Page 24 of Girl, Accused

‘When patients resist change, they construct elaborate fortifications around their dysfunction. The therapist's role is to systematically dismantle these defenses through direct confrontation. Only by breaking down these barriers can true healing begin.’ Ella looked over at Ripley. ‘What do you think of that?’

Ripley didn't even look up from examining the corpse's neck wound. ‘I think our friend knew some big words.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Max hates his high chair, but put a dinosaur toy on it and he jumps right into it.’ Ripley stood up and snapped off her latex gloves. ‘People don't change because you break them down. They change when you show them a better way to be. Dark, you notice something is missing here?’

Ella scanned the room. Dead woman, branded forehead, blood patterns. Everything was exactly as they'd found it. She thought back to the crime scene photos from victim number one.

Ripley was right. Something was missing.

‘He wrote on the walls in blood at Chester Grant’s house.No eye will see me.’

‘Yeah, so where’s our message here? If our killer’s as mission-oriented as we think, no way would he skip the final act.’

Ella peered at the walls. They’d been stained a few shades darker than natural wood. ‘Blood wouldn’t show up on these walls, so he must have got creative.’ She moved to the walls, ran her gloved fingers over the textured surface. Nothing. She checked behind certificates, around the fireplace, under the desk. Her heart picked up speed with each empty search. The killer wouldn't break pattern. Not this early in his sequence. The message had to be here.

‘Think likehim,’ Ripley said. ‘You've just killed someone. Branded them. Now you want to leave your manifesto. But the walls won't work.’

‘So I'd need another surface. Something that would show blood clearly.’ Ella's eyes swept the room again. Blank, bright surfaces. Places where red would stand out.

Then she spotted the book again.

The one that had been oddly positioned on the edge of the desk. The one she’d leafed through a minute ago.

The killer would have seen the book, understood its significance. What better place to leave his judgment than on Summers' own work?

Ella picked up the book again, but this time she wasn't interested in the contents. She was thinking like the killer now, seeing through his eyes. He'd want the biggest blank space possible. Something clean, something white.

Not the pages. Too small, too cramped.

The dust jacket. No - beneath it.

Ella peeled the dust jacket back slowly. The white cardboard emerged and there, in messy strokes of rusty brown, was another message.

‘NO ONE SEES ME.’

CHAPTER TEN

The Granville Police Department looked like it had been built in an era when crime meant bootlegging and public indecency, then never quite evolved past that point. Now in their office for the foreseeable future, Ella plopped herself into a chair that leaned dangerously to the left.

‘At least they gave us a window,’ Ripley said.

They had a crystal view of the Kitty Kat Club across the road, which promised GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS in electric pink letters. Nothing said small-town vice quite like a strip club next to a police station.

Ripley had claimed the other desk, and Ella couldn't help but marvel at how naturally her old partner slipped back into the role. Five months of pruning rosebushes and chasing a toddler around a garden, and here she was, sorting crime scene photos like she'd never left.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Ella said.

‘You’re thinking out loud again.’

‘You could be watching daytime TV right now, but you’re in a grimy office in Ohio.’

‘Can’t grow raspberries in winter, and Max doesn’t finish nursery until next week. Let’s just say I’ve got nothing better to do.’

Ella doubted that. Ripley had spent the better half of their time together longing for retirement, so Ella still couldn’t grasp her decision to return. ‘What about your badge and gun?’

Ripley lowered the police report she was reading. ‘I don’t have – nor want – either. I’m not a federal employee, and we don’t have time to make me one again. Any bullets are going to have to come from you.’

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