Page 53 of Girl, Haunted

Carter found himself at a dead end. He spun around, and the rush swept the hood from his head. Ella saw him now – Carter Langley, the same face from the videos, now fixed with a deer-in-the-headlights expression. Ella pulled her Glock and trained it on him.

‘Stay right there, kid,’ she shouted.

The suspect threw his hands up and backed against the wall. ‘I didn’t do anything. I was just exploring here, I swear. My camera is upstairs.’

‘Save it. I’ve seen your videos. You’re coming with me.’

Carter spat on the floor. ‘Cops, why do you have to ruin everything? This place is public property.’

‘FBI, actually, and we don’t care about your little trespassing efforts. We want you for something else.’

‘What? What have I done now?’

At that moment, Ella’s cell chirped in her pocket. She debated leaving it, but Ella had this guy up against a wall. Carter Langley wasn’t going anywhere, not unless he could teleport.

Ella slowly pulled out her phone and said to Carter, 'Don't move an inch.' She accepted the call, and Luca's voice boomed down the line.

‘Ell, listen to me. I’m at Carter’s place. He’s got a camera.’

'He's a vlogger, Hawkins. Of course, he's got a camera. I'm fine, by the way. So is Carter.'

‘You got him?’ Luca asked.

‘I got him.’

'Bring him in, because I played back the footage on his camera. This guy's got legit murder footage on here.’

Horror and relief collided in a brutal wave.

Ella unhooked her handcuffs and slowly trod towards the suspect.

Carter Langley had a lot of explaining to do.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Ella Dark had seen her fair share of interrogation rooms, but this one took the cake for most depressing. The Yamhill precinct's excuse for an interview chamber looked like it'd been cobbled together from spare parts. A rickety table, two chairs that'd seen better days, and lighting that flickered like a dying firefly. The whole setup screamed ‘we're working with what we've got’ – which, in this case, wasn't much.

Carter Langley sat across from her, looking less like a cold-blooded killer and more like a kid who'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. His eyes darted around the room, taking in the peeling paint and water-stained ceiling tiles. Luca leaned against the wall, arms crossed, doing his best impression of a hardboiled detective. Ella had to admit, he pulled it off pretty well. Must be all those old noir flicks that clogged up her TV back home. She’d already given him hell for breaching Carter’s apartment without a warrant, so she had to hope that the results justified his breaking of protocol. If not, the director would chew her ass out.

Ella leaned forward, forearms on the table. They had three dead bodies stacked like firewood and burning with unanswered questions. Time to start flicking some matches.

‘Carter Langley. HangingLangley. Which name would you prefer?’

Carter's tongue flashed across cracked lips. ‘I don’t care, because I didn’t do nothing.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong, because you did a whole lot of something. So how about we cut the ‘who, me?’ crap and get to the part where you start singing?’

Carter waved his hands around and said, ‘Ooh, so I broke into some old building. Don’t you guys have real crimes to solve? Like maybe those two murders?’

Ella’s ears pricked up. ‘You know about them, huh?’

‘Everybody does.’

‘What do you know about them?’

Carter sat back and folded his arms like he had an ace up his sleeve. 'Only what I've read on the news. Why?'

‘Why? Maybe because there are videos of you at two of the crime scenes. Shadowland and the Crypt. Ring any bells?’

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