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Plans had changed. Thomas Webb was supposed to be the last nail, so to speak. Now the story had sprouted an unexpected epilogue.

His shovel struck rock, which was the signal that he was deep enough.

He pulled the plastic bag from his jacket, turned it upside down and let Thomas Webb’s pinky finger fall into the hole.

It was a small tribute compared to the others, but symbolically significant nonetheless.

He glanced around to ensure there were no prying eyes, then buried the finger alongside its brethren.

This should have been the end of the road.

Three bodies, one mystery, and one irresistible story that the masses would eat up.

But along the way, some things had changed.

He’d never been one for introspection, but these murders had changed him in a way he never expected.

It wasn’t so much that he enjoyed them, because despite his status as a serial killer, he still didn’t understand how someone could enjoy the blood, the mess, the constant anxiety that you could be sentenced to death if you made one wrong move.

No. What he felt was fulfilment. Like he’d finally righted a wrong.

With his new trophy now firmly concealed, no one could tell that there were three pieces of human beings sitting at his feet. Nothing marked the spot except his own memory. No one would find this place unless they knew exactly where to look.

This part had been an impulsive move, because his initial plan had been to throw the eyes, the head and the pinky finger into the sea. Thomas Webb’s hard drive, on the other hand, had ended up in the ocean.

But doing this felt like the right thing to do. This place was a grave, after all, and these body parts were his flowers.

What now? Well, he never believed in fate, despite the sudden turn of events, so it was time to put the final step into motion. Yes, it was risky, even riskier than the others, but the odds were in his favor and he was compelled to roll the dice.

When this story finally reached the world, suspicion would undoubtedly fall on him, but it would seem so outrageous that it couldn’t possibly be true.

The quasi-intellectuals would rage about Occam’s razor while the conspiracy theorists would throw out their convoluted theories, and thankfully, nobody would either of them seriously.

He didn’t care what people said as long as he was a free man – and the money kept rolling in.

He placed his shovel down beneath the rock and just sat. Pretty soon, night would fall, and it would just be him, his trophies, and with any luck – victim number four.

Yes, there was room for one more, because some endings just wrote themselves.

***

Mia Ripley stormed back into the precinct and made a beeline for Interrogation Room B.

Josiah Nicholls had been sitting in here for the past four hours, supposedly their prime suspect. Except his alibi for Thomas Webb’s murder was airtight, because he’d been here, in custody, when someone was driving nails through Webb’s hands.

‘Nicholls!’ Ripley shouted as she kicked the door open. The suspect glanced up, startled. ‘I’m done playing. Are you ready to get serious?’

The AC was still blasting, and Nicholls’ earlier composure had now vanished. Four hours in a freezing room could break anyone, including this wannabe-killer.

‘I told you everything.’ Nicholls had that deer-in-the-headlights look that Ripley loved. It was time to circle this prey, strike, and answer at least one question to this mystery before the night was out.

‘No, you told me some things, and only half of them were true.’

‘It was all true.’

‘Did you kill Frank Sullivan?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you kill anyone else?’

‘No.’

‘Well, we’ve got two more bodies, and we’re pretty certain that the same person killed all three victims. So you either killed all of them or none of them. Which one is it?’

Nicholls’ lip quivered. His jaw clenched and unclenched like a faulty piston, while sweat beaded along his hairline despite it being zero degrees in here.

Ripley was, oddly, no stranger to this expression.

It was the anxious calculation of a man who’d stepped off a cliff and now realized the ground wasn’t where he expected it to be.

One murder was a life sentence, three murders was a death sentence.

‘Just Frank.’

Ripley slammed her hand on the desk. It hurt, but she didn’t show it.

‘Nicholls, you’re full of shit, and I want to know why you’re wasting our time.

Now, I think there’s a chance you killed Frank, but nothing else tracks, so I’m going to need you to stop living in this stupid fantasy world because, believe me, the truth always comes out in the end. ’

Something in Nicholls shattered. The veneer of defiance, thin as it had always been, fractured and fell away. His shoulders folded inward as if his spine had suddenly liquefied, and when he looked up, his eyes had the vacant sheen of a man who’d finally hit the wall at the end of his rope.

‘I didn’t kill Frank. I didn’t kill anyone.’

The wave of relief that washed over Ripley almost knocked her over. Finally. It wasn’t a new jigsaw piece slotting into the picture, but it was the removal of one that never fit in the first place.

‘Keep talking.’

‘I did nothing… but I was there.’

Ripley’s eyebrows hit her scalp. ‘Run that by me again?’

‘I was there, but…’ Nicholls waved his hands defiantly, now suddenly yearning to be a picture of innocence.

‘But?’

