Once Craved (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #3) (22 page)

He’s lived a
successful life,
she realized.

Unlike her, the
killer had done everything that he was supposed to do, and he’d never felt any
contradiction about it. As far as he was concerned, killing whores was just a
way to let off steam, like playing golf or bridge. There was nothing wrong with
it. There was nothing wrong with him.

It was all falling
into place now. He was a killer, nothing more. But Riley was a hunter. She knew
what she was doing in life, he didn’t. He was her unsuspecting prey. And she
was going to take him down.

She got into her car
and started to drive. As she made her way down the rain-drenched mountain, she
remembered something else Mike Nevins had said to her …

“There’s not
always a single
right
thing to do.”

She smiled. She was
at peace with that now.

As the john opened
the motel door for her, Socorro wondered why she was feeling nervous about him.
T.R. had a lot of class.

But maybe that’s
what’s weird,
she thought as she walked into the room. What kind of classy john would pick up
a streetwalker? Wasn’t he more of the escort or call girl type?

When he had picked
her up, she’d actually thought he would want her services right there in the
car like some johns did. Instead he had driven her all the way outside of
Phoenix, saying he wanted to find some peace and quiet. He’d brought her to
this motel near a small town, renting a room in the back part of the building.
From what she had seen there was nothing behind the place but desert.

She wasn’t
completely comfortable with the set-up. For one thing, she wouldn’t be able to
catch a bus home like she usually did in the city. She’d have to wait for him
to drive her back into town.

She’d get home later
than usual. But her daughter, Mari, was old enough to take care of her two younger
brothers. Mari could fix them dinner, but she’d have very little to work with
tonight. Socorro had planned to stop on the way home and pick up fast food
burgers for all of them. And fries. And something sweet too, maybe milkshakes.

Most johns didn’t
seem to pick up on the fact that she was a mother. Of course, she worked hard
not to act like one. Out on the streets, she always played the feisty
stereotypical spitfire of a Latina
chola.
The men she went with wouldn’t
even recognize the mother she was at home.

Meanwhile, it was a
decent motel, and T.R. was being very nice. He’d brought a bottle of scotch
with him, and he was pouring two glasses. He handed one to her.

“Water or ice?” he
asked. “Or anything to mix it with?”

“I’m good,” Socorro
said with a smile. It was rare enough for a john to treat her to a drink. She
wasn’t going to get picky about it. She took a sip. It tasted expensive.

“Take off your
blouse,” he said.

Socorro was happy to
follow orders. She pulled off the blouse and leaned back on the bed. She had
nothing on underneath, but she had no problem with going half-naked, or fully
naked. She would do whatever the johns wanted as far as clothing was concerned,
and most activities too.

“Anything else?” she
asked.

“Not right now.”

So she would wait
until he told her to take off her short skirt, fishnet tights, and spiked
heels. Or maybe he would want to do that for her. Socorro told herself that she
was only feeling wary because he was smoother and slower than her usual
clients. He wasn’t in a hurry like so many of them were.

He sat down beside
her on the bed and began to stroke her body. He ran his fingers across her
breasts and then up her legs, feeling her beneath her skirt.

But something seemed
off. He was breathing rather loudly—but it wasn’t the kind of breathing she
expected with arousal.

He’s having
trouble getting it up,
she realized.

But she could take
care of that. Sometimes the johns couldn’t perform well, but Socorro could
usually make them happy one way or another. She might have to really work at
it, but T.R. was worth some effort.

After all, she was
spooked about nothing. Those news stories had gotten her all worked up—all that
stuff about some serial killer taking prostitutes. Not that there had been a
lot of details. Socorro figured maybe it was just hype during a dull news week.
But it was messing up life on the street. More cops were out there than usual,
scaring both johns and working girls away.

But Socorro didn’t
have the luxury of staying off the street. She needed money, and she needed it
today. She had kids to feed and rent to pay. And although none of regulars had
showed up, she’d gotten lucky with T.R.

