Page 54 of Girl, Haunted

‘I was there to film,’ Carter snapped. ‘It’s what I do. It’s not my fault I saw some guy running around Shadowland.’

‘What exactly did you see?’ Luca chimed in.

'Nothing. Just a guy in a creepy mask. Thought it was just one of the actors or something. Yes, I was at the Crypt the other day, but what's that got to do with the murders?'

Ella remained quiet while Luca pushed off the wall and reached into his jacket. He pulled out the camera he’d found at Carter’s place and dumped it on the table like it was radioactive. ‘Nevermind the Crypt. What about this? Found it in that toxic waste dump you call an apartment.’

Carter looked at it like he’d never seen it before. ‘My camera? You stole my camera?’

‘I did more than steal it. I looked through it.’ Luca played the scene that Ella had already watched prior to the interrogation. It was a short selfie video of Carter standing over the bloodied torso of a woman beside a riverbank. Ella couldn’t verify its authenticity it, but the blood on Carter’s knife in the video looked real enough.

‘That? Well, I’m glad you think it’s real, because it’s a shot for my film.’

Luca said, ‘Fake, huh?’

‘Yup. Swear on my life.’

‘We thought it might be, but we also figured you’re the type of person to hide in plain sight.’

‘I got proof. On my computer. Behind-the-scenes stuff, y'know? And that girl? She's alive. She's an actress. I can give you her freaking address.’

Ella and Luca exchanged a loaded glance, half skeptical, half intrigued. A silent conversation in darting eyes and raised brows.

‘Alright, hotshot,’ Ella said. ‘If you’re so innocent, why’d you run when I caught you at the asylum? Guilty conscience?’

Carter's smile faded. He looked five years younger, some scruffy kid dragged in for penny-ante vandalism. ‘Look, it wouldn't be the first time I got busted for trespassing. I panicked, okay? Didn't want another fine on my record.’

Ella let his words hang in the air like smoke. She wanted to believe him, wanted to cling to the hope that this scrawny, basement-dwelling twerp wasn't smart enough to be their guy. But twenty years on the job had taught her one universal truth: everybody lied. Perps sung choruses of ‘not me, I'm innocent’, right up until the cuffs clicked and the cell door slammed.

But something was nagging at her. Three murders, all vastly different, but they all told the same story. A teddy-bear clutching conman, mirrors in a woman's eyes, a hanging man wearing a bloody mask. These weren't the signature of an amateur. And Carter, for all his bluster, reeked of the small-time chump, vainglorious but lacking the brains or backbone for the genuine bloodletting.

Time to call his bluff.

With calculated nonchalance, Ella plucked the prime photo from the pile under her desk. It was a photo of Gregory Van Allen, face down, clutching a teddy bear in death. She slid it over to Carter.

‘What d’you think of this?’ she asked.

Carter's reaction was immediate and visceral. His face contorted in disgust, and he pushed the photo away like it was on fire. ‘Jesus Christ! What the hell?’

Ella watched him closely, reading his body language. The revulsion seemed genuine – not the reaction of someone who'd seen this before, let alone caused it.

Luca, picking up on Ella's cue, dropped another photo on the table. This one showed Natasha Langston, her eyes replaced with shards of mirror. Carter's reaction was, if anything, even more pronounced. He gagged, but couldn’t turn away from the image.

‘What the…? What’s wrong with her eyes?’

Ella felt a sinking feeling in her gut. This was not how a killer reacted to their handiwork. This was the response of an innocent man confronted with the horrors of murder for the first time.

But she had one more card to play. Ella pulled out the final photo – Benjamin Clarke's body, hanging from the rafters of the Crypt of Despair, that eerie mask fixed to his face.

Carter blanched, recoiling as if she'd thrown a rattler on the table. His bulging eyes raked over the impromptu morgue display, disgust warring with fear on every line of his face. He looked ready to spew, and Ella watched him, hawk-eyed, dissecting every flinch and flared nostril.

It was a gamble. If Carter was their killer, then these photos would be his masterpieces. He'd pore over them, pupils dilating, tongue flicking out to moisten dry lips. It's what they all did: reaching for that taste again, that ultimate high of holding a life in their hands and squeezing until the light went out.

But Carter just looked sick, nauseous, like a boy who'd stumbled into an abattoir. And for a terrible, plummeting moment, Ella knew they had jack-all.

‘That,’ Carter said. He pointed to the picture of Benjamin Clarke hanging from a noose. ‘That mask.’

‘What about it?’

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