by Blake Pierce
Quayle pulled over, and Jake parked right behind him. He and Riley got out of the car and followed Quayle over to a group of cops. The county sheriff came forward to meet them.
The sheriff said to Quayle, “This looks like your serial killer’s work. Since you put out the APB to warn the public, I called you as soon as I found out about it.”
Quayle asked him, “Who found the body?”
“It was a jogger out running with his dog a while ago,” the sheriff said. Then he pointed to a patch of tall weeds and added, “The dog got interested in something in the grass over there. That’s where the jogger found her.”
Jake looked where the sheriff was pointing. Standing in some tall weeds were the ME and his team. They were taking photographs.
As he and Riley and Quayle followed the sheriff out into the weeds, Jake realized that his pulse was racing. He wasn’t sure why. He’d visited hundreds of crime scenes before, and had long since gotten inured to the sight of a corpse. Why was he feeling so agitated this time?
Soon the body came into view, and Jake realized that his anxiety was all too well justified.
He heard the sheriff ask, “Do you have any idea who the victim is?”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “It’s Sister Sandra Hobson, a teacher at Magdalene High School.”
Jake knew there could be no mistake. The victim was dressed in a white habit and a black and white wimple.
But she didn’t look real somehow. Lying there in the thin snow with her hands crossed on her chest, she looked utterly peaceful, like some fairytale princess awaiting the kiss of a handsome young prince to bring her back to life. Even the bruise on her neck looked somehow ornamental, not like something caused by a brutal act of strangulation.
Jake barely listened as Quayle, the sheriff, and the ME talked about the body and how it was found. One question was uppermost in Jake’s mind.
Did Shawn Lutz do this?
It wasn’t impossible, at least according to the time frame as he understood it. They’d arrested Lutz just a couple of hours ago, but Sister Sandra had gone missing the night before last and had been left here last night.
They needed to find out where Lutz had been during those periods of time. In fact, they’d have to find out where he’d been over a wide range of hours, since all of the victims had been abducted well before they were killed. Lutz seemed to be the independent kind of guy who could do whatever he wanted at whatever hour he wanted to. He just could be the serial killer they were looking for.
But still…
Jake tried to imagine Shawn Lutz bringing Sister Sandra’s body here, laying her gently among these weeds and arranging her so perfectly. Jake remembered Lutz’s smirking, superior attitude—and most of all, his utter contempt for any notion of right or wrong. Could he have created the weirdly reverent spectacle Jake was looking upon right now?
Jake searched his mind for an answer. But his normally keen instincts just weren’t kicking in.
Maybe Riley can get a better idea.
But just as he was about to turn and ask her, he felt a heavy weight on his shoulder. He quickly realized that Riley had fallen against him and was clinging to him for support.
“Riley! What’s the matter?” he said.
But Riley didn’t reply. She’d gone deathly pale, and her eyes were rolling back under their lids. Jake managed to catch her before she fainted dead away.
He held her up and lifted her chin and whispered, “Come on, kid. Let’s get you away from here.”
She nodded mutely and allowed him to start leading her away.
Jake heard the ME’s voice calling after him.
“What do you want us to do with the body?”
Jake knew there was no point in preserving the crime scene exactly in its current state. He was already sure that this killing was exactly like the others.
He turned toward the ME and said, “You can load her up and take her away.”
As the ME started giving orders to his team, Jake began to lead Riley toward their borrowed car. He was anxious that she not collapse in full view of the cops and the ME’s team. He managed to get her into the back seat of their vehicle and climbed in beside her.
“Put your head down,” Jake said to her in a gentle voice. “Breathe deep and slow.”
Riley obeyed, holding her head against her knees for a minute or so. Then she jerked back and gasped, as if she were suddenly bursting through the surface of water after being submerged and holding her breath for too long.
“It’s my fault,” she cried out in a desperate voice. “She’s dead because of me.”
“It’s not your fault,” Jake said.
“It is,” Riley said, starting to sob. “I let them down. I let both of them down.”
Jake was momentarily confused.
Both of them?
Then he realized…
Heidi Wright.
The sight of Sister Sandra’s body had reawakened that other recent trauma.
Jake began to sputter and try to reassure her that neither death was her fault—that she’d had no choice but to kill Heidi, and someone else entirely was responsible for what had happened to Sister Sandra. But Riley wouldn’t listen.
“They deserved better,” she sobbed.
“Heidi was a killer,” he reminded her.
“She was a human being, just like Sandra. They both deserved to live. They’re dead because of me. And more people are going to die. And we don’t know how to stop them from dying.”
“We don’t know that,” Jake said. “We’ve got a suspect in custody.”
“He didn’t kill anybody and you know it,” Riley said.
Jake couldn’t argue with her. He knew she might well be right. As distraught as she was, her instincts were still working better than his. And even he hadn’t been able to imagine Shawn Lutz carrying out this murder.
