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

by Blake Pierce

  Jaybird cut her off with a grunt. But Riley bent close to her and said gently, “She was what, Chrissy?”

  “She was awful sick,” Chrissy said.

  Riley could see that Chrissy was frightened of Jaybird now. She’d better not push the issue. Besides, Chrissy’s meaning was obvious. Marsha “Ginger” Kramer had been HIV positive, possibly with fully developed AIDS.

  Then Bill asked Chrissy, “Do you know a girl named Snowflake?”

  “Yeah, she used to work here, she—”

  But Jaybird cleared his throat and she stopped in mid-sentence.

  “Snowflake doesn’t work here anymore,” Jaybird said.

  Again, Riley saw no need to push the issue. It was all pretty clear to her. Snowflake had fled this horrible place because of Jaybird’s brutality. It was only because she was free of Jaybird that she’d dared to call in her tip.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Jaybird said. “Wait just a minute. I know who you should check out.”

  “Who is it?” Riley asked.

  “Now hold on, not so fast,” Jaybird said. “I’ll tell you only if you agree to not hassle me. I’m just doing an honest business.”

  Riley’s stomach turned at making any kind of deal with this man.

  “OK,” she said, “but only if your tip is good.”

  “It’s a guy named Clay Hovis. Yeah, I remember how Ginger was scared of him. All our girls were scared of him. Chiffon especially. In fact, I finally barred him from the place because he’d been too rough on Chiffon. Isn’t that right, Chrissy?”

  Chrissy nodded mutely.

  Jaybird said, “Yeah, it’s definitely Clay. He’s really bad news. Give me something so I can write down his name and address.”

  Chrissy handed Jaybird a pad and pencil, and Jaybird jotted something down. While Bill asked him for a few details about Hovis, Riley turned to look at Chrissy.

  Riley’s heart sank. Still silent, Chrissy was staring at her with an imploring expression. After all the unspoken signals Chrissy and Jaybird had passed back and forth, it struck Riley likely that Jaybird would beat her badly as soon as she and Bill left. The poor woman desperately wanted someone to rescue her from this horrible life. But Riley knew that any rescue would be temporary. This woman would have to get to a point where she was willing to rescue herself. And all the others too.

  As the men talked, Riley leaned over and whispered to Chrissy, “You can leave with me right now if you want to.”

  Chrissy just looked at her blankly.

  “I can get you someplace to stay. There are people who can help you.”

  Chrissy shook her head no. Riley felt a little sick now.

  She’s too scared to even think about leaving, Riley realized.

  She handed Chrissy her card and whispered, “Call me if you change your mind.”

  Chrissy took the card, but she looked away.

  Now Riley knew why the sick, tired, despairing women in the sauna reminded her of Peterson’s cage. Her own torment had lasted only a few days. Chrissy and the rest of women here were living under a life sentence.

  In a way, it didn’t much matter whether Jaybird was the killer they sought, or Hovis, or some other man.

  They’re all monsters, Riley thought.

  And there was no way to stop them all.

  Riley turned away from Chrissy and stepped menacingly toward Jaybird.

  “Your tip had better be good,” Riley said. “Just give me an excuse. Give me any reason at all. I’ll put you down like a dog.”

  Jaybird stared at her with dark angry eyes.

  “Come on,” Bill said to Riley. “Let’s go check out Clay Hovis.”

  Chapter Twenty Two

  It wasn’t a long drive to Clay Hovis’s apartment. It was in the same rough neighborhood as the Kinetic Custom Gym. Riley wasn’t looking forward to interviewing the man. After a career of dealing with horror, she’d had no idea that she could still be so horrified. Right now this case seemed to be getting uglier by the hour.

  “Are you OK?” Bill asked Riley as she drove.

  Riley didn’t answer. She simply didn’t know what to say.

  Then Bill asked her, “What do you think of Jaybird? Do you think he’s our guy?”

  Riley thought for a moment.

