Once Stalked (A Riley Paige Mystery—Book 9)

by Blake Pierce

  When they neared the barracks they were headed for, Riley wasn’t happy to see Col. Adams himself standing just outside the door. Noises were coming from inside the barracks.

  Sergeant Williams stopped and saluted. Col. Larson walked straight toward the garrison commander.

  “May I ask what’s going on in there, Colonel?” she asked.

  “Just a routine weapons search,” Col. Adams said. “I’ve got MPs going from barracks to barracks.”

  Larson looked surprised and dismayed.

  “A weapons search seems hardly ‘routine,’ sir,” she said. “And I doubt very much that any recruit is hiding an M110 sniper rifle in his storage locker. Are you sure this search serves any useful purpose?”

  Col. Adams sneered a little.

  “This is my base, Colonel. I’ll be the judge of that. I take it you’re here to answer the recruits’ questions.”

  “Yes,” Larson said. “I just hope you don’t have them too shaken up to be helpful.”

  Col. Adams let out a grim laugh.

  “A search like this toughens them up,” he said. “We ought to be doing more of this kind of thing routinely.”

  Larson didn’t reply. She appeared to be trying to control her anger.

  The MPs who had been searching for weapons emerged from the barracks. Their leader informed Adams that they’d found nothing suspicious. Adams and the MPs then moved on to the next barracks.

  “Assemble your recruits,” Larson said to Sergeant Williams.

  The drill sergeant stepped inside the barracks and called his AIT group together in the formation area. The fifty or so young men and women looked jittery and tense. Williams introduced them to Larson and the BAU Agents, then put the soldiers at ease so the talks could be less formal.

  Col. Larson said, “First, I want to share our condolences for the loss of your comrade. This is a hard time for you all. I’m sure you have as many questions as we do. You may ask them now.”

  One young man held up his hand and asked, “Why did we have a search just now? Are any of us under suspicion?”

  Riley could see a flash of irritation in Larson’s expression. Riley understood why. Larson was hardly pleased to be left having to explain the garrison commander’s arbitrary actions. But Riley also knew that Larson was too professional to undercut Adams with criticisms of her own.

  “The search was routine, I assure you,” Larson said tersely. “As of now, our search for suspects could lead us anywhere. We need your patience and understanding.”

  A young woman held up her hand.

  She said, “Several of us have been thinking of starting our own search team. Would that be a good idea?”

  Larson shook her head.

  “I’m afraid not,” she said. “It would only add confusion to an already murky situation. Please leave searching to the MPs, CID agents, and these people from the BAU. We know what we’re doing.”

  Then a young man asked, “Wouldn’t this be a good time for us all to have personal weapons?”

  Larson looked at Riley, referring to the question to her.

  Riley was aware that recruits at Fort Mowat normally weren’t allowed to carry their own weapons. She could understand why some of these young people might want them now. She also knew that it wasn’t a good idea.

  Riley said, “You want to be able to defend yourselves. I get that. But personal weapons would only give you a false sense of security. Our shooter is a lone sniper who fires from great distances. Your best precaution right now is to pay attention to your immediate whereabouts. Try not to stand in exposed areas in full view of the hills around this base.”

  Another recruit asked, “Does that include during the daytime?”

  Riley nodded.

  “Yes, it does. So far our shooter has only struck at night. But he seems to be adaptable, not unwilling to change his MO. We can’t rule out the possibility of a daytime attack. You can’t be too careful.”

  Larson added, “Above all else, we don’t want a vigilante atmosphere on this base. We understand that you’re scared and mistrustful. Try not to let those feelings morph into paranoia, and don’t try to take the law into your own hands. The situation is already dangerous enough, so don’t make it worse. Report anything suspicious directly to me.”

  After a handful more questions from the recruits, Riley said, “We need any information you can give us. Even details that might normally seem insignificant. No details are too small. Come to us right away if you even have the slightest hunch that something is wrong. We especially need to know of any pertinent connections between Private Barton and the other three victims. And if Private Barton had any personal issues or enemies, we need to know that too.”

  Riley knew better than to hope that hands would shoot up and the recruits would start offering theories. With some luck, maybe some soldiers would approach them privately.

  But she needed to ask the same question that she’d asked Sergeant Williams a little while ago.

  “Does the phrase ‘run with the pack’ mean anything to anybody here?”

  The recruits looked at each other, some of them shaking their heads. Riley scanned their faces as well as she could. Did she detect any flash of recognition among them? She simply couldn’t tell for sure. There was too much tension in the air already.

  Riley turned to Col. Larson and said, “I don’t have anything else to ask at the moment.”

  Larson told Sergeant Williams that the meeting was at an end, and he dismissed his group. Some of the recruits went to their barracks while the others milled tensely around the formation area. Riley and her colleagues waited around for a few moments to see if any of the soldiers wanted to speak to them more privately. One did.

  He said, “We’ve got a Muslim in our group. Abdul Sadiq is his name. Don’t you think you should bring him in for questioning? I mean, isn’t there a chance that this is some kind of Islamic terrorist thing?”

