Waiting

by Blake Pierce

  That’s good, Riley thought.

  Much like Janet had on that fateful night, Riley would soon have the park seemingly all to herself. She just hoped that the rain would hold off until she managed to do what she wanted to do …

  If I can do it.

  Her instincts were still pretty untested, after all, and she might fail to feel that connection again.

  I didn’t come all this way for nothing, she told herself firmly.

  She followed a footpath until she got to her next destination—the rough-hewn obelisk she’d seen in one of the photos, which turned out to be the LBJ Memorial Grove Monolith. Just as Riley had in the photograph, she could see the Washington Monument towering in the far distance.

  By now, there were no visitors in sight.

  Riley looked all around, trying to imagine how Janet had felt standing here snapping her pictures of the moody scene.

  Did Janet have any feeling of being watched and followed? No, Riley had already sensed that Janet’s abductor was stealthy. Janet had felt safe and content and alone.

  Riley felt a deep chill.

  Janet was wrong.

  He was definitely here somewhere.

  She remembered what Crivaro had said to Charlie in the darkroom …

  “Magnify everything … all the photographs, every square centimeter.”

  Charlie must have done that by now. Had he found any telltale figures or faces?

  No, the killer had surely stayed out of sight, mostly behind her, or …

  Riley looked across the way into a grove of pine and dogwood trees. He might have hidden himself somewhere over there—in fact, Riley felt almost sure of it. She continued on through the grove, taking a path Janet might well have taken to her last location.

  She felt the killer’s presence, sensed him darting among the trees just behind her as she walked along.

  She found herself wondering …

  Is he really here?

  Right now?

  If so, was she in terrible danger herself at this very moment?

  No, she realized. In spite of that vivid sensation of menace, what she was feeling wasn’t happening now. She was tuning into something that had already taken place.

  She could tell that Janet hadn’t been a random target, and neither had Margo Birch. The killer was anything but spontaneous or impulsive. He had stalked both of them stealthily and skillfully until he’d known just when and where to strike.

  As she walked along, a strange feeling came over her.

  She was no longer imagining the episode from her point of view.

  Instead, she saw the whole scene as the killer must have seen it.

  She envisioned herself darting among these trees, avoiding the sight of the young woman who kept walking blithely and unsuspecting just up ahead.

  Riley felt a surge of terror, just as she had during those other times when she’d gotten a sense of the killer’s presence.

  But she fought down her fear and continued on until she arrived at the marina, its wooden docks jutting out into a peaceful lagoon. Margo had taken most of her pictures from those docks. It must have been her favorite spot, and the killer must have known it.

  The dimmed daylight continued to remind Riley of the photos she’d seen. As she heard the gentle lapping of water and the cries of gulls, the black-and-white images flashed through her mind vividly.

  She ducked behind among some trees and peered ahead, imagining that she was the killer watching Janet moving along the docks.

  Finally, Riley remembered that final blurred photograph, with its chaotic and jumbled shapes of boats and docks. As unclear as those shapes had been, Riley felt as though they lined up with the view she had of the marina right now …

  She came back this way to take that picture.

  And he was waiting.

  He must have had some kind of a hard, blunt object in his hand—a short piece of pipe, maybe.

  Riley could now almost feel the weight of that object in her hand.

  She stepped out from among the trees, feeling the readiness and excitement he must have felt as he slipped up behind her and cracked her on the skull and watched her drop to his feet …

  Riley gasped.

  Her point of view snapped back into her own mind.

  She felt that the killer was still there in front of her.

  For a moment, she thought she could grab him by the throat and demand …

  Who are you? Where can we find you right now?

  But she couldn’t do that. And her perception of him was fading.

  She got a fleeting sense of the smirk on his face as he peered down at his stricken prey, looking forward to what came next—the ritual of dressing her and making her up, injecting the fatal drug into her veins, teasing and tormenting her literally to death.

  He had to move her. How?

  She looked around and saw a small parking lot nearby. It was almost empty right now. It might well have been completely empty when he’d attacked Janet. If so, it wouldn’t have been hard to drag her to his parked vehicle, dump her inside, and then drive her …

  Where?

  She flashed back to when she’d been sitting in Crivaro’s car, watching Crivaro and McCune drag Gregory Wertz out of his apartment building. She hadn’t seen Wertz’s apartment, but judging from the looks of the neighborhood and the building and the man himself, it was surely fairly small and cramped and disorderly.

  No, she thought.

  It didn’t happen there.

  That was not the setting for such ritualistic, almost ceremonial sadism.

  Had Wertz dragged her somewhere else entirely?

  No, the man lacked some characteristic needed to maintain such a place and conduct such a ritual …

  Imagination.

  Riley closed her eyes, trying to picture the place where the victims’ torment had taken place.

  She murmured aloud, in an almost pleading voice …

  “Where? Where did you do it?”

  A few droplets of rain hit her, jarring her out of her dark reverie.

