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

  “Please, call me Bill. Thank you, folks, for getting here so quick.”

  “Special Agent Mia Ripley, and this is—” Ripley nodded at Ella to introduce herself.

  Do I say Special Agent too? she thought. No, of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.

  “Ella Dark. Intelligence Analyst.” She shook his hand. A wave of stale cigarette smoke washed over her.

  “Intelligence, huh?” Bill asked.

  “We’re trying something new,” Ripley said. “She’s here to learn.”

  “Well, you’ll definitely learn something here. I’m not sure what, though.” Bill led them to his sheriff’s car waiting outside, which was being watched over by two weary-eyed airport stewards. It was a black SUV with MOBILE PARISH SHERIFF, HONOR, INTEGRITY, SERVICE stenciled in gold lettering on the side. To Ella, the vehicle was unnecessarily large. The kind of car chosen by insecure alphas and football players’ wives. Ripley took the front, while Ella resigned to the back.

  “I’ll be your transport tonight. I’m sure you girls understand why,” Bill said as he started up the car. Ripley locked eyes with Ella through the rearview mirror, noticing the blank-but-intrigued look on her face.

  “Because local police don’t like the Feds interfering,” Ripley confirmed.

  “Ain’t that the truth. They don’t like to think there’s something out there they can’t handle, you see?”

  Ella nodded. “Do you think this is something they can’t handle?” she asked. The car pulled out of the airport parking lot onto a main road. It was Friday night easing into Saturday morning, so a few midnight strollers and partygoers lined the streets, queuing for post-session junk food and overpriced taxis.

  “Life moves a little slower in bayou country,” Bill said, pulling out the cigarette from behind his ear. He placed it in his mouth but didn’t light it. “We get a burglary now and again. Maybe some pervert puttin’ his length in a wild pig. That’s pretty common. But this kind of thing? Not in my twenty-six years.”

  An empty stretch of freeway took them from the heart of Louisiana into the much quieter suburbs on the outskirts of the city. Through an old-style village, complete with thatched houses and cobblestone wells, down an endless country lane which seemingly had no speed limit.

  “Where to, anyway?” Bill asked. “Hotel to get some rest?”

  “Crime scene,” Ripley said without hesitation. “We need to see it while it’s fresh.”

  “You the boss,” said Bill.

  It neared 1 a.m. Ella thought of Jenna back home. She was due to stumble back into their apartment any minute now, after having doubtless moved her party to a nearby club. She felt that comforting feeling of familiarity in her stomach, but at the same time felt a little relieved that she wasn’t there.

  “I hope you’re not tired, Rookie.”

  “Not a chance,” Ella said. It was a lie, and Ripley probably knew it.

  “Speak for yourself,” Bill said, rolling down the driver’s window. He finally lit his cigarette after hanging it between his lips for ten minutes. “Sorry. Need the breeze to keep me alert. Been up since six in the a.m.”

  Ella had him beat by an hour but didn’t say anything when she realized the time difference meant they woke up at the same time. She had watched the world change, from the concrete jungle of Washington, D.C., to the Louisiana backwaters with a sprinkling of stars and clouds in between. The speed of everything almost overwhelmed her. She tried to push everything to the back of her mind; the possibility of failure, the fact she was something of an experiment, the likelihood that everyone in her department would hear about this little excursion and she’d be met with professional jealousy from her whole team. She’d heard stories of people being given opportunities from the higher-ups and very few were met with the expected level of success. What made her think she’d be any different?

  They’d been driving for over an hour by the time they reached the small bayou town. In the dark, it appeared even more alien than it did in her head. Houses stood on wooden stilts to keep their ground floors from flooding. Shops were barely any more than tiny cabins, worlds apart from the franchises and chain restaurants of Washington. The entire town circled around a murky lake centerpiece, which even in darkness shone a muted green. It reminded Ella of a Japanese strolling park, with its buildings protruding from water and rocks arranged to create steps, but one which had been left to overgrow for decades. A couple of airboats rested on the water. Some creatures moved in the shadows, gliding into the water when the sheriff’s vehicle passed them by.

