Page 10 of Girl, Lured

“Hardly. Our precinct has five full-timers. Back when my father ran the joint he was the only cop in town.”

Now it made sense. A product of nepotism. But still, it was nice to see a young person take on an old man’s role.Ella couldn’t quite putherfingeronit, butsomething about theway he carried himself madeherthink back toher first caseon the job.

“Small town. Gossip must spread like the plague around here,” Ripley said.

“Sure does. This town is full of curtain twitchers. Secrets don’t stay secrets for long around here. We’re doing what we can to keep these murders on the down-low.”

“Good, we should…”

“No.” Ella cut her partner off. “Our killer’s a local. Someone who snapped. Someone who’s been on the edge for a while. We need to get the details of these murders out there. Somebody knows this guy.”

Sheriff Halenervously scannedtheroom, his gaze shifting uneasily between the agents. “Put it out there? That might not be wise.”

Ella checked Ripley’s expression. Mostly nondescript, maybe with a trickle of curiosity. It was the look that usually preceded a brief lecture. Ella ignored it. She was in charge now. Ripley was just the consultant and she’d have to get used to this little dynamic shift.

“The eyes and ears of the public are the best tools we have, especially in places like this.”

Ripley added, “It’s true.” Much to Ella’s surprise.

“It might put the fear of God in a few people, but fear prompts people into action.” The comment sounded more venomous than Ella intended, then she realized she was paraphrasing Charles Manson. She felt a sudden chill through her body.

“Fear of God is right,” the sheriff said. “Big religious community around here. They’re gonna think the Devil did this.”

Ella’s brain suddenly became a flurry of fast-moving thoughts, hermindworking rapidly asthesheriff’scommentsunkin. “The Devil, huh,” she said.

“Something like that.” The sheriff went to continue but one of the masked technicians appeared beside him. She removed her protective equipment and took a deep breath.

“We’re finished in there now,” the woman said. “No prints. No hair fibers. No boot markings. No signs of forced entry.”

“Nothing?”

“At least not inside the unit,” she said. “My guys still need to sweep the rest of this place but right now we’re coming up short.”

“Any idea what time the victim was killed?” Ella asked.

The woman crossed the room and grabbed a clipboard from one of her colleagues. When she came back, she said, “You’d need a coroner for an accurate answer but according to this initial report, about eleven hours ago. That’s based on discoloration of the wound and tightness of the skin.”

“About midnight last night,” Ella said.

“More or less,” the woman confirmed.

“Can we take a look?”

“Go ahead. We’re going to check for prints on the exterior.”

Ella and Ripley headed towards the unit as the technicians removed their apparatus. They had to follow the path that had been forged among the clutter, leaving very little wiggle room. But the centerpiece of this tragic scene was the lifeless body of a middle-aged man, still on his knees with his elbows dug into a wooden chair. His hands rested on his shoulders and his face had sunk into the heavy wood. She took a moment to pay her respects to this premature loss of life, and although she’d never met this man before, she’d surely get to know him very soon. Even from beyond the grave, the dead still had ways of telling their stories.

“Stabbed in the back,” Ella said.

“Quite literally,” Ripley replied. She knelt and inspected the laceration just to the left of the victim’s spinal column. “Missed the spine by a cat’s hair, but the force could have still severed one of the vertebral arteries.”

Ella considered the implications. “Would have paralyzed him.”

“Yeah. If this wound is the cause of death, then chances were he took a few minutes to pass out.”

The victim’s positioning was quite bizarre, even by serial killer standards. Looking at the strange contortion effort in front of her, she wasn’t sure of much, but she was positive this positioning was no accident.

“He’d have been more malleable in a paralyzed state,” she said. “Would have helped him get the body into this weird position.” Despite popular belief, moving a dead body – no matter your level of strength – was always a difficult task. Even Edmund Kemper, a seven-foot, three-hundred-pounder, had trouble moving dead coeds from one place to another.

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