Girl, Missing, page 10
He continued playing, feeling himself sink deeper into its melodic embrace with each passing measure – a reminder that music could evoke beauty even during dark times. He then reached over, turned the recording off, and went back to his piano.
This new composition wasn’t his story to tell, but he was working with the best – as he always did – and he wanted to ensure high quality. The role of music producer came with certain responsibilities, the most important one being making sure that a piece was the best it could possibly be. No missed opportunities for a memorable fill, no overlooked details. Sound quality and mixing was part of the job, but the song was the groundwork of the musical house. Once you had a solid foundation, only then could you apply the decorations.
Ethan kept the sound low, not wanting to disturb his sleeping wife upstairs. Fortunately, there was enough distance between the two that his restless playing wouldn’t wake her. He did his midnight ventures from the comfort of the basement; meanwhile Sheila was two stories up above. She hit the hay at ten pm every night like clockwork, but Ethan would regularly work through the night without issue. Such was the life of an insomniac.
For him, clocks were harbingers of terror. Nightfall was a vast entity of irrelevance. If he had a regular job, the pitfalls of sleepless nights would no doubt cripple him beyond daily function, but as the mastermind pulling the strings of today’s classical performers, every hour might as well be midday to him. It made no difference. All that mattered to Ethan Harlow was that the music was perfect.
As though Ethan’s worries had manifested into reality, he heard his wife emerge from her slumber, head across the landing to the bathroom, then back to the bedroom. He breathed easily, although he’d probably get an earful when they finally crossed paths around dawn. She’d be waking up for work; he’d just be heading to bed. It left little time for romance, but who needed romance when you had a three-million-dollar home? His success had afforded her the lifestyle she’d dreamed of since she was a mere farm girl, so she doubted his trophy bride would be looking for an even richer gentleman any time soon.
Ethan reached back to his computer, started recording and played the piano melody from start to finish. He played solo this time, unaccompanied by the sounds of violins and cellos, so that he could register each note one by one. The silent story of the piece involved a young, suicidal girl who, instead of opting for pills, decided to literally dance herself to death. For such a harsh subject matter – that would no doubt be scrutinized by the poison pens of classical reviewers – the quality needed to be otherworldly. Otherwise they’d call it cheap, exploitative, derivative of the Rite of Spring. The best way to avoid criticism was to dazzle them with dopamine-inducing harmonies and masterful technical abilities. Simplicity had no place here. You had to channel your inner Prokofiev.
Instead of playing the piece in G major, he shifted down to C, went up an octave for the finale, finished with a tremolo between the A and C. He’d been hesitant to include the C, because in some circumstances the C and G could clash and jolt the listener out of the song. It took a musical ear to appreciate the controversial link between the two notes, but as he played it again, he felt like he’d found the missing piece of the puzzle.
“Yes!” Ethan said. “That’s it!”
Ethan ran through it one more time to iron out the creases. He was amazed by how perfectly the notes complemented the melody, far exceeding his expectations. Sometimes, risks paid off, he realized. Mozart had been the first person to use different musical styles in his compositions, and Ethan hated to compare himself to a man who could reproduce any melody after hearing it just once, but he couldn’t deny they had a few things in common.
The producer stood up, stretched away the aches in his legs and made for the kitchen. Now that he had what he needed, he just needed to apply the finishing touches and make the song fit for consumption, and there was no fuel like caffeine. Ethan filled the stove-top kettle, turned up the heat and gazed out of the window at his endless stretch of garden. It backed onto the sheep farm at the rear, and he’d foregone a fence so that the sheep could wander in and out as they pleased. It appealed to Sheila’s farm girl tendencies, like a little nod to her past, and the grandkids always loved it when a little lamb popped up to say hello. What was the point of success if you couldn’t use it to put a smile on children’s faces?
Ethan heard his wandering wife again. Maybe the Chinese food had played havoc with her stomach, as it often did. He was going to warn her against the dangers of chow mein, but he learned many years ago to never come between a woman and food. If they had their heart set on a certain meal, the best salesman in the world couldn’t talk them out of it. Around the same time, he learned to never, ever tell a woman the four most offensive words in the English language: I told you so.
The kettle boiled and Ethan made himself one of his special coffees. Vietnamese blend, four heaps of creamer. Daily gallons of this stuff might have been the reason for his insomnia, but it fueled creativity like nothing else. When he eventually got around to writing his autobiography, he’d reveal that this little concoction was the secret ingredient behind the greatest classical releases of the modern era.
Ethan trudged back towards the basement, stopping in the hallway to listen for his roaming partner. He couldn’t hear her now. Must have gone back to bed, he reasoned.
But amid the dead silence, something prickled at Ethan’s ears.
Probably the endless hours in the studio, he thought. He’d heard the horror stories of producers and musicians hearing music when there wasn’t any. Apparently it was as debilitating as tinnitus, not because you always had sounds running through your head – that would be perfectly fine with him – but because it affected your ability to identify individual notes. After thirty years in the industry, he was surprised there’d been few side-effects, so the thought of something cropping up while he was in his prime put the fear of God in him.
