Once Forsaken (A Riley Paige Mystery—Book 7)

by Blake Pierce

  Like her father’s cruelty, it went much deeper than that.

  Hatcher put his hands in his pockets, striking a casual pose as he looked all around.

  “Nice place,” he said. “This is the first time I’ve come here.”

  His smile broadened a little.

  “I’d love to have met your father. I’m sure we’d have had a lot in common.”

  Riley felt a chill deep inside. Had she ever talked to Hatcher about her father? She didn’t think so. But she knew that Hatcher had researched her life obsessively.

  Hatcher added, “I didn’t dare show up here when he was still alive, though. He’d have known who I was in an instant—I’m sure you told him about me. He wouldn’t have called the cops, even if he’d had a phone, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t. No, he’d have just blown me away, shot me like a squirrel. Can’t say I’d blame him.”

  For a fleeting moment, Riley wondered—how did Hatcher know that her father hunted squirrels?

  But of course, it was just common sense. After all, her father had hunted for subsistence. And there was never a scarcity of small game to kill and eat.

  “Care to show me the place?” he asked. “It must have a lot of significance for you. A lot of history.”

  “I never lived here,” Riley said.

  “No, you spent your earliest years in Slippery Rock, about ninety miles from here. It’s a nice town, I spent a couple of days there just to check it out. But then your family moved to Lanton, where you wound up going to college. I’ve been there too. Not as nice as Slippery Rock, bigger, less personal. You weren’t happy there, were you?”

  Riley felt queasy now. It was uncanny that he knew she’d been unhappy about the move to Lanton. She’d only been a little girl back then.

  He knew her much too well for comfort.

  Hatcher continued, “Anyway, your roots are truly here. Here with your father—or rather his ghost. He made you what you are, after all. Ever the ex-Marine, that strong and angry man who told you that you were worthless time and time again—and yet who taught you your true worth. You even look like him.”

  Riley almost blurted …

  “How do you know?”

  But of course, he’d had no trouble finding a picture of her father. “Aren’t you going to invite me inside?” Hatcher asked.

  Without waiting for a reply, he strode past Riley into the house. Riley followed him. He sat down on the stool where Daddy used to skin his squirrels. He looked around the place with an expression of keen interest.

  “So this is your inheritance,” he said. “You’re a person of property, such as it is. What are you going to do with this place?”

  “I’m thinking about giving it to my sister,” Riley said.

  “Oh, yes, Wendy. Have you asked her if she wants it?”

  “Not yet.”

  Hatcher smirked knowingly.

  “She won’t want it.”

  Riley’s jaw clenched. She realized that he was right. Wendy would want nothing to do with this place. To get rid of it, she’d have to sell it. Hatcher’s intuition was nothing short of terrifying.

  “Can we just get down to business?” Riley said.

  “Certainly. But you know I’m going to want a favor in return.”

  Riley shuddered slightly.

  “What do you want this time?”

  “Oh, we’ll settle on that later.”

  It was a familiar story between them. Hatcher always wanted something in return for his insights. Riley had always granted those favors, but the price could be high.

  Hatcher seldom wanted anything less than a piece of her soul.

  “Sit down,” Hatcher said. “Let’s go over things.”

  Riley sat in an uncomfortable wicker chair facing him.

  “So,” Hatcher said, “you’re looking for a killer who hangs his victims. But he drugs them first. With alprazolam.”

  He’s certainly done his homework, Riley thought.

  She was sure that the media had made no mention of the drug alprazolam. But however he managed it, Hatcher’s research resources seemed to be as good as her own. She knew he had a fortune stashed away, and a growing network of criminal colleagues. Among them was surely at least one hacker—some brilliant geek with fewer scruples than even Van Roff. Hatcher could access any official records he desired—the police, the FBI, Byars College. And he didn’t have to worry about the Constitution or any other legal issues.

  Hatcher crossed his arms and kept talking.

  “Let’s see—who have you come into contact with so far? Of course there have been the victims’ families—Lois Pennington’s parents, Representative Webber, the Linzes. Then there was that dead-end trip to Georgia—I could have told you that Kirk Farrell really did kill himself. And isn’t his father a bastard though?”

  Riley didn’t reply.

  “And of course, there are various other people you’ve met along the way—butlers and bodyguards and nurses and such. There’s Dean Autrey—unctuous little prick, isn’t he?—and his tight-ass secretary. Too bad about Patience Romero, though. I hear that her father isn’t taking her death at all well. So sad.”

  Riley’s patience was wearing thin. So were her nerves. But Hatcher didn’t seem to care.

  “What about that Pike Tozer fellow?” he asked. “Do you think you may have eliminated him too quickly?”

  Riley kept silent. She wasn’t about to tell him that Bill and Lucy were planning to interview Tozer again today.

  Hatcher paused for a moment, then spoke more pensively.

  “Tell me, Riley. Don’t you love Oscar Wilde? Such a wit, eh? ‘I can resist everything except temptation.’ I personally think he’s terribly underrated. He wasn’t just wisecracks and witticisms. Few people appreciate the philosophical power of his best works—De Profundis, for example. He wrote that in prison, you know. I suppose that’s why I feel such a kinship with him.”