She’d seen him
before in that big expensive car of his. She’d even tried to talk to him once,
but he’d driven away when her stupid pimp barged in.

¡Pinche Pablo!
she thought.

Anyway, T.R. had to
be all right. It was not like he was hiding from the law or anything like that.

After a few moments
of idle fondling, he got up from the bed.

“I’ve brought you a
gift,” he said.

Socorro was
surprised. Who ever bought gifts for streetwalkers like her?

He took a little
flat box out of his pocket and held it out to her.

Socorro gasped when
she opened it. Inside was a lovely little necklace.

“This is for me?”
she cried.

“Especially for you,”
he said. “I picked it out with you in mind. The diamond is real.”

She smiled with
delight. She knew he was lying, of course. He hadn’t had
her
especially
in mind. How was that even possible? He’d have given the necklace to any whore
who’d gone with him. But she wasn’t complaining.

“I don’t know what
to say,” she said.

He smiled back at
her. “How about
muchísimas gracias?
”

She laughed aloud. “
Muchísimas
gracias—
and then some!”

He glanced around
the room. “Put it on,” he said. “I’ve got some toys out in the car. I’ll be
right back.”

As soon as he went
out the door, Socorro got up and put on the necklace, checking it out in the
mirror. It was a slender silver chain with one nice simple stone. She thought
she looked rather glamorous, naked to the waist except for the necklace.

She sighed. She
deserved this and much more. She often thought that she should try for a better
class of work, like an escort service. Then she could get away from
pinche
Pablo. Working with a madam instead of a pimp would be a welcome change.

Meanwhile, she wasn’t
going to get all sentimental about this expensive trinket. She was nothing to
T.R., and he was nothing to her. She’d sell the necklace as soon as she got a
chance. She could buy groceries, maybe even take a week off.

Or maybe not,
she thought.

If she was going to
move up in the world, shouldn’t she keep it? A call girl or an escort needed
her jewelry. Maybe this was a start in that direction.

But as she looked at
herself in the mirror, something vague started to trouble her. It had something
to do with a necklace and nakedness …

Then she remembered.
It had been on TV—a necklace a lot like this one. A dead woman had been found
in some lake outside of town, naked and wearing just such a necklace.

The woman had been
one of the killer’s victims.

Panic overwhelmed
Socorro. She couldn’t meet the same fate. She had a life to live. She had kids
to feed and take care of. What would become of them if she never came home?

But maybe she was
wrong. Maybe she was scared about nothing. Maybe everything was going to be all
right.

She opened the front
door slowly, just a little, hoping he wouldn’t notice. It was dark outside, and
the light above the door was out. The parking lot wasn’t well lit. Even so, she
could see him by the trunk light of his car, not more than fifteen feet away.
His back was toward her and he was searching for something. In one hand he held
a coil of rope.

Her heart was
pounding now. Should she scream? Would anybody hear her? Nobody else was in
sight. There weren’t even many cars parked out back. The motel seemed to be
mostly vacant.

There was only one
thing to do. She kicked off her spiked heels, pushed the door wide open, and
ran. She heard the man cursing as she rushed past him.

Socorro had no idea
where to run, so she just went where her feet carried her. In moments, the
parking lot pavement gave way to gravel and then to rocky dirt. Darkness closed
in on all sides as she mindlessly ran on and on. Her feet hurt badly from the
rough, stony sand and desert weeds. Her legs and her naked torso were whipped
by low brambly plants. But her feet kept carrying her on and on.

Soon she had no idea
how far she’d run. She was in shock from pain, bleeding, and fear. How much
time had passed since she fled that motel room? Just a few minutes? An hour?

She felt like her
heart would explode and her lungs would burst. She stumbled to a halt and fell
to her knees, momentarily deafened by her own gasping and the pounding of her
pulse.

But as her breathing
slowed, she heard another sound. It was distant traffic. She looked around and
saw headlights moving along some distance away.

¡Tonta!
she thought.

