Once Craved (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #3)

by Blake Pierce

  What would happen if he tried to ring himself in, announcing that he was an FBI agent? And who would he wind up talking to once he was admitted? Dusk had fallen, and the house was well lit. It was possible that a number of people were inside. Bill couldn’t even be sure that Calvin Rabbe was one of them.

  At the next corner, Bill turned his car around to drive past the front gates again.

  In the well-lighted driveway, he saw a fancy little sports convertible wending its way through the grounds toward the gate. The top was down, and Bill could see the driver. The man was young with sandy blond hair, and he was wearing a polo shirt. He perfectly matched pictures Bill had seen of Calvin Rabbe. He had the look of a movie star approaching middle age, but still trying to project a carefree, youthful image.

  Bill suddenly felt lucky. Now he wouldn’t have to fake his way into the mansion. Rabbe was on his way out, very possibly headed for a night on the town. If Bill could just stay on his trail, the man might give himself away. The gate opened, and the little car went off down the street. Bill followed him, keeping an unsuspicious distance behind.

  The night deepened as Bill followed the sports car through the expensive neighborhood. He found himself wondering what Riley was doing right now. Had it really been a good idea to let her go to that truck stop alone? Hank’s Derby sounded like a vile and dangerous place for a woman.

  Bill didn’t really know why he was worried. Riley was far and away the toughest and most capable woman he had ever known. He’d seen her take down some truly dangerous characters. It was hard to imagine what kind of man could actually be a threat to her.

  He decided that his unease was because this case was getting to him. He thought that it was getting to Riley too. Bill doubted that either of them would feel a lot of satisfaction once they took down this killer. Whoever had murdered Nancy Holbrook was just the tip of an iceberg, a symptom of a much larger evil. God only knew how many other women were being exploited, victimized, and killed. They were here to stop one man, but the whole ugly scene would just go on and on.

  Soon Bill noticed that Calvin Rabbe was making his way into an especially unpleasant neighborhood. The streets were lined with seedy bars, motels, and strip joints. Rabbe parked his car in front of a place called the Lariat Strip Club.

  The marquee sign showed a semi-animated neon lariat dropping around a nude woman’s silhouette and tightening around her waist. Below the sign was a smaller one that announced “LIVE NUDES.” So soon after viewing Nancy Holbrook’s naked corpse, the sign struck Bill as chillingly ironic. Had the killer come here to hunt for another living target?

  He parked just a couple of spaces behind Rabbe and watched him get out of the car. In the midst of the local riffraff of druggies and hookers, Rabbe really stood out in his preppy shirt, khaki shorts, and expensive sneakers. But Bill quickly realized that Rabbe wasn’t headed toward the club’s front entrance. Instead he continued around the corner of the building and disappeared from sight.

  Bill jumped out of his car and broke into a trot. When he reached the edge of the building, he saw Rabbe walking away from him toward the alley behind the strip club. Bill waited until his prey disappeared around back, then followed. Once in the alley, Bill was able to hide alongside a dumpster and watch what Rabbe was up to.

  Rabbe knocked on the back door of the strip club. The door opened, and Rabbe walked on inside. The door slammed shut behind him.

  Bill felt more alert by the second. If Rabbe was making a drug deal, this might give Bill a perfect excuse to bring him in. But he had to be patient. He had to be sure.

  After about five minutes, Rabbe stepped out into the alley again. He took a small package out of his front pocket and unfolded it. He brushed his finger through the contents, then rubbed it inside his mouth around his gums. He was sampling the product.

  Bingo! Bill thought.

  Bill stepped into the open, taking out his badge.

  “FBI,” he said. “You’re under arrest.”

  Rabbe hastily refolded the package and stuck it in his pants pocket. For a moment, he looked at Bill with a slightly stunned deer-in-the-headlights expression. Then he smiled broadly, threw back his head, and laughed.

  “FBI? Oh, this is a joke. This has got to be a joke.”

