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“You’ve said that before.”
“And it usually works out pretty good.”
Ripley smirked. “I never said it didn’t.”
“If you get any news from the other houses, let me know straight away?”
“You got it. Same to you.” She tapped the back window of the car. “Don’t let this asshole out of your sight.”
“I won’t,” said Ella as she dived into the driver’s seat. She rumbled onto the road, back towards the precinct, one more last-ditch effort at capturing this maniac cosplaying as God.
She didn’t need to find the killer. She just needed to find Job before he did.
And there was one person who might know exactly where to find him.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
Ella escorted Jasper Edwards through the Alfa Creek precinct, down to a dank basement with some ancient holding cells, not used for decades judging by the rusted iron bars. Another officer locked Jasper inside while Ella stepped back, took a deep breath, and mustered her courage, ready to make her bold request of the man inside.
But she wasn’t asking Jasper anything.
Instead, she moved to the other end of the corridor, another holding cell, this one detaining a former priest with one eye.
He sat on the bench, staring blankly into a foam cup of water. Ella gripped the rusty bars with both hands and said, “Prison’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
Thomas Alden grinned. “You think these chains can hold me?”
“Yeah,” Ella said. “You’re looking at a long time for drug distribution.”
“We’ll see about that,” Alden laughed. It was the laugh of a man unwilling to accept his fate, as though pure stubbornness might help him evade justice.
“We could, or I could help you.”
Alden placed his cup down on the floor, sat back on the bench and folded his arms. He turned his single eye to his capturer. “I don’t need your help.”
“Yes you do. You’re what, forties? You’re looking at fifteen years easily given your past. By the time you get out you’ll be in your sixties, nearing retirement age with no savings, no assets. You want to live out your later years in poverty?”
Alden stayed silent, his mouth clamped shut like a steel trap.
“But I can reduce your sentence… if you help me.”
Something registered on his face. A faint twitch of acknowledgement. “Help you? You’re the one who put me in here.”
Ella ignored his comment. “I can’t promise I’ll get much off your sentence, maybe five years. But if you help me, you can make things right with the lord. Do something good before you get put away. Isn’t that what the Bible teaches? Moral guidance, shun selfishness, keep away existential angst.” She found herself channeling the words of Alden’s rival. The irony, she thought.
Alden shuffled uncomfortably on the bench, using the moment to distract from the fact he was clearly weighing up the proposition. Ella expected a stern refusal. After all, she couldn’t offer him much. All things considered, it was an unfair trade.
“Make right with God?” Alden said. “What would you know about that?”
Ella said, “The groans of the dying rise from the city, and the souls of the wounded cry out for help. But God changes no one with wrongdoing. Repent each time you think you know better than him.”
Something roused in Alden, a new spark. He stood up from his bench and approached the bars, scrutinizing Ella with something that resembled kinship. “The Book of Job,” he said.
Ella hoped she’d recited the speech properly. She’d only learned it ten minutes before. “Know it?”
“Like the back of my eyeball,” Alden said.
Ella smiled. The last thing she expected from this eyeless lunatic was a joke, but it meant he was coming round. If she wanted his full compliance, she needed to give him something, something that might arouse his curiosity and appeal to his sinister nature. “Our killer is reenacting that book. He’s taking away things people love the most, testing them, then murdering them when they fail.”
