Once Gone (6 page)

“I think you’re looking in the wrong section.”

Bill turned and found himself facing a stout little woman with a warm smile. Something about her immediately told him that she was in charge here.

“Why do you say that?” Bill asked.

The woman chuckled.

“Because you don’t have daughters. I can tell a man who doesn’t have a daughter from a mile off. Don’t ask me how, it’s just some kind of instinct, I guess.”

Bill was stunned by her insight, and deeply impressed.

She offered Bill her hand.

“Ruth Behnke,” she said.

Bill shook her hand.

“Bill Jeffreys. I take it you own this store.”

She chuckled again.

“I see you’ve got some kind of instinct, too,” she said. “I’m pleased to meet you. But you
do
have sons, don’t you? Three of them, I’d guess.”

Bill smiled. Her instincts were pretty sharp, all right. Bill figured that she and Riley would enjoy each other’s company.

“Two,” he replied. “But pretty damn close.”

She chuckled.

“How old?” she asked.

“Eight and ten.”

She looked around the place.

“I don’t know that I’ve got much for them here. Oh, actually, I’ve got a few rather quaint toy soldiers in the next aisle. But that’s not the kind of things boys like anymore, is it? It’s all video games these days. And violent ones at that.”

“I’m afraid so.”

She squinted at him appraisingly.

“You’re not here to buy a doll, are you?” she asked.

Bill smiled and shook his head.

“You’re good,” he replied.

“Are you a cop, maybe?” she asked.

Bill laughed quietly and took out his badge.

“Not quite, but a good guess.”

“Oh, my!” she said, with concern. “What does the FBI want with my little place? Am I on some kind of list?”

“In a way,” Bill said. “But it’s nothing to worry about. Your shop came up on our search of stores in this area that sell antique and collectible dolls.”

In fact, Bill didn’t know exactly
what
he was looking for. Riley had suggested that he check out a handful of these places, assuming the killer might have frequented them—or at least had visited them on some occasion. What she was expecting, he didn’t know. Was she expecting the killer himself to be there? Or that one of the employees had met the killer?

Doubtful that they had. Even if they had, it was doubtful that they would have recognized him as a killer. Probably all the men that came in here, if any, were creepy.

More likely Riley was trying to get him to gain more insights into the killer’s mind, his way of looking at the world. If so, Bill figured she’d wind up disappointed. He simply did not have the mind that she did, or the talent to easily walk into killers’ minds.

It seemed to him as if she were really fishing. There were dozens of doll stores within the radius they had been searching. Better, he thought, to let forensics just continue to track down the doll makers. Though, thus far, that had turned up nothing.

“I’d ask what kind of case this is,” Ruth said, “but I probably shouldn’t.”

“No,” Bill said, “you probably shouldn’t.”

Not that the case was a secret anymore—not after Senator Newbrough’s people had put out a press release about it. The media was now saturated with the news. As usual, the Bureau was reeling under an assault of erroneous phone tips, and the internet was abuzz with bizarre theories. The whole thing had become a pain.

But why tell the woman about it? She seemed so nice, and her store so wholesome and innocent, that Bill didn’t want to upset her with something so grim and shocking as a serial murderer obsessed with dolls.

Still, there was one thing he wanted to know.

“Tell me something,” Bill said. “How many sales do you make to adults—I mean grown-ups without kids?”

“Oh, those are most of my sales, by far. To collectors.”

Bill was intrigued. He’d never have guessed that.

“Why do you think that is?” he asked.

The woman smiled an odd, distant smile, and spoke in a gentle tone.

“Because people die, Bill Jeffreys.”

Now Bill was truly startled.

“Pardon?” he said.

“As we get older, we
lose
people. Our friends and loved ones die. We grieve. Dolls stop time for us. They make us forget our grief. They comfort and console us. Look around you. I’ve got dolls that are most of a century old, and some that are almost new. With some of them, at least, you probably can’t tell the difference. They’re ageless.”

