Once Craved (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #3) (26 page)

Riley hurried down
the hallway of the Phoenix FBI building. It was almost eight, and Bill had said
he’d meet her here. She remembered what he had said on the phone when she was
still on the plane.

“Riley, I’ve got
an idea.”

She wished he’d told
her what his idea was. She’d been in suspense about it for hours. Was it
possible that this horrible case was going to be wrapped up soon—maybe even in
the next few minutes?

She wished she could
dare to hope. But she’d slept only fitfully during the plane flight back. And
the truth was, she hadn’t gotten properly rested since she’d been awakened at
three in the morning last Friday back in Fredericksburg. She was too tired to
hope.

When she arrived at
the office, she was surprised to see that Bill wasn’t alone.

Garrett Holbrook was
sitting there, his arms crossed, staring off into space. Riley’s whole body was
jolted with surprise. Now she understood. Now she knew exactly what Bill had
been thinking.

Sounding as stiff
and aloof as ever, Holbrook said, “Can we get started now? Can you please tell
me what this is all about?”

Bill looked up at
Riley. She nodded. It was high time for some questions.

“Let me get right to
the point,” Bill said. “Agent Paige and I need to know when you last saw your
sister alive.”

“I told you back
when you first got here,” he said in a slow, sullen voice. “It was years ago. I
can’t remember how long exactly.”

Riley’s senses
quickened. It was a lie. She knew it. She could hear it in his words. He could
remember. He could remember the exact date, the precise time of day.

She stepped toward
him.

“We need the truth,
Agent Holbrook,” she said.

He continued staring
into space, but he grew paler, and his eyes began to glaze.

“I can’t believe it,”
he said. “I can’t believe it’s taken you this long. Haven’t I been acting guilty
enough?”

Suddenly, as if out
of nowhere, a horrible sob rose out of his throat.

“Because I am
guilty,” he said.

Sobs came pouring
out now, one on top of another, and tears gushed from his eyes. His face was
twisted with anguish. Riley could hardly believe it was the same man as before.

He calmed himself
enough to speak haltingly.

“It was just two
years ago. That’s when I saw Nancy last. She came to my house. She was down and
out. She was doing drugs. She was selling her body. She wanted my help. She said
she didn’t have anybody else to turn to. She wanted a place to stay. She said I
could help her clean up.”

He choked on a
horrible sob.

“I told her to go
away.”

He wept for a few
moments. Then he said, “Why? Why did I do that? What did I have to lose? I’ve
never been married, I never had kids. I had room in my house, room in my life.
I was selfish. I was feeling good about my career, my carefree bachelor life.
She was only my half-sister, so much younger than me, I felt like I barely knew
her. I didn’t want that responsibility. I didn’t want to be bothered.”

His sobs were
quieting a little.

Riley said, “So that’s
why you’ve been so distant with us. That’s why you’ve stayed on the sidelines.”

Holbrook nodded.

“Hell, I felt like I
was hunting for myself. I killed her as surely as anybody did.”

Bill’s jaw had
dropped open with shock. He stared at Riley.

She mouthed silently
to him, “He’s telling the truth.”

Bill nodded in
agreement, then patted Holbrook on the shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he
said. “But if you’d only told us this sooner …”

Holbrook brushed
Bill’s hand aside.

“I’m going home now,”
Holbrook said brokenly. He rose to his feet and stumbled toward the door. Then
he turned back toward Riley and Bill.

With a dark chuckle
of self-loathing, he said, “Well, I guess you can eliminate me as a suspect.
Maybe that’s progress.”

He left the office.
Bill and Riley sat for a moment in dumbstruck silence.

“Damn,” Bill finally
murmured. “I was sure. I was so sure.”

“I was suspicious of
him too,” Riley said. “His behavior was always strange, and now we know why.”

But something was
starting to dawn on Riley. Those words that Holbrook had said …

“I’ve never been
married, I never had kids.”

Those words mattered
somehow. But why?

Riley’s intuition
was in full flood now, slamming together seemingly irrelevant details. They
were snapping together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, forming some kind of
coherent whole.

She remembered those
words of Hatcher’s …

“You should
listen to your daddy.”

And what had her
father said that she should listen to? Oh, she remembered all the cynical,
hateful talk about monsters and madness and what vile human specimens both she
and he were. But there was something else. What was it?

Then the words hit
her like a lightning bolt.

“Never trust a
man whose kids don’t hate him.”

Suddenly she was
fully in the killer’s mind. She was behind his eyes, staring at his next
victim—a lost and terrified teenage girl. He was going to kill her. But she
wasn’t like the others. There’d be no joy in it. The killing would give him no
pleasure.

Still, he was going
to do it. It had to be done. It had to be done right now. He’d put it off too
long.

She heard Hatcher’s
voice, repeating yet again …

“You’re getting
warm.”

She sure didn’t feel
like she was getting warm. She shook her head miserably.

“We’re spinning our
wheels, Bill,” she said.

She thought for a
moment.

