Chapter Twenty-two

Ben

I glanced across at my boyfriend. Scratch that. Not my boyfriend. My fiancé. Again. I dropped my gaze to my hand on the steering wheel, but the noodle that had acted as a temporary ring was long gone, probably not eaten by Griffin in the throes of passion—given I'd never known him to stop for a snack before—but lost somewhere in the sheets. After the phone call, we'd taken the quickest shower known to man together, dressed, and then climbed in my car. We'd done all of those things in virtual silence, neither of us keen to converse. There'd been no question of Griffin not accompanying me, and for that I was grateful. I'd had a few blissful hours of the case not pressing down on me, but now it felt heavier than ever.

"It could be a copycat killing," Griffin said.

"It could be."

"That happens, right?" His gaze burned into the side of my face, as if willing me to say what he wanted to hear .

"Yeah." My answer lacked conviction. "The press still don't have the details, so we should be able to tell when we get there." I slowed for a black Peugeot, the driver seeming to think that at this hour in the morning none of the usual rules of the road applied. If I didn't have much bigger fish to fry, I would have taken great pleasure in pulling him over and reading him the riot act. As it was, I just had to pray he wasn't enough of an idiot to put others in danger. I made a mental note of the license plate in case it came up in an incident report.

"Dougie confessed," Griffin said, strain present in his voice. "And he knew stuff he couldn't have known unless he was there. It has to be a copycat."

I forced myself back into the cold and rational mindset of a detective who put logic before emotion. "There are several options."

"Such as?"

The traffic lights changed to red, and I brought the car to a temporary stop. "Option one as you already pointed out, is that this could be a copycat killer. Someone who's heard about Satanic Romeo's arrest and is such a fan of his work, they want to continue it." Griffin made a noise of disgust in his throat. "Yeah, I know. There are a lot of weirdos out there."

"Option two?"

"Dougie gave a false confession."

"Why would he do that?"

"Attention. Or he convinced himself he did it." The lights changed again, and I eased the car forward, frustration that we weren't there yet burning in my chest. "Coercion. Covering for someone else. There are lots of reasons people give false confessions. It might not seem rational to you or me, but we already know Dougie was off his meds, and the brain can play strange tricks."

"Is there an option three?"

"Yeah."

"Are you going to tell me what it is?"

"Option three is that Dougie is Satanic Romeo, but Satanic Romeo was always more than one person. In Dougie's absence, the other person just carried on their work. There were always things that didn't add up, like where he got the knife from when we know he entered the club without one. And how he doesn't seem to know where the fingers are. Perhaps his partner in crime was always the ringleader, and Dougie got carried along for the ride. And in the end, the combination of being off his meds and guilt had him freaking out in the club."

"You seem more sold on the last option than any of the others?"

"It makes the most sense." I slammed my hand down on the steering wheel. "Which pisses me off when I never even considered it. Some detective I am."

Griffin reached over to lay his hand on my thigh, warmth leaching through the thin fabric of my suit trousers from where his fingers rested. "This is not your fault."

"No?" The word came out like an explosion. "Tell that to the poor bastard we're about to see. I'm sure he'd love to hear we were eating Chinese, fucking, and discussing marriage while he was dying."

Griffin's fingers traveled to my knee to offer a squeeze. "I'm serious about it not being your fault. They had profiles done, right? What did they say? Did any of them suggest it could be two people? "

"No," I admitted. "All the profiles came out as a single white Caucasian male aged somewhere between twenty and thirty."

"Well, there you go then. You were going on what others had said. And we don't even know that's what happened yet. It strikes me that jumping to conclusions before we know more is a waste of time."

The Griffin that had come back into my life had been such a mess that I hated him being the voice of reason, even if it indicated him healing, that I'd helped him to heal. "You're right," I admitted as I took a left turn, the road completely clear. "It just feels like this fucker… or fuckers… has been running rings around me since day one."

"Yeah," Griffin said with a sigh. "I can see how it would feel like that." He lapsed into silence for a few moments. "Where are we going, anyway?"

"Islington. Another apartment. We're only a few streets away."

Griffin nodded, and we didn't speak again until we arrived at the usual scene of frenzied activity all tinged by the flashing blue lights of the squad cars. It spoke to how many crime scenes Griffin had now attended that no one questioned his presence as I flashed my badge to gain admittance and shouldered my way past all the crime scene investigators intent on doing their job. One or two offered a nod, but I wasn't in the mood for small talk.

"DCI Ben Weaver?"

I turned to find a blonde uniformed officer coming my way, her expression suitably earnest. "Sergeant Lily Mapplewell," she said, neither of us moving to shake hands. "I understand this is your case?"

