by Blake Pierce
Everybody but me, Riley thought.
She could hear a rumble of voices and activity over the phone.
“What about the county ME?” Riley asked.
“He’s not here yet, but we’re expecting him any minute,” Bill said. “Riley, I don’t want the body moved until you’ve had a chance to look at.”
Riley understood perfectly. It would be best if she, Bill, and Jenn could all examine the murder scene together in its present state.
But how was she going to get there in time?
Her commercial flight wasn’t scheduled until tomorrow afternoon. Keeping the current scene intact during all that time just wasn’t going to be feasible, especially not in that terrible heat.
Her thoughts were still foggy from just having been awakened. But she quickly realized that the only way to get to Rushville in time would be on an FBI plane. And that was going to present a serious problem.
She rubbed her eyes and asked, “Have you been in touch with Meredith?”
“Yeah,” Bill said slowly.
Riley was about to ask Bill whether he had told Meredith where she was.
But something in the tone of his single-word reply told her …
He’s still covering for me.
So is Jenn.
This was a mess for all of them, and Riley knew that the less she and Bill discussed it right now, the better.
Instead she said, “Keep everything as it is. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Riley and Bill ended the call, and she sat staring at the phone for a moment. The next call she had to make was going to be really rough.
She dialed Meredith’s direct number and quickly heard the team chief’s gruff voice …
“Paige, what’s going on down in Rushville? Have you got any leads?”
Riley swallowed hard and said …
“Chief, I’m not in Rushville. I’m at home in Fredericksburg.”
An icy silence ensued.
Riley wondered …
Should I try to explain?
But no, she figured there was no point in that. And he probably wouldn’t bother asking. What would Brent Meredith care about her family troubles—especially a non-life-threatening crisis with her younger daughter?
Finally Meredith growled, “How long have you been back from Rushville?”
“I just flew back this evening,” Riley said.
Meredith said, “Goddamn it, I talked to Agents Jeffreys and Roston—both of them. Neither one of them mentioned that you’d left. But I kind of had a feeling …”
Riley shuddered as another silence fell. Obviously Meredith had sensed her partners’ evasion on the phone. She hoped that Bill and Jenn hadn’t lied to him outright. But of course if she’d had to cover for either of them …
That’s probably what I’d do.
In a sharper voice than before, Meredith said …
“Agent Paige, this isn’t acceptable. Not on your part, and not on your partners’ either.”
“I understand,” Riley said.
Meredith then let out a grunt of anger and said, “No, I’m not sure you really do. Agent Paige, you seriously dropped the ball. While you were AWOL, there was another murder.”
Riley stifled a gasp and almost exclaimed …
“Chief, that’s not fair.”
After all, her mere presence in Rushville wouldn’t have prevented the killer from striking again. This new death wasn’t her fault.
Even so, she knew she fully deserved the blunt of Meredith’s wrath.
His voice growing louder, Meredith said, “Paige, I’ve got half a mind to pull you off the case and call you and your partners back to Quantico. Start fresh with a new team down there. But I can’t, because you’ve already gotten started. And besides …”
Riley sensed that he was about to add, “You’re the best agents I’ve got.”
But however true that might be, he sure wasn’t going to say so right now.
Meredith continued, “I’m ordering a plane to be ready to take you back down there. Get your ass to Quantico immediately.”
“I will, sir,” Riley said.
“And solve the case. There’s going to be hell to pay for all three of you when you get back. It’ll be a lot worse if you fail to bring in the killer.”
Brent Meredith ended the call.
The phone was shaking in Riley’s hand. She almost felt like crying. Meredith had been frustrated and even angry with her before, but she couldn’t remember him being this enraged.
And how was this going to end—for her and her colleagues?
Riley herself had been reprimanded, suspended, and even fired plenty of times, but usually by Meredith’s own boss, Special Agent in Charge Carl Walder. Whenever she was in trouble with Walder, Meredith usually came to her defense. Besides, Walder was a bumbling opportunist she had no respect for. She respected Meredith tremendously, and it was heartbreaking to feel that she’d let him down.
But right now, she didn’t have a minute to lose.
Riley sent a quick message to Bill. Now she had to get dressed, wake up Gabriela and let her know she was leaving, then drive her rented car straight to Quantico to catch that plane.
As she dashed around getting ready, Riley remembered the conversation she’d had with Jilly a little while ago.
“It’s not like you’ve got two different lives,” Jilly had said. “It’s all the same thing.”
She remembered, too, Ryan telling her …
“Your life is all of a piece.”
She’d believed that herself before she’d gone to bed.
But now she felt as though she’d awakened again to a grim and familiar reality …
It’s no use.
It’s all too much.
I’ll never be everything I need to be.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Riley groped helplessly through the darkness that surrounded her.
Light, she thought.
She needed just a glimmer of light to help her with her search …
… although she couldn’t remember exactly what she was searching for.
