Once Hunted

Another silence fell.

“He’s fifty-five years old now,” Meredith said. “I’d think that after thirty years in prison, he wouldn’t be as dangerous as he was when he was young.”

Riley shook her head.

“You’d be thinking wrong,” she said. “Back then, he was just an ignorant punk. He had no idea of his own potential. But over the years he’s acquired a vast store of knowledge. He knows he’s a genius. And he’s never shown any real remorse. Oh, he’s developed a polished persona over the years. And he’s behaved himself in prison – it gets him privileges even if it won’t shorten his sentence. But I’m sure he’s more vicious and dangerous than ever.”

Riley thought for a moment. Something was bothering her. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

“Does anybody know why?” she asked.

“Why what?” Bill said.

“Why he escaped.”

Bill and Meredith exchanged puzzled looks.

“Why does anybody escape from prison?” Bill asked.

Riley understood how strange her question sounded. She remembered one time when Bill went with her to talk with Hatcher.

“Bill, you met him,” she said. “Did he strike you as – well, dissatisfied? Restless?”

Bill knitted his brow in thought.

“No, actually he seemed …”

His voice trailed off.

“Almost contented, maybe?” Riley said, finishing his thought. “Prison seems to suit him. I’ve never gotten the feeling that he even wants freedom. There’s something almost Zen-like about him, his non-attachment to anything in life. He’s got no desires that I know of. Freedom has nothing to offer him that he wants. And now he’s on the run, a wanted man. So why did he decide to escape? And why now?”

Meredith drummed his fingers on his desk.

“How did you leave things the last time you saw him?” he asked. “Did you part on good terms?”

Riley barely suppressed a wry smile.

“We never part on good terms,” she said.

Then after a pause, she added, “I understand what you’re getting at. You’re wondering if I’m his target.”

“Is it possible?” Bill asked.

Riley didn’t reply. Again, she remembered what Hatcher had said to her.

“You might not have to come back here to see me.”

Had it been a threat? Riley didn’t know.

Meredith said, “Agent Paige, I don’t need to tell you that this is going to be a high-pressure, high-profile case. Even as we speak, news is getting out to the media. Prison escapes are always big news. They can even cause public panic. Whatever it is he’s up to, we’ve got to stop him fast. I wish you didn’t have to come back to a case this dangerous and hard. Do you feel ready? Do you feel up to it?”

Riley felt a strange tingling as she thought about the question. It was a feeling that she’d seldom if ever felt before taking on a case. It took her a moment to realize that the feeling was fear, pure and simple.

But it wasn’t fear for her own safety. It was something else. It was something unnamable and irrational. Perhaps it was the fact that Hatcher knew her so well. In her experience, all prisoners wanted something in return for information. But Hatcher hadn’t been interested in the usual little offerings of whiskey or cigarettes. His own quid pro quo had been both simple and deeply unsettling.

He’d wanted her to tell him things about her.

“Something that you don’t want people to know,” he’d said. “Something you wouldn’t want anybody to know.”

Riley had complied, maybe too readily. Now Hatcher knew all sorts of things about her – that she was a flawed mother, that she hated her father and didn’t go to his funeral, that there was sexual tension between her and Bill, and that sometimes – like Hatcher himself – she took great pleasure in violence and killing.

She remembered what he’d said during their last visit.

“I know you. In some ways, I know you better than you know yourself.”

Could she really match wits with such a man? Meredith was sitting there, patiently awaiting an answer to his question.

“I’m as ready as I can be,” she said, trying to sound more confident than she felt.

“Good,” Meredith said. “How do you think we should proceed?”

Riley thought for a moment.

“Bill and I need to look at all the information on Shane Hatcher that the Agency has on hand,” she said.

Meredith nodded and said, “I’ve already got Sam Flores setting things up.”

*

A few minutes later, Riley, Bill, and Meredith were in the BAU conference room looking at the huge multimedia display that Sam Flores had put together. Flores was a lab technician with black-rimmed glasses.

“I think I’ve got everything you could possibly want to see,” Flores said. “Birth certificate, arrest records, court transcripts, the works.”

Riley saw that it was an impressive display. And it certainly didn’t leave much to the imagination. There were several gruesome photos of Shane Hatcher’s murdered victims, including the mangled cop lying on his own front porch.

“What information do we have about the cop Hatcher killed?” Bill asked.

