CHAPTER SIX
Barely 3PM and dusk had already descended.
The traffic light outside the bedroom window painted the wall red. Again. And again. The same as it had for the eight years he'd lived in this end of town. He could probably keep time by it. Mark the minutes. Count the endless procession of cars heading to the naval base. That's what life had been - a string of cycling lights and small routines.
Until Eleanor.
The Collector stared at the doll in the cabinet like a newborn, seeing the world for the first time. Because, in a way, he was. Reborn in the wake of Eleanor's death, baptized in the intoxicating power of taking a life and making it his own.
The doll – apparently named Margaret according to Eleanor’s records – sat in the glass cabinet that he’d erected for this purpose. Powder-blue dress. Perfect rosebud mouth. Those arsenic-laced grey-blue eyes staring right at him. The pride of Eleanor Calloway's collection, now his. The crack in her hip didn't matter. The German adhesive would arrive tomorrow.
The room was a mess of empty boxes. The cabinet installation had taken hours, but it had to be perfect. Climate controls. Proper lighting. A lot of money for someone living in a place where sirens never stopped wailing, but worth it. You couldn't put perfection in some IKEA display case.
He caught his reflection in the glass. The eyes that stared back from the glass weren't the same ones he'd worn his whole life. These eyes had seen things. Done things. Created things.
Eleanor Calloway had owned this doll but never possessed it. Not really. Possession meant understanding. Meant transformation. The way the doll transformed him just by existing in his space, elevating this rat-trap apartment into something approaching sacred.
The building's pipes groaned. Somewhere upstairs, the meth-head couple started their morning screaming match right on schedule. But their voices seemed distant now, like background noise in a movie about someone else's life.
That old life - the cubicle, the Excel sheets, the frozen dinners eaten over the sink - felt like a cocoon he'd finally shed. The old life sloughed away like dead skin. Forty years as a background character in his own story.
Margaret's eyes caught the traffic light. Red glinted off that ancient German glass. The way she watched him - not like a doll at all. More like she recognized something in him. Something that had always been there, waiting.
He ran a hand along the glass one last time, then turned to gather his things. Eleanor Calloway and her doll was just the first of many. There were other collectors out there that needed to pay the same price.
The clock on his wall said it was just after 3 PM. Three hours until his appointment. The man with the roach wouldn't be expecting anything unusual. Just another collector looking to add to his display. The thought almost made him laugh.
If only they knew what kind of collection he was really building.
***
The Chesapeake PD's idea of an office was a converted storage room with just enough space for two desks and a whiteboard. The ancient radiator clanked like someone was trapped inside it with a wrench. Ella's laptop screen burned blue light into her retinas while the precinct coffee burned a hole in her stomach.
Across from her, Luca seemed immune to the general discomfort. Or maybe he was just putting on a good show. He hunched over his laptop with a pile of files teetering beside him, and he had that look on his face, the one that said he was following a scent. The glamorous side of FBI work - sifting through a victim's financials on the off chance their murderer had left a smoking gun between charges for groceries and gas.
For her part, she'd been falling down the digital rabbit hole of Eleanor Calloway's life. Or lack thereof. For a homicide victim whose death put Hannibal Lecter to shame, Calloway's online presence was about as lively as an unplugged toaster. The woman was a ghost in the machine, which was a rarity for anyone under the age of 60. It was nearly impossible to live without leaving a digital footprint, but Eleanor Calloway seemed to have managed it.
The library records Reeves had scrounged up sketched the outline of a life, its shape as empty as it was precise. Calloway's days unfolded with all the variation of a Swiss railway. Work. Home. Rinse and repeat. Twelve years, she'd toiled away in the stacks of Chesapeake Public Library. Not a sick day in the bunch. Never so much as a long weekend off the map.
All of which amounted to exactly zilch in terms of hunting their doll maker. Ella scrubbed her eyes hard enough to see stars.
‘How's it going?’ Luca hadn't looked up from whatever money trail had his attention.
‘Like trying to squeeze a living corpse from the phone book. Either this woman was J.D. Salinger levels of recluse, or she had something to hide. I can't find any contacts outside of work. No family. No friends unless you count the librarians she worked with. Maybe we ought to pay them a visit.’
‘No friends with a murder fetish?’
‘Not unless they're as allergic to the internet as she was. It's all a dead end.’ She eyed the leaning tower of paperwork beside him. ‘Please tell me you're having better luck.’
Luca held up a sheet, shaking his head. ‘She was a machine. Everything by the book. No impulse buys, no drunken 2 AM Uber rides. Her accounts are about as squeaky clean as an operating room.’
‘Damn it to hell.’
‘Well, there is one thing.’ Luca pinched a page between his thumb and forefinger. ‘A $5,000 payment to someone named V. Blackburn last month.’
‘Blackburn?’ The paper crinkled under Ella's fingers as she snatched it with the grace of a one-eyed pickpocket. ‘No idea. There're no Blackburns in Eleanor's records as far as I can tell. We could see if Reeves knows anything.’
Luca's chair squealed as he pushed back from the desk-that-time-forgot. ‘Yeah, but I think you're right about hitting the library. If work's our only link to Eleanor, let's tug at that. It’s only a block away too. You alright to walk?’
The concern in his voice made her bristle. ‘I'm fine. Burns are healing.’
‘Yeah? Because you've been massaging your right leg all day.’
‘Are you watching how I walk now, Hawkins?’
‘Just looking out for my partner.’ He held up his hands. ‘Temporary partner.’
Ella had to admit that it felt weird these first few hours back in the saddle with Luca. Like slipping into her old skin and finding it didn't quite fit the same. She and Luca had an understanding, but seeing him focused on the job served as a reminder of what they had. What they'd agreed to give up, for the sake of their sanity and, maybe, their hearts.
If she was being honest with herself, it felt good. Better than good. Like stretching cramped muscles after too long in a box. Like coming home.
But home was what Luca meant to her, and if keeping it meant building boundaries with police tape, she was learning to live with the contradiction.
‘I can walk fine,’ she said. ‘Let's go.’