Shuttered Secrets Read online

  Contents

  April, 2021

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  2007

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  July-September, 2021

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  2005

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  October, 2021

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  October, 2021

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  October, 2021

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  November, 2021

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2021 Melissa Erin Jackson.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-7351500-8-6

  Print ISBN: 978-1-7361866-0-2

  Audio ISBN: 978-1-7361866-2-6

  Front cover design by Maggie Hall.

  Interior design and ebook formatting by Michelle Raymond.

  First published in 2021 by Ringtail Press.

  www.melissajacksonbooks.com

  To Lauren, Rebecca, Cecilie, and Michelle—see you Sunday!

  Previously during The Forgotten Child …

  Riley Thomas is a twenty-five-year-old reluctant medium. She’s been able to communicate with spirits since she was ten, but the experience has creeped her out more often than not. When Riley was thirteen, her best friend, Rebecca Green, convinced her to use a Ouija board to contact Rebecca’s deceased little sister. A malevolent spirit was released, and it tormented Rebecca’s family to the point that the Greens move away. Ever since then, Riley has avoided the paranormal at all costs.

  Years later, Riley’s closest friend, Jade, ropes her into attending a ghost-hunting weekend at the famed Jordanville Ranch, former home of the now-deceased serial killer, Orin Jacobs. The house is nestled in the Gila National Forest, about four hours outside Riley’s home base of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Jade doesn’t know about Riley’s abilities, but along with three other friends, they all discover just how sensitive Riley is when she makes contact with a spirit in the house: a nine-year-old boy named Pete Vonick.

  The investigation is being run by a team of ghost hunters from Southwest Paranormal Investigations. Among the group of four is a woman named Nina Galvan, the group’s psychic medium. She can immediately sense that there’s something notable about Riley.

  During the investigation, Riley meets Michael Roberts, who’s been dragged along to the ranch by his sister Donna and her wife, Carla. Riley and Michael click right away, and it’s that connection that makes her want to tough out the weekend. On the first night of the investigation, however, Michael, Riley, and her friend Pamela are in a breakout session with Nina in the cellar when Orin makes his terrifying presence known. Dying camera batteries, wild temperature fluctuations, looming black shadows, and exploding light bulbs make Riley flee the house. Michael and Pamela leave with her, while the remaining women in their party stay behind.

  Once back in Albuquerque, Riley tries to explore her growing relationship with Michael without being interrupted by ghosts. Little Pete Vonick, clad in his beloved Scooby Doo shirt, has other ideas. He’d used his ghostly energy to transfer his beanie into Riley’s bag, so that when her bag left the ranch, he did too. Now he’s haunting her apartment and wants her to find his body.

  Orin Jacobs was known for a string of murders of young girls, making Pete an outlier. Riley’s research into the boy and what might have happened to him leads her to Orin Jacobs’ sole surviving victim: forty-something Mindy Cho, who had escaped Orin’s house of horrors in 1983.

  Riley contacts Mindy. She learns that Orin had an accomplice who, when Mindy was a teenager, had gone by the name Hank Gerber. Orin, caught as a result of Mindy’s escape, told anyone who would listen that Hank should go down for the crimes too. But no Hank Gerber has ever been found. Orin died in prison still swearing he had help luring young women to the ranch.

  With Mindy’s assistance, Riley finds Hank Gerber, whose legal name is Francis Hank Carras. Communications between Hank and Riley result in Hank’s stalking her as he tries to figure out if she knows the true extent of his past crimes—namely, that in 1983, he raped and murdered a woman named Renee Palmer, who had been hiking in the Gila National Forest during Hank’s time at the ranch under Orin’s gruesome tutelage.

  Through her investigation, Riley gets in contact with Detective Howard, who currently works in Santa Fe. It turns out that Howard had started out in Silver City, where the forest is located. His first case had been the unsolved murder of Renee Palmer.

  Riley and Nina Galvan reconnect when Nina invites her to one of her monthly séances. There, Orin gives messages to Riley through Nina, providing clues that suggest there’s a hidden “dark room” in the ranch’s cellar. With Pete’s ghost fading more and more the longer he’s away from his body, Riley returns to the ranch with Michael and Mindy in tow, in hopes of both restoring Pete’s spirit to full power, and finding the room Orin’s spirit insists is there. Detective Howard follows in a separate car.

  Though Detective Howard has yet to arrive, Riley, Michael, and Mindy bravely descend the stairs into the cellar. There, behind a rolling bookshelf, Riley finds a hidden passageway that leads to the dark room. They find it filled with preserved human specimens of an additional five victims, including Pete’s skeleton. Trophies from each victim lie beside the skeletons; among them is Pete’s Scooby Doo shirt.

  Shortly after their discovery of the dark room, Hank shows up armed, ready to silence them all so they can’t reveal his secrets. Michael springs from behind a door and clobbers Hank with a femur. As Hank regains his senses, Orin, in a fit of ghostly revenge, uses his energy to fling Hank against a wall, knocking him unconscious. Detective Howard arrives, suffering from a gunshot wound. He and Hank had crossed paths on the way to the ranch after Hank stopped to “help” Howard with a blown tire. When Hank realized Howard was a cop heading for the ranch, the two men fought. Hank shot the detective, who then tumbled into a ravine.

