Page 44 of Girl, Unmasked (Ella Dark #28)

Ella wasn't much for epiphanies. She preferred her revelations concrete, preferably with a hefty paper trail and a side of irrefutable physical evidence.

She bolted out of her office and down the corridor until she reached the holding cells. They were her gateway to enlightenment or damnation; the jury was still out on which. Ella burst through and made for the last cell on the row.

And there, crumpled on the bench like a used tissue, was none other than the man of the hour himself. Drago LaChance, in all his sniveling glory. Ella clanged her hand on the metal bar.

‘LaChance! I need to talk to you, now.’

He flinched so hard that Ella thought he might shed his skin. His head snapped up. He looked like he hadn't stopped crying since she left him.

‘Why?’

‘Shut up and look.’ Ella thrust the phone through the bars, screen lit up with that damning photo. ‘This scene. Who the hell is this?’

LaChance jumped back like she’d slapped him and shook his head like a child trying to will away a nightmare. ‘No. I don’t want to see. It’ll just… confirm what I did.’

‘No, you idiot. This isn't you. Look!’

‘It has to be me, I did it.’

Ella felt her patience fraying like a rope about to snap. She needed answers, and she needed them five minutes ago. Time to change tactics.

With her free hand, Ella fumbled the pill bottle out of her pocket and threw it to LaChance.

‘Borgman,’ she barked. ‘Who the hell is Borgman and why have you got his pills?’

That got his attention. LaChance's head snapped up, and his expression dissolved to embarrassment. 'They're... not mine.'

‘No kidding they’re not. So whose are they?’

LaChance swallowed hard. ‘My caregiver's.’

Ella blinked, certain she'd misheard. ‘Your what now?’

‘My caregiver. His name’s Ezra. He takes care of me sometimes.’

Ella's mind reeled. A caregiver? This was a whole new wrinkle she hadn't seen coming. ‘What do you mean, takes care of you?’

LaChance shrugged in a liquid motion that made him look like he was trying to melt into the bench. ‘He comes by every few days. Brings me food. Makes sure I haven’t overdosed.’

Ella took a mental step back. This either didn’t make sense or made too much sense. ‘But you’re not disabled or sick or geriatric. Is this Ezra guy a licensed careworker?’

‘I don’t know. He just showed up at my place one day and started taking care of me. I needed all the help I could get, so I welcomed it.’

‘And you didn’t check his employer? Or his credentials?’

‘No. I figured someone had reported me unwell. Wouldn’t be the first time.’

Ella felt like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, each new revelation sending her spinning further into the abyss. ‘So someone else has access to your place? Your phone?’

‘I don't know,’ LaChance said. ‘I black out a lot. Sometimes I wake up and things are... different. Ezra does have a key to my place.’

The gears in Ella's head kicked into overdrive. This Ezra person was starting to look less like a Good Samaritan and more like the missing piece of her puzzle.

‘He live with you?’

‘No. Somewhere else. Don’t know where. I don't know much about him, really.’

‘Ezra Borgman,’ Ella breathed. She needed to find this guy, and fast. Her hand was already reaching for her cell to dial Ripley when another thought stopped her cold.

If Ezra was her unsub – and her gut was screaming that he was – how the hell had he gotten his hands on the original manuscript?

She turned back to LaChance, who was watching her with the wary eyes of a beaten dog. ‘LaChance. When you sent your manuscript to the publisher, did you remove any pages? The murder scenes, specifically.’

‘What? No, of course not. It was all there, every page.’

Of course, Ella thought. She'd been going about this all wrong, trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole. Trying to make LaChance fit a profile he was never meant to.

‘And this Ezra, your careworker. What's he do when he's not… taking care of you?’

‘He's a janitor,’ LaChance said. He sounded detached, like he was reciting from a script he'd memorized long ago. ‘Works for a bunch of different places, I think. Office buildings, mostly.’

And there it was -– the supernova. The blast of white-hot clarity that seared away the cobwebs and lit up the dark corners of this godforsaken case like the Fourth of July.

And suddenly, Ella was back in that musty office at Eagle Eye Publishers, listening to Sophie’s friend tell her that no one had access to Sophie's office – except one person.

Janitor might have been in, the woman had said.

Of course. Who else would have access to Sophie Draper’s manuscript pile? A pile she kept in a locked drawer?

