CHAPTER FORTY FOUR
Beneath the skeletal frame of Helmsley Bridge, Maxwell Tanner crouched in the dark and thought about murder.
The lake beside him mirrored the night sky, and Maxwell had to use all of his willpower not to empty the barrel of his gun into it.
Every muscle in his body was taut, ready to unleash the violence that simmered just beneath his skin.
The damn police had ruined everything.
His eyes were fixed on the two figures above. Lily, the final piece of his puzzle. The cop, some uninvited wannabe-hero who’d dared to intrude on his experiment.
Maxwell wrestled with the idea of firing from his hidden perch and ending it all with two pulls of the trigger. Yet, the knowledge that such an act would reduce his masterpiece to a mere footnote of violence ate at his core and threatened to cheapen everything that he’d worked so hard for.
He stared at the gun. Then, at the figures above.
No. Maxwell Tanner hadn't made it this far by being stupid. He was a predator cornered, and with his instincts still as sharp as a razor’s edge, Maxwell was fully aware that the end was upon him.
The game was over. His world was on the brink of collapse. His car was parked nearby. The test subject, if given the chance, could reveal his identity to the police. His identity – stage names, though they were, could be exposed to the merciless scrutiny of the law.
He could not afford the luxury of rage, not when every second he hung around increased the risk of capture.
Therefore, the only solution was absolute purification of himself from this city.
He had to sever the ties that bound him to this place, to this failed experiment, and disappear into the night.
The thought of fleeing, of abandoning his grand design, was anathema to him. Yet, survival beat pride.
As Maxwell looked up at the victim and the cop, he made his decision. He would retreat into the shadows one last time, but not in defeat. He would vanish, and leave behind a mystery that would haunt Cedarburg for years to come.
His office held the last pieces of his existence in Cedarburg.
He would head there, take whatever he could get his hands on, and flee into the night.
He cared not for his home. After all, it was merely a rented property that simply served as a secondary hideout after his office.
Once he'd gathered his things, he would drive – drive until the city lights were nothing but a distant memory, until the roads no longer bore names, until he could vanish into obscurity.
The police might learn his real name, but they'd never find him.
Maxwell Tanner, a future legend in the annals of psychological research, would live to scheme another day.
But tonight, he had to disappear with minimal trace.
He couldn’t help but recall the memories and achievements of the past few days.
Four, arguably five victims, and each one had been a chapter in a thesis of terror that he had authored with scientific integrity.
His deep dive into the caverns of human fear had breached boundaries that traditional psychology dared not even approach.
This was psychology unbound by ethics and unchained from the constraints of academia.
He’d jumped in where angels – and traditional psychologists – feared to tread.
And it had all been worth it.
Maxwell Tanner's breath hung in the air as he reached into his pocket for his car keys. He was ready to vanish into the oblivion that waited beyond the shadow of Helmsley Bridge when a sound, artificial amidst this cloak of nature, drew his attention.
Maxwell's world expanded violently as he spun around.
His heart plummeted into an abyss.
Fury surged through him. Panic, a sensation he had so often observed with clinical detachment in his subjects, now ensnared and squeezed him with suffocating force.
It was her.
The cop. The one from the group session. The one who'd confessed her fear of needles while Maxwell took mental notes and planned his final experiment.
‘Your game is over, Maxwell,’ she said.
***
‘Drop the gun,’ Ella demanded.
She had him in her sights. Maxwell Tanner. The genius. The researcher. The man who thought he'd cracked the code on human fear.
He was leaving here in cuffs or a body bag. Those were the only options left.
‘You. How? How did you find me?’
Ella didn't falter. Maxwell Tannner, so used to being the observer, was now the observed, and Ella let him stew in that experience. It was the same one he'd instilled in Julia, Tom, Rebecca, and Derek. Time to turn the tables on this psychopath and show him that he wasn't as smart as he thought.
‘I said drop the gun,’ Ella said.
Her sight was locked on his chest, and if Maxwell tried anything, she’d put a bullet in him. His body language told her there were no pressurized limbs ready to spring a sudden movement.
Maxwell's pistol hand slowly raised, and then, inch by inch, he turned the gun on himself.
Ella swallowed hard.
It was a move she hadn’t anticipated.
‘I know you want me alive,’ Maxwell said.
