Once Stalked (A Riley Paige Mystery—Book 9)

by Blake Pierce

  Riley added, “And our time is as valuable as yours. In fact, if you expect to end this string of murders, our time is more valuable.”

  Adams stood up behind his desk, his face red.

  “You know nothing about the military. You’re accomplishing nothing here.”

  Riley stood up and faced the colonel across his desk. “We are too well trained to waste our time trying to interview hundreds of suspects without any actual indication that someone among them is to blame.”

  The colonel was shouting now. “A Muslim fanatic is killing sergeants on my base, and you’re too politically correct to track him down and stop him.”

  Bill was standing now and his voice was angry too. “We follow real leads, not prejudices.”

  “He’s right,” Riley added. “You’re too isolated up here in your fancy office to know what’s happening on your base.”

  “It is my base, and don’t you forget it. You don’t have the authority here. I should have all of you removed from my base right now.”

  By that time, Lucy was out of her chair as well. The smallest of them all, she stepped forward and spoke up firmly. “Colonel Adams, we understand how much you want this killer caught. We are highly trained to do just that. You won’t find better investigative skills anywhere. Please give us the opportunity to get our job done.”

  A silence fell in the room. For a long moment the colonel stared down at the diminutive Latina FBI agent. Finally he swallowed hard and grumbled, “I will expect you to do that.”

  Riley nodded and stepped back from the colonel’s desk.

  He said in softer but still commanding tone, “Now clear out of here. All three of you.”

  As she and her colleagues headed for the door, Riley turned back and said as politely as she could, “Just one more thing, sir. Does the phrase ‘running with the pack’ mean anything to you?”

  Adams squinted.

  “Nothing in particular,” he said. “Should it mean something?”

  Riley studied his expression. He certainly didn’t seem to be lying.

  “Just something I heard,” Riley said. “It can’t mean anything.”

  She turned and left the office, with the other two agents close behind her.

  As they walked down the hall toward the elevator, Riley could feel her temper receding. She focused her thoughts on the phrase that Private Pope had used. Yesterday she had mentioned it to Bill and Lucy.

  As they waited for the elevator, she asked her companions, “Did both of you ask the soldiers you talked to about ‘running with the pack’?”

  “I did,” Lucy said. “I got nothing.”

  “Me too,” Bill said to Riley. “Are you sure it means anything at all?”

  Riley didn’t reply. The truth was, she couldn’t be sure. She had no real reason to keep thinking about it.

  But something about Private Pope’s voice and expression when he’d said it had stuck in her mind.

  When they all got into the elevator, Riley’s phone buzzed.

  She shuddered when she saw that the caller was Shane Hatcher.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Riley fought down her panic. She definitely didn’t want to talk to this caller while she was in the elevator with Bill and Lucy. Finally, the sound stopped as her outgoing message kicked in. Riley hoped that Hatcher would either leave a message or give up. But after a brief silence, the annoying signal started up again.

  She wondered why Hatcher was so anxious to talk to her.

  What would happen if she simply turned her phone off?

  She didn’t want to find out.

  “Don’t you want to get that?” Bill asked as the elevator door opened on the ground floor.

  “I’d better,” Riley said, walking away from Bill and Lucy to talk alone.

  When she took the call, Hatcher sounded angrier than she’d ever heard him.

  “You broke our deal,” he said.

  Riley felt her panic rising.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know. Your real estate agent was here just now, showing the cabin to a married couple. This is supposed to be my place now. We agreed to that. You promised not to sell it.”

  Riley was starting to understand. Shirley Redding had disobeyed her once again.

  Hatcher continued, “I managed to stay out of sight. I don’t think they know anybody’s living here. But you’d damn well better make sure nobody else comes around here. I’m not hiding in the woods again. I’m a city person.”

  “Hatcher, listen to me,” Riley said. “I fired her. Yesterday.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” Hatcher said.

  “I’m not! I swear to you—”

  But Hatcher ended the call. The phone was shaking in Riley’s hands.

  What can that woman be thinking? Riley wondered.

  She hastily typed in a text to Shirley.

  I fired U yesterday. I meant it.

  Riley paused. What else could she say? She couldn’t tell Shirley anything resembling the truth.

  She typed …

  I know U took people to my father’s cabin. Don’t ask me how I know. Just don’t do it again. I repeat. U are fired.

  She sent the text, then heard Bill call out to her, “A problem at home?”

  She saw that Bill and Lucy both looked a little worried.

  “Nothing,” she said with a forced smile. “Just some teenage drama.”

  She immediately hated herself for lying. She’d told too many lies on Hatcher’s behalf already. But she doubted that this one would be the last.

  Anyway, she told herself sternly, she had to put Hatcher out of her mind for now. She, Bill, and Lucy were already late for a meeting with Col. Larson.

  They hurried on to the smaller CID building, ignoring several reporters who still straggled along with them. The guard in the lobby viewed their credentials and let them in, shutting the reporters out. He directed them to Col. Larson’s office. Larson’s secretary escorted them inside.

  Riley was immediately struck by the contrast between this office and Col. Adams’s more regal accommodations. Larson’s office was comparatively small and businesslike, with no fancy or expensive decor.

