CHAPTER NINETEEN

Asphalt gave way to gravel as Ella drove further into the outskirts of Dover. The houses thinned out, replaced by scraggly trees and overgrown lots, the detritus of civilization receding in the rearview.

‘Jesus, we’ve got ourselves a hermit,’ Luca said.

‘Ed Gein. Unabomber. Herb Baumeister. Serial killers and isolation go together like shoes and socks.’

The GPS chirped, dragging Ella out of her historical reflection. They were close, less than a mile out from their destination. She felt that familiar tingle, and it had nothing to do with the bad suspension and everything to do with the hunter”s instinct flaring to life in her gut.

Something was waiting for her at the end of this road. She knew it.

‘Up here,’ Luca said. ‘This dirt path.’

‘Time to go off road.’ Ella dropped into second, mounted the path and began scaling the hill. It was a rickety climb, nothing but a sheer drop into the brambles on either side. At the top, she rounded a bend, and there it was.

Aleister Morgan’s house. Rising out of the gloom like a malevolent tumor.

‘Talk about a Leatherface house,’ Luca said.

Ella cranked the handbrake and killed the headlights. ‘If this was a museum, no wonder it went under.’

It was a behemoth of a thing: crumbling bricks, sagging gables, the kind of place that had been plucked from the reel of a gothic horror film. Darkened windows gaped like empty eye sockets. An overgrown yard bordered the place in a tangle of weeds and brambles that reached out like a witch”s fingers.

‘What’s the plan? All guns blazing?’

There was a correct answer to this question, so it was a chance to put the rookie to the test, see if he could read the room. ‘What do you think, Hawkins?’ Ella asked.

‘If he’s our unsub, then surely we’ll want him cooperative as quickly as possible. Clear the corners, get him on the ground right away. Put the fear on him.’

Ella pulled out her Glock and checked her ammunition levels. All on point. ‘Look around you. What do you see out here?’

Luca indulged the request and glanced out of the window. ‘A whole load of nothing. Nature. Trees. Why?’

‘Look up in those trees. Those clusters of branches. A farm boy like you should recognize that.’

Luca squinted. ‘Uh. A bear’s nest?’

‘Yup. If there are bears around here, there are people with guns to take down said bears. And besides, name me a hermit who didn’t have a gun stash.’ She popped the door and stepped out. ‘Just be smart.’

Luca joined her, one hand resting on his pistol like it was his only friend in this world. They crept towards the house, every step carefully placed to avoid snapping a twig and announcing their presence like a brass band at a funeral. The dilapidated porch groaned like a dying whale as they eased their way up the steps. A stencil declaring Aleister Morgan’s Medieval Museum was etched above the door.

Ella knocked, waited, then caressed her Glock for reassurance. Alone, she’d have no fear, but having Luca by her side prompted a more secure approach. Only last year, she’d been partnered with another rookie, and rushing into an unsecured location had proved fatal for the one-time cohort. The poor girl’s face still haunted her nightly, and Ella would be damned if she’d make the same mistake again.

No answer at the door. Luca knocked this time.

Thirty seconds passed.

No response.

Luca went to hammer again, but Ella held up a fist, freezing Luca in his tracks. She cocked her head, listening hard. There, beneath the chirping crickets and hooting owls, was the metallic groan of rusted hinges.

‘Hawkins, you hear that?’

Luca pressed his ear to the door. ‘No?’

‘Not in there.’ She jerked her chin around the side of the house. ‘Round the back.’

Ella took the lead and peered around the wall, then slowly followed the route down the side of the apparent museum. The surrounding yard was a nightmare of ankle-twisting roots and grasping brambles, a canopy of gnarled branches blotting out the sickly moonlight.

And there, at the far end, a gate. Ancient, its lopsided maw gaping like a hanged man”s broken neck.

An invitation? A trap?

Only one way to find out.

Ella’s pulse spiked. Luca was stuck to her side as she shouldered through the gate, the old hinges screeching like a banshee. She entered into a garden-turned-obstacle-course; gnarled roots, overgrown shrubs, spiky grass snatching at her ankles. Something told her this was a pistol-first invasion.

Suddenly, Luca nudged her. ‘Ella, there,’ he whispered.

Ella followed his line of sight. There, at the back entrance to Aleister Morgan’s house was a silhouette. Tall and scrawny, with a riot of mad scientist hair visible from the dim light coming from inside the home.

The figure stayed still as a statue, like he was carved out of the shadows themselves.

Was this him?

‘You”re late,’ a voice knifed through the gloom, sharp enough to draw blood.

Late, Ella repeated to herself. Was this guy expecting someone else? Some tweeker looking to score? Or was this a regular thing, freaks and geeks showing up at all hours to perv on Aleister”s little chamber of horrors?

Ella inched closer, breathing heavily to slow her pulse rate. Before she could announce herself, the figure turned, slow as molasses in January.

Irritation rolled off him in waves as he squinted at the two new arrivals.