  “No,” she said. “He’s just a businessman. Oh, he’s a businessman who hates women. And he’s OK with beating up and abusing women. That’s all in his line of work. But murder is bad for business. He doesn’t like murder.”

  She thought for another moment, then added, “And he’s not impotent.”

  “And our killer is?” Bill said.

  “Intermittently, at least,” Riley said. “Although I’m sure he doesn’t like to admit it, even to himself. And maybe not when he first started killing. But now performance is an issue for him. He gets his enjoyment out of the murders themselves, not sex or sexual violence.”

  She thought about it for another moment. “And Jaybird’s not like that,” she said. “His bluster and bravado is genuine, not a way of compensating for a lack of virility.”

  “So his tip about this Clay Hovis guy might be legit?” Bill said.

  “Could be,” Riley said.

  It made more and more sense to her. Jaybird had sounded truly angry with Hovis. The man must have caused some real trouble for Jaybird to have banned him from the place. And Jaybird was undoubtedly worried what would happen if or when word of these murders got out. That would really hurt his business. If Hovis was the killer, Jaybird had plenty of reason to want to put him away.

  “You’d better call headquarters,” Riley told Bill as she turned a corner into an especially seedy part of the neighborhood. “We need info about Gretchen Lovick. We’ll need to find out about her next of kin. Chrissy said her husband does some kind of work having to do with computers. It shouldn’t be hard to track him down.”

  Bill got on the phone. As he talked with Morley, Riley realized that she and Bill just might have to inform Lovick that his wife was dead. That thought only made the sick feeling in her stomach worse. Since the body had not been identified until now, the woman’s husband probably wouldn’t know that she’d been murdered. Unless, of course, he had killed her himself, but that wasn’t at all likely in a case that included three dead prostitutes over a span of years. The man they were going to see now was a much more likely suspect.

  Riley pulled the car up in front of a big, ratty-looking apartment building where Clay Hovis lived. They got out of the car and walked up three flights of stairs. As they continued down the hall toward Hovis’s apartment, a cacophony of blaring music and loud voices surrounded them. It was hard for Riley to imagine living here. How could anybody ever sleep or even think?

  As they approached the door to Hovis’s apartment, they heard a dog barking inside. Before they could even knock on the door, they heard more hostile snarling and the scratching of claws against the door. The animal sounded big and extremely dangerous.

  After a moment of animal fury, they heard a man’s voice call out from inside.

  “Who is it?”

  Riley realized that the apartment’s occupant was looking out through a peephole. Riley stepped back so that she’d be fully in view. She took out her badge.

  “Agents Paige and Jeffreys, FBI,” she called out. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  The dog started barking again.

  “Do you have a warrant?” the man yelled through the door.

  “No,” Bill said loudly. “We just want to talk.”

  The animal noise continued.

  “No,” the man’s voice said.

  Riley called out, “Mr. Hovis—I believe we’re talking to Mr. Hovis—things will go better for all of us if you cooperate.”

  Once again, the man answered, “No.”

  Riley looked at Bill, uncertain of what to do. Things would be different if they had a warrant for his arrest, or to search his premises. But as things stood, Clay Hovis was well within his righ
ts not to answer the door, even to law enforcement. And he apparently knew it.

  Bill yelled over the barking, “That’s OK, Mr. Hovis. We understand. You don’t have to talk to us if you don’t want to.”

  Riley looked at Bill with surprise. Bill gave her a half-smile that assured her that he knew exactly what he was doing.

  As the dog’s fury grew, Riley quickly understood Bill’s tactic. Although Hovis had the right not to talk to them, she and Bill had every right to stay right where they were. And as long as they stood in front of the door, the dog’s uproar would get worse. Hovis couldn’t calm the creature down, and the situation inside the apartment must be becoming intolerable.

  Soon the door opened a little, stopped by a chain. Riley could now see the black face of a Doberman pinscher. Its nose pushed through the opening as far as it would go. It flashed enormous teeth at the strangers, and its eyes were angry. The creature barked furiously.

