Page 35 of Girl, Entangled

‘You thought what, Mr. Hale?’

‘I know what this looks like, Agent Dark. I know exactly what it looks like. It looks like me. I’m freakishly tall, just like the guy in the video.’

‘Agreed.’ Ella did him the courtesy of turning the photograph face down. ‘So if you’re innocent, why did you run from us at the first opportunity?’

‘Because I knew who you were.’

Ella and Ripley swapped a look. Ella said, ‘What? We’re the FBI. We told you that.’

‘Not that. I mean you. Agent Dark. You caught Tobias Campbell, the Keymaster, the Alchemist. I’ve followed you ever since they did that Lifetime show about the Mimicker. That’s what I do. I read about cases instead of having friends. And when a guy I’d argued with has just been murdered with a method I happen to be the world’s biggest bore about, I know how it looks. Especially when the woman walking towards me is the one who, as far as I can tell, has never got the wrong person.’

Ella didn’t have anything to say to that, so she looked at Ripley, who was grinning despite all of it. The two of them knew the same thing Hale didn’t: that Ella had sat across this same kind of table from a long line of innocent people and believed every one of them guilty for an hour or two.

‘If only you knew the truth,’ Ella said.

‘Honestly. One of my pals works in the Intelligence department or whatever it is over there. He gives me the scoop.’ Hale frantically waved his hands as though this was the detail that crossed the line. ‘Nothing confidential, of course. Just the overview.’

Ella asked, ‘Who’s your pal?’

‘Lee Rhodes.’

A single, quiet of course went round inside her head and didn’t come out. ‘Roadrunner? The Human Spreadsheet.’

‘Yeah. You know him?’

‘A little bit. I sat next to him for seven years. Mr. Hale, can you confirm where you were the past two nights?’

‘At a Best Western on West Patrick Street, in Frederick. Room two-eleven. I checked in Saturday afternoon and I haven’t been home since.’

Ripley asked, ‘Why weren’t you at home?’

‘Because a pipe broke in the apartment above my workshop last Friday morning and put my ceiling on my floor. The landlord is paying for the hotel. There’s a receipt. There’s CCTV. There’s a woman at the front desk who calls me Frankie. The hotel is ten miles from here. You can check the cameras at the hotel exit. You can check the cameras at the parking lot.’

Hale stopped for a breath.

‘I am not your man, Agent Dark. I am a man who said something he shouldn’t have said to a stranger online once.’

Ella thought back to what else she had on this man. Not much. Except an Ontario Health card. ‘Is that all? Because I might be doing myself a disservice here, but I don’t think I’m scary enough to run from on sight.’

‘Fine. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m Canadian, and I live here illegally. I came here eleven years ago from Thunder Bay. I saw you, I recognized you, and I saw myself going straight back to Canada or straight to a prison cell. I’d lose my business and everything I love. So I ran like a coward. That’s the whole truth and no, Roady doesn’t know I’m here illegally either.’

Ella closed the folder.

A dead end was a dead end, and both her and Ripley knew the look of one when it sat down in front of them with its hands flat on the table.

They were in the same position they were at six that morning, minus a man.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Ella walked to the Hoover Building, talked to Roadrunner about Francis Hale and was back in the MPD parking lot again within forty minutes. According to Roadrunner, Hale was a ‘fine gentleman,’ and while this glowing reference wasn’t evidence of Hale’s innocence, it did tip the scales a little. Before heading inside, Ella sat in the precinct’s smoking area, despite not being a smoker. She often wished she did, because she imagined nicotine was a great way to clear the cobwebs. But addiction was a slippery slope, and before you knew it you had yellow fingers and no teeth.

She went back to her office and found Ripley nose-deep in photographs. Ripley asked, ‘Did you sign any autographs while you were gone?’

‘Hilarious.’

‘You can forget about going undercover ever again. You know that?’

‘I’m not famous.’