CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

‘Almost there,’ Luca chirped, ever the navigator. ‘Two blocks up, hang a left.’

Ella grunted, slinging gravel as she cut the corner too close. No time for niceties, for coloring inside the lines. Not when every second wasted was another chance for Doyle to claim his next victim.

She sucked the sour air through gritted teeth and played every hunch, every half-assed instinct that had gotten her this far. Pictured the clues clicking into place like a Rubik”s Cube from hell – masks and mics, gags and guffaws all twisting, aligning until the truth stared her dead in the face.

And the truth was, their killer had one last name on his list. One final act, a gut-busting encore to bring the whole house down. And Brandon Mulroney would be his stage, his straight man, his giggling corpse.

‘Up here,’ Luca said.

Briarcliff was a shithole, even by Dover standards. Cracked pavement, busted chain link fencing bristling like rotten teeth. A junkyard of broken dreams, coughed up and spat out by the same mean streets that had made Sebastian Doyle the man he was today. Ella cranked the wheel, brought the unmarked to a shuddering stop at the curb. 5284 squatted halfway down the block, and Luca was out of the door before the engine had time to die. Ella jumped out and caught up with him. The blood was roaring so loudly in her ears that she almost missed Harland”s buzz-cut mug popping out the front door.

‘Whoa, where”s the fire?’ He held up a ham hock of a hand, brows beetling together. ‘Thought you two were gonna come through the wall.’

Ella shouldered past him, already scanning the living room for blood spatters and body parts. But the place was quiet as a church on Saturday night, just some golf rerun droning on the tube and the tick of a grandfather clock.

And there, perched on the sofa like he was waiting for high tea, was who she assumed was Brandon Mulroney.

He blinked up at them, pale and a little baffled. Ella gave him a quick once-over. The kid was no hottie, that was for sure. Doughy and soft; the profile of a man who”d never met workout he couldn”t skip. Hairline making a desperate retreat from a shiny fivehead, jowls working overtime to swallow a weak chin.

This was the guy who”d captured Doyle”s breakdown on film? This was the guy that birthed a serial killer for his own amusement? This book had no idea how close he”d come to getting snuffed. How tight the noose of his own digital dickery had gotten around his flabby neck.

Jesus wept, she thought. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

‘Brandon Mulroney?’ Ella didn”t waste time on a how-do. ‘Special Agent Dark, FBI. This is my partner, Special Agent Hawkins. You know why we”re here?’

The confusion melted from Mulroney”s face like a Dali clock, replaced by something resigned and faintly constipated. ‘Yeah, the cops filled me in. Some psycho”s taking out hecklers and I”m next on the list, right?’

Ella opened her mouth, ready to read him the riot act. Fill his ear with all the gory details of what happened to snitches and stitches in Sebastian Doyle”s brave new world. But Harland cut her off at the pass.

‘Brandon here”s been briefed,’ he said. ‘No sign of our boy Doyle. Looks like we mighta jumped the gun on this one, Dark.’

The words hit Ella like a sock full of pennies to the gut. No Doyle. No smoking gun, no trail of blood and teeth leading to a funnyman-turned-psycho killer. Just another dead.

She shook it off, zeroed back in on Brandon. The guy was squirming like he had a hamster shoved somewhere intimate. Nervous. Hiding something.

‘Walk me through it again,’ she said. ‘You were at the Laughingstock that night. Caught Sebastian Doyle”s meltdown on candid camera. Spill.’

Brandon licked his lips, eyes darting to Harland like he was looking for a lifeline. But the chief just crossed his arms, face straight as a Nevada highway.

Mulroney shifted, fingers lacing over the beginnings of a beer gut. ‘Not much to tell. I wasn”t even heckling, just...y”know. Filming. Documenting.’

Ella”s ears pricked. ‘Documenting?’

‘Yeah, for like...proof. Evidence.’ Mulroney shrugged his soft shoulders, picked at a hole in his sweatpants. ‘I felt bad for the guy, y”know? Doyle. He was dying up there, getting ripped to shreds. I thought maybe if I got it on tape...’

‘You could what? Get some clout on the Internet? Get some precious likes?’

‘No!’ Brandon spat. ‘Nothing like that. Those guys were disturbing the show. I wanted to get them kicked out, banned from the club, something like that.’

Ella wasn’t buying it. ‘That”s a pretty little story, Brandon, but if you were so keen to play hero, why upload it for the world to see? Why Make Seb Doyle the poster boy for public humiliation and turn him into a serial killer?’

Mulroney went still. Possum in the pan lights still, barely breathing still. ‘I...I didn”t...I mean, I was going to, but...’

‘But what?’ Ella pressed, sensing blood in the water and closing fast.

Brandon paled so fast Ella thought he might faint. A skim of sweat popped out on his upper lip. ‘I couldn’t...’