  An African-American man also peered through the opening.

  “What do you want?” he said over the sound of barking.

  “Like I said, we just want to talk,” Bill said.

  The man cursed and unlocked the chain. He opened the door, holding the dog tightly by its collar.

  “It’s OK, Genghis,” the man said to the dog. Then he said to Riley and Bill, “Come on in.”

  Riley and Bill cautiously stepped into the apartment. The dog was growling, but he was calmer now that his master had invited them in. The man attached a leash to the dog’s collar, walked the surly creature over to an armchair, and sat down.

  “Genghis, down,” he said.

  The dog obeyed, lying down beside the chair with a whimper. It stopped growling but watched them alertly. Then Hovis glared at Riley and Bill.

  Bill began, “We understand that you’re familiar with the Kinetic Custom Gym.”

  “Yeah,” the man said.

  Riley added, “What do you know about two of its female employees—Chiffon and Ginger? Ginger worked there a long time ago. But Chiffon’s very recent.”

  “I’ve never heard of them,” Hovis said.

  The man’s face and voice were so lacking in expression that Riley couldn’t tell if he was lying or not.

  “Both women are dead,” Bill said. “Chiffon died last night. Ginger died about three years ago.”

  Hovis said nothing.

  Riley said, “Can you tell us where you were and what you were doing last night, between dusk and dawn?”

  “I was right here,” Hovis said.

  “Do you have any witnesses to back you up?” Bill asked.

  “No.”

  Then he fell silent again. The air was still full of ambient noise from the nearby apartments, and the dog kept whining a little. Hovis was obviously not going to be forthcoming. Riley couldn’t yet tell whether he was concealing something or was reticent by nature.

  But as a team, both she and Bill knew from experience better than to try to rush a situation like this. It was best to let Hovis think that they were in no hurry.

  Riley looked the man over carefully. He was black, tall, and rather gangly. His gaze was direct and very intense. She noticed that he was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and full-length jeans, despite the fact that the room’s air conditioning was audibly sputtering and the room was uncomfortably warm.

  After a moment, Riley said, “We talked to Jaybird. It sounds as if you and he had a bit of a falling out.”

  Hovis’s registered an ever-so-slight smirk.

  “You could say that.”

  Bill said, “Care to tell us what it was all about?”

  “Business,” Hovis said.

  Riley said, “Jaybird told us you were getting too rough on his girls. He said that both Ginger and Chiffon were scared of you.”

  Riley thought the man looked vaguely offended.

  “I never touched his girls,” he snapped.

  Riley looked around the apartment. It was shabby and cheap, and all the furniture looked old and used. Still, the place was remarkably neat. Clay Hovis was anything but a slob.

  Nearby was a chess set on a ’50s-style kitchen table. It looked like a game was in progress. Was a partner coming in to play chess with Hovis from time to time, or was he playing the game alone? Either way, Riley had a hunch that Hovis was an excellent player.

  And judging from the books on a nearby bookshelf, Riley gleaned that Hovis was intelligent and self-educated. All this was consistent with the profile of their killer. But she wasn’t ready to jump to any conclusions.

  Riley returned the suspect’s gaze. He kept unflinching eye contact with her. She was starting to read something in that face. She wasn’t sure just what. She reminded herself again not to hurry, not to push. This man demanded patience.

  Then Hovis asked, “How did the girls die?”

  Riley saw something in his expression. Was it a flash of concern? No, Riley sensed that it went deeper than that.

  Guilt, maybe, Riley thought.

  “They were murdered,” Bill said.

  Riley kept studying his face, trying to gauge his reaction.

  “You don’t think Jaybird killed them?” Hovis said.

  “We haven’t ruled out anybody,” Riley said. She wondered if he knew that she was lying about Jaybird.

  Hovis didn’t try to evade Riley’s gaze. To the contrary, he kept his eyes locked directly on hers.

  “What do you do for a living, Mr. Hovis?” she said.

  “Freelance construction work,” he said.

