Page 29

Time to go.

The Confessor stood before the bathroom mirror and admired the W branded into pale flesh. The mark had healed well since that night at St. Augustine's. A perfect W, raised and pink against white skin. No infection, no complications. The iron had been sterilized properly. Everything had been done right.

The face in the mirror belonged to a stranger now. Not the face that had planned this for over a year. Not the face that had watched Chester Grant lecture about medieval morality plays while seducing students half his age. Not the face that had listened to Evelyn Summers dispense her toxic wisdom or observed Rebecca Torres line her pockets with power station money. Not even the face that had ended James Harper's reign of surgical butchery mere hours ago.

Four sinners down. Four letters carved into flesh. Four messages left behind. And now Adam Canton sat in a cell, taking credit for what he hadn't done. The police would waste precious time trying to make him confess to the other murders. By the time they realized their mistake, the trail would be cold.

The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed. It wasn't large. Just enough for the essentials. Three changes of clothes. Toiletries. One book. The Bible, naturally. Everything else could stay behind. Material possessions were chains, and the Confessor had learned long ago that freedom required regular purging. The tools of the trade were sitting in the trunk of the car. And on the way to Illinois, the Confessor would drop them in a river and let nature wash away the forensic evidence.

There had never been a grand plan to all of this, not really. Just an accidental path that started with Chester Grant's smug face in the newspaper: ‘PROFESSOR KEEPS POSITION DESPITE SCANDAL.’

The headline had been a match struck against the kindling of ancient rage. Grant's face had blurred with other faces: the doctor who'd let Mother die while insurance forms gathered signatures, the teacher who'd looked away when playground bruises bloomed like cruel flowers, the officer who'd said, ‘There's nothing we can do without more evidence.’ A lifetime of watching sinners walk free had crystalized in that moment.

Everything had then spiraled into a mission that even now felt more like destiny than choice. But with that said, the vague skeleton of a plan had never included running away. The original blueprint – if it could be termed such a thing – involved seven brands, seven messages, seven souls sent to face their Maker with their sins clearly marked.

But plans changed when God intervened, and He had certainly intervened, considering that the police had already taken Pastor Adam into custody. Given Adam's obsession with Rebecca Torres, it was only natural the police would come across his name eventually, but the Confessor never expected it this quickly. Pastor Adam was the ultimate patsy, and all it would take was a few little pieces of evidence from the other victims concealed somewhere in First Light Assembly. Before the Confessor sped off into the night, those pieces would be in place. Two police officers had been coming in and out of the church for a while, but once they disappeared, the evidence could be planted.

Would the police notice the Confessor’s disappearance? Would they put two and two together and figure out that the killings stopped not just when they arrested Adam Canton but when a certain someone else fled town?

No. All attention would be on Canton. And as for the W in the Confessor’s skin, it was nothing a little makeup wouldn’t fix.

The Confessor picked up a final box and headed for the door. The place felt hollow now, like it had been emptied of purpose. Over a year of planning, reduced to moving boxes and bleach-scented air. But that's how justice works sometimes. You never got to see the end of the story you started.

***

Sitting in her office, Ella was reminded of a line from an old textbook. When the facts don’t make sense, you don’t have all the facts.

Through the glass partition in her office, she could see the top half of Adam Canton locked in a room across the hallway. She wondered if this was what taxidermists felt like. Studying something that looked alive but wasn't. He’d been in there for three hours now .

Canton had confessed to Torres' murder with the desperate eagerness of a child claiming responsibility for a broken window. But his reaction to the other deaths carried the genuine bewilderment of someone watching their reflection move independently in a mirror. Could Canton have killed James Harper before Ella caught him? Technically, yes. Realistically, no. But realistically didn’t matter, not in law enforcement. If it could happen, then a prosecutor would find a way to convince a jury that it did.

Her phone vibrated against the desk. Ripley's name flashed on the screen.

‘Tell me you've got something,’ Ella said by way of greeting.

‘Oh, I've got something all right,’ Ripley replied. ‘Turns out the tech guy had an easy job. Harper's assistant came through with the access codes to his appointment system. Westfall got the clearance fast-tracked.’

‘When the council president gets killed, things move fast. What did you find?’

'And our friend Adam Canton booked a consultation with Harper three days before the murder. Email correspondence confirms it. They had a meeting scheduled for today at 12 PM.'

Ella sat up straight. ‘How’d you know it was Canton?’

‘His name is right in front of me. Adam Canton. Email address is Pastor Canton at SeeMail dot com.’

Ella battled for an opposing comment, but she had to admit that this wasn’t looking good. ‘Anyone could have set that up. You don’t need ID to register an email address.’

‘I was getting to that part. The tech guy ran a check on the IP address the email came from. And guess what the IP address was?’

‘What?’

‘Hostname 66.213.22.193, according to these notes. That mean anything to you?’

‘No.’

‘Me neither, but that IP address led us to a real address. And that was 221 Wexford Street.’

Ella should have shouted in triumph. This kind of evidence was enough to secure a charge before the night was out. ‘First Light Assembly.’

'Yup. Canton's church. Oh, and this James Harper guy? Westfall says he's known around town for being pretty sketchy. He's been in court a bunch of times for botched surgeries. I think Canton really is our guy, Dark.'

Ella looked over at Canton again. The revelation should have brought clarity and should have collapsed the wave function of possibilities into a single definitive reality. Instead, it only deepened her confusion. The evidence pointed in one direction, but instinct pulled her elsewhere.

‘It doesn't make sense,’ she said.

‘What doesn't make sense? We've got surveillance photos of one of his victims. We've got his public freakout at city hall. We've got emails to his last victim sent from his own network. He’s got motive coming out of his ass to kill Torres. If it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.’

‘But there’s no motive to kill the others.’

‘Ted Bundy didn’t have motive to kill thirty-odd women but he still did. Have you interrogated Canton about James Harper?’

‘No.’

'Well, you should. Westfall is about to come back and officially charge him.'

‘Wait,’ Ella snapped. ‘Not yet. Ask him to hold off. One hour.’

‘Dark, don't go rogue on me here. We've got Canton gift-wrapped with a body count-‘

‘Please. I just need to see if I can get through to this guy. Ask Westfall to stay back.’

She ended the call before Ripley could mount a counter-argument. If she could just get one thread of truth out of Canton, she might just be unable to unravel this whole thing.