Page 18 of Girl, Unmasked (Ella Dark #28)

Ella had been on the phone with Rick Vernon outside the precinct. He'd wanted an update on the investigation, which she only saw as an interruption. Edis rarely asked for updates, but she guessed that was something she'd have to get used to.

She went back up to her office, where Ripley had hopefully finished with the photographed copies of the new manuscript pages. When she got in, Ripley was still on page one.

‘You’re loving that book, aren’t you?’

‘No, it sucks, and yes I’ve read these new pages twice over.’

‘Any details in there? Anything we can latch onto?’

Ripley shook her head. ‘It's mostly just descriptions. Really graphic descriptions of what Cain did to the victim.’

Ella pulled the pages over and skimmed through them herself. If she was going to catch this freak, she needed to know everything about him, right down to his preferred style of prose.

Ripley continued, 'It takes place in the victim's apartment. Cain picked the lock on the door and waited for her to come home. When she did, he attacked her with a bat to the skull.'

‘It tracks. That’s exactly what we found with the real victim. He’s following this script to the letter.’

‘Then he removes her eyes. With a scalpel. He used the same scalpel to flay the skin off her back, and then he jammed barbed wire into her head.’

It was one thing to see the aftermath, to piece together what had happened from blood spatter and body positioning, but it was another thing entirely to read it laid out like a recipe for murder. ‘Anything else? Any details about the location, the timing, anything like that?’

Ripley shook her head. ‘Not really. It's all focused on the act itself. The guy's got a real hard-on for describing every cut. It's like he gets off on it, even though we profiled him as not being a sadist.’

'His literary counterpart might be different. Fantasy is always different than reality,' Ella said.

‘True. Either way, he came prepared,’ Ripley continued. ‘Brought all the tools with him. It wasn't some spur-of-the-moment thing. He planned this out, down to the last detail.’

‘Of course. You don’t break into a woman’s house and decide to angelify her on a whim.’

The fact this killer was a planner made him ten times more dangerous – and ten times harder to catch.

Impulse killers were at the mercy of their compulsions, which meant they made mistakes and left evidence behind.

But killers who mapped out every move and followed the plan to the letter were a different breed.

They were the Dennis Raders, the Joseph DeAngelos, the Harold Shipmans.

The ones that went undetected for decades and only got caught because of miracles.

Ella's headache amped up to migraine levels.

She pushed away from her desk, eager to pace away the frustration.

Whoever this Drago LaChance person was, it seems he was determined to make Ella work for every scrap of insight into his rancid gray matter.

As Ella pounded feet against the floor, Ripley scooped the manuscript pages back in front of her and lost herself in the pages again.

Meanwhile, Ella continued pacing as her mind worked overtime to find something she could cling onto for dear life.

There had to be an angle she hadn't considered, maybe a piece of the jigsaw she'd overlooked.

What did she have to go on? A mutilated body, a human-turned-angel, a victim who was one good deed away from sainthood, a murder manual that mapped out the entire thing from start to finish.

All that and she was still staring at a brick wall.

And time was ticking. Sophie Draper had been just the beginning. How many more lambs were already queued up for the slaughter?

‘Wait,’ Ripley said. ‘Wait right there.’

Ella spun to her and saw her dissecting one line of the manuscript. Ripley grabbed a pen and circled a few words. Thank Christ they were only photocopies.

‘What is it?’

‘Hold on to your ass. I might have something.’

Hope suddenly flared to life. Ella’s pulse ramped up to levels that one day might kill her.

‘You do?’

Ripley grinned, and Ella recognized that expression all too well. It had a fire that said, ‘I've got you now, you son of a bitch.’

‘I think,’ Ripley said, ‘I think our guy made a mistake.’