  Riley detected in both his voice and his look that this was a lie. She also sensed that he didn’t much care if she knew it. He might very well want her to know it. He actually seemed to want to tell her something. But it was something that he couldn’t tell her openly.

  He wants me to parse it out somehow, she thought.

  “Mr. Hovis,” she said quietly, “I’m going to say a few things. Statements, not questions. You don’t have to say anything in response to them. You don’t have to do anything at all. Just listen.”

  Just a hint of a smile formed on his lips. Yes, this was what he wanted.

  She looked around the sparsely furnished apartment. She didn’t see a single object of real value. So why did Hovis keep such a big, fierce guard dog? What was he guarding?

  Riley looked Hovis over again. She noticed that his face and hands were oddly pasty for a black person. And again she observed those long sleeves and full-length pants. He was in his stocking feet. He wasn’t wearing a belt, and his fly was unfastened. He’d put these clothes on in a hurry when she and Bill had gotten here. He wanted to cover up something.

  In a flash, Riley realized …

  Needle marks. All over his body.

  “You’re a drug user,” she said.

  He stared back at her. Nothing in his gaze contradicted her.

  Then she said, “You’re an addict—but you’re an extremely high-functioning addict.”

  That hint of a smile showed through again.

  “You don’t work in construction,” Riley said.

  His head tilted forward slightly, almost a nod.

  Things were starting to come together in Riley’s mind, without Hovis saying a word. He was a drug dealer—but not a sociopathic drug dealer. He was compelled to sell drugs to maintain his habit.

  Then she remembered the question he’d asked earlier

  “How did the girls die?”

  She thought back to the women at the Kinetic Custom Gym—how wan and tired and strung out they looked. Chrissy too. Hovis had been afraid that he’d been responsible for their deaths.

  “You didn’t kill them,” Riley said.

  Riley saw something new in Hovis’s expression. It almost looked like gratitude. She knew that her own little chess game with Hovis was over. It had ended in a draw, which suited both of their purposes perfectly.

  “We’ll go now, Mr. Hovis,” she said. “Thank you for your time.”

  Bill seemed only mildly surprised that Ril
ey was cutting the interview short. She knew that he was used to her coming to unspoken conclusions like this.

  As she and Bill made their way out of the building, Riley said, “He’s not our man. But he’d been dealing heroin to Jaybird. Jaybird likes to keep his women dependent and helpless. Hovis didn’t like it. He prefers to do business with users like himself, people who’ve got some control over their lives. So he cut off Jaybird’s supply.”

  “I get it,” Bill said. “So Jaybird was pissed off, and he gave us Hovis’s name just to get back at him.”

  “Yeah—the backstabbing bastard. Hovis just wanted to eliminate himself as a suspect, so we could get on with our work. He was actually trying to help.”

  She thought for a moment, then added, “Our deal with Jaybird is off. His tip was bogus. As soon as I get a chance, I’m going to make sure he’s put out of business.”

  Bill suggested, “If we just tip the local police they’ll clean up the place.”

  “I know,” Riley said. She thought for a moment, then said, “But I also want to give those women some kind of alternative. I want Chrissy to have a chance to get out of the business. She hates it but she’s terrified of Jaybird. I’m sure there are shelters in town that work with prostitutes who want out.”

  “If we can get Jaybird put away, it will be easier for the women. But they’re gonna need a lot of help.”

  Riley knew that most prostitutes had been victims of violence or neglect before they entered the trade. They’d had terrible lives and often didn’t regard themselves as worth saving. Some of them had PTSD problems just as devastating as her own.

  “I’m sure there are organizations in Phoenix that will help,” she replied. “I’m going to get someone on it.”

  Bill’s phone buzzed when they were getting into the car. He checked it and said, “It’s a text from Morley. They’ve got a name and address for Gretchen Lovick’s husband. They’ve called him, and he’s at home, and they’re getting ready to send agents to break the news to him.”

  Riley agonized silently for a moment. She knew what had to be done next.