  Her connection to the killer was completely undone.

  But she knew one thing that she hadn’t known before …

  He has a lair.

  We’ve got to find the lair.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Alone at last in his secret rooms, Joey shed his “costume”—the clothes he wore out in the world of ordinary people, the clothes that made it possible for him to blend in with them, make them think he was one of them.

  If they only knew, he thought.

  He wondered—could he ever teach anyone the terrible truth?

  The truth about themselves and the world they lived in?

  Could any of them ever learn?

  It wasn’t an easy lesson. He knew that better than maybe anybody else in the world.

  When he was fully undressed, he went to the clothes rack where a dozen or so wonderful puffy, gaudy, garish clown costumes hung.

  He picked out one and slipped into it, then stood looking at himself in the mirror.

  There, that’s better, he thought.

  Now that he felt more himself again, his thoughts turned to the young women who had died under his hand.

  He knew it couldn’t be easy for them, having to learn his terrible lesson in so short a time—a lesson he’d spent his whole life having to learn and live with.

  It had actually been impossible for the two girls he’d chosen already, feeling fear and loneliness arise in sudden uncontrollable surges, looking in a mirror and finally seeing their faces …

  Not the faces they usually saw in the mirror, but their truer faces, the faces the rest of the world really saw, bright and loud and alien, the rejected faces, the faces of the shunned.

  For after all—that’s what people really were, all of them.

  Shunned.

  Oh, those girls hadn’t understood. Few people ever did. They thought they were surrounded by people they could trust—parents, relatives, spouses,
friends, coworkers. But all that kindness and goodwill and even love were only feigned, an act, a mockery of how people really felt.

  He’d tried to explain it to the women …

  “They’re going to leave you behind.”

  He’d said it again and again.

  And yet they hadn’t understood.

  It was so simple, really. How could he have made it clearer?

  He remembered what the latest girl had cried out as he’d teased her with a knife …

  “Why do you hate me?”

  What a strange question!

  He’d answered with the truth, of course.

  “Everybody hates you.”

  She’d panicked then.

  He knew that her panic was only natural. He’d lived for many years in such a state of perpetual horror. It was normal for him. He couldn’t imagine life without that horror.

  But it had been all new to her, and he remembered how she’d writhed and cried out …

  “Swat them off me! Kill them!”

  She’d thought she was swarming with insects.

  As her terror had mounted, she’d seem to think that the insects were under her very skin.

  The other girl had felt those insects too—an effect of the drug, apparently.

  But finally, when he’d shown the girl her face in the mirror, he’d seen a change in her.

  She’d really understood, was undeluded, even if just for a moment.

  She saw the self that everybody saw.

  She knew that she was truly outcast, just like he was.

  She knew for a fact …

  “They’re going to leave me behind.”

  … and that he was the only person in the world who would accept her as she was.

  But she’d rejected that opportunity.

  As he’d held the knife to her throat, she’d hissed out …

  “Do it. Do it now.”

  He’d had no intention of killing her, of course.

  It was up to her to choose between a lonely death and the only kind of companionship she could ever hope for …

  A life with me.

  She hadn’t been strong enough to choose that life, and neither had the other girl.

  They’d both chosen to die instead.

  The next one will be stronger, he told himself.

  And he’d already chosen the next girl, although she didn’t know it yet.

  He’d been watching her, following her, waiting for his perfect moment.

  But that moment hadn’t come.

  Soon, he told himself. Soon.

  Meanwhile, he’d tease the world that had tormented him—tease it with a message that people would read tomorrow …

  A riddle.

  Because there was no direct way to say what he had to say.

  It could only be said in a riddle.

  Was there anyone out there who could crack the riddle’s secret—especially its one key, paradoxical word?

  There must be, he thought.

  Just one person.

  A young woman, maybe.

  Maybe someday soon he’d meet her face to face.

  Surely she would understand.

  Meanwhile, he was tired to the very bones from spending the day out in the world, pretending to be just one more of its wretched, lonely denizens.

  He took down one of the countless clown sketches he had tacked on the wall. He’d sent one of those sketches out with his riddle, and he wondered if the picture would appear along with his words.

  Then he went to a shelf and took down a metal box. He set it down on the counter in front of his mirror and opened it. It was full of bottles of latex and spirit gum, colorful prostheses, and tubes of greasepaint.

  He’d gone out into the world in disguise, wearing the kind of clothes that other people wore, wearing the mask of his own skin.

  He needed to put on his own true face to go to bed.

  He smeared the welcome white makeup all over his face. Referring to the sketch as he added more detail, he said aloud the title of the riddle people would be reading tomorrow …

  “Welcome to the Labyrinth.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Riley was soaked to the skin by the time she got back to her apartment building. The rain had hit hard as she was going from Lady Bird Johnson Park to the metro station and it was still raining much later when she arrived at her stop near home. Running that last two blocks had seemed futile.