  It was also at the moment a bit crowded.

  Col. Dana Larson was sitting at her desk, flanked by her CID team, Sergeant Matthews and Agents Goodwin and Shores. They were all poring over materials spread out on the desk.

  “We’re sorry to be late,” Riley said as she and her colleagues sat down in waiting chairs facing Larson.

  Larson said, “Don’t tell me—you were held up by Col. Adams.”

  “How did you guess?” Riley said, laughing a little.

  But Larson didn’t look amused. At the moment, she seemed to be all business.

  “What have you found out?” she asked Riley and her colleagues.

  Riley said, “This morning we met with the recruits in the platoons of Sergeants Rolsky and Fraser.”

  “Do you think any of them might be viable suspects?” Larson asked.

  Riley said, “It’s hard to tell just from one meeting. None of Fraser’s recruits stood out as especially hostile. In fact, he was pretty unanimously well liked.”

  Lucy said, “Agent Jeffreys and I talked to Rolsky’s recruits. Our impression was that he wasn’t especially popular. One told me that Rolsky was an ‘Arab.’ I didn’t know what that meant. I mean, Rolsky was white and Catholic, wasn’t he?”

  “ARAB is a military slang acronym,” Larson explained. “It means ‘Arrogant Regular Army Bastard.’”

  Riley was struck by that phrase.

  Lucy continued, “Still, Rolsky was nothing if not respected. We didn’t sense that any recruits in that platoon actually wanted him dead.”

  Larson tapped her pencil on her desk impatiently.

  “Where does this get us?” she asked.

  Sergeant Matthews spoke up.

  “I don’t think we’ve seen anything to contradict our origin
al theory—that these were acts of Islamic radicalism. In fact, I think we can be pretty sure of it. We still don’t know whether it’s a single man or a small cell.”

  Larson nodded in agreement.

  “We’ve already been investigating on-base Muslims,” she said. “We’ll put extra surveillance on both Muslim recruits and on-base Muslim civilians.”

  Agents Goodwin and Shores nodded in agreement.

  But a new idea was starting to take shape in Riley’s mind

  Riley said, “I’m not so sure that’s the right approach.”

  Larson looked surprised.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  Riley thought for a moment.

  Then she said, “Just now, Agent Vargas said that one of Rolsky’s soldiers called him ‘Regular Army.’ A recruit in Fraser’s platoon said, ‘They don’t make many Americans like Fraser anymore.’ Fraser’s other recruits seemed to agree with him almost unanimously. And yesterday I talked with a recruit that Worthing had busted in rank. The recruit was actually grateful. He admired Worthing all the more for imposing discipline.”

  Riley paused again, trying to organize her thoughts.

  Then she said, “The three dead sergeants were very different men, and they inspired very different feelings among their recruits. But they had one thing in common. They were old-school traditionalists—men who might feel out of place in today’s Army.”

  Larson knitted her brow.

  “So what are you saying? That the killer has it in for old-school soldiers?”

  Riley gulped. She knew that she was about to say something that might not make sense to Larson.

  “No,” she said. “If anything, I think it’s possible that the killer might have been even more old school than any of his victims.”

  A murmur of surprise passed among the CID agents.

  Agent Matthews spoke again.

  “With all due respect, Agent Paige, that doesn’t make any sense.”

  Riley understood why he and his colleagues would feel that way. Her hunches often didn’t make sense until they turned out to be true. Right now, she couldn’t explain her feelings rationally. But she had to try.

  “It’s hard to explain,” Riley said. “But I got a strong feeling at the spot where Worthing’s killer had been when he fired.”

  Larson’s eyebrows rose.

  “A feeling?” she asked.

  Riley hesitated. Bill and Lucy were used to her unorthodox methods. But it was always difficult to explain what she had felt to people who had never worked with her before.

  She was relieved when Bill spoke up.

  “Agent Paige has unusually strong intuitions, Colonel. In the BAU, she’s known for getting into a killer’s mind. When she visits a crime scene, she often gets a sense of the situation, like she did yesterday.”

  Riley hoped Bill’s explanation had helped.

  She said, “I got the feeling that the shooter is a soldier’s soldier. He might feel more out of place here at Fort Mowat than the sergeants did. He might feel like an outright anachronism.”

  Agent Matthews looked genuinely puzzled.

  He said, “But why would one old-school soldier decide to kill others like himself?”

  Riley knew that it was a good question. And at the moment, she had no answer for it.

  Larson shook her head warily.

  “I don’t know what to think of this,” she said. “Agent Paige, like I said yesterday, your reputation precedes you. I’ve admired your achievements. But your methods—well, they’re awfully subjective for my taste.”

  Bill spoke again.

  “Colonel, I’ve been working with Agent Paige for many years, and her hunches are very seldom wrong.”

  Larson tapped her pencil against her desk again.

  “‘Seldom’ isn’t the same as never, Agent Jeffreys. And ‘hunches’ aren’t the same as facts. From what little we know so far, I’m pretty sure that Agent Paige is wrong this time. We’re dealing with Islamic extremism. Period.”

