Once Cold

by Blake Pierce

  Replacing that satisfaction was anxiety and frustration.

  She’d left another cold case unsolved.

  The case of her own mother’s murder.

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

  As Riley sat at her desk, a renewed feeling of hopelessness swept over her.

  She remembered her visit to Floyd Britson at the rest home.

  She remembered the single word he’d said in answer to all her questions:

  “Luster.”

  She’d followed Hatcher’s trail to a senile old man who couldn’t possibly tell her what she wanted to know.

  It seemed like a sick joke.

  And the joke was on Riley.

  Riley’s hopelessness was morphing into anger.

  This was all Hatcher’s doing.

  It was time to have it out with him.

  She looked again at the inscription on her bracelet.

  “face8ecaf”

  The last time she’d tried calling Hatcher by that video address, she’d gotten no answer.

  If she tried it now, would he answer this time?

  He’s got to, Riley thought. He’s just got to.

  She opened up her video chat program and typed in the characters.

  The call rang three times.

  And then … there he was, sitting in front of an anonymous gray background.

  An expression of pleasure crossed his dusky features.

  “Hello, Riley,” he said. “I believe congratulations are in order. You’ve brought the Matchbook Killer to justice.”

  Riley fleetingly wondered how he’d gotten the news so fast.

  But she knew better than to be surprised.

  Hatcher was a man of means with an uncanny reach. He had tendrils everywhere, detecting everything he wanted to know about anybody who mattered to him.

  And Riley knew that she mattered to him intensely.

  “You son of a bitch,” Riley said in low snarl.

  Hatcher’s expression changed to one of mock hurt.

  “You sound angry with me. I wonder why.”

  Riley couldn’t control herself for a single second longer.

  “You played me!” she snapped. “You sent me on a fool’s errand—and you’ve done all this just so you could get my father’s cabin. Well, I’m not going to let you get away with it. I’m going to come up there and throw you out—if I don’t kill you first.”

  She suddenly realized she’d been shouting.

  Her voice had surely carried all through the house.

  Control yourself, she thought. Don’t let him do this to you.

  Hatcher said, “I don’t understand what’s wrong, Riley. I think I’ve been most helpful. I steered you onto the trail toward your mother’s killer. I honestly don’t see why you haven’t found him by now. Did you locate Floyd Britson?”

  “Yes,” Riley said quietly.

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he told you something, didn’t he? A single word.”

  Riley didn’t reply. But it was obvious that Hatcher already knew about Floyd’s mysterious utterance …

  “Luster.”

  He must have talked to Floyd himself.

  He must have heard Floyd say the exact same thing.

  “You’re almost there, Riley,” Hatcher said. “You just need one more little nudge. I’ll be glad to give you that nudge here and now. But I want a little favor first. I think you know what that favor is.”

  Again Riley didn’t reply. She knew what he wanted all too well.

  He relished hearing the darkest secrets of her life.

  His power over her was so strong that she’d told him ugly things about herself—things she would never tell another human soul.

  Just then there was a knock at the door. She heard April’s voice.

  “Mom, are you OK? We heard you shouting.”

  “I’m fine,” Riley called back.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. I just got mad at somebody on the phone. It’s OK now. ”

  She heard April walking away down the hallway.

  Then she said to Hatcher, “I’ve got nothing to tell you.”

  “No?” Hatcher said. “What about Murray Rossum’s death?”

  Riley shuddered.

  He’d hit upon a raw and recent memory.

  Murray Rossum had been a pathetic specimen—a self-hating creature who killed young women by hanging.

  When Riley had cornered him at last, he had hanged himself.

  She’d done nothing to stop him.

  She said, “I watched him die.”

  “And you enjoyed it.”

  “No,” Riley said. “But I was … fascinated.”

  “And a thought went through your mind as you watched him die. What was that thought, Riley?”

  Riley was almost in tears now.

  Hatcher had bored down to the awful truth.

  She remembered a question that Hatcher sometimes asked her.

  “Are you already, or are you becoming?”

  He had answered that question himself once.

  “You’re becoming. You’re becoming what you’ve always been deep down. Call it a monster or whatever you want. And it won’t be long before you are that person.”

  Now she remembered standing there watching Murray die, his movements slowing, his body slackening, his eyes closing.

  “Tell me what you were thinking,” Hatcher said.

  Riley spoke slowly in a choked voice.

  “I thought … I realized … that I was becoming.”

  Hatcher let out a deeply satisfied chuckle. She understood why he felt such gratification.

  Riley had just admitted to him the awful truth.

  She was becoming just like him.

  Almost as though she was becoming part of him.

  After a silent moment, Hatcher said, “Now, about your mother’s killer—well, he seems to be a mysterious creature, eh? Almost magical. A phantom, a ghost, a demon …”

  Then with a tone of great significance, he added:

  “A troll.”

  Then his face disappeared.

  He had ended the call.