Bill looked around, feeling creeped out at all the century-old eyes staring back at him, wondering how many people these dolls had outlived. He wondered what they had witnessed—the love, the anger, the hate, the sadness, the violence. And yet still they stared back with that same blank expression. They didn’t make sense to him.

People
should
age, he thought. They should get old and lined and gray, as he had, given all the darkness and horror there was in the world. Given all that he had seen, it would be a sin, he thought, if he still looked the same. The murder scenes had sunk into him like a living thing, had made him not want to stay young anymore.

“They’re also—not alive,” Bill finally said.

Her smile turned bittersweet, almost pitying.

“Is that really true, Bill? Most of my customers don’t think so. I’m not sure I think so, either.”

An odd silence fell. The woman broke it with a chuckle. She offered Bill a colorful little brochure with pictures of dolls all over it.

“As it happens, I’m heading to an upcoming convention in D.C. You might want to go, too. Maybe it will give you some ideas for whatever it is you’re searching for.”

Bill thanked her and left the store, grateful for the tip about the convention. He hoped that Riley would go with him. Bill remembered that she was supposed to interview Senator Newbrough and his wife this afternoon. It was an important appointment—not just because the senator might have good information, but for diplomatic reasons. Newbrough really was making things hot for the Bureau. Riley was just the agent to convince him that they were doing all that they could.

But will she really show up?
Bill wondered.

It seemed truly bizarre that he couldn’t be sure. Until six months ago, Riley was the one dependable thing in his life. He had always trusted her with his life. But her obvious distress worried him.

More than that, he missed her. Daunted as he sometimes was by her quicksilver mind, he needed her on a job like this. During the last six weeks, he’d also come to realize that he needed her friendship.

Or, deep down, was it more than that?

Riley drove down the two-lane highway, sipping on her energy drink. It was a sunny, warm morning, the car windows were down, and the warm smell of freshly baled hay filled the air. The surrounding modest-sized pastures were dotted with cattle, and mountains edged both sides of the valley. She liked it out here.

But she reminded herself she hadn’t come here to feel good. She had some hard work to do.

Riley turned off onto a well-worn gravel road, and after a minute or two, she reached a crossroads. She turned into the national park, drove a short distance, and stopped her car on the sloping shoulder of the road.

She got out and walked across an open area to a tall, sturdy oak that stood on the northeast corner.

This was the place. This was where Eileen Rogers’s body had been found—posed rather clumsily against this tree. She and Bill had been here together six months ago. Riley started to recreate the scene in her mind.

The biggest difference was the weather. Back then it had been mid-December, and bitterly cold. A thin blanket of snow covered the ground.

Go back,
she told herself.
Go back and feel it.

She breathed deeply, in and out, until she imagined she could feel a searing coldness passing through her windpipe. She could almost see thick clouds of frost forming with her every breath.

The naked corpse had been frozen solid. It wasn’t easy to tell which of the many bodily lesions were knife wounds, and which were cracks and fissures caused by the icy cold.

Riley summoned back the scene, down to every last detail. The wig. The painted smile. The eyes stitched open. The artificial rose lying in the snow between the corpse’s splayed legs.

The picture in her mind was now sufficiently vivid. Now she had to do what she’d done yesterday—get a sense of the killer’s experience.

Once again, she closed her eyes, relaxed, and stepped off into the abyss. She welcomed that lightheaded, giddy feeling as she slipped into the killer’s mind. Pretty soon, she was with him, inside him, seeing exactly what he saw, feeling what he felt.

He was driving here at night, anything but confident. He watched the road anxiously, worried about the ice under his wheels. What if he lost control, skidded into a ditch? He had a corpse on board. He’d be caught for sure. He had to drive carefully. He’d hoped his second murder would be easier than the first, but he was still a nervous wreck.

He stopped the vehicle right here. He hauled the woman’s body—already naked, Riley guessed—out into the open. But it was already stiffened from rigor mortis. He hadn’t reckoned on that. It frustrated him, shook his confidence. To make matters worse, he couldn’t see what he was doing at all well, not even in the glare of the headlights which he directed at the tree. The night was much too dark. He made a mental note to do this in daylight next time if he possibly could.