  Riley and her colleagues glanced at each other.

  We should have seen this coming, Riley thought.

  After all, there were 343 Muslim recruits on the base. Suspicions against them were likely to grow.

  Riley knew they had to nip these suspicions in the bud.

  “There’s a lot we don’t know yet,” she told the recruit. “But we have an extremely high level of confidence that the killer has no links with Islamic extremism. He acts alone, and we don’t yet know his motives. Spread that word around.”

  The soldier went away, and Riley spoke to Larson.

  “Could we put out some kind of all-points bulletin, telling personnel not to target Muslims for suspicion? Things could get ugly if we don’t watch out.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” Larson said.

  At that moment, Larson’s cell phone rang and she answered it. Meanwhile, another young soldier approached the group.

  He said, “This might not mean anything, but Kyle told me he was having some troubles at home. He was kind of tight-lipped about it, so I don’t know any details.”

  Riley doubted that this was significant. For one thing, Kyle Barton’s personal problems probably didn’t link him to the three slain sergeants. Still, she couldn’t discount any feedback.

  “Thanks for telling me,” Riley told the recruit. “Please alert Col. Larson if you think of anything else. Like I said, no details are too small.”

  As the soldier went away, Larson ended her call.

  She told Riley and the others, “I just got word that Barton’s widow and daughter are on the base. We need to go and talk to them.”

  Riley’s heart sank as they walked toward the administration building.

  Talking to grieving family members was easily the most painful part of her job. She dreaded it far more, even, than confronting psychopathic killers.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  As Riley arrived at the administration building with Bill, Lucy, and Col. Larson, her discomfort mounted. She couldn’t imagine what she could say to Private Kyle Barton�
��s widow. What were the right words to say to a young mother whose husband had been killed so abruptly? His death seemed meaningless, and yet it had been no accident. It had been murder.

  A female civilian staff member quickly escorted them to a visitors’ room where the family was waiting. The staff member introduced them all and quickly left the room.

  The widow’s name was Ellen, and the daughter’s name was Sian.

  Riley guessed that little Sian was about fourteen months old. The freckled, golden-haired little girl appeared to have just started to walk and was taking great joy in it. She laughed with delight as she toddled around the room chasing a large sparkly plastic ball with little bells inside.

  Riley suppressed a shudder at the sound of the laughter and the bells. Such innocent glee seemed shockingly misplaced at such a horrible moment.

  But of course, what did little Sian know about death?

  Riley sensed that Sian’s mother, Ellen, was also grappling with this emotional dissonance. Ellen shared her daughter’s freckles and golden hair, but her eyes were red from crying and her eyes were dazed with shock.

  All eyes in the room were on Sian for a few moments. Nobody seemed to have any idea what to say as long as Sian kept bustling noisily around. Then Lucy took the little girl by the hand and said, “Let’s go play in another room. Just you and me.”

  The little girl giggled. Lucy scooped up the ball and led the child out of the room.

  Ellen breathed an exhausted sigh when Sian was gone.

  Riley was relieved when Col. Larson spoke first.

  “We’re sorry for your loss, Mrs. Barton.”

  As always, the words struck Riley as shockingly lame—and as discordant as the toddler’s laughter had been.

  But what else is there to say? she wondered. Riley would have said those exact words if nobody else had.

  Ellen Barton nodded, as if barely aware that anything had been said.

  Then Bill got the interview started. “Mrs. Barton, we have to ask you a few questions. We’ll try not to take too much of your time.”

  The woman nodded again. “All right,” she whispered. Riley was glad that Bill was taking the lead.

  Bill asked, “Did your husband have any enemies that you knew of?”

  Riley was shocked anew when what seemed like an involuntary smirk crossed Ellen’s face.

  “Enemies?” she said. “How would I know? I didn’t even know who his friends were.”

  Riley and Bill glanced at each other.

  “Could you please explain what you mean?” Bill asked Ellen.

  Ellen breathed another deep, weary sigh.

  “Ever since Kyle began basic training, I’ve felt him slipping away from me. The time we’ve had to spend apart has been hard. But even the time we’ve spent together—well, it’s been like he wasn’t really there. The Army mattered more and more and more to him—mattered more than even …”

  Her voice trailed off, but Riley knew where her thought was going.

  The Army had come to matter more to Kyle Barton than his wife and daughter.

  Riley understood and recognized the situation all too well. After all, this wasn’t completely strange territory. Her own father’s dedication to his military career had wreaked havoc on his personal relationships—including with Riley.

  And of course Riley’s own relationships had suffered because of her devotion to the BAU. Ryan had been anything but a perfect husband, but Riley knew that she’d often been absent from the relationship physically or emotionally, sometimes both. And she still worried about how her work was affecting her ability to be a mother. She often had to ask herself whether she was as devoted to Jilly and April as she was to her job.

  She hoped she was, but the question kept coming back into her mind.

  She knew that Bill’s own relationships had suffered in the same way. She remembered something he told her when his own marriage to Maggie was starting to fall apart …

  “She thinks I’m having an affair with my job.”

