Judged

by E. H. Reinhard

  Tim brought up a large bottle of vodka. “So you like to drink, huh? Let’s see how fast you can swallow. Ready?”

  Ridley mumbled and gagged from the funnel being jammed into the back of his throat. Tim held the bottle’s cap in his teeth, twisted it off, and began pouring. The vodka filled the funnel and rolled over the sides. Ridley ripped his head back and forth, splashing more of the vodka onto himself and the floor beneath him. Tim set the bottle on the floor, reached for Ridley’s face, and squeezed his nostrils shut.

  “Swallow and then breathe through your mouth,” Tim said. “Better hurry before that breathing reflex kicks in and your dumb ass drowns on booze.”

  Ridley’s body jerked twice. Tim didn’t know if that was his gag reflex or his body fighting for air. Then he felt Ridley begin to swallow. He watched as the vodka left the funnel and disappeared into Ridley’s mouth and down his throat.

  “There we go,” Tim said. “You know, I gave up drinking shortly after that night you killed my sister. When the police would no longer take me seriously, I sobered up and found a new path in life—ridding the world of pieces of shit, you know, like you. I did it for my sister. She always wanted Miami to be a safer place.”

  Tim held the bottle up and inspected it. “Looks like you did okay. Two thirds more of this bottle, and then we move on to whiskey. Ready?”

  Ridley coughed, expelling blood and pink-tinted vodka from the large end of the funnel.

  “Get your breaths in now. We have a long way to go. Here it comes.”

  Tim grabbed the bottle of vodka and filled the funnel once more. He once again held Ridley’s nose closed until he swallowed. The next funnel filling came more quickly, and then again until the bottle was empty.

  Ridley swayed on the barstool. He gurgled and coughed.

  Tim caught him trying to push the funnel from his mouth with his tongue. “I’ll cut your tongue from your head if that funnel hits the floor.”

  Ridley stopped.

  Tim slapped his hands together. “All right. Who’s ready for some whiskey?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  We pulled up at a white two-story home with a terracotta roof and matching colored shutters and garage doors. The neighborhood, as well as the home itself, were upper class. I imagined each house in the area cost at least half a million dollars. The empty brick driveway of the house led up to a three-car garage sitting at ninety degrees from the front door. A flower garden and pair of palm trees sat closest to us at the garage’s edge, near the street.

  A patrol car was parked a house down on the left. The driver’s door opened, and the officer approached as we stepped from our vehicles.

  “I’m Officer Hugh Cabral. Got a call that we might have something going on here,” he said.

  “Agent Hank Rawlings,” I said while shaking his hand. “This is Agent Beth Harper and Lieutenant Harrington from Miami Dade.”

  “Pleasure,” he said and shook their hands. “So what are we looking at here? My orders were basically show up here and sit here until my shift ends.”

  “We just wanted a car on the place. The person we’re looking for could become a possible victim,” I said.

  “And this has something to do with Timothy Wendell, the vigilante guy?” he asked.

  “The man in question, that we’re looking to talk with here, has come up in the past in connection with him, yes,” I said. “That’s about as far as we know right now.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Let’s head up there.” I started up the brick driveway. Harrington, Beth, and Officer Cabral filed in behind me up the driveway and toward the front door, which was tucked back into an archway. We stood on the stoop.

  “What’s the plan here?” Beth reached out and pressed the doorbell, which chimed, and a dog barked inside.

  “We’ll ask for Kenneth Ridley. Explain the situation and see what he says,” I said.

  A moment later, the door swung open, and a young girl stood in the doorway, staring out at us. A furry little white dog was doing its best to get past the girl and to us, but she held it by its collar. She looked as if she didn’t know what to do about the four adults she didn’t know, standing on her front doorstep.

  “Is your mom or dad home?” Beth asked.

  “Mom!” the girl yelled.

  A second later, a thin brunette woman in her forties appeared in the doorway. The little girl and dog disappeared back into the house.

  “Can I help you with something?” the woman asked.

  “Your name, ma’am?” Beth asked.

  “Ginger Ridley.”

  “Mrs. Ridley.” Beth pulled her credentials from her pocket. “Agent Harper, FBI. We actually need to speak with Kenneth Ridley. Is that your husband?”

  “Kenny doesn’t live here,” she said. “We’re in the process of a divorce, a long process. What’s this about?”

  “Do you know where he currently lives? Or his whereabouts right now?” I asked.

  “Where he is right now, I don’t know. He’s usually done with work around two thirty, so he might be at home. He’s renting a house a few miles from here. He wanted to stay in the area—easier on the children with both of us living in the same school district.”

  “The address for the home?” I pulled my notepad from my pocket and wrote down what she told me.

  “Do you think you could try calling him for us?” Harrington asked.

  “What’s this about? Is he in some kind of trouble?” she asked.

  “There’s a chance that he may be in danger,” Beth said. “We need to ask him some questions.”

  “Danger? From what?”

  “A man named Timothy Wendell. We believe that he may go after your husband,” I said.

  “You mean the guy that’s all over the news? What would he want with Kenny?”