"I'm hoping not," I said truthfully .

She pulled a notepad from her pocket as she jerked her head toward the room that presumably held the body. "Victim is Aaron Cassidy, a Caucasian male in his mid-twenties. He shares this place with a Mr. Jamie Ashley, but Mr. Ashley's currently away. We're tracking him down to find out if his trip was a planned one or something more spur of the moment."

"Tell me more about Aaron?" Whether this case proved to be linked to Satanic Romeo, it was still a murder, which put it firmly in my jurisdiction either way.

Sergeant Mapplewell checked her notebook again. "He's an electrician, so makes pretty good money. He owns this place rather than renting it."

"Gay?" Griffin asked.

Mapplewell didn't seem to have any problems with answering Griffin's question, despite not knowing who he was. "Bisexual, according to the neighbors we spoke to. They said they used to make bets on whether he would bring a man or woman home." There was a pause while we presumably all thought the same, that Aaron probably wished he'd gone for a woman tonight. If he had, he'd have lived to see the morning.

"How was the body discovered?"

Mapplewell didn't need to check her notes for that one. "The same neighbors. The male of the couple said he'd borrowed a DVD from Mr. Cassidy. He admitted with a bit of prodding that returning it was an excuse to find out whether he or his wife had won tonight's wager." When I frowned, she elaborated. "Man or woman."

I nodded. "Right."

"And instead," she waved a hand at the bedroom door we'd stalled a few steps away from. "He found this and called us."

"Thanks. "

When I ran out of questions, she left us to it. I caught Griffin's eye, reminded again that this wasn't his world, that he hadn't asked to be dragged into it. Even so, I was glad he was here. "Are you ready?"

His nod was less than convincing, but we took the few steps needed to enter the bedroom, anyway, both looking to the bloody symbols on the wall first. Despite not having memorized them, I instinctively knew they were the same, my heart sinking. Unless someone had been very indiscreet with photographic evidence, it ruled out a copycat.

The body lay on the floor, a meter from the bed, Patrick lifting his head from his examination as we stepped over the threshold to meet my gaze. An utter weariness that reflected my own had replaced his earlier antagonism. "I thought you had the bastard in custody and we were done with this."

I kneeled at the other side of the corpse, ignoring the waxy skin and the eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling to take in all the other information I could. Red hair. The first red-headed victim. Blue eyes. Freckles. Lots of freckles. Even dead, you could tell he'd been cute. Definitely someone who'd catch your eye at a club. Had he gone to Eclipse? Was that really the murderer's hunting ground, or had Dougie led us down yet another cul-de-sac?

My still damp hair fell into my eyes, forcing me to brush it back as I lowered my gaze, simultaneously knowing what I would find, even as I prayed I might be wrong and find something different. Sure enough, where there should have been fingers, there was nothing but bloody stubs. Despite Griffin's words in the car, guilt threatened to swamp me. "I thought that too. We all did." My words sounded flat, stripped of any emotion, and I hated that—the professional front I'd always hidden behind seeming an affront to a dead Aaron Cassidy who deserved better.

Patrick straightened and took a step back, the droop of his shoulders telling the story of a man who'd just about reached the end of his tether. "Well… do your stuff."

I shook my head. "Griffin doesn't have the things he needs with him. We were…" I aborted what I'd been about to say. It wasn't the time nor the place to be outing ourselves as a couple. Should we have detoured back to Griffin's place to get his bag? Probably. But neither of us had been thinking straight. It had seemed more important to get here as quick as we could.

Griffin lowered himself to a crouch so we were at the same height. "I don't need it. I can do it without. It just takes longer."

"Yeah?" That felt like something I should already have known.

Griffin nodded and then waited. I knew what the hold-up was. Technically, he was off the case. He was supposed to be returning to work in a couple of days, back to far simpler corpses who didn't have their fingers missing and who had died of natural causes. "I need your permission," he pointed out when I said nothing.

What he really needed was me agreeing to take the flak if this came back to bite us in the ass. I could call Baros, but as it wasn't him who'd called me, the chances of him being awake were slim. And what if he said no? If I asked him, I was giving him the opportunity to say we'd exhausted our use of Griffin, that it had given us nothing except a nightclub that was looking less and less useful. I stared at Aaron Cassidy, a man who was still dead and still missing his fingers despite us supposedly having the perpetrator in custody. "You have it," I said before I could think better of it. "Do what you need to do. "

Griffin's stare was intense. He waited for a few moments, like he thought I might change my mind. When I didn't, he nodded and stood to look around the room. "I need a knife or something sharp."