  Riley wasn’t surprised at Hatcher’s literary knowledge. She knew that he’d given himself an astonishing education during his years behind bars. But she had no idea where he might be going with all this talk about Oscar Wilde.

  Hatcher tilted his head back, as if trying to remember something.

  “And such a penetrating grasp of human nature. ‘It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.’ So true, so true. Did I ever tell you that I find you quite charming, Riley? For that matter, so am I. Not a tedious bone in our bodies, either one of us.”

  He leaned toward Riley.

  “Oscar also said something about the weak—people who are weak. It was really quite brilliant, and terribly true and honest. Odd that I can’t remember. Do you happen to know it?”

  “No,” Riley said.

  Hatcher locked gazes with her.

  “I wonder—of all the people you’ve talked to so far, do any strike you as especially weak?”

  When Riley made no reply, Hatcher patted his knees and got to his feet.

  “Well. It was lovely having this chat, catching up. Let’s do it again soon.”

  Riley stood up too.

  “You haven’t told me anything,” she said.

  Hatcher chuckled.

  “Oh, I have. It’s got a slow fuse, that’s all. You’ll understand before long. But will it be soon enough? Will somebody else die before you get it? That’s not my problem. Anyway, I’ve got to get back to work, and so do you, I imagine.”

  He shrugged.

  “Or maybe you’d like to hang around here for a while, bask in your memories. Tell me, did Daddy ever sing to you?”

  Riley’s anger was rising. She’d never heard her father sing a note in her life. But what business was it of Hatcher’s?

  Then Hatcher sang in a remarkably good voice.

  You’re the end of the rainbow,

  My pot of gold …

  “Stop it,” Riley growled.

  But Hatcher kept on singing.

  You’re Daddy’s Little Girl


  To have and to hold …

  Abruptly, he stopped singing and smiled darkly. He was looking at her wrist.

  “Wearing my gift, I see,” he said.

  With a jolt, Riley realized that he was talking about the gold chain.

  She remembered what she’d told Hatcher the last time they’d met:

  “I’ll never wear it.”

  But she’d put it on for the first time late last night.

  And for some reason, she hadn’t taken it off.

  Hatcher purred, “This brings me to the favor I want. This one’s easy. Keep on wearing it.”

  He turned away and silently left the cabin. Badly shaken, Riley sat back down in the wicker chair. In a few moments, she heard Hatcher’s car start and drive away.

  Riley looked at the bracelet on her wrist.

  She desperately wanted to take it off, in defiance of Hatcher.

  But for some reason, she couldn’t.

  She wondered if she ever could.

  But she couldn’t waste time thinking about that now.

  She had a case to solve.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  When Riley left the cabin and drove down the winding road to the highway, she had to make a decision about where to go next. Not home. She wanted to get back into this case but she wasn’t sure how.

  Bill and Lucy were on the Byars campus, rechecking every lead. She didn’t think she could add anything to their efforts. She could drive to Quantico and bug Flores about turning up more information on Byars students. Or tracking down the woman who had told Cory Linz that the Webber girl had hung herself. That woman seemed to have disappeared from the earth. Riley could only hope that she had been paid off and was enjoying a comfortable life somewhere.

  She knew that Flores had reached dead ends in both cases, and she actually had nothing new for him to work from.

  She needed to think, perhaps to finally get some sense of this killer. She pulled into the parking lot in front of a little café and sat in the car for a moment. She closed her eyes and reached mentally for the killer’s mind.

  All she felt was fear. All she saw was the terrified faces of the girls who had died and the boy who had escaped. She finally shook her head and gave it up.

  Riley drew a deep sigh and went inside the café. She sat alone in a booth and ordered coffee and a Danish. When her order came, she sipped her coffee and considered what she knew.

  Hatcher must have told her something useful. But what was it?

  “It’s got a slow fuse,” Hatcher had said.

  Riley sighed. It was too typical of Hatcher, teasing her along like that. She didn’t have time for a “slow fuse”—not when a murderer was out there getting ready to strike again. She had to figure out what he was getting at fast.

  She replayed the conversation in her head.

  “Don’t you love Oscar Wilde?” he’d said.

  Then he’d rattled off a couple of quotes—something about resisting temptation, something else about people being charming or tedious. Then finally there was a quote that Hatcher couldn’t quite remember—or so he pretended. Nothing ever escaped Hatcher’s steel trap of a mind. Riley was sure that he remembered it perfectly.

  Something about “the weak.”

  “It was really quite brilliant, and terribly true and honest.”

  She got out her cell phone and ran a search for “Oscar Wilde,” “quotes,” and “weak.”

  In a matter of seconds she found it …

  “The worst form of tyranny the world has ever known is the tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.”

  Riley felt a chill of understanding.

  The quote obviously resonated with Hatcher—and it did with her as well.

  Weakness and evil were strongly linked in her mind. The killers she hunted down were typically weak deep down. So were the politicians and bosses who so often thwarted her. The underhanded BAU bureaucrat Carl Walder came to mind.

  But Hatcher surely meant something very specific.