  Hank is arrested for the rape and murder of Renee Palmer. Orin’s four other female victims—previously unknown—are identified by authorities, and the forgotten children are given their identities back. Riley discreetly takes Pete’s Scooby Doo shirt with the intention of returning it to Pete’s elderly mother, giving her the closure she has so desperately sought for her lost son.

  April, 2021

  I walked behind her for nearly two blocks before that itchy, lizard-brain instinct told her to turn around. My instincts were stronger, more well-honed than hers, so by the time she glanced back, I had already ducked inside Epicurean Subs.

  I stood in the back, hand to chin, as I pretended to examine the menu board. The place billed itself as gourmet, but as far as I was concerned, adding things like arugula, cranberry, and grilled artichoke hearts didn�
��t warrant the average price tag of fourteen dollars. I checked my watch after thirty seconds or so, then offered the sandwich artist behind the sneeze guard an apologetic wave as I slipped back outside.

  My charge was farther up the sidewalk now, but I would catch up to her soon enough. Her pace had settled into its usual casual stroll, and her hands were stuffed into the pockets of her black belted trench coat. I didn’t know if it was the only one she owned, or if it was just her favorite.

  A piece of straight brown hair had escaped from the black-and-white scarf wrapped around her neck. The strand bounced as she walked, like a waving hand. This way, it beckoned. Follow me.

  The predictable ones bound to their routines were the easiest, their well-worn habits and patterns revealed to me after only a few days of observation. It not only cut the needed surveillance time in half, but it allowed me to notice anomalies even sooner.

  This one, Kendra, picked up her morning coffee from the same café every morning between 7:45 and 7:55 unless she was running late and left her apartment with a travel mug. She grabbed lunch, usually alone, from one of the three places near the bookstore where she worked.

  My client was a rock star-looking wannabe who hadn’t taken his breakup with Kendra well. I’d hated the guy instantly, even when our communication had started out as nothing but text in a private chat.

  I hear you’re the guy to hire if I need to find someone. I’m desperate. I need my girlfriend back, the message had said.

  I heard the whine immediately, but my opinion of the dipshit didn’t matter. His money was just as green as anyone else’s—figuratively speaking, anyway. If they had a target and a Bitcoin wallet, I wasn’t too picky.

  After that first message, I’d given him the number to my current burner. He’d called within minutes. Desperate, indeed.

  “What do you need?” I’d asked.

  “Hi, uhh … yeah, this is Digby? We were just talking in the chat,” he said. “I really need your help. I haven’t been able to sleep. I need her back.”

  I had been right about the whine.

  And his name was Digby? For fuck’s sake. This was the kind of shit I’d had to deal with over the last decade since my best client had hung up his proverbial hat: whiny bitch boys who couldn’t get over their girlfriends—who had likely wisely dumped them.

  “What happened with the ex?” I’d asked.

  “I can’t live without her,” Digby whined. “I know everyone says that, but it’s true. She’s the love of my life. I know she didn’t really mean to break up with me.”

  They always said that. “What was her reason for ending things?”

  “Why does that matter?” Digby had snapped. The defensive tone was common, too.

  Rolling my eyes, I said, “Devil’s in the details, Digs. The more information you give me, the better I’ll be at my job.”

  After some muttering and sniveling, Digby said, “I borrowed money from her once … well, a couple times. I needed to get my guitar repaired … and then pay for studio time. When she gave it to me, she’d said it was a gift, not a loan. That guitar is my future, so it’s her future, too. An investment for us both. But she got bent out of shape about it. And then out of nowhere she breaks up with me—over the phone. Who does that?”

  I suppressed a sigh. “So she just called you up out of the blue and said she was done because you owed her money? This so-called love of your life?”

  Digby sniveled some more. “I mean, it wasn’t totally out of nowhere, I guess? I was a little wasted and missed one of our dinner dates. I needed to unwind after my gig and fell asleep. I work really hard. She knows that. I woke up because she wouldn’t stop calling me. I was hung over after a hard day and she just starts screaming at me that this ‘was the last time she got stood up by me’ or whatever the fuck. She said it in the heat of the moment, though. I see that now. She didn’t mean it.”

  If I were Kendra, I would have broken up with the dipshit, too.

  “I just need you to find her, all right?” Digby asked. “I got my shit together now and I can pay her back and everything. But she won’t answer my calls and blocked me on social media. She moved, too. I can’t get her money to her if I don’t know where she is. I know I can get her back, but I gotta do it in person. I just need a chance to make her toes curl again and then she’ll see she fucked up by letting me go.”

  Right. “Unlike Kendra, I need payment up front. When I get the standard fee, I’ll start. Don’t contact me again after this. I’ll find her and watch her for a few weeks, then tell you what I learn.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Digby said. “One sec.”

