CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ella crossed to Foxall in two strides and dropped to her knees beside him.
She pressed two trembling fingers to the pulse point on his neck even though she already knew what she’d find.
A few seconds later, she could confirm it.
There was no pulse beat. Foxall’s head lolled at an unnatural angle and his empty eyes were fixed on a point over her left shoulder.
A stream of blood dripped from his forehead, down his face, collecting on his white-turned-red collar.
This was new, different. Her unsub hadn’t delivered blunt-force trauma to either of the other victims.
She snatched up her phone and jabbed in the code for dispatch with shaking hands.
She rattled off the details on autopilot, all while her mind was spinning and replaying the last hour in agonizing slow motion.
What if she’d driven a little faster and pushed a little harder.
Would it have made a difference? Could she have saved Eddie Foxall’s life?
Judging by the fresh blood running down his face, she’d missed this killer by anywhere between ten seconds to ten minutes.
Where the hell was Ripley? For all she knew, the killer could be loitering at the end of the street, but she couldn’t rush out and leave an unaccompanied dead body here.
Ella gently laid down Eddie Foxall’s body and scrambled for a light switch.
She found one on the other side of the sunroom and illuminated the scene in bright orange.
From this unfiltered view, she could see that Foxall was a big guy; six-two, two-hundred pounds – but death had taken away any weight that mattered.
He was dressed in a polo shirt with the theater logo on it – the same one his staff member had worn.
It was a small, stupid detail to fixate on, but Ella couldn’t shake it.
This poor man had died in his work clothes.
Ella’s eyes tracked downward and that’s when she saw it. Clenched in Foxall’s fist, half-hidden by his gigantic watch.
Another figurine.
Ella leaned in, squinting at the object clutched in Foxall’s cold fist. She put gloves and then gently pried the dead man’s hand open.
It was wooden, like the ballet dancer, but the shape was different.
A small figure of a man, roughly carved, standing upright on a flat base.
He was holding something in both hands – an oversized key, comically large against his body, gripped across his chest like a wizard holding a staff.
The paint job was crude. He had dark trousers, a pale shirt, and a tiny smear of blue across the figure’s base that might have been water or an accidental brush stroke.
Unlike the ballet dancer, it hadn’t been glued in place.
As Ella puzzled over the implications, a sound from the front of the house froze her blood. The snick of a lock turning, the creak of hinges. Footsteps crossing the threshold.
Ripley. About damn time.
But then reality crashed in and Ella’s breath stuttered. The front door had been locked, and unless her partner had suddenly developed a talent for picking locks, it couldn’t be her.
Ella surged to her feet and swallowed her panic.
She was still formulating an approach when a woman rounded the corner and their eyes locked.
For a single, suspended second, they just stared at each other, the woman in rumpled scrubs and the stranger in her house with her gun still drawn.
The woman’s face was lined with exhaustion.
Then her gaze slid past Ella and the moment shattered.
Her handbag hit the floor with a thud and her mouth opened in a silent scream.
Ella didn’t need to look to know what she was seeing: Eddie’s body, his blood, the unnatural angle of his head.
A sight no one should ever have to come home to.
Ella didn’t need a psychology degree to figure out that this was Eddie Foxall’s now-widow.
‘Ma’am,’ Ella started, but the wife was already moving and stumbling forward on unsteady legs. Ella holstered her weapon and caught her before she could collapse beside her husband with a scream.