“What’s going on?” I asked. “You look shocked.”
“I’ve got the rest of the list,” she said.
Ernie looked at her curiously. “That should be good news.”
She walked over to my desk and handed me another set of papers. “Look at the last name, for Teddy Roosevelt.”
I did. “Lawrence Ridley?”
“That ambulance chasing attorney?” Ernie said. “The one with the cheesy commercials on TV?”
Tara nodded. “I couldn’t believe it either.”
“He helped start the DPD community meetings.” I thumped back in my chair. “You’re sure about this?” I grabbed the new pages and started reading them.
“I looked this over carefully.”
Rizzo stood with an elbow crooked, his chin resting on his hand. “If that’s true, we have to be very careful. Ridley is a powerful man. If we’re wrong, this will go badly for us.”
“How much of his conversation do you have in this chat room?” I asked Tara.
She jabbed a finger at my desk. “A lot. I’ve been reading through some of it. They’re careful not to admit to anything. But they keep talking about their ‘deeds.’ ”
“Well,” Ernie said. “Even if Ridley never admits to a crime, we could get him on conspiracy.”
Rizzo nodded. “First thing, we need to get him in here, see what he has to say.” He fixed his gaze on Tara and echoed my words. “You’re sure on this?”
“Yes,” she said.
Rizzo went to the window and looked out on Cherokee Street. Then he turned to us. “Find out everything you can on Ridley, fast. Then interview him, see what he tells us.” He turned to me. “Sarah, does he talk about a deed that he did?”
I shrugged. “Not really. I don’t see that he performed a deed, or maybe he did his murder first. Or maybe he just pulled the group together. It’ll take a bit to go through all of this.”
“What do we know about this guy?” Rizzo asked. “I just see his commercials on television.”
I quickly got on the computer and typed in Ridley’s name. “He’s fifty-six years old, married, with a couple of kids.”
Ernie was typing as well. “He went to Ohio State, then law school in California. A big house in east Denver. You know he’s got a lot of money.”
“So far, all our potential suspects have money,” I said. “They have resources they assumed keep them from being caught?”
Rizzo motioned at me. “Take Ernie and bring Ridley in for questioning.”
I nodded. “We’re on it.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Ernie and I pulled into the Centennial Airport parking lot an hour later. After Rizzo had left my desk, I phoned Ridley’s office and was told he had left. A little more digging, and we found out from his house staff that he was headed to the airport for a sudden, unplanned trip. It appeared he might be making an escape.
“Let’s get in there,” Ernie said, urgency in his voice.
The small airport is one of the busiest for private flights, and we had called ahead and instructed the tower to hold Lawrence Ridley’s plane. We rushed into the main building, found a security person who led us to the airport director. He was puzzled, but made some calls, and we were eventually escorted outside to the operations area. The high pitch of plane engines roared close by.
The director shielded his eyes against the late afternoon sun. “His plane is over there.”
“Don’t let it take off,” Ernie said.
The director looked at us strangely, then walked us toward a large hanger. In front of it was a small jet, its steps lowered. The director pointed. “There’s Mr. Ridley’s limo now.”
A black limo had just pulled up near the jet. The driver got out, opened the back door, and a man with a full head of dark hair emerged from the limo. Ernie and I walked toward him, and I raised my hand.
“Mr. Ridley?” I called out.
He turned to look at me, and the slightest of frowns appeared on his face.
“Yes?” he asked as we drew close.
“I’m Detective Spillman, and this is Detective Moore. We’re with the Denver Police Department.”
“You’ve caught me at a bad time.”
I forged ahead. “We have reason to believe that you may be an accessory to a series of murders.”
He glanced toward the limo driver and to his wife, a blond in a skirt and high heels, who had just gotten out. “I’m afraid you must be mistaken.” His voice was like his commercials, a touch too much sincerity.
Ernie stared at him “We’d like to take you in for questioning.”
He glanced toward the plane. “Impossible. We’re about to leave town.”
I didn’t have enough to charge him with murder, but I hoped to scare him enough that he’d talk with us. “If you’d like, we can charge you with conspiracy to commit murder, or you can voluntarily talk to us. Take your pick. You come to the station with us, or we’ll bring charges against you. Then it gets ugly.”
He considered that, then turned to his wife, muttered something I couldn’t hear, and kissed her cheek. Then he looked at Ernie and me.
“Let’s go.”
Lawrence Ridley glanced around the interrogation room. His tailored suit, gold watch, and commanding demeanor was out of place in the drab room with its stark white walls, antiseptic smells, and cheap metal table. He eyed video equipment in an upper corner of the room. Ernie was sitting at one end of the table, and I sat opposite Ridley. I noted the time, who was present, and read him his rights for the record. He stated he understood his rights, and I began.
“Do you want a lawyer present?” I asked.
He shook his head, arrogance in his eyes.
“During the course of a murder investigation,” I said, “we discovered our suspect was part of an online chat room whose purpose was to discuss murders that the members commit. One of the members used the name Teddy Roosevelt. We traced that user back to you.”
