Page 13 of Girl, Entangled

Curiosity got the better of her. ‘What do you know so far?’

‘Not a lot. No ID on the vic yet. No phone or wallet or keys. No car nearby. All he had on him was a bunch of cash.’

‘Drug deal gone south?’

Ripley asked, ‘How many drug dealers do you know who hang people in public? And he must be a hell of an opportunistic killer to utilize a nearby gallows.’

‘True. So the vic was lured there. Do you know if it was the hanging that killed him or if he was dead before that?’

‘Don’t know, but I’ll know at some point today.’

Ella set the phone down but kept it within reach. She felt the case taking hold of her, and she resented it. Not the murder itself, because there’d always be a murder somewhere, but she resented how easily the case had dug its claws in. A hanged man at a Renaissance faire, no ID, no phone, a fold of cash and a rope that had been bought for the occasion. The questions had already started lining up in her head, in order, the way they always did, and she hadn’t invited a single one of them in.

She didn’t want this because she had a killer of her own to track down. Lindsey Doyle was out there somewhere. That was the case that mattered.

And here she was, looking at another woman’s case, feeling her pulse pick up at a man executed on the gallows.

‘You know how hard it is to hang someone against their will?’ she asked.

Ripley said, ‘Yes, I do. Hoisting someone up requires great strength. If it’s strangulation and not decapitation, the legs usually find relief somewhere.’

Death by hanging was technically decapitation. The head was severed from the body to induce instant death. Suicide by hanging usually resulted in strangulation, because most victims didn’t drop far enough to cause decapitation, and so the knot around their throat did the rest. Ella only knew one serial killer in history who’d hanged their victims. That was Tobias Campbell, and he’d talked his victims into performing the deed rather than doing the physical work himself. Thinking about it, the similarities to that old foe – the only foe she’d ever shot dead – was the main, albeit subconscious, factor arousing her interest in Ripley’s case.

But she didn’t want to invite herself on board. Doing so would feel like a betrayal to earlier commitment to either spend the week working the Doyle case or calling radio game shows.

‘Mia,’ she said.

‘Yes, I know what you’re thinking, and yes, I could use your help. I’ve got hundreds of faire workers to look into and I can’t do it all myself. The MPD guys won’t know what to look for, because whoever did this isn’t a normal murderer. Not to mention I’m on a pretty strict timescale. The faire workers will disperse in a few days, if they haven’t already.’

Ella thought about it. Helping Ripley meant breaking the only two promises she’d made herself this morning, and she’d made them in good faith. But how many times had Ripley come to her aid in the past? She’d lost count of how many, and such efforts deserved reciprocation.

‘Alright, I’ll help you out. It might help me kickstart my thought process for this Doyle crap. Why are you on this case, anyway?’

‘The chief at the MPD called me. I told Vernon.’

‘Simple as that,’ Ella said.

‘Simple as that. Vernon knows better than to say no. So, what do you think? Want to help me get started, or do you want to sit around in sweatpants all day?’

‘Alright, you win. I’ll help.’

Ella grabbed Ripley’s phone. The screen had locked, but Ella put Ripley’s passcode in. The woman hadn’t changed it since Ella met her.

She went back to the victim and his limp, flaccid corpse. She pinched the screen and zoomed in, because now that she’d committed to finding this man’s killer, her subconscious thrust something to the front of the queue.

The victim’s tattoos.

‘Ready to get started? There are a hundred interviews to get through.’

‘Wait.’

A crude, amateur scrawling on the victim’s arm had seized her. It was a clock with no hands on it.

‘What are you looking at?’ Ripley asked.

And on the victim’s hand were five barely-distinguishable dots, arranged like a five on a dice. Four dots outside, one on the inside.

That confirmed it.