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‘Yeah. First, you can lie under oath. Make up some bullshit about you seeing Logan when you were a kid, and that weird photographic memory of yours remembered him twenty years later. It might fly, it might not.’
Ella chuckled. ‘Not a bad lie, but I couldn’t do that.’
‘No, you shouldn't, so that leaves option two. Tell the truth, all of it, leave no detail unmentioned. Then, take your punishment. Go down a hero.'
Ella scoffed again. 'Yeah, right. Name a hero that did jail time.'
Ripley slapped her partner on the shoulder and said, ‘Nelson Mandela. Martha Stewart. Johnny Cash. Like I said, no hero has ever retired without a misdemeanor or two.’
Ella couldn’t help but smile, perhaps the first one since she’d gotten to LA. Now she knew how Ripley felt, although Ripley’s intense hatred of this state was one of life’s unanswerable mysteries.
‘Earlier today, my guy at Virginia PD called and said Nash looked like he was about to skip town. A small part of me… no, scratch that, ahugepart of me, wished I’d just done what I had to back when I caught him.’
Ripley sniffed, then wiped her nose with her forearm. Looked like hay fever, Ella thought. Maybe it was the heat and pollen Ripley detested so much.
‘Bullets in the head solve a lot of problems, but they create new ones too.’
‘Do you really think that?’ Ella blinked back a few unshed tears. Sometimes I wish I could be heartless, cold. It would've made things easier.’
‘That's not true,’ Ripley said, her voice gentle. ‘If you were any of those things, you wouldn't be the agent you are. And you wouldn't be my partner.’
Ella took a moment, gazing at the stream of words on her laptop. For some reason, she thought of Kathleen Carter’s death scene.
I AM IN HELL HELP ME.
‘Mia, how many times have you…?’
‘Have I…?’
‘Pulled the trigger,’ Ella finished.
Ripley went round to her side of the desk and took a seat. ‘You don’t want to know.’
Ella read between the lines. ‘Do you regret it?’
‘That’s another conversation, now stop distracting yourself with this Logan Nash business. It’s another problem for another time. Right now, we've got a killer in our midst, and I've got a real hankering to get out of this place. Capiche?'
Ella licked the dryness off her lips. Her throat suddenly felt like she'd swallowed a gallon of dirt. 'Yes, miss,' Ella said.
Mia grabbed a tissue and blew her nose at a deafening volume. 'Damn, hay fever’s back again. Hold on D.C., I’m coming home soon.’
Ella went back to the Dread Pages and idly opened up a few threads. A discussion about horror masks, a casting call for an indie film that had been canceled, a post questioning the realism of the Saw franchise. For now, it was all letters and words, no substance. Ella realized she hadn’t slept in over a day, and if she wanted to make any headway, she needed caffeine in her veins.
‘Mia, I’m going to get some air. Maybe coffee, too. I think we need it.’
‘Good call,’ Ripley said as she wiped her nose again. She let out a grunt of frustration.
As Ella was about to leave, she turned and asked the question that had haunted her for well over a year. If she couldn’t solve the current mystery, an older one would have to do.
‘By the way, why do you hate this place so much?’
Ripley was engrossed in something on the screen. She reached down into her bag and pulled out her purse. ‘My husband, Alfie, father of my children.’ She flipped open her purse and showed Ella a photo. Ripley had talked about Alfie a few times, but Ella had never seen his face. ‘Fifteen years ago, we were out here on a case together, chasing a serial stabber. Alfie tracked him to a car garage. When Alfie went to make the arrest, the unsub jumped him. I got there a few minutes later, but it was too late.’
Ella's jaw dropped, completely taken aback. She knew Alfie had passed away, but she never knew how.
‘Oh my God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to bring it up.’
Ripley folded her purse back and put it away. ‘And I never got the answers I wanted, never got to show the unsub the repercussions of his actions. Every time I come here, it’s all I can think about.’
