She left the coffee shop, leaving Carter in the same place she’d originally found him, but now with his perspective of the world knocked a little out of whack.
CHAPTER 15
When Riley got home that evening, she curled up on the couch and turned on a local news station. There hadn’t been any news about the Nob Hill Prowler in a while, so Riley hoped the guy had gotten spooked by the media coverage, stopping his creepy behavior before it escalated to something more violent. Twenty minutes into the news, neither Francis Hank Carras nor the Nob Hill Prowler had been mentioned.
As she picked up the remote to switch the channel, a breaking news bulletin flashed across the screen.
“Early this morning, a young woman, Brooke Winters, was on a run near The University of New Mexico, not far from her home in Nob Hill, when a man ambushed her,” the female news anchor said. “Brooke survived the encounter, and escaped relatively unscathed, but she wanted to share her story today to encourage other women to be vigilant.”
The screen cut to a pretty brunette standing on a sidewalk in what looked like a park. She had a long-distance runner’s body—thin and toned. She had a scrape on her cheek, and a haunted look in her brown eyes, but otherwise looked okay. A male reporter stood on the sidewalk with her. Riley sat forward, her elbows on her knees.
“I’ve been on that run so many times, I never thought about it being unsafe,” Brooke said. “I run really early in the morning, between 4 and 5, so the only people who are out are usually other runners. I’ve seen the same people every week for months. Anyway, I’d just rounded a corner when someone came flying out of nowhere and tackled me. It knocked the wind out of me, so I couldn’t scream or anything. But after we wrestled a bit, I got a look at his face and realized he was wearing a ski mask. It was honestly the scariest thing I’d ever seen. That’s when I started screaming.”
“And someone heard you then?” the reporter asked.
“Yeah,” Brooke said, heaving out a relieved breath, nodding. “This guy, Richard, who is usually out there running the same time as me, heard me screaming and pulled the guy off me. The two of them were whaling on each other, but Richard was so winded from running that it gave the other guy a chance to wriggle away. But not before Richard yanked the ski mask off his head. He had sandy blond hair, blue eyes, and is in his thirties. We both saw that much before the guy punched Richard in the face, took his ski mask back, and ran off.”
“What a harrowing ordeal,” the reporter said. “I’m glad you’re okay and that Richard was able to come to your aid.”
“Me too. Ladies, take pepper spray with you when you’re out alone. Carry a whistle. Run in areas with other people around. I love that run but now I’m too scared to ever do it again. Keep your eyes peeled. You never know who’s out there watching you.”
Riley shuddered.
When the news anchor in the studio returned, on the screen beside her was a composite sketch. “This is a rendering of Brooke’s attacker. If you’ve seen this man, please contact Albuquerque police.”
Though the reporter hadn’t outright made a connection between this man and the Nob Hill Prowler, Riley’s gut told her the voyeur had escalated after all.
When two days went by without a follow-up from Carter, Riley got antsy. Even if, deep down, she believed Carter would come around on accepting she was a psychic, it didn’t mean he’d do anything with that acceptance.
She told herself that the frustration of being back at square one was what made her decide to drive across town to Marty’s Thrift N Save, the store owned by Carol’s friend. Riley hadn’t called Marty first to warn her she’d be stopping by with questions.
According to Carol, Marty had been the one who attended the auction in Clovis, where the cameras had come from. When Riley hadn’t been able to sleep last night, she’d done a little research on how these auctions worked. She’d woken up with her phone on her chest, the battery nearly drained. Riveting stuff, storage unit auctions.
Riley had been disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that what was on TV—Storage Wars, Auction Kings, and the like—wasn’t totally accurate. Rare, expensive items were almost never left in storage units, as the units were more often than not purchased by people down on their luck who needed a safe place to store their belongings when they could no longer afford rent on their residence. If their luck kept proving to be elusive, paying rent on the unit became impossible, too. She’d read a few heartbreaking stories of families losing their units, and then attending the auction, standing outside the fence as they watched all their worldly possessions getting packed onto someone else’s truck bed.