  The words stung Riley. She’d liked Larson when she met her. She’d thought they could work well together. But Larson was clearly offended by Riley’s odd skills. It even seemed that the colonel was becoming a new adversary.

  I’ve got enough of those back in Quantico, she thought.

  Bill still seemed determined to stand up for Riley.

  He said, “Respectfully, Colonel, you brought in BAU agents to work as profilers. That’s exactly what Agent Paige is doing. And my guess is that you’ll ignore her insights at your peril.”

  Larson looked angry now.

  She said, “This is still my base, Agent Jeffreys. And if ‘profiling’ is all about acting on half-baked subjective feelings, I’m afraid I don’t have much use for it. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like the three of you to leave. Let me and my agents get on with our work.”

  Riley, Lucy, and Bill looked at each other, dumbfounded.

  Then they stood up and left Col. Larson’s office without a further word.

  As they walked away from the building Bill said, “Did I just imagine it, or did we just get fired?”

  “You didn’t imagine it,” Riley said.

  “So what do we do now?” Lucy asked. “Go back to Quantico?”

  Riley scoffed at the idea.

  “Not on your life,” she said. “There’s too much at stake here and we’re just getting started.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Riley and her colleagues went straight from the CID building to the car that the base had assigned them. As they drove back to the beach cottage, Riley sensed that Bill and Lucy were both discouraged.

  She didn’t feel discouraged.

  She felt energized.

  She felt more determined than ever to solve this case. In fact, she was beginning to feel downright competitive about it.

  Col. Larson had called Riley’s skills “half-baked subjective feelings.” Of course, Riley had dealt with that kind of criticism before. But she had been a successful agent long enough to know that her profiling talent was real.

  When they got to the cottage, they sat around the kitchen table. Riley imagined what they must look like. Here they were, a middle-aged man and woman whose personal lives had been badly battered during their years of FBI service. And a young Latina who had only been out on a few assignments.

  But Riley knew that she and Bill were among the most successful of FBI agents. They had proved their profiling and investigative skills again and again. And that young Latina was among the best that Riley had seen come through the academy.

  Riley wanted her three-agent team to beat Col. Larson and her brilliant CID agents to the end of this case.

  “You’re a glum-looking pair,” Riley said.

  “I don’t see what we can do,” Lucy said.

  “I don’t either,” Bill said. “We’re cut off from the base’s CID resources. We’ve got no access to their data or resources. Or personnel.”

  Riley smiled.

  “Maybe not,” she said. “But BAU resources can beat CID resources any day.”

  Her colleagues’ eyes lit up with interest and surprise.

  “But we just got fired,” Lucy said.

  “Yeah,” Bill said. “And by the very officer who requested our help.”

  Riley chuckled mischievously.

  “She didn’t say that exactly, not in so many words,” Riley said. “She asked us to leave the room. I’m not sure we need to interpret that as being ‘fired.’ In fact, right now I’m inclined to think rather differently. All she wanted was a chance to confer with her CID agents alone. If she reports otherwise to Meredith—well, maybe we misunderstood.”

  Bill let out a grunt of uneasy laughter.

  “You’re going to get us all into trouble, aren’t you?” he said.

  Riley looked each of her colleagues in the eyes.

  “Look, I know the two of you aren’t used to going rogue. I am.”

  Bill sighed a little.

  “Yeah
, and you’re used to getting suspended and fired.”

  Riley said, “If you two feel skittish about this thing, I understand. I’ll go it alone.”

  “Huh-uh,” Lucy said, shaking her head. “We’re better than that.”

  “Count us both in,” Bill said.

  “OK, then,” Riley said. “How do we proceed?”

  They all thought in silence for a moment.

  Finally Bill said, “We’ve got to play catch-up. They’ve already had time to pore over complete records of all personnel who come and go at Fort Mowat—military and civilian.”

  Riley had to admit that sounded pretty daunting.

  She said, “On a base like this, there have got to be more civilian personnel than military. Larson has got civilians working with the CID. And there are civilian attorneys, contractors, and engineers at any big military base.”

  Bill shook his head warily.

  He said, “And a lot of the base’s computer and information tech people are civilians. And some of the medical staff and social workers. It’s a long list. They’ve all got ID passes, and they’ve been through background checks and various levels of security clearances.”

  Riley said, “But don’t forget—we’ve got access to BAU sources, including a crack technical department.”

  “It sounds like we should call Sam Flores,” Bill said.

  Riley nodded in agreement. This definitely seemed like a job for the head of the Quantico technical analysis team.

  Before Riley could speak, Lucy let out a squeal of delight.

  “Oooh! Can I call him!”

  Riley was surprised by Lucy’s sudden girlish attitude.

  “I don’t see why not,” she said.

  Lucy flipped open her laptop and got Flores on video. She looked happy to see his nerdish, bespectacled face. Flores had an unusually wide grin.

  “Hey, Sammy,” Lucy said.

  “Hey, Lucita,” Flores said.

  Nicknames? Riley thought.

  “What’s going on in California?” Sam asked.

  “Well, just the usual. We’re trying to catch a serial killer.”

  “You don’t say,” Sam said playfully. “It’s those three sergeants at Fort Mowat, right?”