Stalking

by Blake Pierce

  Riley, Crivaro, and Quayle climbed into a police cruiser marked “Raffel County Sheriff.”

  As he drove out of the parking lot, Quayle grumbled quietly, “It’s a fine day when we need folks like you in these parts.”

  Riley gave Crivaro a curious glance.

  “Why doesn’t he like us?” she mouthed silently.

  After all, as Crivaro had told her on the plane, Quayle had personally called the FBI and requested an investigation, even specifying that he needed BAU agents. Crivaro smiled slightly at Riley and shrugged, as if to wordlessly suggest that he’d explain this to her later.

  Then Crivaro said to Quayle, “What can you tell us about the murders?”

  “Not much—not yet,” Quayle said. “That’s why you’re here.”

  “Did the victims know each other?” Crivaro asked.

  “Not that their parents knew of,” Quayle said. “It’s possible, I guess. It’s only a ten-minute drive between Dalhart and Brattledale, and some people visit back and forth. Even so, folks in Dalhart tend to stay put, they keep among themselves. Kind of insular, you might say.”

  “What can you tell me about the local victim?” Crivaro asked.

  Quayle let out a bitter sigh.

  “Kimberly Dent was a good girl,” he said. “A really great kid. I’ve known her since the day she was born. I went to school with both her dad and mom, Phil and Claudia—childhood sweethearts, they were. They’re good folks. Nobody has ever said anything against them. But then, there’s nothing but good folks around these parts. We don’t get the kinds of problems you people are used to.”

  Riley didn’t know exactly who or what Sheriff Quayle meant by “you people,” but she did notice a note of contempt in his voice when he said those two words.

  Quayle soon turned off the main highway onto a smaller rural route road. As they drove out into the countryside, Riley looked out the window at the pleasant, snow-covered rolling hills with bare trees scattered in clusters here and there. Although the landscape wasn’t mountainous like it was where Riley had grown up in western Virginia, Riley felt reminded of scenes of her Appalachian childhood.

  The drive stirred up memories in Riley—some of them nostalgic, but many of them sad. Much of her childhood had been difficult. especially after she’d seen her mother shot to death in a candy store. Riley had been just a little girl. Although she was deeply affected by the beauty of this kind of country, she’d learned at a very early age that beauty and ugliness often existed side by side.

  And something very ugly happened here, she thought.

  “It’s coming right up,” Sheriff Quayle said.

  As they rounded one final bend, Riley saw a parked car and two people—a man and a woman—standing where the shoulder of the road was wide enough for vehicles to pull off. It looked like repeated traffic had dissolved most of the snow in that area.

  The two people were both looking down at something standing just a few feet off of the road. It was a white cross, about a yard tall.

  Kimberly Dent’s parents, Riley suspected.

  Her heart lurched a little at the thought of meeting the bereaved parents. She hadn’t expected to have to do this already, and she was sure Crivaro hadn’t either.

  Sheriff Quayle pulled over onto the shoulder and stopped his car behind one already there. Riley and Crivaro got out with him and they walked toward the couple, who barely seemed aware of their arrival.

  Riley could see the roadside memorial more clearly now. The simple painted wooden cross had Kimberly Dent’s name written across it. Someone—the couple, Riley guessed—had placed a bouquet of artificial flowers in front of it. The couple stood there with their heads bowed as if they were in church.

  The man was holding a mallet, so he must have just pounded the cross into the ground. The couple had surrounded the base of the cross with rocks in the shape of a heart.

  The couple turned at the sound of Sheriff Quayle’s voice.

  “Phil, Claudia, I’ve brought some people I want you to meet.”

  Sheriff Quayle introduced Riley and Crivaro to Phil and Claudia Dent. Both Riley and Crivaro said they were sorry for their loss and apologized for having to ask them some questions right now.

  Riley saw that Phil and Claudia both had thin, serious faces. Doubtless they looked more sad than usual, but Riley got the feeling that they didn’t smile a lot even in better circumstances. She wondered whether their daughter had shared their serious demeanor. Somehow she doubted it. Without knowing quite why, Riley pictured Kimberly Dent as a typically cheerful and outgoing teenager.

