Blake Pierce - The Making of Riley Paige - 4 - Taking

by Blake Pierce

  was going through a bitter time in her life, and she probably wasn’t inclined

  to trust people.

  And yet …

  She’d apparently trusted the killer enough for him to abduct her and kill

  her, perhaps without a lot of effort.

  And so had the woman who was lying here right now.

  She thought about saying so to Crivaro, but he was still busy talking with

  the Sedona police chief and the county ME. Instead, Riley walked over to the

  body and crouched down for a better look at it.

  Again, she was struck by how different this body looked from the one

  she’d seen in the morgue back in Stover. Brett Parma’s body had been so

  horribly mangled after her death that Riley had felt distracted from the

  wounds that had actually killed her.

  But that wasn’t the case with this woman. The cause of death was easy to

  see. Her clothes were stained with the blood that had spurted from her

  forearms, which bore the same wild wounds as the other two victims. The

  ground underneath her was startlingly pristine, showing no sign that she’d

  done any serious bleeding here.

  Now Riley found herself staring at the woman’s hands. The nails were

  torn and the knuckles cut and bruised. She knew that the other corpses had

  similar wounds, but Riley hadn’t given them much thought before.

  But now …

  Riley shuddered as she flashed back to last night’s nightmare. She

  remembered her horror when she realized she was bleeding from her own

  wrists. Then she’d found herself in a dark, tight space, clawing away at four

  walls …

  She gasped aloud as she realized …

  That’s exactly what happened to this victim.

  She walked over to Crivaro and interrupted his conversation by touching

  him on the arm.

  “Agent Crivaro, I think I know something about how the victim died.”

  Crivaro turned and looked at her with interest.

  She said, “She bled to death in a small room—a really, really small room.

  An extremely tight space.”

  Crivaro squinted at her curiously. For a moment, Riley worried that he

  considered this to be a trivial detail.

  Then Crivaro said to the medical examiner, “Do you know Paco Arau, the

  ME down in Stover?”

  Faulkner nodded and said, “Yeah, Paco and I are good pals.”

  Crivaro scratched his chin and said, “Well, Paco will be examining

  whatever he finds under Brett Parma’s fingernails—hairs, fibers, any other

  kind of materials. I want you to do the same with this corpse and then get in

  touch with Paco and compare notes. And also compare whatever the two of

  you find with the information we’ve got about the victim in Colorado. If you

  need any help, let me know, and I’ll get some FBI forensics experts to work

  with you.”

  “I’ll do that,” Faulkner said, then glanced at the corpse and added, “If it’s

  OK with you, I’d like my team to take the body to the morgue now. It’s been

  outdoors long enough.”

  “Go ahead and do that,” Crivaro said.

  Crivaro fell silent for a moment. Riley could tell he was mulling over an

  idea.

  Then he said to Riley and the police chief, “Come on, let’s go back to the

  road.”

  The three of them walked back to where the vehicles were parked. Riley

  noticed the distraught-looking couple was still sitting in the police car.

  Crivaro pointed down to some tire tracks and said to Chief Wilson …

  “I take it you found these tracks when you got here.”

  Wilson nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been careful to keep them from being

  disturbed. My bet is they’re from the perpetrator’s vehicle. It looks like it

  pulled out of here after the rain stopped. I don’t think you’ll get a lot of

  information from these tracks, though. The treads are pretty pristine, no

  distinguishing marks or flaws that I can see.”

  Crivaro looked at Riley and said, “What kind of vehicle do you think made these tracks?”

  Riley knew he was quizzing her again.

  She thought for a moment, then said, “It might have been an RV.”

  “What kind of RV?” Crivaro asked.

  Riley remembered their visit to the RV rental place.

  She said, “With tires like these, it was as big as a bus. That means it would

  have been a Class A RV.”

  Crivaro nodded silently, waiting for her to say something else.

  But what? Riley wondered.

  Then it occurred to her.

  “A bathroom in a big RV would be just the size of the kind of small room

  I’m talking about.”

  Crivaro nodded again and said, “That’s what I’m thinking too. The blood

  might have gone down a shower drain and collected with his wastewater. He

  could have disposed of the blood along with everything else.”

  Riley felt a tingle of excitement.

  She said, “So now we know—the killer’s in a Class A RV, one of the

  biggest motor homes.”

  “It’s a pretty good guess, anyway,” Crivaro said.

  Riley said, “That means we’ve got to go to the campground she’d been

  staying at while she was here in Sedona, see what we can find out there.”

  Crivaro groaned and said, “Does that mean going undercover again?”

  Riley smiled. “I don’t see any way around it. Anyway, we’re already

  dressed for it, and we’ve got the right sort of vehicle.”

  Crivaro shook his head. “I don’t know, Riley. Last night didn’t go so

  well.”

  Riley felt a renewed pang of guilt about dunking that man in the pool.

