Once Craved

The word “routinely” struck an uncomfortable chord with Riley. How could the ongoing disappearance of a certain class of women be considered “routine”? Still, she knew that what Bill was saying was true.

“When Meredith phoned, he made it sound urgent,” she said. “And now he’s even giving us the VIP treatment, flying us directly there on a BAU jet.” She thought back for a moment. “His exact words were that his friend wanted us to look into it as the work of a serial killer. But you sound like nobody’s sure it is a serial.”

Bill shrugged. “It might not be. But Meredith seems to be really close to Nancy Holbrook’s brother, Garrett Holbrook.”

“Yeah,” Riley said. “He told me they went to the academy together. But this whole thing is unusual.”

Bill didn’t argue. Riley leaned back in her seat and considered the situation. It seemed pretty obvious that Meredith was bending FBI rules as a favor to a friend. That wasn’t typical of Meredith at all.

But this didn’t make her think any less of her boss. Actually, she really admired his devotion to his friend. She wondered …

Is there anybody I’d bend the rules for? Bill, maybe?

He’d been more than a partner over the years, and more than even a friend. Even so, Riley wasn’t sure. And that made her wonder – just how close did she feel to any of her coworkers these days, including Bill?

But there didn’t seem much point in thinking about it now. Riley closed her eyes and went to sleep.

*

It was a bright sunny day when they landed in Phoenix.

As they got off the jet, Bill nudged her and said, “Wow, great weather. Maybe at least we’ll get a little vacation out of this trip.”

Somehow, Riley doubted that it was going to be a lot of fun. It had been a long time since she’d taken a real vacation. Her last attempt at an outing in New York with April had been cut short by the usual murder and mayhem that was such a big part of her life.

One of these days, I need to get some real rest, she thought.

A young local agent met them at the plane and drove them to the Phoenix FBI field office, a striking new modern building. As he pulled the car into the Bureau parking lot, he commented, “Cool design, isn’t it? Even won some kind of award. Can you guess what it’s supposed to look like?”

Riley looked over the facade. It was all straight, long rectangles and narrow vertical windows. Everything was carefully placed and the pattern seemed familiar. She stopped and stared at it for a moment.

“DNA sequencing?” she asked.

“Yep,” the agent said. “But I’ll bet you can’t guess what the rock maze over there looks like from above.”

But they walked into the building before Riley or Bill could hazard a guess. Inside, Riley saw the DNA motif repeated in the sharply patterned floor tiles. The agent led them among severe-looking horizontal walls and partitions until they reached the office of Special Agent in Charge Elgin Morley, then left them there.

Riley and Bill introduced themselves to Morley, a small, bookish man in his fifties with a thick black mustache and round glasses. Another man was awaiting them in the office. He was in his forties, tall, gaunt, and slightly hunched. Riley thought he looked tired and depressed.

Morley said, “Agents Paige and Jeffreys, I’d like you to meet Agent Garrett Holbrook. His sister was the victim who was found in Nimbo Lake.”

Hands were shaken all around, and the four agents sat down to talk.

“Thank you for coming,” Holbrook said. “This whole thing has been pretty overwhelming.”

“Tell us about your sister,” Riley said.

“I can’t tell you much,” Holbrook said. “I can’t say I knew her very well. She was my half-sister. My dad was a philandering jerk, left my mom and had children with three different women. Nancy was fifteen years younger than me. We barely had contact over the years.”

He stared blankly at the floor for a moment, his fingers picking absent-mindedly at the arm of his chair. Then without looking up he said, “The last I heard from her, she was doing office work and taking classes at a community college. That was a few years ago. I was shocked to find out what had become of her. I had no idea.”

Then he fell silent. Riley thought he looked like he was leaving something unsaid, but she told herself that maybe that was really all the man knew. After all, what could Riley say about her own older sister if anyone asked her? She and Wendy had been out of contact for so long that they might as well not be sisters at all.

Even so, she sensed something more than grief in Holbrook’s demeanor. It struck her as odd.

Morley suggested that Riley and Bill go with him to Forensic Pathology, where they could take a look at the body. Holbrook nodded and said that he’d be in his office.

