by Blake Pierce
“Most of the time, sure. But since she’s gotten to be a teenager, it gets pretty rocky sometimes.”
Blaine looked at Riley sympathetically for a moment.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “It’s got something to do with a boyfriend.”
“Apparently,” Riley said. “She won’t tell me anything about him. And she refuses to introduce him to me.”
Blaine shook his head.
“They’re both at that age,” he said. “Having a boyfriend is a life-and-death matter. Crystal doesn’t have one yet, which is fine with me, but not with her. She’s absolutely desperate about it.”
“I guess I was the same at that age,” Riley said.
Blaine chuckled a little. “Believe me, when I was fifteen, girls were just about all I ever thought about. Would you like some coffee?”
“I would, thanks. Black will be fine.”
Blaine went to the kitchen. Riley looked around, noticing yet again how nicely decorated the place was. Blaine definitely had good taste.
Blaine came back with two cups of coffee. Riley took a sip. It was delicious.
“I swear, I didn’t know what I was getting into when I became a mother,” she said. “I guess it didn’t help that I was way too young for it.”
“How old were you?”
“Twenty-four.”
Blaine threw back his head and laughed.
“I was younger. Got married at twenty-one. I thought Phoebe was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. Sexy as hell. I kind of overlooked that fact that she was also bipolar and already drank a lot.”
Riley was more and more interested. She’d known that Blaine had been divorced, but little else. It seemed that she and Blaine had youthful mistakes in common. It had been too easy for them to see life through the rosy glow of physical attraction.
“How long did your marriage last?” Riley asked.
“About nine years. We should have ended it long before. I should have ended it. I kept thinking I could rescue Phoebe. It was a stupid idea. Crystal was born when Phoebe was twenty-one and I was twenty-two, a student in chef school. We were too poor and too immature. Our next baby was stillborn, and Phoebe never got over it. She became a complete alcoholic. She got abusive.”
Blaine’s look was farther away now. Riley sensed that he was reliving bitter memories that he didn’t want to talk about.
“When April came along, I was in training to be an FBI agent,” she said. “Ryan wanted me to give it up, but I wouldn’t. He was dead set on becoming a successful lawyer. Well, we both got the careers we wanted. We just didn’t have anything in common for the long haul. We couldn’t make the real foundations of a marriage.”
Riley fell silent under Blaine’s sympathetic gaze. She felt relieved to be able to talk to another adult about all this. She was starting to realize that it was almost impossible to feel uncomfortable around Blaine. She felt as if she could talk to him about anything.
“Blaine, I’m really torn right now,” she said. “I’m really needed on an important case. But things are such a mess at home. I feel like I’m not spending enough time with April.”
Blaine smiled.
“Oh, yeah. The old work-versus-family dilemma. I know it well. Believe me, owning a restaurant is awfully time consuming. Making time for Crystal is a challenge.”
Riley looked into Blaine’s gentle blue eyes.
“How do you find a balance?” she asked.
Blaine shrugged slightly.
“You don’t,” he said. “There’s not enough time for everything. But there’s no point in punishing yourself for not being able to do the impossible. Believe me, giving up your career isn’t a solution. I mean, Phoebe tried being a stay-at-home mom. It was part of what drove her crazy. You just have to make peace with it.”
Riley smiled. It sounded like a wonderful idea—making peace with it. Maybe she could do that. It really did seem possible.
She reached over and touched Blaine’s hand. He took her hand and squeezed it. Riley felt a delicious tension between them. For a moment, she thought that maybe she could stay with Blaine for while, now that both their children were occupied elsewhere. Maybe she could …
But even as the thoughts began to form in her mind, she felt herself drawing away from him. She wasn’t ready to act on these fresh new feelings.
She gently pulled her hand away.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’d better go home. For all I know, April’s back already.”
She exchanged goodbyes with Blaine. As soon as she stepped out the door, her phone buzzed. It was a text from April.
Just got ur text. Really sorry I acted like that. I’m at the coffee shop. Be back soon.
Riley sighed. She simply had no idea what to text back. It seemed best not to reply at all. She and April were going to have to have a serious talk later on.
Riley had just stepped back into her house when the phone buzzed again. It was a call from Ryan. Her ex was just about the last person in the world she wanted to hear from. But she knew that he’d keep leaving messages if she didn’t talk to him now. She accepted the call.
“What do you want, Ryan?” she asked curtly.
“Am I catching you at a bad time?”
Riley wanted to say that no time was a good time as far as he was concerned. But she kept her thought to herself.
“Now’s okay, I guess,” she said.
“I was thinking about dropping by to see you and April,” he said. “I’d like to talk to both of you.”
Riley stifled a groan. “I’d rather you didn’t do that.”
“I thought you said this isn’t a bad time.”
Riley didn’t reply. This was just like Ryan, twisting her words to try to manipulate her.
“How’s April doing?” Ryan asked.
She almost snorted with laughter. She knew he was just trying to get some kind of conversation going.
“Nice of you to ask,” Riley said sarcastically. “She’s doing fine.”
It was a lie, of course. But bringing Ryan into things was the last way to make them better.
