“Are you curious how I got you out?” Peaches asked, obvious wanting Ellie to say yes.
“You did something risky and clever,” Ellie replied dryly, keeping her eyes on the road.
“You have more spunk now,” Peaches replied.
“A serial killer is hunting my family, my husband is going to die, and I’ll soon be, if not already, wanted by the police. Nice girl Ellie has left the building.”
“I like it,” Peaches replied. “Anyway, I got you out by disabling the cameras and pick-pocketing the keys. It was rather simple, to be honest.”
“Glad to hear it,” Ellie said, sarcastically. “You haven’t said where we’re driving to,”
Peaches pointed to an alley up ahead. “Pull in there.”
Ellie did so, avoiding a gaggle of people marching down the sidewalk. When the pickup was fully concealed by the two buildings, Ellie turned off the engine. They mellowed in the darkness of the vehicle. Ellie turned to the detective. “I’m grateful that you helped me, I really am, but why? I know how risky this is.”
“Do you?” Peaches said with a cheeky smile. Noticing Ellie’s lack of amusement, he decided to take the situation much more seriously. “Truthfully, I hate being benched. Even in middle school, being on the sidelines never felt right.”
“Peaches, you have a concussion. You can’t even drive. Are you sure you’re up for this?” Ellie asked.
“If you want me to leave, I will,” Peaches replied. “I don’t need to be here. It was a choice I made, and yes, I might be hopped up on God knows how much pain medication, but there’s a killer out there that’s going to keep on hurting people until he’s stopped. And you, Ellie Batter, are the only one who can stop him.”
Ellie was all for compliments, but that statement felt like a bit of a stretch. “I’m just some woman trying to save her family.”
“You’re a very special woman,” Peaches replied confidently. “I remember when you first came into the police department all those weeks ago. You were shy and timid, with a portrait of a dead woman. Any detective in their right mind would’ve locked you away, but I knew, by your conviction, that you were in this--not for some paycheck or personal glory-- but because it was the right thing to do. And now look at you, you’re battle-hardened, wise, and fierce. How many people can say they’ve been in multiple shootouts and duked it out with a serial killer? That’s something to brag about.”
Ellie did take some pride in it, and though she didn’t feel like she’d changed much, she knew she had. The old Ellie would never think about violating the law or breaking out of any place that the police put her in, and now she did it with little hesitation.
Ellie noticed the white of the bandage peeking out from Peach’s hoodie. She fixed it for him. “I wouldn’t be able to do with it without you. So what’s our next step?”
Peaches chuckled to himself. The pain meds must’ve really been kicking in. “I was hoping to hear your ideas.”
Ellie mumbled a few choice words under her breath and then asked for his phone.
“It’s crushed, remember?” Peaches replied. Ellie remembered Peaches was able to dial the police before the hooded man stopped the phone and sent his steel-toed boot into the knot on Peaches’s forehead.
The detective pulled out a burner phone. “Luckily, I bought another one today.”
Ellie took it from his hands and dialed her parents’ phone number. For the first time, she was glad her twenty-seven-year-old little brother still lived with her folks. She would be able to get them all out of the house.
With a groggy voice, her father Howard answered. “Hello?”
“Dad, it’s me, Ellie,” she said quickly.
“Ellie? What’s wrong? Why are you calling so late?” Howard asked.
There was a soft clicking sound heard as he turned on the bedside lamp.
Martha’s voice was soft and distant. “Is that Ellie? Put her on speakerphone.”
“Dad,” Ellie said anxiously. “Listen to me, because what I’m about to say won’t make much sense, but it’s very important.”
“Okay?” Her father said with unease. “What is it?”
“Someone’s coming after you. A very bad man. He’s going to kill you, Mom, and Paul if you don’t pack your bags and leave tonight.”
The line went silent.
Ellie’s heart raced. “Dad? Hello?”
“We’re here,” she heard her mother say.
Her father took a deep breath in the way that parents do when they were about to say something awkward. “Ellie, have you been drinking?”
