The flashlight in one hand, his pistol in the other, Riggs moved forward slowly. He was reasonably certain that the place was empty, but assumptions like that could earn you an unwanted trip to the morgue with a tag around your big toe. He could see most of the first floor from where he was standing. He shone his flashlight slowly around the room. There was a light switch on the wall, but he wasn’t about to use it. In what had been the dining room, he discerned dust patterns on the floor that showed certain objects had been removed. He ran his fingers over these areas and then moved on. He moved into the kitchen where he lifted the phone. There was no dial tone. He moved back into the dining room.
As Riggs’s eyes swept the room, they passed right over the figure dressed all in black standing just inside the half-opened closet door next to the stairs.
Jackson closed his eyes the second before the light moved across his hiding place so that his pupils would not reflect off it. When the arc of illumination had passed, Jackson reopened his eyes and gripped the handle of the knife tightly. He had heard Riggs before he had ever set foot on the porch. It was not the man who had leased the cottage. He was long gone; Jackson had already searched the place thoroughly. This man had come to reconnoiter the place as well. Riggs, it must be, Jackson concluded. In fact, Jackson found Riggs almost as interesting as the man he had come to kill tonight. Ten years ago Jackson had predicted that LuAnn would be a problem, and now that prediction was coming true. He had done some preliminary checking on Riggs’s background after his discussion with Pemberton. The fact that there was little to find out had intrigued him greatly.
When Riggs passed within a few feet of him, Jackson contemplated killing him. It would take just a flick of the razor-sharp blade against his throat. But as quickly as the homicidal impulse flared through his system, it passed. Killing Riggs would further no purpose, at least not at present. Jackson’s hand gripping the knife relaxed. Riggs would live another day. If there was a next time, Jackson decided, the outcome might be far different. He didn’t like people meddling in his business. If nothing else, he would now check into Riggs’s background with far greater intensity.
Riggs left the cottage and headed toward his Cherokee. He glanced back at the cottage. A sensation had just come over him, as though he had just survived a close call. He shrugged it off. He had once lived by his instincts; however, he assumed they had rusted somewhat since his occupation had changed. It was an empty house and nothing more.
Watching from the window, Jackson picked up on Riggs’s slight hesitation, and with it his curiosity grew even more. Riggs would possibly make an interesting project, but he would have to wait. Jackson had something more pressing to take care of. From the floor of the closet Jackson picked up what looked like a doctor’s bag. He moved to the dining room, crouched down, and unpacked the contents of a first-rate fingerprint kit. Jackson then moved over to the light switch and hit it from various angles with a handheld laser carried in his jacket pocket. Several latent prints sprang to life under the beam. Jackson dusted the area with a fiberglass brush dipped in black powder and gently brushed around the area of the light switch, outlining the latent prints. The kitchen counter, telephone, and doorknobs were subjected to the same process. The telephone, especially, evidenced very clear fingerprints. Jackson smiled. Riggs’s real identity would not be a mystery much longer. Using pressure-wound tape, he then lifted the prints from each of the areas and transferred them to separate index cards. Humming quietly to himself, Jackson marked the cards with special identification hieroglyphics and placed them in separate plastic-lined containers. He then carefully removed all evidence of the fingerprint powder from each of the surfaces. He loved the methodology of it all. Precise steps that reached a precise conclusion. It took him only a few minutes to repack his kit and then he left the cottage. He took a side trail to his waiting car and drove off. It was not often that one captured two birds with one stone. Tonight’s work was beginning to look like precisely that.