Once Lured

by Blake Pierce

  Bad luck for me, Riley thought miserably. Worse luck for Mallory.

  Now she found herself wondering whether she should just drive on home. For all she knew, she was desperately needed there. In any case, it was time to check in. She dialed the house number, and Gabriela answered.

  “Buenas noches, Gabriela,” she said. “How are things going there?”

  Gabriela’s voice sound cheerful.

  “Good,” she said. “Much better. Crystal was here earlier, and April did homework with her. April watched TV for a while and went to bed.”

  Riley breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Thanks, Gabriela. Let me know if there are any problems.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Riley ended the call and sat staring ahead. She remembered something else that Walder had said.

  “I don’t give a damn where you go, as long as it’s far away.”

  An idea came to her. There was a place she could go, and a man who might be able to help. She’d sworn never go to there or see him again. But now she was just desperate enough to change her mind. She started the car and drove north into the night.

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  Riley hated her visits to Sing Sing. Just getting through all the security protocols was demeaning and humiliating. There were the usual pat-downs, the removal of all jewelry and any other kinds of metal, including belt buckles, and the drug-sniffing dogs.

  At least it stopped short of a strip search, she thought.

  She had arrived in Ossining, New York, before dawn. She’d napped in her car, hit a doughnut shop for breakfast, and then notified Sing Sing officials that she wanted to see the prisoner. She’d cleaned up and combed her hair, but she still felt disheveled.

  Now she was wondering whether she’d made a terrible mistake in coming here. But there was no point in turning back—not now.

  By the time she got through the screening and was escorted to the visiting room, just about everything she’d brought with her had been taken away. All she had was a folder full of photographs of the murder victims. She hoped that it would be enough.

  The guard led her into the familiar little room with cream-colored walls and a barred window. Shane Hatcher was already sitting at the battleship-gray table, a pair of small reading glasses perched on his nose.

  He was a vigorous-looking fifty-five-year-old African-American. At a glance he didn’t look especially threatening, but Riley knew better. During his youth as a gangbanger, he’d been known as “Shane the Chain.” He’d beaten his victims to death with chains in murders so brutal that he would likely never be released from prison.

  He smiled at her.

  “Sit down,” he said, a note of irony in his voice. “Make yourself at home. I wish I could offer you something, but as you know already, mine is a rather Spartan lifestyle. I’m sure you understand.”

  She sat across the table from him. They stared at each other for an uneasy moment.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” he finally said.

  It took Riley a moment to realize that he was talking about her father’s death.

  “It’s no loss at all,” Riley said in a tight voice.

  “Oh, it is, it is,” Hatcher said in a surprisingly gentle voice. “He made you what you are—both the good and the bad of it. Now there’s a big empty place in your life. Maybe you haven’t felt it yet, but you will. Did you go to his funeral? No, I don’t imagine you did. How does that make you feel?”

  Riley didn’t reply. Even so, she got the strange feeling that Hatcher was asking out of genuine sympathy. She hoped that she was wrong. She didn’t like the idea of any emotional connection between them.

  “Let’s get down to business,” she said.

  “Yeah, let’s do that. So why are they calling this guy a ‘clock killer’?”

  Riley opened the folder and spread the photos across the table.

  “Well, it’s my own theory, and not everybody agrees,” she said, pointing at the pictures. “But look at the positions of these bodies—the way the arms are pointed. It looks to me like the arms are supposed to be clock hands. See? Five o’clock, six o’clock, seven o’clock, eight o’clock, nine o’clock.”

  Hatcher peered through his glasses with great interest.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “I see it, yes. You’re absolutely right, and anyone who says otherwise is a fool. But there’s more.”

  He pointed at arrows that had been printed on each of the photos.

  “What do these mean?” he asked.

  “They indicate north,” Riley said.

  She got a tingling feeling that something was about to pop into place.

  “Well, turn them all in that direction,” Shane said.

  Riley twisted the pictures around so that all the arrows pointed directly away from her. She remembered the strange feeling she’d had at the crime scenes—that although the bodies had been precisely posed, they hadn’t been laid out in any sensible way with their surroundings. But now she started to see that she was wrong.

  “Now imagine that the table’s a map of the area, with north pointed away from you,” Hatcher said.

  Riley pictured the locations on the table and placed each photograph in its proper place. She gasped a little. Now she could see it perfectly.

  The photos formed the lower part of a clock face, with each of the bodies positioned exactly like hour hands pointing in the expected directions—five o’clock, six o’clock, seven o’clock, eight o’clock, nine o’clock.

  But even more important, now she could see that the town of Ohlman was at the very center of the clock face. It looked like she’d been right all along. The killer was surely based in Ohlman.

  “He’s even more obsessed with time than I thought,” Riley said.

  “And he’s trying to send a message,” Hatcher added.

  “Yes, but what’s he trying to say?”

  Hatcher leaned back in his chair and smiled a sinister smile.

  “Tell me, Riley, what time is it right now?”

  Riley’s watch had been taken away, so she had to think for a moment.

  “Well, they let me into the prison at eight fifteen, and it took a good half hour to get through security, so …”

  “That’s not the kind of time I’m talking about,” Hatcher said.

