For the past two hours, Ella had been on high alert, waiting for the news that a new body was waiting for them. She had no doubt this panicked state would continue through the night, so sleep was wishful thinking right now.

  “That’s not true. If no one hears this guy’s music, we won’t know about it until someone happens across the body.”

  “You’re not dreading that call?” asked Ella. “You could sleep knowing that?”

  Ripley stifled a laugh. “I could sleep on a cactus in a hurricane. Come on, there is such a thing as being case-blind, you know.”

  “One more look,” Ella begged. “Then we’ll call it a night.”

  Ripley asked, “One more look into what? There is no connection between Vicky Haben and Grayson Miller. They ran in different circles, worked different jobs, lived miles apart. No social media interaction, no crossed IP addresses. Their phone signals have never even pinged off the same towers.”

  The tech department had done their job and come up short. Ella didn’t want to believe it, but denying evidence was a fast track to a wrongful conviction.

  Ripley continued, “No mention of Vicky on Grayson’s website either.” She picked up the nameless CD of Vicky’s recordings and pushed it across the table. “I’m guessing there’s no mention of this either, but it doesn’t have a name so we can’t check it.”

  Ella plucked the CD from the table, opened it, and inspected the silver disc inside. The inscription read DVD-RW, which meant it was rewritable. It was just an amateur recording, not an official release, so she doubted anyone other than the musicians who recorded it knew it existed.

  Thoughts of Vicky Haben’s apartment came surging back. She remembered the sparse interior, the music room, the gorgeous violin.

  The sister.

  “Wait a minute,” Ella said. “Vicky’s sister mentioned an abusive ex-boyfriend.”

  “Yeah, Jack,” said Ripley. “But we couldn’t find any mention of a Jack in her apartment. And there were none on the database?”

  “One, but he’s dead.”

  “Then so is our lead.”

  “Wait, she said he’d been sent to a mental hospital, but they kept it hush-hush. Why would a serious incident be kept quiet? And what reason might there be for it not being on a police database?”

  Ella felt something stirring. A spark formulating into an actionable idea.

  “Two reasons,” Ripley said. “Either the offender was a minor or the victim was a minor. Or it involved a celebrity.”

  Ella scrolled up and down the database again, double checking to ensure she hadn’t missed any Jacks. No, there was only one. Deceased. Passed away ten years ago at the age of twenty-five. Couldn’t be him.

  “Damn it. I need to go deeper. I assume I don’t have clearance to do that on the system here.”

  “It depends. If the crime was heinous enough, it might be on the FBI base. But Dark, you’re going off hearsay. It might have been in another jurisdiction, or it might not even have happened at all. You know how bereaved family members can get. Always quick to point the finger.”

  “Can’t deny that, but I need to check or I’ll go insane.” Ella closed down the Openshaw program, navigated to the VICAP system. Three layers of security later, she was back in her familiar program.

  Ella input her search criteria. She kept it within twenty miles of Openshaw, put the time frame between 2016 and 2019. She selected cases involving minors that would result in prolonged stays in rehabilitation facilities.

  Three-hundred and thirteen results.

  Ella said, “Got a hit. Lots of hits.”

  “Any Jacks?”

  Filtered down by first name, two names popped out at her. “Here. Two Jacks.”

  “Read ’em out.”

  “First one. Jack Harper, incarcerated for delinquency, assault and he’s…. damn it. Still hospitalized to this day.”

  Ella’s heart began to seize up. She found herself silently begging to some invisible deity that this next name on the list be useful.

  “Next?” Ripley asked.

  “Jack Marlow. Twenty-nine years old at the time he was admitted. In for attacking a fifteen-year-old kid. Suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, delusions.” Ella caught her breath. “Released in… oh crap.”

  “Recently?”

  “Last month.”

  Ella held her partner’s stare, tension etched on her face. “And where’s that guy now?” Ripley asked.

  “He’s…” Ella slumped her head down, pushed the laptop across the table in frustration. “Agh! Now lives in Colorado.”