In her panic, she
had angled toward the desert instead of toward the highway. She turned around.
The lights of the motel were far behind her. She saw no one between her and the
motel. Hadn’t he followed her?

She hurt all over
and couldn’t run another step. It was chilly now, and she was almost naked, and
she was shivering from both the cold and fear.

But she had to keep
moving. She limped painfully toward the highway.

As she neared the
road, an approaching car slowed down. It was a big, fancy car—T.R.’s car, she
was sure of it. The car pulled beside her and came to a stop.

The passenger door
opened. She could see T.R. driving.

“What’s the matter
with you?” he called out. He was holding her blouse in one hand. “You forgot
this. Get in, put it on. I’ll drive you home.”

But there was no way
she was getting into the car with him. She ran past the car out onto the
highway. Big headlights were bearing down on her. It looked like a truck. She
hoped it was a truck.

Socorro ran toward
the lights, waving her arms. For the first time since she’d started running,
she screamed.

At seven a.m. Riley
walked into the office of Special Agent in Charge Elgin Morley. Bill was
already there, and Morley was sitting behind his desk.

Bill smiled at her.
Morley scowled.

Well, the feeling
sure is mutual,
Riley thought, taking a seat.

This whole situation
seemed like a dream. Her life had taken a mad whirl after she visited her
father yesterday. As soon as she’d gotten home, she’d called Brent Meredith in
Quantico to tell him she wanted to get back to work. He’d said he’d work things
out with Morley and get back to her the next day.

Instead, she’d been
awakened by a phone call at 3:00 this morning. It had been Morley. He’d gruffly
told her that she was needed in Phoenix right away. A BAU car had picked her up
at home and driven her to Quantico, where an FBI jet was waiting to take her
back to Phoenix.

And now here she
was, feeling exhausted and disoriented. At the same time, she was glad to be
back on the job. And she was grateful that Gabriela and April had everything
under control at home. They’d more than understood that she needed to get back
to work.

Morley’s gaze was
anything but friendly. Riley reminded herself that he’d had perfectly sound
professional reasons to take her off the case. Still, she couldn’t help but be
pissed off about it.

Without so much as a
word of greeting, Morley started right in his explanations.

“We’ve had a new
development. Maybe even a break in the case. Bill already knows the details,
but I’ll fill you in too, Agent Paige.”

He looked over notes
that he’d written down.

“Late last night, a
trucker couple picked up a woman near the town of Luning. She was half naked,
cut up, and hysterical. They didn’t know what was wrong with her, except that
she seemed to be running away from somebody. They took her to the Luning cops,
who noticed that she was wearing an expensive necklace. That led them to think
it might have something to do with our case. So they brought her here, along
with the trucker couple.”

“Are they still
here?” Riley asked. “I mean the couple and the woman?”

“They’re all here,”
Morley said. “The couple, Hannah and Troy Coddington, are in the interview room
right now. We’ve identified the woman as Socorro Barrera. She’s in the clinic,
still in shock and pretty much incoherent.”

Riley mulled over
the situation. She wanted to talk with the woman. But was that even possible?
Perhaps, but she needed more information first.

“Bill and I will
talk to the couple,” she said.

“Let’s go, then,”
Morley said.

The three of them
left the office and headed toward the interview room. Riley and Bill went into
the room, and Morley entered the adjacent room. Riley knew that he’d be
watching and listening. That was fine with her.

Hannah and Troy
Coddington were sitting at the table. They were both rugged, heavy-set, and
clad in overalls. Riley wasn’t sure which of them was the more heavily
tattooed.

As Bill and Riley
introduced themselves, Riley noticed that the Coddingtons looked worried.

“Should we get in
touch with a lawyer?” Troy asked.

Hannah added, “We
ain’t got a regular lawyer, but maybe you can fix us up with one.”

Riley was a bit
surprised by the question.

“Why?” she asked.

Hannah said, “Well,
me and Troy know it don’t look good, us picking up a half-naked woman on the
highway, and probably a hooker at that. But we ain’t traffickers, we swear to
God. We hate those bastards. We really do. We were just trying to help this
poor girl.”

