Page 8 of Girl, Sought

Maybe we ought to promise to not be at each other’s throats this time. The past three weeks, I haven’t wanted to kill you once. How about we keep it that way?’

‘Deal. How’re your burns doing?’

Luca inspected his forearm. The bandages had come off, but the blisters remained. 'Fine. Yours?'

A month ago, Ella and Luca had been in a barn fire out in Oregon. The incident had left Ella with first-degree marks on her legs and Luca with second-degree burns on his arms. Ella’s wounds would heal. Luca’s might not.

‘It doesn’t hurt, but my legs go numb after walking for ten minutes.’

‘Then I guess I’m driving. Did you get a hold of your landlord?’

‘No. Maybe she changed her number.’

‘Maybe she died. She was about eighty.’

‘Landlords don't die,’ Ella said. ‘They just evolve into worse landlords.’

‘When we’re done in Chesapeake, we’ll pay her a visit. Mob style.’

Ella headed to the bedroom and grabbed her things. Standard FBI issue - change of clothes, toiletries, enough ammo to start a small war. She added fresh bandages for her legs. The burns might be healing, but three hours in a car would test that threshold.

‘I’ll let it go. I’m not going to cry over a grand.’

Back in the living room, Luca's printer kept spitting out photos of Eleanor Calloway's final performance. Each new angle just pissed Ella off more. Some sicko with a doll fetish thought they could play puppet master with real people. Well, they'd picked the wrong town to set up shop. Ella had spent her entire career studying freaks like this - memorizing their patterns, learning their tells. Somewhere in Chesapeake, this one had left breadcrumbs. And Ella was going to follow them straight to the source, medical leave or not.

Her stupid deposit could wait. The dead couldn't.

CHAPTER THREE

The I-95 stretched ahead in three lanes of grey asphalt under a bleached December sky. Ella spread the crime scene photos across her lap in the passenger seat while Luca kept the SUV at a steady 75. An ancient Eagles track crackled through the radio.

Eleanor Calloway stared up at her with those white orbs that passed for eyes. Their unsub had done something to them: coated the lids with some kind of adhesive that caught the light. The effect transformed human tissue into porcelain perfection and made flesh into something manufactured.

‘Talk to me,’ Luca said. ‘What are you seeing?’

Ella shuffled through the stack. Each new angle revealed fresh details about Eleanor's final tableau. The careful positioning of the hands in her lap. The precise tilt of her head. Even the arrangement of the antique dolls around her chair followed a certain vision.

‘The staging is methodical. He took his time with this. Look at the makeup application - those cheek circles are perfectly symmetrical. The lipstick doesn't bleed past the natural lip line.’

‘Could be a woman.’

‘Could be. But statistically, when single women living alone are targeted...’ Ella let the sentence hang.

‘Male perp,’ Luca finished. ‘Someone rejected. Someone carrying a grudge.’

The SUV merged onto US-301. Another ninety minutes left, according to the GPS. 'Yeah. Our unsub obviously targeted her, so we need to find out why. First thing we need to do when we get there is check the crime scene.'

‘Yup. The lead investigator is going to meet us there this afternoon.’

Traffic thinned as they left the DC metro sprawl behind. Patches of winter-dead forest broke up the monotony of highway barriers and REST STOP AHEAD signs.

‘The killer knew about Eleanor’s little collection, so it must have been someone she knew. Maybe she was part of a collector’s group or something.’

‘Yeah. And my money's on someone who'd been in that house before. Maybe multiple times.’ Ella studied the room's layout in the wider shots. ‘Custom display cases. Climate controls. This wasn't some casual hobby - Eleanor Calloway spent serious money protecting these dolls.’

‘Insurance records might tell us who installed the cases. Could be our guy worked construction. Home security. Something that got him through the door legitimately. You know how many of these home security outfits hire ex-cons?’

It was a depressing thought but not a new one. How many crime scenes had she walked into over the years, only to find the monster had already been invited in? Too damn many. The bogeyman didn't need to pick your lock when he had a key. Ella made a mental note to pull those records as soon as she had the chance. ‘The dolls themselves would be worth checking too. High-end antiques like that, there can't be many dealers in the area.’

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