Riley Thorn and the Corpse in the Closet by Lucy Score
41
12:11 p.m., Tuesday, August 18
It was amazing the damper a bomb could put on a regular Tuesday. The hostages had gone from grumpy complainers to shivering, sobbing messes. Well, that last part was mostly Griffin.
Riley was inundated with the thoughts of people realizing that they could be facing the last few minutes of their life. It wasn’t pretty. But it was poignant, mostly.
“I can’t believe the last thing I said to my daughter was ‘You’re grounded for failing calculus.’ Everyone fails calculus! I failed calculus!”
“Great. My last communication with my husband is going to be a passive-aggressive note on the way he folds bath towels.”
“I thought I had more time to be a better person.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to die with all of these assholes.”
Riley dodged her way through the incoming thoughts and asked her spirit guides to help push out a message.
“Grandmother, I could really use your help right now,” Riley said, sending the message into the clouds.
“You will solve this problem yourself.” Elanora’s reply echoed off the cotton candy clouds in Riley’s head. “The only way you will learn is to do for yourself.”
“I appreciate the sink or swim technique, but I’m telling you a lot of people are going to die if I sink.”
“Then you have no choice but to swim,” Elanora said. “Use your gifts and your tools and fix the situation. You must do what you have no desire to do in order to live.”
“Are you serious right now?”
There was no response.
Riley fell out of the clouds with a pop and landed back in her own body.
“Do you need a tissue?”
Riley blinked and realized Bella Goodshine was peering down at her. Her nose twitched again.
“No, thanks,” she said.
Do what she had no desire to do.She stared at the cameras trained on Hudson and the news desk and tried to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach.
A knock at the studio doors startled her.
“Who is it?” Hudson called pleasantly.
“I am Gabe. I have been entrusted with your food.”
Riley covered her eyes for a moment and then opened them. Nope. She was not asleep, having a terrible nightmare. She was wide awake, living one.
“Gabe, I’m going to need you to strip down out there so I can make sure you’re not carrying a gun.”
“What about the wire I am wearing?”
Riley could hear the internal screams from about a dozen cops.
“An honest delivery guy. This is a treat,” Hudson crowed. “You can keep the wire on. But no weapons.”
“I understand.”
A minute later Hudson peeked through the door and then opened it the whole way.
“Run!” Chris yelled and sprinted for the emergency exit. Sprinted was a kind description for the disjointed shuffle of limbs he displayed.
A gunshot rang out, and Chris crumpled to the ground.
Frightened screams erupted from the rest of the hostages.
“Ow! That hurt!” Chris screeched.
“Relax. I shot you in your foot, not your windpipe.” But Hudson’s hand was shaking when he pointed the gun around the room. “Anyone else want to run? I’ve got ten years of experience with first-person cowboy video games. I can hit a spittoon at twenty paces!”
Everyone shook their heads.
“Good. Now get in here, food guy,” he said, gesturing toward the door with the gun.
Riley closed her eyes as the lovable Gabe stepped into the studio carrying several bags of to-go food. He was wearing nothing but black briefs and a police wire taped to his chest.
“Oh, my,” Valerie fanned herself. “I know we’re about to die, but thank you, Jesus, for your bounty.”
“Everybody line up one at a time and get your food,” Hudson said.
Riley got in line behind Floyd the sound engineer.
“Excuse me! Can someone bring me my lobster salad?” Griffin called from his chair.
“I said no onions on my sandwich,” Chelsea complained. “I’m not paying for this.”
Hudson rolled his eyes. “No one is paying for this because I’m blowing you all up in a few minutes. Eat the goddamn onions.”
“Here is your sparkle pupu platter,” Gabe said, handing Riley a paper carton. “Your chopsticks are inside.”
Riley blinked. Gabe had just sparkle poo-ed her. She suddenly had a good idea just who was stuck in an air vent.
“Thank you,” she said and took the carton behind the cameras.
While Gabe handed out the rest of the food and Hudson oversaw the chaos, she opened the container and peered inside. There were no chopsticks or Chinese food. But there was a small gun. Covertly, she tucked it into the waistband of her shorts.
Once the food was distributed, Hudson pointed his gun at Gabe. Riley reached behind her, closing her hand over the cold metal.
“Food guy, sit in front of the studio doors. You hear that, cops? If you try to breach the studio, you’ll be trampling an innocent, almost-naked delivery guy,” Hudson yelled into the wire on Gabe’s chest.
“It would be my honor to sit,” Gabe announced.
He took his position on the floor in front of the swinging doors, then nodded at Riley.
Apparently, she had her tools. A gun that she could maybe sort of shoot and a guy who could make her more psychic. Well, it was better than nothing.
Now all she had to do was figure out what she had no desire to do and…
“Crap,” she whispered.
“Crap what?” Valerie asked. She was eating stromboli with two hands. “Is that countdown clock moving? I can’t chew any faster!”
“No. Not yet,” Riley said. “I have to go be on TV and try to save the day.”
“Shh!” The sound engineer glared at them.
“Nobody cares if there’s background noise when we’re all going to die, Floyd,” Riley shot back.
Valerie pointed a piece of stromboli at her. “If you being on TV means I get to go home to my kids and my towel-folding husband, then get your ass up there now,” the anchor said.