  Ripley mimicked her partner’s fury. She kicked the chair beside her, clenched her fist. “Close, but no cigar.”

  Ella grabbed the only reachable object. Vicky Haben’s homemade CD. The plastic threatened to snap between her fingers, but Ella’s peripheral vision caught something.

  Something she’d seen earlier but hadn’t properly registered. Only now, with the relevant words flying around her head did it stand out. The name whispered itself, beckoned her to investigate.

  The names of the band members.

  Henry Walker.

  Vicky Haben.

  James Port.

  Luca Turner.

  And the most important one: Jacques Caster.

  Ella jumped across the table, thrusting the CD in her partner’s face. “Holy crap Ripley, check this.”

  Ripley squinted her eyes. “What am I looking at?”

  “The band personnel. Look.”

  “Jacques Caster,” Ripley said, her pupils dilating as she registered the name. “Oh, damn.”

  “It’s French for Jack, right?”

  “Yeah. The J is pronounced differently sometimes, but some people stick with the English version.”

  Ella was already typing away. She plugged the name into the FBI system. She froze, holding her breath, counting down the seconds until the program had finished crawling.

  Ping.

  One result.

  Ella could barely believe it.

  “Mother of God. He’s right here,” she said.

  Ripley shot up from her chair. “He’s on VICAP? The same guy?”

  Ella dug in to his file. Jacques Caster. Thirty-five years old, lifelong resident of Openshaw. Incarcerated in New Wellness Medical Facility in 2018 for assaulting his own brother.

  “You gotta read this, Ripley. Jacques Caster was in for assault for a family member. And he was released earlier this year.”

  “He’s still in the area?”

  “Yeah,” Ella called, already reaching for her jacket. She quickly checked the listed address. “He’s on Valery Drive, about four miles south. That’s barely half a mile from Grayson Miller’s place too.”

  “It’s late as hell but never too late to catch a killer,” Ripley said. “Any more details on his criminal history? The more we know, the better chance we have of making him talk.”

  Ella opened the notes section, flicked through the basic details, and got to the official police report.

  It was only a short column, and she read it three times to make sure.

  “Christ almighty,” Ella said. “This is good. This is very good.”

  Ripley hurried to the other side of the table, peered down at the laptop. She read aloud.

  “Mr. Caster confessed to maiming Harry, his fifteen-year-old brother, after reportedly suffering a bout of psychosis brought on by a lack of available treatment. Mr. Caster suffers from a rare condition colloquially termed chronic melomania.”

  “Chronic melomania?” Ripley asked. “The hell is that?”

  Ella eyeballed her partner and said, “Music addiction. This guy attacked his underage brother because he couldn’t listen to music.”

  Ripley said, “There’s no way that’s a real condition.”

  “Maybe not, but…” Ella scrolled to the next section of notes. There was a psychology report from New Wellness Medical Facility scanned in.

  Ella read it, only once this time.

  Because what it said confirmed she had to meet this man.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ella did the driving, channeling her inner speed racer as she navigated the streets of Openshaw. It was almost half past eleven at night and there’d been no calls of any bodies. That meant either the killer was taking the night off or the body was yet to be found.

  But her attention was on the bizarre actions of Jacques Caster. Not only had the mysterious musician attacked an underage family member, but he suffered from a condition that was so rare it was thought to not even exist.

  And to add to the suspicion, a psychologist claimed that the best music to quench Jacques’s rage was classical pieces.

  “I still don’t know how someone can be addicted to music,” Ripley shouted from the passenger seat. “That’s batshit crazy.”

  Ella took a corner way too sharply and nearly toppled the car. The GPS said they were half a mile away from their destination.

  “I don’t think it’s music addiction; I think it’s dopamine addiction,” Ella said. The medical notes on the system were brief, so Ella applied her own critical thinking to the idea. Music was a minor form of therapy for depression and anxiety, and in the same way people became addicted to painkillers or morphine, people might come to over-rely on music to self-remedy their ailments. “We get positive feelings from listening to music. If we don’t get that hit, we might become restless or depressed or pissed off. Combine that with a preexisting mental problem and you’ve got a recipe for a monster.”