As they followed the Agent in Charge down the hall, Bill asked, “Agent Morley, what reason is there for thinking we’re dealing with a serial killer?”

Morley shook his head. “I’m not sure we’ve got much of a reason,” he said. “But when Garrett found out about Nancy’s death, he refused to leave it alone. He’s one of our best agents, and I’ve tried to accommodate him. He tried to get his own investigation underway, but didn’t get anywhere. The truth is, he hasn’t been himself this whole while.”

Riley had certainly noticed that Garrett seemed to be terribly unsettled. Perhaps a little more so than a seasoned agent would usually be, even over a relative’s death. He’d made it clear that they weren’t close.

Morley led Riley and Bill into the building’s Forensic Pathology area, where he introduced them to its team chief, Dr. Rachel Fowler. The pathologist pulled open the refrigerated unit where Nancy Holbrook’s body was being kept.

Riley winced a little at the familiar odor of decomposition, even though the smell hadn’t gotten very strong yet. She saw that the woman had been short of stature and very thin.

“She hadn’t been in the water long,” Fowler said. “The skin was just beginning to wrinkle when she was found.”

Dr. Fowler pointed to her wrists.

“You can see rope burns. It looks like she was bound when she was killed.”

Riley noticed raised marks on the crook of the corpse’s arm.

“These look like track marks,” Riley said.

“Right. She was using heroin. My guess was that she was slipping into serious addiction.”

It looked to Riley like the woman had been anorexic, and that seemed consistent with Fowler’s addiction theory.

“That kind of addiction seems out of place for a high-class escort,” Bill said. “How do we know that’s what she was?”

Fowler produced a laminated business card in a plastic evidence bag. It had a provocative photo of the dead woman on it. The name on the card was simply “Nanette,” and the business was called “Ishtar Escorts.”

“This card was on her when she was found,” Fowler explained. “The police got in touch with Ishtar Escorts and found out her real name, and that soon led to identifying her as Agent Holbrook’s half-sister.”

“Any idea how she was asphyxiated?” Riley asked.

“There’s some bruising around her neck,” Fowler said. “The killer might have held a plastic bag over her head.”

Riley looked closely at the marks. Was this some kind of a sex game gone wrong, or a deliberate act of murder? She couldn’t yet tell.

“What did she have on when she was found?” Riley asked.

Fowler opened up a box that contained the victim’s clothing. She had been wearing a pink dress with a low neckline – barely respectable, Riley observed, but definitely a notch above a streetwalker’s typical trashy attire. It was the dress of a woman who wanted to look both very sexy and suitably attired for nightclubs.

Nestled on top of the dress was a clear plastic bag of jewelry.

“May I have a look?” Riley asked Fowler.

“Go right ahead.”

Riley took out the bag and looked at the contents. Most of it was fairly tasteful costume jewelry – a beaded necklace and bracelets and simple earrings. But one item stood out among the rest. It was a slender gold ring with a diamond setting. She picked it up and showed it to Bill.

“Real?” Bill asked.

“Yes,” Fowler replied. “Real gold and a real diamond.”

“The killer didn’t bother to steal it,” Bill commented. “So this wasn’t about money.”

Riley turned to Morley. “I’d like to see where the body was found,” she said. “Right now, while it’s still light.”

Morley looked a bit puzzled.

“We can get you there by helicopter,” he said. “But I don’t know what you expect to find. Cops and agents have been all over the site.”

“Trust her,” Bill said knowingly. “She’ll find out something.”

Chapter Eight

The broad surface of Nimbo Lake looked still and tranquil as the helicopter approached it.

But looks can fool you, Riley reminded herself. She knew well that calm surfaces could guard dark secrets.

The helicopter descended, then wobbled as it hovered in search of a place to land. Riley felt a little queasy from the unsteady movement. She didn’t much like helicopters. She looked at Bill, who was sitting next to her. She thought he looked equally uneasy.

But when she glanced over at Agent Holbrook, his face seemed blank to her. He had barely said a word during the half-hour flight from Phoenix. Riley didn’t yet know what to make of him. She was used to reading people easily – sometimes too easily for her own comfort. But Holbrook still struck her as an enigma.