Holding one hand out in front of her, she took another cautious step.
She had a sudden strong sense that someone was standing in front of her.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
She thought it must be a killer. One of the long line of monsters she had faced before.
But why couldn’t she tell?
She repeated again …
“Who’s there?”
Then she heard a harsh and familiar laugh.
A voice replied, “Who do you think it is, girl?”
Now Riley could make out a familiar shadow hulking in front of her.
“Daddy?” she said.
“Yep,” he said, laughing again. “And dead as usual.”
Either the darkness had lifted a little, or her eyes were starting to adjust. She was beginning to see the features on his face and the contours of his full-dress Marine uniform.
Riley’s throat tightened with despair.
“Daddy, I feel so confused,” she said.
“About what? The case you’re working on? Well, just follow your goddamn instincts. Isn’t that what you always do? What are your instincts telling you right now?”
Riley struggled to put her thoughts together.
She stammered, “Th-that these two new murders are … a continuation …”
“Of what?”
“Of what happened to the Bonnett family.”
The shadowy figure shrugged.
“‘A continuation,’” he said. “An interesting choice of words. So it seems you’re looking for a killer who’s been laying low for ten years and has reared his head again. Now that you know that, the rest should be easy. Just find and catch the bastard—before he does it again.”
With a grim chuckle he added …
“No pressure.”
The dim figure started to disappear into the dark again.
; Riley said, “Daddy, why is it so dark? Why can’t I see?”
“It’s always dark,” her father said. “We just don’t notice it most of the time—because we think we can see the truth. We think we know what’s what. That’s how it is with everybody. Of course, it’s a bit different with you. You’ve got this ‘gut feeling’ trick going, your celebrated ‘instinct.’ Maybe it’s not quite like being able to see in the dark, but you can get pretty close to the truth at times.”
He slipped completely from view, and when he spoke again, he sounded farther away …
“You’ve still got a lot to learn, though. For example, you can be right about something, and wrong about it too, both at the same time. Absolutely right, absolutely wrong. That’s where you are right now—absolutely right, absolutely wrong. You just haven’t figured it out yet.”
Riley’s mind reeled …
What can that possibly mean?
But before she could ask that question aloud, she felt herself falling, as if the ground had dropped out from under her feet …
Riley jerked wide awake.
“Sorry about that,” the pilot’s voice came over the intercom. “Be sure you’re buckled in. We’ll be landing now.”
She realized that a sudden slight drop of the FBI plane had awakened her. She wasn’t surprised that she’d fallen asleep on the trip back to Mississippi. She’d only had an hour of sleep tonight.
And now she realized …
I dreamed about Daddy again.
Those dreams were always unsettling, but this one seemed more so than usual. Those words kept rattling in her brain …
“Absolutely right, absolutely wrong.”
For some reason, it seemed weirdly true. But how could that be? It didn’t even make sense.
As she watched the plane’s descent through the window, she told herself …
It was only a dream.
*
When Riley arrived at the airport in Biloxi, Jenn was waiting there to drive her straight to Rushville and to the crime scene. They soon pulled into the parking lot and parked in the outside the area cordoned off by police tape.
As they got out of the car, Riley glanced around.
What a mess, she thought.
Gawking townspeople were crowded around outside the taped-off area. There were also three TV news vans with satellite dishes parked nearby. Riley was sure that the media vehicles were from larger towns in the area, not from right here in a little town like Rushville.
Riley said to Jenn, “I should have gotten here sooner, before the media and all these people arrived.”
Jenn replied, “It wouldn’t have made much difference. They started showing up about as fast as Bill and I and the local law could get here. The cops were barely able to tape off the scene in time to keep them from getting to the body.”
“How did they find out so fast?” Riley asked.
Jenn said, “The theater employee who found the body must have started calling people a minute after he called the cops. Word gets around fast in a town like this, even at this hour. Then I guess somebody must have thought it clever to notify TV stations throughout the area.”
Riley could imagine phones ringing around town, then people scrambling out of bed and driving straight over to this movie theater that was tucked behind the shopping mall.
Riley glanced toward the multiplex and saw that only one movie was playing there—a recent romantic comedy.
She thought wryly …
I guess people are pretty desperate for entertainment in this one-show town.
The people didn’t even seem to mind the suffocating heat that hung over the pavement in the still night air.
As Riley and Jenn approached the police tape, they could hear one of the TV reporters as she spoke to a camera and a boom microphone …
“… so it looks like Rushville’s infamous ‘Carpenter’ killer is back and hard at work. How many more lives will he take before he’s through with his murderous rampage?”
Riley growled under her breath. She wanted to charge over to the woman and tell her to shut the hell up and stop stirring up local panic, but …
I’d wind up on TV too.
And the TV news crew would definitely love that. It was best for to stay out of public view for as long as she could.
