Girl, Haunted (Ella Dark #22)

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Ella stared at the whiteboard until the words blurred into a black smear. Cassius Auctor. It taunted her – a riddle wrapped in an enigma, served with a side of 'screw you.' She chewed on the syllables, desperately trying to decode this psycho's chosen handle.

Cassius . From the Latin Cassus , meaning hollow or void. An emptiness waiting to be filled.

Auctor . Author. Storyteller.

Put them together and what did you get? A ghost. A specter with a taste for the theatrical. He wove stories in entrails and wrote his masterpiece in blood. But to what end? What was the message buried beneath the mayhem?

They hit a wall, and they slammed into it hard. Three bodies and no closer to their killer. Leads had evaporated faster than spit on a skillet and their lone suspect was looking more victim than villain.

Behind her, Luca remained glued to his laptop, combing through Carter's footage frame by agonizing frame. He'd barely spoken in the last hour, so focused was he on the digital needle in a very grim haystack.

Redmond walked back into the room, fresh from yet another smoke break. The man was burning through tobacco like it was the only thing keeping him vertical. Not that Ella blamed him. Everyone had their vice, especially in law enforcement. Compared to some coping techniques, smoking was fairly tame.

She was just about to turn back to the board, to dive once more into the murky depths of motive and meaning, when a commotion from the corridor shattered her concentration.

The clack of heels, a harried voice pitched high with urgency.

Ella swiveled to see Janine, the precinct receptionist who she’d briefly met yesterday, stumble into the doorway. The woman's eyes were wide and rolling in their sockets. She looked like she'd just gone ten rounds with a heavyweight boxer.

‘Sheriff! Agents! Call. On line one. It’s… you gotta…' She sucked wind with one hand, clutching the door frame for support.

‘Easy there, Janine. Who’s on the call?’

Janine gulped air like a landed trout. ‘Not from dispatch. Straight to the precinct line. He asked...’

Ella jumped in, ‘Who asked? Who is it?’

‘It’s him . Someone claiming to be the killer.’

A cold fist clenched around Ella's guts. Luca spun around in haste. Ella locked eyes with him and saw her own 'what-the-hell' reflected back. Redmond was already moving, snatching up the receiver and stabbing the speaker button. Ella made a beeline for the desk. The phone perched there, its light blinking an evil red eye.

‘Trace it,’ Ella hissed to Redmond. He rushed to the door, motioned to another officer out in the corridor.

Ella rolled her shoulders and steeled herself. She prayed that this wasn’t just another prank call.

Then she stabbed the speaker button.

‘Can we help you?’ she asked.

Silence. Then a crackle of static. And finally, a voice smooth as black ice. ‘Detectives. I was beginning to think you were avoiding me.’

The world tilted sideways. Ella's stomach plummeted like she'd missed a step on a steep staircase. Call it cop’s instinct or a sixth sense, but she was certain that she was speaking to their unsub.

‘To what do I owe the pleasure, Mister...?’

A low chuckle slithered through the speaker and raked up gooseflesh on her arms. ‘Come now, Detective. We both know you're far too clever for coy. You've figured out my name.’

The voice was soft, gentle, perhaps cultured. Local accent, but tinged with a flavor of somewhere else. ‘Maybe I'm curious to hear it from the horse's mouth.’

‘Ah, but where's the fun in that?’ He sounded like a snake in the grass – polite and lethal. ‘I'll make you a deal. You share what you've gleaned from the tea leaves, and I'll fill in the rest.’

Ella clenched her teeth. Two could play the enigmatic artist game. ‘Okay, Cassius. You want to play? Let’s play. Yes, we know your name. Or your alias, anyway. And we’ve even seen you on CCTV footage. Tall gentleman, aren’t you?’

‘My, my. You have been doing your homework.’

‘So, Cassius. That’s your name, correct?’

‘It’s one of my names.’

Ella's pulse kicked. It felt like an eternity, but they'd barely been on the phone for thirty seconds. Not nearly long enough for a trace, even if he was ringing from inside the state. She caught Luca's eye as he mouthed ‘keep him on.’

Right. Time to bust out the small talk.

‘Let me guess. You're the chatty type. Want the world to know what you’ve done?’

‘Ha! Trying to profile me, Detective? Hoping I'll reveal some tragic backstory that sent me skipping down the road to ruin?’ His laugh curdled her blood. ‘Tempting, but I'm a sucker for the slow burn. I'd much rather savor the present.’

The hairs on Ella's nape prickled to attention. The best way to keep someone talking was to ask them open-ended questions. People, even serial murderers – especially serial murderers – couldn’t resist talking about themselves. ‘What kind of possibilities we talking here?’

‘The fatal kind. The kind that ends with a chalk outline and a closed casket.’

Ella's stomach plummeted to her shoes as the implications sank fang-deep. ‘What did you do?’

‘Ah ah. That would be telling.’ He clicked his tongue, a schoolmarm tsk-ing a misbehaving student. ‘But I will say this: Greygate Manor is lovely this time of year.’

Ella spun to Redmond. She nodded to him and Redmond disappeared out of the office. Greygate Manor. Another local haunted house.

‘Is that the only reason you called us? Isn’t there anything else you want to say?’

Keep him talking. Don’t spook him.

‘Yes. I didn’t want you fine folks to think I’d given up the ghost. So to speak.’

White-hot rage sizzled up Ella's spine. She wanted to reach through the phone and throttle him until his eyes popped. If I was telling the truth – then the man had killed two people in a single day. The famous, ultra-rare double-event as it was known in profiler terms.

‘Two victims in one day?’ Ella asked.

'I know, impressive, isn't it? Just call me a modern-day Jack the Ripper.'

‘Jack the Ripper, huh? Something tells me you and him won’t have a lot in common.’

‘We'll see about that. You know, they say the ghosts of Jack’s victims still walk the streets of Whitechapel, screaming Jack’s true identity into the void. Maybe that’ll happen here, too.’

Ella caught Luca’s eye. He mouthed ‘one more minute.’

‘And how long will this go on for?’ Ella asked. ‘They say Jack the Ripper’s final victim was the one he was looking for all along. Is that the case for you? Why are you killing innocent people?’

‘This ends soon,’ Cassius said. ‘Any good storyteller knows that you always begin with the ending, and this one will end in the most important haunted house of all.’

Storyteller. Most important haunted house. ‘Is that what this is about? You want to be remembered?’

‘No. This isn’t about me. But anyway, I must bid you adieu before I’m on long enough to trace…’

‘Wait,’ Ella interrupted, ‘tell me what this is about. The bear, the mirrors, the mask. I need to know.’

‘You might want to hurry to Greygate Manor. That poor woman's heart just wasn't in it.’

Click.

‘No!’ Ella screamed into the phone. ‘Don’t hang up you piece of...’

But he was gone.

Ella dug her fingernails into her arm. Her blood went from frozen to boiling in an instant. This bastard had played them like tin guitars, and he wanted them to know it.

‘Not long enough, Ell. No trace,’ said Luca.

There was no time to process, no time to plan. She had only one thought pinging around her skull like a stray bullet: this just went off-script . They were improvising now, playing the psycho's game by his rules.

And in this sick little cat-and-mouse, they were definitely the mice.

‘Hawkins.’ She had to pry the word through clenched teeth. ‘Greygate Manor. We need to get there. Now.’