Jake tried to put his arms around Riley, but she pushed him sharply away.
“I told you,” she said angrily. “You didn’t listen.”
Jake felt as though his breath had been knocked out of him.
She’s right, he thought.
He remembered how hard he’d been on her for insisting that Sister Sandra had been abducted—especially when she’d wanted to return to the Magdalene campus that night.
I could have gone with her, Jake thought.
Instead he’d thrust the car keys at her.
“Go ahead, knock yourself out,” he’d said.
He was seized with shame at his terrible mistake.
How could I have been so wrong? he wondered.
Had he let his own miserable years in a Catholic school affect his judgment? Had that been why he’d been so convinced that Sister Sandra had simply run away—because he couldn’t imagine anyone choosing to live the life she’d so wholeheartedly chosen?
Worst of all, if he’d gone with Riley last night, could they have solved this case once and for all?
Could they have rescued Sister Sandra before she was killed?
Jake’s thoughts were in turmoil, but Riley seemed to be calming herself.
“I’m sorry, Agent Crivaro,” she said. “You were right to doubt me. I just can’t deal with this. I don’t think I can ever work on a murder case ever again. I’ll never be any good as an agent. I just can’t do it. It’s time for me to go home.”
Jake took hold of her hand and squeezed it and said nothing.
He felt deeply exhausted, and his self-confidence was gone.
It’s almost funny, he thought.
Ever since they’d flown out here the day before yesterday, he’d been trying to get Riley to decide whether she was up to working on this case.
And now that she’d finally decided…
I can’t let her go back.
He knew he couldn’t solve this case without her help.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Larissa Billham sipped on her coffee and looked at her watch again.
Where is he? she wondered.
He’d said he was just going to the restroom, but that had been a good many minutes ago. As she sat alone at the table in the bustling Howard Johnson’s, she wondered—had she put him off somehow, maybe even offended him?
Or had he simply decided he didn’t like her and just taken off?
That would be rude of him, of course.
But with a sigh she realized—it would fit with her meager experiences with male behavior.
Maybe this whole thing was a mistake, she thought.
But she was thirty-two years old, and a kind of desperation had been coming over her lately. She felt like it was time to make a major change in her life. She hadn’t so much as been out on a date in eight or nine years. And those long-ago experiences had soured her on men. As the old saying put it…
“They’re all after just one thing.”
And she’d never been ready for that “thing” back in those days—certainly not with the guys in question. In fact, she’d never done that “thing” at all. She’d given up on men altogether—until now.
She wondered—was she making a mistake?
Larissa blushed as she remembered how her friend Penny had reacted when she’d let the truth slip to her during a coffee break at work a couple of weeks ago.
“You’re a virgin?” Penny had exclaimed, so loudly that Larissa was afraid someone else would hear her. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Are you going to spend the rest of your life trying to be Doris Day?”
Penny had badgered her about it during the days that followed. Larissa just had to get laid, she said—“by any means necessary.”
And Larissa had some pretty vulgar ideas of what those “means” might be.
A year or so ago, Larissa would have shrugged off Penny’s entreaties. But that quiet desperation that had been creeping up inside her seemed to be getting stronger every day. She’d done nothing with her adult life so far except be an efficient and perfectly capable paralegal at Colville & Bean.
It was time for a change.
It was time for an adventure.
She wasn’t looking for sex, she kept telling herself—just the kind of companionship she’d been denying herself all these years.
Of course she knew that sex might wind up being part of that package. The prospect scared her a little. But nobody ever said adventures shouldn’t be a little scary. And anyway, it was about time for a change in that department as well.
A server came by the table and asked, “Are you ready to order?”
Larissa said, “No, I’m waiting for my… friend to come back.”
The server smiled tensely and headed off toward another table. Larissa understood the server’s attitude from when she’d waited tables herself many years ago. She’d learned way back then that a server had to stay in constant motion during a frantic lunch shift like this.
“Run and gun,” they’d called it in those days.
Larissa looked at her watch again.
I’ll give him three more minutes, she thought. Then I’ll leave.
It was noon here at the Howard Johnson’s, and the place was packed, and the servers were extremely busy.
What a crazy time and place for a date, she thought.
She remembered how this whole thing had been set up. She’d had no intention of striking up some kind of relationship “by any means necessary.” She wanted to be sensible about it—and safe. She didn’t want to wind up with the same kind of guy who had put her off guys in the first place.
One day recently while waiting her turn in a hair salon, she’d run across a monthly newsletter entitled Wholesome Ways. She’d found it to be rather charming—full of non-denominational advice on how to live a clean, moral life. It seemed like a quaint relic of an earlier era, all about the importance nuclear families and abstinence before marriage. It included recipes, games, vacation ideas—and also personals ads, most of them from people looking for like-minded people to date.
