by Blake Pierce
Then he said, “I hear you threw a guy into the pool.”
Riley couldn’t help but giggle nervously.
She said, “I guess word really gets around this place.”
Crivaro glared at her. “It’s not funny, Riley. We just got here this
afternoon, and you’ve already drawn attention to us. The guys at the bar were
asking each other questions, wondering who you might be. I played dumb,
although it was pretty easy to guess it was you who dunked the guy. What the
hell did you think you were doing?”
Riley winced at the anger in his voice.
She said, “He made a pass at me. I just reacted.”
Crivaro growled, “Well, the next time a guy makes a pass at you, don’t
react like a superhero. Just say no. Isn’t that what young women normally
do? Is that too much to ask?”
Riley swallowed hard. “No. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t let it happen again.”
“I won’t.”
Crivaro sipped his beer again and stared at his sandwich. He didn’t seem
very interested in eating it.
Riley suggested, “Maybe we should have dinner at one of the restaurants.
We could try to talk to some more people.”
“Not tonight,” Crivaro said. “We ought to lay low until tomorrow. In the
morning we can talk to the Wren’s Nest management, see if we can get more
details about Brett Parma—like where she’d come from, maybe where she
was headed. Anyway, it’s been a long day. I’m worn out, and I’m sure you
are too.”
He pushed the paper plate with the sandwich away and got up from the
table.
“I’m going to take a shower and turn in for the night,” he said.
He walked on into the RV without saying another word.
Riley sat alone at the picnic table in the deepening dusk, feeling slightly
stunned. It seemed like she simply couldn’t anticipate Crivaro’s mood from
moment to moment. Riley knew it was her own fault that he was mad at her
right now, but …
Why does he have to talk to me that way?
Sometimes she wondered whether Agent Crivaro cared about her feelings
at all.
She remembered something Ryan had said to her over the phone a while
ago.
“I think he exploits your abilities. He doesn’t care about you or your
safety.”
Was it possible Ryan was right? At least a little bit?
Did Crivaro think of Riley as some sort of freakish prodigy he could shape
into his own image, and nothing more than that?
She took a sip of her own beer and thought …
No, Ryan’s wrong.
She could think of plenty of times when Crivaro had shown concern for
her. If it weren’t for him, she probably wouldn’t be alive today. He really was like a father to her, even at times like now. It was just that sometimes he was sometimes so sharply critical …
Almost like my real father.
She sighed deeply and stared at her sandwich.
She didn’t feel much like eating either, and she felt very tired. She put the
sandwiches and beers back on the tray and carried them inside the RV, where
she could hear the shower running in the little bathroom. She wrapped up the
sandwiches and put them in the refrigerator so she and Crivaro could eat
them tomorrow.
After that she climbed up into her bed above the RV’s cab and pulled the
curtains shut, closing herself into a small but reasonably comfortable sleeping space. She stared out the little window into the growing darkness.
It was strange to think that the killer was out there somewhere, living his
life, feeling unthreatened, planning his next murder.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” she murmured aloud to him. “We’re coming
after you.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Riley was stumbling along a dark trail. The dim light revealed tufts of
rough brush encroaching on both sides of the narrow path. Huge figures with raised arms were silhouetted in the harsh moonlight.
Saguaro cactuses, she realized.
That meant she was somewhere in the desert.
She was worried because she’d never been out in the desert at night
before, and she didn’t know her way …
Or even what I’m doing here.
With her next step, her foot struck something large and soft lying on the
trail in front of her. She looked down and saw a woman’s dead body with
terrified wide-open eyes, her flesh so pale that it seemed almost
phosphorescent.
Riley’s heart sank with despair.
Crivaro and I are too late, she thought.
There’s been another murder.
She reached for a pocket flashlight to get a better look at the body. The
beam fastened on the victim’s forearms, which were slashed wildly like some abstract painting, but no longer bleeding …
Because there’s no blood left in her.
Or was that true? A dark pool on the ground near the corpse seemed to be
growing wider.
As Riley stooped down to look closely at the pool, she felt a stickiness
under the soles of her shoes.
Her flashlight beam revealed that there was more blood on the ground
and that she was standing in it and …
I’m bleeding! I’m bleeding badly!
She shone the flashlight on her left wrist and saw that she’d been slashed
there over and over again. Her blood was flowing freely from the wounds,
pouring out into the growing blotch in the desert soil.
When she rose to her feet, she almost fainted dead away. The flashlight
fell from her hands, and the world suddenly got much, much darker.
She staggered wildly and flailed her arms.
Her hands struck against a hard surface.