Ridley placed his hands on the table. “That’s very interesting.” His expression revealed nothing.
Ernie leaned his chair back and crossed his legs, looking the laid-back observer.
“Are you the user Teddy Roosevelt?” I asked Ridley.
“That’s a very interesting pseudonym to pick,” he said. “An aristocrat, a powerful man, a president who was a great statesman.”
I nodded. “Yes, definitely a leader, but not a murderer.”
He blinked. “I’m not sure what this has to do with me.”
“I just told you,” I said. “The apparent leader of this online group is you.”
“How do you know anyone in this group has actually committed murder?”
I stared at him. “I think you know that, because you were headed to the airport to escape.”
“I had a trip planned.”
“A last-minute trip.” He didn’t say anything, and I went on. “What do you know about Eve Godwin, Clive Worchester, and Alan Oswald?”
“Nothing,” Ridley said.
Ernie’s chair legs dropped to the floor with a bang. Ridley jerked his head at the noise. “Those three, and two others, wanted to experience what it was like to kill,” Ernie said, no longer the laid-back observer. He leaned toward Ridley. “They said they had a safe place to share what their plans were, and what it felt like, a private little group. Teddy organized it all.”
Ernie was now pushing Ridley, hoping he would cave. We stared at him, and I wondered what we would get from him. He had resources to fight this, was too smart to leave a trail of evidence that would convict him. But I also knew, if he was at all like the others in the Guild, he wanted to share, needed to share. I played off that.
I got more comfortable in my chair, took a casual pose, and looked at Ridley. “Let me ask this. How would one go about organizing a guild like this? It’s not part of the norm.”
A gleam appeared in his eye. I was right, he wanted to talk.
He mulled for a moment. “Purely from a hypothe
tical standpoint,” he began, his manner refined. “What if you did have people who wanted to know what it was like to take another human being’s life?”
I smiled easily. “What if? How would you find people who wanted that, let alone get that group together?”
“Someone with a lot of resources, a lot of money, can do whatever they want.” He turned his chair away from the table and crossed one leg over the other. Then he smoothed his pant leg. “Let’s just say, again purely hypothetical, that there was someone, a little old lady, who had bothered a certain lawyer’s family for years. She was an annoying friend of the family, and terribly jealous of the success the lawyer had.”
“She didn’t like that you’re rich,” Ernie said.
“Not me, the lawyer.” Ridley stared at him. “And for the sake of the story, yes. She was a shrew, and her nagging got to be too much. Around that time, the lawyer had taken on a case, a murder trial. The client had shot a man, and he didn’t seem to be remorseful, rather almost pleased about how he had taken a life.” He waved a casual hand in the air. “Mind you, he never said that, it was just something the lawyer surmised. And it stayed with the lawyer, and he kept thinking about this nagging relative. Wondering. Then, he began to plan how he could eliminate her. She lived in a little house, nothing like the lawyer’s estate. He could go there in the middle of the night. This was before all the surveillance video and doorbell cameras and whatnot. The house would be easy to break into, and she was old, lived alone, was hard of hearing. He could go sneak through the back door, go into her bedroom, and no one would be the wiser. A pillow over the head and suffocation. Easy.” His smile was cold. “Hypothetically, of course.”
I glanced at Ernie. We had just heard a confession, and yet Ridley had been so careful, he could deny he was referencing himself.
I felt a pain in my stomach, the acid churning. “What did you do next?”
Ridley was again too slippery to actually admit to anything. “I didn’t do anything. But the lawyer might’ve thought through the whole thing and realized the killing was incredible. I’ve heard that there can be a rush, an exhilaration, when you do something like that. Mind you, I’ve just heard that.”
“And you wanted to see if others would want the same feeling?” Ernie asked.
Ridley nodded appreciatively. “I could see where someone would want to share the wealth, so to speak.”
“How did you get the group together?” I asked.
“To do something like that, I would assume one would have to have the resources to make sure the group would be anonymous. As for finding members, couldn’t one listen to people at parties and get-togethers, get a sense that they wanted a similar experience? It could be a lawyer’s clients who wanted revenge. The possibilities are endless. Hypothetical conversations would indicate interest in such a group. Then members are chosen, and someone could gather them together and create a safe, online place to meet. Again, it might be surprising how many people would want this kind of experience.”
“I thought the group was anonymous,” I said.
“The others didn’t know each other, but I had checked them all out.”
It was his first slip; he didn’t qualify the statement with a hypothetical. He seemed to know that, and he sat a little straighter.
“How could you possibly know that you could trust them all to keep quiet?” I asked.
“Someone who could pull a group like this together would have the resources to vet all the members first, research them to know they could be trusted implicitly. It would be important that the members were local, easier to keep tabs on them. And the members would have to agree to stringent rules. After all, no one would want to get caught, so they wouldn’t risk anything that would jeopardize the group or themselves.”
“So you knew them all, but none of them knew each other, or you.”
“That could be how it works, hypothetically speaking.”
