Once Craved (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #3) (14 page)

Riley was sleeping
later than usual when her phone rang. She hadn’t awakened early because she and
Bill were supposed to be going home today. She looked at the clock. They still
had several hours to get to the airport.

But the call wasn’t
from Bill. It was from Morley.

“We have a new body,”
he said.

Riley was wide awake
now.

“Another prostitute?”
she asked.

“Looks like it.”

“In the lake?”

“It’s in a different
one, Lake Gaffney. But it was dumped there in a black bag. It’s a similar MO. I
want you and Jeffreys to get out there. I’m getting a helicopter ready for you,
but it will take over an hour to reach this one.”

“How long has the
body been in the water?”

“Just since last
night.”

Riley told Morley
they would be right there. She phoned Bill. He said he was packing, but then
she told him the news.

“Sounds like you
were right all along,” he replied. “This could be a serial case.”

Riley didn’t reply.
Being right about something like this gave her no pleasure at all. But it did
mean they had work to do. It did mean that there was a monster out there for
them to track down and stop.

“I’ll bring you some
coffee,” Bill said.

“And a bagel,” she
said. Bill agreed and hung up.

As Riley pulled on
her clothes, she was grateful that whoever had found this body had made the
connection.

“Lake Gaffney,” she
said aloud. She remembered seeing that one on the map. It was another
artificial lake in the hills near Phoenix. She wondered whether the divers back
at Lake Nimbo were having any luck with their search there.

*

Riley knelt down
beside the dead woman in the unzipped body bag. The victim was naked and her
wrists were bound with ordinary clothesline rope. She only wore a thin silver
necklace set with a single diamond.

“Another real stone?”
Bill asked.

“I’m sure it is,”
Riley replied.

“It must be the same
guy.”

She looked up at
Garrett Holbrook, the agent who had called in help from Quantico when his
half-sister had been found murdered. Today he had joined Bill and Riley for the
helicopter flight to Lake Gaffney, where the new body had been found.

“I’m glad you
insisted on getting the BAU involved in this case,” she told the Phoenix agent.

Riley was still
having trouble deciding what to make of him. As usual, he had said very little
during the flight out here. And so far, his participation in the case had been
pretty peripheral.

Holbrook just nodded
grimly. “Glad you agreed to come,” he said. Then he turned back to the newly found
body.

“This one’s in a
body bag,” he said. “Nancy’s body was in a plastic garbage bag.”

Riley always noted
some vague emotion in his voice whenever he said his half-sister’s name—Nancy.
Riley still couldn’t put her finger on exactly what that emotion was. She
believed that something beyond his half-sister’s death was troubling this man.

“The body bag shows
both planning and premeditation,” Riley said. “Could be that your sister’s
killing was spontaneous, maybe almost accidental. But this time he really
intended to do it.”

She looked over at
District Ranger Nick Fessler, who was crouched on the other side of the body.

“How did you find
her?” Riley asked.

A vigorous-looking
yet taciturn man, Fessler looked dismayed by the question.

“I must have told the
police a hundred times already,” he said.

“Tell me again,”
Riley said. She’d already heard about it from the cops, but she wanted to hear
it from Fessler’s own mouth.

“I was out on the
lake last night doing some night fishing. I heard a splash from right over
there, near the little cliff. I figured it was some asshole dumping garbage or
something. I steered on over there, figuring I could clean up a bit. But there
wasn’t anything floating. That seemed odd. So this morning I put on my diving
gear and went down for a look.”

He fell silent.
Riley didn’t need to hear the rest. Fessler had found the body bag and had
gotten his staff to help him bring it up. Then he’d called the police.

Unfortunately,
someone on his staff had indiscreetly emailed a friend about the discovery, and
word of it went viral almost immediately. The media quickly descended upon Lake
Gaffney. Right now the cops had taped off the area and were doing everything
they could to keep reporters and television crews as far away as possible.

