CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Ella sped through the city streets, alone this time. It was nearly deserted at this hour – too late for the worker bees to be out, too early for clubbers to be heading home. Ella pushed up to sixty when she could, watching the GPS count down the miles to her destination: 2.4 miles to go.
She’d sent Paige to Zack’s apartment and she was making the trip to Zack’s mom’s house solo. It was a risky move, but they were fast running out of time. Zack might already have his next victim in his sights, or worse, already have taken them. They needed to cover as much ground as possible before the night was out.
This had to be it. There was nothing that didn’t fit the jigsaw that was this unsub’s psychological profile. He had a motive, a trigger. His dead mother was an amalgamation of the previous victims. She had surgery at Lancaster General Hospital, possibly the same procedure as the first two victims. She was a sex worker. Her name was Irene. All the links were there.
The bigger question was: how many victims was Zack planning to claim? How many degrees could he go before he ran out of viable victims? Would he kill indefinitely like most serial killers, or did he have a fixed number like Alexander Pichushkin or Stephen Griffiths? If she knew the psychotic mind, then this killer would never stop until death or imprisonment intervened.
Less than a mile. Ella saw the old house looming up ahead. She’d entered the rural part of Lancaster. Fields, farms, and hills, taking her back to her youth in Virginia, but she had no time to bask in fond memories.
She quickly called Chief Reed. He picked up immediately.
“Miss Dark, what is it?”
“I need back-up at 4 Clarkvale Road and 13 Groton Avenue. Do you have any guys ready?”
“I’m struggling but I’ll get someone out ASAP. Got a lot of them at Perry’s house, some at the church scene. We’re overloaded here.”
“Alright, do what you can.”
Ella ended the call as she pulled up outside the old farmhouse. The squalor theme continued. Decaying walls, crusty windows, a slanted roof. The isolation must have been peaceful, but she already knew the inside was a pigsty.
She jumped out of the car, headed to the door, and drew her pistol.
“Zack Harris, FBI. Come on out with your hands up,” she called. Her voice echoed through the fields, hitting the distant hills and then lapping back around.
No lights inside. No brief hints of movement. The place seemed dead.
FBI agents, or any law enforcement personnel, weren’t allowed to violate homes without a signed warrant or probable cause.
Fortunately, probable cause was a gray area, and Ella had enough circumstantial evidence on her side to evade any legal repercussions for what she was about to do.
She stepped back, booted the door in and dived right into the darkness. She pulled up the flashlight on her phone and navigated the old house, making her presence fully known.
“FBI. Come out, Zack!”
This was an eerie place, but determination bested terror. Her heart was beating ten times per step, but she’d become accustomed to this feeling of pounding adrenaline now. For the past few weeks, she’d spent more time in this state than not.
Into the living room, she felt for a light switch on the wall. She found it. It cast the room a dim orange, the bulb barely hanging on for its life.
The place was a junkyard. Rot and mold had made themselves at home. The room was spacious but cramped, overflowing with old furniture, boxes, newspapers, lampshades. The Ed Gein crime scene photos jumped into her mind.
This had once been a home, and not a loving one. Photos on the wall grabbed her attention, and as she scanned them, she discovered none of them featured Zack. One was a black and white portrait of Irene, the other was Irene as a child, the other was Irene sitting in a hospital in a wheelchair, sans leg.
Ella did a quick run through of the rest of the house, finding more of the same. Congested rooms, swarming with flies and maggots. She came back downstairs feeling like she’d walked through a landfill. Save for the creatures, there was no living thing in here.
As she backed out of the house, she found another photograph in the hallway. It was a close-up of Irene’s face, sometime during her final days judging by the condition she was in. Puffy, beat-up, tired. The picture was also in a gold frame, and that suggested it was recent.
But more so than that, something caught Ella’s attention. She took a closer at Irene’s face. More specifically, her eyes.
“Oh, God no,” Ella said.
Photograph in one hand, Ella checked the new crime scene photos that had just been delivered by the forensics lab. They hadn’t delivered them by the time she and Paige had left the precinct.
Ella pulled up one that showed Irene Quimby’s face in full color. When they’d discovered her, she’d been face-down.
The final connection.