by Blake Pierce
“What have you got?” Bill asked her.
“Not a thing. And you?”
“Well, we’ve checked out Rabbe’s alibi. He was definitely at his house, at his mother’s charity event. He’s clean.”
Riley sighed. Although she’d more or less expected this, it gave her no satisfaction. As far as she was concerned, Rabbe needed to be put away for good.
“Well, that’s all we can do tonight,” Bill said. “Let’s get out of here.”
*
About an hour and a half later, Riley and Bill were sitting together in a booth in their hotel’s bar. She had just ordered her second bourbon on the rocks. It had been a long time since she’d had a single drink, but she figured tonight would be okay. Even so, she knew she’d better take it easy. This would be her last drink for the night.
Anyway, Riley could see that Bill needed someone to drink and talk with. At the moment, he was putting his whiskey away at a markedly faster rate than Riley. For a few minutes now, he’d been rambling on about the breakup of his marriage.
“It’s hard to let it go,” he continued wearily. “I mean, twelve years of marriage, two kids and all. It’s just like a huge piece of my life is getting cut away. And it’s leaving a big empty space.”
He paused for a moment and took another sip.
Then he said, “I mean, yeah, I can see her point of view. Being married to an FBI agent is tough. But I thought she knew what she was getting into. I was already an agent when we got married. But little by little, all kinds of resentment started to kick in. And after the boys were born, she wanted me to get out of the agency altogether. But what else was I going to do?”
Riley simply nodded. She understood all too well. After all, she’d recently done her own share of trying to turn her back on this kind of work. But whether she liked it or not, she seemed to be in it for the long haul. Teaching hadn’t been enough for her, and sitting around in an office trying to ignore all the evils in the world was simply out of the question.
Still, she said nothing, just let Bill keep on talking.
“You know, I think maybe at the start, she thought being married to an agent would be romantic and exciting. But when I got wounded five years ago, she really freaked out. Things never got back to normal.”
Riley found herself trying to see things from Maggie’s point of view.
“Well, at least she worried about you,” she said. “Ryan barely seemed to notice that I had a job at all. He just couldn’t get used to the fact that I wasn’t the perfect little social hostess.” Then she thought for a moment and added, “Maybe Maggie’s ending it because she loves you.”
Bill gave her a long, curious look.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said.
Riley started laughing.
“Isn’t it, though?” she said.
Suddenly they were both laughing together. It felt good, talking and laughing with Bill like this. For years, he’d been her best friend in the world. But the last couple of cases had taken a toll on their friendship. She’d almost forgotten how close and comfortable she could feel around him.
Of course, she also knew that the bourbon was helping her relax.
Steady, she told herself. Don’t get too comfortable.
Again she remembered that awful drunken night when she’d called Bill and said they should have an affair. The wounds from that incident were just starting to heal. She didn’t want to open them again.
“But enough of my self-pity,” Bill said. “What’s going on with that girl you rescued?”
“You mean Jilly? Well, maybe ‘rescued’ is too strong a word. She’s got a long way to go and needs a lot of help. I’ve called Child Protective Services a few times to check in on her. She’s OK, and they’re hoping to be able to take her away from her father. He really is an abusive man.”
“What’ll happen to her then?” Bill said.
“She’ll wind up with a foster family, I guess. Unless …”
Riley fell silent. A far-fetched possibility started to occur to her. Bill was able to read her expression right away.
“Oh my God,” he said. “You’re not thinking about adopting her, are you?”
Riley didn’t reply. He’d nailed it perfectly, of course. But she was pretty sure that the drinks were starting to kick in. She was definitely feeling a little tipsy now—and more than a little wistful about Jilly.
Bill was smiling at her sympathetically.
“Riley, this can’t be a good idea,” he said. “God only knows what kind of traumas that poor girl has gone through. She doesn’t even know what it’s like to be nurtured and cared for. She’s going to need years of professional help. You don’t have the resources.”
“I know,” she said, feeling a catch in her throat.
Bill really was right, after all. So why did this urge come over her? Maybe it had something to do with how she’d been thinking about her sister lately. She remembered how Wendy had sent her a letter some years ago, just to reach out and connect. But Riley hadn’t replied. Looking back, she didn’t know why. But she regretted it. And now she had no idea where Wendy was or what had become of her.
Riley couldn’t shake the feeling that she had abandoned Wendy. Now she didn’t want to abandon anybody else.
But now was no time to talk about all that. She just sat there, enjoying Bill’s quiet warmth and sympathy. Then a strange fantasy started to shape in her mind.
Bill and I would be the perfect parents for a girl like that, she thought.
For just a moment, it seemed so real—she and Bill living as a couple, doing their best to give Jilly a better life.
“What are you thinking?” Bill said.
Riley laughed awkwardly. She wondered if she should tell him. Then her phone buzzed. It was a text message from April.
Having a great time! Capitol building today. White House tomorrow! How are U?
