Once Gone (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #1)

by Blake Pierce

  Chapter 16

  “Do you feel kind of out of place?” Bill asked.

  “Yeah,” Riley said. “And I’m sure we both look it, too.”

  A seemingly random mix of dolls and people were seated in the leather-upholstered furniture of the ostentatious hotel lobby. The people—mostly women, but a few men—were drinking tea and coffee and chatting with one another. Dolls of sundry types, both male and female, sat among them like perfectly behaved children. Riley thought it looked like some bizarre kind of family reunion in which none of the children were real.

  Riley couldn’t help staring at the odd scene. With no more leads to follow, she and Bill had decided to come here, to this doll convention, hoping she might stumble upon some lead, however remote.

  “Are you two registered?” he asked

  Riley turned to see a security guard eyeing Bill’s jacket, undoubtedly having detected his concealed weapon. The guard held his hand near his own holstered gun.

  She thought that with this many people around, the guard had good reason to worry. A crazed shooter really could wreak havoc in a place like this.

  Bill flashed his badge. “FBI,” he said.

  The guard chuckled.

  “Can’t say I’m surprised,” he said.

  “Why not?” Riley asked.

  The guard shook his head.

  “Because this is just about the weirdest bunch of people I ever saw in one place.”

  “Yeah,” Bill agreed. “And they’re not even all people.”

  The guard shrugged and replied, “You can bet that somebody here has done something they shouldn’t have.”

  The man jerked his head to one side then the other, scanning the room.

  “I’ll be glad when it’s all over.” Then he strode away, looking wary and alert.

  As she wandered with Bill into an adjoining hallway, Riley wasn’t sure what the guard was so worried about. Generally speaking, the attendees looked more eccentric than menacing. The women in view ranged from young to elderly. Some were stern and dour looking, while others seemed open and friendly.

  “Tell me again what you hope to find out here,” Bill muttered.

  “I’m not sure,” Riley admitted.

  “Maybe you’re making too much of the whole doll thing,” he said, clearly unhappy to be here. “Blackwell was creepy about dolls, but he wasn’t the perp. And yesterday we learned that the first victim didn’t even like dolls.”

  Riley didn’t reply. Bill might well be right. But when he had showed her a brochure announcing this convention and show, she somehow couldn’t help following through. She wanted to make another try.

  The men Riley saw tended to look bookish and professorial, most of them wearing glasses and more than a few of them sporting goatees. None of them appeared quite capable of murder. She passed a seated woman who was lovingly rocking a baby doll in her arms and singing a lullaby. A little farther on, an elderly woman was carrying on a rapt conversation with a life-sized monkey doll.

  Okay, Riley thought, so there is a little bit of weirdness going on.

  Bill pulled the brochure out of his jacket pocket and browsed it as they walked along.

  “Anything interesting happening?” Riley asked him.

  “Just talks, lectures, workshops—that kind of thing. Some big manufacturers are here to bring store owners up to date on trends and crazes. And there are some folks who seem to have gotten famous in the whole doll scene. They’re giving talks of one kind or another.”

  Then Bill laughed.

  “Hey, here’s a lecture with a real doozy of a title.”

  “What is it?”

  “‘The Social Construction of Victorian Gender in Period Porcelain Dolls.’ It’s going to start in a few minutes. Want to check it out?”

  Riley laughed as well. “I’m sure we wouldn’t understand a word of it. Anything else?”

  Bill shook his head. “Not really. Nothing to help understand the motives of a sadistic killer, anyway.”

  Riley and Bill moved on into the next big open room. It was a gigantic maze of booths and tables, where every conceivable kind of doll or puppet was on exhibit. They ranged from as tiny as a single finger to life size, from antique to fresh out of the factory. Some of them were walking and some were talking, but most of them just hung or sat or stood there, staring back at the viewers who clustered in front of each one.

  For the first time Riley saw that actual children were present—no boys, only small girls. Most were under their parents’ immediate supervision, but a few wandered loose in unruly little groups, putting exhibitors’ nerves on edge.

  Riley picked up a miniature camera from a table. The attached tag claimed that it worked. On the same counter were tiny newspapers, stuffed toys, handbags, wallets, and backpacks. On the next table were doll-sized bathtubs and other bathroom fixtures.

