CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
She debated staying outside, waiting for the class to finish, and isolating Derek Graham afterward, but her gut told her that she needed eyes on this man immediately. She'd just have to get back into character – the needle-fearer – until she got Derek alone.
The old door hinges creaked in protest as she entered, and in drifted the aroma of incense and recently-burned candles.
She moved through the lobby, towards the communal room where only two days ago she’d uncontrollably spilled her needle phobia to a group of strangers.
Not her smartest move, she reasoned in hindsight, but closing the floodgates during a torrent was easier said than done.
Ella took her chances and skirted toward the communal room. She gently pushed the door and peered inside, but was suddenly met with an unexpected sight.
Judging by the number of idle bodies, the group session hadn’t yet begun.
The chairs were arranged in a familiar circle, but they were sparsely occupied.
Ella scanned the room for Derek Graham but came up short.
The other attendees seemed to share her sense of unease, their glances darting towards the door, as if hoping for his imminent arrival.
When they realized it wasn’t their leader, they went back to the coffees and conversations, and so Ella used the opportunity to slip in amongst the crowd.
She made for the refreshment table and caught wind of a familiar face nearby. He slid over to her and placed a full cup of coffee down in front of Ella.
'Good to see you again, Miss Dark, but it looks like tonight's a no-go,' he said. 'Saw you coming, so I made you a coffee. Dark Roast, right?'
Ella winced at the comment, although she couldn’t place why.
The man was Mason Arthur. Or at least, that’s what he’d said his name was last time.
He was dressed in an ensemble that straddled a fine line between formal and casual; black trousers, brown turtleneck that caressed the underside of his stubbly chin.
He could have walked in straight from the bar or a funeral.
‘What’s going on?’ Ella asked.
‘No sign of the big man. Derek’s no-showed.’
Ella checked her watch. ‘Ten past six. He could be running late.’ Inside, Ella felt the stirrings of a panic-induced frenzy.
Had Derek sensed the tightening noose of her investigation and fled Cedarburg?
Could he be too busy for group therapy, instead already on the hunt for the fourth victim in his sequence?
‘Doubt it. You can usually set your watch to Derek. I guess he’s sick or something. Might have fallen asleep.’
‘That’s a shame,’ was all Ella could muster. She grappled with her options, no clear direction in sight. Should she wait and see if Derek arrived or get out of here and hunt him down?
‘Ah well. I guess that frees up a couple of hours.’ Mason picked up his jacket off the table and threw it on. He leaned in and whispered, ‘It’s not usually this shoddy here, I promise.’
Ella offered a forced smile at Mason's attempt at lightening the mood. ‘I'll keep that in mind. Is anyone else from the group missing?’
‘Hard to say. Most of the usuals are here, but the odd straggler comes and goes, you know?’
‘Got it. I’ll stay, see if Derek shows up.’
‘Yeah. I guess someone should probably check if he’s okay, but… I don’t know anything about the man, and I don’t think anyone here has his cell.’ Mason reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He began scrolling. ‘Oh, yes I do.’
Ella's heart skipped a beat. ‘You have Derek's number?’ She’d looked online but couldn’t find a registered cell in his name.
‘Yup.’ Mason pressed his phone to his ear. ‘He gave it out a few sessions back. I’ve never called him though. Didn’t seem right.’ A moment later, he shook his head and hammered a finger against his screen. ‘No answer.’
‘Damn it.’
‘Look, I’m gonna run. No point staying here, not when the paperwork is piling up,’ Mason said, ‘but you want to try him? Maybe he’ll pick up for you.’
Ella didn’t expect Derek would be contactable right now, but access to his cell number could come in useful. ‘Could I take it? If you don’t mind?’
‘Sure. Here, save this number to your phone.’
Ella pulled out her cell, tapped in the number that Mason read out, and saved Derek as a contact. 'Thank you,' she said. 'I'll try him ASAP.'
‘Let him know we’re worried, and by the way, you never showed up for that coffee.’
The comment caught her off-guard. She’d completely forgotten about Mason’s meetup request the last time they spoke.
‘Sorry. Been up to my eyeballs in... work.’
‘I bet,’ Mason smiled. ‘Well, I’ll be waiting.’
Before Ella could get another word out, Mason spun on his heels and headed for the door, leaving Ella with her thoughts for company. She quickly turned her focus to the phone in her palm and debated calling Derek right away.
But if he was her unsub, the chances of him answering right now were near zero. Even so, if Derek had his fourth victim in his targets, she couldn’t just stand around and wait for a miracle. She had to get out there and make every effort to throw a wrench in the works.
Ella slipped to the back of the room, away from the commotion and idle chatter. Her thumb hovered over the call button.
She pressed, waited, her heart in her mouth.
Two rings.
Three rings.
But the sound stretched on. Hope frayed into disappointment.
And finally, a robotic voice told her she’d reached voicemail.
Anticipation gave way to frustration as she stared at her phone. The screen grew dark and reflected her tired, beaten frown.