“No, Dad.” Ellie took offense. “Listen to me, you, Mom, and Paul just need to leave town for a few days. I’ll pay for the vacation. It doesn’t matter where, only that you go and don’t tell anyone. Not even me, understand?”
Martha whispered. “What’s she talking about?”
Howard whispered back. “I don’t know.”
“Dad, please,” Ellie begged.
“Ellie,” her dad said softly, “is Troy there? I’d like to talk to Troy.”
Ellie’s eyes watered. She blinked away the tears. In her mind, she could clearly see her husband strung up and bleeding. “He’s not here, Dad.”
“What do you mean?” her father replied.
“He’s indisposed,” Ellie replied and attempted to redirect the conversation. “You need to trust me. Get out of town. Promise me you’ll go, okay?”
Martha spoke up. “Ellie, are you feeling okay?”
“Mom, promise me,” Ellie begged.
“Alright, sweetie, we promise,” her mother replied. “Your father and I will research some places tomorrow after we run our errands.”
“Don’t worry about the errands,” Ellie replied, knowing that this conversation wasn’t going anywhere but downhill. “Just take Paul and go. Tonight.”
Her father sighed. “It will be a little hard to take Paul if he’s not here. Ellie, are you sure you’ve not been drinking? Do you want me to call someone for you? A cab, maybe?”
Ellie rubbed her hand down her face. She felt like a broken record player. She wanted to scream Why can’t you just trust me?! She had been a very obedient child, your typical goody-two-shoes “A” student. That should’ve meant something. Alas, Ellie could see the situation from her parents’ point of view. Would she leave town without explanation if they asked her to go? Ellie couldn’t answer that question. How could she expect her parents to answer it? Perhaps her brother could help. “Where’s Paul?”
“You told him to return your rental car,” Howard said as if speaking to a child.
Martha interjected. “He told us he wanted to spend a few nights in Northampton before making the long drive back home.”
Ellie’s gut wrenched. She didn’t know if her family being separated was a good thing or a bad thing. In the blood mural, her mom, dad, and Paul were seated and executed in the same place, but the nature and style of the drawing was so different from the rest of her creations; Ellie didn’t know if that meant they’d all die in the same room or if it was just a series of similar murders. After all, this was the first time Ellie had painted a multiple homicide on the same canvas.
“Did Paul say where he was going?” Ellie replied. “I need a specific location.”
Her mother and father mumbled to one another and then returned to the phone. “He never said,” Howard explained. “Only that he’d be gone for a few days.”
“Ellie?” Martha asked, noticing Ellie’s silence.
“I got to go, Mom. Take what I said seriously. You two really are in real danger,” Ellie said. She felt resistance as she spoke the next words, almost as if it were the last thing she’d say to them. “I love you both very much.”
She ended the call and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. A group of twenty-something year olds walked down the sidewalk behind the truck, laughing. Peaches put his hand on Ellie’s shoulder, making her go tense. He noticed and withdrew his hand. “We’ll find a way to conv
ince them.”
His words were sweet and meaningless. Ellie gathered herself the best she could and dialed her brother’s phone number. It was one of the few cell numbers she had memorized despite only speaking to her brother once every blue moon. The phone rang and rang, but there was no reply. She left an urgent voicemail, begging him to call her back the moment he got a chance. After ten seconds, she called again. And again. And again. At some point, Paul would have to know this was an emergency despite it being an unfamiliar number to him. Then again, this was Paul she was talking about. Her ne’er-do-well brother was content living at home the rest of his life if it meant dodging responsibilities. Somehow, Ellie was able to secure a job in one of the most challenging industries in the world before her brother could save up enough to buy his own place.
“No luck?” Peaches asked, already knowing the answer.
“It’s hopeless,” Ellie said dreadfully. “Nothing I say can convince them. Was I too forceful? Too indirect? Should I have told them the truth about the blackouts and everything?”
