Page 57 of Girl, Remembered

‘That’s funny. You don’t seem to be doing a lot yourself. Those three bodies this morning didn’t come from you personally, did they?’

‘No, but the other one did, and who says I’m finished?’

A beat of silence. Ella let it stretch to give Lindsey room to fill it with something she didn’t mean to say.

Lindsey didn’t fall for it.

‘So, pick me,’ Ella said.

‘I picked you a long time ago.’

‘Good. Stop targeting strangers and go for the person you really want.’

‘I had to target strangers, Ella. I killed nearly everybody close to you.’

The comment was a match strike. It lit a fire of rage that engulfed her whole being. Ella wanted to scream and pace a hole in the carpet but she was tethered to Ripley’s laptop via USB cable. ‘All the more reason to meet up with me,’ Ella managed to say.

‘You really think I’m that stupid? You won’t come alone.’ In the background, Ella heard glass smashing, or she thought she did. The fury had clouded her ability to think, hear and process anything logically.

‘There’s no one else left, Lindsey. You won’t get any more of my friends. It’s going to come down to me and you.’

‘That’s not true. There’s still… the big one.’

Ella caught Ripley’s eye. Ripley shook her head, reassuringly, as if to say she won’t get me. The other option was Luca, who was safe in West Virginia, at least for now.

Who else?

‘The big one, huh. I doubt that. She’s with me.’

‘She?’ Doyle laughed. ‘I’m talking about the person who started all of this. The person you owe your career to.’

Her career? Ella panicked. That could be a number of people, depending on Doyle’s interpretation. She could even trace it back to Ella’s days at Virginia PD, but how would Doyle know such intimate details? Ripley held up a finger and mouthed one minute.

‘You can’t possibly know anything about that,’ Ella said. ‘Whatever you think you know is wrong.’

Lindsey cackled down the line. Wind gushed through the speaker.

Doyle was outdoors, Ella realized.

‘Ella Dark, your problem is that you’re so serious. How about a joke?’

‘A joke?’

‘Yes. Even you must know what jokes are, right?’

Ella looked at the circle of confused faces. Their expressions said yes, anything to keep her talking.

‘Okay, Lindsey, tell me a joke.’

‘A woman gets a facelift for her fiftieth birthday. The next day she walks into a cake shop and says to the server, ‘Guess how old I am.’ The server shrugs and says, ‘I don’t know. Thirty-five?’ The woman laughs and says, ‘No, I’m fifty!’

Ella waited.

‘The next day, the woman walks into a pharmacy. She says to the pharmacist, ‘Guess how old I am.’ The pharmacist looks her up and down says, ‘I don’t know. Forty?’ The woman laughs and says, ‘No, I’m fifty!’

She waited again. Ripley mouthed forty-five seconds.

‘The next day, the woman walks into a grocery store. She says to the cashier, ‘Guess how old I am.’ The cashier reaches out and squeezes her crotch. He puts his hand down her pants and gropes her ass. He grabs her cheeks, stretches them out, wobbles them. He licks his finger and sticks it in her mouth. Once he’s done, he says, ‘You’re fifty.’ The woman is shocked, so she asks, ‘How did you know that?’ The cashier says, ‘I was behind you in the cake shop.’