  “We think that he may believe that your husband was involved in the car accident that killed his sister,” I said.

  The woman turned back into the house. “Katie! Grab my phone and bring it here!”

  I heard an okay shouted from inside the house.

  The girl who’d originally answered the door appeared a moment later, holding out a cell phone toward her mother.

  The woman took it. “Thanks, baby. Go watch television.” As the girl left, the mother dialed and held the phone to her ear.

  The four of us standing on her doorstep stared at her and waited.

  “Kenny, when you get this, call me,” she said and clicked the button to end the phone call. She looked at us. “Voice mail.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Ridley,” I said. “If he calls back, tell him we’re on our way to his residence.”

  “Should I be worried, here?” she asked. “I have children inside the house.”

  “This is Officer Cabral,” I said. “He’s going to keep an eye on the house here.” I looked at the officer, who nodded.

  “Can you call me after you go to Kenny’s house?” she asked.

  Beth told her that she would, and we left her doorstep. I glanced back as we walked down the driveway to see Ms. Ridley still standing in the doorway and watching us. We gathered at the front of Harrington’s car.

  I turned my attention to Officer Cabral. “Is the address she just gave us still in your jurisdiction?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Can you maybe make a call to get a car over there to meet us?”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  “Let me give you my direct number,” I said. “Give me a call if you see anything.”

  “Sure. Am I watching the family or house?”

  “Family,” I said.

  “Got it.”

  Cabral headed for his cruiser.

  I gave Harrington the address for the house, and we got into our cars. Beth made a U-turn in the street and followed Harrington from the neighborhood.

  She glanced over at me. “Did that strike you as odd that the woman didn’t question her husband being involved in Wendell’s sister’s death
?”

  “Yup. I caught it right away. She didn’t ask a single follow-up question. You’d have to assume that there would have at least been one or two.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Beth rocked her head back and forth. “She could have remembered her husband being questioned about it a couple years back, by Lieutenant Peterson.”

  “True,” I said. “You would think, then, that she would have either mentioned that if she connected the dots immediately, or there would have been a wait a minute, I remember something about this moment. There was neither.”

  “Follow up with her?” Beth asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  The drive to Ridley’s neighborhood took us just under ten minutes. We found ourselves in a middle-class subdivision packed with homes that appeared to be from the 1980s. Harrington, driving ahead of us, pulled to the side of the street in front of a pink single story with triple arches leading into a covered entryway. The roof of the home looked stained and old. A faded wooden fence wrapped the property line. Beth put our car in park, and we stepped out.

  “Not quite as fancy as the wife’s place, hey?” Beth asked.

  “Yeah, not even close,” I said.

  Harrington came over, and we headed up the blacktop driveway and through the center of the three arches leading to the front door.

  I reached out and hit the doorbell—no chime from inside. Then I banged my fist on the door. “Kenneth Ridley, FBI!”

  We waited but received no response.

  “Must not be home,” Harrington said. “Do we want to have a bit of a look around?”

  I glanced over at him from my crouched position trying to look through the window nearest the door. The curtains covering it didn’t allow me a visual inside. “Yeah, let’s take a lap around the house quick and see if we see anything.”

  We walked back through the arches of the covered front porch.

  “I’ll try to get a look into the garage,” Harrington said.

  “Sure.”

  Beth and I went right to try to get a look through the two windows facing the street. I walked to the farthest window and looked in. The room had pink walls with a couple of posters stuck to them. I saw a small white desk in one corner and what looked like a twin-size bed with a hot-pink and lime-green comforter against the other wall.

  “What have you got?” Beth asked.

  “Must be his daughter’s room. Nothing looks off. You?”

  “Boy’s room. Same.”

  I continued to the edge of the home and made a right. The wooden fence blocked me from continuing. The nearest window was behind the fence’s perimeter. There was no gate to get through. “Looks like we’re headed the other way,” I said.

  Beth followed me through the grass toward the garage and the far side of the house. Harrington stood near the garage doors.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “You?”

  “Can’t see into the garage. There’s a window, but it’s behind the fence line. What’s the deal here? Does this fall under ‘exigent circumstances’?”

  “Yeah,” Beth said. “There isn’t a court in the country that would fault us for checking on the well-being of someone that we have reason to be a potential victim of a serial killer.” Beth reached out and flipped the latch on the fence. We entered the area along the side of the house.

  Harrington went to the window of the garage. He put his hands around his face and looked inside. “It’s empty,” he said.

  “Let’s check around back,” I said. “If we don’t see anything, we’ll get his phone number from the wife and try to get a GPS signal on it.”

  We rounded the edge of the house and entered the fenced backyard. A small work shed sat in the far corner, along the fence. The backyard, aside from the shed, was nothing more than a thirty-foot-wide stretch of half-dead grass spanning the length of the house. I started for a covered patio to get a look inside. Beth and Harrington continued across the grass toward the back windows of the house.

  I stood at the glass patio doors, looking into the kitchen area. My eyes immediately went to an empty barstool sitting by itself, out of place, in the middle of the kitchen. On the floor were a number of booze bottles and what looked like a funnel. I focused on the substance on the floor, a few feet from the barstool.

