Page 32 of Girl, Unmasked
Ripley, to Ella’s surprise, pounced on it.‘The hell is this?’
‘Little something our coroner found.Looks to me like pages thirty-one to thirty-three.’
Ripley narrowed her eyes at the sheets of sodden A4 trapped behind plastic.‘The coroner found them.As in… they were attached to the victim?’
‘You don’t want to know,’ Ella said.
Ripley reached out to take the papers but Ella pulled them back.‘Whoa.We touch these pages, we might contaminate evidence.’
‘Fine.Kill my curiosity why don’t you.’
‘Consider it murdered.These were down the victim’s throat.Our killer must have stuffed them down there, but that means that this manuscript and our dead angel are definitely connected.’
Ripley reached out and took them this time.She pinched them between her fingers.‘Four missing death scenes.That means three more victims.’
‘Exactly.Get those pages to the lab and get them scanned.Get photos too.Close-ups clean enough to read so we can devour the details.’
‘Oh great.I can’t wait to read even more of this garbage.’
‘If reading a book is all it takes to catch this guy, I’m alright with that.Just get that thing processed, because if he stuffed those pages down Sophie’s throat then he must have touched them.’
‘On it, boss.Want me to get your dry cleaning while I’m at it?’
‘Yes please.And a caffeine overload, because we’ve got some reading to do.We need to comb every line of this stuff for clues to our unsub's identity.Psychological profiles, locations of significance, anything that might point us in the direction of our perp's real world alter ego.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘We need to highlight every mention of a street name, business, park bench – hell, even a particularly offensive piece of graffiti.Because I have a feeling that Cain and Drago LaChance might be the same person.’
***
Ripley laid the notepad down and spun to Ella beside her.‘Alright, where do you want to start?’
Ella tapped the manuscript with a marker pen she’d already chewed to death.‘The main character.What do we know about him?Paint me a word picture.’
‘His name is Cain, and he’s a mess of a man.He calls himself Cain.No one else calls him that.’
‘What do they call him?’
‘Nothing.He’s an anonymous narrator.He doesn’t reveal his real name.’
‘Cain,’ Ella repeated.Her brief time at Sunday school had finally come in useful.‘The original outcast.’
‘He’s got some issues.’
‘Hit me.’
Ripley ticked off the list of on her inky fingers.‘Works a dead end job as a cleaner.Cleaning up the messes the beautiful people leave behind, that sort of thing.’
‘Working class hero,’ Ella said.‘Where does he clean, exactly?’
‘Bunch of different places.Hospitals, offices, small businesses.He works for a temp agency.’Ripley flipped to the next page of notes.‘He’s got some health issues too.Coughs a lot, gets these weird episodes where he completely zones out.Goes into what he callsfugue statesfor big chunks of time and comes back with no clue how he got there.’
Ella pushed to her feet and strode over to the whiteboard and uncapped a marker pen with her teeth.She began slashing words across the virgin canvas in black strokes.
Cain.Cleaner.Sick (respiratory).
‘Physical description.We got one?’
