Page 53 of Girl, Empty
A voice erupted from the doorway.Not Eastern European.Not a woman.
Ella spun around and her gun was already clearing the holster.The man in the doorway matched his photo perfectly; long grey hair, a skinny neck, giant skull like a bobblehead.‘FBI!Don’t move!’
Sinclair’s hands began to ascend in the gesture of surrender, but they were shaky, as were his feet.He was shifting his weight from one leg to the other, and you didn’t need to be a body language expert to know what that meant.
‘Don’t even think-’
But Sinclair became a blur.He vanished from the doorway out into the hallway.Ella burst into a sprint, but there was already another body ahead of her.Ripley flew like she’d somehow shed 30 years of her life as she crossed the space between the trophy room and the hallway in the blink of an eye.Ella followed, and reached the doorway just in time to see Ripley gaining on Sinclair near the front entrance.The bastard had his hand on the door handle when Ripley's fingers closed around his collar.
Ella had a millisecond to briefly feel sorry for Sinclair as Ripley yanked him back and slammed him against the wall.The cheap drywall Ripley had been bitching about earlier buckled under the impact.
Sinclair tried to squirm free.Ripley drove her knee into his stomach and when he doubled over, she grabbed his shoulders and introduced his face to the wall.Once.Twice.By the third impact, he'd stopped struggling.
When it was over, Sinclair lay crumpled at Ripley's feet.She stood over him without so much as a heavy breath, then smoothed down her dress and looked at Ella.
‘You going to cuff him or what?’
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
The ride back to the precinct had stripped Alexander Sinclair of whatever confidence he had in his trophy room, and now Ella was admiring his limp form through the one-way glass outside the interrogation room.
‘I’ve never seen you move so fast,’ Ella said.Ripley was standing beside her with an ice pack on her wrist.
‘Because I’ve never moved so fast.’
‘How’s your arm?You didn’t sprain it, did you?’
‘No.I just haven’t used that muscle in a while.Probably shouldn’t have grabbed him so hard.’She put the ice pack on a table.‘Don’t tell Edis I slammed his head against the wall, will you?’
‘Sure, but since when did you care what Edis thought?’If Ella didn’t know better, she’d think that was Ripley was looking sheepish.
‘I don’t want him thinking I broke the rules on his last ever case.’
‘His last ever case is the perfect time to break the rules.’
‘Maybe, but speaking of breaking cases, you ready to get this guy in a cell so we can smash his cabinets up?’
‘You really don’t like this guy, do you?’
Riggs emerged from a nearby office and pressed his nose to the glass.He looked his young self again; unburdened by a serial killer terrorizing the city he swore to protect, because that serial killer was sitting in his precinct.‘Has he said anything?’
‘He was silent the whole journey back, but we haven’t spoken to him yet.’
‘What?Why not?Smash this son of a bitch open.’
‘Psychological warfare,’ Ripley said.‘Always let them stew in discomfort for a while.It makes things easier.’
‘Does it?’
Ella said, ‘Yeah.The paranoia will eat away at him.Guilty people know they’re screwed, and the longer they sit alone, the more they convince themselves at confessing might be the only way out.They imagine the worst, like what their family will think when they find out they’re guilty.’
‘And how hard they’re going to get railed in prison.’
‘That too.Did you get someone back to the Morrison crime scene?’
‘Yeah,’ said Riggs.‘I’ve got a guy heading there now.He’s got pictures of the nameplate and he’s going to see if it matches the others at the company.If it does, we’re golden.Do we have anything else on him?’
Ella watched Sinclair through the window.He wiped his sweaty hands on his pants, and it took a lot for someone to sweat in an air-conditioned room in January.He was ripe for interviewing.'Not physical, but the circumstantial evidence is there.He's a tech guru and his company has the same security systems as Morrison and First National so he'd be familiar with them.'
