Her only hope was that she could take him down before any lives were lost.
Ella snuck to the first door, threw it open and looked inside. It was a stock room of items: electronics, speakers, TVs, outdated technologies. Not here. She crept to the room opposite, drowning in adrenaline when she saw the outline of a giant figure in the darkness. The beast occupied the entire corner of the room, his head almost reaching the ceiling. Her flashlight lit up the figure’s creamy skin, inhuman expression and perfectly smooth genitals.
A mannequin. Ella had to stop herself cursing out loud. For a moment, she feared she was dealing with someone of inhuman proportions. She checked the rest of the room, finding a toilet, bath, and sink. More boxes of junk took up the spaces between them.
By her math, the next room had to be Ace’s bedroom.
Ella kept herself calm, composed, and focused. She gripped her pistol, finding solace in its touch. This unsub didn’t use guns as far as she knew, so the advantage was hers. But an unaware victim had no such protection.
Ella’s thoughts scrambled as an earsplitting scream pierced the air. The lack of visibility in the corridor heightened her other senses, and the sheer volume of the cry caused intense physical pain. In a split second, her calm composure all but vanished. Her fight response took over as her primary drive. She was into the last door less than a blink later, shouldering it open with brute force.
She saw it by yellow lamplight. Two figures, both locked in a deathly embrace. It took Ella a moment to make sense of the scene in front of her.
Ace, the large, bearded store owner, was at the mercy of another man. Up against the wall, his attacker stood behind him with a knife to his throat. Ace, red-eyed and wearing nothing but shorts, had the face of a man who believed death was imminent. His tiny eyes were widened with abject terror.
“Stop! FBI!” Ella shouted.
The man was much younger than she’d anticipated. Early twenties? His gingery blonde hair reminded her of someone she’d seen recently. She connected the pieces together, realizing now she’d seen the man only this morning.
Only he wasn’t a man when she saw him. He was a child. He was the boy in the newspaper article from 2002.
The attacker renewed his grip on the hostage. “Who are you? Why are you here?” he screamed. His voice was soft, nasally, feminine. She remembered Kevin Steen saying he reminded him of a schoolgirl.
“What’s your name?” Ella asked.
“I don’t have one. Now get back before I cut this guy’s throat to shreds.”
Ace reached up to alleviate the pressure on his neck, but his attacker pushed him off.
“Sir, please listen to me. Your dad is gone and isn’t coming back. Taking revenge on his friends isn’t going to help you.”
“What the hell do you know? You think you know me?”
Ella had to keep this man calm. She saw how he reacted at the Barry Windham crime scene. Rage meant violence.
“No, I don’t know much about you at all, but I know why you’re doing this, and I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to. I can help you.”
“You’re lying. You don’t know anything about me.”
Ella saw a crack she could open up. If she couldn’t talk this man down, and she doubted she could, she needed time to get a clean shot. If she could just get Ace out of the way for a split second, she could take this man down.
“No I don’t, so why don’t you tell me? Why have you killed three people? Alan, Jimmy, Barry. Why?”
“Don’t say their names. Those pieces of shit don’t deserve to be spoken of ever again.”
Ella kept it going. Time was her friend here. “Why? What did they do to you?”
“They made my life hell is what they did. My dad’s coin collecting buddies. Death is too good for them.”
“I’m confused here. What exactly do you despise about coin collecting?”
“I couldn’t give a shit about coin collecting. My dad was the collector, but he dragged me into it. Every day, he’d make me rummage through trash, go to stupid garage sales, spend my entire life looking for coins. It ruined me. It broke me.”
They said the greatest burden a child could bear was the unlived life of his parents. Here was living proof. “But why Alan and Jimmy and Barry? They did nothing to you.”
“They knew my old man. I was dragged to see them every single week, sitting alone in their houses while my dad talked shit with them for hours. If I complained or made a sound, my dad would smack the hell out of me. These assholes overlooked that.” He pushed his knife harder into Ace’s neck. “Didn’t you?”
“Brad, we had no idea. I swear on my life,” Ace shouted. “We thought your father was a good man.”
Ella caught his name.
“Bullshit. You knew full well what he was like. You just didn’t care because he gave you money. That was all you cared about. All my dad cared about. All he wanted was one coin to make him rich. I thought that maybe, just maybe, if I found a coin that was worth a dime, he might start loving me. Never happened.”
“I’m sorry, Brad,” cried Ace. “I didn’t know. You don’t have to do this.”
“Brad, I know all about childhood trauma. Killing these men won’t make that pain go away. You have an internal pain that you’re trying to address externally. Why don’t you talk about it with me?”
“You think I’m a sucker? The second I let this guy go, you’re going to shoot me. Well, that isn’t gonna happen.”
Ella’s finger itched on the trigger. Brad was clearly in control of his mental faculties, not psychotic. He knew what he was doing. What was the solution here? Wait until Brad killed Ace and then fire? Or take a shot right now and hope for the best?
No, another good man couldn’t die because of this psychopath. There had to be a way to make him lower his guard. All she needed was a fleeting moment.
“Brad, those coins you left at the crime scenes. They were your father’s?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not sure if you know this, but your father wasn’t exactly a very knowledgeable collector,” Ella said. She wasn’t sure where she was going with this, but it would come to her. Backup couldn’t be too far away now. But even when they arrived, Ace’s life would still hang in the balance.
So it was on her to draw this man out.
“One of those coins you had. It was worth a lot.”
“What? Stop lying to me. Does anyone tell the truth anymore?” Brad screamed. Ella saw the anger and frustration beginning to mount. She didn’t have long before he reached his limit.
“I’m not. We had them all appraised by an expert. Six coins in total, right? Five of them were common, but that one… holy moly.”
“You’re talking out of your ass. Which one?”
Kennedy, Japan, China was how she remembered them. “The Chinese one. Shen-si Province, 1964.”
“That coin isn’t worth a thing.”
“You’re right, it’s not. Not usually. But the coin you had was a misprint. They’d etched one of the characters wrong.”
Brad held her stare with his black beady eyes. It was difficult to gauge his response by the light of the single lamp in the room, but what she did see was his grip slightly loosen.