CHAPTER THIRTY
As Ella followed Detective Reeves down the stairs and past the reception desk, she was dimly aware that this new development had distracted her from the painful realization that Gabriel Thorne was probably not her killer.
But while she might be staring at a brick wall, it seemed that fortune had given her a ladder.
Detective Reeves led her and Luca into a hallway behind the reception area at ground level. He paused outside a door.
‘You’re the first ones to interview him, so go wild.’
‘Interview who? What the hell’s going on?’
Reeves pushed the door open to reveal a tiny office. Just beyond the threshold was a uniformed officer, and leaning against the far wall was a kid who couldn’t have been older than nineteen. He was swimming in a Red Sox hoodie that was three sizes too big, and he had messy brown hair that covered fifty percent of his face.
But it was the object on the table beside him that made Ella's training kick in.
She absorbed the scene in fragments. Suspect first - male, Caucasian, early twenties at most. Nervous but not terrified. No visible signs of coercion or injury. The way his knee bounced suggested either guilty conscience or chemical enhancement.
Then the object.
Luca moved over to it and plucked it with two fingers. It hung down in a shapeless heap, but Ella couldn’t deny the recognizable features. Hell, it might have been the most identifiable face on earth.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Luca.
He was right, because hanging from his fingertips was the face of the Lord and Savior himself.
Ella scrambled for a quick explanation, but none was forthcoming. Was this a taunt? A confession? An omen of things to come – or a breadcrumb to a crime scene that was already waiting for them?
‘Talk,’ Ella said to the kid. ‘Everything. From the beginning. What’s your name?’
‘Ryan Wheeler. I was riding towards the old boat yard down on Cedar, when this guy waves me down.’
‘Waves you down how? Where was he?’
‘In his car,’ Ryan blurted. ‘He stuck his head out and said something.’
‘Right. Then?’
‘He asked if I wanted a job. At first, I said no, but then he offered me a hundred bucks up front. I couldn't turn that down.'
Ella planted her hands on the table. Not to intimidate - just to keep them from fidgeting while adrenaline sang through her system.
‘What was the job?’
Ryan nodded at the mask. ‘Drop that off at the police precinct and not say a word. He said you’d know what it meant. ’
‘Description. Who was this guy? What did he look like?’
‘I dunno. Regular looking dude. Brown hair?’
‘Is that all you got?’ Ella barked. ‘Height, build, clothes, eye color, distinguishing features, scars, tattoos. Think. Details matter.’
The kid scrubbed his face with a sleeve that had seen better days. ‘Blue sedan. A nice one. Like, expensive nice.’
Ella's mind snagged on that detail. Same as the one Dolores had seen outside the library. ‘License plate?’
‘I didn’t catch it. I just took the money – and the mask – and got out of there.’
‘Of course you did. What else?’
‘Dressed in a white shirt, like he’d just come from the office. Accent was local, and his hands were... I dunno, weird?’
‘Define weird.’
‘All smooth. Long fingers, but his nails were all chewed up around the edges. Like, little bits of skin hanging off.’
The profile sharpened another fraction. Soft hands meant office work. Skin tags suggested stress, poor diet, too many hours under artificial light. Their killer lived in a world of paperwork and fluorescent bulbs while dreaming of transformation.
‘Anything else? Think.’
Ryan sighed through clenched teeth. ‘That was it, really.’
Luca asked, ‘Didn’t this guy give you any explanation?’
‘No. He just handed me a hundo and this mask then drove off. Didn’t even watch me deliver it.’
‘Which direction?’
‘With the boat yard on the left.’
‘Let’s see the money,’ Ella said.
Ryan hesitantly plucked five twenties out of his trouser pocket. He fanned them out. ‘Here.’
Ella glanced back and summoned Reeves over. ‘We’ll need to take that money,’ Ella said.
The kid clutched the notes to his chest. ‘What? You can’t do that. It’s mine.’
‘We’ll give it you back, but we need to note down the serial numbers. How long ago was this?’
‘About an hour ago, I guess. At first I rode off and thought about throwing the mask in the trash, but I figured this guy might be dangerous, you know? I didn’t know if he was watching me or not.’
Ella began pacing the room. She tried to map grid patterns and calculate response times in her head, but an hour was much too long to get any kind of proximity to this anonymous mask-donor. By now he was at home, and given how careful he’d been up until now, Ella knew he wouldn’t be stupid enough to hang around.