‘Okay, so I wanted to confront Frank, that same night. We’d been texting, and got into an argument.’

‘An argument? About what?’

‘Marlowe. Cold cases in general. It just descended into mud-slinging. He told me to come speak to him in person, so I did. But when I got there…’

‘What? You saw his dead body?’

‘No, nothing like that.’ Nicholls took a breath. ‘I pulled up across the street, then I saw someone climbing over Frank’s fence.’

‘As in, entering his property?’

‘No, exiting. Like they’d burgled him.’

Ripley stood up straight. She processed Nicholls’ statement. Not only had this son of a bitch falsely confessed to murder, but he’d also seen the actual killer in the flesh. The urge to slap his stupid face was overwhelming. She pinched the bridge of her nose to calm herself.

‘Right, and this someone leaving Frank’s house – what did he look like?’

Nicholls gulped air like a drowning man breaching the surface. ‘Don’t know. He was wearing all black. Had a hood over his face. That’s why I knew something bad was going down.’

The lie detector in Ripley’s brain pinged above baseline but below outright fabrication. A partial truth, then.

‘ He? Are you sure about that?’

‘No.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then I went home. The next day I heard Frank had been killed, and…’

Ripley leaned back on the desk. ‘So you decided to confess to a murder you didn’t commit. What the fuck is wrong with you?’

‘Because I was worried he’d come for me next!’ Nicholls shouted. The outburst propelled him a few inches off his chair. It was the first display of realism she’d seen since he kicked her in the head.

‘What, you think the killer saw you?’

‘Yes. The GPS screen was on in my car. It was bright. Easy to see my face. And when you arrived at my café, I panicked, because I suddenly knew how this would look. Strange guy shows up using a fake name, obsessing over the case, then Frank turns up dead? I was going to be the perfect fall guy.’

‘So you ran.’

‘Wouldn’t you? I figured jail was coming either way. Either the real killer gets me, or the justice system does. At least in here, I’ve got four walls and people with guns protecting me.’

Clarity crashed over Ripley like ice water. ‘You’d rather take credit for murder than risk being the killer’s next victim. And you wanted to wait here in safety until we caught the actual killer?’

Nicholls said nothing, but his silence spoke volumes. She took a second to take in the whole thing in a linear fashion. Ripley had to admit that Nicholls played a good game of 4D chess here. He’d assigned himself witness protection without his protectors even being aware of it.

‘Nicholls, if I didn’t care about my pension, this is the part where I’d smack you in the face. Again.’

‘It was wrong. I know. I’m sorry.’

Ripley pulled out her cell and texted Ella. Nicholls is innocent, confirmed. She hoped her partner was having more luck finding a solid connection over at Thomas Webb’s house.

‘Why didn’t you just tell the police what you saw?’

Josiah Nicholls laughed. ‘I know how the police work. I saw you fumble my mom’s murder case in real time. As if you guys would give me any protection that was worth a damn.’

She had to hand it to him. For once, Nicholls had a point. Thirty years in the Bureau had given her a front-row seat to the spectacular failures of witness protection.

‘Doesn’t make what you did any less stupid,’ she added. ‘You realize while we’ve been chasing our tails with you, this psycho has nailed a man to his chair?’

‘Jesus. I’m so sorry. I was just scared.’

Ripley mentally ran through everything again, every discrepancy she’d been questioning since she first heard Josiah Nicholls’ name, and there was only one thing she didn’t have an answer for.

‘What about the Marlowe police report in your apartment? And the stones? You had a pile of them?’

‘So?’

Ripley paused. That was his response? Not denial, not another convoluted explanation, just - so? It was the blankness of someone who didn’t grasp the significance of what she was asking.

And in that blankness, another piece clicked into place.

At no point in any of their interactions, not even during his initial false confession, had Josiah Nicholls ever mentioned stones being placed in Frank Sullivan’s eyes.

‘Nicholls… what do you think happened to Frank?’

‘The news said someone shot him.’

He didn’t even know.

So why did he have those exact same stones in his apartment?

‘That police report. Those stones. Were they yours?’

‘No,’ Nicholls said confidently. ‘Never seen them before. I was lying when I said they were mine.’

‘So, how did they get into your apartment?’

Nicholls looked at her blankly. His lack of response said more than words ever could.

Ripley thought of Ella, and for some reason, David Copperfield. How he transported a woman from Vegas to Hawaii seemingly by magic. Except it wasn’t magic. He’d just paid for her to go to Hawaii, filmed her on a beach there, then planted her back in the audience in Vegas.

Planted her.

It had all been premeditated.

An illusion.

And to the unsuspecting people watching, it looked like something it wasn’t.