Page 53 of Girl, Undone
And exposure therapy was exactly what her unsub was doing.
There were no other details about the elusive gentleman Dylan Hartley other than a two-line biography on some networking website, and despite Ella’s efforts, could find no pictures of him.She guessed that, like a lot of great tech minds, operated from behind the scenes.
Ella needed to know what was hidden in the deceased’s Scarecrow messages, and she didn't have the luxury of time to go through the usual channels to request access to the encrypted messages.The bureaucratic red tape could take days, even weeks, and time was a commodity she couldn't afford to waste.Even if she fast-tracked the request through the Mayor or the District Attorney, the chances of getting any results in a timely enough manner to cut this unsub off were slim.
So, she needed another angle.
‘Dylan Hartley,’ she said.
His name lingered in her thoughts, and she concluded that if anyone could bypass the layers of encryption on his own app, it would be him.He was the architect of this digital fortress.It was a long shot, but the longest shots scored the best goals.
She just needed to find him.
Her first stop was the police database.
She threw his name in, hit thesearchbutton, and waited.Her screen froze, as it always did during searches, as if hesitating to reveal the secrets within.
Then the search results pinged.
Two entries.
The first Dylan Hartley was a twenty-year-old kid who’d been arrested for graffiti a year ago.
The second Dylan Hartley was a thirty-year-old who lived in Richfield, which was about an hour’s drive away.
She dug into the second one, but had her reservations that it was the same guy.Richfield didn’t seem like a place where a tech developer would hang out.
Line by line, Hartley's profile began to materialize.The first thing that drew her eye was the criminal history, which had been condensed down to one paragraph.
05/05/2023.Dylan Hartley of Richfield, Wisconsin was arrested and questioned in relation to battery and ongoing virtual harassment.Carrie Baro, an associate of Hartley’s, accused Hartley of subduing her in his home and physically assaulting her.Later, Hartley sent threatening text messages to his accuser [images attached].
The date of the incident was recent, just a few months ago.Battery and virtual harassment — it painted a picture of a man capable of crossing lines, someone who might fit the profile of her unsub.But was this the same Dylan Hartley who developed the Scarecrow app, or just a coincidence of names?
The criminal charges against Hartley were telling.Battery and virtual harassment were serious accusations, indicating a propensity for aggression both physically and online.This duality of behavior mirrored the modus operandi of her unsub, who reveled in the psychological torment of his victims as much as in the physical act of their demise.The pieces were aligning, suggesting a connection, yet Ella knew she needed more than a hunch.Was it possible that Dylan Hartley had access to his users' conversations, and was thus able to intervene, intercept, and draw these users into his own domain?
There was no chance that these kills were the unsub’s first serious crimes because people didn’t just wake up one day and decide to murder people in such barbaric ways.Someone with such psychopathic tendencies didn’t just slip through the cracks unchecked.Her killer was on a police database somewhere, which meant that Dylan Hartley, whoever he was, already had murderous foundations in place.
Ella spun the threads in her mind, seeing what fit and what didn’t.Perhaps that’s why there were no traces of Rebecca’s conversation with her mysterious therapist, or no posts attributed to Julia Dawson and Thomas Barker?If anyone could wipe the slate clean, it would be the platform’s own creator.
Then there was the exposure element angle.The unsub's method of exploiting his victim's deepest fears mirrored the initial purpose of the app – to confront and manage phobias in a virtual setting.But in a twisted, perverse way, the unsub had brought this virtual exposure into the real world, orchestrating horrors that were all too tangible.
But was this even the right person?
Ella quickly pulled up an online map and pasted in the address in Dylan Hartley’s police file.The satellite image loaded; a small grey square surrounded by green in every direction.The house stood isolated, a lone structure seemingly miles away from civilization.It was nondescript, blending into the rural landscape, yet something caught Ella's attention.
She zoomed in closer, hovered her mouse over the home, and double-checked the name that popped up in front of her.
A bolt of astonishment zapped through Ella, electrifying every nerve end as though she'd touched a live wire.
She could hardly believe the words in front of her.
Every fiber told her that this had to be same Dylan Hartley, because his home was named Scarecrow House.
Ella didn’t need any further confirmation.
It might have been the early hours of the morning, but there was no time to waste.
Time to make the trip to Richfield.
