Once Lured

by Blake Pierce

  “I don’t hear an answer,” Mike said in a soothing voice. “And I suspect there’s a pretty good reason for that. There isn’t anything better you could be doing. I mean, what are your options? Turning in your badge and quitting your job? How do you think that would work out?”

  Riley smiled as she remembered her conversation with Blaine about this very issue.

  “Now you’re sounding like my next door neighbor,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “His name is Blaine. He’s a nice guy. A father. His daughter is a friend of April’s.”

  Mike’s smile broadened.

  “Single, I take it?”

  Riley blushed. “How did you guess?”

  “I’m pretty good at that kind of thing,” he said. “Well, maybe we should be talking about this nice guy named Blaine. How are things, uh, progressing with him?”

  Riley grunted a little.

  “Progressing? Are you kidding? They’re not progressing at all.”

  “Why not? Do you think he’s not interested?”

  Riley felt her blush deepen.

  “I think he’s interested,” she said.

  “And obviously you’re interested. So what’s the problem?”

  Riley’s mind boggled.

  “What’s not the problem? He runs a restaurant, I chase murderers. If he knew half of what goes on in my life, he’d be scared to death. I mean, she was abducted straight out of her father’s house. Could you blame him for being scared that the same thing could happen right next door? He’d probably move to another neighborhood.”

  “Are you so sure?”

  Riley didn’t reply. She’d been avoiding talking to Blaine about her work. Maybe it was time for that to change.

  “Isn’t this kind of off the topic?” she said. “I mean, we were talking about April.”

  “Maybe we still are,” Mike said. “Do you really think things with your daughter would get worse if you had a nice man in your life? Considering how much you say she hates her father, she might be hugely relieved.”

  Riley fell silent again. Mike was giving her a lot to think about.

  Just then her phone buzzed. She saw that the call was from Bill.

  “I’ve got to take this,” she told Mike.

  Mike nodded. Riley accepted the call and stepped out into the hallway.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Meara Keagan just turned up,” Bill said. “She escaped captivity.”

  Riley’s heart quickened.

  “So?” she prodded. “Why the grim voice?”

  There came a long pause on the other end. Finally, Bill spoke.

  “She got hit by a car.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When Riley reached the hospital in Ohlman, she rushed inside. Bill was already there, pacing in the waiting area.

  “Is she alive?” Riley asked. “Is she awake?”

  “That’s what they tell me,” Bill said. “They haven’t let me in to see her yet.”

  “How did they find her?” Riley asked.

  Bill shook his head, as if in disbelief.

  “That’s what’s really weird,” he said. “Somebody dropped her off right outside—where you just came in. But whoever left her drove straight off.”

  “Do you think it was the person who hit her?”

  “We’re assuming that. Lucy Vargas is checking the surveillance footage right now. We’ll know more about it soon. Come on, let’s go find out if we can see her yet.”

  Bill led Riley down a hallway to a room with two cops standing outside. A stern-looking woman in a white coat met them. Her nametag said Dr. Leah Pressler.

  “Can we talk to her now?” Bill asked the doctor.

  “If it were up to me, I’d say no,” Dr. Pressler said. “She’s weak and extremely fragile. But she says she wants to talk. She really insists on it.”

  Dr. Pressler escorted Bill and Riley into the room. Meara Keagan was looking up at them with her sunken eyes. She was extremely thin and pale, which made her bright red hair and freckles stand out bizarrely, as if they were a wig and makeup.

  One leg was in a cast, and intravenous tubes were restoring her bodily fluids. She looked like she’d been through hell. But at least she was still alive. And as thin and starved as she looked, she was nowhere near as emaciated as the three corpses had been.

  “Are you from the FBI?” she asked in a tired, raspy voice. Riley immediately noticed her Irish accent. She remembered hearing that she was an Irish immigrant.

  She said, “I’m Agent Riley Paige, and this is Agent Bill Jeffreys.”