  The killer she was now looking for was especially marked by weakness.

  But who could it be?

  So far, the only viable suspect they had was that electrician, Pike Tozer.

  Did he strike Riley as a weak man?

  Physically, no—he seemed quite strong, in fact.

  But Riley realized that she hadn’t gotten much of a sense of his character. She also remembered that Bill and Lucy intended to interview him again. Maybe they’d found out something important.

  Riley called Bill.

  “I’m back on the job,” she said. “I’m sorry about my lapse this morning.”

  “It’s OK,” Bill said.

  “Did you and Lucy talk to Pike Tozer again?”

  Bill’s voice sounded discouraged.

  “Yeah, we tracked him down. He gave us an airtight alibi for yesterday morning. He was working on a job on campus, and he’s got witnesses to back him up. He definitely didn’t kill Patience Romero.”

  Riley took a sip of her coffee.

  “Something’s not right, Bill,” she said.

  “Tell me about it. That composite drawing must be way off. Nobody recognizes that face.”

  Riley thought for a moment.

  She closed her eyes.

  Those words went through her mind again.

  “The tyranny of the weak … the only tyranny that lasts.”

  Had she encountered anyone during the last few days who was noticeably weak?

  Then something started to occur to her.

  Who have I met who isn’t weak?

  Weak people had surrounded her—including non-suspects.

  Deep in her gut an idea started to take shape.

  Her eyes snapped open.

  She told Bill, “You and Lucy keep working the Byars campus. I’ve got somewhere else to go. We’ll meet up later.”

  “When?”

  “It’ll be maybe three hours.”

  Bill sounded surprised.

  “Three hours?”

  Riley felt embarrassed. Of course Bill had no idea where she was right now.

  “I’m out of town,” she said. “I’ll explain it to you later.”

  They ended the call. Riley paid the bill, left the café, and started to drive.

  *

  Riley’s intuition was in full gear when she pulled into the visitor’s parking lot at Franklin Pierce High School. She didn’t yet know exactly where her gut was leading, but she had a pretty good idea how to get there.

  Riley barged in through the front entrance, where she was greeted by an alarmed-looking receptionist.

  “May I help you?” the woman asked.

  Riley flashed her badge and introduced herself.

  “I need to know where I can find Tiffany Pennington,” Riley said. “I’ve got to talk to her.”

  The woman checked her computer.

  “She’s in gym class. I can call her out of class for you.”

  “I know where the gym is,” Riley said, barreling past her down the hall.

  Riley burst in through the gym doors. Girls were playing volleyball—Tiffany and April among them.

  April looked at her mother with alarm.

  “Mom! What are you doing here?”

  Riley showed her badge to the gym teacher.

  “I need to talk to Tiffany,” she said. “In the hall. Right now.”

  The stunned gym teacher nodded and sent Tiffany out with Riley. April followed.

  “Mom, what’s going on? Have you lost your mind?”

  Riley didn’t reply. She seized Tiffany by the shoulders.

  “Tiffany, you’ve got to be forgetting something. There’s something you haven’t told me.”

  Tiffany looked alarmed.

  “What do you mean?”

  Riley took a deep breath to calm herself.

  “Lois’s friend Piper said something about a strange guy. Lois told Piper she didn’t know whether to like him or feel sorry for him
.”

  Tiffany nodded dumbly.

  “Tiffany, your sister must have told you something about him. Think!”

  Tiffany’s eyes widened.

  “I think I do remember something. Oh my god!”

  Riley held her breath as she waited for the next words.

  “Yeah, Lois mentioned some guy in her poetry class. She said he was a nice guy, but small and skinny, and his eyes were a little creepy. He had really big eyes, she said.”

  Tears welled up in Tiffany’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t remember before. How could I have forgotten? I was so stressed out.”

  Riley smiled and patted Tiffany on the shoulder.

  “That’s OK,” she said. “You told me exactly what I need to know.”

  Riley left Tiffany and her daughter in the hallway and hurried back to her car. She sat in the car and called Dean Autrey’s office at Byars. She got the dean’s secretary on the phone.

  “Miss Engstrand, Lois Pennington was taking a poetry class when she died. I need you to tell me who the students were in that class.”

  A few moments later, the agitated secretary was reading off names to Riley.

  At first she didn’t recognize any of them. But then came the tenth name and Riley tingled all over.

  It was Murray Rossum.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  When Riley parked in front of Murray Rossum’s townhouse, Bill and Lucy were already waiting in their car. They all hurried up to the front entrance, where they were met by the female butler, Maude Huntsinger. When they said they had to see Murray, the butler sternly refused.

  “The young master gave me strict instructions,” she said. “He wants to be alone. Nobody in the staff is supposed to bother him for the rest of the day.”

  Riley and Bill exchanged anxious looks.

  Bill said, “Ma’am, this is extremely important.”

  “I understand, sir, but Master Rossum was very clear.”

  Suddenly, to her own surprise, Riley blurted out, “I think something is very wrong in this house.”

  The butler’s eyes widened.

  Then she said to Riley, “Only you.”

  Riley shook her head. “No, I need my colleagues.”