by Shawn Inmon
“Well, I seem to keep coming back to the area for business, so it’s worth the investment,” Scott said as he laid the map book on the counter next to the cash register.
The older lady punched some keys on an old-fashioned cash register and said, “Ten seventy-nine.” She glanced at the ten-dollar bill Scott was offering, then back at him. “Got to pay the Governor, you know.”
“Right, right, of course! Scott pulled an extra dollar from his wallet and handed it to her. He walked out of the bookstore into typical western Washington weather—cool, misty drizzle. He hurried to the cab of the pickup and flipped open his new purchase. It didn’t take him long to figure out how it worked. A listing of all streets were in the back, along with what map pages they appeared on.
Within thirty minutes, he was parked across the street from the house listed for Gary Ridgway in the phone book. It was a smallish house, one story, one-car garage. There were no cars in the driveway and no lights on inside.
Scott sat watch on the house all morning and afternoon with no luck. The house was located in a rural part of town, so there weren’t a lot of inquisitive neighbors out walking their dogs and wondering who he was and why he was there.
Scott’s patience was rewarded at 5:45, when an old pickup pulled into the driveway. Scott slipped low in his seat so he could barely see over the steering wheel. Gary Ridgway emerged from the truck, glanced around, unlocked his front door, and disappeared inside.
I’ve got the right place. I know he was married to three different women, but I don’t know when. I don’t want to go charging in and find him enjoying a cozy domestic scene with his wife and scare her half to death.
Scott sat and watched the house for another hour, but nothing changed. Finally, he started the Luv and eased away from his parking spot. He drove to a little café for dinner, then returned. Still no change.
For the next three days, Scott drove by the house at odd hours. He never saw another vehicle besides Ridgway’s pickup, and he never saw another person.
Over the weekend, Ridgway’s schedule became more unpredictable, coming and going at odd hours, which concerned Scott. No one knew exactly where the Green River Killer had taken his victims, but one popular theory was that he had brought many of them to his home and killed them there.
Scott decided to stakeout the house and follow him if he left. He parked a block-and-a-half up from Ridgway’s house and kept an eye on his truck through binoculars. Time dragged and eventually Scott nodded off. When he woke with a start, the pickup was gone.
He glanced at his watch. Just past midnight.
Where does your friendly neighborhood serial killer go in the middle of a Saturday night? Cruising for victims, probably.
Kicking himself, Scott threw the Luv into gear and drove down the hill in search of Ridgway. After a few miles, he realized it was a lost cause. He pulled into a 7-11, got a large coffee, and returned to his same parking spot.
Hours passed, but Scott didn’t nod off again. At a quarter past four, Ridgway’s pickup rolled up the road and into his driveway. The truck sat idling for two, three, four minutes. Finally, Ridgway and a woman dressed in high heels, a tube top and a neon green miniskirt emerged and went in the front door.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Adrenaline spiked through Scott McKenzie. He sat bolt upright.
Shit! This wasn’t the way I wanted this to go down.
He fumbled around in the cab of the truck, grabbed his pack, then ran for the house.
He slowed as he approached the front door. The porch light was on, but the bulb was weak and barely illuminated anything. Scott melted into the shadows along the side of the house. He tried to look in the windows, but the blinds were pulled snug.
He reached the front door and gently tried the knob. Locked tight.
Scott glanced around, saw all was quiet in the neighborhood. He slunk along the deep shadows that ringed the house and ran into a tall cedar fence that marked the back yard. The gate had a piece of string hanging through a hole. He tugged on it and the gate latch clicked open. He hurried through and found the back door.
It was locked as tight as the front door. Scott put his ear against it and listened, but heard nothing but silence.
Nothing for it. He might be killing her right now. Gonna have to break it down.
Scott unslung his backpack and set it beside the door. He backed up four paces, then ran forward and slammed his shoulder into the center of the door.
The frame split slightly, the blow reverberated through the entire house, but the door held. Scott bounced off and fell onto the muddy ground.
Before he could pick himself up, the door flung open and an enraged Gary Ridgway screamed, “What the hell is going on out here?”
Scott launched himself from his kneeling position. His shoulder hit Ridgway dead center, driving him backward into the house. Scott’s momentum carried him right along and they both landed in a heap in what turned out to be the laundry room.
They scuffled in the darkness of the room for a few seconds, then Scott was able to disentangle himself. He retreated to the back door and reached inside his pack. His fingers closed around his baton. He flicked it open and jumped back inside.
Ridgway was gone.
Scott charged after him, but the house was dark and he stumbled against a piece of furniture in the living room and went down in a heap.
A woman screamed, but Scott had no idea if it was because Ridgway was killing her or if she was afraid of Scott, the sudden intruder. Scott picked himself up, limping slightly and followed the sound of the scream.
He ran down a narrow hallway, seeking Ridgway. As he moved past an open door, Ridgway stabbed at him with a hunting knife, slashing at his side.
Scott cried out, but instinctively swung his baton, catching Ridgway flush in the face, shattering his glasses and smashing his nose.
