Page 43 of Girl, Unknown

“Yeah, is everything okay?”

“No. Who else have you told about this? Does anybody else know that you’re on the Diamonds’ trail?”

Ella didn’t have to think too hard. “Just my partner here. No one else. Why?”

“I’m seeing people. Suspicious faces. Up and down my street, outside my house. I’ve moved houses since Robert died, far away. Unlisted myself from the books. Even if the guy saw me, how has he found me?”

A few weeks ago, Ripley had called Ella the angel of death. Whenever she touched someone, they ended up on a slab. Her ex-boyfriend, her old partner in the field, numerous people she’d met on cases. Ella breathed deeply, letting her pulse settle to a reasonable one-hundred BPM. “I don’t have an answer. Could you hide out somewhere safe for a while? The office could put you in a safe house?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Clarissa snapped. “That means I’d have to admit to helping you. And how long would I need to hide for? Months, years, the rest of my life? I can’t do that.”

Ella began pacing the hallway, struggling for breath. She hadn’t thought this through, hadn’t considered that merely looking into an old file on VICAP could put someone else’s life in danger. “I’m sorry Clarissa, I didn’t mean any of this. What if you…”

Clarissa interrupted, “You started it, so you have to finish it. These people aren’t here to play around. I don’t know where you are right now, but you need to watch your back. I’m going to Vermont to stay with my family, and I’ll be off grid. This really is the last time we’ll speak.”

“I’ll keep you…” Ella begun, but the phone line cut out again.

She felta heavy weight on her chest. Her breathing became shallow and labored.Ella feltlikeshewas being slowly smothered, throat tight and constricted.Shegasped for breath, but itfeltlike her lungs had abandoned her. Panic began to creep in assherealized thatshewas rapidly running out of time.

***

Clarissa’s call had fueled the fire under Ella’s backside. Experience had taught that when the odds were against you, the only solution was a relentless assault that tackled each problem, one by one. Right now, she had three bodies in a morgue and a faceless contract killer stalking her apartment and possibly her every move.

Ripley came back into the office, hair frizzed by the wind outside. She sat down opposite Ella at their metal desks, laptops gently humming away in front of them. After a moment of non-conversation, Ripley said, “Nothing from Clarence’s place. Yet.”

Ella navigated to a new screen. The website was a white-on-black amateur creation known as the Alpha By Design Talkspace, a forum dedicated to all things misogynistic. The forum was broken down into multiple categories, includingAlpha Dating Strategies, Feminism Exposé, Success Stories,and the interestingly titledNSFW: Not Safe For Women.At the bottom of the page were a number of localized sections covering Europe, South America, every US state and a highlighted area forGod’s Country: Davenport, Iowa.

Ripley continued, “Dark, you’re better at math than I am. Do the math on these killers for me. What are the odds of this happening?”

Ella already had the answer lodged away in the recesses of her brain. “Two killers, same town, same time? Point zero zero zero six percent. Three zeros.”

Ripley wriggled her nose. “Higher than I thought, actually.”

“The same odds as winning the lottery twice in a lifetime.”

“I already won the lottery when they paired me with you,” Ripley said. “How many times has this happened before? Give me some perspective here because I’m still struggling to believe it.”

“A bunch of times. Jeffrey Dahmer and Walter Ellis were both active in Milwaukee in the eighties. Son of Sam and Richard Cottingham both terrorized New York City in the seventies at the same time. There was a brief period in LA in the seventies when Edmund Kemper, Herb Mullin, and John Frazier were all active. If we want to go one step further, 1981 in Los Angeles saw five serial killers active at once. That’s the record.”

“And you wonder why I hate California.”

“Yeah. But what’s weird is that all those killers operated over multiple years, even decades, so overlap wouldn’t exactly be uncommon. But two killersbeginningtheir killing sprees within a few miles of each other less than twenty-four hours apart? That would be like winning the lottery every week for a month. It’s nearly impossible to calculate.”

Ripley jiggled a pen between her teeth and said, “Is it?”

“How deep do you want to get?”

“The deepest.”

Ella browsed theGod’s Country: Davenport, Iowa,forum and took in some of the thread titles.Summer Meet Up, Best Places In Davenport To Practice Game, What’s Your Body Count, Are Quad City Chicks Too Outspoken?

“If we want to embrace the concept of infinity, this isn’t so much a coincidence as an inevitability. Everything, no matter how improbable will happen over the course of infinity. Serial killers have been a thing for five, six hundred years. There are around thirty serial killers in the United States right now, close to a thousand the world over. Is it really so insane to think that by some fateful irrevocability they would spawn five miles apart? I guess you could say it’s like the birthday paradox. If you have twenty-three people in a room, there’s a fifty percent chance two of them will share the same birthday.”

Ripley looked like she’d lost interest now. “That’s because people get busier in the winter. Both of my kids were born in June.”

“Social factor is one thing, but it’s also because it could beanydate, not a specific date. We could be in any city in America right now, but we just happen to be in Davenport. We don’t consider that this could have cropped up anywhere.”

Ripley sat back and folded her arms, a pen lodged between her teeth. Ella wasn’t sure why she had a pen because she couldn’t remember the last time Ripley wrote anything down. “I’m going to look into the victims’ phones a little more, see if there’s anything we missed.”

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