Page 42 of Girl, Unmasked (Ella Dark #28)

Ella shoved her way through the doors of the holding area like an uncoiling spring and left Drago LaChance to stew in his own juices. Ripley trailed her into the hallway, and Detective Blythe was on them the moment they emerged on the other side.

‘That was one hell of a collar, Dark,’ Blythe crowed. He clapped her on the shoulder hard enough to dislodge her spine. ‘Textbook from start to finish.’

‘Never doubted her for a second,’ Ripley added.

Ella shrugged off the praise like an ill-fitting coat. She should be riding high on the sweet taste of victory. But there was some splinter of doubt in her side that wouldn't let her savor the moment.

Why? She had a confession, connections between the killer and victims, and enough motive to choke a horse.

All the pieces fit, so why did it feel like she was stumbling around the edges of the puzzle?

Her existential crisis was cut short by the clatter of footsteps coming up the rear. Another uniform appeared with a cat-got-the-cream grin pasted on his face. He held up a plastic bag at arm’s length like it was the Holy Grail.

Got the scumbag's phone,’ he panted. ‘And the go-ahead to crack this baby wide open.’

‘Hot damn, that was fast,’ said Blythe. ‘Dark? Do the honors?’

This was it, the moment of truth. Prove whether or not LaChance was her killer, right there in that little black brick of circuits and silicon.

The officer handed her a pair of latex gloves. She snapped them on and took the phone out of the bag.

‘Passcode has been disabled,’ the guy said.

Ella hovered her thumb over the Home button. ‘Moment of truth.’

‘Let’s see it,’ Blythe said.

One press later, and the screen bloomed to life. She navigated to Drago LaChance's gallery and the most recent picture flickered onto the screen.

Ella felt the world lurch sideways. Breath stalled in her lungs because staring up at her was William Kane's lifeless form. Sprawled in front of his bookshelf, staring into nothing with eyes already clouding over.

Drago LaChance hadn’t been lying.

‘Christ,’ Blythe muttered. ‘We got him.’

Ella barely heard him over the static in her skull.

She swiped left, finding more pictures of Kane's dead body.

After six photos, the next scene emerged.

Martina Payne, this time, caught in loving HD as she hung from her balcony.

The angle was different than the crime scene shots – more intimate, the kind of perspective you could only get if you were standing on that balcony, watching your handiwork twist in the breeze.

Ella's finger trembled as she flicked through this series to the next scene. She knew what she'd find, but that didn't stop the wave of revulsion from crashing over her as Sophie Draper in full angelic composition filled the screen.

LaChance’s gallery of the dead. Proof positive that he was their man.

So why did it feel more like a sham than a smoking gun?

Ella kept swiping. More pictures of Sophie Draper. Shot after shot of the atrocities that had seared themselves onto her eyeballs over the past two days.

‘Well, slap my ass,’ Blythe said. ‘This is gonna be a short trial.’

‘He documented everything,’ Ripley breathed over her shoulder.

Ella barely heard him. She was too busy scrolling, scanning, searching for – what? She just knew that this wasn’t the whole story.

And then, just as she was about to give up and chalk it up to her own overcooked brain misfiring, she hit the end of Drago's murder gallery and landed on something wholly unexpected.

Normalcy. Or at least, the cracked mirror version of it.

The self-portraits caught her first – a dozen awkwardly-angled shots of LaChance himself, greasy hair and sunken eyes dominating the frame. His expression ranged from dazed to surly to utterly empty, like he couldn't quite remember how to arrange his features into anything approaching human.

No artistry to these, no careful composition. Just the visual white noise of a malfunctioning mind.

Ella flipped past them, only to run into a handful of landscapes. An anemic sunset, a sickly-looking oak tree. The kind of generic nature shots a first-year photography student might snap before discovering bong rips.

Was this really it? The sum total of LaChance's existence outside of ripping women to shreds for his scrapbook? For a guy so obsessed with his own genius, it seemed out of tune.

Before she could drill down into that discordant note, Blythe’s hand landed on her shoulder. ‘I think we’ve seen enough, Dark, now let’s slap a charge on this lunatic before he sprouts wings and flies away.’

A half-formed protest rose in Ella’s throat. This was moving too fast. She needed time to shake the pieces until they tumbled into a picture that made sense.

Blythe was already in motion, so Ella shot a hand out and snagged his sleeve. ‘Detective, wait.’

‘What for?’

‘Something isn’t… I mean, it doesn’t track. The memory lapses, the methodology.’ The nagging sensation intensified, morphing into full-blown skepticism. Her instincts were sounding the alarm, but damned if she could put her finger on why.

‘Methodology? Dark, he’s got pictures of all three victims on his cell. He’s confessed. What else do you want, an affidavit signed in blood?’

‘LaChance says he doesn’t remember killing those victims.’

‘If you want honesty, you’re in the wrong job.’

But Ella was already shaking her head. 'No, I'm serious. Think about it. Every kill was calculated down to the last detail. You don't do something like that on a whim or in some kind of trance. There's no way he'd pull off this level of staging if he were sleep-killing.'

‘So maybe he's lying,’ Blythe countered.

'But why? If LaChance did this, really did it, then why not boast about it? A preening psychopath with an ego like this, he should be crowing it from the rooftops. But instead, he's curled up in there crying about blackouts. Why the sudden shyness?'

Blythe heaved a sigh that sounded like it started somewhere around his soles.

He fixed Ella with a look she recognized all too well.

‘I get it, Dark. You want to make sure it’s buttoned up tight before we put a bow on it.

’ Blythe hitched up his belt. ‘Tell you what. I’ll give you an hour to scratch that itch.

Then I’m serving this guy up to the DA on a silver platter and calling it case closed. ’

A dizzying wave of relief coursed through her. ‘Thanks, detective. I won’t let you down.’

‘Don’t. Clock's ticking.’

Blythe spun on his heel and made his way down the corridor. Ella, Ripley, and Ryland watched him go.

Then Ripley looked at her and said, ‘Your funeral, Dark.’

‘Sure is.’

'You honestly, LaChance, aren't our guy? How do you explain the pictures?'

‘I don't know,’ she admitted. ‘But I'm sure as hell gonna find out.’

With that, she pocketed the phone and made a beeline for her office. She had work to do and a clock to beat. And she'd be damned if she let a little thing like linear time stop her from untangling this knot.

In her isolated corner of the precinct, the clock on the wall ticked over to eight PM.

Sixty minutes and counting.