‘Can it.’ Ella took a step forward, boiling over. Getting right up in Brandon”s grille until she could see the spineless yellow of his eyes. ‘You got something to confess, better make it quick. Because I guarantee you, there”s a killer out there who isn’t going to ask twice.’

Mulroney”s eyes flicked to Luca, to Harland looming in the doorway. Looking for an out, a friendly face in a sea of badges.

And then he crumbled like a sandcastle at high tide. Ella almost felt sorry for the bastard. Almost.

‘Alright, Jesus,’ Mulroney cracked, the words bursting out of him like pus from a zit. ‘I didn”t have a choice, okay? Vanzetti made me do it!’

Luca blinked. ‘Who the hell is Vanzetti?’

‘Freddy Vanzetti,’ Mulroney half-sobbed. ‘The owner of The Laughingstock. He paid me to post the video, said it”d be killer publicity for the club.’

Ella felt her guts turn to ice, a slow frost creeping through her veins. ‘Paid you.’

‘Two grand, cash on the barrel.’ Mulroney looked up at her through wispy lashes, pleading. ‘I needed the money, alright? Medical bills, they don”t pay for themselves!’

Ella”s head was pounding, rage and disgust a two-headed viper sinking fangs in her frontal lobe. Greed and cruelty, the oldest dance partnership in the book. Chew a man up and spit him out, then sell tickets to the aftermath. She wanted to laugh or scream or punch her own head until the world made sense again. This mook, this soft-handed little worm had sold Doyle out. Cashed in on his humiliation for a measly two grand.

And now people were dead because of it. Good, bad, didn”t matter - they were all just punchlines now. Christ, no wonder Doyle had snapped. No wonder he”d started painting the town red one laugh at a time. Ella almost couldn”t blame him.

But there was no time for sympathy, for understanding. No time to plumb the depths of a broken man”s shattered psyche. Not when there was still one name left in his little black book.

‘Did Doyle know?’ She asked, voice cold enough to leave hoarfrost in its wake. ‘That you got paid to ruin his life?’

Brandon”s chin wobbled, tears starting to leak. Pathetic.

‘Doyle emailed me,’ he said, snot bubbling. ‘Begged me to take the video down. But I couldn’t. Freddy would have cut me off. Blackballed me from every other club in town. Said he’d sue me if I told anyone about our deal.’

Ella saw red. Blood in her eyes, pounding in her ears. For a second, she wanted nothing more than to crack Brandon”s empty skull open and see if there was anything rattling around besides echoes and IOUs.

But she reined it in. Barely. The job came first. Finding Freddy Vanzetti the club owner and beating Doyle to the last square on this messed-up bingo board.

‘It’s a hard life,’ she said. ‘And this Freddy Vanzetti. He was there the night it happened?’

”He”s there every night. Every day, too. He was the one who boosted my video out there. Put it on all the social sites, all the video sites. He made sure millions saw it.”

The man behind the curtain. The one who”d set the stage, called the cues. The one who”d made a laughingstock of a wannabe’s dreams, and then had the gall, the sheer unmitigated audacity to profit from it.

Another star of this freakshow. Another villain, cackling and capering in the wings.

And Doyle was headed right for him. A guided missile, locked and loaded with enough psychotic rage to level city blocks. He”d save Vanzetti for last, the pièce de résistance of his bloody revenge fantasy.

So now Ella had to save his life.

She whirled away, already fishing out her cell. Ready to put an APB on every cop, crud, and camgirl from here to the state line. Smoke this Freddy fucker out, get him in protective before he wound up the big finish at Doyle”s stand-up special.

But Luca caught her elbow, his grip gentle as a shrink”s question. Ella snapped around to snarl at him, but the look in his eyes stopped her dead.

‘We already know where Doyle”s headed,’ he said softly. ‘Where he”s been headed this whole damn time. We know where this ends.’

And Ella saw it. The dots connecting, lightning streaking across a black sky. The endgame Sebastian had planned before the first body hit the ground.

‘The Laughingstock club,’ Ella said as she eyed her partner, this rookie who’d seen too much too soon. Who still had hope and heart and a hunger for justice that matched her own.

And she knew, in that moment, that she’d happily go down, all guns blazing and middle fingers raised alongside him. He might not have been Ripley, but damn if he didn’t make a good argument for being her replacement.

She turned to Harland, jerked her head at Mulroney still quaking on the couch. ‘Hold down the fort here, Chief. Babysit the cameraman, make sure he doesn”t accidentally make any more murderers.’

Harland grunted, already moving to block the door with his bulk. ‘You got it. Where are you going?’

‘We’re going to find Doyle and show him some real laughs.’

And with that, she was moving. Out the door, down the walk, Luca hot on her heels like a hound scenting blood.

Doyle had had his fill of the spotlight, basked in the crimson glow of revenge served raw and wriggling. Now it was time for the hook, the long drag offstage and into a cold cement cell.

No more encores. No more death rattles in the dark. Ella was ending this freakshow tonight.

She was going to have the last laugh if it killed her.