The helicopter finally touched down, and all three FBI agents stepped out onto solid ground, ducking through the churning air under the still-spinning blades. The road where the chopper had landed was nothing more than parallel tire tracks through the desert weeds.

Riley observed that the road didn’t look heavily used. Even so, it appeared that enough vehicles had passed over it during the past week to conceal any tracks left by whatever the killer had been driving.

The noisy helicopter engine died down, making it easier to talk as Riley and Bill followed Holbrook on foot.

“Tell us what you can about this lake,” Riley said to Holbrook.

“It’s one of a series of reservoirs created by dams along the Acacia River,” Holbrook said. “This is the smallest of the artificial lakes. It’s stocked with fish, and it’s a popular recreation spot, but the public areas are on the other side of the lake. The body was discovered by a couple of teenagers stoned on pot. I’ll show you where.”

Holbrook led them off the road to a stone ridge overlooking the lake.

“The kids were right where we’re standing,” he said. He pointed down to the edge of the lake. “They looked down there and saw it. They said that it just looked like a dark shape in the water.”

“What time of day were the kids here?” Riley asked.

“A little earlier than it is right now,” Holbrook said. “They had cut school and gotten stoned.”

Riley took in the whole scene. The sun was low, and the tops of the red rock cliffs across the lake were ablaze with light. There were a couple of boats out on the water. The sheer drop from the ridge down to the water wasn’t far – a mere ten feet, maybe.

Holbrook pointed to a place nearby where the slope wasn’t as steep.

“The kids climbed down over there to get a closer look,” he said. “That’s when they found out what it really was.”

Poor kids, Riley thought. It had been some two decades since she’d tried marijuana back in college. Even so, she could well imagine the heightened horror of making such a discovery while under the influence.

“Do you want to climb down there for a closer look?” Bill asked Riley.

“No, it’s a good view from here,” Riley said.

Her gut told her that she was right where she needed to be. After all, the killer surely hadn’t lugged the body down the same slope where the kids had gone down.

No, she thought. He stood right here.

It even looked like the sparse vegetation was still broken down a little where she was standing.

She took a few breaths, trying to slip into his point of view. He’d undoubtedly come here at night. But was it a clear night or a cloudy one? Well, in Arizona at this time of year, the chances were that the night was clear. And she recalled that the moon would have been bright about a week ago. In the starlight and moonlight, he could have seen what he was doing pretty well – possibly even without a flashlight.

She imagined him putting the body down right here. But then what had he done next? Obviously he had rolled the body off the ledge. It had fallen straight down into the shallow water.

But something about this scenario struck Riley as wrong. She wondered again, as she had on the plane, how he could have been so careless.

True, from up here on the ledge, he probably couldn’t have seen that the body hadn’t sunk very far. The kids had described the bag as “a dark shape in the water.” From this height, the submerged bag had likely been invisible even on a bright night. He’d assumed that the body had sunk, as newly dead bodies do in fresh water, especially when weighted down with stones.

But why did he suppose that the water was deep right here?

She peered down into the clear water. In the late afternoon light, she could easily see the submerged ledge where the body had landed. It was a small horizontal area, nothing more than the top of a boulder. Around it, the water was black and deep.

She looked around the lake. Sheer cliffs jutted up everywhere out of the water. She could see that Nimbo Lake had been a deep canyon before the dam had filled it with water. She saw only a few places where one could walk along the shoreline. The cliff sides dropped straight down into the depths.

To her right and left, Riley saw ridges that were similar to the one where they were standing, rising to about the same height. The water beneath those cliffs was dark, showing no signs of the kind of ledge that lay below right here.

She felt a tingle of comprehension.

“He’s done this before,” she told Bill and Holbrook. “There’s another body in this lake.”

*

On the helicopter ride back to the FBI Phoenix Division headquarters, Holbrook said, “So you think this is a serial case after all?”

“Yes, I do,” Riley said.

Holbrook said, “I wasn’t positive. Mostly I was eager to get someone good on the case. But what did you see that made up your mind?”

