Page 10 of Girl, Empty (Ella Dark #27)

Ella stared through the windshield at the Westside Aquatic Center.

The place glowed aquamarine from the pool lights inside, and Ella could make small figures behind the windows.

Kids in swimsuits and parents with cameras.

Michael Rankin's daughter was in there somewhere, most likely unaware that her father lay in the morgue.

Now, it fell on Ella to inform the young girl of such details, and this part of the job never got easier no matter how much practice you got.

‘Walk me through it again,’ Ripley said from the driver's seat. She’d reclined her seat and was using the case file as a makeshift table for her gas station coffee. ‘The killer gets in when?’

Ella had run through the scene so many times in her head she could recount the times by memory. ‘Two minutes past midnight, Terrence went out the back to smoke. That’s when our killer must have slipped in the front.’

‘The front door to the building was unlocked, yes?’

‘Yes. That was the easy part. Then the moment he gets in, the security camera in the lobby blacked out.’

‘How’s our guy get into the elevator? What about the weight restriction?’

‘The weight restriction is the least of his problems. How does he even open the elevator without a keycard?’

‘Maybe the tech team will have better luck than us explaining that. Then what?’

‘Every camera he passes by goes dark one by one. Like he’s one of those Japanese ghosts.’ Ella scrubbed her eyelids with her fingertips. The whole sequence defied logic, yet the footage showed it clear as daylight. Physics had rules and technology had limitations, but this killer defied both.

‘So he disables every security measure, somehow. Then what was the deal with the security camera on the top floor?’

‘He blacked it out when he went past it to Rankin’s office the first time. Then he broke it on the way back.’

‘Why?’

‘To lure the security guard up to the top floor. So he’d find Rankin’s body.’

The questions kept piling up. How did the killer map the building so perfectly? How did he know Terrence's smoke break schedule down to the second? The tech angle screamed hacker, but the execution had a different flavor.

And that goddamn pentagram. Was it meant to throw them off? The smartest killers weren’t adverse to the occasional distraction, but there was also a chance that this unsub was trying to genuinely say something with it. Even so, a corporate killing didn’t exactly scream occult or Satanic.

Movement caught Ella's eye. A group of people emerged from the doors, and amongst them, Ella spotted Sarah and Emma Rankin from the social media photos she'd checked out. 'There they are,' Ella pointed.

‘Oh sheesh,’ said Ripley. ‘Look at what the little girl’s holding.’

Ella saw it. Emma was brandishing a silver medal. Second place. She'd remember that placement forever, but not because she'd earned it. She'd remember it because this was the night everything went to hell. She'd remember the exact spot in the parking lot where her childhood ended.

Ripley's hand found the door handle. ‘You coming?’

Ella reached for her own handle, but her hand wouldn't work right. That little girl was having one of the best nights of her life, and Ella couldn't bring herself to be the one to ruin that.

‘I don't think I can, Mia.’

The words just fell out, and a part of her felt pathetic for it. Death notifications were the bread and butter of the job. Maybe it was Ben, or the silver medal, or everything at once.

‘I'll handle it if you want to stay back.’

‘Please.’

Ripley climbed out of the car without another word.

Something had gotten into that woman in since Christmas, and Ella wasn’t complaining about it because right now she felt like a statue in this investigation.

She watched her partner cross the parking lot and interrupt the family as they reached their car.

Confusion first – who was this strange woman hurrying towards them? Then Ripley's hand went to her jacket, pulled out the badge. Sarah's expression dropped.

Then Ella changed her mind. If she could offer even the most minor of comfort to the young girl, she had to do so. She couldn’t let Mia deliver that news with Emma standing right there.

Ella's door slammed open before she realized she'd moved. Her feet hit the ground running. She made a beeline for the daughter.

‘Hey,’ Ella said to Emma, ‘want to come sit with me for a minute while my partner talks to your mom?’

Emma looked at her mother. Sarah managed something that might have been a nod. Ella put her hand on Emma’s back. ‘Come on. Tell me about your medal.’

***

Up ahead, Ella could see that Ripley had taken Sarah Rankin to a bench. Beside her, a nine-year-old girl dangled legs that were too short to reach the floor.

‘Silver medal. That’s real good. Congratulations.’

‘I thought I was going to win,’ Emma said.

‘Second place is good, because it means you can get better. Just knowing you can be better means you’ll push yourself to make it happen.’

Emma looked unimpressed. ‘Is that true?’

‘Sure. It’s called the Bannister Effect. When a barrier that people thought couldn’t be broken is broken, it causes a mental shift. It’s like when someone breaks a world record. Other people start breaking it too.’

‘That’s funny.’

Ella wondered if this conversation path was appropriate given what was about to go down, but she decided that Emma might remember this conversation and use it as inspiration one day. Or maybe she was deluding herself that a child would have any idea what she was talking about.

‘My name’s Ella, by the way.’

‘Cool. That’s kind of like mine, but with an L instead of an M. ’

‘Very true. We’ve got the same vowels.’

Emma placed her silver medal around her neck and fidgeted with the medallion. ‘Is it fun being a cop? I see you guys on TV sometimes.’

‘Some days are more fun than others. What’s it like being a swimmer?’

