by Blake Pierce
It must have worked because she heard him howl in pain. The sound mixed with the banging on the door and Ryan yelling something unintelligible from the other side. She ignored it, instead jabbing her bent right arm back, slamming her elbow into Riggs’ ribcage.
His grip on her neck loosened enough for her to rip free. But he managed to grab her by the shoulders as she pulled away. Gripping them tight, he swung her violently in the direction of the closet. Her head and shoulder slammed into its back wall and she slumped to the ground. The mannequin stand toppled over from its closet hiding spot, landing on the floor beside her. The wig came off the head and rested limply on the carpet like a dead animal.
Riggs stomped toward her, blood coming from his left eye. The pain of the collision was immediately overtaken by the dread that rose up within her as he approached. With her ears ringing and her vision slightly fuzzy, she tried to get to her feet, but her legs were wobbly. She felt Riggs grab her by the jacket and start to yank her up. Grasping for anything, her hand brushed the mannequin pole and she latched onto it.
As she was ripped upward, she swung the pole toward Riggs’ head. She didn’t see it make contact but she felt it and heard it. There was a loud thwack and her attacker immediately let go. The mannequin pole flew out of her hands and, still unsteady on her feet, she stumbled forward past him. She collapsed on the ground, where she rolled over onto her back.
Stanley Riggs was standing at the closet door, clutching his chin, which was bleeding profusely. He looked disoriented for a moment but then his one good eye fixed on Jessie. He smiled, oblivious to the blood dripping down his neck onto his button down shirt. He reached up to the closet shelf, grabbed something from under a folded blanket, and pulled it out. It was a butcher knife.
In the distance she could hear Ryan shouting her name over and over again as he slammed his body uselessly against the thick, wooden door. Yet somehow the much quieter voice of Stanley Riggs cut through the noise.
“Time for you to join the other bitches,” he growled as he stumbled towards her.
Jessie gulped hard and scooted backward on her butt toward the door. There was no way she could get to her gun under the bed. The mannequin pole was halfway across the bedroom. Her back bumped into the wall next to the door. There was nowhere else to go. Riggs was only steps away.
“What did you do with Charlotte!” she suddenly screamed, not even sure why. All she knew was that the only weapon she had left was her words.
Riggs stopped moving and revealed his toothy, bloody grin.
“The same thing I’m going to do to you. The same thing that should be done with all you whores.”
A desperate idea came into her head and she went with it. If it didn’t work, there wasn’t much to lose.
“You can’t keep your woman so you have to kill them all? Is that it?’ she spat as venomously as she could.
“Not all of them,” he announced proudly, “Just the ones who deserve it, like you.”
His face a hateful grimace, Riggs looked torn between wanting to taunt her more or just slice her up. But she couldn’t risk waiting any longer. She wasn’t sure this would work but she was out of options and time.
“Ryan?” she shouted. “You hear where his voice is coming from?”
“Yeah!” he called back.
Jessie saw Stanley Riggs’ nasty, contorted smirk suddenly twist into a frown as his eyes went wide.
“Shoot!” she screamed and dove to the right, as far away from the door as she could get.
Riggs took a step toward her but before he could take a second one, a barrage of shots tore through the wooden door. Jessie couldn’t tell how many hit him, but he was thrown immediately backward and crumpled to the floor. He gasped loudly as his right hand tried to maintain its grip on the butcher knife. After a few seconds, it loosened and the knife slipped from his fingers and onto the floor.
“Jessie!” Ryan shouted. “Are you okay?”
“Give me a second,” she yelled back as she pushed herself upright again into a seated position. She shoved the security bar back to its original spot. After that, with great effort, she rolled over, got to her knees and reached up to unlock the deadbolt. Then she slumped back down again and faced Riggs.
His breathing was more labored now, with one long, slow raspy breath followed by a short, sudden inhalation. The pattern repeated a second time. And then, without warning, it stopped completely.
“The door’s open,” she muttered.
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
They didn’t have much time.
Jessie gave Ryan the basics of what had just happened as he checked her for concussion or other injuries. When he was satisfied that the damage was limited to bruising on her neck, he carried her out to the office. He was just placing her down on the ratty loveseat by the front door when Garrett walked in.
“What the—?” the deputy began.
Ryan cut him off. “I can’t explain it all right now but we caught the killer and we need your help to make it stick.”
Garrett was briefly stunned into silence before he regrouped.
“Could you explain a little more please?”
Jessie felt like she could speak now and did her best to catch him up.
“Stanley Riggs committed these murders,” she said hoarsely. “He’s lying dead in his bedroom where Ry…Randy shot him after he attacked me. I don’t have it all figured out yet but I think he discovered that Charlotte was part of the Special Friends Forum. He didn’t think he could go after her so he took his anger out on anyone else he could tie to the group. But I do think he eventually killed his wife too. He basically admitted as much to me. You’ll need to start a search for her body.”
She swung her legs off the loveseat and slowly sat up.
“What are you doing?” Garrett demanded. “You should stay lying down. You look like hell.”
“What time is it?” she asked.
“2:12,” he answered.
