Girl, Alone (An Ella Dark FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 1) Read online

  Another moment of silence, like he was thinking of the right thing to say.

  “Is the sheriff there? I didn’t steal the dog.”

  Ella and Ripley locked eyes. It was a question she didn’t expect. “No. There’s no one here but me and my partner. May we come in? It’s very cold out here, and we don’t want to get eaten by alligators. We assure you we won’t keep you long.”

  The voice disappeared. Ella waited for what felt like hours, but was no more than ten seconds. Finally, the door began to rattle. She heard the sound of a creaky deadbolt being pulled aside.

  Come on. Show yourself to me, Ella said to herself.

  The door opened a few inches before coming to an abrupt stop. He’d left the chain lock on.

  “Mr. Harmen, we can’t come in if you keep the chain lock on, can we?”

  “‘Gators don’t come this far out,” he said. His face appeared between the cracks. Ella managed to get a clear view of his face. It was most certainly the same man from the mug shot, but with more cracked skin and long hair down to his shoulders. The scar on his forehead still hadn’t healed, and judging by its depth, never would. Everything about him screamed misfit, or worse yet, deranged killer. Ella looked to her left and saw Ripley peering in the windows with a flashlight. However, the dirt on them was so thick it was impossible to see through.

  “You gonna need a warrant to get in here,” he said.

  Ella panicked. He was right, but she didn’t want him to know that. “We only need a warrant if we suspect you might have been involved with the investigation we’re pursuing. Right now, we just want to ask you some questions to clear your name. We know you have a prior history of offenses and we just want to rule you out.”

  Ella could see it in his eyes. There was no way that her words were going to break down his barriers. He knew that she was lying, and while that didn’t bode well for his capture, it suggested that he was a proficient manipulator too. So far, he’d ticked off all of the criteria on her profile.

  “You ain’t coming in here. Get a warrant and come back, lady.”

  Ripley jumped in, passing her flashlight to Ella in the process. Ella took it from her and stumbled out of the way. Ripley stood right up against the small opening, getting as close to Clyde as she possibly could. “Buddy, we’re investigating a very serious federal crime here and your name has cropped up, so I suggest you start talking pretty damn quickly. It’s in your best interests to do so. One way or another we’ll be talking to you within the next twenty-hour hours, so you may as well get it out of the way now. So, what’s it going to be?” Ripley turned to Ella. “Shine that flashlight on him. I want to see who I’m talking to.”

  Ella turned the light into the small gap, illuminating Clyde Harmen’s upper half. He was wearing an oversized black T-shirt and had washed-out tattoos on his forearms.

  But behind him, something caught Ella’s attention. She only saw a brief glimpse into his living quarters, but she spotted something that told her everything she needed to know: The man standing in front of her was the man responsible for these murders.

  She turned the flashlight onto it to see it clearly. Both Clyde and Ripley followed its line of sight.

  And without pause, Clyde fled into the depths of his house and disappeared into the darkness.

  He knew his game was up, because sitting on his mantelpiece, like some kind of grim trophy, was a human skull. Ella shouted after him.

  “What the hell is that?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Instinct kicked in. Ella forced her boot into the door and felt it vibrate on its hinges. A little bit gave way, but not enough.

  “Forget the warrant, the skull is probable cause enough,” Ella shouted. If they didn’t take this chance to arrest him, they night never get another one.

  She stepped back and charged forward with another brutal kick, sending a shockwave of numbness through her right leg. After a third assault, the rickety door burst open, ripping the chain lock clean off its wooden panel. Ella rushed inside with Ripley in tow, hurling themselves into the unknown darkness of the strange farmhouse.

  “You head left,” Ripley shouted, running in the opposite direction. Ella saw Ripley pull out her pistol as she disappeared around the corner, and so Ella did the same. She hurried through a winding hallway, passing by a broken table and an old Victorian clock. The smell of mold and rot engulfed her senses. At the threshold between the hallway and the next room, her foot caught on something, almost sending her tripping to the ground.

