Once Chosen (A Riley Paige Mystery—Book 17)

by Blake Pierce

  Ann Marie gasped. She whirled around and snapped her flashlight back on.

  On the other side of the living room, a curtain was moving slightly over one of the windows.

  Was somebody trying to get in there?

  Gathering her courage, she hurried across the room. Reaching out a shaking hand, she pulled the curtain aside. Then she let out a nervous giggle.

  A pane of glass had been broken in one corner. The wind was moving the curtain and making that whistling sound.

  She felt foolish for reacting so sharply.

  Calm down, she told herself.

  Then she heard yet another sound—or was it her own heart pounding?

  She listened and heard it again. It was coming from the front porch.

  It was a squeaking sound, like someone taking a step on rickety floorboards.

  And she hadn’t closed the front door. It was still standing open.

  She rushed back to the door and shined her flashlight through the opening, but all she could see were the rickety porch floorboards.

  Then she heard the sound again.

  And again.

  Her heart was pounding now, and her breath was coming in gasps.

  Someone must be on that porch. Someone or something.

  She wanted to call out and demand to know, “Who’s there?”

  But when she opened her mouth, no words came out.

  Suddenly, being scared out of her wits didn’t seem so irrational anymore.

  In fact, it made pretty good sense.

  After all, if there was a dead body in the basement, then surely whoever was walking on the front porch must be …

  A murderer.

  As she stepped toward the doorway, it felt like she sometimes did in a dream when she tried to run but could barely move.

  What was she supposed to do in a situation like this?

  It vaguely came back to her …

  Identify myself as an FBI agent.

  Draw my weapon.

  But before she could do either of those things, a large man leapt into the doorway in front of her flashlight beam. He lunged toward her.

  Ann Marie’s flashlight fell from her hand and rattled across the living room floor. The next thing she knew, somebody was holding onto her with a vise-like grip.

  “Just who the hell are you?” her attacker snarled.

  *

  At the sound of a scream upstairs, Riley slammed the freezer door shut. With her gun in one hand and her flashlight in the other, she bounded back up the basement stairs. When she got to the living room, she saw that Ann Marie’s flashlight was lying on the floor, still spinning around from having been suddenly dropped.

  Riley’s own flashlight beam fell upon a big man wearing a hunting outfit. He was holding Ann Marie tightly against him with one arm. With the other he was holding a large knife to her throat.

  Riley’s mind clicked away as she assessed the situation.

  From what she had discovered in the ice chest downstairs, she was sure that this man was no murderer.

  And she doubted very much that he was really going to hurt Ann Marie.

  Looking at her, the man growled, “What the hell are you two up to?”

  Pointing both her weapon and her flashlight beam at his face, Riley said, “We’re Agents Paige and Esmer with the FBI.”

  Still holding the knife to Ann Marie’s throat, the man said, “FBI, huh? Care to show me some ID?”

  Riley had a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other, and at the moment, she didn’t want to put either of them down to fetch her badge.

  She said, “Let go of my partner and she can show you.”

  His expression wavered for a moment. But Riley could see in his eyes that he had no intention of turning this into some kind of hostage situation. After all, he had no reason for it. Sure enough, he released Ann Marie from his grip. She took out her badge and showed it to him.

  Returning his knife to a sheath on his belt, the man growled, “Just what business has the FBI got trespassing around my place?”

  Holstering her own weapon, Riley said, “It depends. Are you Gabriel Ballard?”

  “Folks normally call me Gabe—but yeah, I’m him.”

  He flicked on the overhead light switch. It took Riley’s eyes a moment to adjust, but she quickly saw that the house was even dirtier and more decrepit than she had originally thought. Gabe had a dull, unintelligent face, and at the moment he looked seriously rattled.

  Riley said, “And would you describe yourself as a law-abiding citizen, Gabe Ballard?”

  Ballard shrugged uneasily. “Well, I ain’t done nothing illegal enough for the FBI to come after my ass.”

  “No, just hunting out of season,” Riley said.

  “Hey, it ain’t out of season for bow hunting. I’m an archer, at least during this time of year.”

  Riley said, “Judging from the amount of deer meat you’ve got in that freezer downstairs, I’d say you’ve killed over your limit—way over your limit. And you sure do keep a disgusting place here.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about that smell,” Riley said.

  “What smell?”

  Riley scoffed and said, “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re used to it. You’ve got pieces of butchered deer all over the place down there, and whole buckets full of entrails. It’s an out and out health hazard.”

  Ballard shrugged again and said, “I just never get around to cleaning things up, I guess. What business is it of yours, anyway?”

  That’s a good question, Riley had to admit to herself.

  “Look, just explain a few things to me, OK?” Riley said. “Why did you just threaten my partner with a knife?”

  Ballard snorted. “Hell, I didn’t know who the two of you were—a couple of strange people coming around here at night. Couldn’t tell anything about you. You were trespassing and I didn’t know why. Thought you must be after something.”

  “Do you live here?” Riley asked.