  Riley was shaking all over. She took long slow breaths to calm herself.

  A troll, she thought. Mommy was killed by a troll.

  That word, “troll”—she knew that it had become part of contemporary slang, especially to describe malicious people on the Internet.

  But she felt sure that wasn’t the kind of troll Hatcher meant.

  Riley went onto the Internet and searched for information about trolls.

  Some of it she already knew—that a troll was a legendary supernatural creature, like a gnome, an ogre, a goblin.

  But then she ran across a phrase that jumped out at her …

  “Storybook trolls live under bridges …”

  Riley’s heart started pounding.

  The truth was coming together in her mind, so fast and hard that she could barely comprehend it.

  She decided to run another search—this time for a location on a map.

  She typed in the name Luster.

  Then, in a strangely automatic way, she added: Bridge.

  There it was, on a map right in front of her.

  There was a Luster Street Bridge in Vickery, Virginia—an overpass in an urban area.

  Riley didn’t give herself time to think things through.

  She leaped up from her chair, rushed out of her room, and headed downstairs.

  She was about to go out the front door when she heard April’s voice.

  “Mom, where are you going?”

  Riley turned and saw April’s worried expression. She reached out to April and held her by the shoulders.

  Riley couldn’t help but cry now.

  “I’ve got to go somewhere, honey,” she said. “I might be gone for quite a while. But I’ll be back. And when I come back …”

  She wanted to say …

  “I’ll be back
for good.”

  But the words wouldn’t come.

  Tears were welling up in April’s eyes now.

  “Mom, you’re scaring me.”

  “I know,” Riley said with a sob. “But everything’s going to be all right. I promise.”

  Without another word, she ran out of the house, got into her car, and started to drive.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  It was a long drive to Vickery, Virginia. Night closed in around Riley as she drove toward the mountains, and it started to rain. Riley felt swept by wave upon wave of fatigue.

  She could barely believe all that had happened that day.

  She, Bill, and Jake had tracked down a killer and brought him to justice.

  She’d even been slightly injured in the process.

  But here she was, pursuing the darkest mystery of her life.

  What mattered most at the moment was staying awake.

  Finally she arrived in a manufacturing district on the outskirts of Vickery. It was an area with big metal buildings and warehouses, and large lighted parking. She knew that during the day, those lots would be full of trucks and cars. Tonight most of it looked deserted.

  She pulled up to the end of the Luster Street Bridge. It was raining and dark, so she got an umbrella and a flashlight before getting out of the car.

  Shining the light in front of her, she carefully made her way down the rough, wet hillside along the bridge. The bridge stretched over a dry ravine, not a riverbed. Even so, Riley felt sure that the ravine must flood when the rain was really heavy.

  In the beam of her flashlight, she saw a few scattered belongings just beneath the overpass. There were definitely people under there in the shadows. It looked as though Luster Bridge had been a homeless haven for many years.

  She shined her light around on several sleeping men, some of whom groaned with dismay at the glare. Then her flashlight fell upon one man who was sitting up on a surface of cardboard covered with plastic. He was gripping a half-empty bottle of rubbing alcohol, and his face was ravaged from a long and terrible life.

  “Who’s there?” the man asked.

  That voice—it was unmistakable.

  It had echoed through Riley’s mind all her life.

  The last time she had heard that voice, it had said to her mother …

  “Give me your money.”

  Riley suddenly felt paralyzed. She couldn’t think of what to say.

  “Show me your face,” the man said.

  Riley shined the flashlight in her own face. She thought she heard the man gasp.

  Then there came a long, horrible silence, so long, she wasn’t sure it would ever end.

  “Dear God,” the man said. “The last time I saw you …”

  Riley knew what he was about to say.

  “… you were a little girl in a candy store.”

  He started to cry softly.

  “I always knew you’d find me,” he said.

  Riley knelt beside him.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Wade Bowman.”

  Riley gulped hard, then said:

  “Tell me what happened—that day.”

  He shook his head, sobbing.

  He sobbed so long, she didn’t think he would ever speak, and she wondered how, if ever, she’d get it out of him.

  But then suddenly, to her surprise, he spoke.

  “I hated your daddy,” he said. “He hated me. He made my life hell. I deserved it, I guess. I was a poor excuse for a man, especially for a soldier. But he … humiliated me, ruined me, took away what little self-respect I had. I lost everything, went broke, and I―”

  He paused a moment.

  “I wanted to kill him. I went looking for him. Someone told me they saw him on the way to that candy store. So I went there to kill him. But when I went in, he wasn’t there. Instead, I only saw your mother. I didn’t know if I’d work up the nerve to come kill him again. And in that moment, I thought—what better way to hurt him? I can kill her instead….”

  He choked on a sob.

  “I don’t know why I pulled the trigger. I did it to hurt him, I guess. But then I saw your face … and I hated myself more than ever. I regretted it before I even finished pulling it. Your mother … she was a beautiful person.”

