Once Cold

by Blake Pierce

  Riley looked all around. Suddenly, she felt terribly out of place here among these happy people.

  It was a feeling that she knew all too well.

  Tomorrow she’d be back in her own element, doing what she was meant to do—hunting down monsters and bringing them to justice.

  It was a sad thought, but Riley managed to smile as Crystal brought dessert to their table.

  Riley kept on smiling, but her mind was really back on the job.

  Would she, Bill, and Jake finally get a break in the Matchbook Killer case?

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  Riley arrived at the BAU early the next morning, feeling more than ready to get back to work. On her way to her office, she was greeted by Bill and Jake walking toward her in the hallway.

  “It looks like maybe we’ve got a break in the case,” Bill told Riley with a grin.

  “What do you mean?” Riley asked.

  Jake said, “Woody Grinnell gave me a call this morning. He’d put out those fliers with the composite sketch, and it may have paid off. A guy came into Woody’s Diner this morning and said he might have actually seen the killer.”

  Riley’s head buzzed with excitement.

  “Did he recognize the face in the sketch?” she asked.

  “Not exactly,” Jake said. “It sounds like he saw the killer on the night of the murder.”

  Riley felt a spasm of disappointment.

  “That long ago?” she asked. “Surely he told the police about it at the time.”

  “Apparently not,” Jake said. “Woody says we should check it out, talk to the guy in person. I told him we’d meet him at his diner in Greybull ASAP.”

  “Then let’s go,” Riley said.

  The three of them headed straight out of the building and got into the BAU vehicle they had used on Friday. As Riley started driving, Jake and Bill chatted about the weekend they’d had. They’d spent a lot of it together, starting with Bill’s son’s swim meet on Saturday. Yesterday evening they’d watched a basketball game at a sports bar.

  As Bill and Jake relived the game highlights, Riley felt glad that they were bonding so well. They were two of her favorite people in the world, and she’d known that they would have a lot in common.

  Finally Bill asked, “How about you, Riley? How was your weekend?”

  Riley gulped.

  “Oh, just a little of this and that,” she said.

  She was grateful that Bill and Jake resumed their conversation and didn’t ask her for details. But as she drove, bits of her own weekend replayed in her mind.

  She was still haunted by Byron Chaney’s story—and by his guilt-stricken outcry.

  “I can’t help thinking … I got her killed.”

  Riley shuddered at the memory. She wished she had never succumbed to Hatcher’s tempting offer. What possible good had it done her?

  The more she thought about it, the more she doubted that she’d ever truly solve the mystery of her mother’s death.

  The whole thing seemed so futile—which made her feel all the more glad to have another case to work on today.

  Maybe we’re going to get the break we need, she thought.

  *

  About an hour and a half later, Riley parked in front of Woody’s Diner.

  Woody greeted Riley, Bill, and Jake as they came inside.

  “Perfect timing!” Woody said. “Tony just finished his morning route and got here a few minutes ago.”

  Woody led them straight to a large booth away from other customers. A perfectly ordinary-looking man wearing a US Postal Service uniform was sitting there. Riley guessed that he was in his thirties.

  Woody invited the group to sit down, then ordered coffee all around.

  “This is Tony Veach,” Woody said to Riley and her companions. “He’s the guy I told you about. He came in this morning and said he might have seen something the night of the murder. Tell them what you told me, Tony.”

  Tony looked a bit reluctant.

  “I don’t know if it will help much,” he said. “It was a long time ago. The truth is, I hadn’t even thought about it for years. But then I saw that flier yesterday, and I went home and memories came back and I had nightmares …”

  His voice trailed off.

  Riley said, “Just try to remember as well as you can.”

  Tony took a sip of coffee.

  “I guess I was about seven years old,” he said. “My parents didn’t keep me on a very tight leash, and I went out exploring a lot. I especially liked going out in the woods on clear, bright nights.”

  Tony paused for a moment, looking thoughtful.

  “One night I was poking around through the woods—I found out later it was right near where Tilda Steen was buried. I heard someone moving around, and I got scared and ducked behind a tree to hide. I peeked from behind the tree and—”

  Tony winced a little.

  “Look, I was just a kid. I’m grown up now and I know better. But at the time, I was sure it was a ghost.”

  Riley was startled. She noticed that Bill and Jake were exchanging doubtful glances.

  Tony continued, “I ran home as fast as I could. I didn’t tell anybody right away. But a few days later, they found Tilda’s body in the woods. So I told my dad that I’d seen a ghost that night, right there where it happened. He didn’t believe me. Why would he? He told me there’s no such thing as ghosts and I should forget all about it.”

  Tony shrugged uneasily.

  “Which is pretty much what I did. Until now.”

  Riley got ready to ask Tony more questions, to try to parse out what he’d really seen—if he’d seen anything at all.

  But then she was hit by a different impulse.

  She said, “Let’s all go over there. Right now.”

  “Go where?” Woody asked.

  “Where Tilda’s body was found.”

  Woody squinted skeptically.

  “There’s not much to see—not anymore.”