  In flat, expressionless voice, Claudia said to Riley and Crivaro, “I hope you can find out whoever did this.”

  “We’ll do our best,” Crivaro said. “Do you have any idea who might have wanted to harm your daughter?”

  Phil said rather sharply, “Somebody who doesn’t like us.”

  Riley was startled by how he emphasized the word us.

  Claudia said, “Not somebody from around here. Somebody from elsewhere.”

  She straightened herself up a little and added, “It’s getting to be that kind of a world.”

  As Crivaro continued to ask the couple questions, Riley felt as though a few things were becoming clearer to her—including the sheriff’s curt attitude toward them. She remembered something he’d said to her and Crivaro during the drive.

  “We don’t get the kinds of problems you people are used to.”

  He’d also said, “It’s a fine day when we need folks like you in these parts.”

  From her own childhood, Riley knew that rural people could be “kind of insular,” as Sheriff Quayle had put it, and set in some old-fashioned ways. But the outside world was changing fast, and changing all the time.

  Riley suspected that Phil and Claudia felt as though the world was closing in around them these days, threatening their way of life. And now, their daughter’s murder made them feel that way much more acutely.

  They really don’t want to think the killer is one of them, Riley thought.

  Instead they wanted to think the killer was some outsider, someone who hated them for being the kind of people they were—someone from the world that Riley and Crivaro had just arrived from.

  It saddened Riley to think that they might very well be wrong.

  While Riley was thinking all this over, Crivaro had kept on asking the couple questions.

  “Did Kimberly have a boyfriend?” Crivaro asked.

  The parents winced slightly.

  “No,” Phil said.

  “Absolutely not,” Claudia added.

  Riley exchanged curious glances with Crivaro. The couple sounded almost as if they found the question to be offensive.

  Then Crivaro said, “What about a best friend? Another girl, I mean.”

  Claudia said, “That would be Goldie Dowling.”

  “Could you tell us how to get in touch with her?” Crivaro asked.

  Sheriff Quayle said to Crivaro, “I can take care of that for you.”

  Crivaro nodded and told the couple that he didn’t have any further questions for right now. He asked them to please get in touch with the sheriff’s office if they thought of anything that might be important.

  Claudia stepped back from the memorial, nodding with satisfaction at how it looked.

  She said, “Folks will start bringing flowers and such to decorate it. It’ll look very pretty. But I hope folks have got the sense not to bring real flowers. They’d die fast in this weather.”

  Then she frowned and added, “Anything alive would die if you put it here.”

  Riley heard a world of cold bitterness in those enigmatic words. As the Dents turned away and headed back to their car, Riley took note of two things. Phil and Claudia hadn’t offered each other any physical affection or consolation. They hadn’t so much as even held each other’s hands.

  Also, neither of them had cried.

  Riley wondered whether that was unusual, especially for the woman. T
hen she remembered her own reactions after killing Heidi Wright—the numbness that had clung to her for hours and hours until she’d finally cried alone in her apartment.

  Maybe she’s done a lot of crying already, Riley thought. Or maybe her grief hasn’t really hit her yet.

  As the couple drove away, Sheriff Quayle said to Riley and Crivaro, “Come on, I’ll show you where the body was found.”

  They began to walk toward the trees and underbrush on the far side of the shoulder.

  Crivaro asked, “Do you have any idea what kind of vehicle the killer used?”

  “No, and I don’t know how we could tell,” Quayle said, pointing to the ground. “The shoulder here is a thick layer of gravel, and there’s hardly any snow on it. A vehicle wouldn’t leave any tire tracks here to speak of.”

  Crivaro let out a scoff. He stopped walking and stooped down.

  Riley realized what he was looking at. A telltale mound of fallen leaves was bunched up about where the gravel ended at the edge of the shoulder.