Then Ethan opened the basement door. A faint harmony drifted in his direction, a harmony that was eerily familiar but wasn’t one of his or his clients’ creations.
Did he leave the music playing?
He couldn’t remember.
Ethan edged down the steps, moving slowly, a sudden terror in his heart. He was usually methodical in his approach, never one to leave doors unlocked or computers running when he didn’t need to.
But as he looked back to the basement door behind him, he realized he’d done just that. The door was ajar, and he remembered that he’d left the recording running too. His exhilaration at perfecting the new piece had distorted his awareness, as was so often the case. He’d experienced what musicians called the high-five moment, when everyone slotted together so perfectly that you briefly transcended to a plane of enlightenment.
Ethan reached the end of the stairwell into his basement studio, except this wasn’t the same place he’d left a few minutes ago.
His piano chair was neatly tucked in, as it always was.
The computer was still on the same screen, spiking waves on the recording screen.
But there was something new. Something he’d never seen before.
Something that didn’t belong to him.
A vintage phonograph, pumping out the chaotic notes of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal.
Ethan’s coffee spilled and burned his wrist. He rushed, grabbed his phone from beside the computer, pulled up his call screen with a trembling hand.
Before he’d even hit the number nine, the blade in his spine took his breath away.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ella slept the sleep of a thousand martyrs. Blissful, interrupted, the perfect parody of death. After years in the law enforcement game, your awareness transcended to that akin to a new mother, where the slightest stirring of your child could wake you from the deepest slumber. Dreams became a thing of the past, unless you hovered over that strange alien point between dream and reality where you viewed the world through a carnival mirror. Familiar things were slightly distorted, recognizable earthly qualities but somehow different. However, certain vital pieces of information were forgotten, such as your body’s physical location. That revelation only came seconds after waking up. Mid-slumber, you were at the mercy of your subconscious.
She felt it now, that crossroads. The real world was calling out to her, a siren for her attention. As she tossed and turned, she heard footsteps in the room, but somehow couldn’t unglue her eyes to see who was making such a racket. She had a sudden flashback to her days as a little girl, when her dad would grab her clothes out of the cupboard while she feigned sleep to avoid school. It never worked, but it didn’t stop her trying nearly every morning.
Ella slept off the worry. It would disappear if she just ignored it. She was here, safe, and her concerns were just her mind playing tricks. She lost herself in the eternal darkness of her eyelids, summoning sleep again but coming up short. Her mind was now in a state of alert, despite her body craving rest, and the mind won every time.
Fighting to wake up. Withdrawing herself from sleep. It shouldn’t be this hard, she thought. What the hell was happening?
Ella rolled onto her back, kicking the bed sheets down, exposing herself to the room’s low temperatures. The sudden cold clawed at her skin, icing her toes and jolting her back to life. The ceiling was a blank white canvas. Only a few hours ago, she’d stared at the motel décor as she tried to drift to sleep.
It hadn’t been white.
Ella tried to reach out, grab her phone, grab the glass of water on the nightstand.
Movement was not an option. She was locked in place, immobilized by an invisible force. All she could do was shift her head from side to side, glance around a room that had been transposed from 1995.
This was not a motel in California. She was in her father’s bedroom.
Soft, creamy white drapes. A mahogany dresser, handcrafted by her old man himself. A plush armchair, a collection of old watches, a photograph of a five-year-old Ella balancing on a bale of hay. She was in the past, seeing the world through her late father’s eyes.
The floorboards creaked, as they always did. Old floorboards that Ken always promised to tighten but never got around to. She felt the breeze sweep in through the window, bringing a scent of pesticide from the farmland across the way. Birds chirped their early morning songs in the trees outside.
Footsteps again. Slow and methodical, tracking them from the bathroom to the nightstand. Ella frenziedly tried to free herself from the bed, but found her arms, legs, and spine pinned to the mattress. Trapped by invisible restraints, by an invisible force. Ever since a killer in Massachusetts had locked her in a basement, she’d developed a crippling case of merinthophobia – the fear of being bound or restrained. Sweat dripped down her forehead, stinging her eyes, launching her heart rate to levels that could induce cardiac arrest. Try as she might, no amount of force could unglue her from the place where she’d undoubtedly die. Trapped in place, sharing the same airspace as another soul. This wasn’t just her bed, it was her deathbed.
Then the figure came closer, walking with a purpose. Nothing between Ella and her mysterious assailant but imagination.
Ella’s pounding heart stopped. Her vision cleared, and she saw the man’s face crystal clear.
Or at least, she saw a cap and a face mask, and the same beady eyes of her attacker in the Imperium building the morning before.
His blade raised, revenge in his eyes. Even with his mask, she knew he had a smirk on his face.
Ella opened wide to scream, but found her throat had frozen over. She was at this faceless man’s mercy.
And she didn’t even know his name.
