Page 23 of The Last To Know (Hallowed Halls Series #2)

A s they approached the house, Hannah studied the surroundings. “There’s no sign of a vehicle.” From their viewpoint, she could see the side, back, and front of the house. A barn sat a little way off to the right near the front.

Cooper told her that was where the farming equipment was kept. “They could have parked on the opposite side.”

“Let me check it out.” Zeke started for the back of the house.

Hannah stopped him. “We’ll go together.” The last thing they needed was an ambush.

Zeke led the way.

“I don’t like this. What reason would anyone have to be here unless it’s my father and his partner?”

She couldn’t answer that question. At the back of the place, they had a clear view of the side. No vehicle there either.

“He could have hidden it in the barn.” Hannah’s thoughts swirled with possibilities. “It makes sense that your father would come back here.” Had he brought Isobel here to join the rest of his victims?

“There’s a door at the back.” Cooper indicated the place where the backside of the barn met encroaching woods.

They edged toward the entrance. The door appeared stuck from years of sitting unattended. Cooper yanked it from its frozen grip and went inside. “The power’s been off for years.” He used his flashlight app to search the large open space littered with decaying equipment.

“There’s no one here.” Zeke stepped from the building. “Whoever came here left soon after. The two sets of tracks must be from the vehicle coming and leaving the property.”

It made sense.

“Let’s check the house.” Cooper headed along the side of the barn and crossed the yard. He stopped near the house and pointed. “Footprints.” Two sets in the snow.

With his weapon at the ready, Cooper stepped up on the porch.

Right away, Hannah noticed something was off. The door had been left open . . . as if a sign for them to know someone had been inside.

Hannah gripped the Glock tight as she and Zeke followed him into the house.

The footprints led to what had once been the kitchen.

“The basement,” Cooper said in a flat voice. “He wants us to go to the basement.” He reached for the door handle. It turned freely in his hand.

Hannah used her flashlight app to illuminate the stairs as they followed the wet footprints.

Once they reached the bottom of the dusty basement, the fading prints turned left toward a crumbling brick wall.

“That’s where my father kept his beauties, as he called them.” Cooper led them toward the place where the wall had been compromised.

The moment Hannah’s light shined in the space where Oliver Ellison had kept his special trophies, she gasped.

A woman’s body lay crumpled on the floor.

“Oh, no.” As Hannah neared, she realized who it was. “Isobel.” She felt for a pulse. “She’s still alive. Call an ambulance.”

Isobel’s throat had been slashed. There were multiple cuts all over her body. Above where she lay, a single word had been written in blood.

Unworthy.

Hannah unwrapped her scarf and used it to stem the flow of blood pouring from Isobel’s throat while fighting back tears. She’d convinced the woman to trust her. Told her they’d protect her, and yet nothing was further from the truth. Because Isobel trusted them and they’d gotten her involved when she clearly didn’t want to be, she was in critical condition.

“Ambo’s on its way,” Zeke confirmed. He knelt beside his sister. “This isn’t your fault.”

“Isn’t it? I talked her into cooperating.” She held Isobel’s hand in her gloved one. If she were going to die here, Hannah wanted to make sure she knew she wasn’t alone.

Vehicles moved in. “That’s our people.” Zeke rose and went out to meet them.

Cooper dropped down beside her. She glanced over at him and realized he was praying. She reached for his hand with her free one and joined him.

Isobel needed God’s healing to get through this.

A siren wailed down the county road. Soon its sound grew louder as it neared the house.

EMTs and their team rushed inside the basement.

“Let’s give them room to work.” Cooper helped Hannah up.

She and Cooper joined the rest of the team silently watching as the EMTs did everything that could be done to save Isobel.

They worked quickly to get Isobel ready to transport.

Hannah and Cooper followed them out to the ambulance. The paramedic in charge told them which hospital they’d be transporting her to. With lights and sirens, the ambulance left the property at a rapid pace.

“I can’t believe this happened.” Hannah ran her hand through her hair and realized her glove was covered in blood.

“He’s mocking us—no, he’s mocking me. Tying everything back to his original crimes.” A wintery look entered Cooper’s eyes.

“We’ll catch him. We have to catch him,” Hannah stressed. Yet for years no one had been looking for Oliver Ellison because they’d believed he was dead.

Jack and the rest of the team emerged from the house. “ERT’s on their way here now.” Jack looked around the property. “Did he just come here to kill the doctor as a taunt?”

Cooper ran his hand over his eyes. “I have no idea. Obviously, the man I thought I knew never existed.”

Hannah’s heart went out to him. The blows just kept coming. “We’ll leave the house for ERT to investigate. Let’s spread out across the property and see if he left anything else behind.”