In other cases, units were abandoned on purpose because they held illegal items—guns and drugs, mostly. When the lock was cut on those units after 90 days of missed payments, unsurprisingly, no auction happened, as everything had to be turned over to the police.
And in rare cases—treated as the norm on the reality shows—units held items of value, like the one Marty and Carol had bought. So it begged the question once again: who had owned that unit and what had caused said person to fall behind on payments? Was he or she out of the country, broke, in prison … dead?
It was that last question that made Riley get out of the car and cross the parking lot to the glass doors of Marty’s Thrift N Save. If the unit owner was now dead, Riley could potentially make contact if Marty had any items from the unit in her shop. She pushed open the door and cautiously stepped inside. Like Carol’s store, this one was fairly small, but the layout was more open than her friend’s.
A few feet from the door stood the cashier counter. It was made of glass, and had small glass figurines of fantasy creatures—unicorns, fairies, dragons—lining its two shelves. Bookshelves stacked with leather-bound books stood to either side of the counter. The rest of the space had free-standing shelves and stands scattered haphazardly, stuffed with accessories like handbags, shoes, and scarfs. The back wall was covered in framed black-and-white photos, all of which were of iconic Hollywood women—Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor.
She walked a little further inside the shop, not seeing other patrons or employees. “Hello?” she called out.
No response.
Riley stopped in front of a coat rack hung with purses of all colors and sizes. The smiling face of a gaudy sequined cat stared back at her from the side of a leather messenger bag.
“Oh, hello,” someone said behind her, and Riley whirled to find a five-foot-nothing woman standing there. “Can I help you find something?”
Riley noted a faint Spanish accent.
“I hope so,” Riley said. “I’m not sure if your friend Carol mentioned that I might come by to ask about a storage unit auction you attended where you bought three cameras?”
She smiled, laugh lines prominent at the corners of her brown eyes. “Riley, yes? The one who can communicate with spirits?”
Riley flushed. “Guilty.”
“Well, this is exciting!” Marty said. “I’ve never met a real live psychic before.” She cast a wide look around her store, then hunched into her shoulders a little. “Are there any spirits in here now? I’ve always loved the idea of a shop ghost!”
“Sorry,” Riley said, laughing. “It’s pretty quiet in here from what I can tell.”
“Drat! One of these days I’ll get me a shop ghost. Anyway … I’m glad you came by. Finally someone who will appreciate the weirdness of that auction. I’ve already talked to my husband about it, but none of my friends care a lick about auctions and I can’t tell Carol.”
“I am intrigued,” Riley said, brow cocked.
Marty laughed. “Oh, it’s nothing scandalous. It’s just that the inside of the unit struck me as so odd. There wasn’t much in it, which was odd if only because these things are usually loaded with people’s whole lives. Some of these things are just wall-to-wall boxes thrown in all willy-nilly. It’s a wonder everything doesn’t come falling out when some of these doors are opened. But in th
is one … here, let me show you.”
As Marty pulled her phone out of her back pocket, Riley walked over to stand beside her. Marty scrolled through a few pictures—most of them of happy, round-cheeked kids; grandchildren, Riley guessed—before she went, “Ah, here it is,” and tapped one of the thumbnails.
In the room was nothing but an industrial desk and a desk chair. The desk looked heavy, likely made of metal. The only items on the surface were a lantern that Riley figured ran on batteries, and a mug. The desk sat in the center of the space. Perhaps it had been used as a very isolated office.
“Isn’t that so bizarre? It kind of gives me the creeps if I look at it for too long,” Marty said.
“You’re not allowed to go in a storage unit during an auction, right?”
“Nope,” Marty said. “And with this one, no one needed to.”
“What made you bid on it? It doesn’t look like the kind of thing you or Carol sell.”