  Riley didn’t understand. Hatcher began to speak in a strangely casual tone.

  “I’m really looking forward to the end of the world. I mean, what has the world ever done for me? I want to be awake when it happens. I want to enjoy it. I wish I could see the expressions on people’s faces.”

  Hatcher leaned across the table toward her, his eyes alive with interest.

  “This is not your garden-variety psychopath,” he said. “He’s a madman, pure and simple. There’s nothing sadistic about him. In fact, he’s trying to help us all. In his twisted mind, killing women is just an unfortunate necessity. It’s the only way to get his message out.”

  He leaned back in his chair again.

  “But you’ve got insights of your own,” he said. “Tell me what you’ve got.”

  Riley thought for a moment.

  “I’ve got this feeling—that he doesn’t act alone. That he acts under orders.”

  Hatcher smiled knowingly.

  “Oh, you’re so right,” he said. “But you’re going to have trouble bringing his accomplice to justice.”

  “And why is that?” Riley said.

  “His ‘accomplice’ doesn’t exist.”

  Riley felt a flood of understanding.

  “He’s schizophrenic,” she said. “He hears voices—or maybe just one voice. That voice tells him what to do. Following that voice’s orders is the only purpose he has in life.”

  Hatcher rapped his knuckles on the table.

  “Congratulations,” he said. “You’re catching on. My, we do make a good team, don’t we? My brain and yours working together, they’re a formidable combination. We should work together more often. Maybe make
it an official investigation team. Think the FBI might go for it? No, I guess not. You’re not exactly in good standing with the Bureau right now, are you? I mean, you did show up at Sing Sing without your badge.”

  Riley felt a sudden chill. He knew that she’d been suspended. But how?

  Obviously detecting Riley’s alarm, Hatcher said, “Come on, Riley. I could feel it when you came in here. I know you. In some ways, I know you better than you know yourself.”

  Once again, Riley heard a note of concern in his voice. It worried her. What kind of bond was this cold-blooded killer forming with her? Was it affection, admiration, or both, or something else entirely? Whatever it was, she didn’t like it. She wanted nothing to do with it.

  She put the pictures back in the folder.

  “I’m leaving,” she said.

  “Wait a minute,” Hatcher said. “We’ve got a standing agreement. I always get something out of our meetings. Let’s talk a little. Conversation’s hard to come by on the inside, believe me. How’s that daughter of yours? She’s fifteen, isn’t she? That’s a tough age. Things can go very bad.”

  The chill Riley had been feeling deepened. She had the uncanny sense that she didn’t have any secrets at all from this useful but terrible man.

  Still, she knew that Hatcher had his own code, his own sense of fair play. She mustn’t violate it. She owed him a little something more.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “The same as the first time we met,” Hatcher said. “You tell me something about yourself—something you don’t want to people to know. Something you wouldn’t want anybody else to know.”

  A strange feeling came over Riley—an inexplicable urge to confide in him. She knew it wouldn’t be wise. But she couldn’t fight it.

  “I envy my sister,” Riley said. “Wendy’s her name. I haven’t seen her for years, and I have no idea what kind of life she’s got, but … I envy her.”

  Hatcher said nothing. He just smiled.

  “Daddy hit her so much, she ran away,” she said. “She was fifteen, I was five. She got away. I didn’t. But it’s not so much that she got away …”

  She remembered something that her father had said about Wendy not long ago.

  “I only hit her with my hands. Bruised her up a little on the outside, that’s all. Didn’t hit her deep enough.”

  Then he’d added, “I never laid a hand on you. I hit you a lot deeper than that. You learned. You learned.”

  Struggling to keep her voice calm, Riley said, “Daddy didn’t get a chance to shape her.”

  Hatcher nodded with an awful understanding.

  “But he made you everything you are today.”

  Riley felt the air go out of her lungs.

  That can’t be true, she thought.

  But she couldn’t think about it right now. She had to get out of here. She had to breathe.

  “I’ve got to go,” she said. “I’ve got to solve this case.”

  Hatcher let out a rather mocking sigh.

  “Yes, I suppose you do. Get it done quickly. Get it out of the way. You’ve got other troubles coming soon. You’ll need to give them your full attention.”

  Riley resisted the urge to ask him what troubles he was talking about. Maybe he really knew something, or maybe he was just trying to lure her into conversation.

  “Besides,” he added with a wink, “it’s not the end of the world. Or maybe it is. You should think about that. It’s staring you in the face, but you don’t see it.”

  She got up from the table and started to walk away.

  Hatcher called after her, “Watch yourself, Riley Paige.”

  She turned to look at him. His expression seemed genuinely worried. She couldn’t imagine why. And she didn’t want to.

  “I won’t come back here to see you again,” she said.

  Now Hatcher smiled an inscrutable smile.

  “You might not have to,” he replied.

  Riley left the room without asking what he meant. By the time she was outside the building, she was hyperventilating. Visiting Hatcher was always nerve-racking. This time was no exception.

  She remembered his words:

  “You might not have to.”

  And she tried not to wonder what they meant.