It wasn’t a yes or a no, but that had to be the case.
“You still couldn’t know that they would all agree to the rules or keep the rules?” Ernie interjected.
“Someone with the resources to pull a group like this together would have the resources to keep tabs on the members,” Ridley said with thick self-assurance.
“How did you choose your victims?” I asked.
“That’s an interesting question,” was all he said.
“The group rules.” I consulted some notes. “From what I can gather, beyond needing the utmost secrecy, is that you picked victims you didn’t know.” I pointed my notes at him. “But you yourself broke those rules.”
He pursed his lips. “If, as you say, the first victim was known to the killer, that would create vulnerability for the killer. He, or she, could be caught.” He was still trying the subterfuge, not, technically speaking, admitting to anything. “From that point forward, if group members were to commit murders, there would need to be assurances that no one could get caught.”
“So, for victims, you chose vulnerable people,” Ernie said. “People society doesn’t care much about.”
“People that society, and the police, wouldn’t miss. Where the police wouldn’t work hard to find the killers,” Ridley said. “That would seem a reasonable request for the group members, would it not?”
“Who killed first?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I tried a different direction. “Someone had to be first.” Another glance at my notes. “Possibly Brad Pitt. Knowing that someone in the Guild you created actually committed a murder must’ve made you feel invincible.” No reply. I went on. “Tell me about the jewelry with the red stones. A calling card?”
“One would need a way for the members to know that the deed was done.”
Another slip, a small one, by using the word “deed.” It was circumstantial evidence, but evidence that could nonetheless connect him to the chat room. He didn’t seem aware of it.
“Then it started to go badly,” I said. “Jonathan Hall’s murder.”
“Who?” he asked.
“He’s the lieutenant governor’s son.”
“A homeless man, correct? I think I saw something about him in the news. He would seem to be a vulnerable person, but as it turned out, not an anonymous person.” He tipped his head slightly. “Something like that certainly could complicate things. At that point, with the wrong person being chosen, it seems it might be time to shut the group down, before things crumbled.”
I gave him a hard look. “But things crumbled anyway.”
“It was always possible that a member could make a mistake. It would then be time to close the group.”
“To stop the killing,” Ernie said.
“The group leader insisted on that,” I said.
Ridley nodded. “Of course. I would think if the members went on, continued to kill, it would increase their chances of exposure.”
“One of your members went on,” I said.
He stared at me, confusion written on his face. “Excuse me?”
“I thought you kept tabs on your members.”
“I did.” He stopped. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It surprises you that one of the group members, Alan Oswald, committed a murder last night?” I asked.
He blinked hard, then said, “What’s this?”
“He kidnapped a girl and strangled her,” I said. I glanced at my notes again. “Alan is Joe Smith. He talks about wanting to take his turn.”
Ridley uncrossed his legs. “Well, I suppose no one’s perfect. A member might want to act impulsively, even though he was told strictly not to.”
“This was a lot for you to pull off,” I said, faux admiration in my voice, hoping that might cause him to slip again.
Even though he’d gotten carried away and blundered a time or two, he wasn’t going to now. “Isn’t it fun to speculate?” He smiled at me, then glanced conspicuously at his watch. “I’m afraid
this interview is over. I will get my lawyers together, a top team, I assure you. If you think that I’m going to go to jail, you are mistaken. To be hypothetical, do you think I would put a group like that together without ensuring that there would be no way I could be caught?” His eyes held the purest evil I think I had ever seen. “You don’t have enough to charge me, or you would have.” He stood up. “It’s been a pleasure speaking with you.”
Ernie and I left the room with him. He walked with squared shoulders, head held high, as we escorted him outside. When we reached the sidewalk, he smiled at us one last time, then got into a limo that was waiting at the sidewalk.
Chapter Forty
Ernie and I watched the limo drive away. Then he turned to me.
“Can you believe that guy?” he growled.
I shook my head slowly. “I haven’t conducted an interview like that in a long time, maybe never. An entire interrogation answered in the hypothetical. That’s a guy who knows how to choose his words carefully.”
He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Think we can get him on conspiracy to commit murder charges?”
I thought about that. “I don’t know. We need to gather up as much information as we can and take it to the DA. Let them figure out charges.”
It was dark, and we couldn’t see clouds, but it began to spit rain. He looked up and held out a hand. “Maybe this will cleanse me. After talking to Ridley, I feel dirty.”
I smiled wryly. “Let’s go back inside.”
He opened the door for me, and we walked back upstairs. As we entered the detective room, Spats was sitting at his desk. He held his hands up.
“Where have you guys been?”
I went to my desk and sat down. Ernie looked into Rizzo’s office and beckoned for him to join us. Spats looked at each of us.
“Are you going to spill it?” he asked. “I’ve been busy with Clive Worchester. What’d I miss?”
“I’ll get Rizzo in here, so we only have to go over it once,” Ernie said.
Deadly Guild (Detective Sarah Spillman Mystery Series Book 3) Page 22
