She had a lot of thinking to do.
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
Ella shoved her way through the doors of the holding area like an uncoiling spring and left Drago LaChance to stew in his own juices.Ripley trailed her into the hallway, and Detective Blythe was on them the moment they emerged on the other side.
‘That was one hell of a collar, Dark,’ Blythe crowed.He clapped her on the shoulder hard enough to dislodge her spine.‘Textbook from start to finish.’
‘Never doubted her for a second,’ Ripley added.
Ella shrugged off the praise like an ill-fitting coat.She should be riding high on the sweet taste of victory.But there was some splinter of doubt in her side that wouldn't let her savor the moment.
Why?She had a confession, connections between the killer and victims, and enough motive to choke a horse.
All the pieces fit, so why did it feel like she was stumbling around the edges of the puzzle?
Her existential crisis was cut short by the clatter of footsteps coming up the rear.Another uniform appeared with a cat-got-the-cream grin pasted on his face.He held up a plastic bag at arm’s length like it was the Holy Grail.
Got the scumbag's phone,’ he panted.‘And the go-ahead to crack this baby wide open.’
‘Hot damn, that was fast,’ said Blythe.‘Dark?Do the honors?’
This was it, the moment of truth.Prove whether or not LaChance was her killer, right there in that little black brick of circuits and silicon.
The officer handed her a pair of latex gloves.She snapped them on and took the phone out of the bag.
‘Passcode has been disabled,’ the guy said.
Ella hovered her thumb over theHomebutton.‘Moment of truth.’
‘Let’s see it,’ Blythe said.
One press later, and the screen bloomed to life.She navigated to Drago LaChance's gallery and the most recent picture flickered onto the screen.
Ella felt the world lurch sideways.Breath stalled in her lungs because staring up at her was William Kane's lifeless form.Sprawled in front of his bookshelf, staring into nothing with eyes already clouding over.
Drago LaChance hadn’t been lying.
‘Christ,’ Blythe muttered.‘We got him.’
Ella barely heard him over the static in her skull.She swiped left, finding more pictures of Kane's dead body.After six photos, the next scene emerged.Martina Payne, this time, caught in loving HD as she hung from her balcony.The angle was different than the crime scene shots – more intimate, the kind of perspective you could only get if you were standing on that balcony, watching your handiwork twist in the breeze.
Ella's finger trembled as she flicked through this series to the next scene.She knew what she'd find, but that didn't stop the wave of revulsion from crashing over her as Sophie Draper in full angelic composition filled the screen.
LaChance’s gallery of the dead.Proof positive that he was their man.
So why did it feel more like a sham than a smoking gun?
Ella kept swiping.More pictures of Sophie Draper.Shot after shot of the atrocities that had seared themselves onto her eyeballs over the past two days.
‘Well, slap my ass,’ Blythe said.‘This is gonna be a short trial.’
‘He documented everything,’ Ripley breathed over her shoulder.
Ella barely heard him.She was too busy scrolling, scanning, searching for – what?She just knew that this wasn’t the whole story.
And then, just as she was about to give up and chalk it up to her own overcooked brain misfiring, she hit the end of Drago's murder gallery and landed on something wholly unexpected.
Normalcy.Or at least, the cracked mirror version of it.
