Girl, Sought (Ella Dark #24)

CHAPTER THREE

The I-95 stretched ahead in three lanes of grey asphalt under a bleached December sky. Ella spread the crime scene photos across her lap in the passenger seat while Luca kept the SUV at a steady 75. An ancient Eagles track crackled through the radio.

Eleanor Calloway stared up at her with those white orbs that passed for eyes. Their unsub had done something to them: coated the lids with some kind of adhesive that caught the light. The effect transformed human tissue into porcelain perfection and made flesh into something manufactured.

‘Talk to me,’ Luca said. ‘What are you seeing?’

Ella shuffled through the stack. Each new angle revealed fresh details about Eleanor's final tableau. The careful positioning of the hands in her lap. The precise tilt of her head. Even the arrangement of the antique dolls around her chair followed a certain vision.

‘The staging is methodical. He took his time with this. Look at the makeup application - those cheek circles are perfectly symmetrical. The lipstick doesn't bleed past the natural lip line.’

‘Could be a woman.’

‘Could be. But statistically, when single women living alone are targeted...’ Ella let the sentence hang.

‘Male perp,’ Luca finished. ‘Someone rejected. Someone carrying a grudge.’

The SUV merged onto US-301. Another ninety minutes left, according to the GPS. 'Yeah. Our unsub obviously targeted her, so we need to find out why. First thing we need to do when we get there is check the crime scene.'

‘Yup. The lead investigator is going to meet us there this afternoon.’

Traffic thinned as they left the DC metro sprawl behind. Patches of winter-dead forest broke up the monotony of highway barriers and REST STOP AHEAD signs.

‘The killer knew about Eleanor’s little collection, so it must have been someone she knew. Maybe she was part of a collector’s group or something.’

‘Yeah. And my money's on someone who'd been in that house before. Maybe multiple times.’ Ella studied the room's layout in the wider shots. ‘Custom display cases. Climate controls. This wasn't some casual hobby - Eleanor Calloway spent serious money protecting these dolls.’

‘Insurance records might tell us who installed the cases. Could be our guy worked construction. Home security. Something that got him through the door legitimately. You know how many of these home security outfits hire ex-cons?’

It was a depressing thought but not a new one. How many crime scenes had she walked into over the years, only to find the monster had already been invited in? Too damn many. The bogeyman didn't need to pick your lock when he had a key. Ella made a mental note to pull those records as soon as she had the chance. ‘The dolls themselves would be worth checking too. High-end antiques like that, there can't be many dealers in the area.’

Luca turned the radio down a notch. ‘You seeing any blood in those pictures?’

Ella flipped through them again. ‘Not a drop. Which means…’

‘Strangulation.’

‘Yeah. And I never met a woman who strangled other women. Which means our unsub is likely a man.’

Contrary to what TV shows portrayed, strangling someone took notable physical strength. The effort required was comparable to holding a 50-pound weight in the bicep curl position for five minutes. It didn’t sound like much, but in the moment, it took its toll on the muscles.

‘You know, Hawkins, we might be dealing with… your favorite subcategory of killer.’

Luca kept one hand on the wheel and pinched the bridge of his nose with the other. ‘No. Don’t say it.’

‘I’m sorry, but I think this guy sees himself as… an artist.’

‘Ugh,’ Luca breathed. ‘I hate artists.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘You’ve got a point. All that theatricality. Comes from the kind of person who likes the smell of their own shit. Just give me a simple pervert with mommy issues any day of the week.’

Ella inspected the photos again. ‘Well, the jury’s still out, but I’ve never met a killer with this kind of grandiosity that didn’t think they were God’s gift to… something.’

‘Good, because those pretentious assholes are never as smart as they think. They always go too far and make mistakes, like BTK. Any other cases like this? Ever?’

Ella glanced at the highway and pulled up her mental database. ‘Nothing exactly like this, but there are pieces that fit. Jerry Brudos in the sixties. He had a thing for women's shoes, dressed his victims up. Robert Berdella took posed photos of his victims. And Harvey Glatman – he'd do these elaborate bondage photoshoots before killing his victims.’

She paused, considering. ‘But those guys were all about sexual gratification. There’s no sexual component here. More like... Robert Hansen. Remember him?’

‘The Baker Butcher?’

‘Yeah. He'd hunt women in Anchorage, but first he'd keep them at his house. Dress them up, play act these weird domestic scenarios. It wasn't about sex. It was about control. About making them into his idea of perfect companions.’

Rain began to spatter against the windshield. Ella spread out more photos of Eleanor's death tableau. ‘Our guy's got that same need for control. But instead of playing house, he's turning women into dolls. Making them permanent.’

‘Any cases specifically involving dolls?’

‘Closest I’ve got is Edmund Kemper dismembering his sisters’ dolls as a kid.’

‘So we’ve got something unique on our hands,’ Luca said. ‘Could be some kind of fetish or fantasy, or it could just be a middle finger to the victim.’

‘This is a message, not an escape. He's not becoming the dolls, he's turning the dolls into an extension of his ego.’

Luca checked the GPS. ‘Just under ninety minutes. You want to get coffee first or head straight there?’

‘No time for coffee. I need to see this collection room in the flesh.’

‘Here we go.’ Luca grinned. ‘I know that tone.’

‘What tone?’

‘The one that says you're already hooked.’

Luca had a point. The thought should have disturbed her more than it excited her. But these were the cases that got her blood pumping - the weird ones, the ones that required her to think in frequencies most people couldn't hear. Regular homicides were just math problems. This was something else entirely.

‘Can't help it,’ she admitted. ‘Look what we've got. Ritualistic elements, organized methodology, specific victim selection, unique signature. This freak's telling us a story with every detail.’

The rain picked up and drummed steadily on the roof. Ella settled back in her seat, already building theories, connecting dots, seeing patterns. Medical leave had dulled her edge, but now she was back in the game.

She couldn't wait to walk to that crime scene. To see what other messages their doll maker had left behind. Because guys like this always had more to say.