She stuck close to Cooper. They started past the barn and walked toward the apple orchard.

“There are no footprints this way.” She pointed to the ground. “But they could have come here before the snow covered their tracks. Maybe we’ll find something useful.”

Cooper didn’t appear to be listening. He was lost in his own dark thoughts. She continued to search the countryside. There were dozens of apple trees on the old farm.

“How far does the orchard go?”

Cooper roused himself from his thoughts. “We’re about halfway through them.”

She was amazed by the enormity of the farm.

Her cell phone received an incoming text. “It’s Jack. He’s calling us back to the house. ERT’s here. He wants us to return to Grand Island to go over everything. Looking around out here is a waste of time anyway.”

Cooper stared at the massive number of trees. “You’re right. There’s nothing here.”

The Armada had been moved to allow for Jack’s team and the ambulance to enter the property.

She slipped into her seat and lay her head against the headrest as Cooper followed Jack and Sierra from the property.

Hannah said a silent prayer. “I sure hope Isobel makes it.”

“Me too.” Cooper’s grip on the steering wheel was deathlike.

“Here’s something interesting,” Zeke said and read a message from Chief Killian. “Looks like there’s an old four-wheeling trail right after where that tree was cut down. He must have taken it. According to the chief, there are miles of them all around the area. How would he have known that?”

Hannah thought about the question. “He had to have been planning to take Isobel for a while. Why would he judge her as unworthy? Because she talked to us?”

Cooper nodded. “He’d see it as an act of betrayal.” Cooper’s frown deepened. “My question is . . . why wait until now to start killing again? It’s been years since he escaped.”

Hannah had wondered the same. “There have been no records of any murders like Embalmer’s since his capture. I had Jane confirm,” she told him when Cooper raised his brow. “Maybe something set him off recently. Perhaps he was happy living a life of obscurity until something triggered the urge to kill again.”

“Like maybe the return of this person he claims is his brother? On that subject, Jane sent me something she found.” Zeke handed her the laptop he’d been working on.

“What am I looking at?” Hannah asked.

“A newspaper article from Pottsville, Pennsylvania about the same home invasion where Oliver’s parents died. Remember Jane mentioned Oliver’s parents had died in one. This is a later report claiming the home invasion appeared to be staged. I believe Jane mentioned as much. It was believed the father killed the mother then himself.”

Hannah scanned the article. “The timing’s right. But why did the police claim a home invasion in the beginning?”

“Not sure.” Zeke pointed to the place in the article. “Looks like the original investigators were removed from the case and new detectives assigned.”

“The removed detectives must have rushed to solve the case and missed something,” Cooper said.

“Wait, this is interesting.” Hannah reread the article to make sure it was correct. “The reporter spoke to Oliver, who claimed his father was under a tremendous amount of pressure at his work . . .” She stopped reading, her attention stuck on Greg Ellison’s profession. “Greg owned a mortuary.”

“That can’t be a coincidence,” Zeke said. “Maybe that’s where the fascination with embalming came from.”

“It would stand to reason Oliver would have at least visited the mortuary from time to time.” Hannah continued reading. “Anyway, Oliver claimed the business was suffering financially and his father began drinking heavily. He believed Greg may have snapped and killed Fern, his wife. Then realized what he’d done and took his own life.”

“Was there an insurance policy on the couple?” Cooper asked.

Hannah checked. “Nothing listed. We’ll have to dig deeper.” She handed the laptop back to her brother.

“I’ll see if I can access the police records from back then.” Zeke’s fingers clicked the keys on the computer.

“Obviously, there’s more to the story than what the police believed.”

Hannah searched Cooper’s face. “You think your father might have killed them both and staged the scene? The cause of death does fit his profile.”

“I wonder if he lied about having a brother as well. Maybe he found a groupie he treated like a brother.” She remembered something that had been part of the Embalmer’s victims found at the Ellison farm. She retrieved her tablet and brought up the file on those victims. “All of your father’s embalmed victims were found with names written near them. My sister Callie. My little sister Tonya. They each were displayed in a space that was later confirmed to match a room at their house. They’d become family to him. I wonder if he had sisters who weren’t adopted with him. He was trying to recreate his family.”

“But he had a family. Myself. My mother. Why would he need sisters and . . . and why weren’t there any male victims?” His gaze bored into hers. “Because his brother is still alive. The initials P.A. Did he have sisters in the past who died?”

“It’s possible. We need to find out. If something happened to his sisters, maybe that’s why he’s tried to replace them with women he embalms.”

The thought was horrifying, and yet in a twisted way it made sense. But with no record of any other children at the Ellison household, what family was Oliver really trying to replace?