Once Craved (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #3) (17 page)

“You’re not driving,”
he said. “Not in your state of mind.”

She couldn’t
disagree, although Bill was awfully agitated himself. She walked around to the
passenger side and got in.

“Where are we going
next?” she asked.

“Back to HQ, I
guess.”

Bill started to
drive in stony silence.

Riley mentally
replayed her words and actions of the last few minutes. What had she been
thinking? What had triggered her anger?

She began to
understand now. She and her own daughter had been locked in cages, Jaybird’s
girls passed their days in a prison cell of an extinct sauna, girls like Trinda
got tossed from the back of one truck cab to the next, and God only knew what
kinds of torments Justine had endured at the hands of countless men.

But Gretchen Lovick
had been tormented in her own respectable, upper-middle-class home. She’d lived
in a hell that she hated so much that she took refuge in another kind of hell.

It seemed small
wonder that the situation had pushed Riley’s buttons. But since when did she
let this kind of thing get the best of her?

I’ve got to get
myself under control,
she thought.

Her phone buzzed.
She saw that the call was from Morley.

“What have you got
for me, Agent Paige?” the field office chief said when she answered.

Riley didn’t reply.
She couldn’t bring herself to say the word “nothing.”

There was a note of
barely subdued anger in Morley’s voice. “We brought you and Jeffreys all the
way from Quantico. We expected results.”

Riley’s anger
started to rise again. She and Bill had just gotten here on Saturday, and they
hadn’t even known for sure that they were dealing with a serial killer until
this morning. What kind of results did Morley expect just yet?

But Riley swallowed
her anger.

“We’ll get you
results,” Riley said. “We’re on our way to headquarters.”

“Damn straight you
are,” Morley said. “I’m holding a meeting here in twenty minutes. We’re going
to regroup. We’ve got to crack this thing before more women wind up dead.”

“We’ll be there,
sir,” Riley said.

She ended the call.

“Morley?” Bill said.

“Yeah. He’s holding
a meeting. We’ll get back just in time.”

“He’s not happy, I
take it,” Bill said.

“No. He’s not.”

Bill kept driving,
and a chilly silence settled between them. Riley couldn’t blame Bill for being
upset with her. She felt herself drowning in a sea of self-doubt. She didn’t
know what to make of this case. And it was starting to look like she didn’t
know what to make of herself.

Riley could feel a
sense of urgency in the FBI conference room when she and Bill got there. They
sat down at one end of the big table and looked over the group of people
shuffling chairs about and finding places to sit. Special Agent in Charge Elgin
Morley obviously wanted to make sure not to leave anybody out of the loop.

Chief pathologist
Dr. Rachel Fowler was here. So was Igraine, in all her colorful technopagan
regalia. Riley even recognized the faces of the two agents who had stopped her
from demolishing Calvin Rabbe. There were several others that she hadn’t met,
and Riley wondered what they all expected to find out here today.

She spotted Agent
Garrett Holbrook placing his chair back from the table a bit and close to the
door. She wondered if he was trying to be inconspicuous or was planning an
early exit. Perhaps both, she thought.

At the far end of
the room a gigantic map was projected, showing where the three bodies had been
found. The sheer size of the visual struck Riley as overkill. After all, the
map wasn’t particularly informative. Still, it made the statement that Morley
obviously wanted it to make—that they were deadly serious about bringing a
murderer to justice.

Once everybody had
settled down, Morley stood up to get things underway. He wasn’t a large man,
but he had an intense presence that commanded everyone’s attention. Riley could
see why he was in charge here.

“I’m glad you’re all
here,” he said. “We now know for sure that we’re dealing with a serial killer.
It’s going to be a tough case, and we don’t have a moment to lose. Even now,
our subject might be targeting his next victim—or maybe he’s killed her
already. We’ve got to stop him now, if not sooner.”

Riley heard more
than a trace of impatience in his voice. She’d noticed this about him before.
If Morley had a fault, she figured, it was that he expected progress to made at
some impossible rate. Still, she admired his drive to get results.

Morley gestured
across the table toward Riley and Bill.

“I think most of you
have already met Agents Paige and Jeffreys. They’re here from Quantico to lend
us their expertise. Let’s hear what they’ve got to say about where things
stand.”

He sat down. Riley
and Bill exchanged glances. She nodded slightly and Bill smiled almost
imperceptibly. They were silently exchanging a familiar signal. Riley wanted
him to talk first, so she could simply take in the faces and reactions of the
people present.