“She’s given birth,”
Garrett Holbrook said to Bill and Riley, pointing to stretch marks on the
victim’s belly. “And she looks older than Nancy.”

Riley could see that
he was right. She added, “Both had been bound at the wrists. This time he didn’t
bother remove the rope.”

Bill carefully took
the necklace from the woman’s neck and put it into an evidence bag.

“The earlier body
wore a ring with a diamond,” he said. “This woman’s wearing a necklace—a pretty
expensive one, also with a diamond. All of this sure looks like a recurring
pattern.”

Riley agreed. Right
now a photo of the necklace was all over the Internet. Fortunately, no pictures
showing the whole body had been posted.

She called out to
the county medical examiner, who was standing nearby with his team.

“You can take her
away now.”

The examiner and his
team obediently zipped up the bag and started to take it to their vehicle.

Riley stepped away
from her colleagues and looked around where they stood. Beyond the hills and
patches of dull green surrounding the lake, everything was just dry land and
scrubby grass and brush. Saguaro cactus stood here and there like sentinels.
Things looked much more alive out on the lake. It was a beautiful sunny day,
and the water seemed crystal clear and blue. She could see that the marina
across the lake was quite busy. Doubtless people in the village over there were
going about their ordinary recreations.

Some boaters out on
the water kept trying to veer close to get a look at what was going on here.
Lake security busily waved them away.

It was a handsome
lake, but from what the diving team leader had told her the other day, she knew
that this appearance was deceptive. The depths of lakes like these were dark
with sod and soot.

Just like this
case,
Riley
thought.

Fessler had brought
the body ashore where they stood now. It had apparently been dropped into the
water from a nearby low cliff. But around most of this lake, the hills tapered
gradually to the water’s edge. The killer must have known the area well to find
one of the few places where he could drop a body directly down and expect it to
sink into the water. The killer had clearly been to both lakes before. He was
familiar with the territory. He was likely to be a recreational boater, much
like those out there now.

Riley’s cell phone
buzzed. She saw that the call was from Quentin Rosner, the head of the diving
team. She’d been putting a lot of pressure on him to keep on searching, despite
his insistence that there was no second body in Nimbo Lake. Now she didn’t know
what kind of news to hope for from him.

“What have you got
for me, Mr. Rosner?” she said.

“Agent Paige,” he
began.

Then he hesitated.

“We’ve found a body,”
he said.

Riley’s heart
quickened.

“Tell me about it,”
she said.

“One of my divers
found a skull in an underwater grotto. There’s a whole skeleton there, inside a
black plastic bag. It looks like a woman. She must have been killed some years
ago, long enough for the flesh to completely decompose. But the skeleton is
pretty solid. We might be able to identify her from dental records.”

Riley asked, “Was
there any jewelry on the body?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll
check,” Rosner replied.

Just then Riley
heard Agent Holbrook call out for her and Bill.

“Good work, Rosner,”
she said. “I’ve got to go.”

Agent Holbrook was
looking at his smart phone as Riley and Bill walked toward him.

“I just got some
news from the division,” Holbrook said. “They forwarded this to me.”

Holbrook showed Bill
and Riley an image on his smartphone. It was a selfie of a smiling woman
holding a necklace. It looked like she was standing in a bathroom. Riley
immediately recognized the woman as the victim whose body had just been found.
And the necklace looked exactly like the one Bill had just removed from her
naked corpse.

“Where did this come
from?” Riley asked Holbrook.

“A woman who calls
herself Snowflake called the police tip hotline,” Holbrook said. “She said that
her friend Chiffon sent her this picture with a text message yesterday
afternoon. Chiffon’s text said that a ‘gentleman’ had just given it to her, and
that they’d had a ‘moment,’ and that she’d call Snowflake with more details
soon.”

“Let me guess,”
Riley said. “Chiffon never got back in touch with Snowflake.”

Holbrook nodded. “That’s
right. And Snowflake got worried. And this morning, Snowflake saw the necklace
all over the Internet. She felt sure that Chiffon must be the victim.”