‘Do you work for the police around here?’ Emma asked, clearly preferring cop talk over swimming talk.

‘I’m actually with the FBI, not the police. Do you know what that is?’

‘Are you the ones who do the alien stuff?’

Ella couldn’t help but smile, despite the circumstances. ‘Sort of. We work with the CIA on that.’

‘Have you ever seen one? An alien?’

‘Not yet. We actually just monitor things that are in the skies, and that can be anything. Planes, balloons, missiles. There are no records of aliens ever visiting us.’ Ella leaned in a little closer. ‘And believe me, I’ve looked.’

Emma laughed, and it made Ella’s heart sink. How could she tell this girl she wasn’t going to see her dad again?

‘I thought you did stuff with aliens. I saw it on the X-Files.’

‘Aren’t you a bit young to watch the X-Files?’

‘Nope. It’s not scary. Have you ever seen anything like that?’

If Ella didn’t know any better, she’d think that Emma was playing a trick on her. ‘Yes, actually, but there’s an old quote I like to remember: evil is unspectacular and always human. Even when something seems impossible, there’s always an explanation.’

‘Like magic.’

‘Like magic,’ Ella said.

‘Want to see something? Something magic?’

‘Sure.’

Emma undid her ponytail and pinched the hair tie in her fingers. ‘Do you have one? A hair tie?’

‘Here you go.’ Ella unhooked the one around her wrist. ‘Go wild.’

‘Thanks,’ Emma said. She took it and stretched it with her thumb and index finger. Then she put her own hair tie in the gap between the first tie and the webbing on her hand. Then she stretched that one too.

‘Look. The ties are locked together, see?’

‘I see.’

Emma gesticulated wildly to prove that what she was saying was true. The hair ties were locked together. ‘Now watch. All I need to do is give a little blow, and…’

Ella found herself surprisingly transfixed by this impromptu display of magic. There was something wondrous about taking everyday objects and turning them into a spectacle, even more so if it was a child doing the magic.

‘Ta-daa,’ Emma finished. The hair ties came apart. ‘They’re free. Did you like that?’

True to her word, the hair ties were no longer bound. Ella was momentarily bedazzled. ‘Ha, that’s awesome. How’d you do that?’

‘Magic.’

‘Of course.’

‘I actually don’t know how it works. My mom’s friend taught it to me.’

‘Your mom’s friend, huh?’

‘Yeah, David. He does magic.’

Ella made a mental note of the name, as vague as it was. ‘What kind of friend is he to your mom?’

The young girl returned Ella’s hair tie. ‘Mom and dad aren’t…. what’s the word… together? They’re still my mom and dad, but they sleep in different rooms. Do you know what I mean?’

This was news to her. From everything Ella had heard so far, she assumed Michael, Sarah and Emma had been a typical suburban family. Dad with the high-stress job, mom with the swimming practices, and a kid with too much awareness for a nine-year-old.

‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Are you doing okay?’

‘I thought it would be hard, but it’s not that bad. I never see dad anyway. He’s not coming home, is he?’

Ella’s lips might as well have sewn themselves together, because no words were forthcoming. This was her chance to soften the blow of tragedy, but she couldn’t rip the Band-Aid off. ‘What makes you think that?’ she finally managed.

‘Cops. Well, FBI. Mom is over there crying, and Dad promised he’d be here and he’s not. Something’s wrong, isn’t it?’

Ella wondered if she should put her hand on Emma’s shoulder for that minor comfort, or maybe let her mother deliver the news in a way she knew Emma could process.

No. She had a responsibility, and besides, she felt a connection to this girl despite the twenty-plus-year age gap.

‘You’re right, Emma. Something bad happened to your dad, and we’re trying to find out who did it.’

Emma rubbed at her eyes, but there were no tears there. The girl clearly had a strong grasp on her emotions; something rare to see in a kid with an absent father. ‘Is my dad an X-File?’

‘No. He’s a regular file, and me and my partner over there are going to close it.’

‘Is he… dead?’

This time, Ella did touch Emma’s shoulder. ‘I’m afraid so.’

Tears threatened to wet Emma’s cheeks, but she somehow held herself together. She covered her eyes with her palm and then scrubbed viciously, as if the threat alone could keep the tears at bay. Her legs began to tremble, and Ella knew the poor kid would remember this moment forever.

‘Listen, I lost my dad when I was a kid too,’ Ella said.

‘You did?’

‘Yeah, and it doesn’t mean they’re gone.’ Ella tapped Emma’s temple. ‘He just lives up here now. In your memories, and I’m sure you’ve got some great ones.’

Emma began anxiously fidgeting with her hair tie again, then caressed her forearm, as though the answers to how to deal with this mess were written on her sleeve.

She gently pulled it up and exposed flesh that was surprisingly tanned for a child in Indianapolis in January.

‘This is the last thing he gave me,’ she said.

Ella leaned closer, and there on the olive skin was what looked like smudged ink. Pool water had done its work on whatever design had been there, and left only faint black lines against the tan. Most of it had washed away, but the pattern that remained was unmistakable.

Five points. A star within a circle.

The same shape that had replaced Michael Rankin's financial data twelve hours after his death