Soon people were calling in reporting sightings but Riley was always a step ahead of them. Despite working day and night, searching extensively for a sign of him, he always seemed to elude them. At last, they had a breakthrough when they received a call from Adrian who had managed to track his phone number.
She sat in her small office space, provided to her by the Mexican authorities to work on the case, staring at the phone number that she had noted down on a Post-it a few moments ago when she received the call from Adrian.
“You don’t have to make the call if you don’t want to,” said Tyler. He knew the case had taken a toll on her mental health. She was an emotional wreck, working late hours and smoking impulsively.
Alice looked up at him. There was a flicker of determination in her eyes. “No, I want to be the one who makes the call.”
Tyler nodded, conceding to her plan but inside he was gripped with worry. The investigation had revealed a side of Alice that he had never seen before. She was hungry for revenge but Riley had a way of messing with her mind that would bring her to her knees. He worried about what would happen if she failed to bring him in again.
They set up the apparatus for tracking his location. Alice dialed the number and listened to it ring for a long time. She was sure he wouldn’t pick up since he wouldn’t recognize the number flashing on his Caller ID. But she hoped she could get his answering machine and record a message goading him to talk to her. She knew he had a fragile ego and she was determined to use this weakness against him.
Apart from Alice, there were three other men in the office, including Tyler, who were listening in to the conversation and ready to calculate the coordinates.
There was a click and she took a sigh of relief as the answering machine turned on, instructing her to record her message after the beep.
She waited for the electronic beep and took a deep breath before saying anything. “Hi, dad,” she said. “I was hoping to talk to you. You know there’s no way for you to escape this time. You are going to get caught sooner or later.”
She paused thinking over what to say next. She could imagine him sitting on the bed listening to her message, his potbelly bulging out of an oversized button-up shirt with sweat stains. She could see him snarling at the proposition she was about to make.
“I have an offer for you and I think it is a good one. Surrender to the authorities and I guarantee you a reduced sentence. Remember that it is only a matter of time before we catch you. You could face life in prison for your crimes with no possibility of parole.”
She waited for him to pick up the phone and give away his location making their job a little easier. “You can see my number on your phone. Call me if you like my offer. It’s the least that I could do for my family,” she added bitterly and was about to hang up when she heard a click.
Maniacal laughter penetrated her ear through the receiver. “I always found you to be an amusing little kid,” a deep, sonorous voice boomed out of the speaker. “You always made me laugh with the strange things you’d do and say. Remember I named you Funny Face for all the silly things that you’d do?”
Her cheeks burned from embarrassment. He continued to belittle her by not taking her seriously. The entire chase was some kind of joke to him and he really couldn’t care less about being caught and locked up.
She could feel anger boiling inside her. “Of course I do, Father,” she replied.
“You take after your mother in so many ways,” he said. “She was just as thick-headed as you are.”
Alice glanced at Tyler who gestured to her to stay calm. They needed to keep him on the line a bit longer to trace his location. Alice had to keep him talking. “And you were always so incredibly smart,” she said, seething inside. “It was why we both looked up to you so much.”
He let out another bark of laughter. “Yet the whole world seemed to adore Rita, putting her on a pedestal and showering her praises. I always found it so strange that they couldn’t see her for what she was — a fool and nothing more.”
Alice clenched her fist. All she wanted to do was to punch him in the face. It didn’t surprise her that he thought like that about her mother. She had seen it in the sly remarks he would pass at her at dinner parties, ridiculing her choices and belittling her achievements. The truth was she thought her mother was a fool as well for sticking with someone as horrible as him and never seeing past his lies.
“Yet you felt threatened enough to kill her,” she said.
“She found out about my dirty little secret. I had no choice but to kill her.” he said, sounding morose. Alice couldn’t tell whether he felt bad about murdering her mother or that she caught him abducting and killing young women after luring them with fake promises of a job.
“She knew I owned a ranch a few miles away. I would go there once or twice a month to relax,” he said. “I was gone for a few days and maybe she got bored of being stuck with a sullen little child like you. So she left you with a babysitter and traveled all the way to my ranch. She walked in and discovered the place where I had been keeping the bodies.”
Alice drew in a sharp breath. The scene played before her eyes; her unsuspecting mother walking into a barn, the look of sheer terror on her face as she saw dead women hanging from the ceiling, tied to butcher’s hooks with a pool of blood collecting on the ground.
Her stepfather let out a roar of laughter. "You should have seen her face!" Another bout of laughter followed, it took him a long moment to calm down and continue telling her the story. "I would have put an end to her right then and there but she escaped. I had no other option but to go back home and kill her."
"She kept begging you to think of me," Alice said, darkly. She remembered that her mother had pulled up in the driveway that night and dashed inside the house. Alice's babysitter had fallen sick and gone to the doctor for a quick check-up, leaving her alone at home.
