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There was no way. It couldn’t be. By her napkin math, it would have been around a one in five-hundred million chance.
“You didn’t purposely target these girls because of particular traits?”
“Nope,” Chuck said.
“And what was the deal with the letter? Paradise Lost, Cotard’s Garden, zero-sum parts. Mind explaining your thought process?”
Chuck fiddled with his hands, cracking his knuckles, scraping skin off his nails. Classic gestures of anxiety. He kept his gaze grounded and said, “No comment.”
Ella’s heart sank.
Something was wrong here. Why wasn’t Chuck reacting the way they’d predicted?
“Zero victims, Chuck. That was the whole plan all along, wasn’t it?”
Ella couldn’t see the man’s face but his body language said confusion. It said discomfort and disconnect. It was the look of a man who’d lied on his resume and still got the job, an amateur among professionals, someone beyond their depth. At the mere mention of the phrase zero victims, Chuck Pierce should have come alive. He should have been euphoric that somebody figured out his plan, matched his wit, operated on his level.
But there was nothing. The man who sent their letter was not the man sitting in front of her.
Ella turned to her partner, a face full of concerns of her own. She stepped forward to the jail cell and asked, “Chuck, did you really do this?”
“Yes,” Chuck said and began to cry. “Please, just take me back to prison.”
Ella sighed, exhausted, on the verge of tears herself. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she moaned. “Ripley, we’ve got this all wrong.”
***
Ella stepped outside the precinct for some clean air and reflection. Hopefully the night breeze would soothe some of the disappointment.
Chuck Pierce was not their killer. He simply pretended to be their killer to get back into the Northern Correctional Facility. He left there as a guard but couldn’t return as one, therefore he wanted to return on the other side of the bars. Like his ex-wife said, that job had been everything to him, so Chuck had gone to extreme lengths to get back there, including falsely confessing to murder.
A little conversation had revealed Chuck to be nothing more than a dreamer and a fantasist. He still had some contacts in the law enforcement world, which was why he was able to uncover a few facts about the murders that weren’t publicly known. It was a grand plan, but it all fell down at the last hurdle.
That meant their killer was still out there.
Ella leaned against the wall, observing the night. Chuck was too simple, too surface-level to be their killer anyway. Their unsub considered himself an intellectual. He wanted the world to know his name. Recognition was at the core of his motivation because he believed he had something special and he wanted the world to see it.
She had to think and get inside their killer’s head one more time. There was still the chance that he was involved in law enforcement or the prison system, and his whole approach was centered around the concept of zero victims. That was what she had to figure out.
The precinct door slowly opened and a familiar face walked out. It was Tyler Allen, the podcast host. He must have only just been cleared for release. Tyler lit up a cigarette and nearly consumed the whole thing in one drag. “Still figuring him out, huh?”
“I wish I could say, but it’s private. I hope your podcast does well.”
“Thanks.”
Ella waited for Tyler to take his leave but luck wasn’t in her favor. He leaned against the wall beside her and carried on smoking.
“What are you still doing here, Tyler?” she asked.
Tyler chuckled. “Listen, I saw you and your buddy drag old Chuck Pierce through here earlier. He’s surely not involved, right?”
Ella interest piqued. “You know him?”
“Everyone knows Chuck. Creepy old fella but harmless. I interviewed him for my podcast once. The man’s got some great prison stories.”
“Has he?”
“Yeah. We talked about this really bizarre old case. It happened around here in the eighties. Chuck got friendly with the guy who did it.”
