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The Rose Killer looked her with one eye. The other was clamped shut. “No.”
She spotted a flicker of recognition. She was onto something. “You’ve clearly got alcohol issues, or maybe withdrawal issues. You’re twitching like a cockroach over here, and you’re dozing in and out of reality. Be honest, she left you because you were a drunk, didn’t she?”
Now came the reaction she wanted. The Rose Killer slammed his hand on the wall, doing much more damage to himself than anything else. He clenched his teeth in pain and shouted, “They reminded me of Melanie. The whore thought she could just leave.”
“Newsflash, women can do whatever they like. We don’t need your permission.”
“Whatever.”
Ella shrugged, “Well, Melanie’s out there right now, free of your bullshit. Meanwhile, a couple of women are going to make sure you spend the rest of your life in jail.”
“I knew it was a trap,” he said. “I figured it out.”
A pathetic attempt at dominance, Ella thought. “Sure. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.”
“Wait,” he said. “What do you mean, two women?”
“Vanessa and Abigail. The two victims you killed.”
The man went from sudden fury to puzzlement. “The news told me I killed… four?”
“What?”
“The Monster. He has four victims.”
Ella had to recalibrate. “Well, do you remember killing four women? That would be your first clue.”
The Rose Killer shook his head. “No, just two, but…”
“But…?”
“I don’t remember a lot of things anymore.”
Ella asked, “But you remember killing Vanessa and Abigail?”
“Yes. Well, some parts. Not clearly. Sometimes I drink.”
“You’re not kidding.”
Ella had him. A semblance of confession. Two women, but why was he talking about four? Katherine and Gail were the Ripper’s victims, and Ella doubted that the man in front of her could discretely penetrate a busy council building without leaving any eyewitnesses.
“I just… I don’t know. A part of me thinks Ididkill four times. I didn’t plan on stopping. I was going to do this until I couldn’t do it anymore. I just miss her.”
Ella had to wonder if she hadn’t got this wrong. Perhaps there was a sole Davenport Monster, a split-personality of two distinct killers? Given the similarities between victimologies and M.O.s, it wasn’t completely absurd.
“Tell me your name. I’ll get you a lawyer. Then we can talk this through.”
“Jeff Andrews.”
She got her wish.
The Rose Killer had a name.
“Thank you. I’m sorry you chose to go down this path.”
Ella left the cell, locked the door then ran back up into the main offices. She messaged Ripley and Grant the killer’s name then headed outside to her car. She had to get back to the motel on the off chance the Ripper showed up. But now that the cold night air hit her lungs, she started to question her own theory. Was it possible Jeff Andrews had claimed all four victims, perhaps while he was in some kind of fugue state? The man was clearly no stranger to the bottle and possibly heavy drugs, and abuse of any intoxicant was more than enough to induce memory loss. If he’d taken multiple intoxicants at the same time, whole sections of his memory could have been erased.
But killers that operated under the influence of alcohol were sloppy and careless, whereas she’d profiled the Ripper as a cunning and capable predator. The man had scaled the wall of a government building, killed someone inside, and even left a note for investigators to find. She couldn’t imagine someone of Jeff Andrews’s character pulling that off, at least not without a lot more mess.