  Crivaro swept away the leaves and said to Quayle, “Have a look.”

  Sure enough, Riley saw a partially obscured tire track in the dirt in the dirt where the gravel stopped.

  “Someone parked here,” Crivaro said, tracing the track with his finger. “He was smart enough to smudge up the tread marks so we couldn’t get any solid forensic info from them. But the ground would have been cold and he was in a hurry. He even kicked some leaves over here to hide whatever might be left. His vehicle was heavy enough to leave traces. Not enough here to tell what kind of vehicle it was though.”

  Crivaro got back to his feet, and the three of them waded a very short distance into the barren brush at the edge of the shoulder.

  Quayle pointed to the ground and said, “As you can see, there isn’t a lot of cover this time of year, and she was wearing a red parka, so she was pretty much in clear view of the road. A driver noticed her early this morning and called us about it.”

  “When was the body taken away?” Crivaro asked.

  “About noon,” Quayle said. “The medical examiner didn’t want to leave it exposed to the elements longer than necessary.

  Riley could see where leaves were pressed down from where the body had been. Crivaro stooped down for a closer look.

  Crivaro touched the ground and said, “Kimberly wasn’t killed right here.”

  Quayle looked surprised.

  “That’s what the medical examiner said, based on the approximate time of death,” Quayle said. “But how did you know that?”

  Riley could see exactly what Crivaro meant. She knew what he was going to say as he gestured and pointed and explained it to Quayle.

  “There’s no sign of a struggle. The only disturbance is where the brush was tamped down where the killer carried the body here, and this indentation where the body was laid out. It looks like she was laid out pretty carefully, not casually dumped here. What else has your ME been able to determine?”

  “Death by strangling, sometime yesterday,” Quayle said. “He couldn’t determine the exact time of death.”

  Crivaro said, “I hope you’ve got good photos of both crime scenes.”

  Quayle nodded and said, “Yeah, and the scenes look a lot alike. The sheriff over in Brattledale agrees, it’s got to be the same killer. I’ll show you the pictures when we go to the station.”

  As Crivaro and Quayle kept talking, Riley tried to focus her mind on her surroundings. Her unique talent was for getting into a killer’s mind, usually at crime scenes like this one.

  It was a weird ability, and seemed uncanny even to her. But Crivaro had often assured her that there was nothing psychic or mystical about it. Riley simply had exceptionally good intuitions and instincts—the same as Crivaro himself did.

  Of course, it was easier to do when a crime scene was fresher and the body hadn’t been taken away. But even here she got a slight tingle, an indistinct feeling of the killer’s presence.

  But she got no feeling of hostility or rage.

  Was that because the killing had taken place elsewhere, perhaps many hours before the body had been brought here?

  Had the killer gotten the hatred for the victim out of his system?

  No, that’s not it, Riley thought.

  She sensed that the killer felt never felt any rage at all. After all, the body had been laid out in what appeared to be an orderly and perhaps even respectful manner.

  What about guilt? Riley wondered.

  No, she didn’t pick up any feelings of guilt either. And as usual, her gut feelings were corroborated by the scene itself. The killer had left the body more or less out in the open, where it was sure to be found in the early morning hours. He hadn’t had tried to hide his deed. He’d felt no shame at all.

  Did he feel pride, maybe?

  Riley couldn’t tell. But she did sense that maybe he’d felt a certain satisfaction in what he’d done. When he’d left this place, he’d felt as though he’d done the right thing, perhaps even done his duty.

  Riley shivered as another feeling came over her.

  He’s not finished.

  He’s going to do this again.

  Her reverie was broken by the sound of Crivaro’s voice.

  “Come on, Riley. We’re leaving.”

  She turned and saw that Crivaro and the sheriff were already stumbling out of the brush back onto the shoulder of the road.

  “Quayle’s driving us to the police station in town,” Crivaro added.

  Riley followed after them, and they all got into the sheriff’s car.