He dragged the body to the tree and tried to put it into the pose that he’d envisioned. It didn’t go at all well. The woman’s head was tilted to the left, frozen there by rigor mortis. He yanked and twisted it. Even after breaking its neck, he still couldn’t set it staring straight forward.

And how was he to splay the legs properly? One of the legs was hopelessly crooked. He had no choice but to get a tire iron out of his trunk and break the thigh and kneecap. Then he twisted the leg as well as he could, but not to his satisfaction.

Finally, he dutifully left the ribbon around her neck, the wig on her head, and the rose in the snow. Then he got into his car and drove away. He was disappointed and disheartened. He was also scared. In all his clumsiness, had he left any fatal clues behind? He obsessively replayed his every action in his mind, but he couldn’t be sure.

He knew that he had to do better next time. He promised himself to do better.

Riley opened her eyes. She let the killer’s presence fade away. She was pleased with herself now. She hadn’t let herself be shaken and overwhelmed. And she’d gotten some valuable perspective. She’d gotten a sense of how the killer was learning his craft.

She only wished she knew something—anything—about his first murder. She was more certain than ever that he had killed one earlier time. This had been the work of an apprentice, but not a rank beginner.

Just as Riley was about to turn and walk back toward her car, something in the tree caught her eye. It was a tiny dash of yellow peeking out from where the trunk divided in half a little above her head.

She walked around to the far side of the tree and looked up.

“He’s been back here!” Riley gasped aloud. Chills surged through her body and she glanced around nervously. Nobody seemed to be nearby now.

Nestled up in the branch of a tree staring down at Riley was a naked female doll with blond hair, posed precisely the way the killer had intended the victim to be.

It couldn’t have been there long—three or four days at most. It hadn’t been shifted by the wind or tarnished by rain. The murderer had returned here when he’d been preparing himself for the Reba Frye murder. Much as Riley had done, he had come back here to reflect on his work, to examine his mistakes critically.

She took pictures with her cell phone. She’d send those to the Bureau right away.

Riley knew why he’d left the doll.

It’s an apology for past sloppiness,
she realized.

It was also a promise of better work to come.

Riley drove toward Senator Mitch Newbrough’s manor house, and her heart filled with dread as it came into view. Situated at the end of a long, tree-lined drive, it was huge, formal, and daunting. She always found the rich and powerful harder to deal with than folks further down the social ladder.

She pulled up and parked in a well-manicured circle in front of the stone mansion. Yes, this family was very rich indeed.

She got out of the car and walked up to the enormous front doors. After ringing the doorbell, she was greeted by a clean-cut man of about thirty.

“I’m Robert,” he said. “The Senator’s son. And you must be Special Agent Riley. Come on in. Mother and Father are expecting you.”

Robert Newbrough led Riley on into the house, which immediately reminded her how much she disliked ostentatious homes. The Newbrough house was especially cavernous, and the walk to wherever the Senator and his wife were waiting was disagreeably long.  Riley was sure that making guests walk such an inconvenient distance was a sort of intimidation tactic, a way of communicating that the inhabitants of this house were far too powerful to tangle with. Riley also found the ubiquitous Colonial furniture and decor to be really quite ugly.

More than anything else, she dreaded what was coming next. To her, talking to victims’ families was simply awful—much worse than dealing with murder scenes or even corpses. She found it all too easy to get caught up in people’s grief, anger, and confusion. Such intense emotions wrecked her concentration and distracted her from her work.

As they walked, Robert Newbrough said, “Father’s been home from Richmond ever since …”

He choked a little in mid-sentence. Riley could feel the intensity of his loss.

“Since we heard about Reba,” he continued. “It’s been terrible. Mother’s especially shaken up. Try not to upset her too much.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Riley said.

Robert ignored her, and led Riley into a spacious living room. Senator Mitch Newbrough and his wife were sitting together on a huge couch holding each other’s hands.