Riley was pleased
that they could still communicate wordlessly like this. It was how they’d
worked together when they’d been at their best, each supporting the other. It
felt good to Riley to be getting back into that rhythm.

Bill stood up. “Here’s
what we’ve got so far,” he began. “Agent Morley is right. We’re dealing with a
serial killer, and he’s picking up his pace …”

He launched into a
summary of what had happened during the last few days, beginning with the
discovery of Nancy Holbrook’s body. Riley knew that he’d continue to report all
that she and Bill had been doing since their arrival on Saturday. But she didn’t
need all this review. Instead, she focused her attention on the people sitting
around her. From experience, she could spot any weak links in the team—agents
who weren’t up to the job, or whose judgment was likely to be off. She would
also notice any who appeared to be holding back, perhaps not sharing
information that they all needed to know.

She was pleasantly
surprised to find herself in a small sea of enthusiasm, alertness, and apparent
competence.

No obvious weak
links here,
she
thought.

But something did
catch her eye. Garrett Holbrook had gotten up from his chair and was heading
toward the door. He looked rather agitated and shaken. She told herself that he
was simply upset about having to review details of his own sister’s death.
Maybe he didn’t think he could deal with it all over again.

That sort of made
sense to Riley—but perhaps not really. Holbrook was an FBI agent, after all—a
trained professional. He was used to dealing with horrifying crimes. Besides,
it had been his idea to make this an FBI case in the first place.

Holbrook slipped out
the door and was gone. What bothered Riley most was that she didn’t yet know
what to make of him. She hadn’t been able to nail down what was bothering her
about the brother of a murder victim.

Another presence
hovered in Riley’s mind—the killer himself. Where was he right at this moment?
Was he laughing at their efforts to track him down?

No,
she thought.
We don’t matter
to him that much.

But he mattered to
Riley intensely. In order to bring him down, she knew that she would have to
find a way to delve into the dark recesses of his mind. She was already
beginning to sense a man in full control of what he was doing, a secure man …

Her musings stopped
when Bill said, “And now my partner, Agent Paige, will give us what we’ve got
in the way of a profile.”

Riley rose to her
feet and spoke to the group.

“We can make a few
assumptions. The killer was a male between twenty-one and forty-three years old
when he committed his first murder, and he’s probably still within that age
range. He’s got at least a high school education, and I’m pretty sure that he’s
spent some time in college. In fact, this one might be very well educated. He’s
got a job, probably one that pays well. There’s a good chance that he’s got a
wife and kids, or at least that he’s been married with children in the past. He’s
highly intelligent, and very sure of himself.”

A hand shot up. One
of the agents who had pulled Riley off of Rabbe had a question.

“How much of what
you’re saying is fact, and how much is hypothesis?” he asked.

Riley smiled. It was
a perfectly good question.

“Facts are in short
supply at this point,” she said. “But I’m not just making this stuff up.”

A ripple of laughter
went through the room.

“These are more than
educated guesses,” she said. “The BAU has gathered important data on serial
killers of prostitutes. I’m basing some of my assumptions on that data. For
example, in each of these cases we’ve seen here, the killer transported the
body away from the murder scene and disposed of it in water. These types of
serial killers want to place time and distance between themselves and their
victims. Unlike serials who are out for publicity, they don’t want anyone to
know that a murder has taken place. They don’t get their pleasure from
panicking the general public.”

The agent who had
asked the question looked thoughtful. He added, “Then this type gets all his
kicks from the killing itself?”

“Right,” Riley
answered, “and if I may say so, some of what I’m saying comes from my own many
years of field experience. And I think this killer is atypical in some ways.
For example, I don’t think he has a police record. That won’t make him any
easier to track down. His everyday behavior is probably quite normal. This is a
sociopath who takes prostitutes because they easily available. He considers
them disposable.

“He’s intelligent,
but not a practiced criminal. He would have gotten away clean with the first
murder if he hadn’t fumbled on the second one. The third was a case of bad
luck, but also a sign that he didn’t anticipate all of the possibilities. He
may change his MO the next time … and there will be a next time.”

Another hand went
up. Riley didn’t recognize the young woman.

“Your name, please?”
she asked.

“Robin Mastin,” she
said. “I’m with the local police.”

Riley knew the name
at once. This was the student diver who had found Marsha “Ginger” Kramer’s
skeleton. Riley also knew that the young rookie had insisted on searching even
after team leader Quentin Rosner had been ready to give up.