Flores brought up a batch of photos of a hearty-looking police officer.

“We’re talking about Officer Lucien Wayles, forty-six years old when he died in 1986,” Flores said. “He was married with three kids, awarded a Medal of Valor, well-liked and respected. The FBI teamed up with local cops and nailed Hatcher within days after Wayles was killed. What’s amazing is that they didn’t beat Hatcher to a pulp right then and there.”

Scanning the display, Riley was most struck by the photos of Hatcher himself. She barely recognized him. Although the man she knew could be intimidating, he managed to project a respectable, even bookish demeanor, with a pair of reading glasses always perched on his nose. The young African American in the 1986 mugshots had a lean, hard face and a cruel, empty stare. Riley had a hard time believing that it was the same person.

As detailed and complete as the display was, Riley felt dissatisfied. She had thought that she knew Shane Hatcher as well as anybody alive. But she didn’t know this Shane Hatcher – the vicious young gangbanger called “Shane the Chain.”

I’ve got to get to know him, she thought.

Otherwise, she doubted that she could possibly catch him.

Somehow, she felt that the cold, digital feeling of the display was working against her. She needed something more tangible – actual glossy photographs with folds and frayed edges, yellowed and brittle reports and documents.

She asked Flores, “Could I get a look at the originals of these materials?”

Flores let out a slight snort of disbelief.

“Sorry, Agent Paige – but not a chance. The FBI shredded all its paper files in 2014. Now all of it is scanned and digitized. What you see is all we’ve got.”

Riley let out a sigh of disappointment. Yes, she remembered all that shredding of millions of paper files. Other agents had complained, but back then it hadn’t seemed like a problem to her. Now she fairly itched for some old-fashioned palpability.

But right now, the important thing was to figure out Hatcher’s next move. An idea occurred to her.

“Who was the cop who brought Hatcher in?” she asked. “If he’s still alive, Hatcher’s liable to target him first.”

“It wasn’t a local cop,” Flores said. “And it wasn’t a ‘he.’”

He brought up an old photo of a woman agent.

“Her name was Kelsey Sprigge. She was an FBI agent at the Syracuse office – was thirty-five years old at the time. She’s seventy now, retired and living in Searcy, a town near Syracuse.”

Riley was surprised that Sprigge was a woman.

“She must have joined the bureau – ” Riley began.

Flores continued her thought.

“She signed up in 1972, when J. Edgar’s corpse was barely cold. That was when women were finally allowed to apply to be agents. She’d been a local cop before then.”

Riley was impressed. Kelsey Sprigge had lived a lot of history.

“What can you tell me about her?” Riley asked Flores.

“Well, she’s a widow with three children and three grandchildren.”

“Call the Syracuse FBI field office and tell them to do whatever they can to keep Sprigge safe,” Riley said. “She’s in serious danger.”

Flores nodded.

Then she turned to Meredith.

“Sir, I’m going to need a plane.”

“Why?” he asked, confused.

She took a deep breath.

“Shane may be on his way to kill Sprigge,” she said. “And I want to see her first.”

CHAPTER SIX

As the FBI jet hit the runway at Syracuse Hancock International Airport, Riley remembered something her father had told her in last night’s dream.

“You’re no good to anybody unless they’re dead.”

Riley was struck by the irony. This was perhaps the first case she’d ever been assigned where somebody hadn’t been murdered already.

But that’s likely to change soon, she thought.

She was especially worried about Kelsey Sprigge. She wanted to meet the woman face to face and see that she was all right. Then it would be up to Riley and Bill to keep her that way, and that would mean tracking down Shane Hatcher and putting him back in prison.

As the plane taxied toward the terminal, Riley saw that they had traveled into a true winter world. Although the landing strip was clear, huge mountains of snow showed how much work the plows had put in recently.

It was a change of scenery from Virginia – and a welcome one. Now Riley realized how much she needed a new challenge. She had called Gabriela from Quantico to explain that she was on her way to work on a case. Gabriela had been happy for her and assured her that she’d take care of April.

When the plane came to a stop, Riley and Bill grabbed their gear and climbed down the stairs onto the icy tarmac. When she felt the shock of deep cold on her face, she was glad that she’d been issued a heavy hooded jacket at Quantico.

Two men scurried toward them and introduced themselves as Agents McGill and Newton of the FBI field office in Syracuse.