Peaches didn’t seem to have the answer to that, and if he did, he hid it well behind his unreadable face. They sat in the big pick-up at the center of some alley with no plan. Ellie wondered if it would’ve been better if she had stayed in the mental hospital. She wondered if it would’ve been better if she was the one the hooded man strung up in place of Troy. What good is this power if I can’t save anyone? Is this the cosmos’s way of mocking me? Ellie never liked the “woe is me” mindset, but she was struggling to find anything positive about the situation.
Detective Peaches’s face lit up. “I’ve got an idea.”
Ellie give him her attention.
Peaches continued. “Every canvas had certain symbols hidden inside of the artwork, correct?”
Ellie nodded.
Peaches proceeded with his thought. “What if we could use the mural to find out where your brother is hiding?”
Ellie thought on it for a moment. It wasn’t a bad idea, but… “I don’t have any images of the blood mural.”
“You were able to remember the address in your husband’s portraits, despite having only seen it with the corner of your eye,” Peaches reminded her.
He was right about that. To find the pub where her husband was being held captive, Ellie had focused hard on the portrait that seemed to sharpen in her mind and was able to recall the presence of some text, but it took looking at the actual photographs of her art room to see what the text actually read. Nevertheless, Ellie did as the detective suggested. She leaned her head back in her seat and shut her eyes. She recreated the pub’s basement in her mind and the mural in blood she’d finger-painted on the dusty floor. She recalled the coarse texture of the concrete, how it turned her flesh pink and raw as she swiftly rubbed the tip of her index finger across it. She looked out at the four faces and over their bodies. She remembered the bullet wound in their foreheads and the way their heads fell, but the rest of the memory was blurry. She could only focus on Troy and the overwhelming feeling of guilt as she had tried to cut him down but ended up blacking out instead.
Ellie opened her bloodshot eyes. “I can’t. It’s too… I don’t know, traumatic, I guess.”
Peaches tried his best not to look disappointed, but it was obvious. Whatever the medication the doctors gave him was dulling his poker face.
Ellie turned the car engine back on, but didn’t reverse yet. She had a choice to make: drive around Northampton in search of her little brother, or travel five hours to her parents’ house and get them out of Dodge. There was a good chance that the hooded man knew where her parents lived. After all, he had followed her to the old oak on Willoughby Drive where Ellie had discovered the abbreviated names of the victims: Kimberly, Pamela, Kenny, Michael, and Andrew. The hooded man had led her to a trap that Ellie was able to escape from. There was a good chance that he had followed her all the way from Northampton. The hooded man was resourceful. He knew Ellie’s name within days of her looking into the investigation. Her brother Paul, however, could be the wild card. The chance that the killer knew about his return to Northampton was unlikely because the time that he was dropping off the rent-a-car was the same time the hooded man was abducting Troy. But, Paul was a lot closer to Ellie and if he called back, Ellie would be able to meet him a lot quicker than her parents. From a pragmatic point of view, saving Paul was the better option, but that would leave Ellie’s parents as sitting ducks.
The Sophie’s Choice was making Ellie’s head scream in pain. “Is there any way you can get the crime scene photos from last night?”
Peaches shook his head. “It’s suspicious enough that I checked out of the hospital early this morning and then suddenly, you’re free a few hours later. To have me waltz into the police station asking about your painting would raise a few flags.”
“What if you snuck in? You broke me out of the mental hospital. What is a police station?” Ellie asked.
The detective chuckled. “I like your sense of humor. The mental hospital is child’s play when you know the right people and grease the right pockets. The police station though… that’s a different beast.”
“Then we’re screwed,” Ellie replied. “Unless we return to the crime scene. Can you do that?”
“They have an officer stationed outside of it. They expect that the killer might return and don’t want to miss him. If you’re caught going in there, it’s not going to look good.”
Ellie’s frustration bubbled up. At least in the mental hospital, she knew there was nothing she could do. Here, free to investigate, she was trapped in another prison, and without her art, what was she?
Peaches got to thinking again. “Could you recreate the mural?”