Riley was processing
this information.

Snowflake and
Chiffon,
she
thought.
They sound like prostitute names. And Nancy Holbrook was an escort
who called herself Nanette.

“Did Snowflake say
anything else?” Bill put in.

“Yeah, she said that
she and Chiffon both worked at a place in Phoenix called the Kinetic Custom
Gym. She said we should talk to a guy there called Jaybird.”

Riley started
walking toward the FBI helicopter.

“Let’s go.”

Riley thought that
the Kinetic Custom Gym definitely looked like a front for a brothel. The place
was seedy and rundown, even more so than the rest of this rough-looking
neighborhood. A “CLOSED” sign hung in the door, but she was sure the place was
actually open for a different kind of business.

The car she and Bill
arrived in was the only vehicle in the parking lot. When they got out and
walked toward the building, they could see some exercise machines through the
front windows. The only person is sight was a man seated inside at the front
desk. He was poring over a copy of
Scientific American.
Riley guessed
that this was Jaybird—the man the tipster named Snowflake had said they should
talk to. And Riley was sure that he was a pimp.

Whether he was the
killer they sought was another question.

Bill was about to
pull out his badge to display it through the window.

“Not yet,” Riley
said.

She wanted to get
just a little sense of the man before he found out who they were. She smiled
pleasantly and rapped on the window. The man looked up from his magazine. She
waved as though she and Bill were just a pair of customers wanting to check the
place out.

The man pointed at
the CLOSED sign and started reading again. Riley rapped on the window again,
still smiling. The man looked back up at her, realizing that she and Bill weren’t
going away.

He got up and walked
toward the door. He was blond and about thirty—a short, muscular man who
swaggered as he walked, with his fists clenched at his side. Riley could read a
lot in his stride. She sensed that he’d experienced a lot of violence in his
life, and that he could dish it out when he needed to—or wanted to.

Could this be our
guy?
she
wondered. It started to seem more likely.

The man unlocked the
door and poked his head outside.

“Closed,” he said. “Can’t
you read the sign?”

Smiling as
charmingly as ever, Riley pointed to the hours listed on the glass door.

She said, “Yeah, but
according to this, you should be open. We just want to look around.”

“I don’t think so,”
the man said.

It was time to drop
the pretense. Riley flashed her badge.

“I’m Agent Paige,
and this is my partner, Agent Jeffreys.”

The man’s face broke
into an impish smile. If he was the least bit fazed, he didn’t show it.

“FBI, huh?” he said.
“Why didn’t you say so in the first place? Come on in.”

Bill and Riley
stepped inside.

Riley glanced
around, taking note of the decrepit machinery—treadmills, a rowing machine, two
weight machines. The smell was stale and stagnant. She also noted the overall
space of this front area and realized there must be plenty of room in back to
conduct illicit services.

“Are you the man
people call Jaybird?” Bill asked.

“That’s me,” the man
said. “But I guess you need my real name for, like, official purposes. I’m
Jerome Kehoe.”

He was pointedly not
offering Bill and Riley a seat, not making any effort to make them comfortable.
Even so, he maintained an outward show of hospitality.

“You know, you’re
just the people I want to talk to right now. I mean, you’re in law enforcement.
That means you’re interested in questions of free will, right? Because I sure
as hell am.”

Jaybird picked up
the magazine and waved it at them.

“This article says
that scientists have all but
proved
that our whole reality is just a
computer simulation,” he said, his words pouring out very rapidly. “I mean look
around you, look at everything you see, smell, taste, touch. It’s all just VR
in some big-assed giant mainframe.”

Riley could see that
he was giving them quite a tap dance with this nonsensical fast talk. But she
detected that his interest was more than half genuine. He was intelligent, even
philosophical.

She was also sure
that he was emotionally volatile—extremely so. She guessed that his
hyperactivity was periodically interrupted by emotional crashes, marked by
terrible rages. Even murderous rages, she felt sure.