“I want to check in
with Dr. Gordy,” she said. “He only gave us one name from his list of
drug-theft suspects. We need more names. Someone out of the box. I have a
feeling it may be someone else on that list. Someone we wouldn’t suspect. This
HIV lead is the only concrete lead we have. We need to exhaust it.”

She dialed the phone
number she had for the doctor. An answering service began to deliver an
official-sounding message. Riley turned off the message without leaving one of
her own.

“We don’t have time
to wait for him to get back to us,” she said. “Let’s go over to his house right
now.”

Bill stared at her
like she’d lost her mind.

“Jesus, Riley, it’s
late. It sounds to me like you’re grasping at straws.”

That’s exactly
what I’m doing,
Riley thought.

But she didn’t say
so to Bill. She charged out the door with her partner right behind her.

When they reached
Dr. Poole’s front door, Riley rang the doorbell, but nobody answered for quite
a long time. Riley rang again.

Finally the speaker
next to the door rattled to life, and the doctor’s voice called out.

“Who is it?”

Bill replied, “Doctor
Gordy, it’s Agents Jeffreys and Paige. Bill and Riley. We talked to you
yesterday.”

The voice stammered
a little in confusion.

“Gosh, I—I wasn’t
expecting you tonight,” he said. “Did I forget an appointment? I don’t
think
I wrote anything down …”

“I’m so sorry to
bother you, Dr. Gordy,” Riley said. “This is a bit of an emergency. We’ll make
things as quick as we can.”

“An emergency! My
goodness!” the doctor said. “Of course, come in.”

The door swung open,
and Bill and Riley walked inside. Gordon Poole was fully dressed in casual
clothes and sneakers.

“I’m sorry, did we
disturb you? Were you going out?” Riley asked.

The doctor chuckled.
“At this hour! Goodness, no! I’m not a night owl these days. In fact, it’s
getting close to my bedtime.”

Riley sat down on
the living room couch. Bill sat in a nearby chair. The doctor remained standing
with his hands in his pockets.

“Now what may I help
you with?” he asked.

Riley said, “Dr.
Gordy, our killer is holding a teenage girl. A runaway, just a kid. He’s had
her since yesterday morning. We’d hoped to find her by now. And we’re worried.
We don’t have any time to lose. I’m afraid we’re getting a bit desperate.”

“Oh, dear!” the
doctor said, looking back and forth at Riley and Bill with concern.

Riley continued, “As
we said when we were here before, we think the killer may be HIV positive, so
he might be stealing medications. But the name you gave us didn’t pan out. The
man is on vacation in Mexico. We need the names you didn’t give us. And any
others that you think are even slight possibilities. Please don’t hold back any
information out of concern for a possible suspect. A girl’s life is at stake.”

The doctor sighed
and sat down on the sofa with Riley. He said, “I really can’t stand the idea of
pointing an incriminating finger at innocent men.”

“We need to check
out all possibilities as fast as we can,” Riley replied with real urgency in
her voice. “That’s why we’re disturbing you here at home so late at night.”

Dr. Gordy knitted
his brow in thought for a moment.

“All right,” he
said. “If the killer is actually connected to the thefts, there are a limited
number of people who could have access to the medications.”

Riley fought down
her growing sense of futility. “A limited number of people” sounded woefully
unspecific.

“Do you know whether
any of those people are HIV positive?”

“I’m not sure how I
would be able to tell. As you probably know, HIV is a virus that attacks the
immune system. When immune system cells begin to fail, the body is susceptible
to a variety of infections and diseases. Generally, flu-like symptoms will turn
up in the first month or two. Fatigue can be another symptom. A rash or sore
throat or headaches can be signs.”

Riley and Bill
looked at each other with discouragement. They both knew that they couldn’t go
around accusing just anybody who had those symptoms.

The doctor added, “Besides,
he might not
have
any symptoms. We’re talking about a man who is
stealing the medication he needs, who is surely taking care of himself. With
someone like that, there may be no visible symptoms at all for years.”

“At least you can
help us narrow it down,” Riley said. “If you know anyone who has those symptoms
and had access to the stolen medications, that could steer us in the right
direction. There can’t be a lot of those.”

“All right,” Dr.
Gordy said reluctantly. “Just let me think for a moment.”

During the silence
that followed, Riley sat looking around the room. She focused on the family
pictures on a nearby wall. She had admired those the last time they had visited
Dr. Gordy. There were a lot of photos hung in rows, all showing happy children
and the parks or beaches they were enjoying, the fish they had caught, the
prizes they had won.

Dr. Gordy finally
said, “I can give you two names. Their duties allow them access to the
medicine, and I’ve noticed some telltale symptoms. But I have to warn you, I
find it very hard to believe that these people are guilty.”

“We’ll definitely
keep that in mind,” Bill said firmly.

Riley’s attention
wandered as Dr. Gordy shared names and contact information with Bill, who took
notes. She couldn’t help looking again at the pictures on the wall. The
children looked so happy. Riley wondered why their mother had left and moved
them so far away.

Then, for some
reason, her father’s words echoed in her mind.

“You’re dealing
with what folks call normal.”

That was it. The
photos kept drawing her attention because everything in them looked so very
normal.

She realized that
both Bill and Dr. Gordy were looking at her, expecting some comment on whatever
they’d been discussing.