The janitor. The only person other than Sophie who might be in their alone, after hours, when the office was barren.

Everything snapped into crystalline focus. Ezra wasn't just LaChance's caregiver. He was the goddamn janitor at Eagle Eye too. That's how he'd gotten his hands on the manuscript. That's how he'd known which pages to remove, which scenes to bring to life.

Ezra Borgman was the Angel Maker.

‘LaChance. You said earlier you thought you’d never have any fans.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘I don’t think that’s true. Where would I find Ezra? I need details, now.’

‘Not sure. He might have his own place, but… he’s not well. Ezra is sick, like me.’

You’re not kidding, Ella thought. ‘Hence the pills,’ she said.

LaChance smiled, possibly for the first time in years. ‘It’s weird, really. Ezra is a lot like Cain, from the book. Even looks like him. When he showed up, I thought I was imagining it.’

No, he’s very real, Ella thought. She stepped back from the cell, dialed Ripley. The clock on the wall read 8:20PM. Forty minutes until Blythe pinned all of this on the poor sap in the cage behind her.

One ring. Two.

‘Dark,’ Ripley answered. ‘How’s your little…’

‘Mia, where are you? I need to find someone, quickly.’

‘Who?’

‘Can you get to LaChance’s house right now? His caregiver is our killer.’

‘Who? His caregiver?’

‘No time for questions. Can you get there or not?’

‘No. I’m in the car, dropping Roger Blackwood home. Blythe slapped an assault charge on him. Who is this…’

‘Forget it, I’ll go there myself,’ she snapped.

‘Dark, LaChance’s house is crawling with cops. I just talked to techs on site. They’re gonna be there all night.’

‘Got it. Speak soon.’ Ella killed the call and looked back at LaChance behind her. Forty minutes left and given the pattern so far, angel number four might already be getting fitted for their halo.

But where the hell would Ezra go? His den of iniquity at LaChance's place was crammed with blues.

No self-respecting angel-maker was gonna waltz back there to pick up his arts and crafts supplies.

And if Ezra knew that LaChance was already in chains, she doubted the guy was dumb enough to go home and wait for the police to bang on his door.

Furthermore, a vision-oriented offender like this wasn’t going to quit until his mission was complete. He was going to see his grand vision through to the end, even if it killed him. Especially if it killed him. Suicide by cop was a hell of an encore for a narcissist with an Icarus complex.

Only one way to end this.

Ella spun back to LaChance. The man looked like he was trying to melt into the concrete.

She said, ‘I need to know about victim number four in your novel. That part was missing from the manuscript we found.’

He blinked up at her, eyes puffy and bewildered. ‘The last victim? I…. uh… don’t….’

Ella slammed a hand on the bars and made the poor bastard jump a mile. ‘Kid, if you say you don’t know one more time I’m going to kill you myself. Now, start thinking. The fourth angel in your stupid book. Who is it? Where does the murder happen?’

LaChance's face scrunched up like he was constipated, but it was a better reaction than ignorance.

‘The last death is Judith, when Cain becomes the Angel of Death.’

‘Right. And in the real world?’

‘It’s meant to be his masterpiece. That’s when Cain reveals he’s dying and this whole thing is a last ditch effort to see heaven, because he doesn’t believe…’

‘I don’t need the subtext. Where’s this fourth murder happen?’

‘A theater,’ LaChance said.

‘Which one?’

‘I made up a name. Not a real place.’

A public display. Just what she needed – a crowd of rubberneckers contaminating her crime scene before she even knew where the damn thing was.

‘Who's the victim supposed to be? In real life, I mean. All the others were people who wronged you somehow. This last one's gotta fit the pattern, so extrapolate. Who’s your Judith?’

LaChance went so still he could have been a ventriloquist's dummy. Even the twitch in his cheek subsided. ‘I don’t…

Ella’s look silenced him. ‘It has to be someone you told Ezra about. How does he know about all these people who wronged you?’

‘I… must have told him, but I don’t remember doing it.’

Ella stared at him, really stared, and for the first time saw past the bluster to the broken man beneath. The lost soul so disconnected from the world that he'd poured all his pain into the page, only to have some maniac turn it into a blueprint for murder.

This was getting her nowhere fast and the clock was ticking down like a time bomb. She had about thirty minutes left to figure this out.

‘This might be the last time we meet, Drogo. Whatever happens, good luck.’

Back to the war room.