Once Pined

by Blake Pierce

  “You can start by picking up where you left off—checking for plane tickets, marriage licenses, visas, and such.”

  “What else?”

  Riley thought for a moment. Should Roff run searches over a longer time span to see whether any similar women had turned up dead or missing? No, she had a hunch that he could make better use of his efforts.

  “Just concentrate on these three therapists. Find out every single thing you possibly can about them. I’ll be in touch soon. Thanks for your help, Roff.”

  She paused for a moment and added, “Oh, and I don’t need to tell you …”

  Roff finished her thought for her.

  “Don’t worry. This conversation didn’t take place. And no such subsequent conversations are ever going to take place.”

  They ended the call, and Riley opened the screen shot showing the three workers.

  Riley noticed something odd about the photographs themselves.

  They weren’t very sharp. They were all blurred slightly. But it didn’t seem to be a photographic problem.

  Instead, it looked as though all three women had deliberately moved a little at the very moment when the pictures had been snapped.

  It was as if they didn’t want to leave a clear record of what they looked like.

  She also noticed that the women resembled one another—all of them middle-aged, with similarly shaped faces.

  The same woman? she wondered.

  There were obvious differences, of course, especially in hairstyle and color. And Stillians and Brubaker had blue eyes while Tucci’s eyes were brown.

  But she remembered that the gatekeeper at Amanda Somers’ said that her caller might have been wearing a wig. And contact lenses could explain a difference in eye color.

  Riley felt a prickle of excitement. The case had suddenly taken a new turn. She grabbed her cell phone and dialed Bill’s number.

  He was almost yelling when he answered.

  “Riley! Where the hell were you? The meeting’s over, and Meredith is pissed.”

  Riley paced back and forth and spoke nervously.

  “Bill, listen. We’ve got to go back to Seattle. I think I’ve got something.”

  “What have you got?”

  Riley stopped short. She suddenly realized that she had to be careful what she said.

  “I can’t talk about it on the phone,” she said.

  A short silence fell.

  “Have you got anything absolutely solid?”

  Riley’s heart sank.

  “No,” she said.

  Bill groaned with exasperation.

  “Then I’m sure as hell not going back to Seattle. And you’re not either.”

  “Bill, listen to me—”

  “No, you listen. I can’t do this. I can’t blow off my orders and go back to Seattle with you. I can’t afford to lose my job. And neither can you. Walk away from it, Riley. Whatever it is, just walk away.”

  Before Riley could protest further, Bill said, “Riley, we’re not going to talk about this right now. Believe me, you’ve got other things to worry about. You’ve got to focus on keeping your job. Do you understand?”

  Riley sighed.

  “Yeah, I understand. Goodbye.”

  She ended the call and sat down. She was so agitated now that she couldn’t think clearly. And in a matter of seconds, her phone buzzed again.

  This time it was Meredith.

  “You’d better have a damn good excuse, Agent Paige,” he growled.

  “Sir, I think I’m just about to get a break in the Seattle poisoning case. If I can just—”

  Meredith interrupted.

  “What were you doing when you were supposed to be at this meeting?”

  Riley gulped. She knew that Meredith wasn’t going to let her evade anything.

  “I was checking some new information,” she said.

  “And how did you come by this information?”

  “I’ve got a—source.”

  Riley didn’t reply.

  “Tell me you haven’t been in touch with Shane Hatcher.”

  It’s as if he can see right through me, Riley thought with despair.

  But she also knew that she’d probably make the same guess if she were in his place.

  She still said nothing.

  And of course, she knew that her very silence was an admission.

  When Meredith spoke again, it was with an even grimmer tone.

  “Agent Paige, you can’t work with an escaped prisoner who is on the FBI’s most wanted list. Now tell me where he is, so I can send agents to apprehend him.”

  Riley replied in a low, shaky voice.

  “I won’t help you set a trap for him,” she said.

  A long silence fell.

  “Agent Paige, I’m putting you on leave,” Meredith said at last. “And it really could become permanent this time. That’s all I’ve got to say for now.”

  Meredith abruptly ended the call.

  Riley sat staring into space for a moment.

  Alone again, she thought.

  The situation was all too familiar.

  But she had a job to do, and if she didn’t do it, others might be killed.

  As she started looking for commercial flights on her computer, she thought through all that she was going to have to do next.

  She had to call Ryan and tell him she was leaving town.

  She had to tell Gabriela too.

  But what about April—and especially Jilly?

  Would Jilly be all right during her absence?

  She booked her flight with a heavy heart. She felt as if she were abandoning everyone she loved—and all because of a feeling in her gut.

  What if I’m wrong?

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  Riley was walking toward her gate at Dulles International Airport to catch her flight to Seattle when her cell phone buzzed. She grew excited when she saw that the call was from Van Roff.

  “Tell me you’ve got something, Mr. Roff,” Riley said.

  “I might. Maybe not what we expected, but maybe something.”

  Riley kept on walking as she listened.

