But it would have to do.
I had no other word as mighty or as strong.
Chapter 13
Eddie
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered as I walked over to the pile of bodies. The maid was shaking, wrapped in a blanket.
“They just walked in?” my uncle asked her.
She nodded. “Walked in like they were invited. The woman—no, more a girl—sat down there”—she pointed to a chair in the center of the table—“and started pouring tea and eating cakes.” She shook her head. “They were insane. They were both insane.”
My uncle rested his hand on her shoulder, and then allowed the sketch artist to sit beside her and draw the killers from her descriptions. My uncle came over to me. “Male and female. Seem to be in their early twenties.”
I nodded and moved away from the bodies as forensics began their work. The same tag had been written on the wall in the same pink lipstick.
My uncle put his hands in his pockets and shook his head. “They’re escalating. Each kill more deadly than the last.” He leaned his head closer to mine. “I have a lead I want you to follow up on.”
I raised my eyebrow in question.
“What we found with Clive, the third body . . . the children he’d abused. I decided to dig deeper.” He looked around to make sure no one was listening. “I found out that the former chief of the Rangers was a close friend of Earnshaw.” Shivers ran down my spine. Something just didn’t feel right. “Turns out, several years ago a complaint was brought to him. A young man who claimed he had been abused when he was a kid. A kid in foster care. Claimed he was taken to the Earnshaw estate, along with others, and raped. That his social worker got money from Earnshaw and his associates to fuck him, and others in the same situation.” I felt the blood trickle from my face, drop by drop.
My eyes widened and I shook my head. “Not possible,” I said, imagining Mr. Earnshaw in my head. He wasn’t that kind of man.
My uncle shrugged. “The case, for whatever reason, was squashed. Classed as a false report and filed away so deep you would never know it had ever been made, unless you were looking . . . hard.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “When I get it through here, I’ll have you look it over. Could be nothing, but the guy could be worth talking to.”
“Smith?” The sketch artist’s voice cut through our silence. I followed my uncle back to the maid and the artist. He held out a piece of paper. My focus had drifted again to the tag on the white wall. The lines were getting neater. It suggested their confidence was growing. By the acceleration of their kills, and the manner in which the murders were carried out, that much was obvious.
“What the hell?” my uncle remarked as he studied the picture. He turned to the maid. “They were dressed like this?”
She nodded slowly.
I took the picture from my uncle and looked down at it . . . If my blood had trickled from my face on hearing about the false report of Earnshaw’s abuse, it positively drained in slews on seeing the faces staring back at me. And not just their faces. Their style of dress.
Outfits and faces I knew very well.
“Eddie?” My uncle’s voice burrowed into my ears. His hand hit my shoulder and squeezed. “What is it, son?”
Swallowing to lubricate my dry throat, I whispered, “Ellis.”
The paper shook. I realized my hand was trembling. My finger ran over her face. Her painted face, a hand-drawn clock circling her left eye. Then my gaze fell on the man beside her. The one who caused my blood to ignite. The one who took my best friend from me.
The one obsessed with death and corrupting Ellis’s goodness.
“Heathan James,” I said, my voice betraying my dislike. Shock soon replaced dislike. Heathan was alive? After all of these years he had surfaced. From where? And how?
“Son? You care to explain?” my uncle probed.
Slowly lowering the paper, I faced him. “Heathan James.”
Recognition sparked in my uncle’s face. “The kid you knew when you were young? The runaway? The one never found, presumed dead?”
I nodded and glanced down to see those eyes looking straight back at me, taunting me. Mocking me . . . laughing at me. They were gray and cold. Like steel bullets. No life in their depths. No soul.
And he had my Ellis.
He had corrupted her. Forced her to do evil things.
“He took Ellis. He is forcing her against her will.” Anger took hold of me. “He is making her watch him kill.”
My uncle ran his hand over his forehead. He was about to say something when the maid got to her feet. “No,” she said, head shaking profusely.