  She glanced down, and in the darkness she made out a pile of bones, but unlike the skull, they were small. Not fully developed. Childlike.

  Oh my god, she thought. Her mind conjured up the worst possible scenario, but she pushed the thoughts aside to focus on the task at hand. She entered a vast room, high ceilings, with a decrepit chandelier hanging in the center. She shone her flashlight into the corners, praying that the suspect would jump out on her. It was preferable to the alternative—him escaping.

  Familiar objects came into view. There was a grand piano, covered in dust and looking like it hadn’t been touched in decades. There were cupboards, the doors of which were barely hanging on for life. But as she rotated the flashlight to the far end of the room, she recoiled in terror. She saw something that she’d never seen before, something ripped from the stills of a horror film.

  Staring back at her was some kind of alien creature.

  Attached to the wall, like a mounted stag head, was a bizarre creation made from mismatched body parts. It had alligator scales, but its head was that of a dog’s. Its mouth was lodged open, and inside were enormous walrus fangs sticking out like wooden stakes.

  Ella stopped in her tracks. She felt an icy shiver run down her spine. She turned the flashlight to the left of the beast, landing on another ominous sight.

  A glass cabinet filled with jars. Every jar was filled to the brim with yellow liquid, and inside them were bat corpses, fully preserved and scarily lifelike.

  What the hell is this place?

  From a distant room, Ella heard Ripley’s voice. “Clear. No sign.”

  Ella turned her flashlight from the cabinet to another corner of the room, but she heard a thunderous banging coming from a far cupboard. Suddenly, a swift flurry of footsteps rushed past her. Her peripheral vision made out the blurry outline of a figure in the darkness, black on black.

  “Stop!” she screamed. He was heading in the direction they came, but his momentum halted as he had to stop and pull open the rickety kitchen door. Ella chased after him, reaching out to grab him and narrowly missing his black shirt. As he turned the corner into the hallway, Ella leapt toward him knee-first, colliding with his shoulder and sending him hurtling into the wall. He ricocheted off the wooden panels, bringing a layer of thick dust down from above onto them both. Ella locked her hand around his wrist, but that was when she realized something wasn’t right.

  The wrist was rock solid. Stone cold. She moved her hands up the arm, feeling further solidity. The thing beneath her was in the shape of a human, but it wasn’t real.

  She was holding a mannequin.

  “What the hell?” She shone her flashlight down the hallway in the wake of a small thud, and she saw the front door flapping in the wind. Ripley’s footsteps thundered through the hallway as she arrived from the other side of the house.

  “What is it? What happened?” she shouted.

  “Out the door,” Ella said. “He’s escaped.”

  Ripley turned and fled in the same direction. “Wait here,” she called back.

  Ella picked herself up off the ground, hearing Ripley disappear out into the wild. Between a crack in the door, she saw a few officers follow Ripley down the dirt path and out of sight.

  She felt a crushing weight of disappointment once again. She cursed herself for not acting quicker, for not shooting instead of chasing. She wanted this guy alive, and because of that he was now on the run. She moved toward the door and peered out in
to the darkness but couldn’t see beyond the driveway. She felt she’d let herself down, and those families she was desperate to provide closure to.

  Wait here, Ripley had said. Ella wondered why she hadn’t wanted her to follow. Had she let Ripley down too?

  No, outside was treacherous. There was no point putting themselves both at the mercy of the wild nature. Ripley must have asked her to stay back so they could reconvene here, regardless of the outcome.

  She decided to use the opportunity to scour the house for any potential evidence, so she retraced her steps back into the kitchen. She searched for a light switch by flashlight, but before she found anything, she heard something from another room.

  There was a click. Then a metal clanging sound.

  “Ripley?” Ella called out.

  No response.

  Ella pulled out her gun and held her flashlight beside it. She stealthily moved back into the hallway, noticing something different this time.

  There was no light coming from the front door. It had been shut. The broken chain lock still dangled loosely, but the lock had been clicked in place.

  Ella strafed toward it, pulling on the handle.

  Nothing. The deadbolt lock had been turned.

