Stalking

by Blake Pierce

Then what?

  Should this be Jake’s last case, ever? Should he quit before his abilities dulled too seriously? He could think of just one good reason not to quit—at least not yet.

  Riley.

  One reason he’d chosen her as a protégé in the first place was so that someone could take his place at the BAU—someone with his own unique talents and abilities and instincts. He’d known from the day he first met her that she was definitely such a person.

  But she was still so green—a “diamond in the rough,” as he’d sometimes put it. How long would it be until she could work without his supervision? Riley was undisciplined, quick to take chances, often charging off in unexpected directions, putting herself in danger …

  His ruminations were interrupted by the sound of Lutz’s voice.

  “Are we almost there?”

  Jake chuckled. Lutz sounded for all the world like some kid getting impatient during a long family drive. So Jake said exactly what he’d always said to his own son years ago under similar circumstances.

  “It won’t be as long as it has been.”

  Indeed, Jake knew that they were already halfway to their destination.

  It’s nice to be sure of a little thing like that, he thought.

  He wondered if he’d ever be so sure of the answers to those more complicated questions.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Riley stood to one side in the interrogation room, watching and listening as Agent Crivaro asked Shawn Lutz one question after another.

  This isn’t going well, she thought, struggling with her feelings of discouragement.

  Crivaro wasn’t getting any answers—none at all. This was because Lutz had refused to say anything without a lawyer present. Sheriff Quayle had had no choice but to bring in a public defender, who had gotten here in a hurry and was sitting next to Lutz right now.

  And the lawyer was doing his job all too well.

  Every single time Crivaro asked Lutz a question, the lawyer would tell him the same thing.

  “Don’t answer that.”

  So far, Riley and Crivaro hadn’t gleaned a single bit of useful information. She could tell that Crivaro was feeling even more demoralized than she was.

  Still, Riley figured they had some cause for hope. Quayle had already obtained the search warrants they’d asked for, and cops were on their way right now to search that utility van and Lutz’s apartment. With some luck, they’d turn up some valuable evidence.

  Or better yet …

  Maybe they’ll find Sister Sandra while she’s still alive.

  The alternative was too horrible for Riley to even think about.

  Right now Crivaro was asking Lutz about the two young girls and the missing nun, whether he had ever met them. Again and again, the lawyer told him not to say anything.

  Crivaro let out a grunt of annoyance, then opened a folder with photos of the two dead girls and spread them out on the table in front of Lutz.

  “Does this help your memory?” he asked.

  Lutz’s eyes widened.

  “Now wait a minute,” he said. “Wait just a minute. I didn’t know—”

  The lawyer interrupted sharply, “Shawn, don’t say anything. Not one single word.”

  Lutz let out a surprised chuckle.

  “But this is crazy,” he said. “Does anybody really think—?”

  “Not one word,” the lawyer snapped.

  Lutz turned to his lawyer and said, “But they’re searching my place. They’re going to find out for themselves—”

  The lawyer said, “Shawn, if you don’t keep quiet, I’m walking right out of here. You’re going to have to find someone else to represent you. And in this county, you won’t exactly have la crème de la crème to choose from. I’m the best you’re going to get.”

  Lutz rolled his eyes, looking rather amused now.

  “Okay, but this is stupid,” he said. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  Crivaro kept pressing him about the girls, and where he’d been during the hours between when they’d disappeared and their bodies had been found. He asked where Lutz had been around the time Sister Sandra had gone missing. The lawyer kept telling him to keep his mouth shut, and Lutz kept complying.

  Finally Crivaro fell silent. Riley could see his dismay in his face. He put the photos back into their folder and got up from his chair, apparently ready to abandon this interview.

  Riley felt a flash of impatience.

  We can’t give up, she thought. Not yet.

  But what could they do, short of forcibly pushing the lawyer out of the room?

  Then she remembered something Mitch Brown had said back in his trailer. It had caught her attention at the time, but she’d almost forgotten about it.

