Girl, Haunted (Ella Dark #22)

CHAPTER FIVE

The airplane chased the sun westward. Ella sat across from Luca with a splay of paperwork between them. Funny how life threw curveballs at you; first time flying with a boyfriend and you think you’re headed to Paris or Rome, somewhere where the wine flows and the streets ooze romance. Instead, you’re bound for Yamhill, Oregon. A place where, according to her quick research, had more bears than residents.

Ella caught Luca staring at her while he chewed the end of a pen. ‘What? Do I have crap on my face?’

‘Not this time. I’ve just never heard anyone call you Ells before.’

‘Seriously? We’re still on that?’

Luca threw his hands up. ‘I’m just saying.’

‘You jealous, Hawkins?’

‘Yeah.’

Ella stifled a laugh. ‘Thank you for the honesty, and no, Roadrunner’s like the oversized brother I never had.’

'He seems nice. It's just weird seeing it in the flesh. Your past. I don't know. Stop me if I'm talking garbage.' Luca threw his pen down, then looked out of the window at the rooftops, slowly fading from view. 'There she goes.'

This wasn't Ella's usual territory, but if she wanted to make this relationship work, she had to do the wifely thing now and again. 'Hawkins, if I could reach across this table I'd put my hand on my knee and tell you to stop fretting. The past is the past for a reason. You've got one too.'

He turned back to her. ‘I’ve always been a one-woman man, thank you.’

‘Same.’ Ella plucked out the top page from her pile. ‘But we’ve got more important things to worry about. What do you make of this whole thing?’

Luca scrambled for his pen again then began rifling through his casefile. ‘So, two victims. The first was Gregory Van Allen, forty-two, killed two nights ago. Second victim was Natasha Langston, twenty-eight, killed last night.’

'Gregory was stabbed in the abdomen, judging by these close-ups, then dumped in the first room of the Screamatorium.'

‘Yeah, and Gregory owned the place too. We need to find out how the killer managed to isolate him. It must have been empty when he attacked.’

‘And this teddy bear that Gregory’s holding?’ Ella asked. ‘Any thoughts?’

Luca regarded her again. ‘Is this another test? Like what Ripley used to do to you?’

‘No. You brushed up on psyche more recently than me. Give me everything you’ve got.’

‘Well,’ Luca began, ‘it doesn’t mean anything. Not isolated, anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’

'It's the sole component of his ritual, but his ritual changed with the second murder. So, this teddy bear is part of a puzzle. It's not the individual items that're important, it's what they combine into.'

Ella nodded. A part of her hated it when Luca reached the same conclusion as her, especially when he did it quicker. She loved the man, but she wished he’d slow down his rapid-fire processing for the sake of her vanity.

‘Agreed. Then there’s Natasha Langston.’ Ella flipped to the next batch of crime scene photos. ‘Bloodless. Different approach.’

‘It’s the same approach. Killed alone in a haunted house.’

Ella shook her head in a desperate attempt to dislodge the cobwebs. If she screwed up once, the errors kept coming. ‘Yes, sorry. Different killing method. No stab wounds, no bullet holes.’

‘So he strangled her. Or hit her so hard that she passed out and a lack of oxygen to the brain did the rest. And what’s with this mirror-in-eyes thing?’

Ella had been chewing on that grisly detail for an hour now, but all she had was baseless speculation. ‘It takes a strong stomach to pull this off.’

'I know. I still hate putting contact lenses in, and this unsub is shoving shards of glass in there. But what's the point?'

Ella let the half-formed theories flow uninhibited. ‘Something to do with reflection? As in, take a look at yourself ?’

Luca looked unimpressed. ‘It’s a bit on the nose, Ell. Whatever it is, it’s got something to do with a teddy bear.’

‘It could just be theatrics. The teddy bear could have been a prop in the haunted house, and the mirror shards are from the broken mirror in this Chamber of Reflections room.’

‘Improvisation?’ Luca offered.

‘Could be.’ Ella sat back and caught his eye. ‘But we know that’s too simple.’

Luca grabbed two crime scene photos and held them side by side. ‘Haunted houses. What’s our unsub got against them?’

‘Could have a vendetta against them? What if one genuinely traumatized him? Or he worked at one, got fired, then decided to get back at the whole industry?’

‘Is getting fired a reasonable justification for homicide?’ Luca asked.

‘Anything’s a reason for homicide if you’re crazy enough.’

Luca inspected a wide shot of Natasha Langston’s body lying in a pool of glass. ‘Well, these places are all about pushing your buttons, or so I hear.’

‘Apparently so. He could be using these places as his own little therapy session. When we land, we need to check out the most recent crime scene. See if there’s anything the pictures didn’t pick up.’

‘Yeah. And let’s find out how our guy got inside. The police report says Natasha was working alone all night. Apparently this place – Shadowland – was meant to have a trial run today.’

Ella glanced at the date on the police report. October twelfth. Then something came to her.

‘Just realized, Hawkins. Halloween is in two weeks.’

‘Sure is. You thinking about trick or treating?’

Ella tapped a glossy photo with her pen. ‘Far from it. Haunted houses. Halloween. Coincidence?’

‘What’s the time of year got to do with anything? Don’t these places only open around Halloween time?’

‘No idea. I wish I knew.’

‘Get researching then,’ Luca said. ‘We’ve still got three hours on this damn plane. What’s our allowance again?’

‘Hundred dollars a day.’

Luca eyeballed the stewardess coming down the aisle with a cart full of drinks. ‘If you don’t use it, does it roll over?’

‘No. Ripley tried that once. Saved up all week and got a five-hundred dollar bottle of scotch from the airport on the way home.’

‘Did it work?’

‘Nope. The director billed her for four-hundred.’ Ella's eyes drifted to the window, watching the clouds roll by like tumbleweed. For a moment, the only sound was the dull roar of the engine and the distant voice of a stewardess.

‘You missing her?’ Luca’s tone cut through the white noise.

Ella thought about it. Ripley was like her thumb. You didn’t realize how much you depended on it until you couldn’t use it. ‘I do miss her, but I’m just happy she’s out there somewhere. Besides, you’re the best replacement I could ask for.’

‘Shucks,’ Luca said.

Ella went back to her paperwork. ‘Now, enough reflection, let’s put our heads together and figure this son of a bitch out.’

Ripley or no Ripley, the world kept turning, and psychopaths didn’t catch themselves.