“Partly curiosity. The mug on the table had what looked like coffee in it, but it clearly hadn’t been touched in at least three months, seeing as the unit wouldn’t have been on sale otherwise. I was thinking maybe it was a writer’s shed, and that the next great American novel could be in one of those drawers. Maybe the author had recently dropped dead or something. That, and my husband is very handy and he’s been looking for a desk like this for a long time as a workbench.”
“Was there a lot of competition for it?” Riley asked, still staring at the nearly empty unit.
“Hardly any. I got into a bidding war with an auction veteran I see at a lot of events, but once it got over $700, he dropped out.”
Riley whistled. “$700 for a desk?”
“That’s the part you can’t tell Carol,” Marty said, wrinkling her nose. “I told her it was only $300, and we split the difference. Kenneth outbid me on a rare unit a year ago and I’ve been sore about it ever since. There were two tubs in the back of the unit that had ended up being stuffed to the gills with Disney memorabilia. Kenneth apparently sold the lot of it for close to ten thousand dollars. That jerk! So when Kenneth showed interest in this one, I kept bidding higher out of spite. Oh, the look on his face when he found out there were cameras in those drawers! Worth every penny.”
“I love a person who can hold a good grudge,” Riley said.
Marty laughed again, then pocketed her phone.
“How long ago was the auction?”
“Hmm … about two months ago?”
“Was there anything else in the drawers? Just the cameras?”
“Yep, just the cameras,” Marty said. “Oh, and there was a jacket. You can’t see it in the picture because it was on the ground behind the chair. I took that for myself. There’s a clothes-selling app I post items on exclusively for a few weeks before I make it available for purchase here. The app lets me sell the item to anyone in the country, so if there’s interest, it usually sells there first. It’s a brown leather bomber jacket. A relic of the ’80s, for sure. I’ve already got a couple nibbles.”
Riley really didn’t love the idea of communicating with another serial killer ghost, but she’d promised the woman in the yellow dress that she’d do everything in her power to figure out what had happened to her. “Could I see it?”
Marty cocked her head. “I suppose so. I’ll be right back.”
Riley told herself that if this did make a ghost appear in Marty’s shop and he went poltergeist on them, Riley would do what she could to cover the damages. She was mentally cataloguing what she could sell in her apartment for quick cash when Marty returned with the jacket draped over her arm. It was a warm dark brown, the leather a bit distressed, and had fabric cuffs and a fabric hem.
Marty unzipped the jacket, took hold of it by the shoulders, and held it out for Riley.
“Oh, I didn’t want to try it on it,” Riley said, face heating.
Marty took it in stride, though. “You just want to feel its energy, then? That’s cool. Don’t worry. Carol told me all about the indigo child thing.”
Riley gently took the jacket from Marty, bracing herself for something to happen, but other than the sensation of the supple leather under her fingertips, Riley didn’t feel anything.
“Was she murdered?” Marty asked suddenly. “The woman you and Carol have both seen. Is that why she’s so sad? Someone killed her?”
“I think so,” Riley said softly.
Marty had a hand to her throat as she stared at the jacket. “So does that mean that the person who owned this unit …” She frowned, clearly already second-guessing her desire for a shop ghost.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Riley said as she unzipped pockets and rooted round in their shallow corners. She assumed Marty had done this already, but since handling the item hadn’t triggered anything, Riley was already out of ideas.
The lack of materializing ghosts could mean he’d already moved on—or it could mean that it hadn’t been death that had kept him from paying his storage fees. The jacket was in very good condition if it was truly from the ’80s, and had been well cared for, which was what Ian had also said about the cameras. Between that, and the unfinished mug of coffee on the table, something unexpected and traumatic must have happened to the owner to make him abandon items he’d loved.
When the pockets offered no secrets, Riley checked in the inside lining, hoping a name was written on a tag or near the collar. Her dad had an old jacket like this, and he’d written R. THOMAS on the tag in Sharpie. No such luck here.