She was surrounded by pitch blackness now, and couldn’t see anything at all. But as she turned about and reached in all directions, she discovered …
I’m shut in.
She’d been suddenly locked in some small space, a tiny room.
I’ve got to get out, she thought.
I’ve got to get out before I bleed to death.
She started pounding on the walls, screaming for help …
Riley eyes snapped open as her knuckles slammed against a hard surface.
She quickly realized she was lying in her little sleeping compartment
above the cab of the RV.
She was striking her fist against the ceiling directly above her.
She remembered her dream, and she remembered screaming.
Did I scream out loud?
If so, had Crivaro heard her? Had she woken him up? It was an
embarrassing possibility. But Riley didn’t hear him grumbling or moving
about.
She looked at her watch and saw that she’d slept later than she’d expected.
She pulled the curtain open and climbed down from her perch.
A sheet of paper was on the camper’s table.
It was a note that began …
Riley—
I headed out early to start checking around the grounds. I’ll talk to the
management as soon as the office opens, see if I can get any more
information out of them. Meanwhile, here’s some stuff I want you to do …
The to-do list only had a couple of items on it. First, Crivaro wanted Riley
to reread the small stack of faxed reports they’d gotten from Chief Webster
yesterday to see if anything jumped out at her that
they hadn’t noticed
yesterday. That seemed like an innocuous enough a task.
The second item, though, filled Riley with dread.
Crivaro wanted her to call Brett Parma’s mother, who lived in North
Platte, Nebraska.
But why? Riley wondered.
She knew the Tunsboro police had already gotten in touch with the
woman. What could Riley ask her that they hadn’t asked her already? Now that she and Crivaro knew that Brett Parma had been murdered by the same
killer who had struck a year ago in Colorado, did her partner really think the
mother would have any firsthand knowledge of who he might be?
It seemed extremely unlikely.
Riley took another look at her watch. She knew it was two hours later in
Nebraska than here in Arizona, but even so it seemed just a little early to call the murder victim’s mother.
She went into the little bathroom and got into fresh clothes, shorts, and a
top she thought suitable for the RV life.
Crivaro had already made a pot of hot coffee. Riley poured herself a bowl
of cereal and sat at the table.
As she began to eat, Riley worried about Crivaro. Why had he gotten up
and left without waking her to come along with him? Was he still pissed off
with her on account of her dunking that guy in the pool yesterday?
Had he decided that making her his partner had been a mistake all along?
Was she going to wind up on the next available flight back to Virginia?
She wished she had some idea.
As she ate, she thumbed through the police report again. She didn’t see
anything she hadn’t noticed yesterday. Aside from how Webster’s team had
bungled the crime scene, it seemed to Riley that they had done a pretty good
job of investigating what had initially seemed to be a one-off murder case.
Chief Webster himself had interviewed the owner of the Wren’s Nest
Campground, who had supplied him with some of the information that Riley
was looking at right now. This included registrations of campers who had
come and gone during recent days. Riley said their names aloud as she read
them, hoping she’d maybe remember them if they turned up again. But for
the time being, there was no reason to suspect any of them in particular.
The Tunsboro cops had also tracked down Brett Parma’s movements
during the days before she’d come to the Wren’s Nest Campground. She’d
left North Platte about a week and a half ago and had camped out at the
Petrified Forest and the Mogollon Rim for a few days each before arriving
here. No one knew where she might have been headed after she’d checked
out of the Wren’s Next Campground.
The cops had also run a search to see if any campers who’d been at the
Wren’s Nest during Brett Parma’s stay had also been at either of the other
two campgrounds she’d visited earlier. They hadn’t found any matches.
Riley sighed as she turned the last page of the material and finished her
cup of coffee. She realized she mustn’t put off calling Brett Parma’s mother
any longer. It wouldn’t do to have Crivaro come back and find that she hadn’t
done it yet.
She took out her cell phone and punched in the number for Dale Parma in
North Platte.
When the woman answered the phone, Riley said, “Mrs. Parma, I’m sorry
to trouble you, but this is Agent Riley Sweeney with the FBI and—”
Interrupting, Dale Parma said, “Oh! I hadn’t known the FBI was involved.
I thought it was just the local police down there. I can’t tell you how hard this has been for me. Please tell me you’ve got some news.”
Riley gulped hard.
She supposed that she did have some news—and that was that Dale
Parma’s daughter had been murdered by a serial killer. But should Riley tell
her that? In his note, Crivaro hadn’t given her any instructions one way or the other.
Riley quickly decided it might be best to be evasive.
“Our investigation is underway, Mrs. Parma. I’m afraid I don’t have
anything new to tell you.”
