Page 24 of Girl, Remembered

‘That’s it.’

Luca regarded her like he suspected there was a second half to that sentence. He didn’t push it. Luca rarely pushed it, which was either the best thing about him or the thing she was going to feel guilty about for the rest of her life.

‘And I can’t just do it over the phone?’

‘No. A phone call gives Creed the chance to end the conversation when he wants, and he wouldn’t be as accommodating over the phone anyway.’

‘Fine. I’ll listen to the radio. Maybe talk to some of the guards about the Mountaineers. They’ve had a hell of a season.’

‘Of course. What else is there to do in West Virginia?’

‘Count trees. Where are you going?’

‘Correctional Treatment Facility. Gabriel Winters is being processed in this morning. I want to be in the room.’

‘Be safe.’ He pulled her in with the arm that didn’t have the bag on it, and kissed her, and it lasted longer than either of them probably had time for. ‘It’s weird, isn’t it?’

‘Which part? Everything going on is weird.’

‘We’re supposed to forget these people the second the cuffs go on. Case closed, next file. But here we are. Me driving four hours to babysit Creed and you rushing off to sit across from another one. It’s like none of these killers ever actually leave unless they’re dead.’

She didn’t like the way he said it. The words themselves were fair enough. She’d thought some version of the same thing countless times recently. But Luca’s tone suggested there was a point beneath the point.

‘Hawkins. I’m sorry. It won’t be like this forever.’

‘You sure about that?’

Ella hated to say words for the sake of it. Lies were useless, because the truth always prevailed. ‘No, but I’ll do what I can to make it so.’

‘Good. By my math, I should be at Mount Olive by 3PM. What’s Creed like, anyway? NFL or baseball? Is he a Law & Order guy or a Judge Judy guy?’

‘I never got close enough to ask him, but why don’t you find out? Any information you can get out of him…’

Luca huffed. ‘Are you kidding? I’m not going in to see him unless you call. I’m just thinking about small talk.’

Ella gestured to Luca’s car. ‘Go. Beat the afternoon rush.’

‘One question, before I disappear on you.’ He was already walking backward toward his car, but he stopped. ‘If Doyle managed to talk two grown men into killing themselves rather than give her up, what makes you think Winters is going to say a single word to you?’

‘Easy. I’m going to tell him we have Lindsey Doyle in custody.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. I’m going to tell him that it’s over and she’s sitting in a cell four floors below him, and whatever loyalty he thinks he still owes her doesn’t mean anything now because she’s already talking, already trading him for a better deal. And if he doesn’t believe me, I’ll just show him the pictures.’

Luca threw his bag into the back seat. ‘Huh. Fair enough. But you don’t have her in custody? How can you show him pictures?’

She pulled out her phone and thumbed through to a photograph she’d snuck in the last time she was at the D.C. Jail.

‘Because we have someone in custody that looks exactly like her.’

***

Gabriel Winters had spent twenty-five years inside a glass box for killing four women and, on his release, had gone straight back to killing more. He’d carved symbols into his victims’ skins, hanged a man from a basketball hoop and come close to hanging a young girl from a tree before Ella caught him. He’d done it all wearing a kabuki mask, but now Ella was treated to her first in-person glimpse of his face.

Now she was looking at him through a different pane of glass, from an observation room on the second floor of the Correctional Treatment Facility, and Terrance Dever was standing beside her doing it too. They’d come in separate cars. She’d made sure of that. Forty minutes alone with Terrance Dever was forty minutes she didn’t have spare today, or any day.

Dever leaned in and asked, ‘Do you know what you’re going to ask him?’