The fabric cuffs were surprisingly not dingy. Perhaps the owner got the item dry cleaned regularly. She did find a small, dark stain on one of the cuffs, though, and idly rubbed a thumb across it.
An odd, low buzz filled her head.
A moment later, she got kicked in the stomach so hard, it knocked her breath from her body. She gasped and stumbled back, crashing into the coat rack hung with purses. The rack tippled over easily, taking Riley with it. The rack hit something—an end table, maybe—and split in half underneath her. She fell in a tangle of broken wood, purse straps, and jacket sleeves. The buzzing in her head persisted.
Something as hard as rock clocked her on the side of the face and spots swam before her eyes. The buzzing grew louder. The crunch of bone sounded close to her head, where her hand had just been smashed by an object as heavy as a bowling ball. Another crack to her face, and her head whipped to the side from the impact. It was a wonder her mouth wasn’t full of loose teeth. Nausea roiled in her stomach. Had her jaw just shattered like the coat rack? Panic rose up in her chest like a tide, unable to see her assailant in part because she was wrapped up in the jacket and fallen purses, like she was caught in seaweed that had grabbed hold of her limbs, trying to pull her into the depths. One of the curved pieces of wood from the rack’s base jabbed her painfully in the back.
“Riley!” Marty cried out. “What on earth is going on?”
Another slam to her side, and she was sure then that a rib had snapped in half, shards of which were tearing into her lungs. She groaned, doubled over in the fetal position. “Get the jacket off me!” she choked out.
Marty grabbed hold of the jacket and hurled it behind her where it fell with a muted thud.
The buzzing in her head instantly quieted and Riley sagged. The purse with the sequined cat stared at her again, this time from only half an inch away. The straps of another purse were around one arm and it felt like several others were draped across her legs. Riley pulled the cat purse free and stared up at the ceiling. A significant water stain marred a section near the right-hand corner.
Marty’s face swam into view. “Good heavens! Are you okay? That was the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Reaching up to rub her jaw, Riley was surprised to find it didn’t hurt. “Is my face bruised?”
Marty cocked a brow. “Not that I can see,” she said slowly, then held out a hand. “Let me help you up.”
Riley grabbed onto it and used her free hand to push herself
to sitting. The only spots on her body that actually hurt were on her back and tailbone, where she’d made contact with the coat rack. Her stomach, jaw, and sides, where she’d been hit so forcibly, felt fine.
Once out of the debris, Riley turned back to look at the destruction caused not by a poltergeist, but by some weird psychic reaction to that jacket. Riley glared at it, where it lay pooled on the ground. It took her a moment to piece together what had happened, much like how she had to figure out what Iris Velasco had tried to tell her based on a series of images and impressions.
Her gut told her the spot on the jacket had been blood, and it had been his blood that triggered the psychic reaction.
“The owner of the storage unit got beaten up really badly,” Riley said. “I think that’s tied to why he abandoned it.” He couldn’t have been wearing the jacket when he’d been attacked since the unit was lost because of the attack. The blood that was on it now had been from something else. Maybe the guy got smacked around a lot.
“Oh my. I’m not sure I want something with mojo this bad in here. I surely don’t think I should sell it.”
All Riley knew was that she didn’t want it anywhere near her. They both glanced over at it.
“What do I think I should do with it?” Marty asked.
If it did belong to the man who killed Brynn, Shawna, and the woman in the yellow dress, the blood on that cuff could prove useful, just like the fingerprint slide in her nightstand drawer. But she didn’t have an identity for this man, which meant a trip to the police station was still on the back burner.
“Would it be too much to ask you to hang onto it for now?” Riley asked.
“Not at all. I’ll take it down from the app right away. If it ends up being necessary in figuring out what happened to that young lady, I’ll turn it over to whoever needs it.”
As the adrenaline started to wear off, a pit formed in Riley’s stomach. “I’m really sorry about all this. Just let me know how much it’ll cost to fix all this and—”
Shuttered Secrets Page 20
