Page 27 of Girl, Remembered

Ella knew the phrase, or thought she did. It was a law enforcement term, for the place inside your skull you had where you put the things you’d seen that had no other place to go. Everyone in this game had a grey room inside them. The grey room never emptied. You just had to stuff things inside there and hope it didn’t overflow.

‘I know what that is,’ she said.

‘No.’ Winters shook his head, and there was something close to pity in it, aimed at her for not already knowing. ‘Not the same thing. It’s a website.’

‘What kind of website?’

‘A forum. Invite-only, or it was when I got in. You need a sponsor. The site is full of cops, ex-cops, corrections. A lot of military guys with PTSD, coroners, first responders. People who’ve been through trauma. I’m sure you know a few, in your line of work.’

Ella considered it. It was plausible. But if this so-called Grey Room existed, why hadn’t she heard of it? It seemed like exactly the kind of place her investigations would take her.

She signaled to Dever on the other side of the window. Ripley would have interpreted her signal as it was intended: to search for this online platform immediately. How Dever would interpret it was anyone’s guess.

‘So you joined this Grey Room. Then what?’

‘I read through some posts. Then I posted myself. I wrote, somewhat vaguely, about how my mom died. Anyone with a good eye for disassociation would have recognized it for what it was.’

‘A confession in plain sight,’ Ella said.

‘Yes indeed. I deleted it an hour later, but an hour was enough.’

‘Enough for…?’

‘A private message,’ said Winters. ‘From the Alligator.’

Ella had to replay that line in her head a few times. ‘Come again? The Alligator?’

‘That was her username. I didn’t ask why. We started talking, we grew close. I confessed a few things I shouldn’t, but she didn’t judge. This went on for months.’

‘Until?’

‘Until we met up in person,’ Winters said. ‘That was when things… escalated, should I say.’

Ella could picture the scene, much to her dismay. She pushed and prayed Winters would avoid the intimate details. ‘And?’

‘She drove down to Greensboro and we spent a week together. She stayed at my place. And then she went home. The end.’

One week, Ella thought.

Far from a relationship, but perhaps that was the secret. One week was enough for a taste, and enough for a man to spend his life trying to recapture it. As with any natural performer, Doyle seemed to understand the first rule of pleasing your audience: always leave them wanting more.

‘What else? What did Doyle talk about?’

‘We talked about the usual things, and she pushed me to do what I needed to do. I told her about my past, and she accepted that. When she left, she used to video call me, sometimes from Louisiana, sometimes from right here in D.C. She would sometimes give-’

‘Wait,’ Ella jumped in. ‘Doyle video called you? From D.C.?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Where in D.C., exactly?’

Winters frowned at her, and some of the openness from a minute ago had already started freezing over. ‘You’re asking a lot of questions about someone you have in custody, Miss Dark. I’ve given you a lot here, so do me the courtesy of being honest. That picture on your phone of the woman in jail. It’s not Lindsey, is it?’

Gabriel Winters might have been a serial killer, but serial killers needed at least an ounce of awareness to reach such a status in the first place. Some of them, Winters included, could read people as well as any profiler.

And Winters had read her.

He knew she was lying.