Page 17 of Their Wicked Games

“Okay, thanks.” Jo picked up the card. “Thank you for your time.”

As they walked onto the sidewalk, Carter leaned against the wall of the building as Jo called Alicia. “That’s weird. I got an out-of-service message.” She redialed and tried again. “Hmm. Same message. I’ll try her landline.” She made the call and they waited. “She’s not picking up. We’ll drop by and do a welfare check. She only lives a mile away.”

Carter climbed back behind the wheel of the cruiser and added Fallen Rock Crescent to the GPS. As he spun the vehicle around and headed along Main, he turned to Jo. “Check out what vehicle she drives.”

“Okay.” Jo used the mobile data terminal in the cruiser and soon found the vehicle and registration. “I have it. It’s a green Jeep Cherokee.”

After driving toward what Jenna always described as the new area of town, they turned onto Fallen Rock Crescent and Carter pulled onto the driveway of a neat wood cabin-style home. There was no vehicle in the driveway, but a dog barked inside as they approached the door. He knocked hard three or four times. “FBI. Are you inside, Alicia?”

Nothing but the snarling of a dog.

“It’s a big dog. Bullmastiff, maybe.” Jo pressed her cupped hands against the window and peered inside. “Oh, here he comes.” She jumped back as the dog hurled itself at the window, barking and slobbering spittle in all directions.

Beside Carter, Zorro’s hackles rose and the skin pulled back from his teeth to expose long canines. He lunged forward with a low warning growl and placed himself in front of them. Glad of the barrier between the dogs snapping teeth, Carter glanced at Jo. “We’ll walk around and look in the windows, but I figure she’s out, seeing the Jeep is gone.” He raised both eyebrows. “One thing is for darn sure. I’m not opening that door to go inside to check. If necessary, we’ll call in some dog handlers.” He turned to Zorro. “With me.”

They found no sign of Alicia inside the house as far as they could ascertain. They had views through the windows of a good part of the interior of the house. Nothing seemed out of place, and no signs of a struggle. “We’ll make a note to come back later.” He called Maggie on the radio to bring her up to date and then added the next suspect’s address into the GPS.

“Okay.” Jo peered at her phone. “Next, we have Bill Ripley, a college student. He lives on campus and the information we have on him, apart from being in the crossbow team with Alicia and Jesse Davis, is he’s described as a loner in his high school yearbook.”

Carter headed up Stanton and drove past a green Jeep Cherokee parked off-road and alongside a trail leading into the forest. He waited for a break in the traffic and then backed up and stopped parallel with the other vehicle. “Run the license plate.”

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as Jo entered the information into the MDT and waited for the confirmation. The Jeep was registered to Alicia. Carter climbed out of the cruiser and went to take a look inside the vehicle. Nothing looked out of place. Nothing around the vehicle had been disturbed, there was no sign of a struggle. “Why did she go into the forest and leave her dog behind?”

“Maybe she was meeting someone?” Jo shrugged. “Or she met up with some of her friends to go hunting. Maybe her dog is not suited to hunting. He didn’t come across as a friendly fellow to me.”

Nodding, Carter made his way back to the cruiser. “Yeah, and I’d switch off my phone too. If your phone rings when you have an elk or deer in your sights, it’s game over.” He sighed. “We’ll call her later.”

“Isn’t it a bit late in the day to go hunting?” Jo looked at him as they drove through the college gates. “I figured people left at dawn.”

Smiling, Carter glanced at her. “Yeah, most times.” He pulled up in a parking space outside the office building. “It might be spring break but there’s always office staff here. I’ll go and ask where we can find Bill Ripley.”

“I’ll go.” Jo smiled at him. “You call it in. Jenna would want to know that we haven’t spoken to Alicia and where we found her vehicle.”

Reaching inside his pocket for his phone, Carter smiled. “You got it.”

He made the call and brought Jenna up to date. “We’re not overly worried at this stage. She could be meeting friends in the forest.”

“Just a minute, I’ll check on something.”Jenna went away for a few minutes.“Yeah, there is a designated area for elk not far from there. She is known to hunt and not only with her crossbow friends. She has images all over social media. Concentrate on Bill Ripley. We’ll meet back at the office when you’re done.”

Blowing out a sigh, Carter stared out of the window as Jo came hurrying back. “Okay. Catch you later.” He disconnected and looked at Jo as she slipped into the passenger seat. “Any luck?”

“Yeah.” She pointed to buildings set in a line on the far side of the campus. “The building is the one on the far right. We go through the courtyard and take the stairs.He’s in room 103. We’re lucky. The receptionist said he hasn’t been home long.”

Carter backed out of the parking slot and turned the cruiser around. “Did you get anything else from them? Any background?”

“Yeah, he’s here on a full scholarship.” Jo frowned. “He was raised in Black Rock Falls but spent three years in foster care after his parents died in a fire. He’s very quiet, has a few people he calls friends, and they mentioned the crossbow club. Apparently, discussing the club is the only time he becomes animated and, apart from designing video games, is his life’s passion. He studies computer science. That’s all I have.”

Amazed, Carter smiled at her around his toothpick. “I wasn’t expecting them to volunteer so much information. That’s gold.”

“Well, I did have an edge.” Jo’s cheeks pinked. “One of the receptionists was reading my latest book and I autographed it for her.”

Laughing, Carter drove toward the student residences. It was eerily quiet, with the majority of students away on vacation. The long empty windows of dark lecture halls resembled a skull with teeth missing. He pulled up outside and they climbed out. He looked at Jo. “You take the lead. He’s a young guy, and I don’t want to intimidate him. If he’s one of the killers, seeing us might frighten him into doing something stupid. Thrill killers are known to be unstable. If he makes a move on us, I don’t want to take him down before we’ve extracted information from him.”

“Okay, then we’ll approach the questioning from a different angle.” Jo collected a statement book from the glovebox and climbed out of the cruiser. “Leave it to me. I know just how to proceed.”

The noise of battle from a video game echoed down the corridor as they moved closer to Ripley’s room number. Carter cleared his throat. “I guess, as there’s nobody else here, he can make as much noise as he likes.” He hammered on the door.

The sound stopped immediately, followed by footsteps on tile. The door opened a crack and all Carter could see was one blue eye looking at them. “Bill Ripley? Do you mind if we have a word with you?”

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