  Something to do with God.

  Now she wondered if it might be important after all.

  She leaned across the table toward the suspect.

  “Hey, Shawn. I hear that God is dead. Is that right?”

  His smile widened and his eyes sparkled.

  “Where did you hear that?” he asked Riley.

  “Oh, just around,” Riley said, sitting in the chair where Crivaro had been sitting. “Do you think it’s true?”

  As Lutz opened his mouth to reply, his lawyer growled, “Shawn, I must have told you ten times already—”

  Lutz interrupted with a hearty laugh.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m not supposed to talk. At all. I’m not deaf, you know. I heard you loud and clear. But hey, what’s the harm of an innocent little theological discussion? I can’t exactly incriminate myself chatting with this charming young lady about religion, can I?”

  “Shawn, I mean it—” the lawyer said.

  Lutz interrupted again, “I know, you’ll walk out on me, I heard that too. Well, go ahead. When they search my house, they’ll find out everything. Self-incrimination will be kind of a moot point then, won’t it? So go ahead and leave. The door’s right over there.”

  The lawyer growled and shook his head but didn’t get up to leave.

  Lutz smiled at Riley and said, “Now what was your question again?”

  Riley shrugged and said, “I was just wondering whether God is really dead.”

  Lutz leaned back in his chair and said, “Well, what do you think? You seem like a smart girl. Do you go to church and say your prayers at night? I find that hard to believe, considering your line of work.”

  He nodded toward the folder under Crivaro’s arm and added, “Those pictures alone ought to be enough to make an unbeliever out of you, Agent Sweeney. Or maybe you’re too new to this job to start asking the obvious questions.”

  Riley almost shot back, “I’m asking you the questions.”

  But she knew it would be the wrong thing to say.

  The trick right now was to distract him from the fact that this was still an interrogation—and that her seemingly irrelevant questions might have everything to do with the murders.

  Yesterday, she’d had what felt like a flash of insight about the killer—that his choice of victims had something to do with religion. After all, Natalie and Kimberly had come from churchgoing families, and Sister Sandra was training for her first vows at a Catholic high school.

  If she was right, pursuing the topic might draw him out.

  “What kind of questions do you mean?” she asked.

  Pointing to the pictures again, Lutz said, “For example, what kind of God would allow such terrible things to happen?”

  To Riley’s surprise, Crivaro spoke up.

  “It’s a dumb question to ask. I’ve been working at this job for a long time. If there is someone in charge of this crazy universe, he sure lets a lot of terrible stuff go on. I’ve seen people tortured and terrorized and maimed and hacked up by sick, sadistic monsters. So far, I’ve not seen one of those bastards get struck dead by a thunderbolt. But I’ve seen a lot of decent, innocent people suffer for no reason at all.”

  Lutz nodded and said, “Sounds like you and I might
be on the same wavelength.”

  “All I know is, I’ve got a job to do,” Crivaro said. “Somebody’s got to bring some decency and justice to this crazy world.”

  “Oh, I think you know better than that, Agent Crivaro,” Lutz said with a smile. “You know perfectly well that your job is completely futile. You’re fighting the natural order of things. Decency and justice are just made-up ideas, like good and evil, or right and wrong.”

  Crivaro smirked and nodded, “Because, without God, all things are permitted, eh?”

  Riley was truly startled now. She’d never heard Crivaro say anything quite like that before.

  “Exactly,” Lutz said. “Agent Crivaro, I’ve got real hopes for you. Maybe when we’ve cleared up this stupid misunderstanding, we can spend some time getting to know each other. You might be just the kind of person I keep looking for.”

  Crivaro grunted and said, “You sound like kind of a lonely guy, Shawn.”

  “Aren’t you?” Lutz replied. “I can’t imagine that you’ve got much in common with most people—including this girl here.”

  Riley felt her face flush with anger.

  This “girl”?

  He’s got a hell of a nerve!

  This girl just brought this guy in.

