Page 20 of Girl, Sought

'No, we don't,' Reeves interrupted, 'because we might have another body.'

***

Ella grabbed onto the dashboard as Luca took another corner fast enough to tip their rented cruiser onto two wheels. A few minutes ago, Detective Reeves had mentioned a body, and now her mind was racing ahead to whatever they might find at the end of this drive.

‘Tell me again – what did Reeves say? You and him moved too fast.’

‘Anonymous tip. Male voice. A body at 1147 Waterside Drive. Nothing else.’

She couldn't stop spinning disaster scenarios in her head. Two bodies in two days. The ink wasn't even dry on Eleanor Calloway's death certificate, and here they were, racing toward what could be their doll maker's second act. The timing was wrong. Serial killers weren't supposed to work this fast - they needed time between kills to process, to savor, to recharge whatever twisted batteries powered their compulsions.

Unless this wasn't impulsive at all. Unless this was all part of some grander design, she couldn't see yet.

‘How do we know it’s related?’ Luca asked as he swerved around a delivery truck that had chosen the worst possible moment to double-park.

‘We don’t, but we’re in Chesapeake, not some gangland paradise.’

‘How far away is Reeves?’

‘A few minutes behind. He was going to see if they could dig up any trace of the anonymous call, because chances are…’

‘The killer was the anonymous caller.’

‘Exactly.’ Ella watched raindrops race down her window, imagining their killer out there somewhere, watching his plan unfold. ‘He wants us to see his work. Wants us to understand.’

The SUV's wipers fought a losing battle against the downpour. Through the streaked glass, Chesapeake looked like a town underwater, with its neat suburban edges bleeding into gray. Perfect weather for horror.

Street signs flashed past: Oak Grove, Maple, finally Waterside Drive. The road curved along the Elizabeth River, past houses that probably had great views when the sun was shining. Today, they just looked like cardboard cutouts about to dissolve in the rain.

‘There - 1147.’ Ella pointed at a modest two-story that hunched behind an overgrown hedge like it was trying to hide. No cars in the gravel driveway. No lights on inside. Just empty windows staring out at the rain.

Luca cut the engine, and suddenly the silence felt too thick. The kind of quiet that came before something terrible. Rain drummed on the SUV's roof while Ella studied the house. Nothing obviously wrong - just another colonial box stamped out of the same suburban mold as its neighbors.

Ella was out of the car with her gun drawn. Luca fell into step behind her, and they crossed the lawn at a crouch. Training said wait for backup, but instinct said someone might still be alive in there, as optimistic as it was.

The door's edges were clean - no sign of forced entry. Ella touched the handle with her gloved hand. It moved without resistance.

‘Go,’ Luca said.

She pushed. Her heart slammed against her ribs so hard it hurt. That sixth sense - the one that had kept her alive through a decade of walking into other people's nightmares - screamed danger. Not the kind that could kill her, but the kind that could carve scars into her mind that no amount of therapy could erase.

A hallway swallowed them whole. Something sweet but rotten invaded her nostrils, like fruit left out in the sun. Ella saw four doors and a staircase, and her geographical instincts told her to take the first door on the left.

Ella pivoted with her weapon raised and her light beam found the living room.

For one merciful second, her brain refused to process what she was seeing. Like a camera struggling to focus, reality blurred at the edges, trying to protect her from what waited inside.

Then everything snapped brutally clear.

Glass cases everywhere. Hundreds of dead things pinned under glass. Butterflies with wings spread in eternal flight. Beetles frozen mid-stride. Moths caught in their final pose. A museum of dead things.

Then her eyes found the centerpiece of this twisted museum.

‘No.’ The word slipped out before she could stop it. ‘No no no.’

Ella's gorge rose. She fought to breathe through the sudden constriction in her throat.

Because in front of her was a man, naked, with his arms and legs spread in a perverted star shape. Industrial spikes protruded from his shoulders, his hips, the meat of his palms.

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