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“So if he’s rubbed shoulders with infamous killers, chances are he hasn’t lived around here all of his life. Judging by the police reports, there’s been a few dark incidents in this town but nothing infamous.”
“Right, so he’s spent time elsewhere. Maybe in the city. He could have been a part of Baltimore P.D.,” Ripley said.
“Yeah. This is a place for retirees too. He could have settled down here, then realized retired life wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. The boredom might have driven him to homicide.”
Ripley didn’t look impressed. “Don’t say that.”
Ella forgot who she was talking to for a second. The soon-to-be retiree. “Sorry. I’m just theory crafting.”
“How many police officers are there in this town? Both active and retired.”
Ella filtered down her search results. “Actual officers? Eight. There’s some admin staff in here but we shouldn’t include them. Strangely there are no retired officers living around here or Hicksberg.”
“Any that have worked in other parts of the country? More murderous areas?”
Ella tapped her keyboard, sighed. “No. All career cops who’ve worked here for decades.”
Ripley glanced out of their office window at the passing officers. “Yeah. I can’t see these guys doing much harm, can you?”
“Definitely not. That means we’re going down the wrong path.”
“Can you just search by people who’ve moved here from out of town? Maybe in the past few years?”
“Let me try.” Ella clicked around, not yet completely familiar with Spring Ridge’s antiquated system. “Done, 217 people.”
“Can you go through their professions?”
Ella lowered her eyes so she could see Ripley over her glasses. “One by one?”
“You got a quicker way?”
“Fair comment. Let’s go. Postman, store clerk, administrator, secretary, greengrocer, fireman, retired Army Corps….”
“No, no and no. Keep going.”
Ella scrolled through, her vision beginning to blur at the sight of the page’s tiny text. She discarded job titles one by one: coffee shop worker, planner, engineer, web designer, fisherman, farmer, leather worker, restaurant worker, personal trainer, teacher, sound engineer.
Retired prison worker.
Ella stopped, considered, imagined.
“Prison worker?” she said.
Ripley slammed her fist down. “Of course! Why didn’t we think of that?”
“I guess because there are no prisons around here. Let me check the guy’s details.” She clicked onto his report. “Crap, no criminal record.”
“Who is he?”
“Chuck Pierce. I’ll check the employment history. Used to work at… Oh Christ… Northern Correctional about twenty miles away.”
“NCI?” Ripley asked with eyes as wide as the Royal Gorge. “You mean the Murder Mansion?”
Northern Correctional Institute had housed some of the most infamous serial killers in recent memory: Karl Stanworth, Lance Archer, Cyrus Jackson, and even Miles Kendrick for a brief period in the nineties.
“The Murder Mansion,” Ella confirmed. “He would have had no shortage of serial killers to chat with.” She dug further into the man’s history, consuming the official report of why he’d left his role at the prison.
When she saw the reason, her fingertips began to jitter. The air left her lungs in a sudden and violent wave. “Ripley, this is…. bizarre. Chuck Pierce got fired from his job at NCI.”
