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“There was something in there that I really want to talk to him about.”
Ripley said, “I’ll follow your lead. Let’s go.”
Ella had a good feeling about this. The man was a disheveled wreck of a person, his mind in tatters, his emotions in turmoil. His living conditions matched his mental state, and he had that indescribable aura of malevolence, as though he could turn on a person at any second. They had the circumstantial evidence, now they just needed either hard evidence or a confession. Ella was confident she could achieve the latter.
The agents entered the office that now doubled as an interrogation room and sat down opposite Thomas Alden, the one-eyed religious maniac. Ripley, perhaps enlightened by their new capture, seemingly couldn’t help herself.
“I must ask,” she said, “what’s with the eye?”
Alden seemed unamused at the question. “Sacrifice,” he said. “That’s the price of real faith.” Alden’s voice was rough around the edges, like sandpaper against wood.
Ella asked, “Sacrifice? You tore out your own eye?”
“Yes,” said Alden, as though such an action was a completely rational thing to do. Ella couldn’t keep her curiosity at bay.
“Why?”
“You have to lose sight to gain it back,” said Alden. “I wouldn’t expect you to know about that.”
Ripley said, “You’re insane.”
Alden remained quiet.
“Mr. Alden, would you mind telling us a little bit about your past? Apparently you worked at Saint Paul’s Church, is that right?”
“Yes I did.”
“And according to an old friend of yours, you were a little… extreme.”
Alden smiled with the classic psychopath smile. That emotionless, painted-on smirk that was pure surface, no depth. “I validated certain people’s impulses. That’s all.”
“Really? By encouraging them to self-harm and kill themselves?”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Alden said with sickening pride. Ella suppressed her irritation, telling herself that soon this man would be in a jail cell.
“Sounds to me like you just get off on seeing people hurt. I think you abused a position of trust to indulge your own sick urges.”
“Nonsense.”
Ripley added, “You ran a class called Smart Recovery, correct?”
“Correct.”
“You must have forged some close relationships during that time, maybe with a woman named Joanne Gustafson?”
Alden’s one eye lit up at the name. “Ah, Joanne. Delightful woman.”
“Yes she was. You were close with her?”
“Not as close as I’d liked,” Alden laughed.
Ella said, “Well you must have been pretty close, considering you were her drug dealer.”
Alden feigned shock, his face a cheap party mask of false emotion. “That’s a big accusation,” he said.
“Don’t shit me,” said Ella. “I saw about ten gallons of pseudoephedrine hydrochloride in your kitchen. Either you’ve got the worst case of hay fever on the planet or you’re cooking meth.”
“Lies,” Alden said.
