Page 56 of Little Twisted Things

Three Days Later

Whatever feelings I had for Alex before quickly disappeared. He was no better than any other guy out in the world. I needed to put together the perfect plan, because once the cops found Alex’s body, they’d come knock on my door, and I couldn’t have that. Maybe I needed to make Alex disappear. Play the sobbing girlfriend part because he up and left. That would work better than putting his body on display as if the other murderer in Key West did it. Maybe I’d have Alex write a letter to the university saying he’s resigning. He’d disappear, and no one would be the wiser.

It was after ten o’clock in the evening when I sat in my car, staring at the folded piece of paper with an address on it that I’d found at Alex’s house. I punched the address into the GPS and followed it to a large home with white siding and a white picket fence.

I picked the lock and slowly opened the door, stepping inside the home where the moonlight streamed through the windows. Everything smelled expensive. Leather. Mahogany. A hint of sandalwood lingering in the air. I wandered through the kitchen, my fingertips grazing the cool marble countertop. I made my way into the living room, which overlooked the ocean through towering glass walls. The house was immaculate. Nothing was out of place. Running my finger across the glass table, there wasn’t a speck of dust.

I entered what appeared to be a study. A computer sat on a large mahogany desk, with files neatly placed in one corner. I opened the drawers. Nothing. Something wasn’t adding up.

I climbed the staircase quietly and entered the master bedroom. It was exactly what I’d expected. Neat. Organized. Controlled. I noticed a man’s watch on the dresser beside a pair of silver cufflinks. When I opened the closet doors, everything was arranged by color. White shirts. Blue shirts. Gray suits. Black suits. Raging OCD perhaps? I opened the nightstand drawer. Nothing. The second drawer. Nothing.

I started back downstairs, and something caught my eye. How hadn’t I seen it before? There was a tiny scratch on the hardwood floor. A few inches long. Barely noticeable. Directly in front of the built-in bookcase. I bent down and ran my finger across the mark. It was fresh.

Looking up at the bookcase, I noticed it didn’t sit flush against the wall. Most people would never have noticed. But I did. Predators always notice the little details. I stood back for a moment and examined it.

“What are you hiding?” I whispered.

I swore I smelled bleach. Leaning closer, I inhaled deeply through my nose, and I was right. There was a bleach smell coming from behind the bookcase. I started pulling the books one by one, and when I reached the tenth book on the shelf, I heard a click, and the entire bookcase shifted outward. A hallway stood before me, and at the end was a steel door slightly ajar. I slowly walked and pushed it open, immediately covering my mouth and nose with my hand to shield them from the smell of death and bleach. Just like the rest of the house, the room was immaculate. A stainless-steel table sat in the center. Cabinets lined the walls. The counters held surgical instruments in perfect rows. My eyes drifted to the shelves filled with neatly labeled plastic bins. Watches. Necklaces. Cell phones. Locks of hair. These were the trophies of a killer. It was then that I realized the cheater I was hunting was also a serial killer.

I heard a muffled sound. Almost as if someone else was here. I looked around and noticed another door. Walking over to it, I turned the handle and slowly pushed it open. Horror swept over my face as I saw a young woman chained to the wall under the dim lights. Her eyes widened when she saw me. My God. It was DaisyMae22.

I stood there and stared at her as every instinct I’d ignored came rushing back. The monster the police and FBI had been chasing for years. The haunting headlines that plagued Key West. The monster I believed I was always one step ahead of. I saw everything with clarity. That monster had been sleeping beside me the entire time. I hadn’t uncovered Alex’s secret. I walked straight into it.

Now I faced a problem. If I helped DaisyMae22, she’d run to the police, they’d arrest Alex, and I wouldn’t get my revenge. I needed my revenge. I thought The Last Chapter Killer and I were just two people moving across the same chessboard without ever meeting. I was wrong. And I’d been sitting across from my opponent every morning, sharing coffee with him.

My mind started replaying specific conversations we’d had. But now, they sounded different.

Every story deserves the perfect ending.

The best villains never think they’re villains.

People reveal who they truly are if you know what to look for.

I thought he was speaking about literature. His one true passion in life. But all this time, he hadn’t been talking about his books. He’d been telling me who he was in his own cryptic way. I found it hard to believe. Nobody would ever look at him and think he was a murderer. But then again, nobody would think that about me.

I’d spent weeks thinking Alex was cheating on me. Technically, he was, but infidelity was only a papercut compared to what I’d just learned. I slowly closed my eyes. Every move I made from this point on would matter. Alex wasn’t simply hiding from the police. He was hiding in plain sight. And now that I knew the truth, I could no longer pretend I was just another chapter in his story. Was he planning on killing me at some point? If he were, he’d chosen the wrong woman.

“I’m sorry. I won’t let him hurt you. If I let you go, you’ll run to the police and tell them he’s The Last Chapter Killer. I can’t have you doing that. I need to take care of Alex myself. He’ll pay for what he’s done to you and me. I promise.”

She tried to scream, but the duct tape prevented it. I walked out of the room, shut the door, and made sure the bookcase was intact.

32

I was fascinated and needed to know why he did what he did. Every killer had a story. A reason as to why they became the monsters they did.

I sat on the couch and opened my laptop. I searched for his parents. Nothing came up. I sifted through the county public records. I typed in the address to his house where he kept the secret room. It was registered to a man named Anthony Ridley. I fell down the rabbit hole searching that name. Then I stumbled across an article from twenty years ago in Virginia.

The body of a local husband and father, Benjamin Ridley, was found in the woods, propped up against a tree and perfectly posed when a hiker found him. Investigators have yet to disclose Mr. Ridley’s cause of death.

Then another article popped up.

Investigators have told us that Benjamin Ridley was poisoned by his wife, Alana Ridley. Police raided her home this morning after finding DNA evidence on Mr. Ridley’s body, leading them to obtain a search warrant for the home where they found the poison hidden in one of the cabinets. Mrs. Ridley confessed to murdering her husband after believing he wasn’t the man she used to know.

“My husband had turned into someone I no longer knew. I had no choice but to give his story a perfect ending. He deserved as much so everyone would remember what a kind and loving man he once was, not the monster he’d become over the years.”

Alana Ridley was taken into police custody while CPS took her ten-year-old son, Anthony Ridley, and placed him in foster care. Stay tuned as this story develops.

Alex had become a killer because of his mother, just like I had. He was good. Maybe too good. To go unnoticed all these years took careful and precise planning. In a way, I admired him. But he was killing for the wrong reasons. He preyed upon young women, got them to trust him, and then killed them for some reason. A reason I hadn’t figured out yet. But I would soon, and this time, Alex would be the one to suffer his fate.