  Within a minute, my phone chimed with the familiar sound of a completed transaction. “Got it. Remember: don’t call me to check up on my progress. You micromanage me, I’ll keep your money, abandon the assignment, and then upload your dirty laundry all over the internet. I’m going to be watching your ass, too.”

  “You’re kind of a dick, yeah?” Digby asked.

  I hung up on him.

  Currently, it was the third and final week of Kendra’s surveillance. I stood outside her house for the umpteenth time in a secluded alley across the street. A bank of mostly vacant office buildings lined this side of the road, so it was always easy to find a dark spot to loiter in. The sun had almost set, making my shadowy alcove feel even chillier on this spring evening.

  I gripped my digital camera, a zoom lens affixed to the front. My steady stream of business from bottom feeders like Digby was what funded the purchase of the beautiful Canon EOS R5 in my hands. I brought it to my face now and peered through the viewfinder, giving the lens a few gentle turns until I had a clear shot of Kendra’s bedroom through the gap in her curtains. In an artistic sense, I preferred film, but the sheer number of photos I could take with a digital camera was a significant check mark in the “pro” column. I waited, my breath controlled, like a sniper on top of a building, his scope trained on his target.

  A flash of movement. Kendra walked by her window, clad in her underwear. I took the shot, snapping a few dozen in quick succession. The curve of a hip here, the swell of a breast there. She was gorgeous, I’d give Digby that much. But I had no good news for him. When Kendra moved farther into her room, I lowered the camera.

  I’d found her within twenty-four hours of Digby’s initial call. Even if my best client had flown the coop, I’d kept my skills sharp these last ten years. There had been other well-paying clients, but none were ever at the same level as The Client. What we’d had was special. Even still, I made a good living off my ability to go unnoticed, to slip in and out of people’s lives without them having the faintest notion I’d ever been there. I was a ghost.

  Kendra’s routine was so routine, it had become borderline boring during the first two weeks. Then, about five days ago, there was a blip on the smooth surface of her dull life. A big military-looking guy, who probably went by something testosterone-filled like Axel or Gage, started showing up. Three nights in a row, he arrived in a massive black SUV and had whisked Kendra off to dinners, movies, and even a play. Last night, he’d stayed the night. They’d had sex in the living room, or had at least started there, before they wound up in the bedroom Kendra was wandering around in now, half-clothed. Given the guy’s sudden appearance, he was probably the result of an online dating app. Digby didn’t stand a chance.

  I lifted the camera to my face again when I sensed movement in her window. I waited, patient as a wildlife photographer who lay belly to the ground surrounded by camouflaging foliage, waiting for a twitchy-nosed rodent to peek its head out of its hiding place.

  I heard the crunch of a footstep one second too late. Something hard slammed into the side of my head and the force of it threw my skull against the brick wall beside me. My vision went black for a moment.

  I whirled toward my attacker, making eye contact with Axel/Gage’s fist a moment before it collided with my nose, breaking bone and sending a spray of blood onto my shirt and camera. I hit the gr
ound, my camera a second later. Glass shattered, metal pieces bent, delicate plastic pieces snapped off and skittered away.

  A booted foot made contact with my stomach and a breath whooshed out of me. Axel/Gage grabbed hold of my bloody shirt in his meaty fist and hoisted me up a few inches off the ground, bringing me nose-to-broken-nose with him. “Stay the fuck away from Kendra, you creepy ass piece of shit.”

  He dropped me, but the assault kept coming. Hands were stomped, my ribs kicked, and a solid punch to the side of my face slammed my head into the concrete so hard I saw spots.

  Wheezing, I tried to beg him to stop, but it felt as if my lungs had been shredded like paper. I was too weak to fight off his grabbing hands as he rifled through my pockets. Wallet, keys, phone—he took them all. The camera he used as an additional weapon, holding onto the strap while he whaled on my back and sides with the clunky thing. Some hard part of the camera met the even harder material of my spine and the pain was so excruciating, I nearly passed out from that blow alone.

  He eventually left. I would have heaved a sigh of relief if my lungs had worked. My skin felt hot but the alley’s ground was frigid. I felt the chill of it through my clothes. Was the shivering due to warring temperatures, or was I going into shock?

  I had a very precarious hold on consciousness when he returned. My already taxed heart skipped a beat, and for a moment I was convinced that had been the last one—that I’d just died in this alley. I managed a weak groan of protest when he took me by one foot and dragged me farther into the alley, covering my broken and bleeding body with discarded, moldy cardboard boxes, wooden pallets, and other trash left by the former tenants of the surrounding abandoned buildings.

  I listened to his retreating footsteps and his parting words of “Good riddance, dipshit” as I succumbed to my injuries and let the darkness take me.

  CHAPTER 1

  Riley grabbed the last two bags of ready-made Caesar salads from behind the chilled door, proud of herself for buying something with vegetables in it rather than purchasing twenty frozen pizzas and calling it a day. If that wasn’t the sign of fully being an adult, she didn’t know what was.