“There are other ledges that look just like the one he pushed this body over,” she explained. “He used one of those other drop-offs before, and that body sank just like it was supposed to. But maybe he couldn’t find the same spot this time. Or maybe he thought this was the same spot. Anyway, he expected the same result this time. He was wrong.”

Bill said, “I told you she’d find something there.”

“Divers will need to search this lake,” Riley added.

“That will take some doing,” Holbrook said.

“It’s got to be done anyway. There’s another body down there somewhere. You can count on it. I don’t know how long it’s been there, but it’s there.”

She paused, mentally assessing what all this said about the killer’s personality. He was competent and capable. This wasn’t a pathetic loser, like Eugene Fisk. He was more like Peterson, the killer who had captured and tormented both her and April. He was shrewd and poised, and he thoroughly enjoyed killing – a sociopath rather than a psychopath. Above all else, he was confident.

Maybe too confident for his own good, Riley thought.

It might well prove to be his downfall.

She said, “The guy we’re looking for isn’t some criminal lowlife. My guess is he’s an ordinary citizen, reasonably well-educated, maybe with a wife and family. Nobody who knows him thinks he’s a killer.”

Riley watched Holbrook’s face as they talked. Although she now knew something about the case she hadn’t known before, Holbrook still struck her as utterly impenetrable.

The helicopter circled over the FBI building. Twilight had fallen and the area below was well lighted.

“Look there,” Bill said, pointing out the window.

Riley looked down where he pointed. She was surprised to see that from here the rock garden looked like a gigantic fingerprint. It spread out beneath them like a welcome sign. Some offbeat landscaper had decided that this image arranged out of stone was better suited for the new FBI building than a planted garden would have been. Hundreds of substantial stones had been carefully placed in curving rows to create the ridged illusion.

“Wow,” Riley said to Bill. “Whose fingerprint do you suppose they used? Someone legendary, I guess. Dillinger, maybe?”

“Or maybe John Wayne Gacy. Or Jeffrey Dahmer.”

Riley thought it a strange spectacle. On the ground, no one would ever guess that the arrangement of stones was anything more than a meaningless maze.

It struck her almost as a sign and a warning. This case was going to demand that she view things from a new and unsettling perspective. She was about to probe regions of darkness that not even she had imagined.

Chapter Nine

The man enjoyed watching streetwalkers. He liked how they grouped on the corner and pranced up and down the sidewalks, mostly in pairs. He found them to be much feistier than call girls and escorts, prone to easily losing their temper.

For example, right now, he saw one cursing a bunch of uncouth young guys in a slow-moving vehicle for taking her picture. The man didn’t blame her one bit. After all, she was here to do business, not to serve as scenery.

Where’s their respect? he thought with a smirk. Kids these days.

Now the guys were laughing at her and yelling obscenities. But they couldn’t match her colorful retorts, some of them in Spanish. He liked her style.

He was slumming tonight, parked along a row of cheap motels where streetwalkers gathered. The other girls were less vivacious than the one who had done the cursing. Their attempts at sexiness looked awkward by comparison, and their come-ons were crude. As he watched, one hiked up her skirt to show her skimpy underpants to the driver of a slowly passing car. The driver didn’t stop.

He kept his eye on the girl who had first drawn his attention. She was stomping around indignantly, complaining to the other girls.

The man knew he could have her if he wanted her. She could be his next victim. All he had to do to get her attention was to drive along the curb toward her.

But no, he wouldn’t do that. He never did that. He’d never approach a hooker on the street. It was up to her to approach him. It was the same even with whores he met through a service or a brothel. He’d get them to meet him alone somewhere separately without ever asking directly. It would seem like their idea.

With some luck, the feisty girl would notice his expensive car and trot right on over. His car was wonderful bait. So was the fact that he dressed well.

But however the night ended, he had to be more careful than last time. He’d been sloppy, dropping her body over that ledge and expecting her to sink.

And such a stir she had created! An FBI agent’s sister! And they’d called in big guns from Quantico. He didn’t like it. He wasn’t out for publicity or fame. All he wanted to do was indulge his cravings.

And didn’t he have every right? What healthy adult man didn’t have his cravings?

Now they were going to send divers down in the lake to look for bodies. He knew what they might find there, even after some three years. He didn’t like that at all.