She’d come up with the clever idea of putting a dating ad in Wholesome Ways herself. She was sure that it would guarantee that whoever answered it wouldn’t be another creep on the make. It would be someone with intentions that were more…
Well, virtuous.
But she didn’t want a guy who was so virtuous that he’d bore her to death. He needed to be open to…
Possibilities.
The ads from women typically stipulated that they weren’t interested in sex, just affection and companionship and common values. She knew she had to word her own ad a little differently. So she came up with something she hoped would work:
32 year-old attractive female, lives in Boneau, KY
Unattached since, well, forever.
Hoping to change all that with an attractive, intelligent, gentle, considerate male who respects boundaries.
She’d signed the ad with the name “Annette.” She’d quickly gotten a response on the newsletter’s message board from a guy who called himself Nick, who lived in the nearby town of Sigmont. After they’d exchanged a handful of messages, Nick had struck her as a charming guy.
Nick had been coy about going into any details about his past relationships via email. But he was just a few years older than Larissa, and she got the distinct impression that he, too, had never been in a long-term relationship.
We’ll be on equal footing, she’d thought.
But where and when to meet for the first time had proven to be a whole different issue. Boneau was full of gossipy people, and Larissa dreaded being seen with a date anywhere in town. Nick seemed to feel exactly the same way about Sigmont.
He’d come up with an amusing suggestion that sounded like it would suit both of them. They’d meet for lunch at Howard Johnson’s just off the nearby interstate. It was hardly a romantic setting for their first date, but the chances of either of them being seen by anybody they knew there were just about nil.
Larissa had cheerfully agreed to the idea, and now here she was.
In a curious way, it really did feel like the ideal place to meet. Although the restaurant was packed and busy, there wasn’t a single familiar face anywhere. Most, if not all of the patrons were just passing through on the interstate. Not only had Larissa never seen any of them ever before, she was all but certain never to see any of them ever again.
It really felt quite perfect in its way—even oddly private, despite the ongoing bustle of activity.
But it was starting to look like things weren’t going at all as she had hoped.
She looked at her watch again.
It’s time to give up, she decided.
She felt lucky that they hadn’t ordered yet. When they’d arrived, a server had asked if she and Nick wanted anything to drink while they decided what to order, and they’d both asked for coffee. If she left here right now, she could simply leave enough cash to pay for both of their coffees and also leave a nice tip.
She put some money on the table. But just when she was putting on her jacket and getting ready to leave, she heard a voice.
“Say—you’re not trying to get away from me, are you?”
She turned and saw the man who called himself Nick smiling down at her. As she had when she’d first met him a little while ago, she melted a bit at the sight of his smiling face. He was a much more handsome man than she’d dared to hope for.
Larissa stammered, “Oh, no, I just… wondered…”
Nick sat down again across from her.
“I know, I was gone for longer than I expected. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I had to make a phone call. Business, of course.”
Larissa took her jacket back off and picked up the money from the table.
Then she looked at Nick curiously. Judging from his clothes and grooming, she figured he must be fairly prosperous. But neither of them had mentioned their jobs during their communications so far.
She asked shyly, “So—what is your business?”
Nick ducked his head and smiled sheepishly, as if he didn’t want to reply.
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br /> “You go first,” he said. “Tell me about yourself.”
She wondered whether this might be a good time for both of them to come clean about their real names. But somehow she didn’t feel ready for that.
Instead she laughed and said, “I guess you could say I’m in the divorce business.”
Nick raised his eyebrows in surprise.
Larissa added, “I’m a paralegal for Colville & Bean.”
Nick nodded knowingly.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “The divorce law firm in Boneau.”
“That’s right,” Larissa said. “You’d be surprised at what a thriving business we do, even in this part of the country.”
Nick shook his head and sighed.
“Oh, I’m not surprised at all,” he said. “The decay of family values is spreading simply everywhere.”
Larissa felt a twinge of unease at the moralistic tone in his voice. Meanwhile, she noticed the server making another pass at their table. The server looked at them and obviously sensed that they were in mid-conversation and still hadn’t made up their minds what to order, so he moved right on again.
“Okay, it’s your turn,” she said, forcing a smile. “What do you do?”
Nick said, “Oh, it’s nothing interesting. The truth is, I’m still very curious about you.”
Larissa didn’t know whether to feel flattered or uneasy.
Is there something he doesn’t want to tell me? she wondered.
Nick paused for a moment. Then he looked her in the eyes and said, “Please believe me, I’m not in the habit of doing this. I’ve never answered an ad like that before. But yours really caught my attention.”
“How so?” Larissa asked.
Nick stroked his chin thoughtfully.
“Something about how it was worded, I guess,” he said. “You wrote that you’d been ‘unattached forever.’ Does that mean…?”
His voice trailed off, but Larissa could tell what he meant to ask.
And she felt distinctly uneasy now.