Then the blade came down, and Ella’s restraints suddenly dissolved. She was upright, in a motel bed, frizzy hair laced with sweat. She anchored herself back to reality by clutching the digital alarm clock. She let the dream-adrenaline subside then stepped off the bed, pulling open the curtains and bathing the room in the light of a premature dawn; a stark reminder that the day had not yet begun but worldly problems were not beholden to the passage of time.
“Shit,” Ella gasped.
The alarm clock read five-sixteen am. The night before, after she’d ended her call with Ben, she’d lay down and spent the next hour in a state of fright. Sleep had come unexpectedly, then she’d roused from it layered in dreams. Re-enactments of her father’s death scene were a regular occurrence, but she’d never found herself assuming the role of victim. Twenty-five years on, her subconscious was still finding ways to torment her.
Bang bang bang.
Ella’s pulse shot back up again, her body numb from the seesawing heart rate. Someone was at the door, but it was barely daybreak. She edged towards the door, peered through the spyglass.
Ripley.
Ella clutched the door handle with a weary sigh. Such early intervention could only mean one thing. Ella opened the door, prepped herself, visualizing the inevitable words forming on her partner’s lips.
“Ripley? It’s five in the morning.”
“Couldn’t sleep. And I heard you moving around.”
Her vivid dream-state must have been more feverish than she realized. “Yeah, I can never sleep on the road.”
“Well, there’s bad news and bad news.”
“Please, no.”
“Jacques is in the clear. Solid alibi, even has video footage of himself at home around nine pm last night.”
No surprise. “And the other bad news?”
“We’ve got a fresh body waiting for us.”
***
This killer had balls. Ella had to give him that.
She and Ripley descended the staircase that led to the basement of the five-bedroom, four-bathroom home here on Hollyfield Avenue, the most affluent stretch of properties that Openshaw had to offer. This was the home of Ethan Harlow, a noted music producer, something of a local celebrity according to Chief Sawyer. He’d also said that Ethan’s wife had been the one who found him, which meant that this killer was even more of a thrill-seeker than Ella thought.
The agents had arrived at the location at quarter to six. Chief Sawyer and two other officers were already in place, but the crime scene technicians were still en route. That meant Ella and Ripley were able to view the scene as the killer intended, corpse and all.
The underground room was unlike any other basement Ella had seen before. It was a vast square that spanned the entire width of the house, filled to the brim with relics of accomplishment. In addition to the collection of audio equipment - instruments, a grand piano, a sleek mixer deck – framed vinyl records hung in perfect rows. Gold, platinum, diamond. Ethan Harlow had conquered the music industry, it seemed.
And that made the juxtaposition between his life and death even more difficult to process.
Ethan’s body lay face-down on the glossy wooden floor, his legs tucked slightly underneath his computer desk. There were no visible wounds, only a stream of blood collecting beneath his torso. A gleaming phonograph, its surface buffed to a mirror-like shine, stood just a few paces away. Another scene, another record player.
Ella took a second to pay her respects to the poor gentleman at her feet. Killed in a place he should feel safe, consigning all his worldly talent to the ground. Outpourings of emotion in times like this kept her heart from turning to stone. She looked over the phonograph and the record player lodged inside. The lack of markings and the white label in the middle of the vinyl revealed it was another amateur creation.
“Sorry to summon you so early,” Chief Sawyer said. “We got the call one hour ago.”
Ella connected the dots. “He did this between four and five am?” That’s a deviation from the usual M.O.”
“Guess the nine pm kills weren’t a part of his M.O. at all. They were just a coincidence. Chief, you mentioned that his wife found him?”
“Yup,” Sawyer said. “We’ve taken her to the precinct. She couldn’t hang around here.”
“Understandable,” Ella said. She added interview Ethan’s wife to her mental checklist. “Did she mention how it went down?”
The chief said, “Hard to see through her hysteria, but from what I could gather, she heard loud music coming from that thing.” He nodded at the phonograph. “When she got down here, well, you can guess the rest.”
“Jesus,” Ella said as she knelt down to inspect Ethan’s wounds. She couldn’t get too close given the river of blood, but she got close enough. She gloved up then gently lifted Ethan’s torso to gauge his wounds. “Multiple lacerations. All in the abdomen. Can’t see how many exactly. Looks like a carbon copy of the other victims.”
Ella went back to her partner, looked around the lavish space, tried to visualize this unsub making his way in here.
Ripley said, “He’s getting more confident. He didn’t just knock on the door and blitz attack this guy. He snuck in, navigated the house, and made his way down here. This is meticulous planning. Obsessive. He might be weak but he makes up for it with cunning.”
Ella had mapped the house out on her short journey through it. This wasn’t some bog-standard suburban home. It was nothing short of a maze.
The statistical probability pointed to one frightening thought.
“Ripley, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Probably not. What’s on your mind?”
“What are the chances our killer stalked this guy, invaded his home, and managed to find him down here at five in the morning? He’d have to be the luckiest guy in the world to pull that off.”
“Get to the point,” Ripley said. Clearly her brief sleep session hadn’t done much to quench her irritation.
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