Riley and Bill
smiled at each other.

“We understand,”
Bill said. “We’re not holding you as suspects. We’re not holding you at all.
But we’d appreciate any help you can give us.”

“Could you tell us
exactly what happened?” Riley asked.

Hannah began, “Well,
it was getting close to midnight. We’d just dropped off a shipment in Luning
and were planning to stay in a motel that night.”

“The Nopal Inn,”
Troy said. “Right near Luning.”

Hannah continued. “Troy
was driving, and suddenly we saw her in the road up ahead. First she looked
like a ghost in the glare of the headlights, but she wasn’t no ghost. She was
naked from the waist up, and she wasn’t wearing shoes. I yelled for Troy to
stop.”

Troy shuddered at the
memory.

“Scared me half to
death,” he said. “I braked and swerved, almost jackknifed the truck, could have
killed us all. It’s a miracle I didn’t.”

Hannah also
shuddered and shook her head. She said, “She came running up to my side of the
truck, yelling mostly in Mexican. We couldn’t understand much of it, except
somebody was after her and she wanted us to save her.”

“We didn’t stop to
ask a lot of questions,” Troy said. “Hannah got her up into the truck, and I
drove us on out of there.”

Hannah said, “I took
her to the back of the cab, we’ve got a mattress there. Poor thing, she was cut
up from head to foot, and what few clothes she had on was all tore up. I
wrapped her up in a blanket. She was shivering and her teeth was chattering.
She went into shock right then and there—and I’m talking
deep
shock.
Never heard her say another word.”

“We drove her
straight to the police, and they brought us all here,” Troy said.

Riley tried to
visualize the scene. A lot of details were missing. Where had the woman come
running from? Had she jumped out of a moving vehicle? She hoped that Socorro
would soon be coherent enough to tell more of the story.

“Did you see any
vehicles parked nearby?” Bill asked.

“There was a
good-sized car pulled over on the shoulder,” Troy said. “Black, I think. But I
didn’t get the make. Guess we should have thought to get the plate number, but
everything happened so fast. The car sped away.”

“That’s all right,”
Riley said. “You did everything you could. In fact, I’m sure that you saved
that poor woman’s life. When she gets better, I’m sure she’ll want to thank you
personally.”

Bill turned toward
Riley. With a look, he was silently asking her if they had further questions.
She shook her head no.

“You may go, Mr. and
Mrs. Coddington.” Bill pushed a pad of paper and a pencil across the table
toward. “But before you go, please jot down your contact information. And give
us a call if you remember more details. Anything at all.”

After the exchange
of information, Bill and Riley escorted the couple out of the interview room.
As Troy and Hannah walked away down the hall, Morley stepped out of the
adjoining room.

“I didn’t tell you
to let them go,” he grumbled.

“They told us all
they know,” Riley snapped. “Let’s go to the clinic. I want to talk with the woman.”

 “She’s in no
condition to talk,” Morley said.

“Let me be the judge
of that,” Riley replied.

As they walked
toward the clinic, Riley realized she’d better ease up on her hostility toward
Morley. She was tired and jetlagged, and she was letting her crankiness get the
best of her. He could still yank her off the case for insubordination. And
after her previous suspension, that could spell real trouble for her.

Try to be civil,
she told herself.

A single male
physician was on duty in the clinic. Socorro Barrera, clad in a hospital gown,
was sitting upright in a bed. She was holding a silver chain, running it
through her fingers, nodding her head monotonously and muttering in Spanish.

“She’s been like
this for hours,” the doctor said. “She was a little more coherent when she
first got here. She kept asking about her
hijas
—her children. She gave
us an address. We sent a social worker to look after her kids. They’re there
right now. The kids are OK. But she’s been like this ever since.”

The woman kept muttering
and fingering the chain.

“That chain is
evidence,” the doctor said. “We tried to take it, but she won’t let go of it.”