  But she kept her anger to herself. She realized that Crivaro was taking his own approach to this suspect. More than that, he seemed to be establishing some kind of weird rapport with the suspect. Riley figured she’d better not interfere.

  Crivaro chuckled cynically.

  He said, “I’ve got to say, Shawn, I am kind of glad to make your acquaintance. It’s hard to talk about this kind of stuff with regular folks.”

  “With the herd, you mean,” Lutz said.

  “Yeah, people are like cattle, aren’t they?” Crivaro said. “They believe what they’re told. They don’t think for themselves. Not like you and me.”

  He nudged Riley, who got up and let him sit back down at the table. Then he leaned toward Lutz and spoke to him as if nobody else was in the room. Meanwhile, the lawyer just stared with his mouth hanging open, obviously wondering where this conversation could possibly be leading—and also whether he ought to put a stop to it.

  Crivaro said, “You know, you might just be right about the futility of what I do. Just between you and me, I sometimes wonder if I’m just wasting my time as a lawman, and maybe I should just pack it in. Maybe I’m wrong and the bad guys are right.”

  Lutz laughed.

  “There you go, talking about right and wrong again,” he said. “There is no right or wrong. All we’ve got is our instincts and impulses. We should follow our instincts and ignore everything else. And if other people suffer—well, that’s entirely irrelevant. The laws and morals of the herd are not meant for the likes of us. We’re under no obligation to comply with them.”

  Crivaro shook his head and said to Lutz, “Yeah, it would be nice to get back to pure instinct. But it’s hard to do, in a world where everybody’s telling you what to do and how to live. I feel like I lost touch with my own instincts a long time ago.”

  Crivaro paused for a moment.

  Then drumming his fingers on the table, he added, “I don’t know what I want, Shawn. Deep down, I mean. All I know is that my job makes less and less sense to me. I want to find my way back to something more—well, primal, I guess.”

  Riley was starting to get alarmed now. As they kept talking, Crivaro didn’t seem to be interrogating the suspect at all. Instead, he seemed almost to be confiding in him about his private doubts and longings.

  Soon Lutz said something that really caught Riley’s attention.

  “That’s why I keep looking for companions, kindred spirits, like-minded people.”

  Riley remembered a word Mitch Brown had used to describe him.

  Persuasive.

  Regarding the whole religion thing, Lutz seemed to have persuaded Mitch thoroughly. Mitch himself had said so.

  “Don’t guess I’ll ever set foot in a church again, no matter how much my wife tries to drag me there.”

  And now Riley realized something about Lutz.

  He’s looking for converts.

  Almost like some kind of missionary, he was trying to surround himself with people who believed and thought just like he did. Apparently he had succeeded with Mitch Brown. And right now, it seemed almost as though he was succeeding with Agent Crivaro.

  Unless Crivaro is just playing along.

  But surely Lutz couldn’t succeed in persuading everybody. Riley tried to imagine how he might react to someone who didn’t swallow his whole “God is dead” routine—someone who pushed back and tried to tell him he was wrong.

  Suddenly the whole thing made horrible sense to Riley. Here Lutz was, preaching not only atheism but amorality, a life of pure instinct and impulse, with no regard for other people’s feelings or even lives.

  I’ll bet his impulses aren’t pretty, Riley thought.

  She found it very easy to imagine him getting very angry who disagreed with him.

  Was that what had happened with Natalie, and Kimberly, and Sister Sandra?

  Were all three of them too religious to go along with him?

  Had he murdered them to punish them?

  Yes, that’s it, she thought with a sharp tingle of certainty.

  Riley wanted to get into the thick of the conversation Lutz was having with Crivaro. With this new insight, surely she could trip him up—maybe even get him to confess.

  But before she could even think of what to say, the interrogation room door opened and Sheriff Quayle stepped inside.

  He said, “Agents Crivaro and Sweeney—I need to have a word with you.”

  Crivaro looked annoyed to be interrupted. But he followed Riley and Quayle out of the booth into the adjoining room.

