Once Lured

by Blake Pierce

  “This marks the spot,” he said.

  Bill’s eyes darkened as he stared at the spot on the ground. Riley could imagine what he was thinking and feeling. Although he hadn’t yet been on the case when Metta Lunoe’s body had been found here in May, he had been here since then. Riley knew that he had pored over the place with utmost care. This location must have been haunting him for months now.

  Riley closed her eyes and breathed long and deep, trying to get a feeling of the killer’s presence. The sound of music tangled up in the wind made it easier to do this time. Doubtless the killer had heard the same sounds on the night when he had brought the body here.

  She could see him park his car about where Bill had parked. He opened his trunk, lifted out Metta Lunoe’s emaciated corpse, slung it across his shoulder, then trudged to this spot in the sand.

  Was the moon out that night? she wondered.

  She should have checked before coming out here. But even if there had been moonlight, he surely was carrying a flashlight. She imagined the kinds of weird shadows the fence would have cast. It all seemed very clear.

  And the music—the song was old and familiar, and he probably knew it. Did he hum or whistle along with it as he went about his grisly task? No. She felt sure that he didn’t. He wasn’t gloating or even playful like some other killers she’d hunted. He took his job as seriously as she and Bill did theirs.

  But there were houses nearby, on the far side of the fence. At night, their lights would be on. Somebody sitting on a back porch might even see what he was doing. Did this worry him? It must have, but not enough to make him seek out a more out-of-the-way spot. He had his reasons to be exactly here. He wasn’t going to vary from his plan.

  And he had the body’s exact position in his head—right arm raised, left arm to the side of the body.

  But when Riley imagined the killer laying the body on the ground, something odd happened. He must have had an impulse to arrange it neatly in relation to the surroundings—the fence, especially. It would only feel natural to lay it out parallel to the fence, or perhaps perpendicular to it.

  But he hadn’t done that. She remembered from the photos. The body’s feet had been almost right next to the fence. The head had been angled away from the fence a little. A tuft of weeds had poked out from behind the head, making the position look all the more awkward.

  Why? Riley wondered.

  In her gut, she felt a hunch taking shape.

  It wasn’t his idea, she thought.

  She felt sure of it somehow. None of this was his idea. Not the meticulous poses, the peculiar angles, or perhaps even the murders themselves.

  He was following orders.

  Riley’s eyes snapped open. She saw that Bill was looking at her.

  “Did you get anything?” Bill asked.

  Riley knew that Bill was long since used to her crime scene meditations. He understood how productive they could sometimes be.

  Riley asked, “Are we sure there’s only one murderer? I mean, one man acting alone?”

  Bill thought for a moment.

  “Pretty sure,” he said. “The only time he left any footprints was here. The sand shifted overnight, so we couldn’t get anything from them. Still, there was only one set of footprints, coming and going. Why?”

  Riley didn’t reply. Maybe she was wrong. It was only a hunch, after all. It was nothing she could prove. Even so, the feeling had been really strong.

  “Riley, I’m sorry,” Bill said suddenly.

  Riley felt relieved. It was about time for Bill to snap out of it.

  “I was wrong,” he continued. “I don’t know what got into me back there.”

  “I know what got into you,” Riley said. “You feel absolutely crazed to solve this case. You feel like you owe it to the victims—both the ones who are already dead, and the ones who aren’t. You feel like you’ve let them down so far. I understand. I’ve been there.”

  Bill nodded.

  Riley said, “But Bill, if we get it wrong, if we only think we’ve solved it and we bring in the wrong man, it’ll be worse than doing nothing. More women could die. We know he’s already holding at least one captive. We’ve got to get it right. And we’ve got to do things by the book.”

  “I know,” Bill said. “I won’t let it happen again.”

  Riley hoped not. But there was nothing more to say about it right now.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’ve seen enough here. Let’s head back to Redditch.”

  They walked back to the car, and Bill started to drive. Riley got out her phone and checked the text messages she’d been sending to April all day. They were still only marked “delivered,” not “read.”

  She was worried. She dialed the home phone. Gabriela answered.

  “Hi, Gabriela, I’m just checking in. Is everything all right?”

  Gabriela’s voice sounded agitated.

  “Señora Riley, I am glad you called! I was just going to call you. I got a call from April’s school. She skipped out of school early. She hasn’t gone back. I keep trying to call her, but she won’t answer. I don’t know where she is or what she’s doing. And she’s supposed to have a meeting with her therapist this afternoon after school.”

  “Un momentito, Gabriela,” she said.

  She covered the phone and turned to Bill.

  “Is the helicopter that brought me to Redditch still here?” she asked.

  Bill nodded. “Sure. Why?”

  Riley didn’t answer Bill. She got back on the phone.

  “Don’t worry, Gabriela. I’m coming right home.”

  Riley’s heart sank. She didn’t know whether to be furious or terrified. But she knew she had to get home to find out what was wrong with April.

  But I’d better wrap things up at home fast, she thought.

  Her head was filled with terrible images of what the killer might do in her absence.