  “No joke,” Bill said. “Hands behind your back.”

  Bill had come prepared with a pair of handcuffs. As he took them off his belt, he wondered if he was going to need to draw his weapon.

  Shaking his head with apparent disbelief, Rabbe put his hands behind his back.

  “No, really,” Rabbe said. “This is a joke. I know it’s a joke. Who put you up to this?”

  Bill slapped the handcuffs on him. As he started reading his rights, Rabbe interrupted.

  “I know my rights, believe me. I’m used to this kind of thing from the local cops, but the FBI? Seriously, I don’t believe it. What are you even arresting me for?”

  The corner of the paper package was poking out of Rabbe’s pants pocket. Bill pulled it out and waved it in front of his face.

  “This will do,” he said.

  “Oh, give me a break. You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Bill resumed reading him his rights.

  “I said I know my rights,” Rabbe said, interrupting again.

  “Humor me,” Bill said. He finished the recitation of rights and escorted Rabbe back to his car.

  He had a good feeling that this really was the killer. He hoped Riley would get back to the FBI field office in time to help him make absolutely sure.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Riley got a text message from Bill just as she drove away from the emergency shelter where she’d left Jilly. All it said was that he had apprehended Calvin Rabbe. She hurried back to the Phoenix FBI building to check out the suspect.

  She met Bill outside the interview room.

  “What happened?” she asked breathlessly. “What did you get him for? We didn’t even have a warrant.”

  “Cocaine possession,” Bill said. “I got lucky. Real lucky. I’m glad you’re here. I was just getting ready to talk to him. Come on in and help me out.”

  Riley followed Bill into the interview room. Calvin Rabbe was sitting there in handcuffs, sneering like some snotty overage schoolboy who had been sent to the principal’s office.

  “Will somebody tell me what this is all about?” Rabbe said. “I’m not an idiot. I know it’s not coke. It’s got to be something else.”

  Riley and Bill sat down at the table across from him. Riley stared at him quietly, trying to decide how to handle him. It wouldn’t do to accuse him right away of killing Nancy Holbrook. He’d lawyer up in no time and wiggle right out from under them. A less direct approach seemed more promising.

  Riley said, “We understand that you’re an occasional client of Ishtar Escorts.”

  “Who told you that?” Rabbe said. “That’s not true.”

  “We got your name from Ishtar herself,” Bill put in.

  Rabbe looked surprised, but hardly shocked, nor even especially annoyed.

  “Well, that old whore,” he said. “What’s the world coming to? If you can’t trust whores, who can you trust?”

  Riley leaned across the table toward him.

  “So you like whores, Calvin?” she said.

  Rabbe shrugged. “As women these days go, whores are better than most. That’s not saying a lot.”

  “So you’ve got a problem with women?” Riley said.

  “Don’t get me started,” Rabbe growled, looking away from her.

  I’ve hit his sore spot, Riley realized. She was starting to feel that the interview was on the right track.

  “Tell us a little about Nanette,” Riley said.

  “Who’s Nanette?”

  “Oh, come on,” Riley said. “You know perfectly well who I’m talking about. One of Ishtar’s girls. You met with Nanette last Saturday night.”

  Rabbe let out a snort of derision. “I did no such thing,” he said. “Sure, I
had an appointment with her. But she stood me up. It really ruined my night. She was going to come with me to a charity event my mom was holding. It was written up in the news. Maybe you’ve heard of it, the Judith Rabbe Foundation.”

  He said the words with palpable disgust. Riley was becoming intrigued.

  “No, I can’t say I have heard of it,” Riley said.

  Rabbe rolled his eyes.

  “Oh, my mom’s got this thing about educating girls in all those countries with unpronounceable names. Trying to fix a problem that’s not a problem at all. They’ve got the right idea about women in those places. Not like the fucked-up culture we’ve got here.”

  Riley could see Rabbe’s character coming into clearer focus.

  A misogynist pig, she thought. Exactly the kind of guy we’re looking for.