  Riley sat down in a chair beside the patient. Bill and the doctor remained standing.

  “May I call you Meara?” Riley asked in a gentle tone.

  “Of course,” the woman said, smiling sweetly.

  “What can you remember?”

  Meara Keagan’s whole face strained with effort.

  “This man—he knocked me out while I was trying to help him with his car. I’m not sure how long ago it was.”

  “Five days,” Riley said in a reassuring tone.

  “That’s what I thought. The next thing I knew I was in a basement. In a cage with three girls, all of them starving. He kept us there, barely let us eat or drink at all. He killed one of the girls. Broke her neck.”

  Her voice started to falter. Riley knew that she was reliving the terror of that moment. Riley patted her hand reassuringly.

  “What can you tell me about the basement?”

  “It was … full of clocks. All kinds of clocks. Hundreds of them. But they were behind a fence.” She paused for a moment and then added softly, “We couldn’t get out through the fence … we couldn’t get out …” Her voice trailed off.

  Riley looked at Bill, and he at her. She knew they both were wondering the same thing. Was the woman only imagining the clocks in her delirium?

  “Could you describe the man who held you?” Riley asked.

  She started to shake all over.

  “He was … he was … I can’t …”

  Riley understood. She was repressing the memory of her captor. Maybe she could remember what he looked like later on.

  “It’s okay,” Riley told her. “How did you escape?”

  Her expression became terribly confused.

  “I don’t have any idea. The last thing I remember is that the clocks were ringing and chiming and he was beating us with a whip, and he was beating himself. He did that a lot, whipped both himself and us. The next thing I knew, here I was. I don’t remember anything about how I got here.”

  “Did you escape from him somehow?”

  Meara looked away. Her eyes were foggier now and she seemed to be having trouble speaking.

  “That’s enough for now,” the doctor said.

  The doctor led Bill and Riley out into the hallway.

  She said, “I’m not a neurologist, but I think I can explain the memory gap. It takes a while for the brain to turn a short-term memory into a long-term memory. It’s called ‘consolidation.’ But a trauma to the brain can interfere with that process. She was unconscious when we found her. My guess is that she was knocked out before the short-term memory of her escape could be consolidated.”

  “So she might not ever remember,” Riley said.

  “I don’t see how she could,” Dr. Pressler said, shaking her head. “That information just isn’t in her brain anymore. It’s long gone. But she might be able to tell us more about her captivity after a while. Right now she needs to rest.”

  Riley was about to thank the doctor for the explanation when Lucy came trotting toward them.

  “We’ve found him on the surveillance video,” she said excitedly. “Come have a look.”

  She led Bill and Riley to a room where a local cop was sitting at a computer.

  “Here it is,” the cop said.

  Riley could see it all clearly. A rather beat-up looking medium-sized SUV pulled up to the hospital entrance. A man got out of the
car. He was dark-haired and of medium height.

  He ran around to the back of his vehicle, opened it, and took the unconscious woman out. He put her on the sidewalk and touched her head in what looked like an apologetic gesture. Then he ran back to the car, got in, and drove away.

  “Stop it right there,” Riley said.

  The cop sitting at the computer stopped the video.

  “The license plate is fully visible,” Riley said.

  Lucy was standing next to her. She grinned at Riley.

  “We’ve already on it,” she said. “The car belongs to a certain Jason Cahill, thirty years old. He lives right here in Ohlman. We’ve got an address.”

  “Agent Jeffreys and I will pick him up,” Riley said. “Lucy, please keep track of things here. Call us right away if our patient manages to remember anything more.”

  *

  Riley and Bill parked in front of Jason Cahill’s house. It reminded Riley of where Dennis Vaughn lived back in Redditch—small wood-frame house with a porch. But it was in much better condition than Vaughn’s ramshackle cottage, and the lawn was recently cut.

