Waiting (The Making of Riley Paige—Book 2)

by Blake Pierce

  “I will,” Riley said.

  Ryan left the apartment, and she heard his car pulling away.

  She almost went to sleep again, but realized …

  I’ve got to call in, say I’m not coming today.

  She sat up on the bed reached for her cell phone and called the number of Hoke Gilmer, the training supervisor for the intern program. When a secretary answered, Riley hesitated for a moment.

  What should I say? she wondered.

  Should I tell the truth about what happened?

  It just seemed too personal. Instead she said she was sick, probably from eating something bad yesterday, and that she couldn’t stop throwing up. The secretary expressed her sympathy and said that she hoped Riley got better.

  The call ended, and Riley sat staring at the cell phone wondering …

  What about Agent Crivaro?

  She hadn’t talked to him at all since he’d scolded her yesterday afternoon for chasing the suspect at the carnival.

  What if he decided he wanted her to come and work on the case today?

  I can’t, she thought. I can’t do it.

  It wasn’t just that she felt so sad and exhausted. She doubted that she could get away without Ryan finding out about it. And that might be the last straw for their whole relationship, which had been rocky enough lately. She definitely didn’t want to spoil the caring mood that he was in now.

  She punched in Crivaro’s number and got his voice mail.

  At the sound of the beep she said …

  “Agent Crivaro, this is Riley Sweeney …”

  Her voice faded. For some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to tell Crivaro an outright lie. But that didn’t mean she had to tell him the whole truth.

  Finally she said, “I’m taking a sick day today. I’m really not well. So if you want me to work with you today … I’m sorry, I’m not going to be available.”

  Riley was surprised at how hard it was to say those words.

  They sounded lazy and irresponsible somehow. But it was the best she could do.

  She hesitated again, then said …

  “I hope … I hope you’re making good progress on the case.”

  She ended the call, climbed out of bed, and went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror.

  She was shocked by what she saw.

  Her face was pale and puffy, and her eyes were swollen and red from crying.

  The very sight of her face made her headache worse.

  I made the right decision, she thought.

  She had no business being around other people today, much less trying to get anything done.

  She washed up a bit and brushed her teeth, then went right back to bed. Her whole body went limp again, and she realized how truly and deeply exhausted she was.

  She found herself remembering Dr. Pascal’s words of reassurance last night …

  “In a way, what happened was a good thing, the right thing.

  “And it wasn’t in any way your fault.”

  Riley wanted very much to believe that.

  But so soon after her ordeal, she didn’t know what she really believed.

  In a matter of seconds, she was fast asleep again.

  *

  She awoke to the sounds of footsteps in the hallway and the apartment door opening.

  She was seized with a rush of alarm …

  An intruder! she thought.

  Then she heard Ryan’s voice call out …

  “Riley, I’m home.”

  She breathed easier, but wondered …

  Why is he home so early?

  Then she looked at the clock on her bed stand. It was evening already.

  She had slept all day.

  Ryan peeked into the bedroom from the doorway.

  “So what have you been doing all day?” he asked.

  Riley chuckled and stretched her arms.

  “Sleeping, I guess,” she said. “Nothing else at all. Just sleeping.”

  Ryan grinned and said, “That’s great. That’s just what I want to hear. I brought home a pizza. Do you want me to bring it in here, or …”

  “Oh, no,” Riley said, interrupting. “It’s time I got out of bed. I’ll come out and we can eat in the kitchen.”

  She and Ryan ate pizza together while Ryan talked about his busy, exciting day at the law firm. Riley could tell by his voice how happy he was with his job, and she felt glad for him.

  He’d also brought home a newspaper—the same publication the killer’s poem had appeared in just yesterday. She opened the paper to the daily featured poem. This one was signed by someone named Toni Anderson, and it was a little ode to the writer’s beloved wiener dog, Tipsy.

  Riley read it over several times, looking for clues or riddles. But no, it was a joyful, playful, sentimental little piece, without a trace of darkness in it. It also struck Riley as pretty bad, but she figured it was written by some girl in middle school, and it probably pleased many of the newspaper’s readers.

  Riley thumbed through the rest of the paper, but didn’t find any news at all about the so-called Clown Killer.

  When she and Ryan settled down to watch television, there was nothing on the evening news about the killer either.

  She told herself …

  No news is good news, I guess.

  Still, she was a bit unsettled by how quickly the media seemed to have lost interest in the sensational case. No dead bodies dressed like clowns had been found for four days now—too long, it seemed, to hold the public’s gnat-like attention span. Now the news was all about a sordid political scandal.

  Meanwhile, Riley wondered what Crivaro had been doing and thinking.

  She was sure he was still putting his energy into capturing the killer.

  But was he making progress, or just feeling discouraged?

  While it was surely a good thing that there had been no more murders, would that make it harder to find the killer?

  Might the Clown Killer simply disappear now without a trace?

  Riley remembered something Crivaro said to her a few days ago …

  “Damn, but I hate cold cases.”

  Riley shuddered a little. She understood how Crivaro felt. It was horrible to think that the man was still out there—a twisted killer who dressed his victims as clowns and then scared them to death.

