LURING

by Blake Pierce

  Suddenly, missing some time at the Academy didn’t seem like a big deal.

  The next thing Riley knew, she was trotting along to catch up with Crivaro.

  *

  A short time later, Riley was riding with Crivaro in an FBI vehicle, headed for West Virginia. As Crivaro drove and told Riley more about the case, she looked through a folder filled with reports and crime scene photos.

  She found both the folder’s contents and Crivaro’s words horrifying.

  It seemed like only yesterday that she and Crivaro had hunted down the so-called “Clown Killer,” the twisted murderer who dressed his female victims as clowns, and who had almost killed Riley herself.

  Riley had never imagined that she would ever be faced with that kind of evil again, even if she spent a lifetime in law enforcement.

  But these new murders were almost unimaginably vicious …

  He wraps them up in barbed wire and lets them bleed to death.

  Riley shuddered at the very idea.

  After Crivaro finished his grim account of the case, he said in quiet voice …

  “‘The devil’s rope.’”

  “Pardon?” Riley said.

  Crivaro said, “Erik Lehl told me that’s what barbed wire is sometimes called—‘the devil’s rope.’”

  “Sounds appropriate,” Riley said, closing the folder.

  They drove on in silence for a little while.

  Then Riley noticed Crivaro glancing at her left hand.

  “You’re still engaged, I see,” he said.

  Riley almost felt like hiding the ring on her finger.

  She remembered Frankie recommending that she take it off …

  “It’s liable to distract you, and you’re going to need all the concentration you can muster.”

  She couldn’t help but wonder …

  Maybe I should have taken it off.

  She said to Crivaro, “You sound surprised.”

  “Just making an observation,” Crivaro said. “The guy you were with in DC? Maybe I can meet him when we get back from West Virginia.”

  Riley said, “Ryan doesn’t live in Quantico. He still works for a law firm in DC. We have … he has an apartment there.”

  “Oh,” Crivaro said.

  Riley heard a lot of significance in that single syllable, as if Crivaro suspected that all wasn’t well between her and Ryan.

  Even so, it seemed like maybe he wasn’t going to say anything further about it.

  Riley didn’t see any reason why she should either.

  But she found herself wondering where things really were with Ryan. After two full days of not hearing from him, Riley had received an email from him yesterday. It had been a stiff but polite response to her earlier email, mostly about the work he was doing at Parsons & Rittenhouse.

  He’d signed the note, “Love, Ryan,” but she hadn’t felt a lot of love in his message. And she simply hadn’t known what to write in reply. She’d thought about calling him by phone either at work or at home, but she knew she’d only wind up leaving a voice message—and Ryan probably wouldn’t call her back.

  And if he did call back, were they really ready to talk out their differences?

  She remembered something Ryan had said when they’d argued …

  “Riley, you’ve almost been killed twice since I’ve known you.”

  Was her choice of a career a fatal obstacle to their future together?

  She thought back to something Crivaro had told her once …

  “Believe me, getting obsessed with the darkest parts of human nature wreaks havoc on relationships.”

  Crivaro had seemed almost like a father to Riley at times like those—more so than her actual father ever had. She’d felt like she could talk with him about things that nobody else would understand …

  Finally, Riley took a deep breath and said …

  “The truth is, I don’t know where things are between Ryan and me. We had a fight before I came to Quantico, and we really haven’t put things right since then.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Crivaro said. “Living apart like you two are can’t be easy, especially when you’re just getting started in life. I guess your future depends on how much you want each other to be happy, how much you’ll put into that.”

  Riley sighed as she watched the Virginia landscape roll by outside.

  She said, “I think the only thing I could do to make Ryan happy is to give up the whole FBI thing, settle down to some nine-to-five job that I don’t bring home with me, start having kids as soon as possible.”

  Crivaro let out a grunt of disapproval.

  “That doesn’t sound so good,” he said. “The life of an FBI Agent is … well, not like that at all. It’s crazy and unpredictable—and I don’t need to tell you it’s dangerous. As for having kids …”

  Crivaro’s voice faded away.

  Then he said, “Well, I don’t guess I’ve got any business giving you any advice. My own relationships never turn out too well—not even ordinary ones with my partners.”

  Then he chuckled and added …

  “You know, Chief Lehl tells me I need to learn to play nice with others.”

  Riley laughed and said, “What a weird thing for a boss to say.”

  Crivaro shook his head.

  “Not so weird,” he said. “I put people off, I push people away, I expect too much, and I get impatient. I wonder if maybe …”

  He paused, as if searching for the right words.

  “Maybe I can’t relate to people who aren’t as passionate as I am, aren’t as committed. My work is everything to me. My wife wasn’t like that at all, and my son sure isn’t. They couldn’t understand why I would be. And that’s not their fault. In fact, it’s probably not a fault at all. They’re perfectly normal, just like regular folks. She’s settled into a happy marriage, and he’s going into real estate. They’re going to live stable, normal lives.”

  He laughed again and said, “Maybe I just can’t do normal.”