Scott didn’t wait to see how badly he’d been stabbed, but pressed his advantage. He delivered a vicious front kick that caught Ridgway in the groin. He fell to the ground and Scott was on him.
Ridgway was blinded by the blood spraying from his ruined nose, but he thrashed around under Scott’s strong hold, desperately trying to break free.
Scott swung the baton, slamming it against Ridgway’s head again and again.
Ridgway lapsed toward unconsciousness. That was the opening Scott needed. He unsheathed his karambit and slid it up under Ridgway’s chin and into his brain. Warm blood sprayed over Scott’s face. He jammed the knife up with all his strength, then rolled off him.
From the other room, he heard the woman’s voice—loud and near-hysterical.
“I don’t know what address I’m at. I’m at someone else’s house.” Her voice rose again, becoming almost unintelligible. “He’s killing him, I can hear it!”
Scott walked out of the room, wiping his knife against his jeans and slipping it back into the sheath. He remembered his baton and turned around to retrieve it. It had rolled under a desk and he had to flip the overhead light on to locate it. He avoided looking at the corpse of Gary Ridgway and flipped the light back off.
He staggered back out of the room and waves of pain from the wound in his side washed over him.
He moved down the hall, leaving a long, bloody streak on the wall. The woman stared at him, covered in blood and panting. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. She ran for the front door, fumbled with the lock, then fled, high heels tapping a staccato rhythm against the sidewalk.
Through the open door, Scott heard the faraway wail of sirens. Someone in the neighborhood had heard the ruckus and called the police.
Scott wanted to go through the house and wipe down anything he might have touched, but he knew he was running out of time. He stumbled to the back door, grabbed his pack and hurried around to the open gate.
Scott moved as fast as he could to his pickup and jumped in the cab. He closed the door behind him and slunk down low in the seat.
The blu
e lights of a police car lit up the darkness as it flew up the hill and parked sideways across Ridgway’s driveway. An officer sat inside his prowler for a minute, then emerged with a flashlight in one hand and the other resting on his gun.
Scott watched him approach the wide-open front door cautiously. He stood to the side of the light coming from inside, then called out, “Police!”
A moment later, he disappeared inside.
Scott turned the key and the Luv started on the first try. He shifted into first gear and coasted past the house as quietly as possible.
He checked his rear view mirror anxiously until he was out of sight of the blue flashing lights behind him. Before he got to the bottom of the hill, he saw more sets of flashing lights—a combination of red and blue this time—approaching him.
Before they reached him, he switched off his lights and turned into the driveway of a darkened house. He waited until the two squad cars and an ambulance had passed him, then got back on the road and drove to the motel.
Inside his room, he checked the knife wound, which was throbbing now. It was a stab wound, not a slash, so it was deep but only an inch or so wide.
During his vigilante years, he had been injured enough times that he always carried medical supplies with him. The lips of the cut were clean and needed stitches, but there was no way Scott was going to go to a hospital with a knife wound—especially when he had left the hunting knife at the scene. Knife wounds were reported, and there was every chance that someone would eventually put two and two together.
He gritted his teeth and dabbed an antibiotic ointment all around the wound. The bleeding had slowed to an ooze. He applied a double-folded bandage, then added several layers of medical tape. Finally, he took an ace bandage and wrapped it all the way around him three times.
That should keep my insides on the inside and hopeful absorb any blood that makes it through the bandage.
He rolled up the bloody flannel shirt he had been wearing and stuck it inside a plastic laundry bag.
What he wanted more than anything was to lie down on the bed and sleep for twelve hours.
Self-preservation told him that what he needed to do was put as many miles as possible between him and the crime scene.
He popped three aspirin to help with the pain, checked out of his room and got back on I-5 heading south. He drove straight to PDX, the Portland, Oregon airport. Parking the pickup at a convenience store, Scott left the keys in the ignition and walked away.
No time to sell it, but this will be just as good. Someone will steal it within a few hours and it will be gone.
He grabbed a taxi to the terminal, bought a ticket to Chicago and collapsed into an uncomfortable chair until it was time for his flight.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
The next three years played out much like the previous ten. Scott spent most of his life on the road, doing his best to right the wrongs that he knew were coming. Spiritually and emotionally, he was more centered. He had made peace with his life’s work, and he now had two home bases to work from—Evansville and Middle Falls.
When he got banged up from a confrontation, he made his way as quickly as he could to one of them. Both the Werbeloffs and Joe Hart became adept at sewing and bandaging him up.
Physically, he was starting to wear down. He had never fully recovered from the wounds he had suffered lifetimes earlier in Vietnam. Add in more than a dozen years of brawls with bad men who knew they were fighting for their lives and the picture becomes clear. Even when he wasn’t recently injured, Scott walked with a limp and he woke up to an entire menagerie of pains every morning.
He looked over the remainder of his list and knew he would likely never get to all of them. In the end, the body could only do what it could before it broke down completely.
Each time he went to Middle Falls, he and Joe traveled to the edge of town where their dream project had taken physical form. When Scott had made the initial suggestion, he hadn’t had a specific form in his mind, but long conversations with Joe had solidified the idea.