“Listen, Riley …” Ryan’s voice trailed off. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes.”
No kidding, Riley thought. She kept silent.
After a few moments Ryan said, “Things haven’t been going so well for me lately.”
Riley still said nothing.
“Well, I just wanted to make sure that you and April are all right.”
Riley could hardly believe his nerve.
“We’re doing fine. Why do you ask? Has one of your new girlfriends left, Ryan? Or are things going badly at the office?”
“You’re being awfully hard on me, Riley.”
As far as she was concerned, she was being as gentle as she could manage. She understood the whole situation. Ryan must be alone right now. The socialite who had moved in with him after the divorce must have left, or some newer affair had gone sour.
She knew that Ryan couldn’t stand being alone. He’d always turn back to Riley and April as a last resort. If she let him come back, it would only last until another woman caught his eye.
Riley said, “I think you ought to patch things up with your last girlfriend. Or the one before that. I don’t even know how many you’ve been through since we’ve been divorced. How many, Ryan?”
She heard a slight gasp on the phone. Riley had definitely called it right.
“Ryan, the truth is this isn’t a good time.”
It was the truth. She’d just paid a nice visit to a man she liked. Why spoil it now?
“When will be a good time?” Ryan asked.
“I don’t know,” Riley said. “I’ll let you know. Bye.”
She ended the call. She’d been pacing since she’d started talking to Ryan. She sat down and took a few deep breaths to calm herself.
Then she sent a text message to April.
U’d better get home right now.
It only took a few seconds before she got a reply.
OK. I’m on my way. I’m sorry, Mom.
Riley sighed. April sounded fine now. She would probably be all right for a little while. But something was off.
What was going on with her?
CHAPTER FIVE
In his dimly lit lair, Scratch dashed frantically back and forth among the hundreds of clocks, trying to get everything ready. It was just a few minutes before midnight.
“Fix the one with the horse on it!” Grandpa yelled. “It’s a whole minute behind!”
“I’ll get to it,” Scratch said.
Scratch knew he’d be punished anyway, but it would be especially bad if he didn’t get everything ready on time. Right now he had his hands full with other clocks.
He fixed the clock with the curling metal flowers, which had fallen a full five minutes behind. Then he opened a grandfather clock and moved the minute hand just a little to the right.
He checked the big clock with deer antlers on top. It often fell behind, but it looked okay right now. Finally he was able to fix the one with the rearing horse on it. It was a good thing, too. It was all of seven minutes behind.
“That’ll have to do,” Grandpa grumbled. “You know what to do next.”
Scratch obediently went to the table and picked up the whip. It was a cat o’ nine tails, and Grandpa had started beating him with it when he was too young to remember.
He walked toward the end of the lair that was separated by a chain-link fence. Behind the fence were the four female captives, with no furnishings except wooden bunks without mattresses. There was a closet behind them where they went to relieve themselves. The stench had stopped bothering Scratch quite a while back.
The Irish woman he had fetched a couple of nights back was watching him carefully. After their long diet of crumbs and water, the others were wasted and weary. Two of them seldom did anything more than weep and moan. The fourth was just sitting on the floor near the fence, shrunken and cadaverous. She made no noise at all. She barely looked alive.
Scratch opened the door to the cage. The Irish woman leaped forward, trying to escape. Scratch lashed fiercely at her face with the whip. She cringed back, turning away. He whipped her back over and over again. He knew from experience that it would hurt plenty even through her tattered blouse, especially over the welts and cuts he’d given her already.
Then an uproar of noise filled the air as all the clocks began to strike the midnight hour. Scratch knew what he was supposed to do now.
As the racket continued, he hurried back to the weakest and skinniest girl, the one who seemed barely alive. She looked up at him with a strange expression. She was the only one who had been here long enough to know what he was about to do next. She looked almost as if she were ready for it, maybe even welcomed it.
Scratch had no choice.
He crouched beside her and snapped her neck.
As life ebbed out of her body, he stared up at an ornate antique clock just on the other side of the fence. A hand-carved Death was marching back and forth across the front of it, clad in a black robe, his grinning skull face peering out from beneath his cowl. He was cutting down knights and kings and queens and paupers alike. It was Scratch’s favorite of all the clocks.
The surrounding noise slowly died away. Soon there was no sound at all except the chorus of ticking clocks and the whimpering of the women who still survived.
Scratch slung the dead girl over his shoulder. She was so feather-light that it took no effort at all. He opened the cage, stepped outside, and locked it behind him.
The time, he knew, had come.
CHAPTER SIX
A pretty good act, Riley thought.
Larry Mullins’s voice was shaking a little. As he finished up his prepared statement to the parole board and the families of his victims, he sounded like he was on the verge of tears.
“I’ve had fifteen years to look back,” Mullins said. “Not a day goes by when I’m not filled with regret. I can’t go back and change what happened. I can’t bring Nathan Betts and Ian Harter back to life. But I still have years to make a meaningful contribution to society. Please give me a chance to do that.”
Mullins sat down. His lawyer handed him a handkerchief, and he wiped his eyes—although Riley didn’t see any actual tears.