Amidst the confused looks—some of the crime scene investigators not having gotten the memo about what it was Griffin did, or probably how he did it—someone produced a pair of scissors. By the time I'd cleared the room and Patrick had retreated to the far wall without a single complaint, Griffin had already pulled the blade of the scissors across his palm.

Apart from the lack of candles, the process was the same. "Part of the show," Griffin said, like he could read my mind, as he pressed a hand to the sigil he'd drawn on Aaron's chest. My phone rang as he closed his eyes, more concentration seeming to be needed than previously. I switched it to silent without answering it. If it was the DCS on the other end telling me not to do this, I didn't need to hear it. That way, I had plausible deniability. And if it wasn't him, I couldn't think of anything else that couldn't wait.

The process took longer, concern setting in that this would be yet another fail.

Just as I was ready to give up, Aaron's eyes opened and he sat up, the movement so sudden that Patrick, who'd been blessedly silent throughout, let out a little gasp. We'd covered Aaron's hands again, but he didn't seem to notice as he stared around the room, his breathing labored like a panic attack wasn't far away. "Where is he?"

Despite my heart almost beating out of my chest, I forced myself to stay calm. "Who?"

His gaze flicked my way briefly before he continued his scrutiny of the dark corners of the room. "Noah. He said his name was Noah. He even made a joke about not having an ark." Aaron swallowed, the action seeming to take a superhuman effort. "He was nice. Really nice. I hadn't met anyone nice for a while. He bought all the drinks. Not that I was wasted," he said somewhat defensively. "I've always had a high alcohol tolerance. Ask my friends, they'll tell you. I can drink all of them under the table. Unless you give me wine. I have zero tolerance for wine. But we weren't drinking wine, we were drinking vodka. I had Red Bull, and he had Coke. I told him I wouldn't sleep, and he told me he had no intention of letting me sleep, that"—he swallowed again, this one looking no easier than the first—"well, you know… he had plans for us." Color leached into his cheeks, the contrast startling when only a few minutes ago he'd borne the pallor of death.

His scrutiny stilled when he reached the wall with the symbols, his eyes widening. "Fucking hell! Is that paint? I'm going to have to redo that wall. Did he do that? Fucking animal!"

He was far more animated than Rupert had been, but with that animation came a frenzied torrent of words I was struggling to keep up with. I kneeled next to him, Aaron thankfully not having made any attempt to stand after sitting up. "Aaron?" When he didn't immediately turn my way, I repeated his name, Aaron finally turning his head to look at me. "Tell me more about Noah?" I urged.

"Is he still here?" Aaron's breathing escalated again, the thought apparently not a comfortable one.

"No, he's not," I said. Aaron looked to Griffin, only relaxing when Griffin confirmed what I'd said with a nod. "Listen…" I didn't know how long we had before Aaron either slipped away or questioned why he was naked save for a few artfully draped towels, and on the floor when the bed was only a few feet away. "Tell me where you met him. Tell me everything you can remember about him."

"At Eclipse," Aaron said slowly. "He was dancing with someone else. I was watching him because he was hot. I was envious," he admitted. "But I didn't need to be because when he saw me watching, he came over and started dancing with me instead. We hit it off immediately."

If nothing else, we had confirmation that Eclipse was a focal point of Satanic Romeo's attention. If we cross-referenced, we'd no doubt find that all the victims had frequented the same club.

"He was nice until we got back here and then he suddenly changed."

My head snapped up, and I stared at him. "You remember that?" I looked to Griffin, seeking confirmation it was possible.

He nodded. "It's extremely rare, but it happens sometimes."

Aaron frowned. "What happens?"

I leaned closer. "What did Noah look like? Did he give you any information besides his name?" Given it was a different name to the one Rupert had provided, the name was presumably fake.

He shook his head. "I didn't ask."

I attempted to calm myself, my heart racing and my palms sweaty. It felt like we were on the cusp of something important, something that really could end this case once and for all. Only, I was getting ahead of myself and breaking one of the major rules of policing: not to ask too many questions at the same time. Because Aaron had done what anyone would. He'd ignored the first question I'd asked and answered the second. "What did Noah look like?" I repeated. "Hair color? Eye color? "

Aaron frowned again, like he couldn't work out why I was asking. "He had brown hair and blue eyes."

Frustration bit into me. We needed something we didn't already know. "His hair… Short? Long? Straight? Curly?"

"Short, but long enough to have a slight wave to it."

"Any distinguishing features?"

"Like what?"

"Piercings? Tattoos?"

His brow furrowed. "I don't know. Not that I remember."

"Moles?"