She recalled watching TV in the living room when her mother burst through the door, startling her. Without a word, she grabbed her by the arm and pulled her upstairs. She dragged her to the bedroom and shoved her in the closet.
"Don't make a sound," she instructed as she shut the closet doors and hurried down the stairs with her gun in hand. Moments later, she heard the sounds of a scuffle taking place downstairs.
Riley had wrestled the gun out of her hand as she hesitated to shoot him and chased her to her bedroom. Please think of our daughter, she had begged as he pointed the gun at her, ready to shoot.
"I was thinking of you," he said. "Don't you get it? Your life would have been ruined if Rita went to the FBI and told them about me. She would have fallen from grace. As an FBI agent, she wasn't able to tell that her husband was a serial killer? Her career would have been over. As for you, you would have been hounded by the press all your life. Kids would have bullied you at school for being a murderer's daughter. Don't you get it? I couldn't let her turn me in. It would have ruined everything."
Alice glanced at Tyler who gave her a short nod. They had his location. He motioned at another officer in the room who rushed out to inform the others. They were sending teams after him to arrest him while he was busy talking to her.
"You're lying!" Alice spat. "All you ever cared for was yourself. All these things that you say you wanted to protect me from by killing my mother, I still had to go through them. I had the press tail me for years; kids at school called me all sorts of names after they found out about my history. In addition to all that, I had no one to lean on, no one to love or care for me. You ruined my life!"
She could feel herself getting worked up. It was unbelievable the kind of lies he still continued to tell himself to keep absolving himself of all his crimes. In his head, there was always a good enough reason that made him do the things that he did.
It amazed her that a part of him still didn't think of himself as the bad guy. He continued to excuse his behavior. He was living in denial.
"Think whatever you like. I did what I had to do," he said,
gruffly. "And as for your offer, all I have to say is: forget about it. You think you're some kind of big shot that you made it to the FBI. Well, you're nothing! You've always been nothing, to me, to Rita, you've never mattered to anyone and you don't matter now!"
His words sliced through her like a sharp knife. She swallowed her urge to respond and focused on squeezing out more confessions from him. “And what about the man you killed afterward to stage your murder? Who was he?”
Riley [KW4]let out another hearty laugh. “Some dumb Latino handyman who had turned up at that very moment. It was his ill luck that got him killed. The funny thing is the FBI did not even take a second look at the color of his skin! They just wanted the case to be closed. Can you believe that? They confused me with a Latino?”
Alice heard a loud bang as the door of the apartment where he was hiding was knocked down by SWAT teams. The phone fell from his hand as he sprang to his feet, shocked and confused. A dozen commandos dressed in bulletproof vests, safety helmets, and with their rifles at the ready, funneled into the small apartment.
Alice could hear them shouting, in both Spanish and English, at Riley to put his hands up and avoid resisting arrest.
"There's been a mistake," she could hear him stammering. "I'm just a tourist on vacation. I didn't do anything wrong. You are confusing me with someone else."
Alice locked eyes with Tyler. A small smile appeared on her lips as she slowly placed the receiver back in its cradle.
CHAPTER 7
The airplane knifed through the air as it descended over the runway and cruised to a stop. The fuselage door swung open and the passengers started spilling out of the aircraft and descending the stairs. A handsome green-eyed man with a thick blonde mane stepped out of the plane and gazed over the airport.
His lips curled into a smile underneath a bushy mustache as he looked over LA. Slinging his bag over his shoulder, he began descending the stairs.
He walked with a slight limp across the gleaming floor of the airport, heading toward check out. He had missed this place; it was good to be back.
He couldn't wait to drive down familiar roads and see important landmarks. Each step that he took toward the exit filled him with a sense of joy. He greeted the airport staff with bubbling exuberance.
Grabbing his luggage from the conveyor belt, he loaded it on a trolley and began marching toward the exit. He was almost near the glass door exit when two security officers approached him, blocking his way.
He smiled at the two men, confused. "Everything alright, officers?"
"Could we please have a look at your ID, sir?"
"Of course, I don't mind even though I've already gone through the necessary checks," he said as he fished in his pocket for his ID card and other necessary documentation.
The security guard had a look at his ID that had the name John Lewis typed next to his photograph. He squinted at his picture and glanced at his face. He had an unnaturally thin and pointed nose and high cheekbones. His face was taut and barely creased when he spoke.
The plastic surgery that he had undergone had altered his appearance remarkably but he still bore an uncanny resemblance with Harrold Brown, the notorious criminal. The security officer guessed the documents and ID were forged and fixed him with a cold stare.
"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to come with us please."
"Officer, I'm trying to cooperate as much as possible but I'm running late and I can't afford to lose more time."
"Sir, we're afraid we can't let you leave the airport."
His eyes went round with shock for a moment. Then his brow furrowed and he spoke to them in a sharp, clipped tone, "You can't hold me here without a good enough reason. I'll have to call my lawyers and get this matter sorted legally."