Riley bent closer to
her. Now she could make out what she was saying …

“Dios te salve,
María. Llena eres de gracia: El Señor es contigo …”

Riley understood
right away. In her state of shocked dissociation, Socorro had convinced herself
that the necklace was a rosary. She was fingering it and repeating Hail Marys
in Spanish.

Damn it, the
doctor ought to have figured that out by now,
she thought.

And now here the
poor woman was, surrounded by men except for Riley.

Riley wanted to yell
at the others to get out of the room. But she reminded herself to keep her
cool.

“I’d like a few
minutes alone with her, please,” she said.

The men went out of
the room, leaving Riley and Socorro Barrera alone.

“Socorro,” Riley
said in soft voice.

But the woman just
kept fingering the chain.

“
Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros pecadores …”

Riley at her
closely. Her face wore the remnants of heavy, colorful makeup—a flamboyant
Latina look. But the makeup was all a mess now from tears and sweat and dirt.
Socorro was heavily bandaged all over, and she was bruised in many other
places.

Did somebody beat
her up?
Riley
wondered.

No, these didn’t
look like those kinds of wounds. They didn’t come from a fist or a knife. She’d
gotten them running, probably through some tough terrain. The truckers had said
it was near a town called Luning. The town must have been out on the desert.
The woman’s feet were under the bed sheet. Riley guessed that they must have
been cut up especially badly.

“Socorro,
me
llamo
Riley. I know something terrible happened to you. I’m here to help
you.”

The woman kept
murmuring her prayer and fingering the chain.

Riley touched Socorro
on her fingers. Socorro stopped moving her fingers and stared into Riley’s
eyes. Riley shivered. In all her years as an agent, she’d seldom seen such a
frightened look.

“¿Hablas inglés?”
Riley asked. She
doubted that her Spanish was good enough to conduct such a delicate interview.

To Riley’s relief,
Socorro nodded.

Riley fingered the
chain herself.

“This is pretty,”
Riley said. “Where did you get it?”

The whole time
Socorro had been fingering the chain, she hadn’t looked at it. Now she did. Her
eyes bulged with terror. She fumbled with the chain, taking it off and pushing
it into Riley’s hands.

“Tómalo,”
she said. “Take it, please. I don’t
want it.”

 Riley held the
chain up for her to see.

“But it’s pretty,”
she said. “Where did you get it?”

Socorro cringed,
backing away from Riley, shivering violently.

“He gave it to me,”
she said.

“Who gave it to you,
Socorro?”

Socorro broke eye
contact now, and her eyes began to glaze over again. She was about to slip back
into her state of shock. Riley squeezed her hand gently.

“I want to help,”
Riley said. “But you’ve got to talk to me.”

Riley’s touch and
kindly tone brought Socorro back. She looked at Riley again with the eyes of a
frightened animal.

“I was out walking,”
she said, in much the same numb voice as when she’d been saying the prayer. “Down
on Conover Avenue.”

“Where the working
girls go,” Riley said.

Socorro nodded. “Yes,
but I …”

Her voice trailed
off. Riley patted her hand.

“It’s OK, Socorro. I’m
not here to judge. Nobody’s going to arrest you. Everybody’s on your side. All
I want to do is help.”

Socorro squinted,
trying to remember.

“He had a nice car
and he looked like he had money,” she said. “His car was parked and I walked
right over to him. I told him I’d like to go with him. Right there in the car if
he wanted, I said. But he wanted to go someplace else. He drove way outside of
town. To a little motel.”

Riley remembered the
motel that the Coddingtons had mentioned.

“The Nopal Inn?” she
asked.

Socorro nodded.

“We went into the
room,” she said.

“Did you have sex
there?” Riley asked.

Socorro shook her
head. “No. I was ready to. But I don’t think he could.”

Riley had suspected
that the killer had problems performing sexually. Again she held the necklace
for Socorro to see.

“And he gave this to
you,” she said. “Was it in a box?”

“I think so.”

“Was the name of a
store on the box?”