Page 62 of Girl, Accused

'Yeah, the strokes are different. And lighter than they should be. The walls at Grant's house were a similar color, and that text was much darker.'

‘So our guy got in and got out ASAP.’

‘This was an efficient kill, alright. His first daytime kill too, barely what, twelve hours after killing Torres?’

Ella stared at the bloody text until the letters began to swim. The B branded into Harper's forehead. The message about lies. The rushed execution. All the pieces were there, but they refused to form a coherent picture.

‘I don't know,’ she finally admitted. ‘I don't know what B stands for. I don't know if it fits the pattern. I don't know if we're dealing with one killer or two. Hell, I don't even know if Canton's telling the truth about Torres.’

‘That's a lot of not knowing for someone who usually knows everything.’

‘Yeah, well, maybe that's the point.’ Ella turned back to Harper's body. ‘Maybe we're supposed to be confused. Maybe the killer wants us to question everything we think we know.’

‘Or maybe,’ Ripley said, ‘you're overthinking it because you don't want to admit the simple answer.’

‘Which is?’

‘That sometimes a B is just a B. And we won't know what it means until the killer tells us.’

Ifthe pattern held, there should be three more victims waiting in the killer's divine ledger, but with the accelerated timeline – Torres and Harper killed within twelve hours of each other – Ella sensed they might not have the luxury of methodical investigation anymore.

‘So what now?’ Ripley asked. ‘Wait for Westfall to access Harper’s files?’

Ella stepped away from Harper’s body. Crime scenes were black holes. Stay too close for too long and they pulled you into orbital patterns around the victim when you needed to see the wider universe. She was swimming in information but drowning in confusion.

‘We don’t have time to wait. First it was two days between kills, then one day, now it’s twelve hours. He’s not even a serial killer anymore. He’s a spree killer. We could be looking at another victim before nightfall. I’m going back to the precinct. I’ve got something thinking to do.’

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

Time to go.

The Confessor stood before the bathroom mirror and admired the W branded into pale flesh. The mark had healed well since that night at St. Augustine's. A perfect W, raised and pink against white skin. No infection, no complications. The iron had been sterilized properly. Everything had been done right.

The face in the mirror belonged to a stranger now. Not the face that had planned this for over a year. Not the face that had watched Chester Grant lecture about medieval morality plays while seducing students half his age. Not the face that had listened to Evelyn Summers dispense her toxic wisdom or observed Rebecca Torres line her pockets with power station money. Not even the face that had ended James Harper's reign of surgical butchery mere hours ago.

Four sinners down. Four letters carved into flesh. Four messages left behind. And now Adam Canton sat in a cell, taking credit for what he hadn't done. The police would waste precious time trying to make him confess to the other murders. By the time they realized their mistake, the trail would be cold.

The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed. It wasn't large. Just enough for the essentials. Three changes of clothes. Toiletries. One book. The Bible, naturally. Everything else could stay behind. Material possessions were chains, and the Confessor had learned long ago that freedom required regular purging. The tools of the trade were sitting in the trunk of the car. And on the way to Illinois, the Confessor would drop them in a river and let nature wash away the forensic evidence.

There had never been a grand plan to all of this, not really. Just an accidental path that started with Chester Grant's smug face in the newspaper: ‘PROFESSOR KEEPS POSITION DESPITE SCANDAL.’

The headline had been a match struck against the kindling of ancient rage. Grant's face had blurred with other faces: the doctor who'd let Mother die while insurance forms gathered signatures, the teacher who'd looked away when playground bruises bloomed like cruelflowers, the officer who'd said, ‘There's nothing we can do without more evidence.’ A lifetime of watching sinners walk free had crystalized in that moment.

Everything had then spiraled into a mission that even now felt more like destiny than choice. But with that said, the vague skeleton of a plan had never included running away. The original blueprint – if it could be termed such a thing – involved seven brands, seven messages, seven souls sent to face their Maker with their sins clearly marked.

But plans changed when God intervened, and He had certainly intervened, considering that the police had already taken Pastor Adam into custody. Given Adam's obsession with Rebecca Torres, it was only natural the police would come across his name eventually, but the Confessor never expected it this quickly. Pastor Adam was the ultimate patsy, and all it would take was a few little pieces of evidence from theothervictims concealed somewhere in First Light Assembly. Before the Confessor sped off into the night, those pieces would be in place. Two police officers had been coming in and out of the church for a while, but once they disappeared, the evidence could be planted.

Would the police notice the Confessor’s disappearance? Would they put two and two together and figure out that the killings stopped not just when they arrested Adam Canton but when a certain someone else fled town?

No. All attention would be on Canton. And as for the W in the Confessor’s skin, it was nothing a little makeup wouldn’t fix.

The Confessor picked up a final box and headed for the door. The place felt hollow now, like it had been emptied of purpose. Over a year of planning, reduced to moving boxes and bleach-scented air. But that's how justice works sometimes. You never got to see the end of the story you started.

***

Sitting in her office, Ella was reminded of a line from an old textbook.When the facts don’t make sense, you don’t have all the facts.

Through the glass partition in her office, she could see the top half of Adam Canton locked in a room across the hallway. She wondered if this was what taxidermists felt like. Studying something that looked alive but wasn't. He’d been in there for three hours now.

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