Page 71 of Girl, Unmasked
Next she dived into the kitchen, cleared the pantry, pulled pen cupboards, even emptied out the coat closet.She came up empty every damn time.
Even so, EllaknewLaChance was amongst this trash.Be it cop’s instinct or women’s intuition, but she could feel his greasy presence hiding, waiting for the perfect chance to slip out into the open.
Then a floorboard creaked overhead and Ella's head snapped up, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Gotcha.
Ella bounded up the stairs with her gun leading the way.The upper floor was just as abused as the rest of the house – more crap, more empty bottles.On the landing, Ella saw a bathroom to her left, door ajar.Ella nudged it open with her foot, revealing a scene that would’ve made a hazmat team break out in hives.Crusted sink, cracked mirror and a floor that looked like an explosion in a pharmacy.Empty pill bottles with prescription labels on the front.Ella scooped one up, clocked the details:
Mr.E.Borgman, Cytoxan (Cyclophosphamide) tablets, 25mg.
‘Borgman,’ Ella said as she pocket the bottle.‘Got your real name you little bitch.’
Ella backed out onto the landing and saw a closed door at the end of the hall.Had to be a bedroom.Ella approached it sideways, presenting as small a target as possible.She tried the knob.Locked.
For a long moment, silence.Then, so faint she almost missed it, a muffled sob from the other side of the door.
If Ella’s disgust had a sound, it would have been nails on a chalkboard.After everything this maniac had done, now he had the gall to cry about it?
To hell with that.
She stepped back, put all of her weight onto her right leg and booted the door just beside the knob.The flimsy wood splintered first time and swung inward in a hurricane of dust.Ella surged through the opening, weapon up and ready.
The bedroom was a carbon copy of the rest of the house.
But no suspect.
Ella's eyes darted from corner to corner, cataloging possible hiding spots.Under the bed?In the closet?
The closet.
Sliding doors, one of them cock-eyed.
This was it.End of the line.
She reached out, grabbed the handle, and yanked the door wide in one smooth motion.
And crouched in the darkness, folded in on himself like crumpled paper, was the Angel Maker himself.
Ella exhaled, then stood there for a minute and stared down at the pathetic wreck of a human being before her.This was the monster who'd terrorized her city?This sniveling coward?
‘I give up,’ LaChance cried.‘Lock me away.’
This wasn’t redemption.There was no such luxury.But it was something close.The knowledge that she’d dragged one more monster into the light, and then maybe his three victims could rest a little easier knowing their killer would be trading in his murder den for an eight-by-ten cell.
‘Drago LaChance, or whatever your name is, you’re coming with me.’
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
This was what happened when you played God and got caught, Ella thought.
Even through the holding cell bars, Drago LaChance – not his real name, but what she’d come to know him as – looked about as substantial as wet tissue paper. The man seemed to exist in a constant state of being curled up like a foetus, as though the slightest danger from the outside world could kill him.
LaChance sat hunched on the concrete slab that passed for a bed.His fingers twitched and scraped at nothing in particular.His lank hair hung like ratty curtains, and his eyes were hollow pits in a death’s head.
Footsteps echoed behind her.Ella didn’t need to turn to know it was Ripley.
‘Job well done,’ she said with a shoulder-tap.