  “Alligators?” Ella asked.

  “You don’t go to China and not see the Great Wall, do you?”

  Ella hesitated. “I guess not.”

  “Just like you don’t come to Louisiana and go home without seeing a gator or two,” Bill said. “Gators, water snakes, otters, pelicans. This place is pretty much a zoo without an entry fee.”

  “Sounds like a lot of fun.”

  “Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you what’s not fun. What you’re about to see in here.” Bill pulled up outside a row of terraced shops, with yellow tape bordering across all of them. Just across a dirt path, Ella spotted her first signs of human life. A crowd had gathered, maybe around ten people, with a police officer standing in front of them. “Speaking of beasts. You girls ever been hunting?”

  “Can’t say I have,” Ripley said.

  “Same,” said Ella.

  “That’s unlucky.” Bill jumped out of the car. Ripley and Ella followed. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  They jumped out of the car and made their way to the store entrance. Inside, Ella caught sight of two masked forensic officers photographing the store’s interior. This was the first time she’d seen such a thing in person, and she found it a nerve-wracking ordeal. There was still excitement in her, but the reality of knowing that she was standing mere feet away from where murder had taken place filled her with a sense of dread and responsibility.

  A memory came rushing back to her. Two years before, Ella had been talking to a special agent at an FBI celebration event. She knew he was probably trying to get in her pants, and it wasn’t going to happen, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to get some gory details out of him for his effort.

  He told her that the human brain processes a crime scene in the same pattern every time. First, you smell the blood. Like molten copper left to rust in a sewage plant. Second, you see the body. The familiar profile of a human being distorted in a manner that removes all human elements and leaves an empty shell in its place. Finally, you realize that what you’re seeing is life brought to an end in the most senseless way imaginable. Every hope, every ambition, and every creative endeavor this person would have gone on to enjoy ended in the very room you stood in. With every crime scene, the day got a little darker while the night got no brighter.

  Maybe it was the smell that jogged her recollection. They say smell is the sense closest linked to memory, so maybe it was that that brought back the memory she’d so badly tried to shed. Even decades on, her subconscious could still recognize that bitter, sour odor of blood.

  It hadn’t quite happened as the agent had said. The smell of blood came first, crushing her senses to the point of defeat. And that was it. The other parts hadn’t come, at least not yet.

  “Three murders. One week,” said Sheriff Harris. “This here is our number three.”

  Christine’s Hardware 101 was an unremarkable store. Rows of DIY tools, screws, locks, bolts—all the same shade of dull silver or darker. There were four aisles, all with shelves low enough to peer over the top of, allowing a full view of the interior.

  A forensic officer supplied Ella and Ripley with latex gloves and slip-on boots. They joined Sheriff Harris in aisle three beside a pool of blood, much of which had dried into the hardwood floor. The area was cordoned off with a plastic barrier.

  “Christine Hartwell, store owner,” Harris began. “Judging by initial examinations, shot in the stomach with a rifl
e, probably from around three to four feet away. No CCTV in the store.”

  “Who found her?” Ripley asked, following the blood-spatter up to the counter at the front of the store.

  “If you mean the body, then we did. But a late-night customer came in, sometime around seven p.m. and saw the store was open but empty. He saw the bloodstains and called us in.”

  “We’ll need his name and address,” Ripley said. “And the body?”

  “That’s where things get weird,” said Harris. “We couldn’t find a body at first, at least not in the store. But when we checked the shed in the back… Well, see for yourself.”

  Harris picked up a small folder which he’d rested on one of the shelves. Ella was a little shocked by his relaxed manner but didn’t say anything. She was too busy putting the pieces together. She had an idea what Harris was about to show them.

  “Hanging upside down in the shed. Hooked like a slaughtered pig. Cut right down the middle. Poor woman had almost been separated in two.”