“Then I don’t have time to lie down. Those detectives will be rolling into town in the next fifteen minutes and we need to get our stories straight before then.”
“Why can’t the truth be our story?” he wanted to know.
Jessie wished it was as simple as that. There was no way they could tell the Riverside detectives everything without putting themselves in danger from the Night Hunter. But maybe they could tell Garrett. She looked over at Ryan, who shrugged.
“It’s your call,” he told her.
“He deserves to know,” she replied before turning back to Garrett. “I know Rich McClane told you not to ask questions. Hell, even he doesn’t know the whole truth. But no one can know we’re involved. It would put our lives at risk.”
“How?”
“Garrett, this is a lot to take in. But my name’s not really Jennifer Barnes. It’s Jessie Hunt. I’m a criminal profiler with the LAPD. And Randy Hosea there is actually Ryan Hernandez, an LAPD detective. We’re up here, away from Los Angeles, because a serial killer called the Night Hunter has been trying to kill us, along with my little sister. He’s very old but he’s also brilliant. He uses experience and deception to murder his victims. And he’s got a vendetta against me. We hoped that by coming to Wildpines for a while and maintaining a low profile, we would stay off his radar. Our captain thought we could help his old friend Rich out on this case without attracting much attention. But that obviously didn’t pan out.”
Garrett looked like his brain was about to explode but she didn’t have time to bring him along slowly so she pushed on.
“So, if word gets out that the two of us were involved in solving these murders, the Night Hunter will be able to track us again. And he’s good enough to find us. That’s why you have to be the one who solved this case. You have to have killed Riggs when you came here to question him and he attacked you.”
Garrett shook his head vehemently.
“Even if I said yes, there’s no way it would work. You guys were all over town in the last t
wenty-four hours. Lots of people saw you. This motel has your prints. It was Rand…Ryan’s weapon that shot him. That will all come out.”
Now it was Ryan’s turn to shake his head as he pulled out his gun.
“This isn’t my service weapon. It’s personal and untraceable. It’s yours now. No one will give you a hard time for using an unlicensed gun to take a down a guy who killed four women. Make sure to wipe down the mannequin pole and the bedroom locks for prints. Those are the only things Jessie touched. In addition to the gun, I touched the bedroom and front door handles so get those too. For everything else, Rich McClane will help you. He can massage the paperwork and deal with unwanted questions. We wore heavy jackets and beanies everywhere we went. No one got a clean look at our faces the whole time we were here. And unless Wildpines has invested in a bunch of security cameras, none of which I saw, we won’t be ID’d by facial recognition tech.”
“Someone will figure it out,” Garrett insisted. “Even if those Riverside detectives are as thick as Rich says, they’re not going to believe that two ghosts conducted a bunch of interrogations and then disappeared into the mist. They’ll figure out what happened eventually.”
“Maybe,” Jessie conceded, “but not right away. You’ll be giving us time to come up with a plan. We just need a day or two to find somewhere safe to go. No one knows we’re staying at Rich’s cabin so unless those detectives are geniuses, figure it out, and raid the place before then, we should be okay. And if the story does eventually fall apart, we’ll take the heat. In the end, everyone will know that you put yourself on the line to save us from a vicious killer. And that won’t go unappreciated, not by us and not by the Los Angeles Police Department.”
Garrett stood there, his brow furrowed, deep in thought. Jessie didn’t want to rush him but every second he waited was one that put them in greater danger. Still, this was his choice and he deserved to make it without any more pressure from them.
“You better get going,” he finally said. “You don’t want to be anywhere near here when those guys arrive.”
“Thanks, Garrett,” Jessie said. “You don’t know how much this means to us.”
“Don’t get all mushy,” he replied, his face flushing. “Just get going and remember to park your car in Rich’s garage. You don’t need anyone who might be searching the area to run the plates.”
“Will do, sir,” Ryan promised, helping Jessie to her feet.
Garret wasn’t done.
“And call me from your car on the way back to the cabin. I need you to walk me through what happened in detail so I can tell these guys exactly what it is that I did here.”
He held the door open and they hurried out as fast as they could. It was 2:17. They had to completely disappear in the next ten minutes.
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
They kept the curtains pulled shut.
It was probably overkill but it was getting dark and they didn’t want anyone driving by to wonder why the lights were on at Rich McClane’s place when he was in town doing sheriff stuff.
Because a trip to the store was out of the question, they made do with leftovers. Hannah put together an impressive duck stew but Jessie’s throat was really sore so she stuck to instant oatmeal. As she swallowed small bites, she thought back over the last few hours.
They had spent most of the afternoon going over the case, trying to piece together what had happened so that Garrett could better explain how he came to suspect Stanley Riggs. As they reviewed the communications in the Special Friends Forum with the benefit of hindsight, several things became apparent.
First, Charlotte Riggs had multiple affairs. Second, she clearly didn’t have much concern that her husband would find out because she made her login information for the forum autofill. It must have driven Stanley crazy to discover what she’d been doing right under his nose all this time. Learning that she couldn’t even be bothered to hide it well would have added insult to injury.