  *

  Tiredness kept sweeping over Riley all during the drive south. She hadn’t gotten any sleep at all for about twenty-four hours except for a short nap in the car before going into Sing Sing. And with fresh ideas about the case buzzing through her mind, Riley was finding it hard to keep her mind on her driving. She needed a change of pace.

  She remembered that there was a ferry from New Jersey to Delaware. She decided to take that rather than stay on the road. The hour-and-twenty-minute trip across the Delaware Bay might give her time for some clear thinking. Or at least to get a little rest.

  She pulled up the directions on her GPS system and headed for Cape May. When she pulled into the terminal, she was glad to see that there weren’t a lot of cars in line for the next ferry. She didn’t have to wait long before the handsome white boat loaded and then pulled away from the dock. Most other passengers headed up the stairs to the passenger decks, but Riley walked to the bow instead.

  The air was crisp and clear. Gray-blue water swirled past the bow into white streamers on both sides. As the boat moved away from the dock and beyond the breakwaters, it passed a white lighthouse. The rippling gray-blue water was restful to Riley’s mind.

  She turned and glanced up at the decks overhead. She knew that food was available there, even a bar. She hadn’t even had breakfast today, but somehow she didn’t feel hungry. What she wanted was quiet. She went back to her car and got inside.

  She closed her eyes, but knew she wouldn’t be able to go to sleep. She didn’t really want to. Hatcher had said some things that she knew were important, but that she didn’t yet understand. He’d spoken in riddles, as usual. Now it was time to parse out his meaning.

  She remembered what he’d said just before she left.

  “It’s not the end of the world. Or maybe it is. You should think about that. It’s staring you in the face, but you don’t see it.”

  Now it was time to see it. She kept her eyes closed and breathed deeply. Then it came to her—an image that she seldom thought about.

  It was the so-called Doomsday Clock—a symbol used by The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to show how close humanity was to a global catastrophe. In the days of the Cold War, the clock indicated the danger of a worldwide nuclear holocaust. Nowadays it also warned of the perils of climate change.

  Whenever the situation seemed especially dangerous, the scientists moved the minute hand a little closer to midnight.

  Now Riley understood Hatcher’s hint. The killer was keeping his own version of a Doomsday Clock. He was using women’s bodies to warn the world that its end was near. According to his own way of keeping time, midnight was when he thought it was going to happen.”

  Riley realized that the implications were enormous. If the killer followed his ongoing pattern, he needed to kill three more victims—one for ten o’clock, another for eleven o’clock, and the last for midnight. Now that Riley understood the clock image, she ought to be able to locate on a map just where the killer planned to leave these final victims.

  But I’m not going to let it come to that, she thought.

  She knew that Shane Hatcher was right about one other thing—this killer was a flat-out madman with crazy delusions. But who was he taking his orders from, really?

  She remembered what Hatcher had said.

  “His ‘accomplice’ doesn’t exist.”

  Somehow that didn’t ring true for her. It was too glib, too simple. Riley knew that Hatcher’s insights were hardly infallible. He had his limits. There was a flaw in his considerable talents as a criminologist. He was too clinical, too cold, too intellectual. He couldn’t empathize, couldn’t get under a killer’s skin like she did.

  And now it was time for
her to do just that.

  She closed her eyes again and let herself slip into that familiar dark part of her own mind. There she got an image of him—an image that he seemed to hold of himself. It was a grotesque, surreal picture of a man building an enormous clock, using women’s dead bodies as hands.

  The women were part of a message—not people but items, clock parts. He bore the women no animosity, but his dehumanizing of them was total.

  As the clock took shape, it began to tick, the corpse hands began to move, and an alarm sounded—an alarm warning of an apocalyptic midnight soon to come.

  That’s how he sees himself, Riley thought. But how did he get that way?

  She turned the question over in that dark part of her mind. An image quickly flashed before her. It was a little boy watching an older man at work in a dimly lit workshop. The man was using delicate tools to build an actual clock out of thousands of precision pieces. The boy watched anxiously. The man didn’t mean him well, but everything in the boy’s life depended on him. It was absolutely crucial that he understand every move the man made.

  Her dark musings were interrupted by the deafening roar of the boat’s horn. It was announcing the ferry’s arrival in Lewes, Delaware.

  In an inkling, the image was gone. But Riley wasn’t disappointed. She’d gotten the exact insight she’d needed.

  Her next stop would be Ohlman—the clock’s center, its hub, its axle. And she knew what she had to do.

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE

  As she pulled into Ohlman, Riley felt in her gut that she was closing in on the killer. The store’s website proudly called itself “Ohlman’s only watch and clock repair service.” She thought it might also be a madman’s lair.

  The place she was looking for was easy to find. She saw the sign for Gorski Jewelers as soon as she turned onto Main Street, and she parked her car right in front. When she got out and approached the place, she tried to guess whether or not the building had a basement, but she couldn’t tell from outside.

  Unfortunately, a CLOSED sign hung on the door.

  Riley let out a moan of discouragement. She’d completely forgotten that it was Sunday. In a little town like this, there probably wasn’t a single store open along Main Street. Practically everybody had gone to church that morning and was now spending the afternoon with their families.