Riley smiled. It was a perfectly timed reminder. She already had a daughter, and a brave and bright one at that. Now was no time for Riley to tear up her own life and change everything.
She typed back:
Just fine. U keep on having fun.
April replied, Will do!
Bill said, “A message from April, I take it?”
Riley chuckled a little. “How did you guess?”
“Oh, maybe it was just that proud and loving mother look.”
Bill’s kind words sounded somewhat melancholy. His smile looked a little sadder now. Riley guessed that he was thinking about his own boys, and the ongoing custody battle he and Maggie were fighting over them. She suddenly felt lucky not to be going through all that with April.
At the same time, it seemed best to change the subject.
“You know, we’ve got to file a report with Morley,” she said.
“Yeah, I know,” Bill said tiredly. “I guess we’ve been putting it off.”
“What are we going to tell him?”
Bill drummed his fingers on the table.
“There’s nothing to say, except that we’re coming up blank,” he said. “We’ve got no reason at all to think we’re after a serial killer. That means we’ve got no reason to be here at all. Garrett Holbrook’s going to be disappointed, though. He was really hoping that we could crack his sister’s murder.”
“Do you think so?” Riley said.
Bill looked surprised by the question.
“Sure. How else would he feel?”
Riley simply shrugged. The words had been out before she’d thought about what she was saying. She couldn’t explain what she meant. It was just that Garrett Holbrook still struck her as a bit of a mystery. She felt sure that there was something he wasn’t telling them. But now they’d probably never find out what it was.
Riley said, “Well, I guess we can file our report tomorrow morning. Then we’ll be out of here. Do you think the FBI will fly us back the way we came, in a company jet?”
Bill laughed.
“
Nothing that ceremonious,” he said. “My guess is we’ll be flying back coach.”
“You’re probably right.”
She saw that Bill had finished his drink. She was only halfway through hers, but she figured she’d had enough. She was feeling a little giddy now. She pushed the drink away. It felt good to consciously decide to quit for the night.
She and Bill paid the bar bill. Then Bill escorted her back to her hotel room. They paused a bit awkwardly outside her door. They maintained a distance of a couple of feet between them. Riley was sure that Bill was thinking just what she was thinking. If they so much as hugged, things might get out of control. And neither of them really wanted that. At least not tonight.
“You’re a good woman, Riley Paige,” Bill said.
Riley felt tears well up in her eyes.
“And you’re a good man,” she said. “And a good friend.”
Bill turned and walked away down the hallway. She went on into her room and sat down on the bed. She couldn’t help feeling disappointed in their trip. At the very least, she wished they could have gotten Nancy Holbrook’s killer.
Besides, her gut had told her that they were dealing with a serial killer. She wasn’t used to her gut being wrong.
Or am I really wrong this time? she wondered.
Chapter Nineteen
Rookie cop Robin Mastin scaled down the underwater cliff side, her flashlight barely breaking through the surrounding darkness. She was getting close to the base of the cliff, some fifty feet down, and the visibility was barely three feet ahead.
She and her class had spent two days combing the depths of Nimbo Lake for a woman’s body. This was supposed to be their third day of searching, but their diving chief, Quentin Rosner, was sure there was no body to be found. When they had met here very early this morning, he had announced that they were going to give it up.
Robin had begged for the chance to make one more try. She had reminded Rosner that they were doing this search on orders from Special Agent Riley Paige from Quantico. Rosner had finally agreed to one more hour, but she knew that the hour was up now.
Riley Paige! The very name filled Robin with awe and admiration. The woman was a legend, and Robin wanted to be like her. And if Riley Paige thought there was a body down here, Robin felt sure that there really was one. If Robin could find it, she’d make her name even before she got her technologist certification. Then maybe she could get herself stationed somewhere with an active underwater CSI team.
That hope was why she had enrolled in diving school in the first place, even though her friends had laughed at her. They’d kept reminding her that Arizona wasn’t the likeliest place to find diving jobs. But Robin had big plans. She’d already become a master diver, and when she had the CSI certification, she’d move anywhere she had to go for an exciting career.
Now she swam down the last few feet, hugging the cliff all the way, examining every square inch of its surface. As she touched the bottom, she felt an unwelcome tug on the yellow rope that reached back to the surface. It was Rosner, telling her it was time to leave.
She felt crushed with disappointment. She was sure that the search somehow had been handled wrong, sure that they had missed something.
At Paige’s insistence, Rosner and the class had pored over maps of what the lake had looked like before it became a lake. If there was a body, Rosner was absolutely sure that it lay somewhere on the lake floor.
They’d searched every square foot without uncovering anything, just pieces of junk and a few animal bones. One of her classmates had found a rotting carcass of a dog. Nobody had any idea how it had gotten there. Dogs could swim, after all.
Rosner had laughed at Robin when she’d said that she wanted to search the side of this particular cliff.
Robin remembered what Rosner had said.
“You think she landed on a vertical surface? Gravity doesn’t work like that.”
