CHAPTER FORTY
‘Who the hell is Mason Arthur?’ Ripley asked.
Ella’s brain was firing at a thousand miles an hour, so she took a deep breath and started from the beginning.
‘I first met him when I went to the group therapy class. He came over to me, started talking, and introduced himself as Mason Arthur, but it was obviously a fake name.'
‘Right. Who was this guy?’
‘He told me he’d just moved to the area – probably another lie.
He said he’d started a life coaching business and invited me to his offices.
That’s because he was scoping me out as a potential victim.
He’s probably not even a life coach. He was just lying so he could blend in at the group without raising any suspicions. ’
Ripley’s expression became increasingly grave. She scratched her head, clearly not yet on board with the theory. ‘Okay? And that’s it?’
‘No,’ Ella said and went back to her whiteboard. ‘The first thing I noticed about him – he had a greyish smudge on his neck. Like, a tribal design that went from his shoulder to his chin, but he’d tried to cover it with a really tight collar.’
‘Okay?’
‘Derek’s last words to me were group, name, don’t know, man, nic.’
‘Nick?’
‘He wasn’t saying that. He was saying man, neck, because the guy had a tattoo on his neck. Derek didn’t know his name either, just that he was a male member of the group with a weird tattoo on his neck.’
‘A greyish smudge? Are you sure it was a tattoo?’
Ella filled in the blanks without realizing.
‘He’s tried laser it off because it was too noticeable.
This guy is really good at staying discrete, so he must have thought about all this in advance.
But there’s more. I met Mason again earlier tonight, and you know what the first thing he said to me was? ’
‘What?’
Ella replayed the words like an audio file lodged front and center in her brain. Something about it had unnerved her, but at the time, she couldn’t place why.
‘Good to see you again, Miss Dark.’
Ripley looked nonplussed. ‘And?’
‘Miss Dark,’ Ella said. ‘When I first met him, I told him my name was Ella Darby. This guy knew my real name.’
At that revelation, the last vestiges of doubt evaporated from Ripley's disposition. ‘He researched you. And he slipped up.’
‘Exactly. He knew my real name, which means he's been digging into my background.
That's no casual life coach or group therapy participant.
That's our guy digging into the lives of his targets.’ Ella paused and drew a deep breath as she prepared to unveil another layer of Mason's calculated approach.
‘And there's something else, something that didn't click until now.’
‘What?’
‘At that same meeting, Mason... he slid a coffee across to me. Just out of the blue, like it was a friendly gesture. But I didn't drink it.’
‘Poison,’ Ripley said.
‘Exactly. Mason knew that Derek wouldn’t be showing up because he’d already put him in that cabin, and if I was poisoned, he could have lured me outside to his car and got me to the cabin that way.’
‘And chances were you would have died in that cabin too.’
‘Oh, I’d be dead all right. But that’s not the proof of his guilt. There’s a kicker at the end.’
‘Go.’
‘It was Mason who gave me Derek’s apparent cell phone number, but you said Derek didn’t have a cell phone.
I looked for it on the police file and couldn’t find it either.
That’s because it was Mason’s cell – maybe a burner phone – that he had on him all along.
That’s why it was silent when the line was connected, because it was Mason on the other end.
He stayed silent so I wouldn’t recognize his voice. ’
Ripley said, ‘Then he planted the phone in the cabin and did a runner. He knew you’d trace it.’
‘Which means he knows I’m a cop.’
‘Which means he knows the cops might figure him out.’
Ella nodded. ‘And that’s why we need to find him right now.’
Ripley marched around the room, one hand lodged on the back of her neck. 'Right, but if Mason Arthur isn't his real name, how do we find him? It's not like he's going to show back up at the group sessions now, either.'
Ella leaned against the whiteboard. She replayed both of her short conversations with Mason in her head, and recalled a detail from their first interaction she’d almost overlooked.
'He mentioned he works out of the Apollo Court building.'
Apollo Court? Never heard of it.’
Ella hurried to her laptop, opened up her browser, and began typing. 'Right. He invited me to look at his office, offered me a real coffee. Probably poison.’
‘But during your first meeting, there’s no way he knew you were a cop right away, so he might have been telling the truth.’
‘That’s what I’m checking. And if Mason Arthur is a facade, we might be able to peel it back, starting from Apollo Court. It's our best shot,' Ella said. She searched Apollo Court life coach Cedarburg online and hit return. The room around her seemed to fall away. The loading icon spun.
The page loaded, and the first result had everything she needed.
‘Got you! Ripley, look.’
Her partner leaned in. ‘Maxwell Tanner. Clinical therapist. An extraordinary life starts with self-care.’
‘I bet it does, you son of a bitch,’ Ella said. ‘Maxwell Tanner, Apollo Court, floor 13, office 9AA.’
‘Maxwell Tanner,’ Ripley repeated. ‘No pictures of this asshole?’
Ella clicked around. ‘No. Can’t find one. Now we know why.’
Ripley was already double-checking her ammunition levels. ‘Let’s go. Time to end this.’
‘Wait,’ Ella said as she grabbing her wrist. ‘If Maxwell Tanner’s our unsub, he’d be an available therapist on Scarecrow.’
‘Check it. There’s every chance Maxwell is already making for the hills.’
Ella scrambled for her printout of the list of therapists on Scarecrow, scanned down the names, and locked onto it with a rush of adrenaline so potent it could've lifted her off the ground.
‘Maxwell Tanner,’ she read aloud, scrunching the paper in her hands. ‘We got you, you bastard.’
Here, in black and white, was the proof that tied everything together; the linchpin of her case against the man they knew as Mason Arthur. He wasn’t a life coach. That was just a ruse to lure her to his building. He was a clinical therapist – and a serial killer.
Ella stood firm. The case had twisted and turned and nearly broken her. But now she had a name, an address, and a target she could actually hunt.
She grabbed her jacket off the back of her chair. Her weapon from the desk drawer. Ripley was already at the door.
They moved.