She heard Mrs. Parma groan with despair.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” the woman said. “So why are you calling me?”
Riley gulped and thought …
That’s a good question.
She said, “I just wanted to ask you … a few things.”
Mrs. Parma gasped slightly.
“Good Lord, what could you possibly want me to tell you? I’ve answered
so many questions already. I’m exhausted from trying to think of answers.”
Riley wanted to admit that this call had been a mistake, to apologize and
say goodbye …
But Crivaro told me to talk to her.
Riley summoned up her courage and said, “Mrs. Parma, I know you’ve
already been asked lots of questions, so please forgive me. The FBI just got
started on this case, and we need to be thorough and get a fresh start. Can you think of anyone who might have wished your daughter harm?”
“Absolutely not,” Mrs. Parma said. “And yes, I did answer that question
already.”
Riley struggled to think of anything more to ask. Nothing that came to
mind seemed the least bit relevant, now that they knew that Brett Parma had
been murdered by a serial killer, and quite possibly a stranger. What could
this woman possibly know that would be the least bit helpful?
Even so, Riley asked …
“Was Brett engaged, or did she have a relationship, a boyfriend, anything
like that?”
“I don’t think so,” Mrs. Parma said with a sigh. “You’d think I’d know,
living in the same town with my only daughter. But she just … drifted away
from me during the last few years. Emotionally, I mean.”
The woman was quiet for a moment.
Then she said, “My husband, her father, died three years ago, and I guess
she was always a little closer to him than she was to me, and after he was
gone I’d go for months at a time without hearing from her at all.”
Riley listened closely as the woman kept talking. Mrs. Parma said she
thought that Brett had been restless and lonely, and she sometimes said she
hated her receptionist job at the Hanson Family Medical Group …
Riley listened as Mrs. Parma rattled on about how Brett had been so
different as a little girl, so cheerful and outgoing, but how she’d changed
during her teen years, becoming sullen and sad, and how things were never
the same after that.
Finally the woman blurted out a question …
“Agent Sweeney—could you tell me why?”
Riley winced sharply and wondered …
What on earth can I possibly say?
Slowly and carefully, Riley began …
“Mrs. Parma, a killer’s mind can be a terrible mystery, even to
investigators like—”
Mrs. Parma interrupted, “No, I don’t mean that. I mean, can you tell me
why she went away like that? She went on this trip without even telling me.
I’m not sure she told anybody. If she had, somebody could have told her it
was dangerous for a young woman to go traveling alone, especially camping.
It seems like such a crazy thing to do. Do you know why she did it?”
Riley swallowed hard at a sudden awful realization.
Yes, I know why she did it.
After lis
tening to the woman talk, Riley felt sure the victim’s mother also knew the truth deep in her gut.
She was sick of North Platte.
She was sick of her life there.
Brett Parma had been desperate to get away from everything she’d ever
known—including her own mother.
But Riley didn’t dare say all that aloud.
What would be the point in it?
Instead she said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know.”
Riley thought she heard the woman choke back a sob.
“Of course you don’t,” she said. “I don’t know why I asked. I’m being
foolish.”
Riley clumsily told Mrs. Parma that she was sorry for her loss, then
thanked her for her time and ended the call.
She sat at the kitchen table staring at the phone.
She remembered Mrs. Parma saying …
“I’m being foolish.”
Now that the call was over, Riley herself felt foolish. It took a few
moments for her to realize why. The call had been absolutely pointless, and
Riley should never have made it. What was worse, Agent Crivaro surely
knew it would be pointless, and yet he’d told Riley to do it anyway.
But why?
An unpleasant possibility dawned on her.
Maybe he just wanted me to do something pointless and painful.
Maybe he was trying to drive her away by giving her unpleasant and
useless tasks. If so, Riley wished he’d just tell her to go away and get it done with. It seemed cruel of him to drag out the inevitable end of their
partnership.
At that moment, the motor home door slammed open.
Crivaro came charging in, red-faced and panting.
He almost yelled, “Come out here and give me a hand. We’ve got to
disconnect all the utilities. We’re getting out of here right now!”
“Why?” Riley asked.
“There’s been another murder,” Crivaro said.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Riley gripped the dashboard fearfully as the RV tires squealed and a truck
behind them honked furiously. Agent Crivaro had veered their motor home
sharply into the left lane, cutting off an eighteen-wheeler. As the truck bore
down on them, Crivaro swerved back to the right without even taking the
trouble to signal.
More angry honking ensued from a driver in that lane.
“Don’t forget you’re driving a small house,” Riley told him nervously.