  “Let’s go anyway.”

  Bill and Jake looked surprised, but Riley insisted, and the group left the diner. Woody and Tony got into a separate car, and the agents followed them in their own vehicle.

  “This doesn’t sound good to me,” Jake said.

  “Not to me either,” Bill said. “It reminds me too much of that crazy guy in Denison—the one who said the killer was from outer space. This guy doesn’t seem crazy. But he was a kid at the time, and kids have got wild imaginations.”

  Jake said, “Maybe he didn’t see anything at all. Maybe he wasn’t even there that night. Maybe his memory is playing tricks on him. We all know how that sometimes happens.”

  Riley kept driving behind the other vehicle without commenting.

  She understood how Bill and Jake felt, but her gut was telling her something different.

  She had now talked to two witnesses who thought they’d seen something bizarre—one said it was a space alien and the other thought it was a ghost. That alone seemed like a strange coincidence, if it really was just a coincidence.

  Riley had a hunch that maybe it wasn’t.

  But her heart sank as they arrived at their destination and the two cars parked alongside the road. The woods where the body had been found were being cleared for a housing development. Bulldozers and other heavy machinery were noisily at work.

  Riley remembered what Woody had just said.

  “There’s not much to see—not anymore.”

  She now saw that he really meant it. Was there any possibility of finding clues to a murder that had happened twenty-five years ago in a place like this?

  Everybody got out of their cars. They followed Tony to the edge of a patch of woods. He pointed among the trees.

  “I saw what I saw right over there.”

  “Take us there,” Riley said.

  As they walked into the trees, Riley realized that this patch of woods wasn’t going to be here much longer. Any day now it would get leveled by the rumbling, lumbering bulldozers. If they
had let the case go cold any longer, whatever they might still find here would be gone.

  If it isn’t gone already, Riley thought.

  A short distance into the trees, Tony turned all around, getting his bearings. Then he walked over to a large oak tree.

  “I’m pretty sure this is the tree I hid behind,” he said. “I’ll never forget it. See this crooked knob in it? Looks like a face. It’s bigger than it was back then.”

  Riley looked and indeed saw the distinct growth in the tree.

  Then, pointing, he added, “I saw him coming from over there.”

  “Tell us exactly what you saw,” Riley said.

  Tony squinted as he tried to retrieve the memory.

  “The first thing I saw … well, it was crazy, but I thought it was just a disembodied head floating in midair. And hands, hanging open so I could see all the fingers. The face and the hands were so bright, they seemed to be glowing. His mouth was moving—I think he was muttering to himself, but I couldn’t hear him over the crickets. Then I saw that he actually was all there—it was just so dark that his arms and legs and torso blended into the background at first. It was his eyes that really freaked me out. They were such a bright blue. They didn’t look natural.”

  Riley recalled what Roger Duffy had said about the suspect’s eyes.

  “Streaming blue light was coming out of them.”

  Now she almost wondered if maybe Duffy hadn’t been as crazy as he’d seemed.

  “What about his hair?” Riley asked.

  Tony looked a bit puzzled.

  “I … didn’t notice, I guess.”

  Riley was sure that the memory was still there. She just had to nudge it along.

  “Was it glowing like his face and hands?” she asked.

  Tony tilted his head thoughtfully.

  “No,” he said. “His hair was dark, like the rest of his body, and it almost seemed to disappear into the background.”

  Riley was getting an image in her mind of a weirdly mask-like face and glove-like hands moving through this area. No wonder the poor kid had been scared. No wonder his father had told him he was talking nonsense.

  “And you’re sure he wasn’t carrying anything?” she asked.

  “No, his hands were empty.”

  Riley thought for a moment, then asked, “What happened next?”

  Pointing again, Tony said, “He continued along that way and disappeared from sight. I’d been frozen in my tracks the whole time I watched him. I came to my senses and ran straight out toward the road. Just then a car came speeding by. Maybe it was him, but I didn’t get a look at the driver.”

  Bill and Jake were listening with extreme interest.

  “What kind of car was it?” Bill asked.

  Tony shook his head.

  “I didn’t notice. What I did notice … well, I told Dad about that too, and he said I was just imagining it.”

  “What was it?” Riley asked.

  Tony let out a chuckle of self-doubt.

  “Maybe I’d seen too many Godzilla movies. I was sure that the top of the car had been ripped by some gigantic prehistoric monster.”

  Riley wondered if he’d maybe imagined that part. After seeing what looked like some kind of a phantom moving through the forest, surely his imagination must have been running away with him. Still, she knew that she needed to keep this detail in mind.

  Riley asked Woody, “Where was the body buried?”

  Woody pointed.

  “Right over there, not more than twenty feet away from here. I’ll take you there.”

  “No,” Riley said. “I’ll go there by myself.”

  Woody looked a little puzzled.

  “She knows what she’s doing,” Jake said.

  Woody shrugged.

  Tony asked, “Is there anything else I can tell you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Riley said.

  Tony shuffled his feet a little.