  Riley smiled as a comfortable silence fell between them. She felt good, talking openly like this. And she sensed that Agent Crivaro felt the same way. He wasn’t the kind of man who normally let his guard down, talked about his feelings.

  Maybe we can do each other some good, she thought.

  She was starting to feel really glad that Crivaro had yanked her away from Quantico, at least for a day or two—glad, and more than a little bit special.

  Before too long they were driving up into the Appalachian Mountains, and they passed a sign for an exit to the town of Milladore.

  She said to Crivaro …

  “My dad lives in a cabin up in the mountains near that town.”

  Crivaro said, “A cabin in the mountains. Wow. That sounds great. I kind of envy him. Maybe I can meet him someday.”

  Riley frowned and said nothing.

  She couldn’t remember ever wanting to introduce her father to anybody.

  If Agent Crivaro had a problem “playing nice with others,” her father was much worse. He didn’t get along with anybody at all—including Riley. Living the life of a hermit outdoorsman suited him just fine.

  But she wondered … what would happen if she introduced Crivaro to her father? They were two crusty, cantankerous men. Her father had been as passionate about serving in the Marines as Crivaro was about being an FBI Agent. Maybe they’d really get along.

  But Riley didn’t feel ready to try to find out.

  Maybe someday, Riley thought.

  *

  Not long after they’d crossed the state line into West Virginia, they pulled into the sleepy little town of Dighton, where Hope Nelson had lived. It was smaller than Lanton, the West Virginia town where Riley gone to college. It was more like Slippery Rock, the town where she had lived when she was a little girl.

  It was hard to imagine that two brutal murders had taken place anywhere near here.

  Agent Crivaro drove through the town without stopping and continued out into the c
ountry. Finally Crivaro pulled a car to a stop beside a pasture where several Black Angus cattle were grazing.

  They got out of the car and walked toward the fence at the edge of the pasture.

  Riley looked up and down the fence, until her eye lighted on one particular post.

  Remembering the photos she’d looked at during the drive, she realized …

  It was right here.

  This was where she was Hope Nelson’s body was found.

  Riley hesitated.

  Did she really want to sense anything about a ruthless killer who used barbed wire on his victims?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  As she stood next to the barbed wire fence, Riley began to feel as though a deep and fearful darkness was closing around her. Although it was still mid-afternoon, it was easy to imagine how the place must have looked at night, when the killer had brought Hope Nelson’s body to this out-of-the-way place. She shuddered slightly at the image that was forming in her mind.

  Crivaro touched her on the shoulder and said …

  “You know what to do.”

  Riley nodded. She did know exactly what she had to do next.

  During the other times they’d worked together, Crivaro had discovered that they shared an unusual ability. They could sometimes tap into an earlier event and sometimes actually learn what a killer had felt and done. It was a gut sensation, a combination of perception, intuition, and imagination. He had taught her how to use that talent.

  She remembered that the first time she’d done this, it had helped to close her eyes.

  But this time she decided to keep her eyes open, in order to retrace the killer’s movements as well as she could.

  She walked back over to the road and said to Crivaro …

  “He stopped his vehicle over here—probably a pickup truck or an SUV.”

  She imagined opening the back hatch or gate of the vehicle.

  Inside was poor Hope’s body, bound up tightly by duct tape and barbed wire and …

  Anything else?

  He couldn’t very well have wrapped his arms around the spiky package without causing himself considerable injury.

  She looked down at the ground between her and the fence.

  She saw where the grass seemed to be matted down from something being dragged across it. But the earth wasn’t gouged or torn up anywhere that she could see.

  She said to Crivaro …

  “I think the body was wrapped up in a blanket. He used the ends of the blanket to help him lower it out of the vehicle and drag it across the ground.”

  She walked along the matted path toward the fence post, trying to imagine herself hauling the heavy load along with her—scooting and lifting it in fits and starts. He was a strong man, she thought, but not necessarily very tall or heavy.

  When she got to the fence post, she noticed a large sixteen-penny nail pounded part of the way into the top. Remembering the photos, she continued …

  “He let the blanket fall away from the bundle, then he pounded this nail here. He tied a length of slender rope to the bundle—clothesline, maybe. He passed the line around the nail in order to hoist the victim off the ground. Then he tied it fast. He stood here looking at his handiwork and …”

  Riley paused, wondering …

  And what?

  A strange feeling started to come over her—or rather a lack of feeling.

  It seemed like a kind of emotional numbness.

  She stammered, “I think … he felt spent. Whatever joy or excitement he’d felt while he’d been torturing her was over by the time he’d brought her here. She was dead now, so the thrill was gone. He was just finishing up. Or …”

  She paused again.

  Crivaro said, “Or what?”

  Riley sighed deeply and said, “Or maybe the numbness is just me. Maybe I’m just not connecting with him.”

  Crivaro patted her on the shoulder again.

  “It’s OK,” he said. “Let’s give it another try.”

  Riley walked through the exercise again, this time with Crivaro giving her more verbal prompts along the way. But it ended the same way—with a curiously empty feeling as she imagined how the killer might have felt while staring at his grisly handiwork …

  No pride, guilt, triumph, shame …

  “I just don’t feel much of anything,” she said, staring at the fence post again.