  “Naw, I live over in town. I keep this place for hunting, storing weapons and deer meat and such. I was just driving over here to check on things when I saw your car way up ahead, slowing down and checking out my gate. I turned off my headlights and watched you driving slowly on. I thought something might be up, so I pulled over and stopped and waited. Sure enough, I saw the two of you came walking back, then slip through the gate.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything to us then?” Riley asked.

  “For all I knew, you might be armed. I didn’t have a gun on me. So I followed way behind on foot, watching your flashlights as you walked down the drive. I was still down the road a piece when I saw that you got through my front door somehow. Picked the lock, I guess. I could have called the cops on you right then, but I didn’t want them poking around either. It took a little while before I got up the nerve to come on into the house to find out just why you’d broke in here.”

  He’s got some reasonably good stalking skills, Riley thought. She could appreciate that after having a father for a hunter.

  Then Ballard pointed at Ann Marie and said, “Then I came inside, and I got blinded by the beam of this girl’s flashlight. I figured she was liable to shoot me, so I grabbed hold of her fast as I could. I asked who she was, and she didn’t say a word.”

  Riley turned and glared at Ann Marie. She stopped herself from asking aloud, You didn’t introduce yourself as an FBI agent?

  Ann Marie lowered her eyes ashamedly. She obviously knew what Riley was thinking.

  Ballard then said, “Now maybe the two of you would like to tell me what the hell you’re doing, breaking into my place like this?”

  Riley stifled a discouraged groan. She owed the man an explanation. But just how much should she tell him?

  “We’re investigating a murder,” Riley said.

  Ballard’s eyes widened.

  “Murder? Are you talking about the missing girl who turned up dead today? I sure didn�
�t have anything to do with that.”

  Ann Marie demanded, “Really? Because we’ve got a few questions we need answers to. For example, where were you last night?”

  Ballard snapped back, “Last night I was over at Tim’s Bar, having a few drinks with buddies.”

  Ann Marie persisted angrily, “What about Halloween a year ago?”

  He looked puzzled for a moment, then replied. “Back then I was out in the next county, at a hunting lodge with a bunch of bow hunters. It’s absolutely legal, you know.”

  Riley remembered the crossbows in the basement. Although she hadn’t seen the exact dates for this year, she knew that bow hunting season usually opened before the regular season. Her father had looked down on that kind of hunting. He’d said it was done just to show off skill, for bragging rights rather than for food needs. Bow hunting too often resulted in wounded animals rather than clean kills. But even so, it was certainly legal in season.

  Ballard broke into a grin. “See, ladies? I’ve got lots of friends who’ll tell you everywhere I’ve been.”

  Ann Marie looked like she was about to continue trying to drill him, but Riley silenced her with a gesture across her throat.

  Then she said to Ballard, “We came here by mistake. We’re sorry.”

  Ballard grunted loudly. “You’re sorry?” he said. “Sorry don’t cut it. I went to school, I know my rights. The law can’t come busting into somebody’s house without a warrant. It’s illegal.”

  Riley shrugged slightly.

  “Yeah, and so is hunting over your limit,” she said. “I guess that makes us just about even. I’m sure neither of us wants to make a big deal out of things. Let’s just call it a night, OK?”

  Without another word, she walked out of the house with Ann Marie following her.

  As they headed back down the road by the beams of their flashlight, Ann Marie chattered disapprovingly.

  “Where are we going? We’ve got to ask him more questions!”

  “Like what?”

  “Like where he was when Allison Hillis disappeared or—”

  Riley interrupted, “That man didn’t kill anybody.”

  “How do you know?”

  Riley groaned aloud and said, “His alibis are going to check out. Besides, didn’t you hear what I said back there? His freezer is stuffed full of deer meat. That freezer was the only reason we suspected him in the first place. He’s not a killer, just some jerk who keeps a smelly hunting lodge.”

  “Oh,” Ann Marie mumbled sheepishly.

  Riley felt her frustration rising as they walked in silence for a few moments.

  Finally she said in a voice tight with anger, “Ann Marie, we’ve got some things we need to discuss.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The tension between Riley and Ann Marie was palpable. They walked a little farther along the dark dirt road without talking.

  Finally Riley spoke up, “Just what the hell happened back there?”

  “I’m sorry,” Ann Marie said. “I screwed up.”

  “I’ll say you screwed up,” Riley said. “But I need to hear your version of it.”

  Ann Marie sighed deeply.

  Then she said, “It was dark. I heard a noise out on the porch. I thought someone was out there. I wasn’t sure.”

  Riley said, “And you didn’t call out to whoever it was?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t announce that you were FBI?”

  “I was too scared.”

  Riley struggled to imagine the incident from Ann Marie’s point of view. She found it hard to do.

  “So you thought you might be in danger?” Riley asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “But you didn’t draw your weapon?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Ann Marie’s voice sounded choked with emotion.

  “I don’t know. I just froze, I guess.”

  “Froze?” Riley said. “Ann Marie, you were trained—no, you were drilled on what to do in these situations. Are you telling me you just forgot everything you’d learned at the academy?”

