“Really?”
Paige squinted. “Oh wait. No. The name matches but the ages don’t. I’m looking at the wrong person.”
Ella collapsed back in her seat and shut her eyes. Not a single person of interest from this massive list of potential suspects and none with any kind of military background. These were the moments she hated the most. The dead ends. The brick walls. The crushing sense of hopelessness and the possibility that her unsub had genuinely left no trace of himself behind.
“Sorry,” Paige said. “What now? Try them again?”
“I don’t know,” Ella said, going for the honest approach. “We need to find a new avenue to explore, I guess.”
Paige fiddled with her pen then threw it on the table. “Does this happen often?” she asked.
“Dead ends? More often than you’d think. But they make you reassess everything and sometimes that helps create new leads.” Ella took off her glasses and bit the end. “Or we go to the hotel and start again tomorrow.”
She checked the time. It was just after 8pm but recent events had obliterated her body clock. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept for more than 4 hours in one sitting. Maybe a week ago? The day before her ex-boyfriend was murdered? She remembered sleeping on an unfamiliar bed but couldn’t recall any details other than it belonged to a hotel somewhere in D.C.
“I’d love to carry on but I don’t know what we’re expecting to find here,” Paige said. “What if we tried running the names through VICAP?”
VICAP was the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. It logged similar crimes committed across multiple states. The program was founded in the mid-eighties during the rise of the ‘highway multi-murder’ phenomenon: the belief that long-haul truck drivers were committing cross-state murders, later confirmed to be accurate.
“I doubt it would help. These are our killer’s first two murders. Besides, if there was another case involving chopped-off legs, I’d know about it. I wouldn’t forget a detail like that.”
“Is it true? I’ve been meaning to ask about that but I didn’t want to sound rude.”
“Is what true?”
“Your memory. Someone told me you can remember anything.”
Ella snickered. “I wish it was that good. People call it a photographic memory, or an eidetic memory, but such a thing doesn’t really exist. It’s not like I can look at something and remember it for the rest of my life. But if I see something, focus on it and commit it to memory, I can recall a lot easier than other people.”
Paige’s expression was half confusion, half fascination. “But… how? Why does it stay in there longer than other peoples’? Did you have to work at it?”
Ella began collecting her things. “Nope. I just thought it was normal. It wasn’t until I discovered other people couldn’t do it that I realized there was something weird about my memory.”
“I don’t understand how it works,” Paige said.
“Me either. Imagine you read a number on a page. Six-seven-four-nine. That little piece of info will be committed to your short-term memory bank for about a minute, or until a new piece of information overrides it. Through some weird biological anomaly, I won’t forget that number providing I’ve seen it written down. Put simply, I’ve got a really, really long short-term memory,” Ella laughed.
“So you can recall everything we’ve seen and heard so far today?”
“Sort of. Seen, yes, but only the things I focused on. I couldn’t tell you all of the license plates we’ve seen or anything like that. But I snapped the crime scenes, the bodies, the officers we met. That kind of thing.”
The agents took their leave, out through the precinct towards the exit.
“That must be so useful. Sorry for the questions, I’m just intrigued.”
“It’s fine. I’ve never actually talked about it before. I don’t think Ripley ever brought it up, and to me it just seems normal.”
“When did you find out you had it? Could I learn it? I really want to.”
“I was about 10 years old when I learned I had it. My aunt bought me this CD. A Guns ‘N’ Roses album. On the way back from the store, I read all the lyrics in the booklet. Then when we played the CD, I could sing along to it even though I’d never heard the songs before. My aunt got upset because she thought I’d secretly heard the album already, but then I explained to her that I’d just remembered the words. She was a bit freaked out.”
They reached their car. Paige looked like she’d just discovered the secrets of the universe.
“That’s… the coolest thing ever,” Paige said. “You’d make a great magician.”
“Well, thanks. You must have some bizarre talent too.” Ella jumped in the driver’s seat while Paige got in next to her.
“I do have one thing. Watch this.” Paige dropped her head back and pinched her eyeball. She blinked away the sensation and then turned the overhead light on in the car. She pointed to her face.