Page 14 of Girl, Empty (Ella Dark #27)

Ella had never worn a gas mask in her life, nor had she ever seen comically-high piles of money before.

But here in the Riverside branch of First National Bank, Ella was up to her elbows in both experiences at once, with a blue-faced corpse thrown in as a bonus.

She looked over at Riggs and Ripley, and she could read the confusion on their faces even behind the gas masks.

‘Tell me I’m not going mad, Mia,’ she said.

‘You’re not going mad,’ Ripley said. Her voice came out muffled through the mask. ‘This poor guy was really killed inside a bank vault.’

Ella was about to ask the obvious question, but she realized it would be as futile as asking the meaning of the universe. Nobody here, especially not Ella, Ripley or Riggs, had any idea how this could have happened. ‘Riggs, who called it in?’

‘Bank teller called us just after half eight. Said her and the manager opened up and found this guy – Thomas Grayson – like this.’

‘Who is he? Does he work here?’ Ella got as close to the entryway as she could, and she could see that the victim was dressed casually. Sweat pants, fleece jacket, trainers. If he worked here, he wasn’t on the job when it happened.

‘Manager said he was the head of security, but that’s all I know.’

Ella pushed the puzzle aside. For a second, there was only the man. Thomas Grayson. Dressed for a night at home, not for death. She paid him a moment of silent tribute, then asked, ‘Why were they opening the vault?’

‘No idea. You can ask them yourself. They’re outside.’

Ripley said, ‘This is – what? Four layers of security? Front door, security door, elevator, bank vault. Our unsub bypassed all of them.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And how did he kill him? There’s no blood.’

Ella tapped her gas mask. The gesture felt oddly foolish. ‘It’s a fire protection measure. Bank vaults are sealed tight. Oxygen is limited. If a fire started in here, the suppression system would unleash gas to put the fire out.’

‘How’d you know that, huh?’

'There was a case in Sweden where some bank robbers got in the vault. One of them lit a cigarette and it set the suppression system off. The door sealed shut, and boom.'

‘Suffocation,’ Ripley said. ‘But our vic here doesn’t look like he was smoking.’

‘So the M.O. is inconsistent.’

‘No it’s not. The M.O. is identical. He bypassed multiple layers of security and left a middle aged man for dead. Even the victimology is consistent. The only deviation is the killing method, and that alone says a lot about our killer.’

Riggs briefly lifted up his gas mask, got a hit of the odor, and then snapped it back down. 'What does it say about our killer?'

‘It says that this isn’t just some fantasy he’s acting out.

Usually if a serial killer fantasizes about stabbing a victim, he fantasizes about stabbing every victim.

The killing method only changes if he’s evolving or he can no longer attain the same high he got from his first kill, but it can take five, six victims before it reaches that point.

I’ve never seen a killer deviate the killing method this much between the first and second victim. ’

Ella caught on to Ripley’s train of thought. She sometimes forgot just how much behavioral knowledge was locked in that old brain of hers. ‘So… he’s showing off.’

‘Either that or he’s proving a point. It’s like one of those magic tricks where a card is inside an egg that’s inside a watermelon that’s inside a locked box. He wants the world to know he can penetrate these places. That no one – or nowhere – is safe.’

‘Can we go in?’ asked Ella.

‘The bank manager said it takes about fifteen minutes for the gas to displace. So, it’s your funeral.’

Ella checked the time on her cell. 08:52. Twenty-two minutes since the bank manager had opened the vault, so the math said it was breathable. Her lungs hoped the math was right. ‘Mia, you coming in?’

‘Are you mad? I’m not stepping into a place filled with poison gas.’

‘What happened to that proactivity?’

‘I smoked for years. My lungs are already shot. You go ahead.’

Ella stepped over the threshold into the vault.

The place was smaller than she expected a bank vault to be; around the same size as a small bedroom.

There metal drawers up to waist height, and three rows of shelves across every wall, all packed with stacks of bills.

Wads of fifties had green bands around them, hundreds had purple.

There must have been hundreds of thousands in cash in here, and given how perfectly the stacks were arranged, the killer hadn’t even taken a dollar.

‘What’s in his hand other hand, Dark?’ Ripley shouted. ‘I can’t see from here.’

Ella moved closer to the body. Thomas Grayson had died curled up in the bottom-left corner, so his left hand was obscured by his torso and the wall next to it.

‘Cell phone,’ Ella said. ‘He must have tried calling to get help.’

‘Doubt there’s any reception down here,’ said Riggs. ‘What else can you see?’

Ella moved, careful not to disrupt the positioning of the body. ‘He’s wearing sweatpants and a jumper.’

‘So?’

‘Security chiefs didn't typically show up to banks in leisure wear, especially not after hours when they have no reason to be here. So either Grayson was lured here or he came voluntarily. Maybe to meet someone.’

‘To a bank vault?’ Riggs asked.

‘Or to stop someone,’ Ripley offered. ‘What if Grayson knew something was going down? What if he tried to intervene?’

The thought sent a shudder through her. A security professional who'd stumbled onto something bigger than himself, who'd tried to be a hero and paid the ultimate price for it. It was the kind of tragedy that reminded her why she’d gotten into this job.

'Could be. I guess we need to,' Ella stopped abruptly as she caught sight of something gleaming underneath the victim's thigh. She leaned down, gently raised his leg and plucked the concealed item from within.

It was a set of keys.

‘What’s that?’ Ripley shouted.

‘Keys. One for a Ford, one for a front door.’

‘Poor guy might have tried to jimmy his way out.’

‘Fat chance of that in a bank vault,’ Ella said as she inspected the keys, and then noticed something odd. On the tip of what she assumed was Thomas Grayson’s house key, she saw flecks of silver paint.

Dots suddenly connected in her mind. Grayson didn't have much time, maybe a minute or two before the gas took him.

That was just long enough to understand two things: that death was coming, and that there was no way out.

A man like him, a man whose career was security, wouldn't waste his final seconds on panic. He'd use them.

‘Mia, Riggs,’ Ella shouted. ‘I think Grayson left us a message.’

Ripley’s head peered around the door. ‘A message? How?’

‘Look for something painted silver.’

Ella scanned the vault's interior for anything silver, but the irony wasn't lost on her – everything in here was steel.

Steel shelves, steel drawers, steel walls that had become Thomas Grayson's coffin.

The cash bands were green and purple and yellow, the counting table was black, and Grayson's clothes were dark blue and gray. Nothing silver except the door.

Of course. The massive vault door with its silver paint job. Grayson would have scratched his message on whatever surface he could reach from his position in the corner. The door opened outward, which meant its exterior face would have been inside the vault when he was dying.

She rushed out of the vault and found the door. Riggs and Ripley appeared at her side.

All eyes were drawn to the same thing.

Two faint words etched into the door. The words that Thomas Grayson had chosen to carve as his final act on earth.

Not his kids’ names, not a goodbye, not a final piece of philosophic wisdom.

Whatever it meant, it had been worth more to him than any last words of love or regret.

Cell backdoor.