  Bill asked the next question. “So how does your mother feel about your bringing escorts to her fancy get-togethers?”

  It struck Riley as an excellent question. She remembered the less-than-respectable outfit that Nancy Holbrook had been wearing when her body was found. She also pictured how it would have gone over at the kind of upscale charity event that Rabbe’s mother had surely given.

  A broad, satisfied smirk formed across Rabbe’s face.

  “She doesn’t like it, you can be sure of that,” he said. “And it serves her right. But Nanette left me high and dry that night. No time to schedule another girl. I got stuck there alone in a house full of shrill harpies going on and on about oppression and patriarchal hegemony and all that sort of thing. Jesus.”

  His expression changed. Something seemed to be dawning on him.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “Is this about Nanette’s heroin habit? Is that why you hauled me in? Because I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  It was a lie, and Riley instantly knew it.

  “But you didn’t mind that she was strung out on smack, did you?” she said.

  Rabbe chuckled a little.

  “I like them docile, if you know what I mean,” he said. “More like nature meant them to be. You ought to read a little evolutionary psychology, baby. Women aren’t wired for the kind of work you do, the kind of life you live. Nature designed you to stay in the cave while the men went out to hunt. You’re supposed to have babies and take good care of them.”

  He looked her steadily in the eye.

  “You’re just making yourself miserable, you know,” Rabbe told her. “Fighting your own DNA coding, I mean. And I pity your boyfriend or husband—unless you’re a lesbian, which I guess would make sense.”

  She knew that he was trying to get her goat. But it wasn’t going to work. It was going to take a lot more than pseudoscientific antifeminism to get her to flare up at him, especially after the ugliness she’d just witnessed at Hank’s Derby.

  Then he told her, “I can see right through you. I know your type through and through. And I’ll bet anything—every cent I’ve got in the world—that you’re a lousy lay.”

  It was Riley’s turn to smirk.

  “This from a guy who can’t get laid unless he pays for it,” she said.

  The comment seemed to have no impact upon him at all.

  “Oh, I can get laid,” he said. “I can get all the pussy I want, anytime I want. It’s an art and a science, and I’m a master at it. I could have you if I wanted you. I could make you beg for it if I put my mind to it.”

  Riley almost laughed at the idea of Rabbe trying to ply his pickup technique on her. Still, she detected that he was more than half telling the truth. He was cunning and amorally deceptive, and he knew exactly what he was doing. She sensed that he could drop this vulgar, woman-hating manner altogether and adopt a much more charming and attractive persona. He could present himself as thoughtful, gallant, and sensitive to a woman’s feelings. He could get his way with many women before they had a chance to see their mistake.

  But they always live to regret it, she thought.

  Or maybe some of them didn’t live to regret it.

  And this creep had no regrets. Not for anything he did. Not even for anything he said. She could feel her innate disgust for this type of man stirring in her gut.

  “So why go to whores?” Bill asked.

  Rabbe looked at Bill. “Believe me, buddy, whores are the way to go. Or maybe you know that already. They’re honest. You don’t have to get into bargaining and bartering about ‘consent.’ These days it’s all ‘may I’ this and ‘may I’ that. A man can go to jail just for having sex with his own wife.”

  “Nonconsensual sex,” Bill said.

  “In marriage, there’s no such thing.”

  He made a point of saying it directly to Riley. But she had no trouble keeping her cool. She sensed that now was a good time to get to the point.

  “Did you have anything to do with Nanette’s death?” she asked.

  Riley looked for even a flicker of reaction. Rabbe’s face showed no change of expression at all.

  “She’s dead?” he replied blandly.

  “She was killed on Saturday night,” Riley said.

  Bill added, “The night you had an appointment with her.”

  Rabbe actually looked bored now.

  “Well, I’m all broken up about it,” he said, pretending to stifle a yawn. “So that’s what this is all about. You think I did it. Well, I’ve got an alibi. I was at home at my mom’s charity event. You can even find photos of me there on the Internet.”

