Page 6 of Girl, Unmasked (Ella Dark #28)

‘These are new times, and exciting times,’ Vernon said. ‘Things are going to be changing, but not in ways you might think.’

Rick Vernon didn’t fill out the desk like Edis had. Edis had commanded the space, but Vernon sat neat and contained behind it. Ella thought it looked a little like a kid playing dress-up in his dad’s office.

Everything remained exactly as Edis had left it, too.

Usually, Ella and Ripley would have sat in the leather chairs facing the desk because it was their standard formation, but today they both stood.

Neither had discussed it, but maybe they’d spent so much time together they now shared a single mind.

Ella felt that assuming the old position was a betrayal to Edis, like claiming ownership of a dead relative’s sofa before they were even buried.

‘Would either of you like to sit? I promise the chairs aren’t booby-trapped.’

Neither of them moved.

‘Or stand. Whatever makes you comfortable.’

‘What can we do for you, sir?’ asked Ella.

‘Look, I’m going to be honest with you. Edis has a reputation in our circles, and people get reputations for a reason.’

Ella felt Ripley tense beside her. The woman was itching for a confrontation, Ella could tell a mile off. ‘What reputation might that be?’

‘He was good. I’d never deny that. But he was old school, and the world is changing. Crime is changing. You two know the criminal mind even better than me, so you should know exactly what I’m talking about.’

‘How is crime changing, sir?’

‘You’re originally from Intelligence, is that right Miss Dark?’

‘Yes it is.’

‘How many serial cases are there per year in the United States?’

‘Twenty new cases per year on average, with around thirty active cold cases.’

‘Bingo, and that number is decreasing, thanks to you two. Almost one hundred percent of serial cases fall into your hands, and what’s going to happen in a few years when that number drops to zero?’

‘Then we’ll do something else,’ Ripley said.

‘The majority of high-profile crime is terrorism, crimes of passion, excessively violent murders, mass killings, mass shootings. I’m trying to put a lot more emphasis on these types of crimes, which means there isn’t much room left for the Behavioral team.’

‘Come again?’ Ella snapped. ‘No room for the BAU?’

‘Not like that. The BAU gets better results than any other division, to the point that it’s skewing the data quite drastically. Do you two know how many people work in the BAU?’

Ella looked over at her partner, and then back at Vernon. ‘Two.’

Despite sometimes working with other agents, only Ella and Ripley were official BAU agents. The others – including Luca – either fell under specialist departments or standard field agents.

‘Yes. You two. A two-person department with a hundred percent close rate sounds like a dream, but the question then becomes; why aren’t you two putting those skills to work elsewhere?’

Ripley crossed her arms and laughed. ‘What, you want us cleaning the toilets? Running errands?’

‘No. Nothing like that.’

‘Maybe you could start a sex line and we could be the operators.’

‘Funny. Do you know how many cases Behavioral worked last year?’

‘Twelve,’ Ella said.

‘Yes, twelve. Violent Crimes handled over three hundred, and I think your talents could be better utilized across a broader spectrum of cases.’

‘We're profilers,’ Ella said. ‘Behavioral analysts. It's what we're trained for.’

‘And I still want you as behavioral analysts. Serial killers are becoming extinct, but excessively violent crime is on the rise. Single homicides with extreme violence. Torture murders. Crimes that shock the conscience but don't fit the serial pattern.'

Ripley shifted her weight. 'So you want us to be homicide detectives.'

‘I want you to be what you’ve always been. The Behavioral Analysis Unit as it currently exists is a relic. Two agents waiting around for the next Bundy or Dahmer while dozens of equally horrific murders go unsolved because they don't fit your mandate.'

'Our mandate has served the Bureau pretty well,' Ella said.

'Has it? Tell me, Agent Dark, how many people died last year in single-incident homicides that exhibited extreme violence or unusual signatures?'

She knew he already had the answer. This was a performance, not a conversation. 'Over eight-hundred.'

'Eight hundred and forty-three. That's just the ones we know about. The ones weird enough or brutal enough that local PD reached out for help. Help we couldn't give because our behavioral experts were focused exclusively on pattern crimes.'

‘That’s not true,’ Ella said. ‘There’ve been plenty of cases we’ve investigated that begun as a single homicide and then progressed to serial status. Edis had a way of sniffing those cases out, and then he handed them over to us.’

‘No, Edis had a way of helping out his friends. He even admitted it himself. If a sheriff from his old days was in too deep, he’d send you two in on horseback. I can’t blame Edis for doing that, but it’s not how we should operate.’

Ella thought back to two weeks ago, how Edis had given her a signed affidavit to meet Austin Creed in prison. It had been his parting gift to her, and now she understood why. The new regime would never pull anything like that, it seemed.

Ripley was pacing now, edging closer to the door. ‘So what, you just dismantle the BAU? A division that’s been here since the eighties?’

‘I’m talking about evolution. Instead of the BAU, I want an Ultra-Violent Crime Unit. You’ll still profile, but instead of waiting for official serial status, you’ll engage from victim number one.’