  Ripley scrolled through the photographs while Ella looked on. They were much more visceral than the few she’d seen on the plane.

  “Why weren’t these sent along with the first batch of photos?” Ella asked.

  “The officers who were first on the scene took these. By the time the rest of us got there, the forensic team had already removed the body and taken their own photos back at the coroner’s office. I called you guys as soon as I got here. Your guys then liaised with the local coroners, not us.”

  Ella didn’t buy it.

  “Let’s see the shed,” said Ripley, already making her way toward the exit.

  “This way,” Harris called. He led them behind the counter and into the storeroom area, cluttered with boxes and panels of wood. Ella thought this would make a great place for a killer to hide. They entered into a small yard area, filled with similar junk like spare shelves and wooden crates. Specks of blood were dotted around on each of them.

  But Ella spotted something. She stopped in her tracks for a second, but was interrupted by the high-pitched creak of the shed door opening. She caught up with Ripley and Harris.

  “You might want to borrow this, Agent,” Harris said. He pulled a small face mask from his pocket, crumpled but still in working order. “Dead bodies don’t exactly have that new car smell.”

  Ella put the mask on while Ripley took no such protection. They entered into a muddled, damp shed, illuminated by two small police lamps sitting on the floor. Their eyes all fixed on the same thing.

  Two hooks hung from the shed roof, held in place by four thick nails.

  Something about this image filled Ella with a sick awareness of her own mortality. Even through her face mask, the scent of death seeped into her lungs. It reminded her of when her local garbage men didn’t remove the communal trash outside of her apartment complex for a week. Rotting meat, moldy food. Even though the victim had only been in here for a few hours, the presence of death still lingered.

  Neither Ripley nor Harris said anything. Suddenly, Ella felt out of her depth. She was looking at an instrument of murder and mutilation. No textbook in the world could prepare a person for witnessing these things in the flesh. She felt light-headed at the thought that only a few hours ago, a real woman was sawn in two in this very room, while the rest of this sleepy town went about their business completely oblivious to the horrors taking place a few doors away.

  Ella had seen enough crime scene photos to last a lifetime. Both her personal and professional life exposed her to such images on a regular basis. Blood was no different, with certain scenes from her past replaying in her thoughts and dreams nightly. But here, in reality, other feelings crept in alongside the dread and sorrow. These were the actions of a real serial killer, and just being here was enough to potentially put her in his or her crosshairs. Was she a fool to come here, away from the safety of her cushy desk job?

  A part of her told her yes, she was.

  “Before you ask,” Harris said, “no. We haven’t found her head yet.”

  ***

  “So, maybe he was a hunter? Or a butcher?” asked Harris.

  “Possibly,” said Ripley. “This kind of setup takes time, planning, coordination. He didn’t just do this on a whim.”

  Ripley marched from the store to the shed and back again more times than Ella could count. She spoke loudly, but to herself, putting herself in the killer’s head as she retraced his steps from intrusion to murder to dismemberment. She scribbled notes in her black notepad, then pushed her hair behind her ears. “Sheriff, the three recent murders aren’t related,” she said without looking up from her pad.

  Harris narrowed his eyes. He pulled out his third cigarette of the night and lit it up. “What makes you so sure?” he asked.

  “Victimology is different. M.O.s are different. Crime escalation doesn’t add up. This isn’t the same person.”

  Ripley wandered back inside the store, leaving Ella and Harris outside. “Mind explaining?” he asked.

  “No serial killer, at least not a sexually motivated one, would murder a teenager, an old woman, and a middle-aged woman in the span of a single week, and certainly not in that order. Serial killers have types,” Ella said. “Nor would he discard the bodies in such different ways every time—especially if these are his first murders.”

  “What’s sexual about this?” Harris asked. “Just seems like a lunatic to me.”

  “He’s appeasing a very specific fantasy. This is about more than just death. He’s been picturing and perfecting this scene in his head for a long time, and usually, that comes with a sexual component.”

