Stalking

by Blake Pierce

  Another question troubled him deeply.

  Can I really do this job without her?

  Jake reached for his desk phone and punched in her number.

  *

  Riley was walking into her apartment when her cellphone rang. Frankie had just driven her home from Tiffin’s Grub & Pub, where the two friends had enjoyed a delicious lunch and some quality conversation. Riley hoped the call wasn’t going to sour her mood.

  As Riley shut the door behind her, she looked at the phone. The call was from Jake Crivaro. She answered it immediately.

  She heard her mentor’s gruff voice say, “Riley—Crivaro here.”

  Riley smiled at his familiar salutation.

  She almost said, I know.

  Instead she said, “What’s going on?”

  She heard Crivaro grunt indecisively. Then he said, “Uh, I just wanted to know … when I last saw you yesterday, you weren’t feeling well. Are you feeling better?”

  Riley felt a spark of curiosity. She felt sure that Crivaro was calling about something more than her well-being.

  “Yeah, I’m feeling better,” she said. “I guess I’ve got a long way to go, though. Yesterday was … well, kind of tough, you know?”

  “I know,” Crivaro said. “I’m sorry things turned out that way. Have you made a counseling appointment yet?”

  “Not yet,” Riley said.

  “Don’t put it off.”

  “I won’t,” Riley said, not at all sure she really meant it.

  An awkward pause ensued.

  Then Crivaro said, “Well, I thought I’d let you know that I’m flying out to Tennessee in a little while. There have been a couple of murders, one in Kentucky and one in Tennessee, and they sound like they might be the work of a serial killer. Lehl put me on the job.”

  Riley’s curiosity grew. This seemed like an odd bit of information for Crivaro to want to share with her right now.

  “I hope it goes well,” she said.

  “Yeah, well …”

  An even longer silence fell.

  Then Crivaro said, “Lehl says I should work with a partner on this case. He’s got nothing but rookies available, so I thought I’d call and ask … Naw, it’s a bad idea, forget I said anything.”

  Riley felt a tingle of excitement.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” she asked.

  “No, I shouldn’t have called, I’m sorry. I’m sure it’s the last thing you want to do right now. You need to rest, spend some time with your fiancé, get your head back to normal. You also need to get some counseling under your belt before you come back to work. You know that sooner or later, you’ll need to go through that psych evaluation.”

  But not right now, Riley thought. Not if I’m already away somewhere on another case.

  She blurted, “I’ll do it.”

  She heard Crivaro sigh.

  “Riley, I’m really not sure about this.”

  Riley said, “Well, I’m sure. Who else can you work with? You need someone tough, someone who knows you. You’d only terrorize some poor rookie.”

  Crivaro chuckled nervously and said, “Yeah, that’s kind of what I told Lehl. Anyway, he’s getting a plane ready to fly to Tennessee. Do you want me to drive to DC and pick you up?”

  “No, you don’t need to do that,” Riley said. “I can get there faster by train. I know the schedule, and there’s one I can catch soon. If you pick me up at the Quantico station, we could go directly to the airstrip.”

  Riley gave him the arrival schedule and Crivaro replied, “Okay, then.”

  After a hesitation he stammered, “And, uh …”

  Riley sensed that he was struggling to find the right words for what he wanted to say.

  Finally he simply said, “Thanks.”

  Riley almost found herself saying, “No, thank you.”

  Instead she said, “I’ll be there soon.”

  She ended the call and sat down on the couch, staring at her cellphone. She felt startled by the decision she’d just made. She really hadn’t given the matter any thought at all.

  Did I just make a mistake? she wondered.

  She didn’t feel like she’d made a mistake. In fact, she felt deeply relieved. She was surprised by her own eagerness to get back to work.

  But what surprised Riley most about the call was Crivaro’s tone, almost like a shy schoolboy asking a girl on a date.

  He really wants to work with me, she thought.

  He doesn’t want to work with anybody else.

  It gave her a warm feeling to be wanted—and perhaps even needed.

  But when she got up from the couch to head for the bedroom to fetch her always-ready go-bag, something occurred to her.

  Ryan.

  She had to call him to let him know. And she doubted that he was going to take it well. She remembered their conversation last night, and how he’d pressed her about quitting the BAU, and what she’d said in reply.

  “Ryan, do we really have to talk through this right now?”

  They hadn’t gotten around to it yet, of course. There simply hadn’t been any time. But now Riley was heading out to work on a new case anyway.

  She picked up the landline phone and nervously punched in Ryan’s phone number. He sounded cheerful when he answered the phone.

  “Hey, sweetie, I’m glad you called. I’ve got reservations for tonight at that restaurant we both love, Hugo’s Embers. Isn’t that great? You know how hard it is to get a table there.”

  Riley gulped anxiously.

  She said, “Yeah, that’s great, Ryan, but … we’re going to have to do this some other night.”

  “Huh?”

  Riley fought down a sigh.

  “Agent Crivaro just called,” she said. “He wants me to work with him on a case in Tennessee. I’m leaving right now to catch a train to Quantico.”

  A tense silence fell.