It wasn’t just out of concern for himself. Oddly, he felt bad for the lake. Having divers probe and poke into its every submerged nook and cranny struck him as rather obscene and invasive, an inexcusable violation. After all, the lake hadn’t done anything wrong. Why should it be harassed?

Anyway, he wasn’t worried. There was no way they were going to trace either victim back to him. It simply wasn’t going to happen. He was through with that lake, though. He hadn’t yet decided where to deposit his next victim, but he was sure he would come to a decision before the night was over.

Now the vivacious girl was looking at his car. She started walking toward him, with lots of sass in her step.

He rolled down the passenger window and she poked her head in. She was a dark-skinned Latina, heavily made-up with thick lip liner, colorful eye shadow, and fierce arched eyebrows that seemed to be tattoos. Her earrings were big gold-painted crucifixes.

“Nice car,” she said.

He smiled.

“What’s a nice girl like you doing out so late?” he asked. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

“Maybe you’d like to tuck me in,” she said, smiling.

Her teeth struck him as remarkably clean and straight. Indeed, she looked remarkably healthy. That was pretty rare out here on the streets, where most of the girls were “tweakers,” in various stages of meth addiction.

“I like your style,” he said. “Very chola.”

Her smile broadened. He could see that she took being called a Latina gangbanger as a compliment.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Socorro.”

Ah, “socorro,” he thought. Spanish for “help.”

“I’ll bet you give great socorro,” he said in a leering tone.

Her deep brown eyes leered right back. “You look like maybe you could use some socorro right now.”

“Maybe I could,” he said.

But before they could start settling terms, a car pulled into the space right behind him. He heard a man call out from the driver window.

“¡Socorro!” he yelled. “¡Vente!”

The girl drew herself up with a rather lame show of indignation.

“¿Porqué?” she yelled back.

“Vente aquí, ¡puta!”

The man detected a trace of fear in the girl’s eyes. It couldn’t be because the man in the car had called her a whore. He guessed that the man was her pimp, checking on her to see how much cash she had brought in so far tonight.

“¡Pinche Pablo!” She muttered the all-purpose insult under her breath. Then she walked toward the car.

The man sat there, wondering if she was going to come back, still wanting to do business with him. Either way, he didn’t like it. Waiting around was not his style.

His interest in the girl suddenly vanished. No, he wouldn’t bother with her. She had no idea how lucky she was.

Besides, what was he doing slumming like this? His next victim ought to be classier.

Chiffon, he thought. He’d almost forgotten about Chiffon. But maybe I’ve just been saving her for a special occasion.

He could wait. It didn’t have to be tonight. He drove away, gloating over his show of self-restraint, despite his enormous cravings. He considered that one of his best personal qualities.

He was, after all, a very civilized man.

Chapter Ten

The three young women in the interview room didn’t look at all like Riley had expected. For a few moments she just watched them through the one-way window. They were tastefully dressed, almost like well-paid secretaries. She’d been told their names were Mitzi, Koreen, and Tantra. Of course Riley was sure that those weren’t their real names.

Riley also doubted that they dressed so acceptably when they were on the job. Working for about 250 dollars per hour, they’d surely invested in elaborate wardrobes to cater to all sorts of clients’ fantasies. They had been colleagues of Nancy “Nanette” Holbrook at Ishtar Escorts. The clothes Nancy Holbrook had been wearing when she was killed had been markedly less proper. But, Riley figured, when not actually on the job, the women wanted to look respectable.

Although prostitutes had played a role in some of the cases Riley had investigated in the past, this was the first time she’d been called on to work so directly with any of them. These women were potential victims themselves. They might even be potential suspects, although virtually all murders of this type were carried out by men. Riley felt sure that these women weren’t the kind of monsters she hunted in her job.

It was late Sunday afternoon. Last night Riley and Bill had settled into their separate and comfortable hotel rooms not far from the FBI building. Riley had phoned April, who was in a Washington, DC, hotel with the history field trip. April had been giggly and happy, and had warned her mother that she didn’t really have time for phone calls. “I’ll text you tomorrow,” April had said, shouting over the teenage clamor in the background.