  Where was he right now?

  What was he doing?

  Did anyone he knew have any idea what a monster he really was?

  Was he shunned and alone, or did he live an ordinary-seeming life?

  Riley wanted to find out. She wanted to do anything she could to help bring him to justice.

  *

  The next day was a Saturday. Ryan had work to do, but he decided to do it at home instead of going in to the law office, so he set up his computer on the kitchen table.

  As Ryan worked, Riley puttered around doing one thing and another. At first she felt a little shaky, but the activity helped to keep her mind occupied. She cleaned the apartment, did a couple of loads of clothes in the building’s laundry room, and prepared dinner. She had a nice casserole ready by the time Ryan had finished his work.

  Ryan was appreciative of her efforts, and Riley told herself that she could learn to enjoy living a normal life like this rather than chasing down a killer.

  She got another good night’s sleep and awoke later than usual on Sunday morning. This time, when she got out of bed and looked in the bathroom mirror, she saw that she looked almost her normal self.

  Ryan’s smiling face appeared behind her in the mirror, and he put his arms around her.

  “Looking good this morning, eh?”

  Riley chuckled a little.

  “Better,” she said. “Still some dark circles under the eyes …”

  “I don’t see any circles,” he said, kissing her on the neck.

  Riley pointed to her eyes and said, “They’re up here, silly.”

  Ryan looked up and said, “I still don’t see any circles.”

>   “That’s because you’re not me,” Riley said.

  “Well, if you’re the only one who can see ’em, they don’t matter, do they?”

  Riley laughed as he tickled her neck with more kisses.

  Then Ryan said, “Hey, let’s get out of here. Let’s go somewhere.”

  “Where?” Riley asked.

  “Anywhere. It’s a beautiful day. We’ve got nothing else to do. Let’s enjoy it.”

  It sounded like a great idea to Riley.

  Ryan fixed a nice breakfast of bacon and scrambled eggs and when they finished eating they got dressed and ready to go out. They didn’t bother to make any plans, just got on the metro rail and headed downtown.

  When they came out of the station near the National Mall, they saw the Washington Monument in the distance, all covered with scaffolding for renovations. It was just a short walk from there to the National Air and Space Museum, and Ryan tugged her in that direction.

  “You should see this,” he declared. “I’ve been here before. It’s wonderful.”

  Riley got a kick out of his enthusiasm, and she quickly fell in love with the museum. Its exhibits offered a dizzying excursion through the history of flight. On display was the Wright Brothers’ rickety 1903 Flyer, the first airplane to ever take flight. So was the Spirit of St. Louis, in which Charles Lindbergh made the first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic in 1927.

  The exhibit that held Riley’s attention was a red Lockheed Vega once flown by Amelia Earhart, the pioneering female aviator who had mysteriously disappeared in the Pacific Ocean while trying to fly around the world.

  She felt an odd sense of kinship with Earhart—perhaps because she, too, was venturing into a career not common for women.

  She shivered a little as she considered Earhart’s fate …

  Things didn’t always end well for pioneering women.

  Also on display were the Bell X-1 rocket plane, the first aircraft to break the sound barrier; the tiny space capsule in which John Glenn orbited the earth in 1962; and the Apollo 11 Command Module, which had taken American astronauts to the moon and back in 1969.

  Ryan was looking like a kid as they continued among the exhibits,

  “Imagine!” he said. “It hasn’t even been a hundred years since the Wright brothers first flew! Think of all that’s been accomplished in that time! What kinds of amazing things are still going to happen in our own lifetimes?”

  Riley, found that to be a breathtaking thought.

  They’d done quite a lot of walking by the time they’d left the museum, and they were ready to find a place where they could sit down and have some lunch. As they wandered along a nearby street checking out restaurants and cafés, an old brick building caught Riley’s eye. The sign on it read …

  FORGOTTEN D.C.

  Riley stared at the sign for a few moments, shaping the words silently with her lips …

  “Forgotten D.C.”

  She wondered—why did those words intrigue her so?

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  The words on the building, “Forgotten D.C.,” cast a sort of lonely spell, which somehow hit a chord with Riley.

  I guess I’ve been feeling pretty lonely myself lately.

  Pointing to the sign, she said to Ryan, “That’s an odd name. What do you think that place is?”

  Ryan glanced at it and shrugged.

  “Whatever it is, it doesn’t look like a place to eat,” he said. “I thought you were hungry.”

  Riley tugged on his arm playfully.

  “Oh, come on, let’s go have a look,” she said.

  Ryan replied with a laugh, “Wow, you really are feeling better, aren’t you?”

  Riley grinned and took hold of his hand.

  She said, “Let’s see if you can keep up with me.”

  When they went inside the building, they found that it was another museum, although a much, much smaller one than they’d just visited. It was obviously not part of the Smithsonian or any national exhibition.

  A woman with unruly puffs of graying hair was sitting at a table, where a sign said that admission was five dollars.

  Ryan grumbled in a whisper, “We didn’t have to pay anything to get into the Air and Space Museum.”

