CHAPTER FIVE
Death had a perfume all its own. Ella knew the scent well, but Eleanor Calloway's collection room hit differently. The familiar copper-penny reek of blood was absent. Instead, something sweet and artificial hung in the air; a blend of furniture polish and old porcelain.
The collection room sprawled before her like a Victorian parlor. Custom mahogany cases lined the walls from floor to ceiling, each one lit from within by hidden LEDs. Temperature and humidity readouts glowed in the corners. Eleanor Calloway had dropped serious cash on environmental controls to protect her precious dolls.
And what dolls they were. Hundreds of glass eyes stared out from behind the pristine glass. Bisque faces with hand-painted features. Tiny rosebud mouths frozen in permanent smiles. Period costumes preserved in climate-controlled perfection. Some wore lace-trimmed dresses, and others sported miniature military uniforms complete with brass buttons no bigger than pinheads.
But the room's centerpiece made all that porcelain perfection look cheap.
Eleanor Calloway sat rigid in a high-backed wooden chair, posed like the grand dame of this twisted tea party. The unsub had dressed her in a powder-blue Victorian gown with ruffles and pearl buttons from neck to ankle. White lace gloves covered hands arranged just so in her lap. Her dark hair had been styled in elaborate ringlets that framed her face like a doll's wig.
The makeup job was what really turned Ella's stomach. Powder white foundation erased every human imperfection. Rouge circles painted on each cheek gave her that porcelain doll glow. The lips were a perfect crimson bow, probably traced with a stencil for symmetry.
And then the eyes.
The killer had glued Eleanor's eyelids wide open. The whites gleamed with an unnatural sheen and blue irises stared straight ahead, frozen in that thousand-yard stare that only the dead could manage. He’d even painted tiny catch-lights in each eye; those little white dots that made porcelain dolls look alive. Luca was the first to speak.
‘What the hell are we dealing with here?’
Ella's throat felt tight. ‘He spent hours on this. The makeup alone would've taken forever to get this precise. And what the hell did he do with her clothes?’
The dolls had been carefully arranged around Eleanor's chair in concentric circles, like attendants at court. Antique faces stared up at their new queen with empty eyes.
‘Must have taken her clothes with him. Check out the hands,’ Luca said.
Ella leaned closer, careful not to disturb the scene. Eleanor's gloved fingers were locked in an unnatural pose, curved like she was about to play piano.
‘Uh, Jesus. He broke her fingers.’ Ella turned to Detective Reeves, who was hanging near the door. ‘Did the neighbors hear anything?’
‘Haven’t interviewed them all yet, but the ones I did – nothing. Mrs. Jacobs said she heard a car about midnight, but that could have been anything.’
‘Well, we can say for sure that he did all of this postmortem. You don’t break someone’s fingers in silence.’
‘Ell, look at her neck,’ Luca pointed.
She inspected it. There was a perfect ring of red that wrapped around the whole neck. ‘He garroted her. Didn’t use his bare hands.’
‘Wanted to keep her pristine. Bare hands would have left too much bruising.’
‘Yeah. He wanted as clean a death as possible.’
‘Our guy’s got a vision. That’s for sure.’
An understatement. The scene pulled Ella into its guts and begged her to poke around and uncoil the innards. So many questions stabbed her brain. What was this monster’s endgame? Why Eleanor Calloway, a librarian of all people? What message was he trying to send with this staging? Why go to these lengths?
She had a feeling they were just seeing the tip of this psychopath's iceberg. A killer who put this much work into their displays didn't stop at one. They were just getting started.
'Well, if this guy thinks himself an artist, then I'm going to be his biggest critic.'
Luca said, ‘I don’t want to sound like a headmaster from the fifties, but what kind of man is this skilled at putting on makeup? I tried to cover a blemish once. Ended up with a massive orange circle on my cheek.’
‘I don’t think our guy was naturally skilled at applying makeup. I think he learned to do it – just for this.’
Luca regarded her. ‘You sure about that? Seems like a reach.’
The behavioral profile was beginning to take shape. Ella couldn’t imagine an unsub engineering a scene just to put his expert makeup-application skills to use. ‘Come on, Hawkins. This doesn’t seem like a revenge killing to me because death wasn’t the goal here. This is a fantasy brought to life. Our unsub needed everything perfect, and that included expert makeup application.’
'You think he took classes?' Reeves asked from the doorway.
'Maybe. Or he could work in a field where he does this for a living. Theater. TV. Photoshoots. Maybe even mortuary work. The point is, this wasn't impulsive. He planned every detail.' Ella circled Eleanor's chair. 'The garrote instead of manual strangulation. The perfect makeup application. Breaking her fingers post-mortem for the right pose. Everything calculated for maximum visual impact.'
'Like a director setting up his shot,' Luca said.
'Exactly. He's not just killing - he's creating.'
Luca nodded toward the dolls. ‘Why arrange them like this? Why make them watch?’
