ripley’s frustration. She always found that when one partner kicked off, it made the other one weirdly calmer, as though they needed to bear the responsibility that the other was quickly shunning.
“It sucks, but it’s better than nothing.”