“I’m so sorry,”
Riley said, “I’ve spent too many hours on a plane today. I’m afraid I’m just
tired and a little unfocused.”

Bill said, “We have
two more names to look into now. I’ve assured Dr. Gordy that we’ll be very
careful about making accusations.”

“Oh, thank you,”
Riley said.

When she looked at
the genial doctor, she felt as if his appearance was changing before her eyes.
She started to wonder, and her heart began to beast faster.

Could this be the
killer, seated before her? This perfectly normal, eloquent doctor? In this perfectly
normal house and suburb? With his perfectly normal family? Could evil be so
disguised?

Or was she losing
her mind now for good?

She had to find out.

She tried to keep
her voice steady as she chose her words carefully.

“I couldn’t help
admiring your photos again,” she said. “Your children look so happy with you.
Do you get to see them often?”

Despite herself, she
heard her own voice trembling.

She watched very
carefully, and her heart dropped as she caught a quick flash of anger on the
doctor’s face before he broke into a smile and said, “Not as often as I’d like,
of course. But life doesn’t always go exactly as we’ve planned, does it?”

Now Riley was
studying the man with all her powers of observation. She didn’t quite know why,
but she was starting to sense that something was very wrong with this
sweet-looking man sitting before her.

“I hope that my bit
of professional advice was worth your driving here at this hour,” Dr. Gordy
said, with a tone of wanting to wrap things up.

“Of course it was,”
Riley said. “And thank you so much. We’re sorry to have put you to any trouble,”
she said, her heart slamming, trying to figure out how to stall. “We’ll go now,
and let you get back to your evening.”

She then wracked her
brain for something, anything to say, as he began to sit up.

“But do you mind if
I use your bathroom first?” she added.

He hesitated, then
smiled reluctantly.

“Of course not,” he
said. Pointing down the hallway. “The guest bath is the first door on the right
just down the hall.”

Riley got up and
hurried down the hallway. She could feel her palms sweating.

Had she lost her
mind? Was she seeing things where there was nothing?

Riley poked her head
into the guest bathroom that Dr. Poole had told her to use. There was a
medicine cabinet above the sink and a few cabinet doors and drawers. But
searching here would be waste of time. Poole wouldn’t have directed her here if
there was anything to find.

I don’t have time
to look everywhere,
she thought.
I’d better get lucky.

Trespassing deeper
into his house, she passed by several other doors and went to a big fancy one
at the very end of the hall. When she pushed it, the door opened into a huge
master bedroom that was softly lit by two elegant fixtures.

She stepped inside
and pulled the door shut behind her. There were standing wardrobes, three
chests of drawers, and doors that probably led to closets.

Where should she
start?

She went to check an
open door on the other side of the room and found a private bathroom. She
turned on the light and darted inside. The bathroom was bigger than her own
bedroom. It had all the necessities, plus lots of mirrors and elegant
decorative touches. She’d have to go through a whole array of drawers and
cabinet doors until she found something. She threw one cabinet door open, glanced
around, then reached for another.

There was nothing.

I hope Bill keeps
him talking,
she
thought.

*

Bill wished Riley
would hurry up. If the missing girl was still alive, they had no time to lose.
And if she wasn’t, they needed to nail the killer before he struck again. And
they had found out everything the doctor was willing to tell them. He looked at
the pictures on the wall, seeking a topic of conversation.

“So—you and your
kids seem to enjoy fishing,” he said. “Me, too. You folks in Arizona have got
it made. So many lakes, so many places to fish.”

“Yes, there are lots
of lakes here, aren’t there?” Dr. Poole said. “They’re all artificial, you
know. The products of skillful engineering, damming rivers, and filling
canyons. Most of them double as reservoirs, and they’re great recreational
sites. Lake Mead is the biggest reservoir in the USA. We share that one with
Nevada, you know.”

“What kind of fish
can you go for?”

“Oh, the state
stocks them with trout, crappie, catfish, tilapia, and several kinds of bass.
Once I caught a real trophy-size bass.”

Dr. Poole was
looking a little distracted. He kept glancing toward the hallway.

“I envy all the time
you spend with your kids,” Bill said. “I can see from the pictures how much
they love you.”

Dr. Poole shrugged
rather absently.

“They can’t possibly
love me as much as I love them,” he said.

“Yeah, anyone can
see that.”

A silence fell, and
as Bill looked around, something shiny on the floor caught his eye. It was
under the table right next to his chair, almost hidden in the thick shag of the
carpet.

Bill got up from his
chair and bent over to see it better. He picked it up, wanting to help the kind
doctor.

It was a shiny metal
earring—a cheap thing, shaped like a flower.

Suddenly, in his
mind he heard the words of Colleen Wuttke.

“I had a bunch of
these once, pretty things, all gold-toned and shaped like flowers.”

This was Colleen’s
missing earring.

What was it doing
here?

His heart slammed as
it all came together at once, and he realized.

This could only mean
that—

But as soon as he
realized, as soon as he began to reach for his gun, suddenly, he felt a hard
blow against the back of his head.

And then, everything
went black.