  “I’ve been looking for patients who were cared for by our three workers—Lisa Tucci, Judy Brubaker, and Hallie Stillians. Mostly I didn’t find anything sinister. No deaths even, except for the last patients they treated. In fact, they generally seemed to do excellent work. Patients came in sick or hurt, and the women helped them get better, and they went they went on with their lives. Except …”

  Riley had arrived at her gate and sat down in the waiting area.

  “Except what?”

  “Well, there’s this one guy. Lance Miller. He’d had a heart attack about a year and a half ago at the age of forty-five. Hallie Stillians was treating him at Reliance Rehabilitation Center in Seattle. He took sick while he was under her care and complained to the staff about it. He got better, but it sounded kind of suspicious to me.”

  Riley’s interest was piqued. It certainly sounded suspicious to her as well.

  “Could you give him a call and get some specifics?” she asked.

  Roff grunted a little.

  “Well, I’m afraid this interviewing-by-phone thing might be a little beyond my capacities. Those other calls I made earlier were just for cold hard information. Asking this guy questions about his illness would involve actually relating to another human being. I just don’t deal with people well. I might mess that up really bad.”

  Riley laughed.

  “I see your point,” she said. “I’ll be in Seattle this afternoon. Could you just call him and set up an appointment for me to visit him?”

  “Sure. Should I have someone meet you at the airport?”

  “No, I’ll rent a car. I’m not going to contact any other local FBI personnel just yet.”

  Roff let out an approving chuckle.

  “Say no more. If anybody asks, I don’t even know you’re there. In fact, I’ve never even heard of you. I’ll just say, ‘Agent Ril
ey Who’?”

  They ended the call just in time for Riley to board her plane.

  *

  Six hours later, Riley got off the plane in Seattle and rented a car. As she drove, she listened to GPS directions to Lance Miller’s house. It was early afternoon in Seattle, but it seemed much later, because the jet lag was hitting Riley harder than usual.

  Riley wondered why she felt that way as she neared Miller’s neighborhood. She traveled almost constantly and normally had little trouble adjusting. What was different about today?

  It was only partially cloudy today, and the sun was shining. She drove by a public park where people were walking and children were playing, taking eager advantage of the break in the rainy weather. The sight of people enjoying themselves together seemed to answer her question.

  I’m lonely, she thought.

  Her family was all the way on the other side of the country, and she seemed unable to devote herself to them as she should. Her usual colleagues had turned their backs on her—including Bill. And now she had exactly two allies left in the world.

  One was a geek who’d simply told her outright …

  “I just don’t deal with people well.”

  And the other was a vicious killer obsessed with chains.

  What did that say about her?

  She still wasn’t wearing the gold chain that Shane Hatcher had given her. But she was carrying it in her bag. She wasn’t sure just why, except that there seemed to be little else in the world to make her feel grounded among her fellow human beings.

  It seemed appropriate that she was now taking directions from a computerized female voice.

  Lance Miller’s house was in an upper-middle-class neighborhood bordering on Seattle’s University District. She parked in front of a large but cozy craftsman bungalow that was painted an attractive shade of blue. It was surrounded on all sides by well-kept plants and bushes. She climbed the steep stone steps up to the porch and rang the doorbell.

  A handsome man with sandy hair and a freckled complexion answered the door. Riley showed him her badge, introduced herself, and asked if she was speaking with Lance Miller.

  “Oh, no, I’m Gary,” the man said, shaking Riley’s hand with a smile. “But Lance is expecting you.”

  Gary led Riley into the living room, where a lean, scholarly-looking man with round glasses and a closely-cropped beard rose up from his chair.

  “I’m Lance,” he said. “Please have a seat. Make yourself comfortable.”

  Riley sat down and quickly scanned the house and its two occupants. The men both wore wedding rings and were obviously married to each other. The living room was tastefully decorated without being the least bit ostentatious. Riley guessed that both men were reasonably successful professionals, perhaps university professors.

  “I’ll leave you two to talk,” Gary said, then went upstairs.

  Lance sat down and leaned toward Riley.

  “The man who called me said you were investigating some poisonings,” he said. “Does this have anything to do with the awful thing that happened to Amanda Somers? There seems to be some confusion about how she died—whether it was suicide or murder. It was very sad.”

  “Yes, it was,” Riley said. She decided not to say that Somers’ death was most definitely a murder and not a suicide.

  She said, “I understand that you spent some time at Reliance Rehabilitation Center about a year and a half ago.”

  Lance shuddered.

  “That was a strange experience.”

  “You complained to the staff, I’m told.”

  “Oh, yes. I was being poisoned. I’m still quite sure of it.”

  Riley took out her notepad and started to take notes.

  “I hear that you were in the care of a freelance healthcare worker named Hallie Stillians.”

  Riley was a bit surprised by the smile that crossed Lance’s face.

  “Yes, Hallie. Have you met her? An odd creature, not quite of this world, but so very sweet. I don’t know how I would have pulled through it all without her.”

  It was hardly the response that Riley had expected—not if she was right about Hallie Stillians being one of the poisoner’s identities.

  “Tell me all about what happened,” Riley said.