  Riley could see that Quayle looked deeply alarmed.

  He said, “My guys searched Lutz’s place. They found something, all right. He’s growing an impressive amount of marijuana in his basement.”

  Riley felt a jolt of surprise. But before she could wrap her mind about what this discovery might mean, Sheriff Quayle spoke again.

  “I’ve got worse news. Another body has been found.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  Jake was concerned about his young partner’s silence during the drive to the new crime scene. Even as he kept his attention on following Sheriff Quayle’s car, he couldn’t help wondering how Riley was taking the news of another victim. So far during the drive, she hadn’t said a word.

  Finally, in a broken, stammering voice, she said, “Agent Crivaro… do you think…?”

  Her voice faded, but Jake knew what she wanted to ask.

  Might this new victim be Sister Sandra?

  “I don’t know, Riley,” Jake said. “Even Sheriff Quayle doesn’t know. All he knows is that another body has been found. We’ll just have to see.”

  His words were of no comfort, and he knew it.

  And the truth was, he was plenty anxious about that himself.

  Just yesterday, he’d been sure that Sister Sandra was just a runaway, not an abduction victim at all. He might well have been wrong. If she had been murdered, what did that say about his judgment?

  He stifled a discouraged groan. Ever since they had started working on this case, he’d been badgering Riley about whether she was up to the job.

  But what about me?

  Am I up to it?

  Trying to shake off his apprehension, he decided that both he and Riley needed to talk about something else.

  “What did you think about our suspect?” he asked.

  In an expressionless monotone, Riley said, “We know he was growing pot in his basement. When he first saw us back at that trailer, maybe he thought that was why we were after him.”

  “Yeah, and maybe that was why he ran,” Jake said. “But we can’t be sure of that. We can’t be sure of anything, the way his lawyer keeps him from answering our questions about alibis and such.”
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  “He sure talked a lot, though,” Riley said. “To you, anyway.”

  Jake grunted and said, “Yeah, I guess I’ve got a way of drawing out that kind of a guy. It was pretty easy to figure out his worldview—one part Nietzsche, one part Dostoevsky.”

  Riley gave Jake a slightly surprised look.

  Jake said, “Hey, don’t look at me like I’m supposed to be some illiterate stooge. I’ve read some books, you know. Nietzsche’s the philosopher who said that God is dead. Dostoevsky wrote novels about what people would do if they really believed that. He figured they’d be capable of any sort of crime, including murder. ‘Without God, all things are permitted,’ he said.”

  “Is that what you believe?” Riley asked.

  Jake was taken aback by the question.

  He forced a laugh and said, “Come on, you know me better than that.”

  “He sure seemed to think you were on his wavelength,” Riley said.

  Jake shook his head and said nothing for a few seconds. The truth was, he was still unsettled by that interview—not just by things Lutz had said, but things he’d heard himself saying.

  “Riley, this job really gets under your moral skin after a while,” Jake said. “It’s only natural that you start suspecting the worst about human nature. But you also start wondering about the whole damned universe. Who’s in charge, anyway? And why does he—or she—let so many terrible things happen in the world?”

  Jake thought for a moment, and then added, “You should read some Dostoevsky, you know. In a way, he was one hell of a forensic psychologist. You can learn stuff from him that you can’t get out of any textbooks.”

  Another silence fell between them.

  “So what do you think about Shawn Lutz?” Riley asked.

  Jake thought for a moment.

  Then he said, “Well, aside from being a pseudo-intellectual, he’s also a sociopath, and a narcissist, and more than a bit of a bullshit artist. And if you want to know whether he’s capable of murder…”

  Jake shrugged and added, “I’d say maybe, yeah.”

  Jake followed Sheriff Quayle’s car as he turned off the main highway onto a gravel country road. After about a mile, a group of parked vehicles came into sight—a couple of police cars and a medical examiner’s van. There was no shoulder along there, so the cars pretty much blocked the road—not that it looked like there was ever much traffic this way.