  For the first time, she felt the cold air prickle against her skin. She had a sudden awareness of this vast house, still lingering with musty and moldy scents of God knows what. Then she felt what others had called agent’s intuition; a sudden and definite knowledge of something despite no evidence. But you knew it.

  And Ella knew it.

  She knew that she wasn’t alone in here.

  Then came the sound. A deafening whirring noise that was so close it felt like it was inside her ear canal. Instinct propelled her to protect herself by jumping back, and that was when she saw the same dark figure from before standing a few feet away from her. But this time, he had come prepared. He wielded something in his hands, but Ella couldn’t quite make out what.

  Ella pointed her gun and flashlight at him, but before she could even outstretch her arms to her shooting position, something collided with her hands. Both the gun and the flashlight flew to the floor, sending her staggering alongside them.

  In a swift motion, she composed herself and kicked in the direction the figure had attacked from, but found only darkness. She couldn’t make out anyone in front of her.

  She turned her attention to the flashlight. She made a jump to grab it, but something came from nowhere and pushed down on her wrist. By the peripheral light from her flashlight, she made out Clyde Harmen standing above her. He was brandishing some kind of electrical saw in his hands. He lifted it up and perched it on his shoulder.

  “I don’t want to kill you, but I will if I have to,” he said. He flicked a switch and the whirring noise started up again.

  “You don’t want to do this, Clyde,” Ella screamed, struggling for breath. The terror had taken the wind out of her. She had a sudden flash of tomorrow’s newspaper headlines. BAYOU SERIAL KILLER KILLS FIVE. SERIAL KILLER CAPTURED; FBI ROOKIE MURDERED.

  “You’re right, I don’t,” said Clyde. He brought down the saw, but Ella swept her legs around and managed to kick Clyde in the back of the knees. He reeled, dropping the saw almost fatally close to Ella’s shoulder. She rolled to the side, jumped to her feet, and hurried into the room on the right-hand side of the hallway. It was too dark to fight. She weighed up the options in her head.

  Either light up the room to give her a fighting chance, or buy time and wait for Ripley to come back.

  She made her decision. Ella scrambled toward the walls, desperately hunting for a light switch. Footsteps came from the other room just as her hand found a pull cord. She yanked on it.

  A bare bulbs hanging from a lengthy cord lit up above her, and she realized she was in the living room. In her bordering vision she saw more of Clyde’s bizarre creatures, but she didn’t have time to register them. She scanned the room for her exit points, but the living room led into a decrepit dining room piled high with rotting furniture. A table was overturned, and on top of it chairs were piled high. Beyond that, there was only a wall.

  She had no way out. It was fight or die.

  Ella rushed into the dining room to search for a weapon. She needed something to combat his saw to give her leverage. She leapt over a small sofa onto a pile of disused wood, coming across a discarded table leg. She grabbed it.

  The light from the living room illuminated a small alcove in the dining, allowing Ella to see inside. Another one of Clyde’s strange monsters guarded it, but this time, it was something colossal.

  She spotted a taxidermied brown bear, eyeless and sprouting tentacles from its face. The bear was taller and stockier than she was. A quick idea formed. Ella pulled the bear slightly out from its alcove. To her surprise, it was reasonably light, about the same weight as a small sofa, she thought.

  She rushed into her new hiding place. Then waited.

  Clyde came hurtling round the corner, banging his saw against the wall as he navigated his living room. He was a different Clyde than what she saw ten minutes before. He was frightened, crazed, wretched.

  “Come on out, little girl,” he said.

  Ella realized that the saw-wielding maniac a few yards away from her was a real-life serial killer hunting for his next body. She wondered what his game plan was. They knew his name, they knew where he lived. Would he kill her then run? Would he kill her then kill himself? Was this his going-out-with-a-bang finale before succumbing to prison life for the rest of his days?

  Clyde reached the dining room. He tipped his saw onto his shoulder and eyeballed the bear. He laughed. “Come on out from behind there, sweetheart.”