“With paint?” Ellie asked.
“Of course,” Peaches replied. “Is there some way you can--how do I say it-- tap into your power?”
“Force myself to have a blackout?” Ellie replied. She thought on it. The power was still new to her. “I don’t know, to be honest with you.”
Peaches smiled his reassuring smile. “Let’s give it a go. If it doesn’t work out, we head to your parents’ house.”
“You seem to be invested in this for someone whose motivation is that they just don’t like to sit on the sidelines,” Ellie inquired of the detective.
Peaches smiled to himself and looked at his hands. “Truth be told, I’ve never met anyone quite like you, or experienced anything quite like this case. I feel as though there are seasons in our lives that shape us. Your very existence has rocked my reality, Ellie. Some people run from that change, I’ve always been the sort to take on challenges.”
“Well… thanks,” Ellie said, reversing the car out of the alleyway. “I guess we’re going back to my place.”
“Not wise,” Peaches stopped her.
Ellie gave him a concerned look. “That’s where all my supplies are.”
“Yeah, and probably the police,” Peaches reminded her.
“Only if they know that I broke out of the mental hospital,” Ellie replied. She checked the time. “That was less than forty minutes ago.”
“If you want to risk it, we’ll risk it, but we can’t stay for long,” Peaches warned her.
“Grab-and-go. Got it.” Getting paint from a store had its advantages, but Ellie didn’t have any money on her and most shops were closed.
She drove down the city streets and toward her nice apartment complex near the heart of downtown. At the final stoplight before reaching her destination, a police cruiser pulled up next to her. The officer was hidden behind tinted windows, but Ellie could feel him watching her. She kept her eyes straight ahead, trying to play it cool. The light stayed red. The police radio buzzed on.
“This is Dispatch. A suspect in the Troy Batter assault has fled the hospital, most likely with assistance. We are requesting all available units to search for Ellie Batter, Caucasian female, slender, five-foot eight inches, with multiple stitches on her cheek and neck.”
&nbs
p; Ellie squeezed the steering wheel tighter. Her mouth dried out. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. In the corner of her eye, she watched the officer pick up the radio microphone and reply.
“Ellie,” Peaches’s soft voice pulled her out of the tense moment.
She turned to the detective and then back to the traffic light that had gone green. She started forward, careful not to hit the gas too hard. The police cruiser was driving parallel to her. She didn’t know if that was intentional or by chance.
“Keep it cool,” Peaches told her. “And your eyes forward.”
Ellie did as he said. The officer was to the left of her. He couldn’t see the stitched knife wound on her right cheek, but the graze on her neck was in clear view. It probably looked like a hickey. Looking as natural as she could, Ellie covered the wound with her hand. She grimaced as she touched the tender flesh. Just before reaching the apartment, the police squad car made a U-turn and vanished in Ellie’s rear view. Ellie breathed for what felt like the first time since the cop arrived.
“We don’t have much time,” Peaches reminded her.
Ellie and the detective hustled up the few steps into the apartment’s lobby. At this time of night, it was empty and quiet. Ellie jammed her finger against the elevator button. If her suite was not on the twelfth floor, she might have taken the stairs, but even then, Peaches may not be ready for that sort of physical strain. The elevator door dinged open. Ellie slipped inside, hit the button, and watched the lobby, expecting to see police flooding in as the door close. They didn’t come.
Ellie and Peaches reached the apartment. Not having her keys or wallet, Ellie unlocked the door with the spare Troy kept on the rim of the doorway.
“Grab whatever you need.” Peaches told her as she flipped on the light switch. “We won’t be coming back here for a while.”
The place was ransacked. The coat hanger was toppled over across the entrance, old food and liquids was spilled out, and Ellie’s prized paintings that decorated the walls were slashed apart and on the floor. Even though this happened when the hooded man kidnapped Troy, Ellie was shocked when she overlooked the destruction. She never had the time to clean.
Stolen Secrets: A Collection Of Riveting Mysteries Page 25
