Page 37 of Girl, Entangled

‘Yeah. We need to try and get real names for those regulars too. I’m guessing they won’t all be local, though.’

The door opened and Hibbert came in with a take-out coffee in one hand and a slim folder in the other. He set the coffee on the corner of Ella’s desk without being asked, which Ella took as a small kindness from a man who had been awake longer than either of them.

‘Hale’s alibi holds,’ he said.

Ripley set the printouts down. ‘All of it?’

‘All of it. I had a uniform from the Frederick barracks walk into the lobby of the Best Western on West Patrick Street about twenty minutes ago. The manager handed over the whole digital lot inside ten minutes. The desk records have Hale checking in Sunday afternoon at ten past three. Plate match on the van in the lot, photo ID match on the licence.’

‘And last night?’

‘That’s where it gets airtight. The corridor camera on the second floor has the door to room two-eleven in continuous view from before he got there to after he left this morning. Hale went up to the room at six p.m. on Monday and didn’t come out again until nine a.m. this morning.’

‘Any other way in or out?’

‘Not unless he can float. His room is three stories high.’

Ella had to concede that, despite the argument, the size and the weaponry angle, Francis Hale wasn’t her man. His alibi was nailed to the wall. ‘What about the immigration thing?’

‘Not my department,’ Hibbert said, ‘but I can pass it on. I’ve got bigger things to worry about than a Canadian immigrant. Should I let him go?’

‘I don’t see any need for him anymore,’ Ripley said.

Ella took a second to think things through. Francis Hale was an expert in medieval weaponry, and their unsub had utilized two medieval weapons.

Hibbert began, ‘Alright, I’ll process him and-’

‘No. Keep him here a little longer,’ Ella said. ‘I need to have a chat with him.’

‘About what?’ Ripley asked.

‘Trust me.’ She turned to Hibbert. ‘Where’s the evidence room around here?’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

He lifted to failure, then dropped the barbell onto the concrete floor with a clang. His biceps and forearms burned hotter than the sun, and he was content that he’d broken down the muscle ready for tomorrow’s restoration. He would skip kettlebells today, although the idea to replace his 50lb bell with Curtis Brennan’s head briefly crossed his mind. He discarded the idea because the thing still hadn’t stopped dripping blood.

Being freakishly tall had always been a curse. Clothes didn’t fit, he couldn’t sit in regular chairs, people would always ask him what the weather was like at this altitude, not to mention that height and skinniness reminded people, for some reason, of scarecrows.

From childhood to adulthood, he’d always felt like a freakshow exhibit, but then someone had come along and put it all into perspective. From that day on in MCI Jessup, he was no longer ashamed of being a gangly freak, and that’s when he’d started developing width to even out the height.

As he admired his sweaty, shirtless figure in the full-length mirror, he couldn’t help but be proud of this metamorphosis. The lanky nobody had been replaced with, by any metric, a monster of inhuman proportions. It had been a while since he’d wrapped the tape measure around his arms, but he must be at the 22-inch mark by now. The legs were bigger still, and his head seemed to shrink by the week given his growing traps.

Yes, this was the real him. He knew this barbarian had been living inside him all this time. It just took a special person to bring it out.

He went to the cabinet and worked the lock and took out a vial and a fresh needle. He drew one out and held it up to the bulb, and the oil inside it caught the light. He had a system for this. He filled the syringe then swabbed the outside of his thigh. Then he found the muscle, drew back, watched for blood, found none, and pressed the plunger home, and the small fire of it spread under the skin and he breathed out through his teeth and waited for it to pass.

In lieu of speaking aloud, he thought the words he wanted to say.

I haven’t watched the footage back. I can’t do it. In case I see something that gives me away. Then I’ll worry about it. So I’m going to steer clear until the whole job is finished. What do you think?

The thing on the wall didn’t respond, even to his telepathic projections. It was an inanimate object. He was aware, in the way a man was aware of things he had decided to live alongside, that this was unusual behaviour. He had been told, by people whose business it was to have opinions about such things, that his interior life had certain features that fell outside the normal range. He did not dispute it. Normal range had never been a useful concept where he was concerned, and the men who told him these things had done their telling from behind a desk in a room with a locked door, and the desk and the room and the lock had not been there for their protection.

Once the rush of the anabolic wore off, he stood up and went to the mirror one more time. His stomach needed some work, but abs were the result of low body fat, not resistance training. Unfortunately, if he wanted arms and legs the size of tree trunks, he had to eat like a pig, and doing so bloated the mid-section. It wasn’t a big deal, because his idol hadn’t been perfectly sculpted around the mid-section either.

I’ve got the next one ready to go. It’s happening tonight. Are you excited?

The next one had been chosen months ago. He had their routine memorized down to the smallest detail, and in about three hours, he’d put the plan into action. It was going to be a little riskier than the others because he wouldn’t have much privacy for this one, but that would make the whole thing sweeter when it was all said and done.