  “That might be accurate,” Crivaro said, “Maybe he didn’t feel anything either. Like you said, the most exciting part was over for him. What he’d done here might have felt like a letdown, just some drudgery to get over with. Or …”

  Crivaro shrugged and added, “Or maybe you’re right, and you’re just not getting any connection. Don’t be too hard on yourself. I didn’t get anything here either. You’re not trying to work miracles here. There’s nothing magical about it. It’s all about intuition—and sometimes intuition doesn’t come when we want it to.”

  Riley squinted thoughtfully and said, “What really matters is how he felt when he was really engaged with the victim, when she was still alive. I mean, was it just pure cruelty and sadism, like the Clown Killer? Or was it … something else? I wish we could go to where Hope was abducted, or where he wrapped her up and tormented her to death.”

  Crivaro let out a dismayed growl.

  “Unfortunately, we don’t have any idea where those two things happened. But don’t worry, we can still check the other crime scene. You might get more of a hit there. Meanwhile, we’d better drive into town, check in with Chief Messenger, see if his men have found anything new.”

  Crivaro drove them back into the little town of Dighton. When they walked into the small police station, a couple of cops looked up from their desks. Crivaro asked them where he and Riley could find the chief, and they said he was in his office.

  The office door at the back of the station was partially open as Riley and Crivaro walked toward it.

  Riley heard a man’s voice say …

  “I’d expected Senator Gardner to be at Hope’s memorial service yesterday.”

  Another man’s voice snapped back …

  “Why would you expect that?”

  Sounding flustered, the first man said …

  “Well, I just thought …”

  The second man sternly interrupted, “Well, don’t think about it. And don’t talk about it. You know better than that.”

  Crivaro rapped lightly on the door and gently pushed it open. Two men were standing there, looking startled and upset.

  The shorter of them was wearing a police uniform. Riley thought he looked a bit like Agent Crivaro. The taller of the two men was wearing an expensive-looking suit.

  Crivaro introduced them as Chief Graham Messenger and Mayor Mason Nelson—Hope Nelson’s husband.

  As Crivaro asked for any news about the case, Riley felt a palpable awkwardness between the mayor and the police chief—and also more than trace of anxiety.

  Riley’s instincts hadn’t kicked in at the crime scene, but right now her gut was telling her something quite clearly. Just now the chief had been saying something the mayor had disapproved of—and now they were both uneasy about having been overheard.

  We walked in on something.

  We heard something we weren’t supposed to hear.

  There was nothing new about the case to discuss, so Riley and Crivaro headed back to the car. As Crivaro started to drive away, Riley said …

  “Something was going on back there.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Crivaro said.

  Riley thought for a moment, recalling the chief’s words …

  “I’d expected Senator Gardner to be at Hope’s memorial service yesterday.”

  Riley said, “Warren Gardner—isn’t he one of West Virginia’s U.S. senators? Yeah, he’s always pushing some kind of religious agenda—school prayer, putting the Ten Commandments in government buildings, all that kind of thing.”

  “If you say so,” Crivaro said. “I don’t pay much
attention to politics.”

  Riley said, “Just when we were walking in, Chief Messenger said something about the senator not coming to Hope Nelson’s funeral.”

  “I didn’t hear it,” Crivaro said.

  “Well, I sure did,” Riley said. “And the mayor got upset that Messenger even mentioned it. And both of them seemed upset when we showed up at that moment.”

  “You’re imagining things,” Crivaro said.

  Riley was surprised by the tightness in Crivaro’s voice.

  “No, I don’t think I am,” she said. “We need to go back there. We need to ask them …”

  Crivaro interrupted sharply, “No, we don’t. Whatever they were talking about was none of our business.”

  Riley began, “But I’ve got this feeling …”

  Crivaro broke in again, his voice louder …

  “Your feelings are out of whack today. You admitted it yourself. Whatever the chief and mayor were talking about, it’s none of our business.”

  “But—”

  “Leave it the hell alone, Riley. A detective’s got to ignore stupid things that just don’t matter, even when your gut tells you otherwise. You need to learn that. You’ve got a lot to learn.”

  Then in a low growl he added …

  “Too much, maybe.”

  A long silence fell between them. Riley was startled by Crivaro’s sudden coldness. After they’d driven for a little while, Crivaro took a turn onto the Interstate, taking them eastward, back toward Virginia.

  Riley asked, “Aren’t we going to the other crime scene near Hyland?”

  “No,” Crivaro said. “We’re through for the day. I’m taking you back to Quantico.”

  Riley felt a chill at the note of finality in his voice. She wished he would explain why he was being so short with her. But she sensed that there was no use in trying to get him to tell her …

  He’s angry enough as it is.

  As they drove on in silence, Riley remembered what the mayor had said to Chief Messenger …

  “Well, don’t think about it. And don’t talk about it. You know better than that.”

  Despite Crivaro’s objection, Riley felt sure that the exchange was important somehow.

  She wished she knew why.