  “Riley, I can’t say I like this,” Ryan said. “Are you ready to go back to work? You were in pretty bad shape last night. And besides …”

  There was another pause.

  Then Ryan said, “Riley, we need this. A romantic evening together, I mean. It’s been a long time since we … you know.”

  It took Riley a moment to understand exactly what he meant.

  Then she realized, Oh my God. He’s talking about sex.

  How long had it been since they’d made love? She didn’t know, and realized she hadn’t thought about it at all lately. Between the two cases she’d already worked on this month, she’d been exhausted. Besides that, she’d been preoccupied with the upcoming Mullins trial.

  She said, “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

  “Riley, that’s not the point. You decided this without even talking to me.”

  Riley felt a twinge of anger.

  Am I going to have to consult Ryan every time I take a case?

  But the last thing she wanted was to get into a fight with him about it right now. She simply didn’t have time.

  She said, “I’m sorry about this. I really am. We’ll talk things through when I get home.”

  “I don’t want you to go,” Ryan said in an imploring voice.

  “I’ve got to go,” Riley said. “It’s my job.”

  “But—”

  “Goodbye, Ryan. I’ve got a train to catch. I love you.”

  She ended the call and slumped with sigh of despair.

  Should I call Crivaro back? she wondered.

  Should I tell him I can’t do the case?

  Crivaro would surely understand. He’d told her as much already.

  But then Riley felt a surge of resentment. Ryan had no business pressuring her like this, especially after what had happened yesterday. She had work to do, and she couldn’t spend the rest of her life asking Ryan’s permission to do it.

  She hurried to her bedroom, got her go-bag, and headed out to catch the train.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  To Riley, life was beginning to feel like one long
plane trip with Jake Crivaro. They had just flown back from New York yesterday evening. Now they were on the BAU jet again, headed for the western end of Tennessee.

  It’s almost like I never came home at all, she thought.

  In a way, she wished that were true. It would be nice to realize that her argument with Ryan over the phone this morning had just been a dream, and that things were just fine between them.

  Unfortunately, she knew that all of it had really happened.

  And of course, so had the terrible events of yesterday.

  My whole life seems like a bad dream right now, she thought. Like a nightmare of endless flying, danger, and sudden death.

  She shook off her dark thoughts and looked at Crivaro. He was sitting next to her going over some handwritten notes that he’d taken about their upcoming case.

  He explained, “About a week ago, a body was found in the woods near Brattledale, in Raffel County, Kentucky. The victim was a teenage girl, Natalie Booker.”

  “How was she killed?” Riley asked.

  “Strangled,” Crivaro said. “If it was just a one-off in just one state, it wouldn’t be any of our business. But yesterday another body turned up, another teenager, named Kimberly Dent, also strangled, and probably by the same killer. Her body was in the edge of some woods near Dalhart, Tennessee—across state lines.”

  “Which makes it an FBI case,” Riley said. “If we wanted to take it up.”

  “That’s right,” Crivaro said. “Aside from that, the Raffel County Sheriff Ed Quayle asked specifically for help from BAU, so we’re definitely involved.”

  Crivaro folded up his notebook.

  “That’s about all I know so far,” he said. “Sheriff Quayle will be meeting us at the airport, and I’m sure he’ll have more to say.”

  Riley nodded in agreement, and she and her partner fell silent for a while. As she sat staring out the window, her mind began to drift back to yesterday’s awful shootout.

  Riley heard Crivaro say in a gentle voice, “You look tired.”

  She turned toward him and saw that he was looking at her with concern.

  “I guess I kind of am,” Riley said. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  “Are you sure you’re up to working on this case?”

  “I’m sure,” Riley said.

  But she really didn’t feel so sure about it. And she could tell by Crivaro’s worried expression that he sensed her doubts.

  He said in a gentle voice, “It was a tough thing, what happened to you yesterday.”

  Riley shrugged and said, “I guess you know how it feels.”

  “Not really, no.”

  Riley was surprised to hear him say that.

  Hasn’t he ever killed anybody? she wondered.

  Crivaro hadn’t needed to use deadly force on any of the cases Riley had worked with him on so far. The closest he had come was when a madman was about to inject Riley with a deadly dose of amphetamine. But Crivaro’s then-partner Mark McCune had fired the shot that felled the killer.

  Nevertheless Riley was sure that Crivaro must have used deadly force during his twenty-plus years as an FBI agent—probably many times.

  But there had to be a first time, she thought.

  Maybe it would help her to hear him tell her about it.

  She asked in a cautious tone, “Agent Crivaro … could you tell me about the first time you had to use deadly force?”

  Crivaro shrugged. He didn’t look especially unsettled by the question.

  “Well, that’s some ancient history,” he said. “Have you ever heard of the Magrette bank robbery of 1980?”

  Riley’s eyes widened.

  “Of course I’ve heard about it,” she said. “I learned about it at the Academy. I’ve even acted out parts of it with other cadets. It’s still used in anti-terrorism and survival training. Were you involved with that?”

  Crivaro smiled an odd sort of smile.

  “Yeah, toward the end of it, anyway. Do you want to hear about it?”

  Riley nodded silently.