  Lance stroked his beard as he remembered.

  “Well, I had a heart attack. I was only forty-six, but I ought to have seen it coming. My father died from heart disease at an early age, and so did his father. It was a genetic thing, and I was just a ticking bomb. I should have taken better precautions. I don’t feel quite so—invincible anymore.”

  He stopped to think for a moment.

  “I had surgery at South Hills Hospital, and it left me terribly weak and feeble. So I went to Reliance Rehab, and Hallie started working with me right away, doing physical rehab. We took an immediate liking to one another. She was so—quaint, I guess. Not really old, but somehow she seemed to belong to an earlier time. And she made the most delicious tea.”

  Lance winced sharply.

  “But after little more than a day, I got awfully sick—nausea and vomiting, terrible pain in the palms of my hand and the soles of my feet. And I got … well, very confused and disoriented. To tell the truth, I don’t think I was quite in my right mind. I babbled a lot. I’m afraid I might have said some rather embarrassing things.”

  Thallium poisoning, Riley realized.

  So far, what Lance was telling her was consistent with the other killings.

  “How did Hallie deal with all this?” Riley asked.

  “Oh, I don’t think I’ve ever known a more empathetic or caring human being in my life. I swear, she was so concerned about me, she seemed to get sick herself. She actually said she was sick. And she said some rather odd things …”

  His voice drifted off.

  “What did she say?” Riley said.

  “She kept saying, ‘It’s this world. It’s this awful world. It makes us all sick. It makes me sick too.’ Well, I suppose that’s true in a way. Most of us are pretty hardened and cynical, and we don’t really think about what a hard world this is for so many people. Hallie was especially sensitive that way.”

  He paused again.

  “Anyway, I was sure that I was being poisoned. And Hallie seemed to be sure of it too. I tried to complain to the staff about it. But they wouldn’t believe it. I swear, they were some of the iciest people I ever met. Especially the head nurse, Edith Cooper. ‘Nurse Ratched,’ I used to call her, but Hallie didn’t get it. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, you know.”

  Riley had caught the reference to the cold-hearted nurse of literary and movie fame.

  Lance continued his story.

  “After about a day and a half of this, I told Hallie I was afraid I was going to die. Hallie squeezed my hand and said, ‘You don’t deserve this. This is all a mistake. You don’t deserve to suffer and die. You’re special. I’m going to make sure you get through this. You just wait and see.’”

  “What did she do then?” Riley asked.

  “Well, it was less what she did than how she did it. She was just so gentle and caring. She rubbed the places where I hurt most, my feet and my hands. And she kept making more tea—a different recipe from before, something really delicious and soothing. She’d even sing to me—a really pretty lullaby, I can remember just a bit of it …”

  Lance closed his eyes and sang in a pleasant voice.

  You pine away

  From day to day

  Too sad to laugh, too sad to play.

  He opened his eyes again.

  “I got better pretty quickly, and Hallie said she felt better too. She said something I didn’t really understand. ‘It was an angel who made us both sick, but she changed her mind, because we’re both good. And now we’re going to be fine.’”

  He smiled and added, “The truth is, I more than half think that Hallie’s a bit of an angel herself.”

  Then he shrugged slightly.

  “She finished my r
ehab work and I came home, perfectly healthy.”

  Lance stared off into space for a moment, lost in memory. Then he looked at Riley again.

  “Is there anything else I can tell you?”

  Riley felt a confusing surge of emotions. She couldn’t bring himself to tell Lance that the woman he’d liked so much had almost certainly tried to kill him.

  “No, you’ve been a great help,” Riley said. “Thank you for your time.”

  When she left the house, she knew where she had to go next. Surely somebody else at that clinic had their own stories to tell about the woman who called herself Hallie Stillians.

  Maybe I’ll find out the truth at last, she thought as she started to drive.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  Riley was overcome by an eerie feeling the moment she walked into Reliance Rehab. There was something positively inhospitable about the place. For one thing, the temperature seemed unusually chilly.

  But Riley sensed that there was something else in the air.

  It’s more than the temperature that’s cold in here, she thought.

  She showed her badge to a frowning and sullen receptionist and asked to see the head nurse.

  As the receptionist led Riley through the clinic, Riley’s discomfort grew. Nobody in the building was smiling. Everyone looked grim, and whenever someone glanced at Riley, she felt positively unwelcome.

  She remembered something that Lance had said.

  “I swear, they were some of the iciest people I ever met.”

  When they got to the head nurse’s office, the receptionist knocked on the door.

  A voice inside called out, “Who is it?”

  “An FBI agent,” the receptionist called back. “She’s here to ask some questions.”

  Riley heard some scuffling inside the office. Then the door opened, and a rather agitated-looking woman appeared. She had a tight, pinched-looking face, and her smile seemed forced.

  “Can I help you?” she said, sounding a little breathless.

  Riley showed her badge again.

  “Special Agent Riley Paige, FBI,” she said.

  “Well, this must be something serious, indeed,” the woman said uneasily. “Come on in.”

  Riley went into the office and sat down. The woman sat down at her desk.