"A few. But everyone has moles. None that stood out. He had a knife," Noah suddenly said, his expression changing to one of anguish. "It must have been in his jacket. Once we'd had sex, he changed. I barely recognized him. He'd been friendly before… charming… smiley. But he turned cold. He told me he needed something from me. At first, I thought it was a game. I told him to stop messing about, that I wasn't into anything kinky. But he didn't stop. He kept coming. He kept talking about a woman and demons. He said she'd be proud of him handling things, that he'd been a disappointment to her, but that he was fixing things. That she'd see how useful he was and once they had Janessa back, things would be different."

"Janessa?" Griffin's question, not mine.

Aaron lifted his shoulders in a shrug. "I've no idea who she was. I was more focused on staying away from the knife." A sheen of sweat had broken out on his forehead. "I tried to get to the phone to call someone. The police. Anyone." He blinked a few times, as if struggling to get something straight in his head. "You're the police, right?" He waited for my nod before continuing. "Maybe I did call, then. Things are a bit fuzzy." His brow scrunched like he was thinking hard. "He hit me and I went down, and he was on me before I could get back up, pinning me down and talking about demons."

"What was he saying about them?" Griffin asked.

Aaron let out a humorless laugh. "It made little sense. He was obviously crazy, and he'd seemed so sweet in the club. I never would have brought him home if I'd realized he was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. I certainly wouldn't have had sex with him."

"Tell us anyway," I urged. "We want to catch this guy. Anything you can tell us might help."

"He said…"

Aaron went to lift his arm, and I quickly grabbed his wrist, holding it down before he dislodged the towel. "Go on."

"He said he couldn't keep asking for more, that eventually he'd have to appear and that when he did, things would be back to the way they were supposed to be."

Patrick shifted slightly in the background, the movement snagging Aaron's attention and making him look that way. "Why is he dressed like a…? Did someone die?"

Grasping his chin, I turned his head back my way. "Don't worry about him. Tell me anything else you can remember."

Aaron tried to turn back, but I held fast. "Aaron? Anything else?" His eyelids fluttered and I knew he was fading. He went limp, and I gently lowered him back to the carpet, his eyes closed this time. "Fuck!"

"I warned you it can be short," Griffin said.

I stood, looking anywhere but at Aaron as color once more leached from his face. No matter how many dead bodies I'd seen, I doubted it would ever get easier to have a conversation with them while knowing there was nothing I could do. Except for catching the bastard to prevent him from doing it to anyone else.

My phone started ringing again, and I brought it to my ear without looking to see who it was.

"Weaver?"

I winced, Baros not sounding too happy. So much for him not being awake. News traveled fast. "I made a decision," I said before he could start tearing a strip off me. "And it proved to be the right one. He remembered more than any of the others. We know the demon angle is correct now, that it has something to do with his mother, and that Eclipse is a focal point, just as we suspected. We can station men there… have it watched every night. He must take the knife in with him so maybe we could get the club to carry out searches, catch him before he selects another victim." I was thinking aloud, my words to Baros more a stream of consciousness. "Although, that risks scaring him off if he hears about it, so it might not be the best idea. We don't want him moving to another club or we'll be back to square one. We can talk about it when I get back to the station. I'm coming in now."

True to my word, I left the bedroom, Griffin following as my torrent of words continued, my brain running at a million miles an hour. "Have Dougie prepped for an interview. I want to talk to him, and I'm not going to stop till I get the truth out of him. Either what he told us is an absolute crock of shit, or they were in it together and he knows who it is. I'm going to get the truth out of him, even if I have to shake it out of him."

"Weaver?"

"I know what you're going to say. You don't think I should be the one to do the interview. Well, tough shit! I stood back before and look where it got us. Another murder. I got him to do what I wanted in the club, so I can do it again. That's what they say, right? If you want a job doing well, do it yourself. I should have been the one to interview him before."

"WEAVER!" Baros' voice was strident now. Like he was rapidly losing patience. "You can't interview Dougie Elrod."

"Oh, can't I? Just watch me."

"You can't interview him because Dougie Elrod hanged himself. We found him unresponsive an hour ago, and no matter what we tried, we couldn't revive him. I just had to break the news to his mother."

I stopped dead, the news hitting me like a slug to the chest.

"Ben?" Griffin's voice, his tone one of concern.

"Dougie's dead," I said, my voice barely more than a whisper. "He hung himself."

Griffin's reaction wasn't what I'd expected. I'd expected shock, but I got cold calculation, his eyes narrowing. "How long ago?"

I ended the call with Baros as soon as I got what Griffin was getting at. Maybe I could talk to Dougie after all.