Ella could see the logic, even if she hated it. More cases meant more lives potentially saved. But it also meant losing what made the BAU special. ‘Sir, I see your point, but what about genuine serial cases?’

‘That stays the same. How does that sound?’

'It sounds dumb,' Ripley said flatly. 'What you're describing is pooling our success stats with other divisions that aren't performing as well.

It's like a group exercise in school where one kid does all the work and everyone gets an A. We get a high solve rate because we’re selective.

You want us to water that down by having us chase every garden variety psycho? '

‘Not every psycho. The right psychos. Take this, for example. This was shoved in my face first thing this morning, before I’d even been officially given the job.

Forgive me for not having much time to dissect it.

’ Vernon reached into a drawer and pulled out two manila folders.

He slid them across the desk. Ella took hers, Ripley reluctantly following suit.

'Under the current system, this would go to Violent Crimes, maybe get a consultation request if they're lucky.

Under my system, it comes straight to you. '

Ella opened the folder and scanned the first page. The basics jumped out at her

VICTIM: Sophie Draper.

AGE: 39.

LOCATION: Norwalk, Connecticut.

STATUS: DOA.

She flipped past the initial report to the crime scene photos and felt her breath catch in her throat.

The first image showed Sophie Draper kneeling on her living room floor, positioned in prayer with her elbows resting on a chair.

But prayer was too gentle a word for this obscenity.

The woman's back had been flayed open from the base of her neck to her tailbone, and the skin had been peeled away and spread outward in two precise flaps.

The exposed muscle and tissue glistened to create the illusion of wings, as if they'd been ripped from her body, leaving only the bloody evidence of where they'd once been attached.

A crown of barbed wire had been forced onto her head, pressed deep enough that blood had run down her face in dark rivulets before drying.

Her hands were clasped in front of her, held in place with what looked like fishing line wrapped around her wrists.

Ella forced herself to study the details professionally, but she couldn't stop the wave of empathy that crashed over her. This woman had a name, a life, probably a family wondering why she hadn't answered their calls.

‘He skinned her,’ Ella said quietly. ‘Made her into...’

‘An angel,’ Ripley finished. ‘We’ve got an angel maker.’

Vernon cocked a brow. ‘An angel maker? Don’t tell me there’s a profiling term for someone who does that?’

Ella said, ‘No, but theatrical killers utilize angel imagery a lot. It could mean a lot of things.’

‘Like purification, or it’s a satirical way of saying the victim is evil, or the perp could be religious.’

‘See what I mean?’ Vernon said.

Another good point, which Ella conceded. This was the kind of case that did require behavioral analysis from the beginning, because any perpetrator capable of this was capable of doing more. Ripley was skimming through her file, probably trying to avoid admitting that Vernon had been right.

‘Wait a minute,’ Ripley said. ‘What’s wrong with her eyes?’

‘Huh?’

‘Look.’

Ella rifled through her own folder until she found a photo that showed the victim’s eyes in full detail. They were glazed over, too white, too perfect.

Then she realized they weren’t eyes at all.

‘What the… are they stones?’

Where Sophie Draper's eyes should have been, two smooth, white orbs stared blankly at nothing.

‘Could be stones, marbles, glass eyes. Definitely not contact lenses.’

Ella stared at the photograph, and despite every reservation she had about Vernon's political maneuvering, despite her loyalty to Edis and the old ways of doing things, the case sank its claws into her.

Someone had spent hours with Sophie Draper's body, carefully flayed her skin, positioned her in prayer, crowned her with barbed wire, and then, for the final touch, removed her eyes and replacing them with perfect white spheres.

This certainly wasn’t a case of random violence. Ella caught Ripley’s eye, and her body language said she was thinking the same. Ripley snapped her casefile shut.

‘Alright, Rick, we’ll investigate this.’

‘Great. Forgive me, but I don’t know the procedure from here. I’m still learning, you see.’

Ripley waved him off, ‘Call the admin team, arrange our travel, our transport and our hotel. They’ll notify a handler who’ll get us through the security gate.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll send you private. You just get yourselves to the airport, I’ll figure it out.’

‘Private?’ Ella asked. ‘Connecticut is only an hour away.’

‘That’s what I said, now get out of here. Oh, and one more thing. The expanded unit means expanded resources. I'm bringing in six new behavioral analysts over the next month. You two will be team leaders, not partners.’

Ella froze. 'Excuse me?'

'Think about it. I've got the two best behavioral analysts in the Bureau, and you're joined at the hip. That's a waste of resources. You could be mentoring junior agents, spreading that expertise across multiple cases simultaneously.'

Ripley pinched the bridge of her nose and said, 'You're splitting us up?'

'Not permanently. Major cases, you'll still collaborate. But day-to-day? You'll be mentoring, training, spreading that expertise around. That's how we build a stronger Bureau.'

Ella and Ripley exchanged glances, and something told Ella that neither of them were going to let this happen.

Ripley put her folder under her arm and made for the door. Ella followed behind. Before leaving, Ripley turned back and asked, ‘This will place won’t have burned down before we get back, right?’

‘We’re not going anywhere,’ Vernon smiled, ‘and neither is the Ultra-Violent Crime Unit.’