The hearing officer and case manager conferred with each other in whispers. So did the members of the parole board.
Riley knew it would soon be her turn to testify. Meanwhile, she studied Mullins’s face.
She remembered him well and thought that he hadn’t changed much. Even back then, he had been well-scrubbed and well-spoken with an earnest air of innocence about him. If he was more hardened now, he hid it behind his expressions of abject sorrow. Back then he had been working as a nanny—or a “manny,” as his lawyer preferred to say.
What struck Riley most was how little he’d aged. He’d been twenty-five when he’d gone to prison. He still had the same amiable, boyish expression that he’d had back then.
The same wasn’t true of the victims’ parents. The two couples looked prematurely old and broken in spirit. Riley’s heart ached for all their years of grief and sorrow.
She wished she’d been able to do right by them from the beginning. So had her first FBI partner, Jake Crivaro. It had been one of Riley’s first cases as an agent, and Jake had been a fine mentor.
Larry Mullins had been arrested on a charge of the death of one child on a playground. During their investigation, Riley and Jake found that another child had died under almost identical circumstances while in Mullins’s care in a different city. Both children had been suffocated.
When Riley had apprehended Mullins, read him his rights, and cuffed him, his smirking, gloating expression had all but admitted his guilt to her.
“Good luck,” he had said to her sarcastically.
Indeed, luck turned against Riley and Jake as soon as Mullins was in custody. He had firmly denied committing the murders. And despite Riley’s and Jake’s best efforts, the evidence against him remained dangerously thin. It had been impossible to determine just how the boys had been suffocated, and no murder weapon had been found. Mullins himself only admitted to letting them out of his sight. He’d denied murdering either of them.
Riley remembered what the chief prosecutor had said to her and Jake.
“We’ve got to be careful, or the bastard will walk. If we try to prosecute him on all possible charges, we’ll lose the whole thing. We can’t prove that Mullins was the only person who had access to the children when they were killed.”
Then came the plea-bargaining. Riley hated plea bargains. Her hatred for them had started with that case. Mullins’s lawyer offered the deal. Mullins would plead guilty to both murders, but not as premeditated killings, and his sentences would run simultaneously.
It was a lousy deal. It didn’t even make sense. If Mullins had really killed the children, how could he have also been merely negligent? The two conclusions were completely contradictory. But the prosecutor saw no choice but to accept the deal. Mullins finally faced thirty years in prison with the possibility of parole or early release for good behavior.
The families had been crushed and horrified. They’d blamed Riley and Jake for not doing their job. Jake had retired as soon as the case was over, a bitter and angry man.
Riley had promised the boys’ families she would do everything she could to keep Mullins behind bars. A few days ago, Nathan Betts’s parents had called Riley to tell her about the parole hearing. The time had come for her to keep her promise.
The general whispering came to an end. Hearing Officer Julie Simmons looked at Riley.
“I understand that FBI Special Agent Riley Paige would like to make a statement,” Simmons said.
Riley gulped hard. The moment she had spent fifteen years preparing for had arrived. She knew the parole board was familiar with all of the evidence already, as incomplete as it was. There was no point in going over it again. She had to make a more personal appeal
.
She stood up and spoke.
“As I understand it, Larry Mullins is up for parole because he is an ‘exemplary prisoner.’” With a note of irony, she added, “Mr. Mullins, I congratulate you on your achievement.”
Mullin nodded, his face showing no expression. Riley continued.
“‘Exemplary behavior’—what does that mean, exactly? It seems to me that it has less to do with what he has done than with what he hasn’t done. He hasn’t broken prison rules. He’s behaved himself. That’s all.”
Riley struggled to keep her voice steady.
“Frankly, I’m not surprised. There aren’t any children in prison for him to kill.”
There were gasps and murmurs in the room. Mullins’s smile turned into a steady glare.
“Pardon me,” Riley said. “I realize that Mullins never pleaded to premeditated murder, and the prosecution never pursued that verdict. But he pleaded guilty nonetheless. He killed two children. There is no way he could have done so with good intentions.”
She paused a moment, choosing her next words carefully. She wanted to goad Mullins into showing his anger, showing his true colors. But of course the man knew that if he did, he’d ruin his record of good behavior and would never get out. Her best strategy was to make the board members face the reality of what he had done.
“I saw Ian Harter’s lifeless four-year-old body the day after he was killed. He looked like he was asleep with his eyes open. Death had taken all expression away, and his face was slack and peaceful. Even so, I could still see the terror in his lifeless eyes. His last moments on this earth were filled with terror. It was the same for little Nathan Betts.”
Riley heard both mothers begin to cry. She hated bringing back those awful memories, but she simply had no choice.
“We mustn’t forget their terror,” Riley said. “And we mustn’t forget that Mullins showed little emotion during his trial, and certainly no sign of remorse. His remorse came much, much later—if it was ever real at all.”
Riley took a long, slow breath.
“How many years of life did he take away from those boys if you add them together? Much, much more than a hundred, it seems to me. He got a sentence of thirty years. He’s only served fifteen. It’s not enough. He’ll never live long enough to pay back all those lost years.”