  As the sheriff drove away, Riley looked back at the cross the couple had just set up as a memorial to their dead daughter. Of course she’d seen hundreds of roadside shrines, but she’d always assumed they’d been set up as memorials of car accident victims.

  It struck Riley as somehow strange to set up a shrine to mark the site of a hideous, grisly, premeditated crime.

  No more crosses, she thought.

  This has got to stop.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It wasn’t the oncoming night that was making Riley feel uneasy. As Sheriff Quayle drove them into the small down of Dalhart, she eyed the rows of modest houses, some of them dark, and others with lighted windows. The houses were tidy, and the town looked perfectly comfortable and secure.

  Riley was remembering something Claudia Dent had said about the murderer.

  “Not somebody from around here. Somebody from elsewhere.”

  Riley didn’t know whether to hope the woman was wrong or right. As far as Riley and Crivaro and the police were concerned, all that mattered was catching the killer as soon as possible.

  But was that true for the Dents and all the other people who lived in this sleepy town? What if the killer turned out to be one of their own—maybe even a trusted friend, neighbor, and citizen? Would the town ever recover from the gnawing horror of such a shock?

  They’re going to have a hard time recovering one way or the other, Riley figured.

  Still, she couldn’t help thinking that the pain would run much deeper if the killer was someone who lived among them.

  As they headed into town the town center, Sheriff Quayle pointed out a few of the local features, including a remarkably handsome courthouse, a brick building with white columns. Dalhart was the county seat, Quayle said.

  As humble as it was, Riley sensed that the town gave off a certain aura of pride and prestige. The people who lived here considered themselves to be important—at least in the rural scheme of things.

  Quayle parked outside the surprisingly large county law enforcement building, and Riley and Crivaro followed him on inside. The three of them sat down at a large table in a conference room.

  Quayle said, “I want you to know that we’ve put out a public warning to all the towns in the area. Citizens have been notified that any missing persons should be reported immediately. And young women should not out walking alone, especially at night.”

  Quayle drummed
his fingers on the table and added, “That’s scarier to folks in these parts than people like you can probably imagine. The streets of Dalhart have always been as safe as can be, even at night. Women and girls could walk alone wherever they wanted, all hours. The same is true in Brattledale.”

  He inhaled and exhaled wearily.

  “Times are really catching up with us, I guess,” he said.

  Crivaro asked, “Do you know when and where both girls were last seen before they disappeared?”

  Quayle said, “In Brattledale, some of Natalie Booker’s friends saw her leaving a weekly youth meeting at her church. Here in Dalhart, the last person to see Kimberly Dent was Goldie Dowling, the best friend Phil and Claudia mentioned.”

  Riley and Crivaro were both taking notes now.

  Crivaro said, “I’m going to want to get in touch with Goldie ASAP—tonight if possible.”

  Quayle looked at his watch.

  He said, “Isn’t it getting kind of late for that kind of thing?”

  Crivaro said, “I want to talk to her on the phone, at least. Her memories of last night are still fresh, and I don’t want to wait until she starts forgetting things.”

  Quayle pushed a button on his intercom and asked for Goldie Dowling’s phone number. He got his answer almost immediately.

  Then Crivaro asked, “When did anybody notice that the girls were missing?”

  Quayle said, “Well, Natalie’s parents got worried when she didn’t come home from church. They called the local police but the on-duty cops didn’t take it seriously, thought it was just some typical rebellious teenage behavior. It wasn’t the first time that local parents had called in about their kids not being home, only to have them turn up quickly. Those calls had never turned out to be anything before. The cops figured it was more of the same with Natalie.”

  Quayle shook his head.

  “They should have known better, in Natalie’s case,” he said. “From what Sheriff Cole tells me, she was about as perfectly behaved as a small-town kid can be these days. She’d never have deliberately given her parents any cause for worry.”

  “What about Kimberly?” Riley asked.

  Quayle said, “Her parents didn’t notice she was missing until the next morning. They tend to go to bed early, and Kimberly would sometimes get home when they were already asleep. She’d come in quietly so she wouldn’t wake them.”