  “And this guy is Vicky Haben’s ex-boyfriend?”

  “Yes, according to her sister. They must have collaborated on an album too. And the reason Vicky or her sister didn’t know about his crime was because it involved a minor.”

  “I can’t lie that it fits the bill,” Ripley said. “I guess we gotta ask this guy a lot of questions.”

  They passed the sign for Valerie Street. Fifty yards to the destination. The street was like a sleeping giant, its quietness softly snoring in the night. The modest homes standing sentry in two perfect rows were the only witnesses to its slumber.

  “There, number two hundred.” Ella parked the car in front of a neighbor’s house so as not to alert Jacques to their presence. Ella had this unsub profiled as a runner, and while the killer might not have been strong, that didn’t mean he couldn’t run like hell.

  “He live alone?” Ripley asked.

  “No idea. It didn’t say.”

  “Pistols to the palm,” Ripley said. “I got a feeling this guy might not come out with open arms.”

  “You read my mind.” Ella shot out of the car and edged towards house number two hundred. The single-story home was enveloped in a layer of dilapidation: paint-peeled walls and a front garden full of weeds. A broken fence encircled the place from front to back, doing more damage to its presentation than providing any security. Ella had seen a lot of serial killers’ homes in the past twelve months, and they didn’t stray too far from the image in front of her.

  Ella rapped her knuckles on the front door, the sound carrying on the night. A second later, a hallway light switched on. Ella prepped herself for a potential battle.

  The door creaked open, a pair of eyeballs appeared in the crack.

  Not Jacques Caster.

  A young woman, platinum blonde, glasses perched on the tip of her nose. “Hello?” she asked.

  “Hi, is this the home of Jacques Caster?” asked Ella.

  The woman shut the door a little. “Maybe. What’s he done now?”

  Ella dismissed the question, pulled out her badge. “We’re with the FBI. Could we talk to Jacques?”

  “He’s asleep,” the young woman said. “Believe me, you don’t want to wake him up.”

  Ripley jumped in, “You don’t want to wake me up, either. Now please, if Jacques is in, we need to talk to him.”

  The woman turned and looked down her hallway as though the answer to her predicament might lie ten feet behind her. “Why? What’s this about?”

  “There’s been a series of homicides in the area. We want to talk to Jacques about them.”

  “Homicides? You think my brother is a murderer?”

  Ripley said, “You could save us a lot of time by just letting us in.”

  “I would, but Jacques is… he can be a handful.”

  “We can handle it,” Ripley said. “This is kind of important.”

  Ella hadn’t even met the suspect but she felt good about him. If his own sister was admitting his behavioral trouble, it meant they had a potential monster on their hands. As Ella edged closer to the door, she heard the faint hum of a piano playing in the distance.

  “You have music on?” she asked.

  “Always. Jacques needs it.”

  “Why?”

  Before she could answer, footsteps boomed in the background, like something heavy being flung down the stairs. “Who’s at the door?” a voice called.

  Jacques’s sister’s expression was one of worry. She’d shut the door further still. “No one,” she called.

  Then a second figure appeared at the crack, tearing at the chain that held the door on the latch and pulling it open.

  Jacques Caster in all his glory.

  He was a burly figure, broad but not muscular. Deep brown eyes, hair cut to the scalp. He didn’t look like Ella imagined, and didn’t even fit Sally Haben’s description. Several years in an institute had not been kind to him.

  “You’re Jacques?” she asked. She stared a dagger through the man’s sister, her attempt at a lie now fully exposed. Her suspicions roused further still.

  “Yeah. Who are you?” said Jacques.

  Ella had her pistol discreetly glued to her hand. The guy looked like he packed a punch, and his rapid weight-shifting between legs suggested he could erupt at any second. Ella thought he might suffer from a mental handicap, but looking at him, he just looked like a pure ball of rage.