  “We have blood!” I said. I pulled my weapon and reached out for the patio door.

  Harrington and Beth came to my back.

  “FBI!” I announced. I slid the door open, and the three of us entered.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Tim reached over and steadied the steering wheel. “Stay in your damn lane,” he said.

  Ridley’s head was pressed against the headrest. Tim watched him squint hard and begin to veer to the left again.

  “Hey!” Tim shouted. “Stay alert. We only have a few more miles.”

  “Few more miles?” Ridley asked. His words were sloppy from his injured mouth and all the alcohol. All his syllables slurred together. He rolled his head on the headrest and looked at Tim, paying no attention to his task of driving. “Why are you wearing that?” he asked. Blood rolled from his mouth and down his chin.

  “You’ll see.”

  Ridley looked forward and rested his chin on his chest, focusing on his steering wheel. “Where did my airbag go?”

  “You already asked me that four times,” Tim said. “Keep your eyes on the road.”

  The car slowed. Tim reached over and reset the cruise control with the controls on the steering wheel. He pressed the button to increase the speed.

  “Keep your damn feet off of the pedals,” Tim said. He focused through the windshield. Their stop was just a mile or so ahead.

  “Where are we going?” Ridley asked.

  “You already asked me that as well. Your stop is right up here, and I’m going to go take care of someone else.”

  “Wha…?” Ridley’s question trailed off.

  The car started listing to the right. Tim reached over and steadied the wheel. Ridley’s hands dropped to his lap. Tim was then in complete control. He spotted the huge green sign hanging over the freeway in the distance. He looked at Ridley, who was passed out. Tim clicked the button on the cruise control to increase speed again. The speedometer read eighty-seven miles an hour. Through the windshield, Tim could see a small cross and plastic flowers someone had placed twenty feet off the edge of the freeway, at the three-foot-wide concrete base holding the sign.

  Tim sat back in his passenger seat while controlling the steering wheel with his outstretched left hand—he started turning right. The passenger’s side wheels ran through the reflectors and rumble strips on the shoulder of the interstate. Then they found grass, as did the driver’s wheels a moment later. Tim took his aim and let go of the steering wheel. He crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes. A split second later, the SUV made impact.

  Tim opened his eyes. Smoke clung to the air inside the car. He flipped the visor on his helmet and tried to get a look at himself and his surroundings. Blood covered his left arm, with a bit more on his right. He wiggled his fingers and tried moving his arms. Sharp pain came from his left arm, but his right was fine. Tim looked down. The dash of the vehicle was pinning his left leg against the seat bottom. When he tried moving it, he felt a bit of pain. His eyes went to his right leg, free and fine. Tim looked up at the shattered windshield. He could see the metal pillar of the freeway sign and some cracked concrete from its base ten feet ahead—they must have bounced backward. The hood directly in front of him was crushed but still extended almost a full two feet farther than it did on the driver’s side. Tim turned his head and looked over at Ridley. He saw one arm that looked almost undamaged, but Ridley’s torso was crushed between the dash and the seat. What remained of his head was mostly covered by the sunken-in windshield on the driver’s side. Everything was covered in red. Tim couldn’t see Ridley’s legs. Tim reached for the kitchen kn
ife he had taped to the shoulder support of his HANS device. He pulled it off and cut through the seatbelt. He tried the door handle, which operated, but the door didn’t open. Metal from the front of the car was pinning the door closed. Tim yanked at his left leg but couldn’t free it.

  “Hey, are you all right?” someone asked.

  Tim looked past what remained of Ridley, through the blown-out driver-side window, to see a man rushing to the driver’s side of the car.

  “What the hell?” the guy said.

  “Get me out,” Tim said.

  The guy stood dead in his tracks.

  Tim pulled at the door handle again while shouldering the door. The door came free from whatever was pinning it, and he spilled out, still being held halfway inside the car by his pinned leg. He reached down for the buttons that operated the power seat and found the one to move it backward. His leg came free, and he fell to the ground outside the vehicle.

  Tim got his legs under himself and stood. He looked down at his bloodied left leg—the damage seemed to be superficial. After undoing the tethers securing his helmet to the HANS device, he pulled it off. He tossed it in the grass and took a look at what remained of the black Mercedes. He rounded the crushed front of the SUV and approached the man that was still standing there and staring at him. Tim looked up at the shoulder of the freeway, which was lined with cars that must have witnessed the accident. Tim spotted no cops on the scene. He reached for his back waistline and pulled his pistol.

  Tim pointed it at the guy, who was still stuck in place. “Which car is yours?” he asked.

  The guy said nothing.

  Tim walked to him, grabbed him by the back of his white T-shirt near his neck and stuck the gun in his face. “Which car, asshole?”

  “The blue Ford,” the guy said.

  “Show me.” Tim turned the man by the nape of his neck and started walking him toward the freeway, keeping the barrel of the gun planted against the man’s cheek.

  “That one?” Tim asked.

  “Yeah,” the guy said.