AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Skull. It’s mine.’
‘Thought you were blind?’
‘I am…. Blind. But…. I can feel its absence.’
Ella wasn’t buying it. This place wasn’t a home, with its purposeful design, creepy movie memorabilia, unsettling art.
It was a stage.
Ella pulled the skull from her pocket, tossed it at the woman.
Her hands flew to grab it.
Ella used the moment to pull out her pistol, aim it at the old crone.
‘You can stop playing games now, Harry Faulkner.’
The old woman's posture shifted. She straightened up, the frailty in her mannerism dissipating. Her grip on the skull tightened, and she placed it gingerly on the dresser. She turned her milky eyes towards Ella, a slight smirk playing at the corner of her lips.
‘Bravo, Detective.’
With a grace that belied her supposed age, the woman began removing the grey wig, revealing a head full of dark, stringy hair. The milky contacts came off next, revealing piercing blue eyes, the same eyes Ella had seen in photographs of Harry Faulkner.
Ella breathed a heavy sigh of relief. The man in front of her – the Maywood Horror Slayer or whatever the press had taken to calling him today – was locked in her sights. The only way he was leaving this apartment was in chains.
Beside her, Ripley’s face was a picture. Half confusion, half disgust. Ella wasn’t sure why.
Harry leaned back into the chair, looking almost relaxed. ‘What gave it away, detective?’
‘Two things,’ Ella said, her target still locked on the suspect. ‘Your game is bound by the rules of horror films. There was bound to be one final twist.’
The character's true self slowly manifested, morphing from an old crone to a young man. Now, Harry Faulkner's true face emerged. Now that Ella looked closer, he didn't look too different from the character he was playing, a little like a spider that had assumed a human form.
‘You got that right. And the second?’
Ella pulled out her handcuffs. 'Old women don't tend to have Adam's apples. Now, come on, get changed. Your story ends in a prison cell.'
CHAPTER THIRTY
Behind the glass, Harry the old crone looked remarkably composed for a man whose world had come crashing down. His blue eyes glinted with a mix of mischief and defiance, his posture relaxed as if he were in his own living room rather than a holding cell. Ella had been surprised at his lack of resistance.
Chief Daniels appeared with two coffees in hand. He handed them to Ella and Ripley. ‘You got him,’ he said.
‘It’s looking good,’ Ripley grinned. ‘Smug son of a bitch has done nothing but talk.’
‘He confessed?’
‘No, but he won’t shut up about art and movies and whatever. It’s his grandiosity doing the talking. His way of controlling the narrative.’
‘Well, I’ve got good news for you both. As one of my guys was inspecting his place, he saw something on Faulkner’s laptop. A screenplay or something, about the very murders happenin’ around here.’
Ella’s ears perked up. ‘A screenplay?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Check the date the document was created. If it was longer than three days ago, that’s good circumstantial evidence.’
Ella left her coffee unsipped because she was itching to get into the interrogation room, gagging to break open this man’s head and rummage through the contents.