"Sir, we apologize for the inconvenience but we're going to ask you one more time to please step aside and come with us." One of the officers stepped forward and held him by the arm, steering him away from the exit and back into the airport.
He tried to shrug away his hand. "This is preposterous! I can't believe I am being subjected to such public humiliation! I am an important businessman who came here on a business trip. You have no proof of wrongdoing against me."
The officers subdued him. A few other security personnel rushed toward him to escort Harrold to a nearby office.
Throughout the interrogation, he remained adamant that he was not Harrold Brown but John Lewis. It soon became apparent that his lie was not going to fool anyone and he became more submissive.
Capturing Harrold Brown was an enormous feat for the FBI. With Harrold's testimony and his bank account records, they could prove that he committed insurance fraud alongside Riley.
Furthermore, they had Riley's confession that he murdered Rita. They still had to prove the other murders that he committed and to do that they had to find the bodies of the victims.
Alice drove to the ranch that Riley had mentioned to her over the phone. She didn't find anything out of the ordinary in the first search. But as she looked more closely, she discovered large blue barrels in the barn.
A nauseating smell of decaying flesh wafted up as soon as she opened the lids to look inside. A total of thirty bodies were discovered including men, women, and children.
The bodies were taken in for examination. Alice knew that Riley would be languishing in jail for the rest of his life as she saw them being shoved into latex body bags and rolled into ambulances.
A large crowd of people had gathered around the ranch along with news vans and reporters. The police had to make sure no one trespassed. Alice made her way to her car and was spotted by reporters on the way. They ran after her, crowding around her, shoving their microphones at her and bombarding her with questions.
“Agent Sloan, do you have anything to say to the people of California?” an eager reporter asked, elbowing her way through the crowd and shouting her question to be heard over the din of noise.
“All I have to say is that,” she started speaking into the microphone that was the closest to her, unsure whether it belonged to the woman who had asked the question or not, “the nightmare is over.”
“But how could a man like that go on murdering people for years without the police or the FBI noticing?” another journalist asked.
“Is it true that the murderer is your stepfather?”
“How come your mother never realized that she had married a serial killer despite working for the FBI?”
Alice could feel her cheeks burn. Those were questions that had kept her up many nights as she raked her mind trying to answer them. The truth was she still could not understand what had made Rita trust him so much. How could she abandon reason and go on living with a man who was clearly a psychopath? Why couldn’t she trust her daughter when she warned her about him? How could she dismiss her daughter’s concerns, writing her off as a difficult child who simply did not get along with anyone?
A part of her hated her mother for bringing Riley into her life. She couldn’t help but think that she should have known better. The anger that was buried inside her over her mother’s naivety almost made her open her mouth and lash out at her publicly. She almost said aloud that she did not know why her mother could not see her stepfather for who he was — a cold, heartless psychopath. She almost told the press that she wished her mother were stripped of the honors she had received while serving in the FBI for subjecting her child to unimaginable abuse and failing to capture a criminal.
She held herself back from saying all that at the last moment. Instead, she stared into the camera for a few minutes unable to come up with a good answer. The reporters looked on waiting for her to speak, their microphones poised at her.
Finally, she gathered herself and looked straight into the lens of the camera. “All I know is that people like Chris Murray are adept at winning other’s trust. Over thirty bodies were discovered in this ranch today, most of whom were adult men and women. Chris had managed to manipulate and deceive these sound minded indi
viduals and perhaps many others that we will probably never know of. My mother was just another one of his victims. Her tragedy does not reflect on her skills as an FBI agent.”
The crowd hung on her every word. She could see a few journalists scribbling away on little notepads. Whatever she said now would be published on the front pages of newspapers by tomorrow. Never before had she felt the sheer magnitude of her words.
“As an FBI agent you are taught to look for the enemy even when he is in disguise. You are taught to look for subtle hints and clues that may give away the culprit’s true identity. When you are on duty, your mind is prepared to take note of the smallest things. All your senses are on high alert.”
She paused as she felt a rush of sympathy for her dead mother. Tears filled her eyes but she was determined not to let them fall. She looked up and squared her shoulders, trying to appear confident and in control as she uttered the last words of her speech.
“That is not the case when you are at home with your family or with a loved one. You consider yourself safe with the ones you love. Your mind is at ease. You are no longer looking for incriminating evidence against the person sitting across from you on the dinner table because they have won your trust and you believe what they say. If my mother was a fool for not seeing Chris for who he was then so be it. She paid for it with her life.”
The crowd dispersed as she finished speaking and she made her way to her car.
***
Chris Murray was sentenced to death for first degree manslaughter, insurance fraud, and vandalism of a gravesite. Harrold Brown was sentenced to life imprisonment for aiding and abetting a criminal, committing insurance fraud, and forgery.
***
A breeze rippled the blades of grass on the field and rustled the branches of the oak tree overhead. Alice and Tyler stood before a grave with a white marble headstone with the words ‘In loving memory of Rita Sloan’ etched across it.
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