PSYCHOPATH

chapter 20: part 2

Chapter 20: PART 2

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELLIE

~ "God should have made girls lethal when he made monsters of men." ~

-e.h

MONTH THREE

Time dissolved into itself, as shapeless as rain.

One of the missing women was found.

Dead, of course.

Body found on a large metal rebar, rusty and long, protruding right through the middle of her abdomen cavity. There was a twisted, unnatural angle in her neck, and her eyes were still open, like she was staring right at them in a sightless, glassy gaze. Her last moments alive immortalized forever on that ashen face.

Her name was Diana Roberts.

And it was utterly hideous to look at, like a dream where Ella wanted to run but couldn't, couldn't fight, couldn't run, couldn't scream, couldn't do anything. All Ella could do was stand there and stare at the carnage unfolded in front of her and wonder when Seth and Harry would have to take photos of her on that spike.

On the corpse's deformed stomach, naked and gory, a code wrapped around the rebar in the middle:

It ain't over till the fat lady sings.

Maybe he thought it was amusing, to put a proverb such as that for the murder of a slightly overweight woman; but Ella knew that wasn't what it was meant for, not truly. No, it was always something else...

Nothing was irreversible until the final act was played out.

There were still some more tricks up his sleeve it seemed. A warning and an invitation to play all wrapped into one dead body for her, always for her.

Although the woman had been missing for quite a while, Ella couldn't help the feeling that she was the one at fault for the death, that her recent actions gave permission or a purpose for a new murder. If only she hadn't listened to him...if only she hadn't blindly followed him...if only she had never succumbed to such dark parts of her own psyche to let it happen in the first place. It was guilt, deadly shards of glass splintering her ribcage with each breath, moral residues parasitically digging crevices into her bones. In short, it hurt to breathe.

Diana Roberts was a prostitute, a drastic difference from the other women that had disappeared the weeks before, of women all young and in college and by all accounts from peers, decent. The team jumped on the idea that the Code Killer chose her because of her profession, and Ella innately knew that was bullshit. Nothing about being a prostitute would mark the woman as needing to die in his books.

No, it was something big enough, something actually terrible, to warrant his seal of approval for death.

With some more elbow grease put into it, the team dug up souring news. That she was selling her twelve-year old daughter to male friends for the money to feed her heroin addiction.

And it felt like a very pointed message to Ella, like the Code Killer was talking directly to her. See, see, this is who your mother was.

When it wasn't. It was not the same thing, not at all. Ella felt sick, the illness of anger and indignation hitting her with a crushing, agonizing sense of how could you have not seen this coming, this is what you get for doing this to him, leaving him.

She watched as the news reporters feasted on the scene like scavenger birds. Cameras flashing and squawking questions to passing officers. Ella observed the scene with disdain; she hated this. The Code Killer probably loved it, those flashing lights and his deeds in print, how he had practically become a household name, and the whole world was waiting on him with bated breath.