Ella slipped out of the communal room, into the corridor, and headed towards the church exit.
She burst out into the courtyard and breathed in the winter air, then surveyed the distant tombstones as though the answer to her predicament might be etched beside the details of the dead.
She began to pace up and down the pathway, rubbing the back of her neck in irritation.
Nightfall was beginning to set in, and by her count, it meant another body was only a few hours away – if her unsub hadn't already skipped town.
Her thoughts turned to Dylan Hartley, the app developer. Perhaps he’d made some progress in obtaining the victims’ chat transcripts, but even so, it wouldn’t reveal Derek’s whereabouts. If anything, she needed access to all of Derek’s chats on the app.
She also considered the group therapy members. Who among them hadn’t shown up tonight? If the killer was keeping up his usual pattern, the victim would be both a member of the group and on the Scarecrow app.
But as Ella tried to mentally prepare her next move, the stillness of the cemetery was broken by the shrill ring of her phone.
Startled, she fumbled for the device in her pocket, and her heart endured an abrupt shockwave.
The flashing screen was alive with a name.
A name she’d only just put into her phone.
Derek Graham was calling her.
She brought the phone to her ear.
‘Hello?’
There was a pause, a stretched second where the world inhaled, and Ella's nerve endings prickled.
The rustling of leaves in a gentle breeze, the distant cry of a bird returning to its nest, the soft crunch of gravel beneath her – all of these sounds came at once and briefly drowned out any sound from the other side of the phone.
But then Ella realized there was nothing.
Just a crackly, static line with no one on the other end.
‘Hello?’ she asked again. ‘Derek?’
No response.
Ella checked her screen to make sure the line hadn’t disconnected.
No. The call was in full flow. The timer told her that she'd been on the line for ten, eleven, or twelve seconds.
‘Derek? Are you there?’
She listened intently, hoping for a sound, a word, anything that might break the silence.
But the line offered no secrets. Ella strained her ears for any recognizable sounds from the other side, and there amidst the static was something so faint she almost missed it.
A low, distant murmur, like an engine idling.
The sound was elusive, woven into the static like a ghostly whisper, barely discernible yet unmistakably there.
An engine could mean a car, a location, a direction. It was a tangible thread in this web of shadows. Her heart quickened at the thought. Was Derek on the move? Or was he stationary, waiting, watching?
She held the phone closer as she tried to isolate the sound, to pull it from the ether and give it shape.
The engine's hum throbbed through the line, but in the grand scheme of things, it meant nothing. She needed something to work with, and she couldn’t work with a muffled sound that might or might not be a car engine.
Ella went to shout down the line again, but then stopped.
Brute force could shake the fortress, but only intelligence could infiltrate it.
She needed to be smart, make the most of the opportunity in her hands.
Ella switched the phone to loudspeaker, opened up her call-tracking software, and waited for it to connect to the current line.
It could pinpoint a caller’s location, but it needed to be connected for a minimum of three minutes.
Two minutes to go.
She glanced at the call timer - the seconds were accumulating, but not fast enough. She needed to keep the line open, to maintain this tenuous connection.
‘Stay on the line, God damn it,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘Just a little longer.’
Ella hurried out of the cemetery to her car, jumped inside, and placed the phone on the dashboard with the timer still ticking away.
She had to ask herself the obvious question – was this a purposeful call or an accidental dial?
Could Derek have nudged the phone by accident and returned her missed call without knowing?
Or was this something else?
She kept the key in the ignition but didn’t start the engine.
She needed to stay quiet, because if this call was a stroke of fortune, she couldn’t risk calling attention to it.
Patience was her ally now, and the soft hum of the vehicle's idle engine could disrupt the faint connection she had established, the only connection to Derek's whereabouts.
One minute and twenty seconds to go.
She held firm. The call timer counted down the moments until she could leap into action.
Her fingers itched to turn the key, to ignite the engine and tear through the streets in pursuit, but she remembered what Ripley always told her: being a cop is one percent action, ninety-nine percent watching and waiting.
One minute to go.
‘Come on,’ Ella whispered.
The pressure coiled around her like a snake as the seconds dispersed.
The marker on the map on her screen began to zip between cell towers.
It jumped from a place called West Mirth to somewhere called North Bypass Creek.
As the seconds dwindled down, the marker's movements grew erratic and zipped around Cedarburg in a seemingly random pattern.
Thirty seconds to go.
Ella's fingers twitched near the ignition. She didn’t know these roads, so Derek Graham had the advantage.
Twenty.
Fifteen.
‘Hold on, you son of a bitch,’ she muttered. ‘Come on.’
Ten.
Five.
At last, the timer hit zero, the three-minute threshold breached. The software pinged, locking onto the last known coordinates of the call.
A stretch of green in North Bypass Creek, miles away from the nearest residential area.
Ella heart dropped to the pit of her stomach.
Another cabin?
Another body?
Ella turned the key, fired up her engine, and sped out into the streets.
Not tonight, she told herself. There would be no more bodies on her watch.