  He was sobbing helplessly now.

  Riley found it easy to guess the rest of his story.

  Wade Bowman had lost himself forever in an agony of guilt and shame. He’d probably been homeless for years—perhaps ever since he’d killed her mother.

  Bowman calmed a little and wiped his face and eyes with his sleeve.

  Then he reached under a blanket.

  He took out a tarnished snub-nosed revolver and held it out to Riley.

  “Here,” he said. “I’ve wanted to give it to you for a long time.”

  Riley took the revolver. It felt startlingly heavy in her hand. She knew that she was holding the very weapon that had killed her mother.

  “It’s loaded,” the man said. “Kill me if you want to.”

  Riley shuddered.

  It would be easy to do.

  But did she want to kill him? What did she want really, after all these years?

  Justice, she thought.

  And now justice was well within her reach There was no statute of limitations on murder. She could arrest him. She could bring him to trial. She could send him to prison, surely enough.

  She thought of Shane, of what she was becoming. And she realized that she could stop becoming. If she killed this man, it would be too late.

  But if she walked away, she could save herself.

  She could arrest him, of course. But she looked around, at the squalor in which he lived, and she realized that a life here, under this bridge, was far worse than anything prison could offer.

  Why send him to prison when he’d already passed a lifetime in hell? Through some mysterious agency, justice had been done a long time ago.

  She turned around and walked away. She heard the man’s sobs echoing under the bridge. She got back into her car and started to drive. She remembered crossing a river not far back. She found the bridge over the river and parked again.

  She walked out onto the bridge and looked into the water.

  She remembered something that some philosopher had once said—something about how one who fights with monsters should be careful not to become a monster.

  She couldn’t remember the words exactly, except for the last few words:

  “And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

  She looked down into the filthy river full of industrial pollution.

  She thought …

  The abyss and I now know each other very well.

  She threw the gun into the water, got into her car, and started on the long drive home.

  She sobbed the entire way.

  It was over.

  Finally, after all these years, it was over.

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  Riley got home very late that night. She slept long and hard, almost until noon, and when she finally woke up, she was surprised to realize that she actually felt good. She got dressed and went downstairs.

  She heard Gabriela singing in the kitchen, which made the day seem even better. When Riley went in for coffee, Gabriela was happily working at what looked like a very special meal.

  “Hello, Gabriela,” she said.

  Gabriela turned toward her and smiled.

  “Buenos días, Señora Riley,” she said. “You are very late, but that is good. Could I fix you some breakfast?”

  “No, don’t trouble yourself,” Riley said. “It looks like you’re fixing something special.”

  “Sí, did you forget? Señor Blaine and his daughter are coming to dinner tonight.”

  Riley smiled. Yes, she had forgotten. But it gave her something to look forward to.

  She poured herself some coffee and got a sweet roll. She went to the living room and turned on a movie channel.
It was showing an old movie that she’d seen but couldn’t remember the name of. She didn’t much care at the moment.

  As she sipped her coffee and ate her snack, she remembered her experience yesterday with the abyss—and how the abyss had looked back into her.

  The abyss was still there in the back of her mind.

  It would probably never go away.

  But it seemed to have receded.

  She could distance herself from it, at least for now.

  Life goes on, she told herself.

  And she was ready for a break. Now that she, Bill, and Jake had solved the Matchbook Killer case, she wouldn’t be expected at the BAU for a while. Since she had also suffered a bash to the head, she might not have to go in for a couple of weeks.

  She finished watching the movie, read a few magazine articles, then watched the end of another movie. She had almost dozed off again when she was awakened by a flurry of activity.

  The girls had gotten home from school.

  April looked at Riley with concern.

  “How are you doing, Mom?” she asked.

  Riley remembered—the last time April had seen her, she was tearing out of the house on a mysterious errand.

  She smiled, hoping that April wouldn’t ask questions.

  “I’m fine,” Riley said.

  Fortunately, both girls’ minds were on other things.

  “Mom, Blaine and Crystal are coming to dinner!” Jilly said.

  “You’ve got to get dressed!” April said.

  Riley looked down at her slacks.

  “I am dressed,” she said.

  April and Jilly rolled their eyes at each other.

  “OK,” Riley said with a sigh. “I’ll go change.”

  But before Riley could get up from the couch, the doorbell rang.

  Jilly answered the door and simply stared at whoever was outside. Then Jilly turned and walked away, leaving the door open.

  Ryan came inside.

  Jilly left the room, and April crossed her arms.

  Ryan looked shocked.

  “This isn’t a very pleasant greeting,” he said.

  “What do you expect?” April asked.

  Ryan looked at Riley, as if appealing for her to intercede.

  She had no intention of doing anything to make him feel comfortable.

  She said, “I guess you’re here to pick up the stuff you left in my room and the bathroom. I’ve packed it all up. You’ll find it upstairs next to the bedroom door.”