Once Gone (16 page)

“And he doesn’t fit your profile?”

“Mike, this Darrell Gumm guy is a wannabe,” she continued. “He’s got some kind of fanboy fantasy about psychopaths. He wants to be one. He wants to be famous for it. But he doesn’t have what it takes. He’s creepy, but he’s not a killer. It’s just that right now he gets to act out his fantasy to the hilt. It’s his dream come true.”

Mike stroked his chin thoughtfully. “And you don’t think the real killer wants fame?”

She said, “He might be interested in fame, and he might even want it, but it’s not what makes him tick. He’s driven by something else, something more personal. The victims represent something to him, and he enjoys their pain because of who or what they stand for. They’re not chosen randomly.”

“Then how?

Riley shook her head. She wished she could put it into words better than she could.

“It’s got something to do with dolls, Mike. The guy’s obsessed with them. And dolls have something to do with how he targets the women.”

Then she sighed. At this point, this didn’t even sound very convincing to her. And yet she was sure that was the right track.

Mike was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I know that you have a talent for recognizing the nature of evil. I’ve always trusted your instincts. But if you’re right, this suspect they’re holding has got everybody else fooled. And not all FBI agents are fools.” 

“But some of them are,” Riley said. “I can’t get the woman he took yesterday out of my mind. I keep thinking about what she’s going through right now.” Then she blurted out the point of her visit with the psychiatrist. “Mike, could you question Darrell Gumm? You’d see through him in a second.”

Mike looked startled. “They haven’t called me in on this one,” he said. “I checked on the case this morning and I was told that Dr. Ralston interviewed him yesterday. Apparently he agrees that Gumm’s the killer. He even got Gumm to sign a written confession. The case is closed as far as the Bureau is concerned. They think that now they just need to find the woman. They’re sure they’ll get Gumm to talk.”

Riley rolled her eyes with exasperation.

“But Ralston’s a quack,” she said. “He’s Walder’s toady. He’ll come to any conclusion Walder wants.”

Mike didn’t say anything. He just smiled at Riley. Riley was pretty sure that Mike held Ralston in the same contempt as she did. But he was too professional to say so.

“I haven’t been able to figure this one out,” Riley said. “Will you at least read the files and tell me what you think?”

Mike seemed deep in thought. Then he said, “Let’s talk about you a little. How long have you been back on the job?”

Riley had to think about that. This case had consumed her but it was still new.

“About a week,” she said.

He tilted his head with concern. “You’re pushing very hard. You always do.”

“The man has killed one woman in that time and taken another. I should have stayed on the case since I first saw his work six months ago. I should never have dropped out on it.”

“You were interrupted.”

She knew he was referring to her own capture and torture. She had spent hours describing that to Mike and he had helped her through it.

“I’m back now. And another woman is in trouble.”

“Who are you working with now?”

“Bill Jeffreys again. He’s terrific but his imagination isn’t as active as mine is. He hasn’t come up with anything either,”

“How is that working for you? Being with Jeffreys every day?”

“Fine. Why wouldn’t it be?”

Mike gazed quietly at her for a moment, then leaned toward her with an expression of concern.

“I mean, are you sure your head is clear? Are you sure you’re in this game? I guess what I’m asking is—which criminal are you really after?”

Riley squinted, a little surprised by this apparent change of topic.

“What do you mean, which?” she asked.

“The new one, or the old one?”

A silence fell between them.

“I think that maybe you’re actually here to talk about you,” Mike said softly. “I know that you’ve always had trouble believing that Peterson died in that explosion.”

Riley didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t expected this; she hadn’t expected the tables to turn on her.

“That’s beside the point,” Riley said.

 “What about your meds, Riley?” Mike asked.

Again, Riley didn’t reply. She hadn’t taken her prescribed tranquilizer for days. She didn’t want to blunt her concentration.

“I’m not sure I like where you’re going with this,” Riley said.

Mike took a long sip from his mug of tea.

