CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Ella hit the highway doing eighty and called Ripley before she’d made it past the first exit.
Ripley picked up on two rings. ‘Dark, where the hell are you? I was at the Parsons scene but I’ve just got back.’
‘Listen to me. I know who he is.’
‘What? Who is he?’
‘Edgar Borden. Thirty-six. Released from Louisiana State seven months ago. Aggravated robbery, served three years. He works at a donation centre in Gentilly. That’s where Rose Michaels’s music box ended up.’
'How do you.'
‘He goes to a support group on Tuesday nights at a church. It’s for people dealing with loss.
Eddie Foxall went to that group. Earl Parsons used to go.
Rose Michaels’s mom went to the group. He’s been sitting in a room with these people every week, listening to them talk about the worst things that ever happened to them, and then he’s been killing them. ’
‘I’m looking right now.’
‘It gets worse. Remember on the phone how he said, ‘Someone’s told me all about you,’ and, ‘I opened the door, just like someone else did for me.’
‘Yeah.’
‘He was talking about Lindsey Doyle.’
‘Uh, Dark, you’re thinking of the wrong case. Are you going mad?’
‘No. Edgar Borden was in Louisiana State, where Doyle worked. If she fell in love with Creed, it’s not crazy to think she might have relationships with other inmates.’
‘Right, let’s say I believe you. Where are you going?’
‘Creed’s farmhouse. Look at the pictures in the file on my desk. They’re ones the NOPD took when they last searched Creed’s place. In Creed’s bedroom there’s a music box with a pelican on it. It’s exactly the same pelican.’
‘Looking. Hang on.’ Ripley went quiet for a second then said, ‘Oh shit. You’re right. It’s identical.’
‘Yeah it is.’
‘Wait, are you alone?’
Ella said, ‘Yes, and I need you to do something for me. I don’t know what I’m going to find at Creed’s farm, or if Edgar will even be there, so get an address for him.
His parole officer will have one on file.
Try the Ninth Ward, that’s where the cell tower pinged.
Get uniforms to Good Shepherd Donations and to First Love Church on Flood Street.
Lock both places down. If he’s at either of them, hold him.
If he’s not, talk to everyone who works there and find out when they last saw him. ’
‘I’ll call Fields.’
‘Call Fields. Call whoever you need. But get it done fast because if he’s not at either of those places, he’s at the farm, and I’m about twenty minutes out.’
‘Ella.’ Ripley used her first name, which she never did. ‘Backup. I’ll get units to you. Do not walk into that farmhouse on your own.’
‘Get them moving, Mia.’
‘I mean it.’
‘So do I. Get them moving.’
Ella hung up and floored the gas. She could be there in twenty minutes – or less if she kept her foot where it was.
So she kept her foot where it was.
***
She’d built a case against this place from a desk two thousand miles away and never once stood on its soil, and now that she was here, the disconnect was so total it felt like stepping into a photograph.
Creed’s farm sat at the end of a dirt road that had stopped being a road about half a mile back.
Ella drove up to a chain-link fence with the gate hanging open, then over to the holding pens where presumably Creed had kept his livestock.
Then she saw the corrugated lean-to with the skinning table underneath it.
Next to it was the hatchery building that was barely visible.
And ahead of her, set back from the compound behind a patch of dead lawn that had gone brown, was the farmhouse itself.
Everything was where the photographs had shown them; present like they were waiting for someone to come back and use this place.
This was the house where Austin Creed had slept and eaten and planned and dreamed up his murderous plan that had set Ella on the path she now trod.
Nobody was coming back, but somebody might be here already.
She got out of the car, drew her Glock, and started across the yard.
She passed the skinning table and didn't look at it.
She passed the hatchery building with its door hanging open and didn't look at that either. She kept her eyes on the farmhouse.
The back door was closed. She went around to the side and found a window. The curtains were drawn.
She pressed her ear to the glass and heard nothing, so she moved to the front. The porch was three wooden steps and a screen door that had come off one of its hinges and hung at an angle. The front door behind it was ajar.
Ella stood at the bottom of the steps with her Glock up and her weight on the balls of her feet.
Someone was in there. She could feel it in her bones.
She went up the steps with the boards creaking underfoot. She pushed the front door open with her shoulder and swept the hallway with her weapon.
Visibility was a luxury she didn't have, because it seemed the whole place had no power to it. She cleared the living room, the beaten-up sofa, and the TV. Nobody was hiding in here. Then to the first spare room downstairs, then headed through the hallway.