They had created a small village of its own, with tiny houses modeled on the guest house Joe had in his backyard. Those were for vets who needed solitude, peace, and quiet to get their heads straight. There were bunkhouses for those that desired company and socializing.
There was a huge community center with pool tables, card tables, an industrial kitchen, and a massive great room where everyone could gather to hear a speaker or watch a movie. There was also a counseling center, manned during the day five days a week, for those who wanted or needed someone to talk to.
Joe’s favorite part was the no-kill animal center he had built right in the middle of the complex. It served a number of purposes. It saved animals and helped them find their forever homes, of course, but it did much more. It gave the vets who were staying there a place to work and bond with the animals. It also gave the townspeople of Middle Falls a reason to come onto the property and learn that it was a positive thing for their community.
It all sat on twenty wooded acres with walking paths, a duck pond, and benches to sit and contemplate the world.
The one thing Joe couldn’t figure out was what to call the whole enterprise.
A few months before the place was ready to open, Scott took Sam aside for a meeting. They walked through the grounds, inspecting the finishing touches on the buildings and landscaping.
“Come up with a name, yet?” Scott asked her.
“Yeah, but nothing great. Nothing that quite fits.” Sam shot a sideways glance at Scott. “You’ve got an idea, don’t you? I know you.”
“Joe’s dad Rodrigo was a vet, you know. Korea.”
“Right. He did mention that one night.”
“So then, what about ‘The Rodrigo Hart Oasis for Veterans.’”
Sam stopped. She stared up into the tops of the trees that ringed the project. “The Rodrigo Hart Oasis for Veterans. Scott, you are a certified genius.”
“Nope. I have a lot of time to think when I’m traveling.”
‘I’ve been meaning to ask you. What do you do when you’re traveling? What are you looking for?”
“Peace, love and understanding?”
“Okay, fine. Don’t tell me. I still think you’re a genius. And now I’ve got an idea. I’m going to put a little side project together and get a sign made up for the Oasis. We’ll surprise Joe with it.”
“You’ll surprise Joe with it. Me? I’m hitting the road again. I think this place is about ready for some occupants, don’t you? I’m gonna go look for them.”
And that’s exactly what he did.
As he had so often, he traveled to the four corners of the country, crisscrossing the middle states over and over. This time, instead of dealing out vigilante justice, he looked for veterans living on the fringes of society.
Unfortunately, they weren’t hard to find. The difficult part was picking the right person. The truth was, some of the homeless vets were homeless by choice. They never felt like they fit in when they returned home, or they didn’t fit in with their families, or a thousand other reasons. They chose to live without a roof over their heads every night and found a certain amount of freedom and contentment from the lack of commitment. On the other end of the spectrum were those who were almost beyond help—so mentally ill or drug-addicted that Scott knew a few weeks or a month at the Oasis wouldn’t be much help.
He looked for people more in the middle. Vets who hadn’t ever gotten a break, who had been abandoned by the system, but were still fighting to get back on their feet.
The only way to identify who was who was for Scott to live as they did. And so he did. He stopped flying, riding the bus, or staying in even the most inexpensive motels. Instead, he hopped freight trains, rode his thumb, and slept under the stars or tucked into a cramped space somewhere. The men and women who lived on the fringes of society looked out for each other and communicated through what they called the hobo network. Someone always knew something, or someone. W
here to find a safe place to sleep, where the best place to hop trains was, or who might have an extra can or two of food.
When Scott found someone that he knew would benefit from a stay at the Oasis, he bought them a bus ticket to Middle Falls and gave them enough money to eat on the journey. He knew that some cashed the ticket in and smoked or drank the proceeds, and he was okay with that. He wanted to extend the hand of possibility to those who needed it. It was up to them whether they accepted the opportunity or not.
Enough did that a steady stream of “Scott’s people” found their way to the Oasis. Word of Scott’s largesse and scouting trips spread along the hobo network. No one knew his full name. They just called him the Angel.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Scott enjoyed his scouting trips more than he ever had his other life’s work, but he still did his best to combine the two.
By the spring of 1990, though, he was forty-one-years-old with the body of a seventy-year-old man. Sleeping in doorways or around a fire outside the city limits was fine, but he found he was having a harder time standing up straight after he did.
A reputation is a wonderful thing, though, and eventually word spread when he was in town and he found that he didn’t need to actually bed down beside them every night. He knew he wasn’t the only one who was hurting from that lifestyle, though, so that only increased his urgency in getting more people back to Joe, Sam, and the Oasis.
Eventually, Scott sent so many on that Joe and Sam had to apply for new permits and build more bunkhouses to accommodate the stream of veterans. They encouraged Scott’s evangelical work, though, and told him they would keep building more buildings until they either ran out of space or money.
Whenever he needed a break, he headed back to Middle Falls and stayed at the Oasis. When Joe saw that Scott was returning regularly, he built him his own cabin, placing it inside the trees that ringed the buildings for a little privacy. Scott only asked for one thing—a front porch he could sit on like he’d had a lifetime before in Vermont. Joe was more than happy to accommodate the request. The porch opened out onto a small meadow, then the tranquil duck pond. It finally felt to Scott like he was living his own Walden dream.
