CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Ella”s head nodded, eyelids fluttering as she teetered on the knife”s edge between waking and dreams. Files and photos blurred together, names and faces melting like crayons left out in the sun. She could feel herself slipping, the squawk of the bullpen fading to muted underwater gurgles.

Just five minutes...

The thought swam up from her subconscious, sweet and seductive as a siren”s song. What was the harm? Couple winks, clear out the cobwebs, come back swinging. The temptation wrapped its sticky fingers round her brain and dragged her under, down into the depths of REM and regret.

Ripley”s face floated by, hard eyes in a soft face. Tough as a coil of razor wire wrapped in silk. Ripley. Where was she right now? Had she finally come around, or was she still trying to delay the inevitable? The thoughts bubbled by, drifting away in a stream of worry.

Ben drifted past her mind’s eye next, sunny smile and surgeon”s hands. Golden boy wonder, always reaching, always just out of grasp. He shimmered like a mirage, bright and blurry round the edges. He was out there right now, California dreaming, ocean gleaming.

Brrrring.

Ella jolted awake with a snort. Her mouth suddenly tasted like vinegar. Hey, bleary eyes swept the office.

‘You gonna get that?’ Luca asked from across the table, brows hoisted to his hairline. Kid looked fresh as a daisy. Curse his perfect pores.

Brrrring.

Phone. Right.

Ella snatched the receiver like it might scuttle away. ‘This is Agent Dark,’ she said.

”Another one.” Harland”s voice came through. His voice was as raw as a back alley brawl.

Ella”s heart leapt then plunged like a bungee jumper with a frayed cord. ‘Another one? Where?’

Luca caught the comment and stood to attention.

‘Snickersville Square. My guy saw the freak in action.’

‘Saw him in action?’

Ella hoped, prayed that there was more to Harland’s comment than that. Please say you have him in chains.

‘Yeah,’ Harland said, ‘but he got away.’

Of course he did. Because the universe was a twisted old biddy with a sick sense of humor.

‘Dammit.’ The word slipped out, heartfelt as a prayer.

‘224 Allenstown. Chuckles Fountain.’

Ella wasn’t sure she heard him right. ‘The what?’

‘Just GPS it and get here now.’

‘On it.’ Ella hung up the phone and grabbed her jacket. Luca cocked his head, question mark stamped on his mug.

‘What’s going on?’

She’d been wrong. This killer wasn’t stopping at two.

‘Unsub struck again. We need to get there now.’

***

Ella screeched into the regular cop carpet that was Snickersville Square and slammed the brakes next to a cruiser with its PD blues still swirling.

‘Guess this is the place.’ Luca had his door swung open before the car lurched to a standstill. Ella was right behind him as they jogged into the neon-soaked nightmare.

A few stray onlookers buzzed round the edges, pressing against the yellow tape. Necks craned, cellphones snapping for social media likes and shares. Anything for clout in this sick, sad world. Ella shouldered past them, face hard as the badge in her pocket. No time for looky-loos when there was a job to do.

She slipped under the tape with Luca close behind, and a grim scene of death and stone made itself known.

And smack dab in the middle, chained to the Chuckles Memorial Fountain like Christ on the cross, was a body. A man”s body, all dressed up for a night on the wrong side of the tracks.

Ella”s soul withered at the sight. Another one. Another poor sap who”d drawn the short straw when the killer came calling. She stalked closer as every detail seared itself into her eyeballs. Hands cuffed to the fountain”s upper spires. Slumped head, limp torso, knees on the elevated base of the fountain.

Close, so goddamn close and still too late.

‘Good God,’ Luca said. ‘This is our guy? Where are the stocks?’

Ella didn’t have an answer. Across the way, she spotted Harland jawing with a uniform, both of them looking like they’d rather be drinking poison. She angled in their direction.

‘Chief,’ she called. ‘Talk to me.’

Harland swiveled to face her, craggy mug set in stone. ‘Freakshow. Grade-A goat rodeo. But at least we got a witness this time.’ He jerked his thumb at the uniform. ‘Meet Officer Macklin. He”s the one who stumbled on this mess and got an eyeful of our sicko in action.’

‘You saw the perp?’ Ella asked. She sized him up. The guy was shook, no doubt about it.

‘I saw something,’ Macklin said.

‘Walk me through it, officer.’

Macklin swallowed hard. ‘I was on patrol, keeping an eye out like the Chief said. Anyway, I spotted this guy pushin” someone in a wheelchair. Struck me as strange, y”know? Wrong place, wrong time.’

Wheelchair, Ella thought. That’s how he’s transporting the victims.

‘Go on.’