‘I said, you”re-’ The words died on his tongue as recognition sucker-punched him. His eyes flared wide, mouth hanging open like a gutted fish.

‘Aleister Morgan?’ Ella said. ‘That you?’

Aleister looked like he”d just seen a ghost. Or a cop. He stood frozen, brain visibly short-circuiting behind those beady eyes.

Ella took a moment to drink him in, to really look at the man who might be behind the Dover murders. He was a scrawny son of a bitch, all sharp angles and jutting bones. Lanky in a way that suggested more drugs than meals.

But there was a wiry strength to him too. She could see it in the way he held himself, in the twitch of his fingers and the dart of his eyes. This was a man who knew violence, who maybe even got off on it. Aleister Morgan might look like a strong breeze would knock him over, but there was something in his eyes, something cold and dead and hungry. The kinda look that said he”d do anything, hurt anyone, just to feel something.

She”d seen it before, in the empty stares of a dozen different killers. The ones who killed for fun, for sport, just to prove they could.

Ella took a step forward, but quick as a snake, Aleister spun on his heel and bolted into his house. He crashed through the back door, leaving curses and a slammed door in his wake.

‘Freeze!’ Ella screamed, but Aleister was gone. She barreled into the house, pistol in one hand and flashlight in the other. Luca moved in sync with her, equally armed. Ella swept her flashlight across the living room, illuminating a sagging couch, a TV that looked like it had been stuck on static since the Cold War. Empty beer cans and overflowing ashtrays littered every surface. Perhaps the detritus of a life circling the drain.

‘FBI,’ Ella shouted. ‘Come out.’

But there was no response. Just the creak of rotting floorboards.

Luca disappeared up ahead and Ella followed. Into a kitchen, Ella found a sink piled high with crusty dishes and a fridge that smelled like something had died in it, but no signs of life. Ella moved into a hallway with rows of doors either side, booted the first one open and shined her light in.

It illuminated a splattered hellscape someone might generously call a bathroom. Cracked tiles, a broken porcelain throne, a mildewed shower curtain clinging to a rusted rod like a moldy shroud. She swept the light around, half-expecting Aleister to come scuttling out like a cockroach. But the only occupants were an army of yellow bottles standing to attention.

On to the next contender. Ella shouldered through, ready for anything. A downstairs bedroom. A mattress squatting on the floor, surrounded by mountains of crusty laundry and an archaeological dig”s worth of beer cans. Posters peeled off the walls like sunburnt skin; naked women and concert posters. The typical interior design of a degenerate bachelor pad.

‘Ella!’ Luca”s voice knifed through the house. ‘In here, now!’

Ella sprinted towards her partner’s voice. She burst into the next room and skidded to a halt, blood turning to ice water in her veins.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Ella said.

Their flashlights brought the contents of the room into view piece by piece.

Stocks, racks, iron maidens – masterfully crafted, given the sickening sheen on the wood and metalwork. They lined the walls, crouched in the corners, a forest of nightmares waiting to snare the unwary.

Ella swallowed hard. There was no time to gawp at what might be devices designed to showcase corpses. Beside, Luca stood frozen, but Ella caught his nostrils flaring. He cocked his head like a dog catching a scent.

‘You smell that?’ Luca asked.

She inhaled and caught a note of something. The kind of smell she associated with back alleys and seedy dens. It was sweet, acrid, with a zing that made her eyes water.

‘Meth,’ she bit out.

Junkie and a serial killer, a match made in a cop”s worst nightmare. It explained the squalor, the stench. Guy was too busy chasing the white dragon to worry about little things like hygiene and decor.

Luca spun to face her, his pretty-boy mug set in hard lines. ‘We gotta split up. Guy could be hiding anywhere.’

‘No chance. Not letting you outta my sight.’

‘C”mon, trust me. This place is huge. We stick together, Aleister could slip right by.’

Ella chewed her lip, copper flooding her tongue. Luca had a point. Much as it chapped her ass to admit, going solo would double their odds of catching this freak.

‘Fine,’ she ground out. ‘But keep your finger on the trigger and try not to kill him.’

‘Roger.’

Then he was gone, pounding up the stairs in a clatter of boots and bravado. Ella swallowed past the sudden tightness in her throat. He better not do anything stupid, or she”d resurrect him just to slap him herself.

She pushed the worry down, locked it up tight. No time for sentimentality. She began prowling the rest of the downstairs area, senses cranked to eleven. More empty spaces, more junk. She jabbed her flashlight into corners dark and deep enough to hide an army.

Nothing. Just dust and cobwebs and the rancid reek of a life gone sideways.

She snarled under her breath. Where was this guy? She hadn’t heard any doors opening or closing. Hadn’t heard anyone ascend the stairs until Luca did. Her instincts told her that Aleister Morgan was on this floor. Either that or he’d managed to get outside.

Ella paused in the hallway, closing her eyes as she strained her ears past the thud of her own heartbeat. Listening for the creak of floorboards, the rasp of breath, anything that might give the bastard away.