  Crivaro said, “Well, tell me everything you know about it already. I don’t want to bore you with stuff you’ve heard a zillion times.”

  Riley almost scoffed aloud. There was nothing boring about the story of the Magrette robbery.

  Nevertheless, she said, “Well, I know that the whole thing was crazy—and extremely violent. A gang of six bank robbers stormed into a bank in Magrette, Pennsylvania, armed to the teeth and wearing military fatigues. They forced the tellers to hand over $20,000 in cash.”

  “A lot of money back then,” Jake said.

  “But the local police got word about it while it was going on,” Riley said. “When they showed up at the scene, a gunfight broke out right there in front of the bank.”

  Jake shook his head.

  “Those poor cops,” he said. “They had no idea how outgunned they were.”

  Riley said, “A deputy got hit—five times, if I remember right.”

  “He survived, amazingly enough,” Crivaro said.

  “The robbers managed to get to their getaway vehicle,” Riley continued. “Then they led the cops on a wild chase. The robbers fired at the police cars, even threw homemade bombs at them. All kinds of vehicles got damaged, including a police helicopter. The robbers managed to get away for a time.”

  Crivaro grunted slightly.

  “Yeah, and that was when the FBI got called in—me included,” he said. “Early the next morning, a team of us tracked the gang down to some nearby woods, but it turned out to be an ambush. We were met by a hail of bullets. Our team chief, Val Davidson, was killed instantly.”

  Crivaro shuddered and added, “Got hit with a bullet from assault rifle. Pretty near took his whole head off. I’d never seen anything like it.”

  He fell quiet for a moment, and his gaze seemed to turn inward.

  Then he said, “We all returned fire, including me, although we only got glimpses of our attackers in those woods. The gunfire seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere. I fired the very last shot, though. The split second I fired, I heard a cry of pain from the woods. Then all the shooting stopped, and everything got quiet.”

  Crivaro shuffled his feet nervously.

  He said, “Then five of the robbers came toward us with their hands above their heads. They were surrendering! Another guy and I went out into the woods to try to figure out what happened. We found Wallace Combs, the gang leader, lying dead on the ground, killed by a bullet square in the center of his chest. The rest of the gang soon told us that Combs had talked them into fighting to the death. But as things turned out, they couldn’t go on without him.”

  Crivaro squinted, as if struggling anew with his disbelief.

  “I’d killed him,” he said. “But I’d never even seen him. I’d just been shooting out into the woods. It was the luckiest damn shot in the world.”

  Crivaro fell quiet for a moment.

  “I can’t say I ever felt guilty about it,” he said, “but it changed me. It made me harder, I guess. Part of it was seeing my chief get killed like that. I’ve never had trouble using deadly force ever since then.”

  Then he looked Riley squarely in the eye.

  He said, “It’s a different experience for everybody—that first kill, I mean. What happened to me that day—well, it was completely different from what happened to you yesterday. I didn’t see the man I shot until he was dead. It didn’t feel so personal, so … well, I don’t really have any idea how you feel about it.”

  Riley winced sharply at those words.

  For a moment, she again saw that innocent young face staring with dead eyes into the snowfall. As helpful as it had been to talk about this with Frankie a while ago, Riley knew that she still had a lot to deal with.

  And it’s going to take time, she thought.

  Crivaro patted her on the shoulder.

  “So do you want to talk about it?” he said.

  Riley thought for a moment, then sho
ok her head no.

  “That’s probably just as well,” Crivaro said. “I’m not the guy who can help you get through this. I don’t have the right touch. You really need to talk to a therapist, just like Lehl ordered you to do. Promise me you’ll make that appointment as soon as we get back to Quantico.”

  “I promise,” Riley said.

  But she felt a sharp dread as she said those words.

  She wondered how she could open up about such an awful experience to a total stranger. How could it possibly help?

  And why is it anybody else’s business, anyway?

  Can’t I get out of it somehow?

  But of course she knew she couldn’t. Orders were orders, and a promise was a promise.

  And anyway, she and Crivaro were about to pursue a probable serial killer.

  I probably have worse things to dread than a visit to the doctor, she realized with a bitter smile.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The tall, grim man waiting for Riley and Crivaro when they got off their plane didn’t seem at all welcoming. Riley guessed that this must be Sheriff Quayle, who had actually requested their help. But he was just standing there on the tarmac of Hayden Regional Airport with arms crossed and an angry expression on his face. He looked as if he thought Riley and Crivaro had already done something he didn’t like.

  Does he think we’re late or something? Riley wondered.

  It seemed to her that they’d gotten here as quickly as they reasonably could.

  Riley and Crivaro produced their badges and introduced themselves. Quayle didn’t bother to do so himself.

  “Come on,” he said in a gruff voice. “I’ll drive you there.”

  Riley could only guess that “there” meant the crime scene.

  A man of few words, Riley thought.

  She and Crivaro followed him through the small airport terminal, then outside into the parking lot. The weather was about like it had been in Virginia—cold, but not bitterly so. Not the way it had been in upstate New York. But there was some snow on the ground and it was cold enough that Riley was glad she’d dressed warmly for the trip.