“You’re carrying a lot of emotional baggage,” he said. “You got divorced this year, and I’m aware that your feelings about that are conflicted. And of course, you lost your mother in such a horrible, tragic way all those years ago.”

Riley’s face flushed with irritation. She didn’t want to get into this.

“We’ve talked about the circumstances of your own abduction,” Mike went on. “You pushed the limits. You took a huge risk. Your actions were really pretty foolhardy.”

“I got Marie out,” she said.

“At great cost to yourself.”

Riley took a long, deep breath.

“You’re saying maybe I brought it on myself,” she said. “Because my marriage fell apart, because of how my mother got killed. You’re saying maybe I think I deserved it. So I attracted this to myself. I put myself in this situation.”

Mike smiled back with a sympathetic smile.

“I’m just saying you need to take a good hard look at yourself right now. Ask yourself what’s really going on inside.”

Riley struggled for breath, fighting back tears. Mike was right. She had been wondering all these things. That’s why his words were hitting her so hard. But she’d been ignoring those half-submerged thoughts. And it was high time she figured out if any of it was true.

“I was doing my job, Mike,” she said in a choked voice.

“I know,” he said. “None of it was your fault. Do you know that? It’s the self-blame I worry about. You attract what you feel you deserve. You create your own life circumstances.”

Riley stood, unable to hear any more.

“I wasn’t taken, Doctor, because I attracted it,” she said. “I was taken because there are psychos out there.”

*

Riley hurried to the nearest exit, into the open courtyard. It was a beautiful summer day. She took several long, slow breaths, calming herself a little. Then she sat down on a bench and buried her head in her hands.

At that moment her cell phone buzzed.

Marie.

Her gut told her right away that the call was urgent.

Riley answered and heard nothing but convulsive gasps.

“Marie,” Riley asked, concerned, “what is it?”

For a moment, Riley only heard sobs. Marie was obviously in an even worse state than she was.

“Riley,” Marie finally gasped, “have you found him? Have you been looking for him? Has
anybody
been looking for him?”

Riley’s spirits sank. Of course Marie was talking about Peterson. She wanted to assure her that he was really dead, killed in that explosion. But how could she say so positively when she harbored doubts herself? She remembered what forensics tech agent Betty Richter had told her a few days ago about the odds that Peterson was really dead.

I’d say ninety-nine percent.

That figure hadn’t given Riley any comfort. And it was the last thing Marie wanted or needed to hear right now.

“Marie,” Riley said miserably, “there’s nothing I can do.”

Marie let out a wail of despair that chilled Riley to the bone.

“Oh, God, then it
is
him!” she cried. “It can’t be anybody else.”

Riley’s nerves quickened. “What are you talking about, Marie? What’s happened?”

Marie’s words poured out in a frantic rush.

“I
told
you he’d been calling me. I cut off my landline, but somehow he’s got my cell phone number. He keeps calling all the time. He doesn’t say anything, he just calls and breathes, but I know it’s him. Who else can it be? And he’s been here, Riley. He’s been to my house.”

Riley’s alarm mounted by the second.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I hear noises at night. He throws things at the door and my bedroom window. Pebbles, I think.”

Riley’s heart jumped as she remembered the pebbles on her own front stoop. Was it possible that Peterson was really alive? Were both she and Marie in danger all over again?

She knew she had to choose her words carefully. Marie was clearly teetering on an extremely dangerous brink.

“I’m coming to you right now, Marie,” she said. “And I’ll get the Bureau to look into this.”

Marie let out a harsh, desperate, and bitter laugh.

“Look into it?” she echoed. “Forget it, Riley. You said it already. There’s nothing you can do. You’re not going to do anything. Nobody’s going to do anything. Nobody
can
do anything.”

Riley got in her car and put the phone on speaker so she could talk and drive.

“Stay on the phone,” she said, as she started her car and headed for Georgetown. “I’m coming for you.”

Riley struggled against traffic while trying to keep Marie on the phone. She drove through an intersection after a yellow light switched to red; she was driving dangerously and she knew it. But what else could she do? She was in her own car, not an agency vehicle, so she had no lights and siren.