Above all else, he
was good at conning people, keeping them off balance, manipulating them. If she
and Bill didn’t stay on their toes, they might well leave this place with
nothing but a year-long membership to a nonexistent gym.

He continued, “I
mean,
think
about the ontological implications of that shit, for the
kind of work
you
guys do. Because, like, if I commit a crime, but it’s
preprogrammed in some kind of omnipotent God machine, am I really guilty? Am I
responsible for my own goddamn behavior? Are you? Is anybody? Because that’s an
interesting question, huh?”

Riley knew better
than to get drawn into any discussion. It was time to get to the point.

“We’d like to know
where you were and what you were doing last night,” she said.

“Like, what time?”
Jaybird said.

“Between sunset and
dawn,” Bill put in.

Jaybird grunted a
little impatiently. “That covers a lot of hours. And my nights can get kind of
busy, if you know what I mean. And I don’t sleep. I never sleep. I’m always out
and around. So it’s a tough question. Now I’m not a constitutional scholar, but
I’m pretty sure you’re not here to arrest me, but even so, I’m pretty sure I
don’t
have
to answer any questions. Correct me if I’m wrong. Am I wrong?”

Riley abruptly held
up her cell phone to show him the selfie of Chiffon.

“This is one of your
girls, isn’t it?” Riley asked.

Riley could tell by
his expression that she’d finally succeeded in catching him off balance. He
knew better than to try to lie.

“Yeah,” he said. “Chiffon’s
her name. She works here.”

“In what capacity?”
Bill asked.

Jaybird shrugged.

“She gives massages,”
he said. “I’ve got girls here who do that. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Nobody said there
was,” Bill said with an ironic edge. “Did my partner say there was something
wrong with it? Did I say there was something wrong with it? Who said there was
anything wrong with it?”

Riley enjoyed
watching Bill take a go at the guy, playing him at his own game. She sensed
that Jaybird was starting to get a little intimidated. Jaybird might be tough,
but Bill was larger and equally imposing.

I’ll just let
Bill run with this for a while,
she thought.

“Naw, nobody said
that,” Jaybird said. “Chiffon’s not here, though.”

“We know that,” Bill
said. “She’s dead.”

Jaybird said
nothing. Riley didn’t know what to make of his reaction—or lack of it. Maybe
Bill could read him better.

At that moment, her
cell phone buzzed. She stepped away from Bill and Jaybird to take the call. It
was Elgin Morley calling from headquarters. Riley could hear Bill and Jaybird
talking during the phone call.

“Agent Paige, we’ve
had a bit of luck,” Morley said. “We ran a search on dental records for the
skull that was found this morning, and we got a match right away. The victim’s
name was Marsha Kramer. Her family reported her missing three years ago. She
was in college when she disappeared.”

“Could you text me a
photo of her?” Riley asked.

“I’ll do that right
away,” Morley said.

As Riley waited, she
heard Bill and Jaybird continuing their little verbal tug-of-war. Bill was
trying to get him to say more about Chiffon, without much success. Riley needed
to get back into the conversation.

The photo of Marsha
Kramer came through.

Riley thanked Morley
and ended the call. She walked over to Bill and Jaybird, displaying the photo.

“How about this
girl?” Riley asked. “Do you know her?”

Jaybird didn’t say
anything, but she could see a flash of recognition in his eyes.

Bill said, “Jaybird—Mr.
Kehoe—let’s stop playing games here. We don’t have a warrant, but we won’t have
trouble getting one. Things will go better for you if you just cooperate.”

“Yeah, I remember
her,” Jaybird said. “It’s been a long time, though. Years, maybe. I don’t
remember her real good. Honest, I don’t. Maybe my wife could help.”

Jaybird turned and
walked toward a door leading into the back part of the building. Riley trotted
right after him, determined not to let him out of her sight. Jaybird made no
effort to stop her. She heard Bill’s footsteps right behind her.

