The Night Stalker

Ninety-Three

‘What?’ Hunter cleared the rain from his eyebrows and stared back at Chief Cooper. ‘Never found? So how did you know he was murdered?’

The chief let out a deep sigh. His glasses were so heavy with rain Hunter could barely see his eyes. ‘The truth is that we didn’t know. But that was what the evidence told us.’

‘What evidence?’

Chief Cooper finally pulled the nylon hood of his raincoat over his head and retreated a few steps back to the shelter of a large tree. Hunter followed him.

‘The Harpers tragedy happened on a Sunday,’ the chief explained. ‘Every Sunday, without fail, for the six years previous to that day, Ray took his son fishing. Sometimes to Lake Sonoma, sometimes to Rio Nido, and sometimes to Russian River. They’re all within driving distance. I went with them several times. Ray was a great fisherman, and his boy was starting to get pretty good at it too.

‘Tito, the neighbor who called in “shots fired”, saw Ray and his kid packing the truck a couple of hours before he heard the shot. The owner of the gas station a few blocks away from their house also confirmed seeing the kid in the passenger’s seat of Ray’s truck while Ray went into the store to buy some ice cream. Andrew never came back to the house with his father. When Forensics checked the truck, they found the kid’s shirt and shoes. There was blood on the shirt, on the shoes, on the car’s dashboard, and on the inside of the passenger’s door. The kid’s blood. The lab confirmed it.’

‘Wasn’t there an investigation into the boy’s disappearance?’

‘Yes, there was. But we found nothing other than what I just told you. We don’t know where he took his son, Detective — Sonoma Lake, Rio Nido or Russian River. There are also acres and acres of forest surrounding Healdsburg and the rivers. He could’ve killed his son and buried or left him to the wolves somewhere in the forest. He could’ve weighted the kid’s body down and dumped him in the lake or the river. Finding the body without knowing where he went that day was a pretty impossible task. Though we did try, we never found it.’

The chief took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose where the pads had left two sunken red marks.

‘Ray was a good man, but he suffered from depression,’ he continued. ‘I think he found out about Emily’s affair a few days earlier because there was thought put into what he did. It wasn’t your typical loss of control murder, though it might’ve looked that way from all the mess and blood. We figured Ray found out that Emily saw her lover when she thought it was safe to do so. So he got his kid out of the house and killed him first, disposing of the body somewhere. He then went over to Nathan Gardner’s apartment, disfigured him and left him there, bleeding to death, but not before stitching his mouth shut. After that, Ray returned to his house to confront his wife, and to complete his crazy killing plan.’

Chief Cooper paused and looked straight into Hunter’s eyes.

‘And I have no doubt that in Ray’s plan, no one was coming out alive. No one.’