But there was only the groans and sighs of the house settling and the faint skitter of unseen vermin in the walls. She was about to punch a hole through the drywall in sheer frustration, but then something appeared in her periphery.

A door. Barely visible in the gloom, tucked under the stairs like an afterthought. Ella crept closer, pulse kicking up a notch as the stink of chemicals grew stronger. Meth fumes, seeping through the cracks like toxic smoke.

She tried the handle. Locked, of course, but locks were merely a suggestion.

Ella took a step back and unleashed hell on that flimsy piece of plywood. The sole of her boot slammed into it like a battering ram, once, twice, three times. The frame shattered, the door flew open and suddenly Ella was staring down a set of narrow stairs descending into pitch blackness.

A basement.

Perhaps Aleister”s own little corner of tweaker hell.

Ella”s lips peeled back from her teeth in a skull”s grin. Bingo.

She started down, gun leading the way. Her flashlight burned through the inky depths as the risers creaked under her weight. As she descended, the stench of harsh chemicals became overwhelming, and it mingled with the cloying rot of festering garbage for good measure.

But Ella pushed on, the thrill of the hunt thrumming through her veins and drowning out all else. Aleister was down here, she”d bet her badge on it. Probably thought he was safe in his dank little rat hole.

Ella hit the icy concrete at the bottom. She swept her light in a wide arc, shadows skittering up the crumbling brick walls. The beam flashed over a rusted workbench cluttered with pipes and bottles, a propane tank hulking in the corner like a bloated metal toad.

Aleister”s meth kitchen. His personal portal to chemical Wonderland.

‘FBI,’ Ella announced again. ‘It’s over, Aleister.’

Ella picked her way deeper into the room, waiting and praying for a response. She found overturned furniture, piles of scrap metal and plastic tubing. Two more pieces of medieval equipment; a wooden chair covered in spikes and straps, a metal cage suspended in the air. The place was a regular medieval-meets-meth-house conception.

But no Aleister. Just the remnants of his disastrous attempts to cook crank.

Ella swore under her breath. Had she jumped the gun? Let him slip right through her fingers?

She was halfway to the stairs, ready to double back and canvass the whole damn property inch by inch, when a sound made her freeze.

A footstep. The scuff of a shoe on concrete, directly behind her.

Ella whirled, finger tightening on the trigger. But before she could get a bead on the threat, something slammed into her from the side in a blur of flailing limbs.

She hit the ground hard, flashlight flying as the air whooshed out of her lungs. A knee dug into her back, bony hands scrabbling for her gun. Aleister. He’d pulled a guerrilla ambush, lying in wait like a snake in the grass. His hands clamped around her throat, squeezing, crushing, cutting off her air.

Ella bucked, thrashed, but he had an iron grip, a crackhead’s grip. Spots danced across Ella”s vision as the pressure built in her skull. She reached up to claw at his face, but Aleister dodged and tightened his grip around her neck.

But suddenly, the overhead light blazed to life. Black turned to yellow and Aleister’s weight was ripped away as someone tore him off her like a scab off a wound.

She rolled to her side, coughing and wheezing as blessed air rushed back into her lungs. Luca and Aleister were joined as one, careening across the room, with Luca driving Aleister back with the inexorable force of a freight train. Aleister stumbled, flailed, tried to find purchase on the filthy floor but Luca was relentless. With a roar that rattled the teeth in Ella”s head, Luca hurled Aleister towards a nightmarish collection of medieval horrors. Spikes and blades and things that existed only to bring pain.

Time seemed to slow as Ella watched Aleister fly. He pinwheeled his arms, desperately trying to stop his momentum, but it was too late, too much.

Ella cringed in anticipation, bracing for the sickening crunch of flesh meeting metal. And then it came as Aleister slammed into a chair straight out of the Spanish Inquisition”s wet dreams.

Rusted spikes pierced his back, drew blood and howls in equal measure. But the crazy bastard didn”t stay down. He jolted to his feet like a human pincushion high on pain and insanity.

He staggered forward, mouth open in a wordless snarl. But Luca was ready for him. He snatched up a metal rod – the kind of thing that would be right at home in this house of horrors – and swung.

Not at the face, but in a perfect arc right between Aleister’s legs.

Metal on meat.

Even Ella had to clench her own nethers in sympathetic agony.

And suddenly, Aleister was screaming a different tune.

He crumpled, hands clutching his pulverized package. A hit like that, Ella wouldn”t be surprised if his balls were powder.

She staggered to her feet, one hand massaging her bruised throat. She stared at Luca, at the steel in his eyes, the set of his jaw. In that moment, he was more than a pretty face rookie. He might very well have been her savior.

Luca tossed the rod aside with a clatter, his chest heaving as the adrenaline drained away.

He jerked his chin at Aleister, still writhing on the floor like a worm on a hotplate. His hands were glued to his groin.

‘The capital of Thailand,’ Luca said. He turned back to Ella.

Ella pulled out her cuffs and threw them to her partner. ‘What?’

Luca suppressed a grin, pointed to the fallen suspect and said, ‘Bangkok.’