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Ripley chimed in, ‘Sorry, we didn’t know. There’s no mention of that on his records.’
'Well, leave it that way,' the woman said.
Ella turned to her partner as she weighed up the possibilities. If Jason Parker had been in an institution for more than three days, he couldn’t be their unsub. Not unless he was allowed to leave and come back, which not many institutes allowed.
‘Sorry to be blunt, but why are you in his house?’ she asked.
‘I been his neighbor for twenty years and I’ve watched the man go through hell and back. I come round and clean this place so it’s spick and span for when he gets home. That alright with you, Marple?’
Ella took a deep breath, processing the unexpected turn of events. They'd come looking for a potential killer, but instead, found a tormented soul searching for peace.
Ripley tapped Ella on the arm and gestured to leave. Ella followed her through into the kitchen, taking one last look at the photos of Megan Parker on the wall.
How did she get the profile so wrong?
And if Jason Parker wasn’t her killer, who the hell was?
‘Well, Dark, you were right about one thing.’
Ella said nothing. She waited for Ripley to take her shot.
‘Jason Parker was indeed a victim, he just never took the next step.’
Back out in the car, the short trip felt like a fever dream. Ella desperately wanted to believe that she’d come close to figuring this unsub out, only to have the finish line pushed back another mile.
'You were right about something, too,' Ella said. 'Reality is much different from the movies.'
A dead end. Back to square one.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Back at the precinct, Ella stared at her laptop screen, still struggling to process the crushing blow of Jason Parker not being their unsub. Furthermore, how could her profile have been so wildly inaccurate?
No leads. None of the names on Alex Morton’s list seemed to correlate with their profile. No DNA evidence at any of the crime scenes. And to top it all off, they were around six hours away from another victim losing their life providing the killer kept up the same pattern.
The only good news was that she finally had full access to the Dread Pages. It was a forum with thirty-thousand users, all either horror industry workers or devout fans. Ella had searched the entire forum by thetermmask and found six-thousand results. The fact that a single term was all she had to go on felt pathetically thin. But the sad reality was that the masked killer angle was the only thread she had to pull. She scrolled through, seeing posts but not really noticing them.
Most iconic horror mask?
New Freddy mask for sale.
A timeline of Ghostface masks (yes, they’re different).
‘Jason’s neighbor was right,’ Ripley said as she walked in, phone in hand. ‘He’s been in an institute for two weeks. Hewasone of Morton’s porn friends though, but he’s been securely locked up during every murder.’
Ella massaged her temples in preparation for an oncoming headache. It was going to be a brutal one. ‘God dammit.’
‘You can say that again. Daniels has checked every mask store in the city. None have Michael or Pinhead masks of the same quality our killer used. No one recognizes his personal mask, either.’
‘Probably got them online.’
‘Yup. Untraceable.’
‘Our killer’s too smart to buy those masks from local places. He’s covered his tracks every time. This will be no different.’
Ella's phone buzzed with a flurry of notifications. The media frenzy over the masked killer had reached fever pitch, and reporters were hungry for the next big scoop.
Ripley said, ‘You’re getting them too?’
