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Ella grabbed the most recent cipher and shifted every letter in the sequence down by twelve. Since this message had only been left a few hours ago, their unsub might still be lingering at the final destination.
Ella's fingers moved quickly, urgency fueling her resolve. She began shifting each letter in the sequence down by twelve, the rhythm of the process almost meditative in the stillness of the office.
The letters changed, but no message appeared.
‘Huh,’ Ella said. ‘I’m just getting more nonsense with this one. The answer to the riddle was twelve, right?’
Ripley checked her notes. ‘In a clock’s face, where hands unite. Thrice six they mark, in day or night. Sounds like twelve to me.’
Ella tried again, this time shifting the letters up twelve letters instead of down.
QIIX QI EX XLI…
‘No, it’s not working. Did we miss something?’
Ripley pushed her notes over to her partner. ‘Clock hands unite at twelve.’
Ella thought about it. ‘Thrice six, day or night. Three times six is eighteen. Twelve and six,’ Ella made a vertical line in the air. ‘When the clock hands join in a straight line. One hand at twelve, one at six.’
‘Crap,’ Ripley said. ‘Twelve plus six. The answer’s eighteen.’
Ella got back to work, adjusting every letter in the cipher down by eighteen letters. The message began to reveal itself, emerging from the chaotic jumble of letters like a sinister prophecy.
‘Got it,’ Ella said, finally creating readable words.
‘What’s it say? Wherever it is, we need to get there,’ Ripley said.
Ella turned her paper around.
MEET ME AT THE GARAGES BY THE OLD BRICK STORE TEN PM TONIGHT OR YOU WILL DIE.
‘Let’s move. We might still have a chance to catch him,’ Ella said. ‘Even if he’s not there, we might find something he’s left behind.’
Despite the early-morning hour and complete lack of sleep, she felt laser-focused, ready to embrace the darkness ahead.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ella’s heart pounded in sync with her footsteps as she approached the garages cited in the killer’s message. The Old Brick Store seemed to be a long-abandoned establishment, flanked on either site by equally derelict garages. Graffiti-tagged walls, debris-littered floors.
She moved cautiously with her pistol in hand, every shadow seeming to shift and whisper secrets of the horrors that might lurk within. The garages, undoubtedly once a hub of activity, now stood as silent sentinels to decay, their doors hanging off hinges, windows broken, a testament to the transient nature of life.
‘You hear anything, Dark?’ asked Ripley.
‘Nothing,’ Ella replied.
The killer's choice of this place for his grim rendezvous was no accident. It was a carefully orchestrated stage for his macabre performance, a setting chosen for its isolation and its sense of unease. Ella felt it too – the oppressive weight of the unseen, the sense that eyes were watching from the shadows, biding their time in the stillness.
‘Check each garage. Our guy might be squatting,’ Ripley whispered.
Ella's pulse echoed in her ears, a steady drumbeat as she prowled the desolate space. The garages, marked by time and neglect, seemed to resonate with a grim history. Graffiti, like the scrawls of a deranged mind, adorned the walls, giving voice to long-forgotten angsts and rages. The ground crunched underfoot, spoilt by trash and needles from yesterday’s users and abusers.
Ella advanced through the garages, each step fuelled by a mix of anticipation and dread. The first garage loomed before her, its interior shrouded in darkness. The beam of her flashlight cut through the gloom, revealing a space stripped of its past, now nothing more than a hollow shell. Empty cans clattered softly as she moved, the sound unnervingly loud in the silence.
As she delved deeper, each garage told the same story of desolation. Cobwebs adorned the corners, dust lay thick on surfaces that once gleamed with use. In one, a rusted car frame sat like a skeletal relic of a forgotten era. Piles of old newspapers, their headlines faded and irrelevant, lay scattered.
Disappointment gnawed at her. She had hoped to find some clue, some trace of the killer's presence, but all she encountered were the remnants of lives and purposes long since abandoned.
Ella returned to the pathway out front. A second later, Ripley emerged too.
