Page 61 of Girl, Haunted

Her scream came as a choked gurgle; her eyes blew wide with shock and pain as her hands fluttered uselessly to the bloom of red spreading across her abdomen. Cassius held her gaze and drank in every nuance of her dying expression.

This, right here, was the only honesty left in the world. The unvarnished truth of terror and betrayal when the mask was ripped away. He'd seen it in all their faces. That dawning horror as they realized the scares had suddenly turned lethal.

Amanda was no exception. She gaped at him, her mouth working around syllables that wouldn't form.

Poor woman. Heartbroken. Desperate. Looking for sanctuary and finding only demise. It was almost poetic. So poetic that the story practically wrote itself.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Ella stared at the whiteboard until the words blurred into a black smear. Cassius Auctor. It taunted her – a riddle wrapped in an enigma, served with a side of 'screw you.' She chewed on the syllables, desperately trying to decode this psycho's chosen handle.

Cassius. From the LatinCassus, meaning hollow or void. An emptiness waiting to be filled.

Auctor. Author. Storyteller.

Put them together and what did you get? A ghost. A specter with a taste for the theatrical. He wove stories in entrails and wrote his masterpiece in blood. But to what end? What was the message buried beneath the mayhem?

They hit a wall, and they slammed into it hard. Three bodies and no closer to their killer. Leads had evaporated faster than spit on a skillet and their lone suspect was looking more victim than villain.

Behind her, Luca remained glued to his laptop, combing through Carter's footage frame by agonizing frame. He'd barely spoken in the last hour, so focused was he on the digital needle in a very grim haystack.

Redmond walked back into the room, fresh from yet another smoke break. The man was burning through tobacco like it was the only thing keeping him vertical. Not that Ella blamed him. Everyone had their vice, especially in law enforcement. Compared to some coping techniques, smoking was fairly tame.

She was just about to turn back to the board, to dive once more into the murky depths of motive and meaning, when a commotion from the corridor shattered her concentration.

The clack of heels, a harried voice pitched high with urgency.

Ella swiveled to see Janine, the precinct receptionist who she’d briefly met yesterday, stumble into the doorway. The woman's eyes were wide and rolling in their sockets. She looked like she'd just gone ten rounds with a heavyweight boxer.

‘Sheriff! Agents! Call. On line one. It’s… you gotta…' She sucked wind with one hand, clutching the door frame for support.

‘Easy there, Janine. Who’s on the call?’

Janine gulped air like a landed trout. ‘Not from dispatch. Straight to the precinct line. He asked...’

Ella jumped in, ‘Who asked? Who is it?’

‘It’shim. Someone claiming to be the killer.’

A cold fist clenched around Ella's guts. Luca spun around in haste. Ella locked eyes with him and saw her own 'what-the-hell' reflected back. Redmond was already moving, snatching up the receiver and stabbing the speaker button. Ella made a beeline for the desk. The phone perched there, its light blinking an evil red eye.

‘Trace it,’ Ella hissed to Redmond. He rushed to the door, motioned to another officer out in the corridor.

Ella rolled her shoulders and steeled herself. She prayed that this wasn’t just another prank call.

Then she stabbed the speaker button.

‘Can we help you?’ she asked.

Silence. Then a crackle of static. And finally, a voice smooth as black ice. ‘Detectives. I was beginning to think you were avoiding me.’

The world tilted sideways. Ella's stomach plummeted like she'd missed a step on a steep staircase. Call it cop’s instinct or a sixth sense, but she was certain that she was speaking to their unsub.

‘To what do I owe the pleasure, Mister...?’

A low chuckle slithered through the speaker and raked up gooseflesh on her arms. ‘Come now, Detective. We both know you're far too clever for coy. You've figured out my name.’

The voice was soft, gentle, perhaps cultured. Local accent, but tinged with a flavor of somewhere else. ‘Maybe I'm curious to hear it from the horse's mouth.’

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