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“If you think of anything, or if you’re not feeling safe, call me.” Charlotte took the card and thanked her. “Can you get home from here?”
“Yes, I’ll be fine. Can I leave?”
“Please do and take care.”
Ella joined Ripley at the disposal site just as the technicians finished their work. A couple of patches of dried blood were all that remained.
“Why here?” Ripley asked, kicking through the grass. “He’s got a million isolated spots to dump the body, but he’s chosen this public section. Why?”
“To mimic the original Dahlia?”
“How close does this scene resemble the original?”
Ella stepped back and pictured the 1947 crime scene photos then compared them to the image in front of her.
“Almost identical,” she said. “The body on the edge of the grass with one building slightly to the left. It’s a semi-public area in a rural location and the body was even posed the same. He didn’t just dump her here. He modeled the scene down to a tee.”
“So the small details are important to him,” Ripley said. “Crucial. That suggests he’s obsessive, meticulous. He won’t opt for convenience. Everything needs to be perfect.”
“Most definitely. This is an exact recreation.”
“A way to honor his heroes. A way to terrorize the community. And neither are good for us.”
“Agreed. These aren’t his personal fantasies. He’s channeling the fantasies of others so we’re going to struggle to predict his pattern – if there even is one.”
Ripley turned to her partner and nodded in agreement. Then she started laughing.
“Funny, isn’t it?” Ripley asked.
“What is?”
“Remember our first case last year? The Mimicker?”
Ella couldn’t forget that case if she tried. Her first foray into field work saw her chase an unsub that copycatted the crimes of infamous serial killers. She still saw that unsub’s face in her dreams weekly.
“Of course. What about it?”
Ripley went back to the grassy area and stared out at the embankment. “Nothing. The irony will hit you later. The real question is – where do we go from here?”
Such an experienced agent would know exactly where to go next, but Ella realized this was a test. Ripley was leaving the progress of the case to her partner to reassure herself the Bureau would be in safe hands once she disappeared. Ella had to take the reins on this one.
“Autopsies,” Ella said. “See if they’ve got an ID on this girl. Plus I want to know what this backwoods morgue looks like.”
“Chief,” Ripley called. “Are we able to visit the coroner’s office yet?”
The officer fired up the car engine and motioned for the agents to join him. “I’ll take you to one of our depots in Spring Ridge. That’s our nearest hub. From there you can take one of our cars to the morgue.”
Ella suddenly recalled an old paper she’d written at her university. The Black Dahlia: Death of a Dream. She’d analyzed every suspect in the case and concluded that none of them were likely to have committed the crime. In total, she’d spent around fifteen years obsessing over it, and now she had the chance to investigate the modern equivalent.
But she had to remain stoic. If Ripley caught a whiff of personal fascination, she’d see it as a weakness. All cases had to be scrutinized with cold detachment in her partner’s eyes.
But Ella already felt a personal connection to this one.
“Let’s go. This killer isn’t going to catch himself.”
CHAPTER FIVE
A sinister thought popped into Mia Ripley’s head as she entered Carroll County Medical Examiner's Office: no one could ever truly say they’d been in their last morgue. It didn’t matter how many morgues you visited in your lifetime, you’d always end up in another one at the end. You just wouldn’t know about it.