  Ella, still holding the photographs, began to scour through them again. The same thoughts she had on the plane came surging back. These images were oddly familiar, but something was different about them. There was an additional element present. A recreation of something. Like a reboot of a classic film, but one modernized and stripped of the things which made it classic in the first place.

  Ripley returned from indoors. It was closing in on 2 a.m. Even in her coat, scarf, and flimsy face mask, Ella felt the windchill against her bones.

  “Mr. Harris, we’re dealing with three separate murders here,” Ripley began. “I’m sorry if that makes things even more difficult, but I’m convinced of it. There’s a possibility these three victims may be connected somehow, but given how much they vary in age and character, it’s unlikely. It may be a gang operating in the area. I’m hesitant to use the word cult, but that’s another possibility. In all my years as an agent, I’ve never seen a serial killer this haphazard. Therefore, my conclusion is that this isn’t the work of a single perpetrator. I’d bet my pension on it.”

  The more Ripley talked, the more Ella was convinced she was wrong. She glanced back at the hooks hanging inside the shed, then at the assortment of junk and back-stock lingering in the yard. A crate of emulsion. Bags of gravel. Cheap stuff.

  Then something new caught her eye.

  PREDILUTED COOLANT. HEAVY-DUTY. 50/50

  Harris took a huge drag of his cigarette and exhaled smoke alongside a heavy sigh. “Well, I guess you—”

  “What was the last item rung up at the store counter?” Ella interrupted. Both Harris and Ripley eyeballed her. Harris pulled out his notes, which flapped in the wind.

  “Let me see.” He flicked over a few pages.

  “I’ll save you some time. It was a gallon of antifreeze, wasn’t it?”

  Harris held his notes up to the light from the shed. He ran his index finger down the page. “Bingo.”

  “What does that matter?” Ripley asked.

  “What’s the timestamp on the purchase?” Ella asked, ignoring Ripley’s question.

  “5:49 p.m.”

  “Right around the time of the murder,” Ella said. “I knew it. One more question.”

  This was it. This was the detail that would confirm her suspicions. Norman Bates. Psycho. A boy’s best friend is his mother.

  “Was Christi
ne shot with a .22 caliber rifle? Was there rope around her wrists?”

  “That’s two questions, but yes and yes.”

  “I know who committed this murder,” Ella said with a sure confidence she didn’t know she had in her.

  “What?” Ripley asked. “Who?”

  “It was Ed Gein.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Ella was the first to admit it sounded ridiculous. Ripley and Harris seemed to agree.

  Ripley didn’t give it much thought. “Ella, be serious for a second. Ed Gein’s been dead for thirty years, and even if he was alive, he’d be a hundred years old. We didn’t bring you in from—”

  “No,” Ella interrupted. “I don’t mean it was literally Ed Gein. I mean someone has recreated one of his crime scenes right down to the last detail. It’s all here.”

  “Gein?” Harris asked. “The weirdo out in Wisconsin?”

  “November 1957. Plainfield, Wisconsin. Ed Gein walked into a hardware store a few miles from his house. He bought a gallon of antifreeze, then shot the owner with a .22 caliber rifle. He dragged the body into his truck and took her home, where he hung her up like a deer in his shed. He decapitated her, gutted her, and left her blood to drain. This is exactly what’s happened here, right down to the ropes on her wrists.”

  Ella rushed back inside the store. Before her revelation, she would have been glad to get out of the cold. Now she didn’t care as much.

  “I’m the victim,” Ella said, standing at the counter. “The unsub comes in and buys the antifreeze, right? I’m looking at him out on the shop floor.”

  “Why bother?” asked Harris. “Why wouldn’t he just shoot her right away?”

  Harris had a good point, but Ella had a better answer.

  “Two reasons. First, he needs to scope the interior. Make sure it’s safe. Learn the layout. Therefore, we can most likely say that this guy isn’t local. I’m guessing it’s a tight-knit community round here, and the killer isn’t part of it.”