  But Riley was curious. She took two five-dollar bills out of her purse and gave them to the woman, who handed them a couple of tickets.

  The woman smiled and remarked in a raspy but pleasant voice, “You two are our first visitors today. It’s nice to know that somebody is interested in our local ghosts. It’s an awful thing, to be left behind, to be forgotten—to be utterly lost. Our ghosts deserve better, I think.”

  Riley and Ryan looked at each other. She could see that he, too, was a bit startled by the woman’s statement.

  Riley went on inside, and Ryan followed her.

  The place was dimly lit—and oddly spooky, Riley thought. It looked like it had probably been a small office building many, many years ago. Walls had been torn down and iron braces put up to support the ceiling, creating a lot of space for displays and exhibits.

  Lying in glass display cases in the center of the floor, a series of enormous maps showed stages of the city’s grown and development—from the swampy, tentative settlement the nation’s founders had started during the 1790s, through the city’s wild burst of growth after the Civil War, continuing on to the sprawling metropolis that Washington was today.

  Display cases, exhibits, and photographs told stories of a truly forgotten past—the ornate facade and interior of burlesque Gayety Theater; the enormous building where the Center Market had once been housed; the Washington Penitentiary where the conspirators who planned Lincoln’s assassination had been executed; the eccentric, castle-like mansion known as “Stewart’s Folly”; and a host of other long-lost wonders.

  Riley took particular notice of a series of pictures of an old amusement park called Whopping Escapades. The place looked like it must have been truly vast, with enormous roller coasters, gigantic Ferris wheels, and a wildly decorated merry-go-round …

  A true “labyrinth,” Riley thought, thinking of the poem the killer had put in the newspaper.

  But of course, that place was long gone now.

  Finally they came to an open doorway leading into a gift shop. Riley glanced inside. The shop was full of small trinkets and items that looked like they had been salvaged from ruins of long-lost places.

  Riley was fascinated.

  She took a step inside, but before she knew it, her legs went out from under her and she found herself sitting on the floor.

  She heard Ryan cry out after she hit the floor …

  “Riley! What happened?”

  For a moment, Riley wasn’t sure herself. Since when had she gotten so clumsy? But then she felt the floor and realized …

  It’s wet.

  In an instant, Ryan and the woman were both helping her to her feet.

  The woman was saying, “I’m so, so sorry. I hope you’re OK.”

  “I’m fine,” Riley said.

  As he was helping Ryan out of the gift shop, Ryan said, “Riley, you’ve got to watch your step. You’re still on the mend.”

  “I’m not hurt, just embarrassed,” she replied.

  Following behind Riley anxiously, the woman called back to somebody in the shop, “How many times have I told you to put out the sign when you’re mopping?”

  A male voice called back …

  “Sorry.”

  Ryan glanced back in time to see a lanky man put a yellow plastic sign in the entry way …

  WET FLOOR

  Riley assured both Ryan and the woman that she was fine.

  The woman said, “It’s a nice little shop. You could wait just a few minutes until he finishes mopping and the floor is dry.”

  But then Ryan whispered to her, “Come on, Riley. I’m not crazy about this place. It kind of gives me the creeps. I don’t want to waste any more money here. And I’m definitely hungry.”

  Riley nodded
silently and followed Ryan toward the front entrance.

  The woman called out as they left …

  “Thanks for coming in! Do come back soon!”

  *

  A little while later, Ryan and Riley were eating sandwiches in a nearby outdoor café. It was still a lovely, sunny day, but Riley sensed that Ryan’s mood had changed. He was saying very little now.

  They ate in silence for a little while until Ryan spoke up …

  “Riley, I’ve been thinking …”

  His voice faded, and Riley waited for him to go on.

  Uh-oh, she thought. This doesn’t sound good.

  Finally Ryan said, “I think you were right.”

  Riley was a bit puzzled. It wasn’t the sort of thing Ryan had been saying to her a lot lately.

  “Right about what?” she asked.

  “Right about not getting married right away,” Ryan said. “We really shouldn’t rush things.”

  Riley was really taken aback now.

  “Really?” she said. “What made you change your mind?”

  Ryan shrugged and said, “Well, you gave me some pretty good reasons when we talked about it before. This job of mine—I love it, but it’s an even bigger challenge than I’d expected. And you—well, I’ll respect whatever you decide to do this summer. But whatever you decide, you’ll be going through lots of changes. How can we even begin to make plans for a wedding right now? That’s really a huge deal.”

  Riley felt her mouth drop open a little.

  She tried to tell herself …

  This is what I wanted.

  She knew she ought to feel relieved that Ryan was seeing her side of things at long last.

  But why this sudden change of heart? After all, he’d even told his parents they were engaged.

  Riley said, “But your parents—”

  Ryan interrupted with a smile, “They can wait. They won’t mind.”

  Right then it dawned on Riley.

  Ryan didn’t have to worry anymore about Riley’s pregnancy showing.

  His parents didn’t need to know it had ever happened.

  Was that why he wasn’t in a hurry anymore?

  Ryan looked a little troubled by Riley’s silence. He said, “I thought you’d be happy that … you know … I agree with you.”