But her unsub had taken the next step. First he'd left someone else to discover Eleanor Calloway's body, then he'd called in Alfred Finch's death himself via anonymous call. Now, he was sending messages directly to the people hunting him. Whoever this guy was, he'd developed an unexpected taste for power. Right now, he was feeling invincible, and if she wanted to catch him, she needed to play to his newfound God complex.
‘Get CSI down here,’ she told Reeves. ‘Full workup. And get his complete statement.’
Reeves guided Ryan out of the room. Ella moved over to the mask and studied it without touching it. Not particularly expensive or well-made, despite the attention to detail. The kind of thing that would look convincing under stage lights but showed its flaws up close.
‘This isn't just a delivery,’ Luca said. ‘It's a preview.’
'This isn't a preview at all. These masks are part of his ritual, and he won't hand them over until that ritual's complete. This is a post view. We're already too late.'
‘So what do we do?’
The words triggered something in Ella's mind - a connection she should have made sooner. Gabriel Thorne's voice echoed: Hundred grand for Chinese vase, five million for an old crucifix...
‘Wait a minute.’ She pointed to the ceiling. ‘What Thorne said, ten minutes ago.’
'Uh… Thorne said a lot of things. Thanks for the prompts in there, by the way, but-'
‘No. Follow me. We need to speak to Thorne again, quickly.’ She bounded out of the room and back up the stairs. ‘Hawkins, you with me?’
‘Yeah. Keep talking.’ Luca wheezed his way up the stairs behind her. Ever since the barn fire in Oregon, his lungs hadn't been quite right, but he kept pace anyway.
‘Our perp wore a bug mask to kill a bug collector. What does that mean?’
‘It means he’d have a Jesus mask for someone who collects-,’ he panted.
‘Finish that sentence.’
‘Jesuses.’
Ella reached the landing. ‘Religious artifacts.’ She strode down the corridor with the interrogation room in sight. The knowledge that they were probably already too late stabbed her in the gut, but it wasn’t like she could wait around for a missing persons report to file in. The killer was already a step ahead, and she needed to catch up.
‘Or that. But what’s Thorne got to do with this?’
She reached the interrogation room door and paused with one hand on the knob. ‘Because not only does Thorne know more about local collectors than we do, but he said something earlier. Something I’m going to zone in on. Come on.’
She pushed open hard enough to make the two-way mirror rattle in its frame. Thorne jumped in his chair like someone had jabbed him with a cattle prod.
‘Thought I’d seen the last of you,’ he said.
Ella planted her fists into the table. ‘Religious collectors. How many are there in Chesapeake?’
‘What? Religious collectables?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
'Ask less questions,' Ella said. 'Earlier, you said you appraised a crucifix for five million dollars. Who was it for?'
Thorne's face transformed into a mask of its own - the particular blank expression that meant someone was weighing consequences against conscience. ‘That's privileged information. Client confidentiality.’
‘Your client confidentiality ends where my body count begins.’ Ella leaned in until she could see her reflection fractured in his pupils. ‘You really want to obstruct a federal investigation? Because we’ve already got you on several counts, and we can add a few more years onto that sentence if you want.’
‘I signed NDAs. Serious ones.’ Sweat beaded on his upper lip. ‘These people, they're paranoid about security. About who knows what they have.’
‘Dead collectors can't sue for breach of contract. But I can make your life a special kind of hell.’
Thorne's mouth worked like a fish on land. ‘You’re bluffing.’
‘You wouldn’t be the first person I’ve put in Red Onion Supermax, and believe me, the gangbangers in there love a tax fraud.’
More calculations flickered behind Thorne's eyes. The man lived in a world of numbers; inflated appraisals and crooked tax breaks. Everything had a price tag, even morality.
‘There are confidentiality agreements. Paperwork. My clients trust me with everything. I can’t just-’
Luca jumped in, ‘So you do know a religious collector.’
Something finally fractured. Ella saw that precise moment when self-preservation trumped professional ethics.
‘Fine.’ The word came out like it hurt. ‘There's one major collector. Has one of the biggest private collections of religious artifacts in the world.’
‘Name and address. Now.’
'Joseph Carpenter. I don't know the street name, but he lives in the mansion opposite St. Michael's Church. His collection's in the basement, from what I remember.'
Ella was moving before the last syllable died. They had a name. They had a location.
‘Call it in,’ she barked at Luca. ‘Get Reeves, get backup, get anyone with a badge and a pulse. I want that house surrounded five minutes ago.’