Page 25 of Girl, Accused

‘Deal. What about clothes? Did you pack any?’

‘No. I need to go shopping while we’re here.’ Ripley checked her watch. ‘Actually, I better go now. You okay for an hour or two?’

‘Yeah. I’m going to dig into our vics’ lives and see if there’s any overlap.’

‘Before you get lost in this case, write up a list of everyone you know and send it to Edis.’

Ella’s eyebrows slammed into her hairline. ‘Everyone I know?’

‘Yeah. Everyone that lives in D.C. anyway. Anyone who might be in danger.’

‘I already texted everyone I could think of. I told them to stay alert. What else can I do? I can’t put them all in safe houses.’ Ella decided not to tell Ripley that it was a pathetically-short list. Had her social circle always been this small, or was it a symptom of age?

‘Doesn’t matter. Edis can get cops out to them and give them the rundown.’

‘But where do I start? Where do I finish? I barely knew my landlord.’

‘Then it’s going to be a long list. The sooner you get it done, the sooner we can find this branding son of a bitch, yes?’

Ella watched Ripley collect her bag. The woman still had that economy of motion, that implicit understanding that in their line of work, everything was a zero-sum game. Time spent on one thing meant time taken from another. Emotional investment here meant emotional withdrawal there. Her brief retirement might have softened her skin, but her core was still titanium.

'Fine,' Ella said. 'Go and buy some clothes, you hobo.'

Ripley strode out of the room and left Ella alone. She mentally ran through everything they had so far; two victims, two letters, two messages.

NO EYE WILL SEE ME.

NO ONE SEES ME.

What connected a literature professor and a psychologist? Why brand one with L and one with P? Who was next in this strange alphabet, and most importantly, how could it help Ella catch the perp?

The answers lay somewhere in the lives of the deceased, perhaps in the intersection between their professional personas and private failings.

But first, the list.

Ella opened a new document. The cursor blinked accusingly at her, waiting for names. How many people in D.C. might be in danger because they'd had the misfortune of knowing Ella Dark?

She began to type the first name.

Luca Hawkins.

***

Much to Ella's surprise, concocting a list of everyone she knew in D.C. had been disturbingly easy. Her social circle was less of a circle and more of a sad geometric anomaly with 36 sides, because that was how names she could come up with.

After the obvious names – Luca, Ripley, her aunt, some people from the Bureau and one her old employers, the well quickly ran dry. She'd never been one to accumulate social connections for the sake of it, but seeing it laid out so starkly renewed her appreciation for Ripley's reappearance. Some of the names on the list were questionable, too. Did she reallyknowher butcher? She wasn’t sure if his name was Paul or Peter, but she’d spoken to him multiple times in the past few months. Did that qualify him as an acquaintance?

Ella sent the list to Edis along with a brief note explaining that these were all the people she could recall having significant contact with in D.C. over the past year. At least he couldn't accuse her of being too popular.

With her list of potential victims compiled and dispatched, Ella turned her attention to the two corpses that had brought her to Ohio. Chester Grant and Evelyn Summers. Professor and psychologist. L and P.No eye will see meversusno one sees me.

Ella pulled up the files Westfall had sent over. Credit card statements, phone records, utility bills, tax records – all the paperwork of lives that no longer existed. She began scouring Grant’s records first, and quickly discovered that his spending habits painted a portrait of scholarly austerity. $80 on groceries per week, no subscriptions, no routine splurges, nothing out of the ordinary.

She switched to Summers' records. More of the same mundane patterns but with a few forays into excess. Clothes boutiques, restaurants with names Ella couldn’t pronounce, subscriptions to every streaming service in existence.

Ella soon determined that Chester Grant and Evelyn Summers’ lives intersected only in the vaguest sense of geography; they shopped at different stores, filled their tanks at different gas stations, operated in different tax brackets. If they'd ever so much as driven down the same street, their Visas didn't show it. Any connection they might have had didn’t leave a paper trail.

Maybe social media would provide some answers. Ella typed Dr. Evelyn Summers' name into Facebook and was rewarded with an easy hit. She clicked into it.

---