Judged (22 page)

“Get what over with?” Ridley asked.

Tim reached down and picked up the funnel he had on the floor. He held it before Ridley. “Open your mouth,” Tim said.

Ridley clenched his jaw.

“Two options, and I’m fine with either. Option one: you open your mouth voluntarily, and I stick in this funnel. Option two, I’ll break your damn teeth out of your head and force it in. Tick tock. Make a decision.”

Ridley kept his jaw clenched. Tim could see his jaw muscles flexing.

“Suit yourself.” Tim dropped the blue plastic funnel to the floor and reached behind his back. He took his pistol from his waistline, turned it in his hand, and held it by the barrel. “I’m guessing that this is going to hurt.”

Ridley’s eyes grew wide when Tim brought the gun back to swing it toward his teeth. “Wait!” Ridley yelled.

“Too late,” Tim said. He swung the butt of the pistol into Ridley’s mouth. The gun hit with a slap and a crunch. Ridley yanked his head back, only for it to be straightened by Tim grabbing him by the back of the head. Tim swung the gun three more times. The last time, the butt of the pistol hit with not much more than a thudding squish. Blood poured from Ridley’s mouth. Chips of teeth stuck in the blood, rolling down Ridley’s chin. His lips were jagged and cut, chunks of flesh hanging. He gurgled some words that Tim couldn’t make out through all the blood in his mouth.

“Funnel time,” Tim said.

He jammed the blood-covered pistol back into his waistband and reached down. He scooped up the funnel and jammed it into Ridley’s bloody mouth. With his left hand, he held it in against Ridley’s protests while he reached down again with his right.

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?”

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.

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.