  He leaned back in his chair.

  “OK, fun times over,” he said. “I want my phone call. I want my lawyer.”

  She didn’t know whether it was the artificial yawn or the comment about fun times, but Riley wasn’t listening anymore. She lunged across the table and grabbed Rabbe by the front of his expensive shirt.

  “Right!” she shouted. “No more fun times.”

  His scream when she threw him to the floor was deeply satisfying. She flung herself toward him and he scrambled backward across the floor, moving remarkably fast for a man in handcuffs.

  Two younger agents rushed into the room, grabbing Riley’s arms from both sides, but she was still moving forward toward Rabbe. She started to knock them away, but she didn’t fight Bill off when he put his arms around her from behind, pinning her own arms down.

  “Enough,” Bill said. “You’ll get suspended again,” he said sternly.

  “Again?” one of the younger agents said.

  “All right,” Riley said. “All right.” Her fury was subsiding. She relaxed her body and Bill released his hold.

  By then Rabbe was yelling for his lawyer and threatening lawsuits. Riley looked down at him and he grew quiet.

  He was a rare suspect, she realized—the kind she didn’t know how to read. She turned to Bill.

  “Let’s have a word outside,” she said coolly.

  She and Bill stepped outside the interview room.

  “I think we should let him go,” she said.

  Bill looked shocked and surprised.

  “You don’t think he’s our guy?” Bill asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then shouldn’t we question him some more?”

  Riley let out a discouraged sigh. “We can check out his alibi. But right now, all we’ve got him on is a half-assed drug charge. Just possession of a small quantity. And with the kind of lawyer he can afford, we won’t even be able to make that stick. He’ll be out of here in no time. If we let him go now, at least we can assign some agents to keep track of him. Maybe we can trip him up.”

  Bill shook his head.

  “I don’t like this,” he said. “But I’ll go in and do it. Maybe that will keep him from bringing charges against you.”

  Riley watched through the one-way window as Bill took off Rabbe’s handcuffs and told him he could go. Rabbe looked straight into the window. He obviously knew that Riley was watching him. He gave her a smirk but then lowered his eyes and hurried out of the room.

  Riley wasn’t used to feeling so full o
f self-doubt. And now she remembered how the diving team chief had said there was no second body in the lake. She hadn’t had a chance to tell Bill about that yet, but it had shaken her confidence.

  As she waited for Bill to finish escorting Rabbe out of the building, her head filled up with questions. Could she really be sure that the divers were wrong? Was it possible that this wasn’t a serial case after all?

  She was used to following her gut, but now her gut was giving her mixed signals. Maybe all the trauma of the last few months—being held captive herself and having to rescue April from captivity—had blunted her instincts. Maybe she wasn’t up for this kind of work anymore.

  Still, there was one thing she wanted to do, even if this was the last job she ever took as a field agent. She wanted to catch Nancy Holbrook’s killer. But was she right to suspect Rabbe?

  Or did she just want him to be guilty?

  Chapter Sixteen

  As the woman strolled down the posh hotel hallway with the man who called himself T.R., she wondered what kind of fun was in store for her today. The situation made her a little giddy and she gave herself a stern reminder …

  Your name is “Chiffon.” Don’t forget it.

  It wasn’t that she usually had trouble remembering the name of her hooker alter-ego. She really liked the name Chiffon, and she’d used it with dozens of johns without slipping once. But T.R. was different. He disarmed her somehow.

  Maybe it was because he’d shown a trace of vulnerability the only other time they’d been together. Things hadn’t gone well for the poor guy. Of course, she’d dutifully taken the blame and cheerfully offered to make it up to him.

  A little while ago in the middle of the day, she’d spotted him sitting in his parked car a block away from the Kinetic Custom Gym. He’d picked her up near the gym once before, although he’d insisted they meet somewhere else to play. She thought it was because he was too classy for a place like that. This time, she’d approached him and suggested they give things another try.