Page 14 of Girl, Entangled

‘I think I know a better place to start.’ Ella pointed to the victim’s ink. ‘We might be looking for a vigilante.’

CHAPTER SIX

The Metropolitan Police Department’s headquarters sat on Indiana Avenue, a little under two miles from the Hoover Building, and close enough that Ella walked past it weekly. Today she’d driven. Two MPD officers had followed her out of her own parking lot and across the city, and Ella thought it particularly absurd that a law enforcement officer was being escorted to a police station by police. Once there, they’d told Ella they’d return to their stations outside her apartment.

Ella and Ripley were in a side office on the first floor. It was a single room with one window and a spider plant that was desperately waiting for rejuvenation via spring. Ella set her laptop on the desk, plugged it in, waited for it to find the building’s network and then waited longer while it failed to. After some jigging around, she got it working.

The man who Ella suspected was Chief Andrew Hibbert came through the door, both hands full. He was younger than Ella pictured from Ripley’s admittedly vague description, or maybe he was just better preserved. The black ponytail was exactly as advertised.

‘Agent Dark. Mia’s told me good things about you.’

‘Then she must be lying.’ Ella extended her hand. ‘Good to meet you.’

‘Likewise. Here, I come bearing gifts.’ Hibbert set the contents of his hands on the table. ‘Crime scene photos. Glossy eights, just in case you prefer paper.’

‘Thank you. I do prefer paper.’

Ripley butted in, ‘Andy, Dark noticed something on the vic’s arms. He’s got prison tattoos.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Show him, Dark.’

Ella found the relevant photos in Hibbert’s pile. She pointed to the clock and the dice formation. ‘A clock with no hands. It means doing time. The dice is symbolic of prison too. The four dots around the outside are the walls and the dot in the middle is the prisoner. This guy has to be in the system somewhere.’

‘Nice catch. I’ll run his face through the database. If there’s no match, the pathologist can match his prints. Speaking of which, the doctor works quick, but quick is still two hours.’

‘Great. What’s the latest on the faire?’ asked Ripley.

‘We cancelled it. It was meant to run two more days, but we can’t risk that. The press are already trying to sneak in. The whole faire is travelling to Maryland on Thursday, but we’ve demanded everyone stay back. The problem is that we don’t know if we have everyone or not. The workers are contractors, not employees, so some could have slunk off already. We’ve given them permission to dismantle everything – except the area around the gallows, of course – but that’s all.’

‘Then we don’t have an hour or two,’ Ella said. ‘Mia. We need to start interviewing, and I need to see the scene in its natural habitat.’

‘I’m all set up here, so ready when you are.’

Two cases now, both holding her at once. She’d give the hanged man until the faire packed up and the carnies scattered. After that, Doyle.

But for the next few hours, the dead man got all of her.

***

By two o’clock, Ella had spoken to thirty-five people and not one of them had so much as twitched.

A guilty conscious could rarely disguise itself fully. There was always a tell, no matter how slight, but Ella hadn’t caught a single one from a single person. All she found were faire workers concerned that they might be next to find themselves dead, and they were right to be concerned.

Ella had done a full circle of available bodies. She’d started near the gallows – now covered with a tent, for both privacy and so that press helicopters would see nothing but a roof – and worked clockwise. Ripley had gone in the other direction. Now Ella was back to where she started, but with much less faire in her peripherals. Stalls had closed, bunting had been taken down, and a particularly regal statue of a knight on horseback was in the process of being dismantled by three women.

That was another thing about this faire. Ella had brought an assumption to Rock Creek Park, and that assumption was men. This historical-cosplay hybrid event seemed to be, on paper, built to accommodate what Ella guessed was the mostly-male fantasy of being a medieval warrior, but she’d been wrong. This faire was overrun with women, which helped, because she doubted a woman had the brute strength to pull off a murder like this. It had been a woman who operated the gallows prop, and as well as being in her sixties and frail enough for a cough to blow her over, she also had a doorbell camera that would probably confirm her innocence when Ella found time to check it.

She scanned for anyone she’d missed, and then saw the tomato toss. Ripley had said the guy who ran that stall had been the one to notify the police, but the stall had been empty on Ella’s first round.

It wasn’t empty now.

A young, pale man was now dismantling the wooden stocks. He was lean, but not gym-lean. This was a lack of body fat from missing meals, not from cardio. Judging by the black bags underneath his eyes, he hadn’t slept, or hadn’t slept well, or hadn’t slept sober.

Ella crossed the path with her hands out of her pockets and her ID already showing.

‘Excuse me. Can I talk to you for a minute?’