  “We’re FBI. We need to talk to you,” she said.

  “What? Why?”

  Ripley added, “We’ll ask the questions. Can we come in?”

  “No,” said the sister. “Please don’t.”

  Ella peered over at her partner, the frustration evident. During their past few cases, Ripley had managed to maintain her calm. She used to fly off the handle at a wrong word, but she’d been a much more pleasant soul in recent months. For some reason, that calm woman was nowhere to be seen tonight.

  Ripley slammed her hand against the wall. “Listen, we’re asking these questions whether you like it or not. I’m fine with doing things the hard way if you are.”

  Jacques trembled, shifting from side to side. He stuck both hands into his pockets, then to his neck. His pale-white face flushed red as his lips curved downward.

  Ella knew the signs of an anxiety attack when she saw one.

  “Guys, if we could just come in and talk, this would be…”

  “We’re not talking,” the sister said as she clutched her brother’s arm. “Jacques, it’s okay.”

  The much larger brother pushed her off, so much that she toppled against the wall. Ella’s instinct took over. She knew Ripley would be reaching for her gun at that very second, so she grabbed her partner’s wrist and shook her head. If Jacques was their perp, they wouldn’t get much of a confession out of him in this state. An anxiety attack could last hours, days, and she didn’t know if it could be made worse – or even fatal – by another underlying condition.

  They needed him in a competent state.

  “Calm down, Jacques, we’re just here to talk.”

  Without warning, the suspect fled into the house, footsteps thundering in his wake. Ella sprang into action, storming the house in pursuit, embracing the bittersweet notion of a fleeing suspect. Running suggested a battle was on the horizon, but it also suggested guilt.

  Ella was inside the home, Ripley two steps behind. It was a short journey down the hallway before Ella froze in place, slowly sheathed her weapon, and processed the unexpected sight nestled in the corner.

  Jacques Caster was crouched down, cowering, arms wrapped around his head. “Jacques,” she said, “If you did something bad, you need to tell us.”

  She didn’t want to heighten his state, but still needed to be blunt with him. Looking at him now, she tried to visualize him at each crime scene, sneaking his way in, thrusting butcher knives into two peoples stomachs.

  Ella struggled to see it with any believability. Chronic anxiety wasn’t a common symptom in serial killers, and someone of this unsub’s bent would either confess or deny their wrongdoings outright. A response like this was all but unique to someone of his perceived character. Jacques could simply have been a compelling actor, but such ability was at odds with everything she’d discerned about him during their short exchange. He wore his problems on his sleeve, and if he’d been responsible for two murders, he wouldn’t be able to keep it to himself.

  Ripley charged in front of Ella, her heavy boots clinking off the hardwood floor. “Mr. Caster, where were you the last two nights?”

  “I can’t remember,” Jacques shouted.

  “It’s not a hard question, buddy. Try again.”

  Jacques fought his way to a standing position, his arms still wrapped around his head. Whenever someone placed a barrier between their words and the person they were talking to, nine times out of ten, they were about to tell a lie.

  “I don’t know.”

  “He was here with me,” his sister cried out. “Every night. All week.”

  Ripley ignored the comment. “Is that true, Jacques?”

  Jacques dropped his arms, arched his shoulders, and snatched a picture frame off the wall and bounced it off the ground. His red-flushed skin had taken on a pale blue tinge, his breathing short and shallow. The man began to sweat as though he was halfway through a sprint. His eyes darted from corner to corner, searching for an escape.

  Ripley pulled out her pistol, aimed it at the suspect. Ella gripped her partner’s arm in haste but Ripley’s firm stance couldn’t be bested. Jacques, now staring down the barrel of a Glock 17, mutated into a beacon of fury. Ella spotted the tell-tale signs of someone on the verge of attack, someone about to make a fatal mistake. Jacques rapidly shifted his weight around, like cornered prey about to make a last ditch effort to stay alive.

 

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