A door was open at the end – and light was seeping from it.
Ella swallowed hard. Her pulse was speeding at such a rate she couldn’t keep her hands still.
She readied herself, put one foot over the threshold and pushed through into the next room.
Austin Creed’s kitchen. The same one she’d seen in the photographs.
And there he was.
Edgar Borden sat at the kitchen table with his hands folded in front of him.
Ella had to wait a second for her eyes to adjust to the scene, because he was illuminated by candlelight, and the image didn’t seem to correlate to anything she knew about spree killers in their final moments.
The killer was unarmed from what Ella could see.
He’d lit three candles and placed them in a triangle shape.
Even by the brief light, he looked much older than thirty-six, and he was much stockier than pictures of him had suggested.
He was wearing a flannel shirt over a grey T-shirt and jeans that looked like they’d been slept in.
Around his neck, on a length of cord, hung a small wooden figure that Ella couldn’t make out from this distance.
He looked at her with no surprise at all. Like he’d been expecting her. Like this was the only possible way the evening could have ended.
‘Hello, Ella.’
‘Edgar Borden. Put your hands where I can see them.’
He lifted his hands off the table and held them at shoulder height, palms forward. ‘You got me. You figured out my name, too.’
‘Yes I did, and you know why I’m here.’
‘I know why you’re here,’ Edgar said.
‘Then you know how this ends. You’re going to stand up slowly, turn around, and put your hands behind your back. We’re going to walk out of this house together.’
‘Wouldn’t you like to chat first?’
‘No. Stand up and turn around.’
‘I’m not armed.’
‘Just do it,’ Ella said.
‘I’m surprised you don’t have some questions of your own.’
‘I don’t care,’ Ella lied. ‘Now comply or I’ll be forced to shoot.’
Borden looked around the kitchen as if noticing it for the first time. ‘Strange place, isn’t it? I knew him, you know? Austin Creed.’
‘And you might just know him again.’
Borden laughed and said, ‘That’s the plan.’
Ella began to step forward but then stopped. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Ah, so you do have questions,’ Borden grinned. ‘My mentor asked me to do this. This isn’t my choice.’
‘Your mentor? You mean Lindsey Doyle?’
Borden’s sly grin collapsed. ‘Huh? You know her?’
‘Very much so. She put you up to this?’ Ella’s curiosity got the better of her. ‘All of these murders. They were Lindsey’s idea?’
'Sort of. One day, she'd really encourage me to go for it; other days, she'd tell me I shouldn't. It's like there were two of her.'
The pit of Ella’s stomach began to burn. Yes, it’s almost like there were two of her, she thought. ‘And Lindsey… where is she now?’
‘I don’t know. She stopped communicating with me.’
‘And how did you communicate with her?’
‘By phone, and no, you won’t find it. I smashed it and threw it in the ocean.’
Goddammit. ‘Fine, story time’s over. Let’s-’
‘She wanted me to kill you,’ Borden interrupted. ‘That’s why she wanted you to come here. So I could kill you in a place that meant something to you.’
Ella winced at the thought of this place meaning something to her, like her life was somehow intertwined with some barren shithole that festered a cowardly murderer. ‘Feel free to try your best.’
‘I’m not going to do that, though.’
‘No?’
‘No. I’ve done what I needed to do. I saved four people.
That was always enough. The rest of it was her thing, not mine.
I’m breaking the rules. She won’t like it.
But she’s not here, is she? And just looking at you, you seem to me like someone doing your job, and I wouldn’t want killing an agent on my resúmé. I just want to go home.’
Borden’s hands hadn’t moved. His body was still. Whatever he was feeling, he had it locked down tight.
‘You killed four people.’
‘I know.’
‘Then you know you’re not going home.’
‘Oh, I’m going home. I’m going back to Louisiana State. I never wanted to leave.’
Ella had to wonder if this man was much more demented than she gave him credit for. He’d killed four people but didn’t seem to understand the gravity of it.
‘Edgar, I can’t promise where you’ll end up, but it’s time to go. Get to your feet.’
The suspect did rise to his feet. ‘But I cooperated. You could put in a good word.’
‘You understand that killing four people in Louisiana could get you the death penalty, right Edgar?’
Edgar Borden toppled forward and steadied himself on the table. Ella gently squeezed the trigger because this was starting to look like a job for a bullet in the leg.
‘Death penalty? But Lindsey said I’d be safe back inside... she said I’d definitely go back home…’