Page 19 of Girl, Unknown

Ella’s heart sank as she hovered over theANSWERbutton, but what was she going to say? What if it was someone from the FBI offices asking her about her intrusion into the Logan Nash file?

It didn’t matter. She needed to know who was on the other side. If it helped her find her dad’s killer, embarrassment was a small price to pay.

She answered. “Hello?”

But the line cut out.

CHAPTER NINE

The man emptied the last of the rum down his throat then scrapped the bottle on the pile beside his chair. The dry, sugary nectar gave him the hit he craved, the boost he needed to get up and continue his mission, but he couldn’t draw himself away from the TV.

He thought about how his ex-wife would lambast him for working too hard, for never spending quality time with her or doing the things that husbands were supposed to do.Just sit and watch TV with me for an hour,she’d say, and he would. He hated every second of it, always feeling like he was wasting what precious time he had left consuming the mundane details of other people’s lives. How she loved to watch the news, how she loved to keep up to date withcurrent affairs.That was the one he hated the most, because whatever was happening outside of your own circle didn’t matter. Political scandals, celebrity affairs, the new ingredient found in every drink that was apparently poisoning your children. None of it affected your day-to-day life; it was all just a distraction designed to keep you in a constant state of panic.

But the irony now was that he couldn’t unglue himself from the TV, because every station in the state was talking about him. A heinous, cold-blooded killer running rampant through the streets of Davenport. One channel had already called him the Davenport Monster, a name he didn’t dislike but thought they could do better. A name that, he was surprised, had come so early during his reign.

Because try as he might, he couldn’t remember killing anyone last night.

It was true that the blackouts had been more frequent recently. Since his old lady had up and left him, he found himself on the receiving end of unwanted visions, bouts of extreme hallucinations that seemed to entwine themselves in the fabric of his reality. They left him unable to distinguish between real and fantasy, and so he constantly had to check that he was living in the real world, not some fairytale vision brought on by psychosis.

As of this moment, he was very much present. In his shabby apartment, nailed to his single seater, witnessing the aftermath of his strangulation efforts. He could feel the rum tingling down his esophagus, felt the groove of the old fabric beneath his backside. He was living in the here and now, at least for the time being, but last night? He couldn’t say for sure.

Doctors had warned him that drinking during bouts of mania was a recipe for disaster. The solution was to pop a few pills, lie down, and sleep off the hysteria. But since Melanie had disappeared, he couldn’t sleep without a little moonshine in his system. He had to drink to oblivion to get his full eight hours, but it shattered his mind into even more pieces than the psychosis did. Booze was the chain that kept him shackled to reality, but it became weaker with every application. He needed more cuffs, fetters, straitjackets – anything to stop him from breaking free and wreaking havoc around the city.

The woman he certainlydidkill, the lady who the news was now calling Vanessa, hadn’t been easy prey. The scene played out much differently than he envisioned, but it was still an experience like no other. He’d seen Vanessa walking home, followed her, waited for an opportune time, and broke into her place through the back. The prissy little bitch, with her button-down blouse and her open-toe shoes, reminded him of his ex-wife, so he knew he needed to get close to her. It was almost like a magnetic pull, and even though a small part of him knew he was going one step beyond, he couldn’t resist his calling. If he unleashed his rage on this surrogate, perhaps it would quench all that rage and frustration that had been building for so long. As he was strangling her, he imagined it was Melanie in her place. Maybe he could convince himself that he really had offed Melanie so that he didn’t have to torture himself thinking about her with another man, imagining her marrying a new love, making babies, building the kind of life he wanted but never made time to create. If he couldn’t have Melanie, no one would.

But two days on, his conscious brain still knew the truth. Melanie was out there somewhere, and if he couldn’t find her, he’d just keep on taking people who reminded him of her. No doubt the real Melanie would hear of the murders in Davenport, maybe make the connection that all the dead women resembled her. Then Melanie would live in a constant state of fear, always looking over her shoulder, shuddering at every late-night bump, second-guessing every knock at her door. Death was preferable, but constant terror was a good consolation prize.

He scrambled out of his chair, studied his image in the mirror. He scraped his hair off his face, slapped himself around to get him in the right headspace then put together his outfit for the evening. All black, nothing flashy. It was the everyman’s outfit, the delivery man’s outfit.

This one was going to be a little different because he already knew exactly who tonight’s Melanie substitute was going to be. A young chick he’d watched from afar at the diner, watched her canoodling with some muscular deadbeat, and he couldn’t help but imagine the real Melanie was out there doing the same right now. He’d only seen this mystery woman yesterday afternoon, but he’d spent the next few hours watching her, following her home, scrutinizing her apartment block for the best entry and exit points.

He’d overheard the woman’s brainless lover say something about surprising her with a gift when she least expected it. He’d latched onto that idea, and it was the reason why he couldn’t strike too late tonight. It had to be believable, it had to be probable, otherwise this woman – if she was anything like the real Melanie – would see right through his tricks.

On the TV, news of his murders dissolved into less interesting political matters. Some nonsense that he didn’t care for but was scandalous enough to keep the great unwashed glued to their screens. Pathetic, he thought, but if they wanted news, he was going to give it to them. He moved to the kitchen, picked up his so-called gift, and checked himself out one last time.

He looked the part. He was ready to make magic happen again.

For the second time? The third time? He wasn’t even sure himself. The news said the second woman had been in her forties, lived in some rundown place on the edge of the city. She’d been stabbed apparently, and while he didn’t remember doing it, there was a missing knife in his collection that he couldn’t account for.

Maybe it was him. Maybe the inner monster was a lot more vicious than he imagined. He could have been living with an uncontrollable, merciless fiend who walked his own path, delivered his own justice independent of his own desires. Perhaps his body was just the host, and there was a bloodthirsty parasite in his brain commanding him to kill.

Two monsters in one.

What a story.

He left the apartment, headed down to his car.

Whatever was going on, the Davenport Monster was going to strike again tonight.

CHAPTER TEN

Ella set up camp in the beige slab that doubled as her office at the Davenport precinct; then once Ripley was firmly lost in the blazing screen of her laptop, Ella slipped out into the corridor and made for the exit.

She couldn’t hold onto this mystery any longer, not when the answer was a phone call away. Ella pulled up her recent calls list, hovered over Robert Reed’s name and tapped. She decided not to think too deeply about this, instead going with the flow. Best to tell the truth, and if that somehow morphed her personal investigation into an all-out FBI affair, so be it.

She didn’t care how she got there, as long as she was the one to snap the cuffs on her father’s killer.

The phone rang once, twice, three times.

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