  “In that case, I need to get back to my afternoon route,” Tony said.

  “And the lunch rush is just starting at my diner,” Woody added.

  “You guys go on ahead,” Riley said. “You’ve been a great help.”

  Woody and Tony headed back to their car.

  Riley, Bill, and Jake stood in the wooded area looking at each other.

  “Do you want my help?” Jake asked Riley.

  Riley knew that he was thinking about how he’d prompted her along at the Baylord Inn back in Brinkley. But this time things felt different to her.

  “I think I’d better do this on my own,” Riley said.

  Jake nodded. “Bill and I will wait for you in the car.”

  In a few moments, Riley was standing alone in the patch of woods.

  She took slow, deep breaths as she prepared herself to enter a dark, terrible place—the mind of the killer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  Riley turned around slowly. In a setting like this, was she going to be able to get in touch with the mind of a murderer at all?

  She was surrounded by trees, but bright noon sunlight filtered through their branches. Heavy machinery rumbled and clanged nearby.

  Was she really going to be able to block the sunlight and the sounds? Could she imagine being in this place on a still, moonlit night?

  First things first, she thought.

  She took out her tablet computer and brought up the case files, then found crime scene photos that had been taken here twenty-five years ago. She needed them to get her exact bearings.

  Then she walked in the direction where Woody had pointed. It was easy to find the spot she was looking for. Except for a fallen log, the placement of the trees was still much the same as it was in the photos.

  She looked through the pictures, which showed Tilda Steen’s freshly uncovered body from various angles. Unlike the two victims before her, she was fully clothed when she’d been buried. She looked grotesque in the photos—with dirt all over her, and with signs of decomposition already apparent.

  As Riley scanned the scene, she realized that one thing hadn’t changed over the years. Then as now, the highway was visible from this spot. The killer had buried the girl close to the road—so close that the smell had been noticed a few days later by a passing bicyclist.

  The murderer had surely known that this body would be found, just as the others had.

  She tucked the tablet away. She wouldn’t need it now.

  In spite of the distractions, she found herself slipping into his mind quite easily.

  In just a few moments, it seemed to be a moonlit night. The sounds of heavy machinery gave way to the constant drone of crickets in the moonlight.

  Riley gasped. She was inside him now, seeing things through his eyes.

  And there Tilda lay at his feet, in the shallow grave he had just dug.

  She looked asleep rather than dead.

  What was he thinking?

  How small and light she is, Riley thought.

  He could have carried her farther into the woods—much farther.

  But he wanted someone to find her.

  Maybe if someone found her, they’d find him, and stop him.

  Now Riley could feel his arms getting back to work again, shoveling dirt onto the body.

  But not too much dirt, Riley thought.

  He didn’t want to cover the body too thoroughly.

  He didn’t bother to replace all the dirt he had dug up to make the grave.

  Instead, he threw rocks, twigs, moss, and leaves over her—just enough so that he couldn’t see any part of her.

  Then it was done.

  He felt no relief, only mounting self-hatred.

  He felt sick at heart about what he had done. There was a sharp bitter taste in his mouth. He wished he could turn back the clock to just a little while ago, when she had still been alive.

  In fact, he wished he could turn back the clock several months, before he’d killed the other two girls.

  They hadn’t deserved to die—not on accoun
t of his failed lust.

  But one way or the other, he was going to have to live with this horrible deed—and the other dead girls as well.

  “I’m an evil man in an evil world,” Riley imagined him thinking.

  But what was done was done.

  It was time to get away from this place.

  He gripped his shovel in his hand and turned to walk back to his car—

  Wait a minute, Riley thought.

  Something was wrong with that image.

  She remembered how Tony had described those glowing hands. They’d been “hanging open so I could see all the fingers.”

  He’d been walking away from the grave when Tony had seen him.

  But he hadn’t been carrying the shovel. Tony had been sure the man hadn’t been carrying anything.

  Riley took herself back into the killer’s mind at the moment when he’d finished covering the body.

  She felt his whole body quivering with rage and disgust.

  He looked at the shovel in his hand.

  “Never again,” he murmured aloud.

  Riley could feel the tension in his arm and shoulders as he swung the shovel back, then the release as he threw it away from him.

  Suddenly, Riley snapped out of her trancelike state.

  The shovel!

  Remembering the precise imagined sensation of throwing it, she walked in that direction. Her footsteps took her straight to the fallen log she had noticed earlier. She knelt down and frantically probed the mulch under it.

  She felt a sharp pain in her fingers as they hit something hard. She tugged and pulled until it came out from under the log.

  Sure enough, it was the blade of the shovel. The metal was rusted almost through, and the wooden handle was so rotted that it crumbled to pieces in her hand. It had been pinned there ever since the tree had fallen.

  Riley felt a sickening wave of despair.

  The shovel could have served as a valuable piece of evidence—if it had been found at the time.

  But in its current state of deterioration, it was of no use at all.

  And yet a possibility was forming in her mind.

  He threw away the shovel, she thought.

  He’d wanted to be rid of everything that had anything to do with the murders.