  The house was on the outskirts of Ohlman, and a fair distance from neighboring houses. As she and Bill walked toward the place, Riley noticed an SUV parked in the driveway—the same vehicle that had appeared in the surveillance video. Sure enough, the front of the vehicle was dented and a headlight was broken.

  This might be it, Riley thought. Maybe we’ve really got him.

  But just as they were about to step up onto the porch, Bill pointed to the foundations of the house.

  “Look,” he said. “No basement.”

  Bill was right. The house was open underneath, built on wooden posts. Meara had insisted that she had been held captive in a basement. Might the basement be at some other address?

  In any case, Riley knew they had Jason Cahill dead to rights on a hit-and-run charge. Maybe the rest would follow easily.

  Bill knocked on the door. The man who opened it looked nothing like the overweight, shaggy Dennis Vaughn. He was slim and clean-cut, and he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He looked tired and haggard.

  “Are you the police?” he said.

  Bill and Riley both showed their badges. The man looked only slightly surprised.

  “The FBI. Jesus. I was expecting the police. But the FBI?”

  “Are you Jason Cahill?” Bill asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Riley said, “You’re under arrest for a hit-and-run incident involving Meara Keagan. Turn around.”

  Jason Cahill cooperatively put his hands behind his back so that Bill could cuff him. Riley looked inside the little house. She saw that it was simply decorated with furniture that looked well-used but in good repair.

  “How is she?” Cahill asked. “Is she okay?”

  Instead of replying, Riley began to read him his rights.

  “I know my rights,” Cahill said. “I want a lawyer.”

  Bill’s face turned red with anger. Riley worried. The last thing she needed was for him to get out of control again.

  Bill growled, “What do you know about the deaths of Metta Lunoe and Valerie Bruner?”

  Riley watched Cahill’s face. She detected no change of expression.

  “I don’t know anything about them,” he said. “I’m not saying anything else without a lawyer. I can’t afford one, so you need to get me one.”

  “Where were you last Sunday night?” Bill said.

  “I’m not saying anything else without a lawyer,” Cahill said.

  Bill tugged on the cuffs so that they hurt a little. Cahill winced in pain. Riley was walking behind them on the way out of the house.

  “Hey,” Riley said sharply.

  Bill turned and looked at her. Riley didn’t say anything, but tried to tell him by her expression that she wasn’t going to put up with him going berserk again. Bill shook his head angrily.

  Riley was worried—and not just about Bill. Cahill was taking things very coolly. If he really was their killer, he knew exactly how to handle himself. Proving a case against him wouldn’t be easy.

  And the girls would never be found.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Riley felt stranded. She and Bill were sitting outside the interview room at the local police station. They’d been there for a half hour now while Cahill had been consulting with a public defender in the room.

  Cahill hadn’t said a word to them so far, but the lawyer had talked to them plenty before he went in to confer with his client. He was a local public defender—a stocky, middle-aged fellow named Rudy Dunkelberg.

  Riley had realized immediately that Dunkelberg wasn’t just some backwoods rube with a law license. He knew exactly what he was doing. He’d picked up right away that Jason Cahill was wanted for a lot more than a hit-and-run accident. In fact, he’d guessed that Cahill was a suspect in the three murders, which were finally becoming public knowledge.

  And now Riley knew what was coming next. Dunkelberg was going to make sure that Cahill said nothing about the murders—not even to him. It made Riley angry, but she knew that Dunkelberg was just doing his job.

  “I hate it when they lawyer up,” Bill muttered.

  “So do I,” Riley said. “But we’ve got to make do with the situation as it is.”

  Bill shook his head wearily.

  “Riley, I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” he said. “I’ve just got to close this case. I’ve got to put a stop to this guy.”

  “We’ve got to close this case,” Riley said, correcting him. “And we’ve got to do it by the book.”

  The interview room door opened. Dunkelberg looked out and said, “You can come in now.”

  Riley and Bill walked into the room and sat across the table from Cahill and his lawyer. Cahill still seemed oddly expressionless. Riley had seen plenty of psychopathic killers show a similar lack of affect.