“We’re here to help any way we can,” McGill told Bill and Riley as they all hurried into the terminal.

Riley asked the first question that came to her mind.

“Have you got people watching Kelsey Sprigge? Are you sure she’s safe?”

“Some local cops are posted outside her house in Searcy,” Newton said. “We’re sure she’s fine.”

Riley wished she felt as certain.

Bill said, “Okay then. Right now we just need something to drive to Searcy.”

McGill said, “Searcy’s not far from Syracuse, and the roads are all clear. We’ve brought an SUV you can use, but … uh, are you used to driving in northern winters?”

“You know, Syracuse always wins the Golden Snowball Award,” Newton added with impish pride.

“Golden Snowball?” Riley asked.

“That’s New York state’s prize for the most snow,” McGill said. “We’re the champs. Got a trophy to prove it.”

“Maybe one of us should drive you,” Newton said.

Bill chuckled. “Thanks, but I think we can handle it. I had a winter assignment in North Dakota a few years ago. I got a good dose of winter driving there.”

Although she didn’t say so, Riley also felt seasoned for this kind of driving. She’d learned to drive in the Virginia mountains. The snow there was never as deep as it was here, but the back roads were never cleared very quickly. She’d probably put in as much time on icy roads as anybody here.

But she was happy to have Bill drive. Right now she was preoccupied with Kelsey Sprigge’s safety. Bill took the keys and they were on their way.

“I’ve got to say, it feels good to be working together again,” Bill said as he drove. “It’s selfish of me, I guess. I like working with Lucy, but it’s not the same.”

Riley smiled. She also felt good to be working with Bill again.

“Still, part of me wishes you weren’t coming back to this case,” Bill added.

“Why not?” Riley asked with surprise.

Bill shook his head.

“I’ve just got a bad feeling,” he said. “Remember, I met Hatcher too. It takes a lot to scare me, but … well, he’s in a class by himself.”

Riley didn’t reply, but she couldn’t disagree. She knew that Hatcher had pushed Bill’s buttons during that visit. With uncanny instinct, the longtime prisoner had made shrewd observations about Bill’s personal life.

Riley remembered how Hatcher had pointed to Bill’s wedding band and said:

“Forget about trying to fix things with your wife. It can’t be done.”

Hatcher had been right, and Bill was now in the middle of an ugly divorce.

At the end of the same visit, he’d said something to Riley that still haunted her.

“Stop fighting it.”

To this day, she didn’t know what Hatcher had meant she should stop fighting. But she felt an inexplicable dread that one day she was going to find out.

*

A little while later, Bill parked alongside a huge pile of plowed snow outside Kelsey Sprigge’s house in Searcy. Riley saw a police car parked nearby with a couple of uniformed cops inside. But two cops in a car didn’t inspire her with a whole lot of confidence. The vicious and brilliant criminal who had broken out of Sing Sing could make short work of them if he put his mind to it.

Bill and Riley got out of the car and flashed their badges at the cops. Then they walked up the shoveled sidewalk toward the house. It was a traditional two-story home with a practical pitched roof and enclosed front porch, and it was covered with Christmas lights. Riley rang the doorbell.

A woman answered the door with a charming smile. She was lean and fit and wearing a jogging suit. Her expression was bright and cheerful.

“Why, you must be Agents Jeffreys and Paige,” she said. “I’m Kelsey Sprigge. Come on in. Get out of this awful cold.”

Kelsey Sprigge led Riley and Bill to a cozy living room with a roaring fire.

“Would you like something to drink?” she asked. “Of course, you’re on duty. I’ll get some coffee.”

She went into the kitchen, and Bill and Riley sat down. Riley looked around at the Christmas decorations and at the dozens of framed photographs hanging from the walls and resting on the furniture. They were taken of Kelsey Sprigge at various times of her adult life, with children and grandchildren all around her. In many of the pictures, a smiling man stood at her side.

Riley remembered that Flores had said she was a widow. From the photos Riley guessed that it had been a long, happy marriage. Somehow, Kelsey Sprigge had managed to accomplish something that had always defeated Riley. She had lived a full, loving family life while working as an FBI agent.

Riley more than half wanted to ask her how she’d managed that. But of course, now was not the time.

The woman quickly returned carrying a tray with two cups of coffee, cream and sugar, and – to Riley’s surprise – a scotch on the rocks for herself.