Third, it was now much clearer why Stanley had used the wig. The forum chats were littered with Charlotte’s derogatory comments about his appearance: his height, his apple-red complexion, his sad, remaining flyaway hairs.
He must have known that there was no way he could have gotten close to any of his victims if they knew who he was. So he used his small frame as a weapon, likely drawing them in by disguising himself as another woman in some kind of distress. With long black hair and all bundled up, none of them would have realized it was him until it was too late.
Finally, with time to read the forum messages more closely without time constraints, it became clear why Clarice Kimble had cut Charlotte out of both the WBA and the Special Friends Forum. The messages between the two of them were cryptic but it seemed almost certain that Charlotte had propositioned Martin Kimble at some point very recently. The phrases “off limits,” “over the line” and “my MK” were all used.
They texted all of these details to Garrett. He must have been incredibly busy because he only responded once, to let them know Charlotte Riggs’ body was discovered wrapped up in a pickup truck behind the motel. He said that she was probably dead less than an hour when the sheriffs found her. It looked like Riggs was about to dump her somewhere when Jessie and Ryan showed up.
Jessie followed up by asking if their cover story was holding but he didn’t reply so she tried Rich McClane. He didn’t text back, instead calling a minute later.
“Sorry,” he told them. “I had to find somewhere private. There aren’t many places like that around here right now. Between law enforcement and crime scene folks, there are probably two dozen representatives of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department on site, and that includes the honorable Sheriff Nicholas Kazanky himself. I’d say there are about half that many reporters here too.”
“So are they buying Garrett’s story?” Ryan asked.
“So far, so good,” Rich replied. “Kazansky swooped right in and took credit for the whole thing. He praised Deputy Garrett Hicks as the epitome of what the department is all about. That means he’s invested now. Anything that doesn’t fit neatly into his narrative of events will not see the light of day. He’ll make certain of that.”
“How do you know?” Jessie asked.
“Because it’s already happening,” he replied. “A few local residents came by the station earlier mentioning some mystery investigators. But Kazansky doesn’t want any part of it. He’s dismissed them out of hand. I don’t know how he plans to deal with the issue long-term. But he clearly doesn’t want any flies in his glory ointment and in my experience he’s pretty good at swatting away those flies.”
Ryan laughed bitterly.
“Never have I been so hopeful that an unscrupulous, narcissistic law enforcement professional would succeed in his scumbaggery,” he said, speaking Jessie’s thoughts aloud.
“I spoke to a far more principled cop a little earlier,” Rich said. “Decker filled me in on the exact particulars of your situation back in L.A. Under the circumstances, he thought I should have the full picture. Do you know what you plan to do next? Of course, you’re more than welcome to stay at the cabin as long as you like.”
“We appreciate that, Rich,” Jessie said. “I think we’re just going to stay here overnight. The marshals are allowing that but they’ll be here first thing in the morning to pick us up. Then it’s back to safe house living until the madman hunting us is caught or killed.”
“I understand,” he replied. “Well, while you’re here, let me know if you need anything. I know you can’t go running out for any food or toiletries so I’m happy to bring stuff to you when I get a free moment.”
*
It turned out they didn’t need anything. The cabin was fully stocked on toiletries and Hannah managed to be her typically creative gastronomic savant. Even though Jessie hadn’t felt up to partaking, she thought the duck stew smelled great as she slurped up the last of her cereal.
After dinner, as Hannah washed the dishes, she mentioned that the W
ildpines Arts Conservatory had a summer session that included a program on Indigenous Culture and Cuisine.
“You guys think that I might be able to go?” she asked, “that is, assuming this whole ‘elderly serial killer’ thing gets resolved?”
“Is that something that really interests you?” Jessie asked.
“Sure. If I ever have a normal life again, it’s the sort of thing I’d absolutely be into. It might help me decide if culinary school is really what I want to do after graduation. Besides, I like it up here. I can think more clearly. I can breathe. And the people are nice too. I’ve already made few friends here. Both Patrice and Chris said they could help expedite my application.”
“If things go back to normal, we can talk about it,” Jessie said.
She again noticed her sister blush at the mention of the name Chris. Again she said nothing. Nor did she mention what Garrett had told them about last night’s incident with Gunnar Quaid at Wildyology.
Initially, she was upset that Hannah hadn’t mentioned it. But upon further reflection, she understood. Had she said anything, Jessie had to admit she would have said no to any future outings. And from what she could tell, this incident wasn’t her sister’s fault.
This Gunnar creep had been following her around earlier in the day and initiated physical contact at the restaurant. Hannah was only protecting herself by making a scene, bringing attention to the threat she was facing. And as promised, she’d stayed at Wildyology until she was ready to be picked up, just as Jessie had asked her too. Calling her out didn’t seem productive. After all, as their shared therapist had told her on more than one occasion: to rebuild trust, at some point you have to give a person the benefit of the doubt.
After dinner, while Ryan and Hannah had some ice cream, she stepped outside to get a little air. The cold stung her already sensitive throat but she ignored it as she trudged over to the wagon wheel bench where she’d found Ryan mentally beating himself up earlier in the day.