  Riley felt a pang of sadness.

  Infidelity takes many forms, she thought.

  And now it seemed almost as though Ellen Barton had lost her husband quite some time before his death.

  While Riley was thinking these thoughts, Bill was still asking Ellen more questions. He was being his diplomatic best and Ellen Barton seemed willing to help, but the woman simply didn’t know enough to offer any real insights. Finally Bill looked at Riley, silently asking if she wanted to ask anything else.

  Riley shook her head and said, “We won’t trouble you further, Mrs. Barton. Again, we offer our condolences for your loss.”

  Col. Larson handed the woman her business card and said, “Please get in touch with us if you remember anything at all—even something that might seem unimportant. Thank you so much for taking some time to talk with us.”

  Riley, Bill, and Col. Larson left the room. In the hallway, they encountered Lucy and little Sian playing with the ball. Lucy escorted the child back in with her mother, and then the agents all headed for the CID building to regroup.

  Instead of considering the rest of the day’s activities, Riley found herself still thinking about something that Ellen had said.

  “I didn’t even know who his friends were.”

  It was a sad sentiment, but now Riley wondered …

  Is it something more than that?

  Everybody they had talked to on the base seemed to hold Barton in the highest regard. But had he harbored some mystery that few of them knew about? Had Kyle Barton’s secretiveness toward his wife masked some darker riddle—something that had to do with his own murder?

  Riley didn’t yet know.

  But she felt sure that something besides family matters had been amiss in Barton’s life—and that whatever it was had everything to do with his death.

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  As night fell that evening, Riley, Bill, and Lucy sat on the patio of the cottage where they were again staying, looking out over the ocean.

  It had been a frustrating day. After meeting with Ellen Barton they had gone on to interview people who had known Private Barton. They had learned nothing.

  They had also tracked down and talked to base personnel who had been up and around during the night of Barton’s murder. But those people all had alibis that checked out perfectly.

  Right now, Riley and her colleagues were enjoying a pizza that they had ordered. Lucy offered Riley a beer, and for a moment Riley hesitated. She wanted a drink badly, but she didn’t want a repeat of last night. But after all, the three agents only had a six-pack among them, so she realized that she needn’t worry about overdoing it.

  As they ate and drank, Lucy asked, “Are we sure the shooter isn’t through killing? Serial killers have sometimes been known to just stop.”

  Neither Riley nor Bill replied for a moment.

  Riley found it an oddly unsettling thought. The last thing she and her colleagues wanted was more killings. But if the killer just quit and quietly slipped into the shadows, the case might go cold.

  Just last month, Riley had solved a case that had been cold for twenty-five years. And of course a few cases were never solved at all.

  She hated the thought of that happening with this one.

  At last Bill said, “My gut tells me that he’s not finished yet.”

  “I agree,” Riley said. “The question isn’t so much whether he’s planning to kill again, but when. And we’ve got to stop him before that happens.”

  “We might have some time,” Bill added. “He’s been killing at irregular intervals, and it could be that those intervals will get shorter rather than longer. But I’m not so sure about that. We don’t have much to go by.”

  Riley silently agreed. Security on the base had been heightened, with increased surveillance from drones and helicopters. There also was a new curfew to keep personnel from roaming around at night. But Riley knew that this killer was nothing if not resourceful—a sort of murderous
Boy Scout, always prepared for any eventuality. It really bothered Riley that she and her colleagues were making so little progress.

  When they finished eating, Lucy got up from the table.

  “I think I’ll take a walk along the beach,” she said.

  Riley smiled and said, “You won’t be able to see much when it’s dark like this.”

  “It’s never completely dark on the water,” Lucy said.

  The younger agent walked off the patio and onto the beach.

  Riley felt moved as she remembered the story Lucy had told about her own life—how she and her family had lived in Sacramento, but had worked so hard that Lucy had no chance to see the ocean until she went to college.

  Riley recalled what Lucy had said about the ocean …

  “Whenever I see it, it reminds me of how lucky I am, and how proud I am to live in this country and to do the work that I do.”

  Riley felt her eyes get a little misty.

  As if reading her thoughts, Bill said, “That girl’s going to do great things with the Bureau. I’m proud to be working with her now, and I know that she’s just getting started.”

  “Me, too,” Riley said.

  She and Bill fell silent again. Riley realized that she hadn’t been in touch with anyone back in Fredericksburg all day. It was too late for phone calls, but not too late for texts. She quickly typed affectionate messages to Blaine, Gabriela, and the girls. She told April and Jilly how much she loved them, and how much she was looking forward to coming home.

  Then she sat and stared at the surf and listened to its steady waves.

  Anxieties started to crowd into her brain again. The thought of Shirley Redding’s pointless death still haunted her. She started looking back over the last few months, thinking about all the decisions she might have made differently.

  How did I let all this happen? she kept asking herself.

  In the midst of her thoughts, she was startled by the sound of Bill’s voice.

  “How are you doing?”