Riley was in awe of Kelsey. For a woman of seventy, she was extremely spry and full of life, and tougher than most women she’d met. In some ways, Riley felt it was like looking at a sneak preview of the woman she might become.

“Well, now,” Kelsey said, sitting down and smiling. “I wish our weather was more welcoming.”

Riley was startled by her easy hospitality. Under the circumstances, she thought that the woman should be truly alarmed.

“Ms. Sprigge – ” Bill began.

“Kelsey, please,” the woman interrupted. “And I know why you’re here. You’re worried that Shane Hatcher might be coming after me, that I might be his first target. You think he wants to murder me.”

Riley and Bill looked at each other, not sure what to say.

“And of course, that’s why those police are outside,” Kelsey said, still smiling sweetly. “I asked them to come in and warm up, but they wouldn’t do it. They wouldn’t even let me go out for my afternoon jog! Such a shame, I just love getting out for a run in this brisk weather. Well, I’m not worried about being murdered, and I don’t think you should worry either. I really don’t think that Shane Hatcher intends to do any such thing.”

Riley almost blurted, “Why not?”

Instead, she said cautiously, “Kelsey, you captured him. You brought him to justice. He was spending his life in prison because of you. You might be the whole reason he got out.”

Kelsey didn’t say anything for a moment. She was eyeing the pistol in Riley’s holster.

“What weapon do you carry, dear?” she asked.

“A forty-caliber Glock,” Riley said.

“Nice!” Kelsey said. “May I have a look at it?”

Riley handed Kelsey her weapon. Kelsey took out the magazine and examined the gun. She handled it with the appreciation of a connoisseur.

“Glocks came along a little too late for me to use in the field,” she said. “I like them, though. The polymer frame has a good feel to it – very light, excellent balance. I love the sighting arrangement.”

She put the magazine back in and handed the gun back to Riley. Then she walked over to a desk. She took out a semiautomatic pistol of her own.

“I took Shane Hatcher down with this baby,” she said, smiling. She handed the gun to Riley, then sat back down. “Smith and Wesson Model 459. I wounded and disarmed him. My partner wanted to kill him on the spot – revenge for the cop he’d killed. Well, I wouldn’t have it. I told him if he did kill Hatcher, there’d be more than one corpse to bury.”

Kelsey blushed a little.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I’d rather that story didn’t get around. Please don’t tell anybody.”

Riley handed the weapon back to her.

“Anyway, I could tell that I met with Hatcher’s approval,” Kelsey said. “You know, he had a strict code, even as a gangbanger. He knew that I was just doing my job. I think he respected that. And he was grateful, too. Anyway, he’s never shown any interest in me. I even wrote him a few letters, but he never wrote back. He probably doesn’t even remember my name. No, I’m all but positive he doesn’t want to kill me.”

Kelsey peered at Riley with interest.

“But Riley – is it OK for me to call you Riley? – you told me on the phone that you’d actually visited him, that you’d gotten to know him. He must be quite fascinating.”

Riley thought she actually detected a note of envy in the woman’s voice.

Kelsey rose from her chair.

“But listen to me babble, while you’ve got a bad guy to catch! And who knows what he might be up to, even as we speak. I’ve got some information that might help. Come on, I’ll show you everything I’ve got.”

She led Riley and Bill through a hallway to a basement door. Riley’s nerves quickened.

Why does it have to be in a basement? she thought.

Riley had harbored a slight but irrational phobia about basements for some time now – vestiges of PTSD from having been held captive in Peterson’s damp crawlspace, and even more recently from having taken out a different killer in a pitch-dark basement.

But as they followed Kelsey down the stairs, Riley saw nothing sinister. The basement was finished as a comfortable rec room. In one corner was a well-lighted office area with a desk covered with manila folders, a bulletin board with old photographs and newspaper clippings, and a couple of filing drawers.

“Here it is – everything you could want to know about ‘Shane the Chain’ and his career and downfall,” Kelsey said. “Help yourself. Ask if you need help making sense out of it all.”

Riley and Bill started looking through folders. Riley was surprised and thrilled. It was a fascinating, even daunting body of information and a lot of it had never been scanned for the FBI database. The folder she was looking through was crammed with seemingly unimportant items, including restaurant napkins with handwritten notes and sketches pertaining to the case.