  Ryan was sitting at the kitchen table, but he jumped up when she walked in.

  “Oh no,” he exclaimed. “I guess you didn’t take an umbrella.”

  Riley shook her head, her hair slinging water about. “At least it’s warm outside,” she said, laughing.

  Ryan hustled her into the bathroom and started rubbing her down with one of their towels.

  “You need to take better care of yourself,” he scolded her.

  “Stop,” she protested. “I’ll change. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  She undressed, dried herself off, and put on dry clothes.

  When she got back to the kitchen, she felt a surge of guilt at what she saw.

  Two places were set at the table. Ryan had put out a bowl of tuna and pasta salad—a quick and easy meal that Ryan liked to make. He was sitting there waiting for her.

  Riley remembered her words from this morning

  “I’ll be home early tonight. I’ll fix dinner. Don’t worry.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said in a choked voice. “Ryan, I’m so sorry.”

  Ryan shrugged, then said, “It was getting late.”

  He put some salad on his own plate.

  “I’m really, really sorry,” Riley said shakily. “I lost track of time.”

  Ryan started eating silently.

  Oh, no, Riley thought.

  She knew from Ryan’s silence that he was really upset.

  As she took some salad for herself, Riley said, “Um. How was your day?”

  Without looking up at her, Ryan said, “Good. My second day in a real courtroom.”

  “Wow,” Riley said. “That must be really exciting.”

  Ryan didn’t reply.

  His second day, Riley thought with regret.

  He hadn’t mentioned this yesterday when she’d come in. She’d been tired, and he’d been hunched over a pile of work he’d brought back from home.

  They ate in silence for a few moments.

  Finally Ryan glanced up at her and said, “So how about you? How was your day?”

  Riley gulped hard.

  She had promised herself she’d tell him the truth about her involvement with the murder case as soon as they had some time together.

  Right now seemed to be that moment.

  Riley decided maybe she could ease into the truth with some of her more innocuous activities …

  “Well, I went to a couple of workshops today. One was about computers and how to use the Internet. I did some hands-on stuff.”

  She laughed nervously and added, “You’ll be glad to know that I’m finally learning how to use a computer. I mean, you’ve been bugging me about my backward ways. Maybe I’ll even be ready for the new millennium.”

  Ryan didn’t laugh or even smile. He just kept eating.

  Then Riley said …

  “After that I went to a workshop in the morgue—”

  Before she could continue, Ryan looked up at her with a startled expression.

  “The morgue? Oh, my God! How bad was it?”

  Riley was puzzled.

  Why is he so worried?

  She shrugged silently.

  Ryan put down his fork and looked at her with concern.

  “Oh, Riley—please tell me you didn’t have to look at a corpse.”

  Riley nodded.

  Ryan was looking really alarmed now.

  He said, “That must have been so hard for you—I mean after what happened to your mom when you were little, and then all that happened back in Lanton. How did you handle it? Are you OK?”

/>   Riley stammered, “Sure, I’m … it was no big deal.”

  Ryan reached across the table and took Riley’s hand.

  “But it was a big deal. They shouldn’t have made you do that.”

  Riley almost protested that nobody had “made” her do it, that she’d gone to the workshop on her own impulse, but …

  No, I just can’t tell him that.

  Still, she just couldn’t be completely dishonest with him.

  She said, “It wasn’t traumatic, Ryan. In fact, it was really interesting. I learned a lot about gunshot wounds that I hadn’t known before.”

  Ryan’s eyes widened.

  Riley added, “Really, it’s nothing to worry about.”

  Ryan shook his head and said, “I don’t like this, Riley. A couple of days ago you were wondering if this program was right for you. Are you still unsure? Because I certainly am. Riley, you’ve got to remember—”

  “I know,” Riley said, interrupting gently. “I’m pregnant and I’ve got to take care of myself. Don’t worry. It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

  Ryan squeezed her hand.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “I’m sure,” Riley said.

  Ryan shrugged a little and said, “Well, as long as you’re sure. You should do what you want to do. I’ll support you, no matter what decision you make.”

  Ryan’s words stabbed Riley to the heart …

  He says he supports me!

  What would he say if he knew the truth, that she’d visited a grisly murder scene and was now involved in a real-life murder case—so deeply involved that she had deliberately gotten inside the mind of the murderer?

  Oddly, she felt as though she might be able to tell him if only he were still angry with her. Then they might really be able to have things out.

  But now when he was being supportive and concerned and respectful of her wishes?

  I just can’t.

  I can’t upset him like that.

  Anyway, the icy discomfort between them had thawed because of his concern. They chatted more comfortably during the rest of the meal, mostly about Ryan’s extremely busy day at Parsons and Rittenhouse, and the work he still had to do at home tonight.

  As they talked, though, Riley sensed that something else was on Ryan’s mind—something that maybe he felt they needed to talk about, but that he was wary of bringing up. Riley wondered what it might be.