‘So I followed, saw them duck down this alley. By the time I caught up...’ Macklin trailed off, falling victim to a full-body shudder.

‘Take your time,’ Ella said, not unkindly. Pushing too hard now would only jam the guy up worse.

After a beat, Macklin forged on. ‘I found the vic, chained up. And the perp.’

‘You see his face?’

”No, ma”am. He had a mask on.”

Behind her, Ella heard Luca”s sharp intake of breath. Felt him go stiff as a board at the M-word. She reached back, brushed her fingers against his wrist. He caught them for a second, a silent thank you. Then it was back to business.

‘What kind of mask?’

‘White. Plain, but with like, a frowning mouth. Black eye holes.’

Ella chewed the inside of her cheek, pieces clicking together in the jigsaw of her brain. Same get-up Aleister”s client had been sporting. The freak with the stock fetish.

She traded a loaded glance with Luca, a whole conversation in the quirk of a brow. If Aleister was on the level about his mystery commissioner, then they were back to square zilch on leads. Aleister Morgan had been telling the truth, and given this body had shown up while he was under interrogation, that meant he was innocent.

Macklin was still yapping in a stream of self-flagellation. ‘I chased him, I swear. But the bastard was greased lightning. Disappeared.’

Harland jumped in, ‘I’ve got guys scouting the area. Every direction. The wheelchair he used is behind the fountain right now. The guy didn’t have a chance to take it with him.’

Ella looked over, clocked it. A cheap black chair parked in the shadows. ‘Nobody touch it until forensics get here. If we wanna bag this guy’s prints, that chair is our best option.’

‘Roger,’ Harland said. ‘Techs should be here in ten.’

Ella turned back to Macklin. ‘Good job here.’

”Yeah, right,” he said.

‘Seriously. You got eyes on him. That’s the closest we’ve come so far. Keep your head up.’

It was cold comfort, flimsier than a streetwalker”s alibi. But it was all she had to offer.

‘Appreciated.’

‘You get his height, weight, identifiable marks?’

‘He was on the small side. Maybe twenty pounds overweight. Hair was buzzed. No tats or anything that I saw.’

‘Got it. Chief, keep the bloodhounds at bay? Me and Hawkins need to take a closer look.’

”Yeah, yeah.” Harland”s eyes cut to the rubbernecks, still gawping at the police line. ”You do your thing, I”ll handle the peanut gallery.

She nudged Luca and strode back into the lion”s den of flashing bulbs and fetid stone. He fell into step as the monstrosity amongst this admittedly-crude sculpture came into full view.

Up close and personal with this modern art monstrosity masquerading as murder, the wrongness of it smacked Ella right between the peepers. With the other stiffs it was the stocks, the mocking ye-olde punishment vibe the unsub got his rocks off to.

‘What the hell is going on here?’ Luca asked. ‘Did we interrupt his staging?’

Luca was right. This was off-script. Lazy. Like he’d been caught with his pants down and had to improvise.

No stocks, just a pair of bargain-basement handcuffs chaining the vic to the fountain like an afterthought. The intention was the same, but the presentation lacked the loving attention to detail of the previous kills. The sick artistry that made Ella”s gorge rise and her trigger finger itch.

She knelt down, peering at the victim’s wrists cuffed awkwardly above his head. He was hanging limply, knees brushing the ground, like a waiting sacrifice for some otherworldly demon.

Luca crouched beside her and squinted at the vic”s neck. ‘Abrasions to the neck. Same M.O. as the others.’

‘Ambushed, strangled, then rigged up like a scarecrow,’ Ella finished. She tilted her head, considering. Something wasn”t sitting right in her craw. ‘But why no stocks this time? What”s with the switch to cuffs and chains?’

‘Maybe…’ Luca ventured, ‘Maybe the stocks aren”t what”s important. Not for this one, anyway.’

Ella shot him a look. ‘Explain.’

Luca shrugged, sheepish. ‘Dunno, exactly. But we know our unsub had this all planned in advance. He brought those two stocks months ago. He doesn’t do impulsive.’

‘So there’s something else about this place that’s important to him.’

‘Maybe, but what?’ Luca asked. ‘Chuckles Fountain. Did we ever stop to consider that the locations might be significant? Park, alleyway, now a fountain.’

Knock her over with a feather, because Luca might be onto something. ‘Hold that thought,’ she said and looked back to the gaggle of uniformed officer. ‘Macklin, get over here.’

The officer sauntered over. ‘Everything okay?’

‘This fountain,’ Ella asked, ‘what is it?’

Macklin nodded at the sculpture. ‘It’s a memorial for a guy named Chuckles. Some local celebrity, before my time.’

‘Who was he?’

