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“This is good. We have his voice on tape. We know he owns a van.”
“Play it again. I need to hear that voice.”
Ella pushed the top file on the list again.
ERROR: NOT FOUND.
She backed out of the screen and then opened it up again. “Must have timed out. Give me a second.”
But when she went back in, the top file had vanished. The most recent cam footage was dated three days ago.
“What the hell?” Ella restarted again, and this time, there were even fewer files. The most recent one was a week ago.
“Where’s it gone, Dark? It’s disappeared.”
How could it have vanished? Surely you could play these files more than once? “This is weird. It’s gone. How can files just delete from….” Ella stopped herself and suppressed an enormous wave of panic. “Oh God. Oh no. He’s deleting them. Our killer is deleting all the files through Clara’s phone.”
Ripley shot to attention. “He can do that? You mean he’s on her phone right now?”
“I don’t see another way,” Ella shouted, flustered, rattled, losing control. “What the hell can I do?” She pressed buttons at random, jumping into the Settings area, then back into the Dash Cam. Even fewer files now. He was deleting them all.
“Can we get Clara’s phone number through here? Is there any way?”
She read Ella’s mind. If he was using her phone, they might be able to trace it. She fiddled with the dials, having no clue where she needed to look. There were too many options to choose from.
“Dark?”
“I’m trying!”
She found the Wi-Fi menu, then a page called Connected Devices.
ONE ACTIVE DEVICE; RIVERSIDE, MD.
“Riverside. Whoever’s doing this is in Riverside right now. That’s barely two miles from here.”
“Phone number. Do you have it?”
Ella dug in deeper, scrolling past the bunch of new sections until the next screen threw up a ten-digit number. “Got it. Go.”
Ripley hammered the number into her cell phone and pressed dial. The car’s built-in computer began to jingle and the screen flashed up INCOMING CALL (Bluetooth out of range, trying 4G instead).
Two rings.
Three.
Ella’s heart pounded so fast she struggled to catch her breath.
The monitor’s wavy screensaver turned from blue to green. The text changed:
CALL CONNECTED.
The killer had answered.
Ella’s head emptied of thoughts. They were on the spot, needed to improvise. Ella hadn’t expected the killer to actually pick up. What could they say that might give them some intel?
But Ripley jumped in first. “Tell us what you want,” she shouted. The call being so close to the speaker created screeching feedback. Ella turned down the volume on the car so she could hear better. She needed to commit this man’s voice to memory.
“Hello?” Ripley again. “Talk to us you coward.”