  She said, “I won’t screw up again, I promise. We can do this. I can do

  this.”

  “If you say so,” Crivaro said. “I found it easier pretending to be a hit man.

  Anyway, we’ve got a couple more things to do before we get going.”

  Riley and Crivaro went over to the victim’s RV and took a look inside.

  The camper was actually elegant inside, probably quite expensive for its size.

  Everything was perfectly neat and immaculate, with no sign of a struggle.

  That seemed consistent with Riley’s intuition that the killer abducted his

  victims by getting them to trust him, not by force. He probably just lured them into his own motor home.

  Nodding toward the couple in the police car, Crivaro asked Chief Wilson

  …

  “What about those two?”

  Wilson shrugged a little and said …

  “They’ve already told us pretty much everything they could, I guess. Still,

  we’ll take them to the station and get a formal statement. Their names are

  Simon and Paula Haas. They’re tourists from LA.”

  Crivaro said to Riley, “Go over there and touch base with them. Find out

  what they’ve got to say. I’ve got a few more things to go over with the chief

  before you and I head on to the campground.”

  Riley hesitated. Again, she got the feeling that Crivaro was just trying to

  get her out of the way, if only briefly. Surely the couple wouldn’t be able to

  tell her anything they hadn’t already told the police.

  Riley quickly told herself …

  Don’t be so hypersensitive.

  Crivaro was just making certain they didn’t overlook any possible details.

  Riley walked over to the police
car and looked at the couple sitting in the

  back seat. They appeared to be almost catatonic with shock, and they were

  holding hands as if for dear life.

  Riley crouched by the open door and produced her badge. She gently

  introduced herself, and said, “I’m terribly sorry that you’re going through all this. Could I ask you just a couple of questions?”

  Paula Haas stared off into space as if she hadn’t heard what Riley had

  said. Simon looked up and nodded.

  Riley asked, “Could you tell me just how you found the victim?”

  Simon Haas wrinkled his brow, as if he were trying to remember

  something that had happened a long time ago.

  Finally, he said, “Paula and I came here just before dawn. We wanted to

  get on the trail before a lot of people got here. It looked like it was going to be a beautiful morning.”

  He nodded toward a nearby car and said, “We parked right over there, put

  on our backpacks, and started out onto the trail. We only got as far as the spot that people call the Transept …”

  He gulped down a sob of horror and said …

  “And there she was. Just lying there.”

  Riley shuddered at those words, as if she herself were seeing the corpse

  again—only this time with no warning, with no expectation that there could

  possibly be anything evil afoot. It was all too easy to imagine how the couple

  had felt. On top of the sheer horror of seeing the body, they must surely have

  been terrified for their own lives, at least for a few moments.

  Riley took a slow breath and asked …

  “Did you notice anybody else in the area? Any vehicles nearby? A large

  RV, for example?”

  Simon Haas shook his head and said, “No. Like I said, we got here really

  early. I don’t think there was anybody at all near here.”

  Finally Paula Haas looked at Riley. “Could you tell us … why?”

  Riley felt an eerie sense of déjà vu as she remembered Brett Parma’s

  mother saying the same thing to her yesterday …

  “Why?”

  Riley opened her mouth, but no words came out. She had no idea what to

  say—or even exactly what Paula was trying to ask her.

  Simon put his arm around his wife and said …

  “I guess what Paula wants to know is … how could something so awful

  happen in a beautiful place like this? We came here … hoping to experience

  something wonderful. We’d heard that Transept Trail was a really special

  place that few other people knew about. So how could …?”

  His voice trailed away, but he kept gazing at Riley imploringly.

  Riley managed to gasp out the words …

  “I’m so sorry that you’ve had to go through this. Thank you for your

  help.”

  As she got unsteadily to her feet and started to walk away, she saw

  Crivaro coming toward her.

  “We’re through here,” he said to Riley. “Let’s hit the road again.”

  As Riley followed him to the RV, she was overcome by a deep sense of

  pity—even deeper, in a way, than she’d felt for Mrs. Parma.

  Simon’s words echoed through her head.

  “We came here … hoping to experience something wonderful.”

  Riley realized that these two people had arrived in Sedona full of New

  Age ideas, full of naïve faith that the universe itself was a loving, benevolent place.

  But suddenly they knew what Riley had faced during her whole lifetime

  …

  The universe isn’t such a friendly place at all.

  And she knew that the evil she was tracking now wasn’t going to just

  disappear.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  As Crivaro drove the RV away from the crime scene, Riley tried to shake

  off a lingering discomfort over her conversation with Simon and Paula Haas.

  She simply hadn’t known how to respond to the couple’s shock at

  encountering such evil in what they had considered a holy place.

  Her mood wasn’t helped by the vehicle she saw coming from the opposite

  direction.

  A TV news truck hurtled past them, headed toward the murder scene.