  The T-shirt station printed shirts for dolls and for full-size people, but the hair salon was for dolls only. The sight of several small carefully styled wigs gave Riley chills. The FBI had already found the manufacturers of the wigs from the murder scenes and knew that they were sold in countless stores everywhere. Seeing them lined up like this brought back images that Riley knew that other people here didn’t share. Images of dead women, naked, sitting splayed like dolls, wearing ill-fitting wigs made out of doll hair.

  Riley felt sure that those images would never fade from her mind. The women treated so callously, yet so carefully arranged to represent … something she couldn’t quite pin down. But of course that was why she and Bill were even here.

  She stepped forward and spoke to the perky young woman who seemed to be charge of the doll-hair salon.

  “Do you sell these wigs here?” Riley asked.

  “Of course,” the woman responded. “Those are just for display, but I have brand new ones in boxes. Which one would you like?”

  Riley wasn’t sure what to say next. “Do you style these little wigs?” she finally asked.

  “We can change the style for you. It’s a very small additional charge.”

  “What kind of people buy them?” Riley said. She wanted to ask whether any creepy guys had been around to buy doll wigs.

  The woman looked at her, wide-eyed. “I’m not sure what you mean,” she said. “All kinds of people buy them. Sometimes they bring in a doll they already have to get the hair changed.”

  “I mean, do men often buy them?” Riley asked.

  The young woman was looking distinctly uncomfortable now. “Not that I recall,” she said. Then she turned abruptly away to deal with a new customer.

  Riley just stood there for a moment. She felt like an idiot, accosting someone with such questions. It was as though she had thrust her own dark world into one that was supposed to be sweet and simple.

  She felt a touch on her arm. Bill said, “I don’t think you’re going to find the perp here.”

  Riley could feel her face flush. But as she turned away from the doll-hair salon, she realized that she wasn’t the only strange lady that the exhibitors here had to deal with. She almost walked into a woman desperately clutching a newly bought doll, weeping passionately, apparently with joy. At another table, a man and a woman had gotten into a shouting match over which of them would get to buy a particularly rare collector’s item. They were engaged in a physical tug-of-war that threatened to tear the merchandise apart.

  “Now I begin to see why that security guard was worried,” she said to Bill.

  She saw that Bill was intently watching someone nearby.

  “What?” she asked him.

  “Check out that guy,” Bill said, nodding toward a man standing at a nearby display of large dolls in frilly dresses. He was in his mid-thirties and quite handsome. Unlike most of the other males here, he didn’t look bookish or scholarly. Instead, he cut the appearance of a prosperous and confident businessman, properly dressed in an expensive suit and tie.

  “He looks as out of place as we do,” Bill muttere
d. “Why is a guy like that playing with dolls?”

  “I don’t know,” Riley replied. “But he also looks like he could hire a real live playmate if he wanted to.” She watched the businessman for a moment. He had stopped to look at a display of little girl dolls in frilly dresses. He glanced around, as if to be sure that no one was watching.

  Bill turned his back to the man and leaned forward as if talking animatedly with Riley. “What’s he doing now?”

  “Checking out the merchandise,” she said. “In a way I really don’t like.”

  The man bent toward one doll and peered at it closely—maybe a little too closely—and his thin lips curled up into a smile. Then he again scanned the others in the room.

  “Or looking for prospective victims,” she added.

  Riley was sure she detected a certain furtiveness in the man’s manner as he fingered the doll’s dress, examining the fabric in a sensuous manner.

  Bill glanced at the man again. “Jesus,” he murmured. “Is this guy creepy or what?”

  A chilly feeling seized Riley. Rationally, she knew perfectly well that this couldn’t be the murderer. After all, what were the chances of stumbling across him in public like this? Still, at that moment Riley was convinced that she was in the presence of evil.

  “Don’t let him get out of sight,” Riley said. “If he gets weird enough, we’ll ask him some questions.”

  But then, reality blew those dark thoughts away. A little girl about five years old came running up to the man.

  “Daddy,” she called him.

  The man’s smile widened, and his face beamed innocently with love. He showed his daughter the doll he had found, and she clapped her hands and laughed with delight. He handed it to her and she hugged it tightly. The father took out his wallet and got ready to pay the vendor.

  Riley stifled a groan.

  My instincts miss again, she thought.

  She saw that Bill was listening to someone on his cell phone. His face looked stricken as he turned toward her.

  “He’s taken another woman.”