Page 42 of Girl, Haunted

‘There’d be abrasions around the neck from the rope. Believe me.’ Ella thought back to a case from last year, one she’d tried desperately to forget.

‘Okay, so he killed him with the knife, then somehow pulled off this elaborate staging?’

Ella pointed to the fallen stepladder beside them. ‘I’m guessing this ladder had something to do with it. It would definitely require strength, especially in the upper body, but I’ve seen it done before. Bodies are quite malleable in the few minutes after death.’

Redmond jumped in. ‘While I appreciate the insight into this lunatic’s mind, shouldn’t we be figuring out who he is? It has to be someone close to this place, right?’

Ella and Luca shared a uniform sigh. Ella thought back to Natasha Langston, the poor woman with mirrors in her eyes. Then Van Allen, the teddy-bear clutching villain. And now this. An electrician who, as far as Ella knew, had no connection to this business other than being a hired tradesman.

But there was something else. A new piece of the jigsaw that changed the whole picture.

‘I don’t think our unsub is as prepared as we thought.’

Luca surveyed the carnage. ‘How d’you mean?’

‘How could our killer know that Natasha Langston would be in the mirrored room? How could he know that there’d be an electrician on a ladder in here?’

‘You think he’s improvising? But what about the teddy bear? And the mask?’

‘I don’t know about those, but unless our killer has intricate knowledge of the behind-the-scenes stuff, it feels to me like he’s just working with what he’s got.’

‘Opportunistic and organized? That’s a dangerous cocktail.’

Redmond made ahmphsound. Ella recognized it as sheriff language for ‘get to the point.’

She turned to him. ‘First of all, cameras. What do we have?’

‘Same old story. There are cameras outside the building, but they’re avoidable. The owner’s gonna send us the footage regardless.’

‘Good. Were there customers in here at the time the owner found the body?’

‘Yeah. One group of ten going through the maze.’

Ella’s ears perked up. ‘Just like with Van Allen.’

‘We’ll need their names,’ Luca said.

‘I can do better than that. They’re all locked away in one of the rooms.’

‘All of them?’

Redmond scratched his beard. ‘Well, nine of them.’

Ella clenched her teeth and then sighed. ‘So, we’re missing one?’

‘Afraid so.’

Her frustration threatened to boil over. While they were chasing a teddy bear-obsessed madman, the real killer was plying his trade elsewhere. ‘So, the killer pulled this off and then slipped out? How?’

Luca was moving along the leathery drapes that passed as walls. ‘Pretty easily. These are just flaps, and they don’t even reach the ground. Anyone can slip underneath these things.’

Ella moved over, hiked up one of the flaps and slipped under.She found herself in the interstitial space between the horror maze and the building's actual structure. Luca appeared at her side.

‘Told you,’ he said.

Before Ella could formulate a response, she caught sight of something on the floor.

A spotty trail of red droplets.

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