‘I don’t care,’ Ella lied. An alive suspect was preferable, but a dead one was a close second.
‘Then tell me how you found me, before I pull the trigger.’
Ella didn’t have time to give a lecture. All she cared about was putting this case behind her. ‘Because you screwed up,’ she said.
Maxwell’s mouth twitched. He pushed the gun barrel into his temple. ‘No I didn’t. I didn’t screw up.’
‘The group. The Scarecrow app. You told me where you worked because you thought I was a potential victim. You tried to give me poisoned coffee. You called me Miss Dark when I never told you my real name. You gave me your burner cell’s number and pretended it was Derek’s. Need I go on?’
‘Yes.’
‘The person who did this knew about my needle phobia, which limited it to a select few people. Oh, and Lily. I was at the group session when she mentioned her fear of heights.’
‘You think you've won? You think capturing me changes anything?’
‘Yes I do,’ Ella said. She began circling. Trying to edge him toward the water.
‘It won’t change anything. I’ll still go down a pioneer.’
‘Doubt it,’ Ella said. She reached into her jacket, pulled out a wad of papers.
Maxwell’s precious manuscript.
‘This what you’re looking for?’
‘What the hell?’ Maxwell screamed. He stomped closer to Ella, but she re-positioned herself. ‘Where did you get that?’
‘Detective work. It was all here. Your final experiment. Heights. It had to be here.’
Maxwell tensed up like a cornered animal ready to lash out. He began to convulse, and for a moment, Ella feared he might actually pull the trigger. 'It's on my computer. My work is safe. It will get out there. I’ll make sure of it.’
‘We already seized it. Your computer’s in an evidence locker, and once you’re in chains, I’m taking a sledge hammer to it. And as for this,’ Ella dug her fingernails into the papers and crumpled them, ‘this is going straight to hell too.’
Ella flung the papers into the icy waters. They caught the wind in a fleeting moment of grace before they descended to their watery grave. The lake pulled them down despite their weightlessness.
But the moment the manuscript touched the water, Maxwell Tanner erupted. A guttural scream tore through the night – the sound of a man witnessing the destruction of his obsession.
‘My work!’ Maxwell howled. The man who had prided himself on control, on being the orchestrator of terror, lost all semblance of composure. His pistol arm fell by the wayside as he lunged towards the lake’s edge, as if he could somehow salvage the sinking pages.
Ella gauged the moment, saw her opening.
Now was the optimal time to strike.
She took her shot.
With Maxwell skirting around the edges of the water, Ella charged at the man full force.
She wrapped herself around Maxwell from behind and clutched his pistol hand with her wrist. Maxwell, caught off guard by the sudden force, stumbled backward, teetering on the edge of the lake's dark embrace. Ella threw her own pistol down and used her hand to pry Maxwell’s pistol from his grip.
As she launched his gun into the depths of the lake, Maxwell lost his footing and toppled backward. Ella found herself for a split-second that felt like an eternity, then Maxwell’s weight crushed down on her, driving her spine-first into the unforgiving ground.
The impact stole the breath from her lungs and forced a shockwave down her back and through every nerve in her body.
Dazed but undeterred, Ella fought against the haze clouding her vision.
Maxwell writhed free from Ella’s grip as he scrambled for any hold that would allow him an advantage.
He managed to twist himself around and land amateur blows to Ella’s abdomen.
Each blow sent jolts of pain through Ella’s body, but Ella tensed, diminishing their effect.
Bruises were preferable to a bullet wound, she reasoned, and now both of them were gunless.
With a grunt of effort, Ella shifted beneath him.
She twisted her hips, leveraging her legs to dislodge him, to create just enough space to bring her knees up and push him off her.
Ella rolled away from his grasp and sprang to her feet, fueled by adrenaline, justice, and the lives Maxwell had needlessly snubbed out.
Ella wasted no time. She hurtled toward her opponent and landing a right hook into his jaw.
She felt bone crack, ligaments tear, and cartilage shatter beneath the blow.
Maxwell tried to defend himself by flailing his arms, but it was a futile attempt to block the onslaught.
Ella unleashed a relentless barrage of attacks that suddenly transported her back to her martial arts days.
In that moment, she was no longer a cop bound by the law.
She was a survivor of one of Maxwell's experiments, and she was driven by the need for retribution.