On their way into
the back of the building, they passed an open door. Riley stopped and looked
inside. The room was a sauna, with cedar paneling and wooden risers. But it
wasn’t in use now, and it probably hadn’t been for years.

Instead, the room
now seemed to be a rest area for the women who worked here. Six of them were in
there now, scantily clothed, of a mix of races. None of them was attractive,
and all of them looked tired, ill, and listless.

Riley shuddered
deeply. An image flashed in her mind, Peterson’s dark cage, and his propane
flame. She wasn’t sure why it came to mind just now. She shook off the memory.
There was work to do.

“These are my
massage girls,” Jaybird said. “And if you’ve got time, you can get a free
massage.” Pointedly to Riley, he added, “You too. But I guess you’re on duty.
Well, maybe some other time.”

Riley knew that this
wasn’t a bluff—at least not exactly. If she or Bill asked, any of these women
was prepared give them at least a crude rudiment of a massage. Still, she was
pretty sure that none of the women was certified or even trained.

Jaybird led them
back into a corridor of curtained cubicles, where clients surely got their
services. Privacy was obviously not a priority in a low-rent operation like
this.

The corridor ended
at the back entrance. A woman in her twenties was sitting at a desk watching a
small television and chewing gum. She was dressed just like the other women,
and her expression was similarly vacant. Riley felt pretty sure that clients
used this back entrance instead of the front, and that this woman was a
receptionist of sorts.

“This is my wife,
Chrissy,” Jaybird told Riley and Bill. “Chrissy, I’ve got a couple of FBI
agents here.”

Chrissy looked
worried.

“Don’t worry, they
come in peace,” Jaybird said with a chuckle. “They’ve just got some questions.”

Riley wondered
whether Jaybird and Chrissy were really married. Neither wore a wedding ring.
Whatever their actual relationship was, Riley was pretty sure it wasn’t the
least bit exclusive.

“They’ve got bad
news about Chiffon, though,” Jaybird told her. “They say she’s dead.”

Chrissy gasped.
Riley sensed that she must have known the victim well.

“Who killed her?”
Chrissy asked.

The words struck
Riley as revealing—not “How did she die?” but “Who killed her?”

Before Riley could
reply, Jaybird chortled and said, “Well, if you listen to these two, you might
think it was me. They say it was last night. But you know it wasn’t me, don’t
you, Chrissy?’

Chrissy smiled
weakly.

“It sure wasn’t
Jaybird,” she said. “I know what he was doing last night.”

“Yeah, Chrissy
knows,” Jaybird said with a coarse laugh. “She can tell you some details, let
me tell you. Not all of it would be appropriate for the lady, though,” he added,
indicating Riley again.

“I had a bad feeling
about her,” Chrissy said. “She’d sometimes go a long time without coming in to
work, but this time felt different somehow. Does her husband know?”

The question took
Riley slightly aback. She could see that Bill had the same reaction.

“She was married?”
Bill asked.

“Yeah, her husband
does something that’s got to do with computers,” Chrissy said. “She
has—had—three children.”

Chrissy shrugged and
added, “She didn’t have to work here. I mean, she didn’t need the money. She
was just bored.”

Riley took note of
the glances Chrissy kept exchanging with Jaybird. She was taking care not to
say anything he didn’t want her to say. He was giving her all kinds of scowls,
nods, and squints as nonverbal cues. Still, at this point, Jaybird didn’t seem
worried about what Riley and Bill knew about the business. It certainly wasn’t
much of a secret. And after all, they weren’t here to bust him.

He might have
other worries, though,
Riley thought.

She couldn’t yet
decide whether he was the killer.

Riley said, “Chiffon
wasn’t her real name, though, was it, Chrissy?”

Chrissy shook her
head. “It was Gretchen something. Oh, yeah. Gretchen Lovick.”

Riley showed her the
picture of the woman who had just been identified, Marsha Kramer.