Page 46 of Girl, Entangled

Greaves had been the other man they’d kept in that dead-end corridor. What had the prison officer said?

‘Oh, that was the other guy we had in here. Greaves. The guys here used to call him the Greave Digger. Staff and prisoners alike. He’s gone now. Lethal injection, actually. He killed a woman, carved her up and buried her body parts in graves all over some field, hence the nickname. He ended up going to Terre Haute. A week later he got the needle.’

Ella stepped back from the laptop.

What did it all mean?

The remains of a woman named Mary Monroe were found in a field – the same field where someone else had just burned to death. Billy Hayes was suspected of her murder, but then forensic evidence linked a man named Thomas Greaves. Thomas Greaves was then put to death.

But what did this have to do with the murders happening right now? They were a little over three years removed from the incident with Mary Monroe.

Thomas Greaves.

Ella paced the room with paperwork in hand. All of the details of the past few days fizzled in her head. It stung her temples for a moment, because she knew there was information hiding in there that could be useful. As she began to linearly run through every event, she jumped ahead to something her brain had flagged earlier that day.

She threw the paperwork down, then replaced it for a printout.

The comments from Curtis Brennan’s livestream, posted at the very moment his head was becoming independent from his body.

JimmyTwoFingers: Curtis going to investigate, RIP Curtis.

Redshoes: He heard the killer.

MaryB_87: Where did you go??

tommyg: Rock Creek Park and the dead man.

RonaldR: MPD is not underfunded, they’re mismanaged.

Redshoes: Killer is probably watching this stream!

JimmyTwoFingers: Curt, you look terrified.

PigCake: The headphones are off. Business is about to pick up.

Ella’s mouth went dry.

There it was.

tommyg.

Two appearances. The first asking Curtis Brennan where he streamed from, or perhaps confirming the location he was streaming from. The second steering the conversation back to the dead man at Rock Creek Park.

Tommy G.

Thomas G.

Ella had been right.

An obsessive couldn’t watch an amateur get it wrong in front of a million people and say nothing.

Or do nothing.

In this case, he certainly hadn’t done nothing. He was in the stream, talking to the man he was about to execute.

Ella turned her head.

A static executioner stared at her from inside its painted world, one that was identical to the executioner she’d seen on Brennan’s livestream.