Girl, Haunted (Ella Dark #22)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Outside the Crypt of Despair, the afternoon chill gnawed through Ella's jacket like a thousand icy needles, and yet her insides felt like they were being slow-roasted over hot coals. The joys of being a woman, she figured. Could the menopause really hit at 30? Weirder things had happened. Mother Nature was a real bitch sometimes.

Luca was inside speaking with the owner of the establishment, and Sheriff Redmond was watching two assistants from the Yamhill Country Coroners play tug-of-war with the body of Benjamin Clarke as they loaded him into a van. Poor guy had probably thought the scariest thing waiting for him in this place was an electric shock from a faulty wire, or maybe an eager actor in a clown mask.

The joke was on him. He'd found out the hard way that real monsters didn't need makeup.

Ella made a beeline for Redmond. He removed his hat, scooped the sweat off his head and flicked it to the ground.

‘Anything from the interviewees?’

‘It’s the same guy. Leather jacket and gloves, same as we saw on the Screamatorium footage. Just a different mask this time.’

‘It’s not much, but it’s something,’ Redmond said. ‘Guess Roland Pierce is off the hook now.’

‘Depends exactly when Benjamin Clarke was killed. It’s what, forty minutes between here and Nocturne House? It’s possible Roland did this then rushed to his gig, but…’ she trailed off.

‘But probably not,’ Redmond finished.

‘Yeah. Probably not.’ She jammed her fists into her pockets, trying to coax some feeling back into her frozen fingers. ‘We'll check his alibi, but chances are it’ll check out.’

‘Well, the owner of this is getting everything he can for me. CCTV, customer lists, names of the two actors he had working this afternoon.’

‘Great. Ask him to differentiate between guests who paid in cash and card. Our guy is smart, so he wouldn’t have left an electronic trail.’

On the other side of the lot, the morgue van shut its doors and rolled off into the afternoon. Ella watched it go, and told herself that as soon as the van was out of sight, she’d give Redmond the bad news.

He must have sensed it, because he asked her, ‘Any other good news you wanna share, Agent? My ulcer could use a laugh.’

‘Sorry, fresh out of good news, but I’ve got a steaming pile of bad news if you’re interested.’

‘The job says I gotta be. What is it?’

She gestured to the building. ‘Our unsub’s getting bolder. Striking in broad daylight now. He knows these haunted houses better than the rats in the walls, and he's got the balls to pull this off with a crowd just rooms away.’

Redmond’s face went the color of oatmeal. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’re about to ruin my week? Even more so?’

‘Because we need to go nuclear. Need to shut every haunted house down until we catch this guy. Take away his playground.’

Redmond’s Adam’s apple dipped like it was trying to escape his throat. ‘We’re gonna make a few enemies. You know Halloween season is prime trade for these kinds of places.’

Always the same old song and dance. Money versus lives. Like comparing apples to hand grenades. ‘Yeah, but dead customers don’t spend much cash. I get that this won’t win us any popularity contests. But I'd rather piss off every haunt owner from here to California than see another corpse.’

‘I’m just saying,’ Redmond said. ‘Halloween’s two weeks away. These haunted house owners, they make most of their yearly take in the next few days.’

Ella's patience, already worn thin, snapped like a rubber band pulled too tight. ‘Profit margins can go to hell. We've got three bodies on our hands, Sheriff. Three families who are never gonna see their loved ones again. You want to be the one to tell the next set of parents that their kid got axed because we were too worried about some carnie's bottom line?’

A pause, then the scratch of Redmond’s finger against his ear. ‘The mayor’s gonna have us over a barrel, and what if our guy just moves on to the next county? Next state?’

‘He won't. This is personal for him. These places, this area - it means something. He'll stick around, maybe even get sloppy when we take away his hunting grounds.’

The sheriff let out a long, weary sigh. ‘Alright. You’re officially the boss. I'll start making calls, but I'm warning you – this ain't gonna be pretty. These scare houses, they’re the lifeblood of Yamhill. We're talking about nearly half the town's annual income, all crammed into a six-week window around Halloween. You know what’ll happen if we screw this up?’

A hollow feeling opened up in the pit of Ella's stomach, as if her insides were trying to collapse in on themselves. She resisted the urge to wrap an arm around her midsection.

‘Then the whole town will go to hell,’ she said.

‘Yup. Folks here, they count on this. It's how they pay their mortgages, put their kids through college. If we shut these places down now, at the peak of the season, then there won’t be much of a town left to save.’

Heat surged up Ella's spine. ‘So we need to solve this now.’

Redmond let the silence do the talking as Luca emerged from the door and joined them. There was a new wrinkle in his forehead that hadn’t been there yesterday morning.

‘Anything from the owner, Hawkins?’

‘He’s working on getting us the names and the CCTV footage, and he swears up and down that nothing was out of place when they opened this morning. He talked to the victim right before the first group arrived, then found him dead about an hour later.’

‘He notice anything suspicious?’

‘Not today, but yesterday he caught a guy outside with a video camera. Didn’t get an ID on him and he didn’t look familiar.’

Ella thought it through. The more intel she got, the less sense this case made. ‘Maybe the CCTV caught him, but something tells me our guy is too smart for that.’

‘Yeah,’ Luca said. ‘You give the sheriff the bad news already?’

Redmond said, ‘Yup. It’s gonna make us public enemy number one, and to be honest, I’m not sure if I’ve got the authority to shut down businesses like you’re asking.’

‘Maybe not, but we do,’ Ella said.

‘Tell ‘em the Bureau sent you.’

Redmond reluctantly pulled out his cell phone. ‘Alright. Just don’t blame me when you get garbage thrown at you.’

The Sheriff made his way across the lot with his phone pressed to his ear. She turned to Luca, ready to lay out their next move, but the words died on her lips when she saw the sheepish grin on his face. It was the same look he'd had earlier when he'd interrupted her interview with that jumpy kid.

‘You still mad at me?’ he asked.

‘Yeah. A little bit.’ She tried to hold onto the embers of her anger, but damn if the guy didn’t have a way of getting under her skin.

Luca held up his hands in mock surrender, that infuriating grin still plastered across his pretty-boy face. ‘Consider this my apology. I didn’t mean to undermine you. Thought maybe that guy would open up more to a fellow Y-chromosome.’

Ella felt her annoyance starting to fade. She wasn’t sure how he did it, but Luca had a way of fixing things even when the world was going to hell. She kicked his foot and said, ‘Forget it. I’m sorry as well.’

‘We’ve got three bodies on slabs and a psycho on the loose. There are more important things to worry about.’

‘Then we better get back to the precinct. How long before we have that list of names? Our killer has to be the one name that’s on both the Screamatorium and Crypt of Despair lists.’

Luca nudged his head towards the building. ‘The owner’s old, not tech savvy. Give him an hour or two.’

‘Well, let’s not waste any time.’ She threw the car keys at him. ‘Put those NASCAR skills to use and get us back to the office.’