‘A comic. Poor man’s Charlie Chaplin. Quite a tragic story, apparently.’

Luca asked, ‘How so?’

‘I’m no Dover historian but legend goes that he was doing a show one night, but the audience started booing him, heckling him, because he was putting on a poor show. Turns out the guy was sick, and he ended up having a heart attack onstage.’

Ella processed the story, filed the details away. ‘Poor Chuckles.’

‘Poor Chuckles, alright.’ Macklin gestured at the fountain. ‘And all he got for his efforts was this dumpy piece of shit.’

”Thanks, Macklin,” Ella said, then went back to the display. She shelved the information for later, then pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket.

Luca said, ‘Nothing scarier than when a girl puts the gloves on.’

‘Need to go diving,’ she said.

‘Where?’

Ella edged closer and gently searched the victim’s pockets. The usual detritus of a life cut short – keys, loose change, receipts for coffee and pie. And a wallet, worn buttery-soft with age and use.

‘Unsub didn’t have time to clean the vic out like he did with the others. Everything’s still here. Phone, keys, wallet.’

‘Phone contents could be vital,’ Luca said.

Ella flipped open the wallet, zeroing in on the driver”s license tucked behind a scratched window of plastic. ‘Harry Shepherd,’ she read out, committing the name to memory.

‘Harry Shepherd,’ Luca repeated.

Ella kept digging, sorting through punch cards and scraps of paper in search of something, anything to break the holding pattern they”d been stuck in since this whole circus kicked off.

Her fingers caught on something stiff, a rectangle of cardstock shoved into a backfold. She tugged it free, flipped it over. And promptly felt her eyebrows shoot up to outer space.

‘Uh…’

Luca leaned in, all barely-leashed curiosity. ‘What you got?’

Wordlessly, Ella held up the card. Black as a bible and twice as likely to give Luca an aneurysm, with Lord Leatherworth, Dominant Extraordinaire embossed in blood-red foil.

Luca blanched. ‘Is that…?’

‘Professional male dom? Looks like.’ The corner of Ella”s mouth ticked up. ‘Looks like Harry here was into the scene.’

‘Combined with the cuffs here,’ Luca gestured. ‘I mean, it paints a picture.’

Ella nodded. It sure did. A big, lurid, full-color centerfold of a picture, the kind to make a vice cop blush. But the question was: did that picture include a white-masked psychopath with a thing for stocks and strangulation?

Only one way to find out.

‘Let”s see if Harry here left us any other breadcrumbs.’ She jerked her chin at Luca. ‘Help me get his pants off.’

‘Come again?’

Ella fought the urge to laugh at Luca”s bug-eyed incredulity. Right, the guy probably never had to strip a corpse. Much less in public, with half the Dover PD snapping pics for the scrapbook.

She relented with a wry grin. ‘Not the full monty. Just need to check for any marks, anything that might confirm our findings.’

Luca cleared his throat as a dull flush crawled up his neck. ‘Uh. Right. That”s… yeah, okay. Are we allowed to do that?’

‘Generally frowned upon,’ Ella said as she reached for the vic”s belt.

Luca choked, a strangled sound somewhere between a laugh and a whimper. But he knelt down gamely enough, helping Ella ease Harry’s rumpled slacks down over his hips. She wrangled his underwear out of the way, professional as a preacher”s daughter, then flicked over the milk-white skin, the vulnerable backs of thighs. She frowned when she noticed the stripes of fading pink cross-hatching Harry’s firm backside.

Bingo.

‘Well heck,’ Luca muttered. ‘Looks like Harry here was quite the submissive.’

‘Agreed.’

‘These marks are fresh, too. Harry has been spanked pretty damn recently. Probably today.’

Ella gave him a look. ‘Thought you weren’t an expert in weird sex,’ she smirked.

Luca blushed a little. Bless him. ‘Maybe I lied.’

She flicked another glance at the business card in her hand at that pretentious red scrawl. Decision crystallized with every beat of her strung-out heart. It could be a coincidence, of course, but in her experience, coincidences were just patterns with bad timing.

‘Let’s get Harry’s pants back up. The guys out there are looking at us like we’re grave robbers.’

With as much grace as possible, Ella and Luca redressed Harry Shepherd. She mentally apologized for the indignity, then followed up with a promise to find justice for this poor gentleman.

‘Time to go and visit a professional dom,’ Ella said.

‘What, now?’ Luca asked. ‘It’s nearly midnight.’

‘That’s the beauty of late night calls. People are always home.’

The game was afoot. At last. The thrill of the hunt sang in Ella”s blood, razor-edged and bittersweet as the first sip of rotgut after a long dry spell.

And she had to admit, she had a good feeling about this.