The two agents pushed through the crowd of people straining to get a glimpse of the scene. Among them, Riley recognized a few faces she’d seen around town. Brandon Hitt was there. His brother, Wyatt, didn’t seem to be with him, which was a relief to Riley. She was sure that kid had seen enough dead bodies for a lifetime.
She also saw Amos Crites, who was staring back at her with a scowl on his face.
When she reached the yellow tape. Riley flashed her badge to a tired-looking cop, who lifted the tape so they could pass on through.
Riley saw that the body was fairly well concealed among parked vehicles, including the county coroner’s van. She made her way to where the covered body lay on the pavement beside a car that must have belonged to the victim.
The uniformed coroner was standing nearby. So were Bill, Dominic, and Chief Crane. Bill gave Riley a silent, expectant look. But Riley knew that now was definitely not the time to tell him how furious Meredith was with their team.
Crane looked at Riley angrily and said, “It’s about time you got here. Coroner Kuchan’s been anxious to take away the victim’s body.”
Fanning his face with his hat, the big, slouching coroner nodded and said …
“I am at that. She was killed around nine fifteen, so she’s been in rigor for a while now, and she’s not going to get any fresher. Cadavers start going ripe fast in this kind of heat. We need to get her into a cooler as soon as we can.”
Then with a wave of his hand, the coroner said to Riley, “Have yourself a look.”
Riley knelt down beside the victim, who was lying flat on her back. She gently pulled the sheet away from the victim’s face. Sure enough, there was a single small round crater in the center of her forehead. Riley could see that there had been a lot of bleeding. Because of the heat, blood on the woman’s face and the surrounding pavement had already turned black.
The woman’s eyes were still open, and she stared dully up at the sky with an expression of only mild surprise.
Riley sensed right away …
She knew her attacker.
But she had no idea what he was about to do.
Riley asked, “What was her name?”
Chief Crane said, “Vanessa Pinker, a housewife with a son and a daughter, both of them still kids. I knew her a little—enough to say hi when I ran into her, anyway. A nice lady.”
“Where are her husband and kids?” Riley said.
“At home,” Crane said. “Her husband, Reid, insisted on coming right over here after a couple of my cops went to their house and gave him the bad news. He didn’t stay long. He was a real mess when he left.”
I can imagine, Riley thought.
She peered closely at the woman’s face. Despite the hubbub going on around her, Riley tried to play out the killer’s actions in her mind …
He walked right up behind her as she was about to get into her car after coming out of the movie.
He might have even said her name.
Then she turned around and had just enough time to recognize him before he …
Riley paused, feeling momentarily uncertain.
She reached back into her memories of the previous two murder scenes. At the Bonnett’s home, she’d thought she could sense the killer’s thoughts after murdering the family of four …
I could do it better.
I could do it with more skill.
I could do it cleaner and faster.
She also remembered sensing his lust for more killing after that slaughter—a craving that might well have built to an unbearable point over the next ten years until it exploded into action a week and half ago.
Now Riley brought back her impressions at the house near
the beach, when she’d thought she’d sensed what was going through his head the moment before killing Ogden …
This won’t be like last time.
Not so sloppy and reckless.
Looking down at the body now, Riley could imagine the killer gazing down at Vanessa Pinker, watching her body twitch as her life ebbed quickly away, the blood still red and fresh.
It hadn’t been personal—at least not this time. He may have known this woman and even stalked her, but first he had chosen her at random.
And she sensed that he felt pleased with what he’d done …
Or more than just pleased.
The killer was now in the throes of his own gratified aggression. After all those years of dormancy, it was all flowing so easily and effortless now …
I’m a true master.
There’s no need for further delay.
Riley shuddered as the feeling of the killer’s thoughts ebbed away.
She rose to her feet and saw Bill, Jenn, Sam, Dominic, and Chief Crane had been standing there watching her.
She said to Chief Crane, “We’ve got to catch him quickly. He’s not going to waste any time before he kills again. He’s ready and eager, and he may well have chosen his next victim already. He could be just looking for the right moment to strike.”
Crane’s mouth dropped open.
“How do you know?”
Riley realized that, unlike Sam and Dominic, Crane was still unfamiliar with this technique of hers. She hoped that Bill and Jenn weren’t going to launch into a detailed explanation.
She was relieved when Bill said simply, “Trust her instincts, Chief Crane. Agent Paige is a superior profiler. She knows what she’s talking about.”
Crane just kept staring at Riley.
She said to Crane, “I hope you understand now—this wasn’t just some random drifter who came and went. You’ve got an active serial killer right here in Rushville. And you’ll need our help to stop him.”
Crane let out a grunt of dismay.
“Well, I guess this is where I ask for the FBI’s help. OK, then. Consider it official.”
Then Crane glanced over at the news vehicles.
He said, “Have you heard those damned reporters? ‘The Carpenter is back,’ they’re saying. The ‘Carpenter’—that’s what folks used to call whoever killed the Bonnetts. As if this has anything to do with that.”
