Page 40 of Girl, Empty (Ella Dark #27)

The man on the floor was making a noise. Calvin Roth watched him writhe in disorientation, then nudged him with his shoe.

‘Wake up, Kevin. It’s time.’

For fifteen years, the man in front of him had been a name he’d wanted to erase.

He hadn’t been flesh and blood until tonight, with emphasis on the blood.

Calvin hadn’t wanted to disorient him too much, but he had to put an end to Kevin’s phone call immediately.

Calvin didn’t know who he’d been talking to, because he’d thrown Kevin’s cell off the roof.

Kevin rolled a little longer, then propped himself up on one elbow. ‘What the… where are we?’

‘We’re on the roof, Kevin. We’re six stories high.’

‘Who are you?’

Calvin reached into his jacket and pulled out his secret weapon, quite literally. A SIG Sauer P320. He didn’t know the first thing about shooting, but it was amazing how confident you felt with a pistol in your hands.

He pointed it at Kevin. ‘You don’t who I am?’

‘No. Why are you… in my building?’

‘I’m not in your building. I’m on your building, and I’ve been coming here for fifteen years.’

Kevin was blinking rapidly. A bruise had already appeared on the side of his temple where the lead pipe had connected. Perfect. The injury would be consist with a long fall.

‘Wha… but….’

Calvin wanted to get close to this man, but despite all his research, he didn’t know if Kevin Wolfe had any fighting discipline in him. Being too close was a risk, so he maintained his distance. ‘Dennis Roth. Does that answer your questions?’

‘Dennis? I haven’t heard that name in…’ Kevin’s mouth dropped open an inch. The rest of his body froze in paralysis. ‘Dennis? You… look just like him. You’re his son.’

‘Calvin Roth. I was Dennis’s son. Until you killed him.’

‘That’s not true,’ Kevin spat. He tried to climb to his feet, but Calvin stepped closer.

‘Don’t move! Now’s your chance to tell me everything. I know what you did, and I need you to confess.’

‘There’s nothing to confess, kid. I didn’t kill Dennis.’

Calvin kept his SIG pointed at Kevin while he reached into his jacket with his spare hand. He pulled out a notebook and a pencil. He tossed them and they skittered across the concrete and came to rest near Kevin’s hand. Kevin stared at the notebook like was a venomous snake.

‘What’s this?’

‘You're going to write it all down. How you killed Dennis Roth. Why you killed him. Make it detailed. Make it true.’

‘He had a heart attack!’

‘Bullshit! Why was his room locked from the outside? Why was there no key inside. Why did security footage show empty hallways?’ Calvin had asked these questions so many times they'd worn grooves in his brain.

‘Because the system glitched, you fool! It’s as simple as that! There was no one on the security cameras because no one came by.’

‘Lies. It can happen. I made it happen. Michael Rankin in his office. Thomas Grayson in that vault. Noah Redmond in his freezer. I've been showing the world how it's done, Kevin. How you did it.’

Understanding dawned slow and horrible across Kevin’s face. ‘Those murders. That was you?’

‘Demonstrations. Proofs of concept.’ Calvin kept the gun trained on Kevin’s center mass. ‘The police said locked room murders were impossible. I proved them wrong. Three times. Now everyone will know my father could have been murdered. Was murdered. By you.’

‘Calvin, listen-’

‘Pick up the pen.’

Kevin massaged the bruise on his temple. ‘I can't confess to something I didn't-’

‘Pick up the pen! Or I’ll put six bullets in you right now!’

Kevin’s hand shook as he reached for it. Not from the concussion, Calvin guessed. This was pure adrenaline. Pure terror, he hoped. ‘What happens if I write it?’

‘Then maybe I don’t shoot you right here.’

‘And if I don't?’

Calvin smiled, but the expression felt foreign to him. When was the last time he'd smiled at anything? ‘Then we skip to the part where you jump.’

‘Jump?’

‘Kevin Wolfe, overcome with guilt after fifteen years, throws himself from the building where he committed his first murder.

They'll find my father's case files in your office safe, because I’m going to put them there after this.

They'll see the pattern. The locked rooms. The connection.

They'll think you’d seen the recent locked room murders and suffered a bout of crippling guilt.

You couldn't live with what you'd done, so you killed yourself.’

‘That's insane.’

‘Is it? More insane than a man dying in a locked room with no explanation? More insane than the police shrugging and filing it under natural causes because solving it would mean more work? Are you going to write it or not?’

‘No.’

‘Fine. I can’t make you. Get up.’

Kevin managed to rise to a standing position, then collapsed and had to hold himself up on the wall of the server hut. He glanced at the door that led back to the stairwell, and Calvin caught it.

‘Don’t bother trying to escape. All the doors are locked. I made sure of it. It’s just me and you, a hundred feet in the air, and no one can get up here.’

‘How?’

‘It’s just code, Kevin. Everything is alpha-numerical code.

And when there’s a finite number of possibilities, it means you can find the code if you look for long enough.

That’s exactly what I did. For your building, and every other building I left bodies in.

It’s really, really easy. But enough of that – raise your hands. ’

Kevin complied, then backed up against the wall. ‘Don’t do this, Calvin. I have children. They’re young. They need their father.’

‘I needed a father.’

‘Yes you did, and Dennis was a great one. You have his… spirit.’

‘Don’t try and butter me up, Kevin. Get over there.’

‘I won’t do it. I’m not going near that ledge.’

Calvin rushed over to Kevin, grabbed his hair in one hand, and jammed the gun into his forehead. 'Then I'm going to shoot you right here. Do you want that? Do you want me to spray this roof with your brains, Kevin?' he screamed. Calvin had never screamed in his life, and the catharsis felt good.

But he needed Kevin on that ledge.

‘So shoot me. Or are you all bark and no bite, just like your dad?’

‘What?’ Calvin shouted in Kevin’s face. ‘Say that again.’

‘You heard me, you little shit. Your dad was an asshole. I didn’t kill him, but boy was I glad he died. Everyone was, including-,’

Rage became Calvin’s driving force. All rationale left his body and he hammered the butt of his SIG against Calvin’s head in three driving blows. ‘Including who, Kevin? Who was glad?’

Then the door to stairwell suddenly detonated. The lock mechanism separated from the frame in a shower of metal confetti, and through the hole stepped a woman he’d seen before. He’d seen her last night, in the street outside Blackglass.

And her gun was pointed at him.

‘Including your mom, Calvin,’ she shouted, breathless. ‘Because she was the one who killed your dad.’