Riley said, “That
was some pretty good work you did at Nimbo Lake.”

Robin Mastin smiled
and blushed. “Thank you, Agent Paige,” she said.

Riley got the strong
feeling that the young woman especially appreciated praise from a seasoned
agent.

“Your question?”
Riley said.

“The body I found
was still wearing an expensive-looking bracelet. Is that significant?”

“As a matter of
fact, it is,” Riley said. “Nancy Holbrook’s body was still wearing a diamond
ring. Gretchen Lovick was wearing a necklace, also with a diamond. Not
extremely high-end pieces, but well beyond what we might have expected to find
on them.”

Riley thought this
was a good moment to give the eager rookie a chance to pitch in.

“What does that
suggest to you, Officer Mastin?” she asked.

The young woman
thought it over for a moment.

“Well, it seems
likely that the killer gave those trinkets to the women as gifts. That must
mean that he was on good terms with them when he killed them. They thought they
could trust him.”

“Very good,” Riley
said. Robin Mastin blushed some more and smiled proudly.

Riley continued, “This
is important to keep in mind. Our killer doesn’t snatch his victims off the
street, or abduct them by force. He uses some kind of ruse. We can be pretty
sure that he poses as a john—and a kindly, generous john at that. He’s a deadly
con man.”

Riley paused for a
moment, then said, “Here’s an important detail. His first victim was HIV
positive. The killer is very likely to be as well. If so, he probably knows it.”

Pathologist Dr.
Rachel Fowler looked up from her note-taking.

“That’s interesting,”
Fowler said. “The last two victims didn’t have HIV. But then, he didn’t have
sex with them, or at least not when he killed them. Marsha Kramer’s remains
were too decomposed to tell.”

“According to her
associates, Kramer had the virus,” Riley said. “And I’ve got a hunch that our
killer was sexually active three years ago and got it from her. Considering his
probable social status, he’s most likely taking drugs for it, either illicitly
or by prescription.”

Riley caught the eye
of the pagan digital tech chief.

“Igraine, is there
any way you can use that information to track him down?” Without irony, she
added, “With the magic at your disposal?”

Igraine tugged on
one of her safety pins thoughtfully.

“I wouldn’t get
optimistic, Agent Paige,” she said. “We could try getting a report from
pharmacies. But more than ten thousand people in the area are known to be HIV
positive or have AIDS. Even if we leave out women, the elderly, or the very
young, that still leaves too many people to sort through fast enough to be of
any immediate help.”

Riley was impressed
by Igraine’s display of ready knowledge.

“I understand,
Igraine,” she said. “We’ll think of another approach for you and your team.”

Now Riley noticed
that Morley had gotten up and was heading for the door. He seemed to be
responding to a phone message.

It must be
something important,
Riley thought as he stepped quietly outside.

Riley and Bill took
a few more questions, then called the meeting to a close. Everybody left the
room except for the two of them.

“Where’s Holbrook?”
Bill asked. “I thought he’d stay around afterwards.”

“I saw him leave
early on,” Riley said.

“That’s kind of odd,”
Bill said.

“He’s kind of odd,”
Riley agreed.

Morley came back
into the room, looking more hopeful than usual.

“We just got a tip,”
he told Riley and Bill. “It’s from a woman named Ruthie Lapham, who runs the
bar at the Desert King. It’s another truck stop where prostitutes hang out.
Ruthie’s something of a mother hen to the hookers there, watches out for them
as much as she can. She’s worried about a girl named Clover, who has been AWOL
for a few days.”

Bill shook his head
doubtfully.

“A missing
prostitute isn’t exactly a lead,” he said.

Riley had to agree. “It’s
sad, but it happens every day.”

Morley said, “Yeah,
and with the media coverage of the murders, our tip lines have been flooded
with useless calls. But this might be different. Ruthie says a suspicious guy
has been cruising the girls there from time to time. He really stands out. The
usual clientele are truck drivers, and this guy just doesn’t fit in. He’s
always made the girls nervous and of course now they’re jumpier than usual. But
Ruthie says she thinks they could be right about this one.”

Riley’s interest was
piqued. “So why did Ruthie call just now?” she asked.

“Because the guy
just showed up there again,” Morley said. “She thinks maybe we should check him
out.”

“He could be gone by
the time we get there,” Bill said. “Still, we’d better go. If nothing else, we
can talk to the women, find out what they might know about him.”

But Riley remembered
how hard it had been to talk to most of the women at Hank’s Derby.