  “I remembered,” Ann Marie said. “I just … well, froze. I was just so scared. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. I promise.”

  Riley found it hard to control the anger in her voice.

  “How can I know it won’t happen again? Suppose we’d been right, and the killer really lived there, and it was him you heard on that porch. What do you think would have happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Riley scoffed. “Well, I’m pretty sure I do know. You’d have gotten killed. And I might well have gotten killed as well. We both could have ended up missing and buried somewhere, like that girl we saw earlier today.”

  They’d arrived back to the gate at the end of the drive. They squeezed between the gate and the fence again and continued walking toward the car.

  Riley shook her head. “Ann Marie, I can’t train you from scratch. I’ve got to be able to count on you when the going gets tough. You need to be ready to do this job. Do you think you are ready?”

  “I think so,” Ann Marie said.

  She doesn’t sound very sure of herself, Riley thought.

  They got into the car, and Riley started driving them back to Winneway. They didn’t say another word to each other during the whole drive. They found the motel that Sheriff Wightman had recommended and checked in.

  As they walked toward their rooms, Ann Marie said, “Agent Paige, please let me finish this case. You have no idea what becoming a BAU agent means to me. I’ll do better. I promise.”

  “We’ll see,” Riley replied sternly.

  Ann Marie ducked her head and hurried off to her room.

  Riley went inside her own room and stood there for a moment trying to decide what to do next. She knew that her first order of business was to report in to Brent Meredith. After all, when she and Ann Marie had met with him this morning, he hadn’t believed this was going to turn out to be a real BAU case. She remembered what he’d said.

  “You’ll probably go there and turn right around and come back again.”

  Riley didn’t think things were turning out that way after all. It was true that they had only one murder to investigate. But the killer’s odd messages combined with the sense of him that she’d experienced in the park had her intuitions tingling. She felt a rising suspicion that this “Goatman” was a true serial killer, the kind of monster she had dedicated her career to hunting. She couldn’t give up on this case until she found him and stopped him from killing again.

  It was too late to phone Meredith, so she opened her laptop and wrote him an email reporting much of what had happened today.

  Then she threw herself on the bed. It was very late, and it had been a long, discouraging day. She felt tired, and unsure what to do next. She had half a mind to call Meredith first thing in the morning and tell him that Ann Marie just wasn’t cut out to be a BAU agent.

  But the rookie’s plea echoed through Riley’s mind.

  “Please let me finish this case. You have no idea what becoming a BAU agent means to me.”

  Riley scoffed aloud to herself.

  I’ve got no idea, huh?

  Did the girl really think no other rookie agent had ever felt the same way—the same depth of commitment, the same feeling of being called to a noble task?

  But Riley found it hard not to sympathize with her. She remembered something else Ann Marie had said earlier today about the choice she’d made to go into law enforcement, and how her father had disapproved.

  “He always wanted me to take over the family business someday.”

  She knew it was no small thing to defy a father’s expectations.

  Ann Marie might seem like a shallow twit, but Riley figured there must be grit and commitment somewhere inside her.

  Maybe she deserves another chance.

  Besides, now that Riley had some time to think, she realized she was at least as angry with herself as she was with
Ann Marie. She hadn’t been at her best today. In fact, the whole debacle back at that hunting lodge was more her own fault than Ann Marie’s.

  She knew that she had jumped too eagerly on Bill’s discovery that a commercial-sized freezer had been delivered to that house a year ago. It ought to have occurred to her that the area was hunting country, and a hunter might use such an enormous freezer to store deer meat.

  Or at least a hunter who’s been shooting over his limit.

  Sure, she should have followed up on Bill’s tip. But rushing out there with Ann Marie at night and breaking into the place was a bad call on her part. If one or both of them had gotten killed, it would have been on Riley’s head.

  I’m definitely off my game.

  But what was wrong, exactly?

  Was it having to work with a green, awkward rookie instead of with Bill? Or did it have something to do with how her relationship with Bill was changing? Maybe she was letting their budding romance distract her from her work. If so, did she have any business scolding Ann Marie for making rookie mistakes?

  Another lingering worry floated into her mind.

  Was there any chance at all that this new thing with Bill was going to turn out well—for either of them?

  Were they going to ruin the best relationship either one of them had had in their whole lives?

  She wondered if maybe she should call him right now and talk all this through.

  Or maybe she should call the kids at home.

  She smiled as she remembered how satisfied she’d felt just to get her quarreling kids off to school this morning, and what she’d said when April had complained that her solution to their argument “didn’t make sense.”

  “It doesn’t have to make sense. I make the rules here.”

  Now that she thought about it, that was one of the beautiful things about being a mother. Things didn’t always have to make sense. She could exercise a little arbitrary authority from time to time.

  Being a BAU agent was different. Making sense of things was the whole point of her work. There had to be an answer to everything. But sometimes that seemed to be impossible. How could anyone make sense of a twisted, homicidal mind? How was she going to make sense of a killer who wrote messages about a “Goatman”?