Riley sighed. “Fine. But I am not happy about this.” She rolled up her metaphorical psychic garage doors and gave Gabe a pointed look.
He nodded sagely and closed his eyes.
Hands over her head, she cautiously approached the news desk. “Um, Hudson?”
He stopped mid-monologue about Bianca Hornberger’s extensive offenses. “Will you stop ruining things for me?”
“I’m really sorry,” she said, edging closer to the desk. “But I think there are some things you need to consider before your grand finale. Things Jackson wants you to know.”
Hudson studied her, scrubbing his hairless jaw with the barrel of his gun. “Fine. I’ll give you two minutes to change my mind.” He gestured to the empty chair at the anchor desk.
“I hope she doesn’t realize I nervous peed a little up there.”
Gross.
“Sit,” Hudson ordered.
Riley checked the chair and, finding no visible puddles, sat.
“Let’s have two minutes on the screen,” he said to the sound booth. He waited until a timer appeared on screen then gestured at her. “You may begin.”
“You want to know why I keep showing up and ruining everything, right?”
“I do. Why in the world would anyone want to save these horrible people?”
“Your brother, Jackson, wants to save them, and he’s been trying to tell you from the other side.”
He snorted. “No, he hasn’t.”
A cold sweat broke out at the hairline on her neck. The TV lights were hotter than she’d imagined.
“Your brother was bullied in high school,” Riley said.
“Yeah. And then he committed suicide. You’re wasting your two minutes. You don’t know him. You don’t know what he wants.”
“I know that he was your favorite person on earth. I know that he let you win at video games and, when that girl on your bus told you there was no Santa, he took you aside and told you that the spirit of Santa is in all of us.”
“So what? He’d be happy that I’m finally punishing the wrongdoers. I’ve dedicated my entire life to getting him justice.”
“There’s a difference between justice and revenge, and Jackson doesn’t want revenge. He wants you to see the value of each human life.” She glanced at Griffin, who was blubbering about how much he was going to miss fresh dry cleaning. “Even the pathetic, terrible ones.”
“Hmmm. Nope. Not buying it.”
She felt the nudge in her brain and let the visions come. She saw it all playing out, each scene connected by a silver cord.
“It was a terrible thing that you lost your big brother to bullying. But he’s still out there trying to look after you,” she said. “Think about it. You killed Larry Rupley in the house next door to mine. You chose the victim and the location. My boyfriend was hired to find Larry. That’s a pretty big coincidence, don’t you think?”
“If you want to waste your time with rhetorical questions, then sure,” Hudson said smugly.
“I was hired by Detective Weber to consult on Bianca’s case. I wouldn’t have even been here at Channel 50 interviewing people if he hadn’t asked me to. Before today, I had never once set foot in Chelsea’s house. She just so happens to live next door to my parents, and my dad’s cow got loose. What are the odds that I would keep showing up like that in your life over and over again?”
“You’re right. It’s a sign,” he admitted. “A sign that I need to definitely kill you so you don’t prevent any future heroes from finishing the work I started!”
“Listen to me. To Jackson. Justice would be letting these people keep on living their miserable lives full of hate and fear. Justice would be allowing their communities to shun them now that you’ve unveiled them for who they are.”
“They’re not living miserable lives. They have everything!” Hudson yelled.
She shook her head. “Griffin and Bella have been cheating on each other for their entire relationship. She can’t stand the way he touches her, and he hates the sound of her voice. Chris lost his hair and his first marriage to this job. He only sees his kids every other weekend. And Chelsea’s sons moved across the country to get away from her. She’ll never be a part of their daily lives again.”
“Yes, I will! My boys love me! I gave them everything!” Chelsea howled from the sports desk.
The clock was down to ten seconds, and Riley was feeling desperate. “Mr. Pickles!” she said.
“Is she having a nervous breakdown?” Chris whimpered from the floor.
“Not everyone is cut out to be on-air talent,” Griffin said.
“After you killed Larry, you went back to his place and rescued his cat, Mr. Pickles, because you knew no one would come looking for Larry for a while, didn’t you?”
Hudson shrugged. “I always wanted a cat.”
She felt the nudge at her consciousness. “But you couldn’t have one because your brother was allergic, wasn’t he?”
“It wasn’t his fault he turned into a snot rocket around cats,” he said defensively.
“What if I tell you that your brother sent you Mr. Pickles? Who is going to feed Mr. Pickles tonight if you don’t come home? Think of Mr. Pickles,” Riley said.
“First of all, I’m not an idiot. Mr. Pickles has an automatic feeder that will last at least a week. And after I blow up the station, the cops will be all over my apartment. Mr. Pickles will be fine.”
The timer had ended on-screen, but Hudson hadn’t noticed yet.
“The cops will take Mr. Pickles to a shelter. You know how overcrowded shelters get. What if there’s no room for Mr. Pickles? He’s innocent. He never hurt anyone. You can’t just let him go to a shelter to be put down.”
“Poor Mr. Pickles,” Chris sobbed from the floor. “My wife will take him! We don’t want him to die too.”
Hudson pushed his glasses up his nose with the barrel of the gun and grinned. “See? Problem solved. Chris’s widow will take him. And guess what Miss Fancy Psychic? You’re out of time.”
Ah, hell. She was going to have to do this the hard way.
“Yeah, well, so are you,” Riley said, drawing her gun.
