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John Milton.
“Milton, Milton, Milton,” she said. “That name. Where do I know that name?”
She scanned through the notes she’d made since she’d arrived in this town. It only took her a few seconds to find the name – because it was right on the first page.
No. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t have been right there from the start.
Ella had to focus, recalibrate, ensure she wasn’t just seeing things where she wanted to see them. She scanned the details again, double-checking, lining everything up piece by piece.
“When a juvenile comes out of detention, do they change their names?”
“If the crime is serious enough, yeah.”
“Shit, Ripley.” Ella dived out of her seat and scrambled through her paperwork. “It was right here in front of us. It was here the whole time and we missed it. Dammit, look at this.” Ella threw her notebook over to her partner and pointed to her circled note. “That girl who found the first body – her name was Charlotte Milton.”
Ripley browsed the notes but looked baffled. “Don’t do this, Dark. Don’t see connections where there aren’t any.”
“No, there’s something else. You remember that dash cam footage from Clara’s car? The guy in the audio. What did he say?” Ella rifled through her notes for the very short transcript. “Our killer said: Do you think you could throw these in my van for me. If I got them dirty, Charlotte would be even more pissed.”
“And you think Charlotte was his actual girlfriend’s name? Our killer wouldn’t be that dumb.”
“It wasn’t him being stupid, it was him toying with us. Messing with our heads. Making it obvious so we’d miss it. But that’s not all. When we talked to Charlotte, what did she say? Where did she say she lived?”
“Tell me.”
“Coalville Street. She said she’d lived on Coalville Street for a few months. You see? The Crawler stalked a family on Coalville Street.” Ella scoured her database of local residents for what felt like the millionth time. She filtered down by residents on Coalville Street – 67 names – and went through them one by one.
Her eyes were drawn to the name like a moth to flame.
“Hold up, Dark. I’m confused here. You think this Crawler guy is going back to the house he haunted as a kid?”
“No,” Ella turned her laptop around and showed Ripley the names of the residents who now lived at 22 Coalville Street.
John and Charlotte Milton.
“I’m saying the Crawler lives there now.”
Even Ripley couldn’t hide the shock.
“Come on,” Ella said. “We haven’t got much time left.”
Ripley rose to her feet – or tried to – before slumping back into her chair and clutching her shoulder. She bit her hand to somehow suppress the pain. Ella rushed over to check on her but Ripley gave her the palm.
“I’m good. I can go.”
“No. You’re not coming with me like that. Let me go on my own, and if I think I’m in danger I’ll call you. Okay?”
“Alright, go, and good luck.”
Ella needed it because she knew this guy wasn’t going to go down easily.
***
John Milton slipped into the bedroom where he found his wife watching television in bed. He gave her a kiss on the cheek then said his goodbyes, destined to return a satisfied man, a complete man. Since he’d moved into this house, all the memories had come flooding back. Memories of sitting in the gaps between walls, memories of sneaking out of the vents in the middle of the night to raid the fridge. Oh, the pleasure of tormenting those young girls by knocking against the walls when their parents were out of the house. He realized back then that hurting people numbed his own pain, like it was a curse to be passed down. Once you’d handed it off to someone else, you were liberated. Your life wasn’t so bad because someone else had it just as bad as you. If anything, his torment was an act of love, bringing everyone down to the same level so they all shared a common anguish.
Pain is perfect misery, the worst of evils, and in excess, overturns all patience.
He’d been patient enough. Twenty years he’d waited to get back into this house, and it had taken incredible manipulation on his part to convince his wife to move here. He spoke of the rolling hills and the solitude and the crystal. A couple of their age needed their peace and quiet, he’d told her. There was a whole lot of nothing to do around here, and that turned out perfect for what he had planned.