She opened another folder that held photocopied reports and other documents. Riley was a bit amused to realize that Kelsey surely wasn’t supposed to have copied or kept them. The originals had surely long since been shredded after being scanned.

As Bill and Riley pored over the material, Kelsey remarked, “I guess you’re wondering why I just won’t let this case go. Sometimes I wonder myself.”

She thought for a moment.

“Shane Hatcher was my one brush with real evil,” she said. “During my first fourteen years with the Bureau, I was pretty much window dressing here in the Syracuse office – the token woman. But I worked this case from the ground up, talking to gangbangers in the street, taking charge of the team. Nobody thought I could bring Hatcher down. In fact, nobody was sure that anybody could bring him down. But I did.”

Now Riley was looking through a folder of poor-quality photos that the Bureau probably hadn’t bothered to scan. Kelsey had obviously known better than to throw them away.

One showed a cop sitting in a café talking to a gangbanger. Riley immediately recognized the young man as Shane Hatcher. It took her a moment to recognize the cop.

“That’s the officer that Hatcher killed, isn’t it?” Riley said.

Kelsey nodded.

“Officer Lucien Wayles,” she said. “I took that photograph myself.”

“What’s he doing talking with Hatcher?”

Kelsey smiled knowingly.

“Well, now, that’s rather interesting,” she said. “I suppose you’ve heard that Officer Wayles was an upstanding, decorated policeman. That’s what the local cops still want everybody to think. Actually, he was corrupt to the very bone. In this picture, he was meeting with Hatcher hoping to make a deal with him – a cut of the drug profits for not interfering with Hatcher’s territory. Hatcher said no. That’s when Wayles decided to do Hatcher in.”

Kelsey pulled out a photograph of Wayles’s mangled body.

“As you probably know, that didn’t work out too well for Officer Wayles,” she said.

Riley felt a tingle of understanding. This was exactly the treasure trove of material she’d yearned for. It brought her much, much closer to the mind of the youthful Shane Hatcher.

As she looked at the photo of Hatcher and the cop, Riley probed the young man’s mind. She imagined Hatcher’s thoughts and feelings at the moment the picture was taken. She also remembered something that Kelsey had just said.

“You know, he had a strict code, even as a gangbanger.”

From her own conversations with Hatcher, Riley knew that it was still true today. And now, looking at the photo, Riley could feel Hatcher’s visceral disgust at Wayles’s proposal.

It offended him, Riley thought. It felt like an insult.

Small wonder that Hatcher had made such a gruesome example of Wayles. According to Hatcher’s twisted code, it was the moral thing to do.

Thumbing through more photos, Riley found a mugshot of another gangbanger.

“Who’s this?” Riley asked.

“Smokey Moran,” Kelsey said. “Shane the Chain’s most trusted lieutenant – until I busted him for selling drugs. He faced a long prison sentence, so I had no trouble getting him to turn state’s evidence against Hatcher in return for some leniency. That’s how I finally nailed Hatcher.”

Riley’s skin prickled as she handled the picture.

“What became of Moran?” she asked.

Kelsey shook her head with disapproval.

“He’s still out there,” she said. “I often wish I hadn’t made that deal. For years and years now, he’s been quietly running all kinds of gang activities. The younger gangbangers look up to him and admire him. He’s smart and elusive. The local cops and the Bureau have never been able to bring him to justice.”

That prickling feeling grew. Riley found herself in Hatcher’s mind, brooding in prison for decades over Moran’s betrayal. In Hatcher’s moral universe, such a man didn’t deserve to live. And justice was long overdue.

“Do you have his current address?” Riley asked Kelsey.

“No, but I’m sure the field office does. Why?”

Riley took a deep breath.

“Because Shane is going there to kill him.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Riley knew that Smokey Moran was in great danger. But the truth was, Riley’s heart didn’t exactly go out to the vicious career thug.

Shane Hatcher was what really mattered.

Her assignment was to put Hatcher back in prison. If they caught him before he killed Moran for the old betrayal, fine. She and Bill would drive to Moran’s address without giving him any advance warning. They would call the local field office to have backup meet them there.

It was about a half hour drive from Kelsey Sprigge’s home in middle-class Searcy to the much more sinister gang neighborhoods of Syracuse. The sky was overcast, but no snow was falling, and traffic moved normally along the well-cleared roads.