She couldn’t think of an argument against it. Even so, here she was, trying to prove him wrong. It was going to be humiliating to come to the surface one last time to admit her failure. But even now, she wasn’t going to be rushed. She scaled the cliff as carefully as she’d descended, feeling and looking as closely as she could.
About twenty feet from the surface, a peculiar sensation caused her to stop. She became very still. Had she felt something real or was it just her imagination?
But there it was. She had felt a slight current in the water. But where could it be coming from?
She reached up and felt the edge of a ledge. It seemed that the cliff side was broken by jutting rocks. The current was coming from somewhere around those rocks.
She rose further to look above the ledge. The visibility was terrible, no more than a foot. But now she understood the source of the current. She had found a tiny entrance to a cave, which might well stretch back for miles under the rock. It might even drain separately into the river that had been dammed to form this lake.
A theory was rapidly forming in her mind. Possibly—just possibly—a body dropped from straight above might have hit this ledge and gotten sucked back into the cave, at least a short distance.
The entrance was so small that she had to squeeze to get inside. But she was only in to her waist when her fingers found something that wiggled under a layer of silt. She brushed it vigorously and saw that it was black plastic.
Her heart was pounding now. She remembered that the previous body had been found in a black plastic garbage bag. Those bags degraded very slowly, especially in cool temperatures. She struggled to keep her breathing under control. It would be dangerous to be overcome with excitement at this depth, in this tight space.
She fumbled around and found the bag’s opening. Just inside, she could see it clearly—a rounded white bone surface where sutures joined together.
It was the top of a skull.
Chapter Twenty
Riley was sleeping later than usual when her phone rang. She hadn’t awakened early because she and Bill were supposed to be going home today. She looked at the clock. They still had several hours to get to the airport.
But the call wasn’t from Bill. It was from Morley.
“We have a new body,” he said.
Riley was wide awake now.
“Another prostitute?” she asked.
“Looks like it.”
“In the lake?”
“It’s in a different one, Lake Gaffney. But it was dumped there in a black bag. It’s a similar MO. I want you and Jeffreys to get out there. I’m getting a helicopter ready for you, but it will take over an hour to reach this one.”
“How long has the body been in the water?”
“Just since last night.”
Riley told Morley they would be right there. She phoned Bill. He said he was packing, but then she told him the news.
“Sounds like you were right all along,” he replied. “This could be a serial case.”
Riley didn’t reply. Being right about something like this gave her no pleasure at all. But it did mean they had work to do. It did mean that there was a monster out there for them to track down and stop.
“I’ll bring you some coffee,” Bill said.
“And a bagel,” she said. Bill agreed and hung up.
As Riley pulled on her clothes, she was grateful that whoever had found this body had made the connection.
“Lake Gaffney,” she said aloud. She remembered seeing that one on the map. It was another artificial lake in the hills near Phoenix. She wondered whether the divers back at Lake Nimbo were having any luck with their search there.
*
Riley knelt down beside the dead woman in the unzipped body bag. The victim was naked and her wrists were bound with ordinary clothesline rope. She only wore a thin silver necklace set with a single diamond.
“Another real stone?” Bill asked.
“I’m sure it is,” Riley replied.
“It must be the same guy.”
She looked up at Garrett Holbrook,
the agent who had called in help from Quantico when his half-sister had been found murdered. Today he had joined Bill and Riley for the helicopter flight to Lake Gaffney, where the new body had been found.
“I’m glad you insisted on getting the BAU involved in this case,” she told the Phoenix agent.
Riley was still having trouble deciding what to make of him. As usual, he had said very little during the flight out here. And so far, his participation in the case had been pretty peripheral.
Holbrook just nodded grimly. “Glad you agreed to come,” he said. Then he turned back to the newly found body.
“This one’s in a body bag,” he said. “Nancy’s body was in a plastic garbage bag.”
Riley always noted some vague emotion in his voice whenever he said his half-sister’s name—Nancy. Riley still couldn’t put her finger on exactly what that emotion was. She believed that something beyond his half-sister’s death was troubling this man.
“The body bag shows both planning and premeditation,” Riley said. “Could be that your sister’s killing was spontaneous, maybe almost accidental. But this time he really intended to do it.”
She looked over at District Ranger Nick Fessler, who was crouched on the other side of the body.
“How did you find her?” Riley asked.
A vigorous-looking yet taciturn man, Fessler looked dismayed by the question.
“I must have told the police a hundred times already,” he said.
“Tell me again,” Riley said. She’d already heard about it from the cops, but she wanted to hear it from Fessler’s own mouth.
“I was out on the lake last night doing some night fishing. I heard a splash from right over there, near the little cliff. I figured it was some asshole dumping garbage or something. I steered on over there, figuring I could clean up a bit. But there wasn’t anything floating. That seemed odd. So this morning I put on my diving gear and went down for a look.”
He fell silent. Riley didn’t need to hear the rest. Fessler had found the body bag and had gotten his staff to help him bring it up. Then he’d called the police.