Page 78 of Girl, Remembered

‘Fair. Where’s Hawkins right now?’

Ella checked her phone. One text from Luca.

Driving home from West Virginia.

‘Good man. Come on, let’s get bandages around those hands. They might drop off if they get infected. Oh, and I’m not the hero tonight. All I did was shoot a fool. The real hero is-’

‘Don’t say it. We all did our part. Me, you, Vernon, Dever, Amelia, Roadrunner, Strickland, the MPD. This was a team effort.’

‘I know. I was going to say Edis.’

Ella laughed. ‘William Edis. Stone cold killer. I never knew he had it in him.’

‘He was a cop in Chicago. I guarantee that’s not the first bullet he’s put in someone. Let’s go and see how he is.’

The night had cooled enough that Ella could see her breath by the time they rounded the corner of the building. Blue and red light strobe off the front of the Milestone. An ambulance sat nose to nose with the examiner’s van. A line of state troopers had strung tape between a lamppost and somebody’s cruiser, and beyond it stood a small knot of MPD officers.

Edis sat on the lip of the ambulance. A medic had packed his head wounds with white gauze, and a nasal cannula fed oxygen into him at a rate that made his chest rise and fall. He smiled when he saw Ella and Ripley approach.

‘Miss Dark, I need a word,’ he said.

‘You need more than that. What’s up?’

‘I just wanted to ask why you couldn’t have done this three months ago. The owner of this place would have sold it to me for a lot less.’

A smile tugged at her lips. ‘Imagine the publicity you’ll get. If this place was open, there’d be a massive queue outside by morning.’

‘A politician knows all about good publicity, but that’s not me anymore. I’m going to try and keep this on the down low, as optimistic as that might be. Please, try not to advertise what happened tonight. I’m not proud of what I did.’

‘You should be, Will. You had the reflexes of a cat.’

Edis seemed to accept the compliment as anyone in his position would – with humility. ‘Muscle memory, I’d say. Some things you don’t forget.’ He turned to Ella. ‘Like the fact that I spent nearly two years sending you out to catch dangerous criminals all across this country, asking you to risk your life for me, and every time I said I’d owe you one. I never did repay that.’

‘Until tonight,’ Ella said. She extended her hand to him. ‘Consider us even. Thank you for saving my life.’

‘Likewise. I’m not looking forward to the legal fallout. I’m just a retired citizen now, but that’s for another day.’

Ripley said, ‘There’s nothing to worry about, Will. There was a dangerous intruder on your property. You’re well within your rights to use force. And you’ve got four witnesses.’

‘I hope it’s that simple, Mia. And Miss Dark, I hope you don’t think me sentimental, purchasing this place.’

‘Not at all.’

‘This place has a lot of good memories for me, our mutual memory included.’

‘Same. And now we’ve got another one.’

‘Yes indeed. Please, you two should get home. Or to a hospital.’

‘You’re not the boss anymore, Will,’ Ripley said. ‘You can’t tell us what to do.’

‘Very true. I just-’

The sound of squeaky wheels on concrete intruded. All attention concentrated on the source, which was two M.E. assistants wheeling an obscured body down the pathway. Inside the body bag was undoubtedly the remains of Lindsey Doyle.

There she went, to hell or worse.

They watched the assistants load the body bag into their van and slam the doors.