“I’m hanging up, Riley,” Marie said for the fifth time.

“No!” Riley barked yet again, fighting down a surge of despair. “Stay on the phone, Marie.”

Marie’s voice sounded weary now.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she said. “Save yourself if you can, but I really can’t do this. I’m through with this. I’m going to stop it all right now.”

Riley felt ready to explode from panic. What did Marie mean? What was she going to do?

“You
can
do this, Marie,” Riley said.

“Goodbye, Riley.”

“No!” Riley shouted. “Just wait. Wait! It’s all you have to do. I’ll be right there.”

She was driving much faster than the flow of traffic, wending among the lanes like a madwoman. Several times, other drivers honked at her.

“Don’t hang up,” Riley demanded fiercely. “Do you hear me?”

Marie said nothing. But Riley could hear her sobbing and keening.

The sounds were perversely reassuring. At least Marie was still there. At least she was still on the phone. But could Riley keep her there? She knew that the poor woman was plummeting into an abyss of pure animal terror. Marie no longer had a rational thought in her head; she seemed to be almost insane with fear.

Riley’s own memories swarmed into her mind. Terrible days in a beastlike state in which the world of humanity simply didn’t exist. Total darkness, the feeling of the very existence of a world outside of the darkness slipping away, and a complete loss of any sense of the passage of time.

I’ve got to fight it,
she told herself.

The memories enveloped her …

With nothing to hear or see, Riley tried to keep her other senses engaged. She felt the sour taste of fear back in her throat, rising up in her mouth until it turned into an electrical tingling on the tip of her tongue. She scratched at the dirt floor she was sitting on, exploring its dampness. She sniffed the mold and mildew that surrounded her.

Those sensations were all that still kept her in the world of the living.

Then in the midst of the blackness, came a blinding light and the roar of Peterson’s propane torch.

A sharp bump shook Riley out of her hideous reverie. It took her a second to realize that her car had struck against a curb and that she was in danger of veering into oncoming traffic. Horns blared.

Riley regained control of her car and looked around. She wasn’t far from Georgetown.

“Marie,” she shouted. “Are you still there?”

Again, she heard only a muffled sob. That was good. But what could Riley do now? She wavered. She could call for FBI help in D.C., but by the time she explained the problem and got agents sent to the address, God only knew what would happen. Besides, that would mean ending the call with Marie.

She had to keep her on the phone, but how?

How was she going to pull Marie out of that abyss? She had almost fallen into it herself.

Riley remembered something. Long ago, she had been trained in how to keep crisis callers on the line. She’d never had to use that training until now. She struggled to remember what she was supposed to do. Those lessons had been so long ago.

Part of a lesson came back to her. She was taught to do anything,
say
anything, to keep the caller talking. It didn’t matter how meaningless or irrelevant it might be. What mattered was that the caller kept hearing a concerned human voice.

“Marie, there’s something you need to do for me,” Riley said.

“What’s that?”

Riley’s brain was rushing frantically, making up what to say as she went along.

“I need for you to go to your kitchen,” she said. “I want you to tell me exactly what herbs and spices you’ve got in your rack.”

Marie didn’t answer for a moment. Riley worried. Was Marie in the right state of mind to go along with such an irrelevant distraction?

“Okay,” Marie said. “I’m going there now.”

Riley breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps this would buy her some time. She could hear the clinking of spice jars over the phone. Marie’s voice sounded truly strange now—hysterical and robotic at the same time.

“I’ve got dried oregano. And crushed red pepper. And nutmeg.”

“Excellent,” Riley said. “What else?”

“Dried thyme. And ground ginger. And black peppercorns.”

Marie paused. How could Riley keep this going?

“Have you got curry powder?” Riley asked.

After a clink of bottles, Marie said, “No.”

Riley spoke slowly, as if giving life-and-death instructions—because really, she was doing exactly that.

“Well, get a pad of paper and a pencil,” Riley said. “Write that down. You’ll need to get it when you buy groceries.”