  CHAPTER TEN

  When Riley opened her front door, she was greeted by Gabriela’s anxious face. Riley knew that things must be serious. The Guatemalan woman had been through a lot of difficulties in her life and wasn’t easily alarmed. She was glad she had decided to return to Quantico with the FBI helicopter and drive home right away.

  “Is April here?” Riley asked.

  “Sí,” Gabriela said. “She is upstairs in her room.”

  Riley walked inside and put down her bags.

  “Did she go to the appointment?” Riley asked.

  “No,” Gabriela said. “Somebody at the doctor’s office called, wanted to know where she was.” Gabriela’s eyes widened. “Señora Riley,” she said, “April won’t talk to me. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  That really worried Riley. April adored Gabriela and almost never shut her out. “I’ll see what I can find out,” she said, patting Gabriela’s shoulder and heading for the stairway.

  As Riley hurried up the stairs, she heard music playing in April’s room. She knocked on the door.

  She heard April call out, “Come in.”

  She walked inside. April was sitting on her bed with her cell phone in her hand. She actually smiled at Riley.

  “Hey, Mom!” she said loudly over the music. “I didn’t expect you back so soon! Did you get the case solved early?”

  Riley knew this teenage tactic well. April was trying to act as if everything was all right. As though this was just a normal day.

  “Turn down the music,” Riley said.

  April did so, and Riley sat down on the bed with her.

  “Gabriela said that you left school early,” Riley said.

  April was trying to look surprised now.

  “Wow, is that why you came home early?” she said. “Look, it was just a misunderstanding. I had a pass to go to the local library. For research. So I left. The office got mixed up and called Gabriela. I explained it to her. I thought she understood. I had no idea that she’d call you. What was she thinking, huh?”

  April was lying and Riley knew it. But she
’d learned from past confrontations not to say so outright. She just sat there.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” April asked, sounding more defensive now.

  Riley still said nothing.

  “Jesus, you don’t even believe me, do you?” April said, trying to sound righteously indignant. “Can I help it if you don’t even believe anything I say? Can I help it if you don’t trust me?”

  It was a familiar manipulative trick of April’s. But Riley wasn’t going to fall for it this time.

  “Should I believe you, April?” Riley said quietly. “Should I trust you? Can I?”

  Riley could tell by April’s expression that she’d just punched a hole in her defenses. April jumped up from the bed, stomped toward the door, and swung it open.

  “If you can’t even trust me, there’s no point in talking,” April said, her voice trembling with rage. “Just go. Just leave me alone, okay?”

  Riley didn’t speak or move. She kept her eyes locked on April’s. She realized that she was using one of her own interview methods—the very tactic she’d tried to use on Dennis Vaughn before Bill had made a wreck of things.

  Just get her talking, Riley thought. Let her trip herself up.

  It felt weird, treating her daughter the same way she’d treat a murder suspect. But she could feel that it was working.

  Still standing by the door, April burst into tears.

  “Leave me alone! Please!”

  April stood there sobbing. Riley sensed that she was crying more out of guilt and shame than anger.

  Riley patted the mattress next to her and said quietly, “Come back over here and sit down.”

  April stood staring through her tears for a moment. Then she stomped back and sat down on the bed so hard that the frame shook. Riley handed her a handkerchief.

  “I’m working on a case in Delaware, April,” Riley said, sounding a lot calmer than she felt. “Women are being killed. But when I heard from Gabriela that you’d skipped school, I came straight home. I flew back by helicopter. That’s how much I worry about you.”

  April choked down a sob.

  “Things will go a lot better if you just tell me the truth,” Riley said. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized that she’d said exactly the same thing to countless suspects. Had she really learned her parenting skills from years of detective work? It seemed bitterly ironic.

  “I skipped out of school, Mom,” April finally said. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking. I got so bored.”

  Riley’s heart melted a little. She remembered what it was like. She, too, had sometimes skipped school as a teenager. She’d been living with an aunt and uncle during those years. She’d driven them crazy with her wayward behavior. Was she being a hypocrite to expect anything different from her own daughter?

  No, she told herself. I’m being a parent, that’s all.

  “Were you with Joel?” Riley asked.

  “Yeah, I guess,” April said.

  Riley sighed. She’d used that same lamely evasive phrase herself as a teenager—“Yeah, I guess.” She didn’t like it that her daughter had a boyfriend who encouraged her in bad behavior. But at least April more or less admitted it.

  “Where did you go?” Riley asked.

  “To the mall,” April said.

  A telltale catch in April’s voice made Riley wonder if this was true.

  “And what about your appointment with Dr. Sloat?” Riley asked.

  “What about it?”

  “Gabriela says you missed it.”

  April dabbed her eyes and cleared her throat.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have called and canceled it.”

  “I don’t want you canceling appointments with your therapist.”

  April shook her head.

  “Mom, Dr. Sloat’s great, and I really like her, but I don’t need her help anymore. I really don’t.”

  Riley patted her daughter’s hand.