  Ella clasped the wooden leg in both her palms, ran in from her hiding spot on the other side of the room, and crashed the piece of wood into the back of Clyde’s head. She felt the recoil right from her fingertips down into her forearms. He toppled into his stuffed bear and they both fell against the wall. He swung around in haste and launched his saw out at Ella, but she blocked the blow with her own weapon. The saw blade stuck deep in the wood but didn’t penetrate it. Ella saw her opportunity and took it.

  She grabbed the wood with her hands at either end and yanked the saw from Clyde’s loosened grip. She saw a glazed look in his eyes, clearly still reeling from her brutal head shot. Both weapons lodged together, she hurled them to the other side of the room.

  Clyde swung at her with his fist, catching her in the jaw. A spurt of blood filled her mouth. A second fist came, but Ella blocked it with her forearm and clutched Clyde’s wrist. She maneuvered around behind him, bending his arm with it and almost pulling it clean off his shoulder. Clyde cried out in pain. Ella felt the tension in his joints. Someone as skinny as him, she knew she could rip the bone in two if she wanted.

  She pressed her knee into his spine and held him toward the floor, spitting a stream of blood out of her mouth.

  “Fuck. Stop,” Clyde shouted. “You’re going to rip my fucking arm off.”

  “Got you,” Ella said. “Game over.” She pushed his cheek against the dusty floor, locking eyes with a man who’d taken four innocent lives in such cruel, unimaginable ways. It was her first moment coming face-to-face with a killer, and was as surreal as it was exhilarating.

  Ella caught her breath as she kept him restrained. There was a sound at the front door. Heavy banging. Please be Ripley, Ella thought.

  She heard the door burst into pieces and footsteps flood inside.

  “In here,” she shouted. The new arrivals followed the sound of her voice. It was Ripley, Harris, and two officers. They rushed across, relieving Ella of her duties and cuffing Clyde’s hands behind his back.

  Ella rolled off. Ripley leaned down to her. “Dark, are you okay? Shit, how did he get back here? If I’d have known…” She trailed off. She seemed genuinely sorry for making a mistake.

  “It’s fine,” Ella said. Ripley helped her back to her feet. “It’s my fault. I thought he left
the house. He didn’t. He must have hidden.”

  “Are you hurt? Your mouth is swollen. Let’s get you to a hospital quick.”

  “No, I’m fine. Please. Let’s get this guy out of here.” She turned back to Clyde and saw Harris and the officers keeping Clyde subdued.

  “Well, what a surprise this is. Clyde Harmen. I knew I’d be seein’ you again,” said Harris.

  Clyde lifted his head up from the floor as much as Harris’s grip allowed him to. He looked right at Ella, through her. He had the eyes of a true psychopath—small pupils, unexpressive, completely devoid of any positive emotions. There was only bitterness and fury in them. She saw pure evil; the face of a man who could take innocent lives so willingly and without remorse. Ella could see him pulling off all of these murders. She had no doubt.

  Two more officers rushed inside and helped Harris bring Clyde to his feet. Clyde kept his gaze firmly on Ella, and she, out of some unexplainable urge, returned his gesture. While Harris read him his Miranda rights, Clyde kept completely silent. They always did. Gein went quietly and without issue, as did Dahmer. Kemper even handed himself in to police of his own accord. Once their game was up, they knew there was no point in fighting anymore. Besides, they had infamy to look forward to. Ella suspected that the man in front of her would be the same.

  Ripley left the room and came back, handing Ella’s pistol back to her. She took it and thanked her. In Ripley’s other hand she gripped the same human skull that caused Clyde to flee. “You did amazing, Dark. Great work. Bujinkan again?”

  Ella collected herself and then turned to face Ripley. “No, misdirection with a bear. And Muay Thai. Have you seen this place? It’s a freak show.”

  “No? I couldn’t see much in the dark.”

  “Well, look at that thing in your hands.” She nodded toward the skull. “Should you really be touching that?”

  But the look on Ripley’s face told Ella that something wasn’t quite right. She’d never felt her emotions flip so quickly from elation to disappointment.