  A handwritten letter was lying on the table in front of Cahill.

  “My client is ready to confess,” Dunkelberg said.

  “He’s what?” Bill blurted with disbelief.

  “Mr. Cahill will read his confession now,” Dunkelberg said.

  He nodded to his client, whose expression still hadn’t changed at all. Cahill began to read in a slow, steady voice.

  “Last night I was in Glenburn, about forty miles from Ohlman,” he read. “I was playing poker with some friends I went to college with six years ago.”

  Dunkelberg interrupted, “My client will be glad to give you their names and contact information. Go ahead, Mr. Cahill.”

  “The game went on almost all night. I left at about five thirty in the morning. I was severely intoxicated. I had no business driving, but I decided to drive home anyway. At about six o’clock, a woman stepped in front of my vehicle. I didn’t stop in time and I hit her.”

  Cahill paused for a moment.

  “Then I panicked,” he continued. “I wasn’t thinking straight. I’ve already got a couple of DUIs and I was scared of getting another. But I didn’t want to just leave the woman there. I picked her up and put her in the back of my car. I drove her straight to the hospital and left her there.”

  Cahill cleared his throat.

  “I was sobering up by the time I got home. I was able to think more clearly. I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. I couldn’t get to sleep. I had just decided to turn myself in when the FBI agents arrived.”

  Another silence fell.

  “I am sincerely sorry for what I did,” he said, concluding his statement.

  Dunkelberg said, “That’s all that my client wishes to say at this time. As you can see, he is placing himself at the mercy of the system.” He handed Cahill a pen. “Now all he has to do is sign this confession—”

  “Hold on,” Bill snapped. “He’s not signing that.”

  Riley understood Bill’s protest. By confessing to a possibly bogus offense, Cahill might well put himself beyond their reach. But she knew that there was nothing that she or Bi
ll could do to stop him.

  Even so, she had an idea.

  “Just a moment,” she said. She got out her cell phone and cued up the pictures of the crime scenes and the murder victims.

  She flashed a picture of Metta Lunoe’s emaciated corpse at Cahill.

  “Do you recognize this woman?” she asked.

  At last she saw a change in the man’s expression. It was subtle but visible. She flashed through a series of graphic images of Metta Lunoe until pictures of Valerie Bruner came up.

  “Does any of this mean anything to you?” Riley said.

  Cahill’s face had gone slack and his eyes glazed over.

  Bill yelled across the table, “Answer her question, damn it!”

  Riley gave him a sharp nudge with her elbow.

  “I’d like to confer with my partner alone for a moment,” she said.

  Dunkelberg nodded, and Riley escorted Bill out of the room.

  “He’s not our man,” she told him.

  “How do you know that?” Bill asked.

  “I could see it in his face. He’s never seen those murdered women in his life.”

  Bill looked like he could hardly believe his ears.

  “I didn’t see anything in his face,” he said. “He looked as cold as could be. He looked just like a thousand killers we’ve seen.”

  Riley almost shouted, “He’s hung over, Bill. He’s numb and strung-out. That’s why he looks like that. And on top of that he’s in shock. He’s still processing what he did to Meara Keagan.”

  Bill just stared at her for a moment.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  Riley didn’t reply. She couldn’t be absolutely sure. But her gut was telling her that Jason Cahill was not the killer.

  “So are we back at square one?” Bill said wearily.

  “No,” Riley said. “We can still use him. All he’s got to do is show us where the accident happened. That will get us closer to finding out where she was held.”

  *

  Scratch had just heated up a frozen dinner and was sitting down to eat when he heard a car outside. He ran to the front window and lifted the blind. His stomach sank at what he saw in the evening light. Sure enough, across the street a man in a jacket that said POLICE was standing on a porch talking to one of his neighbors. Scratch looked down the block and saw two more cops at two other houses doing the same thing.