  Crivaro grumbled, “Damn reporters. They found out pretty fast about this

  one. I guess they must monitor the police radio. Pretty soon the crime scene

  will be crawling with them.”

  Riley replied, “I’m glad they didn’t get there before we did.”

  As new as she was to investigative work, she’d had her own troubles

  dealing with the media. She knew what a nuisance they could be.

  Then Crivaro asked her, “Did you find out anything new from the

  couple?”

  Riley hesitated. She wished she could tell him how shaken she felt after

  that brief interview. But …

  He wouldn’t understand.

  “No,” she said. “Nothing they didn’t already tell the cops, I’m sure.”

  Crivaro grunted and said, “I figured that. Still, we can’t leave any stone

  unturned.”

  He drove on for a few moments, then added, “Chief Wilson and his team

  seem to know what they’re doing. Better than the guys back in Tunsboro,

  anyway. They’ve handled that crime scene really well. And Webster’s calling

  in the Arizona Highway Patrol to set up a circle of roadblocks around the

  whole area. They’ll check out RVs, especially the bigger ones. Maybe that

  will keep the killer from getting out of the area.”

  Riley looked at Crivaro with surprise.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” she asked.

  Crivaro shrugged and said, “Well, it’s one of the basics. What I’d do if I

  were Webster, I guess.”

  Then with a hint of sarcasm in his voice, he added, “Have you got a better

  idea?”

  Riley thought it over for a moment, then answered slowly …

  “I’m just worried that he’s long gone from the area. What if he is, and he

  hears that there have been roadblocks all around Sedona checking on big

  RVs? Won’t that put him on the alert, wherever he winds up? He’ll know

  what kind of RV we’re looking for, and that will make it easier for him to

  stay hidden. Maybe even get rid of the motor home.”

  Crivaro scoffed. “Yeah, that possibility occurred to me. But kid, it’s time

  you learned that every strategy has its risks. What if he’s still in the area, and we miss our chance to nab him before he gets very far? He’s committed two

  murders just a couple of days apart. He didn’t travel very far between the

  two. We know he’s got a taste for blood, and he’s likely to kill again soon, if he hasn’t already. Roadblocks aren’t a bad idea, believe me.”

  Riley still had her doubts, but now was no time to get into an argument.

  They were just then pulling into the entrance to the Spring View

  Campground, where Shelby Eden had been staying before she’d been killed.

  Crivaro parked their vehicle in front of the main office.

  “I’ll go on in,” he said, “and tell the management what we’re doing here,

  see if they can tell me anything useful.”

  As he climbed out of the cab he added with a growl …

  “Then we can set up the camper and do our undercover bit. I’ll sure be

  glad when we stop having to do this.”

  As he headed on into the office, Riley’s eyes drifted over to the

  campground itself. It was surprisingly lush with trees and vegetation. It

 
looked as though somebody had created a sort of oasis in the middle of the

  rocky desert.

  Riley climbed down out of the vehicle and wandered onto the grounds. To

  her surprise, the whole place looked like some kind of fantasy Hollywood

  movie set.

  She saw Asian varieties of pine, willow, and cherry trees so carefully

  trimmed they hardly looked real. Flowering plants were everywhere—

  magnolias, azaleas, camellias, and the like. White boulders were precisely

  placed amid patches of gravel or moss.

  She passed a statue of a woman wearing an acorn-shaped crown and

  flowing clothes—some sort of Buddhist figure, Riley guessed. Even the

  camping lots were so meticulously arranged that the expensive RVs seemed

  to blend naturally into their surroundings.

  Or maybe “naturally” isn’t the right word.

  The whole place struck Riley as positively weird, plunked into the Arizona

  desert like this. She couldn’t imagine how expensive it must have been to

  maintain in this dry climate.

  Riley crossed a rainbow-shaped wooden bridge over a crystal clear stream

  filled with large, shiny fish. The stream was fed by a small artificial waterfall.

  At the far end of the bridge was a little shopping area, with storefronts

  advertising astrology and tarot readings and Tai Chi classes and such. New

  Age music droned quietly over speakers.

  She spotted three women sitting at a table outside a little outdoor tea shop,

  sipping from delicate cups, talking and laughing. Riley thought this might be

  good place to start gathering information.

  As she strolled across the white gravel patio toward the women, they

  looked up at her with curious expressions. She realized that all three of them

  were dressed in flowing, loose-fitting outfits, some probably made from silk.

  Oh, no, she thought.

  It was hardly any wonder she’d attracted their attention—and not in a

  good way. She wasn’t going to fit in at all, wearing the inexpensive shorts, T-

  shirt, and sandals she’d bought yesterday. And of course, Agent Crivaro was

  really going to look sorely out of place here.

  For a second, Riley wondered if she should hurry back out to the

  campground office and warn Crivaro away, tell him that going undercover

  here wasn’t going to work out at all.

  But one of the women patted an empty chair and asked her with a stiff