‘Because they're his audience. This isn't just murder - it's performance art. He's showing off his skills to the only critics he respects.’ Ella gestured at the display cases. 'And he’s not going to stop at one, but the question is – is it the dolls that attracted him here, or something else?'
‘Where should we start?’ Reeves asked. ‘Neighbors? Friends? Family?’
‘All of the above. Our killer knew about Eleanor’s collection, so he must have had contact with her.’
‘Someone close to her?’
‘Impossible to say. Could have been her best friend or just some tradesman who happened to stumble on this room. We need to look beyond the usual suspects though. It might not be as simple as a jilted lover or disgruntled co-worker. He's a predator. He would have stalked Eleanor, learned her routines. Probably ingratiated himself into her life somehow. We need to check out the collector community too.’
Reeves cleared his throat. ‘I'll put the word out, see if anyone in her circle has a screw loose. Maybe someone made a stink at an auction, threw a tantrum about losing a rare doll. If this guy's got an obsession, maybe there's a trail.’
Ella nodded. ‘Good. Get a list of any males Eleanor had contact with recently too - repairmen, delivery guys, anyone who came to the house.’
‘I'll pull her credit card, phone records,’ Luca offered. ‘See if anyone was harassing her.’
While Luca and Reeves discussed phone records and credit card statements, Ella studied the room's layout again. Everything was positioned with mathematical precision - the display cases exactly parallel to each other, each shelf measured to the millimeter it seemed. Eleanor's restoration tools sat at perfect right angles on her workbench. Even the chair they'd posed her in was centered precisely between the cases. This was OCD cranked to eleven.
Ella moved along the cases. They seemed to be categorized by era, although Ella would be lying if she said she was certain. Similar dolls had been grouped together, but that was as much as Ella could glean.
The central display case dominated the wall opposite Eleanor's chair. Prime real estate in a room dedicated to perfection. Ella's gaze swept over the shelves, taking in the arrangement. Then she saw it.
A gap.
Right in the center of the main shelf, surrounded by Eleanor's finest pieces, sat an empty space. Not random - precisely sized, like something had been removed. The velvet lining showed slight compression marks where a doll had once stood.
Luca and Reeves' chatter faded to background static as Ella zeroed in on the anomaly. She knew in her gut this was no oversight. Eleanor would never leave her precious collection incomplete. Not willingly.
No, this was something else. A message from their psycho puppeteer.
‘Hey.’ Ella cut through Luca and Reeves' conversation. ‘Come look at this.’
They joined her at the case. Ella pointed to the empty spot. ‘Notice anything odd?’
Luca squinted. ‘Something missing?’
‘Looks like it. Someone like Eleanor would never leave a noticeable gap like this.’
Reeves looked queasy. Probably wishing he was back on traffic duty. ‘What if it was out for cleaning or something?’
Ella nodded at Eleanor’s tools on her desk. ‘She did her own maintenance, by the looks of things. I think our perp took whatever was here. To assert dominance.’
‘Dominance? Over dolls?’ Reeves asked.
‘No, it's bigger than that. This whole display, it's a power trip. He's proving he can infiltrate his victim's most private sanctum, violate their prized possessions. This is ownership.’
Ella's eyes drifted back to the gaping hole in Eleanor's prized display. The negative space screamed at her, taunting. Daring her to fill in the blanks.
‘Looks like we’ve got some serious digging to do,’ Luca said. ‘Maybe we ought to head to the precinct. The sooner we look into Eleanor’s life, the more chance we’ve got of catching him before another body joins the pile.’
Reeves jumped in. ‘Wait a minute, you think this could just be number one? Of how many?’
The odds of this being a one-off homicide were higher than zero but still low, so Ella kept that optimism on lock. She could feel the certainty of this progressing to a serial case in her bones. This was just the overture. Her maestro of death had a full symphony in mind.
‘If I was a betting woman, I’d put six figures on it. Killers like this don’t go to these lengths without a long-term plan in mind, and once they get a taste of that power, they’ll do anything to feel it again.’
Reeves looked ready to hurl, but he squared his shoulders and nodded. 'Then we better get hunting.'
Ella took one final sweep of the room and committed every detail to memory. The empty spot in the display case nagged at her like a missing tooth. Their unsub hadn't just staged a murder - he'd curated it, right down to selecting his own souvenir. As much as she hated to admit it, this guy had balls and brains in equal measure, and that combination made for difficult capture.
‘You want to stay here until forensics arrive?’ she asked Reeves.
‘Yeah. You guys get set up at the precinct. The receptionist will show you your office.’
‘Thanks. Make sure the CSI team get photos of everything in this room, especially the positioning of the body. And tell them to inspect the inside of the case with the missing doll. Our guy could have gotten sloppy and left a print in there.’
'Will do.' Reeves looked relieved to have concrete tasks to focus on. Anything to avoid staring at Eleanor's painted face.
‘Let’s go, Hawkins. We’ve got a doll maker to find.’