  “I’ll decide when you don’t need her anymore. And that will depend on what Dr. Sloat thinks. Promise me you’ll keep your next appointment.”

  “I promise,” April said.

  “And promise me that you’ll bring Joel around so I can meet him,” Riley said.

  “I promise.”

  Riley had no idea whether these promises meant anything. But it seemed like the best she could do for now. She got up from the bed.

  “A couple more things,” Riley said. “Gabriela told me that you wouldn’t talk to her. I want no more of that. Gabriela’s maybe the best thing we’ve got right now. She’s doing everything she can to hold our lives together. Always be nice to her.”

  “Okay,” April said.

  “Also, you’re grounded for a week.”

  April let out a groan of despair.

  “But Mom—”

  “No ‘buts.’ That’s final.”

  Riley left the room before April had time to start making another scene. She walked downstairs where Gabriela was waiting.

  “How is the chica?” Gabriela asked worriedly.

  “Grounded for a week,” Riley said. “Please make sure she doesn’t go anywhere except school.”

  Gabriela nodded.

  “I will get dinner ready,” she said. She disappeared into the kitchen.

  Riley sat down on the couch, feeling deeply grateful for Gabriela’s presence in their lives. She also felt exhausted and rattled.

  She thought she’d handled things fairly well with April just now. Even so, she knew that she only barely had things under control. Things were likely to unravel in her absence. And how could she come flying back from whatever case she might be working on whenever April had a crisis?

  She remembered what Blaine had said to her the other day.

  “Believe me, giving up your career isn’t a solution.”

  He was right, of course. But that didn’t solve Riley’s problem. Here she was struggling between this crisis with April and a killer who might take another life at any moment.

  She felt as if her whole world were ripping in two.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The cat o’ nine tails struck Meara’s back mercilessly. She cowered into a corner and braced herself for the next blow. Another came, and then another, and another. The clocks were chiming, ringing, and blaring out the hour.

  The pain was unbearable. But Meara’s throat was so dry and raw that she couldn’t scream anymore. Nothing came out except a hoarse, hollow gasping sound. Even she couldn’t hear herself over the din of the clocks. Not that screaming had done any good. Wherever she and the other two captives were being held, no one could hear them scream here.

  The chimes and bells and other sounds slowly came to a stop. Meara felt pretty sure that they had marked the hour of six o’clock.

  Then the blows stopped coming. She heard her captor say, “I’m sorry, I’ll try to do better.”

  She turned around just in time to see him strike himself on the back with the whip.

  He let out a howl of pain, then said again, “I’m sorry, I’ll do better. I will.”

  Again he swung the devilish whip across his own shoulder, striking his own back. He was turned away from her now, and she could see that his back was bleeding as badly as hers, blotches spreading across his ragged shirt.

  She took the opportunity to scurry to the far side of the enclosure, where she huddled with the two half-starved girls.

  She’d seen her captor do this before. She was still shocked and baffled by it. What kind of insanity drove him to punish himself so severely?

  The captor didn’t stop beating himself until he was exhausted and gasping. He stepped out of the cage and locked it behind him, laying the whip down on a table. Then he turned his attention to the clocks. He seemed so absorbed by them that he forgot all about his captives.

  Muttering inaudibly, he moved the hands of a clock with the face of a cat. Then he took a key out of his pocket and wound another that was shaped like a butterfly.
After that, he stopped and stared raptly at a clock that had been made out of what appeared to be a real human skull.

  Finally, he turned back toward his captives and spoke in a strange, almost kindly voice.

  “I wish I could make you understand,” he said. “But I’m not allowed to talk about it—not even to you. If I could tell you, you’d understand. You’d accept everything.”

  He was staring straight into Meara’s eyes now.

  “It’s just—it’s just—it’s just …”

  He paused a moment and then blurted out, “It’s about time. We’re running out of time. You, me, everyone, the world. Your sacrifice—it means something, it’s important, it’s the only hope left for anyone, you should feel honored …”

  Then he winced guiltily, as if he’d been slapped in the face. He picked up the whip off the table and beat himself again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  He finally laid the cat o’ nine tails on the table again. Then he went out through the door where he’d come in. Meara could hear him climbing a flight of stairs.

  Meara stayed crouched in the corner with the other women for a few moments. She’d never seen anyone who was truly insane before. Sometimes he talked in a strange way. Not just like he was talking to himself. He seemed to be carrying on a conversation with someone unseen and unheard. And he had killed Chelsea so casually, barely giving any attention to his own actions.

  Now she realized that there was no way to reason with this monster. He would kill them all just as cruelly, and she’d never see her family again.

  She thought of her sister, who was planning to come to this country to work as soon as Meara made enough to pay her way here. Cathleen would be expecting to hear from her by now. But as things were now, nobody would ever hear from her again. Nobody would ever know what had become of her. She would just vanish off the face of the earth.

  Ever since she’d been brought here, Meara had paid attention to the clocks, trying to keep track of the passage of time. She guessed that she’d been here a full five days and nights, with nothing to eat or drink except occasional scraps of bread and some water.