Once Cold

“That was before your time,” Jake said. “Why do you want to dredge up all that ancient history?”

She heard bitterness in his voice – the same bitterness she remembered hearing from him when she was still a young rookie. He’d been furious with the powers-that-be for shutting the case down. He’d still been bitter when he retired a few years later.

“You know I’ve been in touch with Tilda Steen’s mother over the years,” Riley said. “I talked to her just yesterday. This time …”

She paused. How could she put it into words?

“It hit me harder than usual, I guess. If nobody does anything, the poor woman will die without her daughter’s killer getting brought to justice. I don’t have any other cases going and I …”

Her voice trailed off.

“I know just how you feel,” Jake said, his voice suddenly sympathetic. “Those three dead women deserved better. Their families deserved better.”

Riley felt relieved that Jake shared her feelings.

“I can’t do much without BAU support,” Riley said. “Do you think there’s any way I could reopen the case?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Let’s get right to work.”

Riley could hear Jake’s fingers rattling on his computer keyboard as he brought up his own files.

“What went wrong when you worked on it?” Riley asked.

“What didn’t go wrong? My theories didn’t fit with anybody else’s at the BAU. The area was fairly rural back then, just three little small towns. Even so, along an interstate that close to Richmond, there were plenty of transients. The Bureau just decided it must have been some drifter who moved along. My gut told me something different – that he lived in the area and might live there still. But nobody cared what my gut had to say.”

While he was typing, he grumbled, “I might have cracked this thing years ago if it weren’t for my shit-for-brains partner.”

Riley had heard about Jake’s incompetent partner, who had been fired before Riley joined the BAU.

She said, “I hear he screwed up almost everything he touched.”

“Yeah, literally. In one of the bars, he handled a drinking glass the killer had touched, smeared up the fingerprints but good.”

“Weren’t there any fingerprints on the napkins or the matchbooks?”

“Not after being covered with dirt in a shallow grave. The guy screwed up royally. He should’ve been fired right then and there. He didn’t last long, though. Last I heard he was working in a convenience store. Good riddance.”

Riley heard a pause in Jake’s typing. She guessed that he now had all his materials ready at hand.

“OK, now close your eyes,” Jake said.

Riley shut her eyes and smiled. He was going to put her through much the same exercise she had taught to her students. She had learned it from him in the first place.

Jake said, “You’re the killer, but you haven’t killed anybody yet. You just walked into McLaughlin’s Pub in Brinkley, and you’ve just introduced yourself to a girl named Melody Yanovich. You’ve put some moves on her, and things seem to be going pretty smoothly.”

She began to see things from the killer’s point of view. The scene playing out clearly in her mind.

Jake said, “There’s a little bowl of matchbooks on the bar. In the middle of your pickup, you grab one and pocket it. Why?”

Riley could practically feel the little matchbook between her fingers. She imagined herself tucking it into her shirt pocket.

But why? she wondered.

When the case had been open, there had been a fairly commonsensical theory about that. The killer had left matchbooks from the bars and notepaper from the motels on the victims’ bodies to taunt the police.

But now she realized – Jake didn’t think so.

And now she didn’t either.

She said, “He didn’t even know he was going to kill her – at least not when he was in McLaughlin’s Pub, not that first time. He picked up the matchbook as a souvenir of his impending conquest, a trophy for the good time he expected to have.”

“Good,” Jake said. “Then what?”

Riley could clearly visualize the killer helping Melody Yanovich out of his car and escorting her into the motel room.

“Melody was willing, and he was feeling confident. As soon as they got into the room, she went to the bathroom to get ready. Meanwhile, he picked up a piece of notebook paper with the motel logo – for the same reason he’d picked up the matchbook, as a souvenir. Then he took off his clothes and got under the covers. Soon Melody came out of the bathroom …”

Riley paused to get a clearer picture.

Had the woman been naked right then?

No, not exactly, Riley thought.

“Melody came out with a towel wrapped around her. Right then he started to get uneasy. He’d had trouble performing in the past. Was he going to have that problem again this time? She climbed into bed with him and pulled off the towel and …”

“And?” Jake coaxed.

“And he knew then and there – he couldn’t do it. He was ashamed and humiliated. He couldn’t let the woman get away knowing that he’d failed. A burning rage took him over completely. His fury wiped away his humanity. He grabbed her by the throat and strangled her in the bed. She died very quickly. His rage ebbed away, and he realized what he’d done, and he was seized by guilt. And …”

Riley’s mind hurried through the rest of the crime. The killer had not only buried the victims in shallow graves, but he’d put the graves close to streets and highways. He knew perfectly well that the bodies would be found. In fact, he’d made sure of it.

Riley’s eyes snapped open.

“I get it, Jake. When he first picked up the matchbooks and pieces of notepaper, he was only collecting souvenirs. But after the murders, he used them for something different. He left them with the bodies to help the police, not to taunt them. He wanted to be caught. He didn’t have the nerve to turn himself in, so leaving clues was the best he could do.”

“You’re catching on,” Jake said. “My guess is, both of the first two murders played out pretty much exactly that way. Now take a look at the local police summary of the murders.”

Riley looked at the report on her computer screen.

“How was the last murder different?” Jake asked.

Riley scanned the text. She didn’t notice anything she hadn’t known already.

“Tilda Steen was fully clothed when he buried her. It seemed that he hadn’t tried to have sex with her at all.”

Jake said, “Now tell me what it says about the cause of death for all three victims.”

Riley quickly found it in the text.

“Strangulation,” she said. “The same for all of them.”

Jake grunted with dismay.

“That’s where the locals went wrong,” he said. “The first two, Melody Yanovich and Portia Quinn, were both definitely strangled. But I found out from the medical examiner – there weren’t any bruises on Tilda Steen’s neck. She’d been suffocated but not strangled. What does that tell you?”

Riley’s brain clicked along, processing this new information.

She closed her eyes again, trying to imagine the scene.

“Something happened when he got Tilda into that motel room,” Riley said. “She confided something to him, maybe something she’d never told anybody else. Or maybe she told him something about himself he wanted to hear. She suddenly became …”

Riley paused.

Jake said, “Go ahead. Say it.”

“Human to him. He felt guilty for what he was going to do. And in a twisted way …”

It took Riley a moment to put her thoughts together.

“He decided to kill her as an act of mercy. He didn’t strangle her with his hands. He did it more gently. He overpowered her on the bed and suffocated her with a pillow. He felt so remorseful that …”

Riley opened her eyes.

“… he didn’t ever kill again.”

Jake let out a grunt of approval.

He said, “That was the same conclusion I came to back in the day. I still think it. I believe he’s still in that general area, and he’s still haunted by what he did all those years ago.”

A word started echoing through Riley’s mind …

Remorse.

Something suddenly seemed crystal clear to her.

Without stopping to think, she said, “He’s still remorseful, Jake. And I’ll bet anything he leaves flowers on the women’s graves.”

Jake chuckled with satisfaction.

“Good thinking,” he said. “That’s what I always liked about you, Riley. You get the psychology, and you know how to turn it into action.”

Riley smiled.

“I learned from the best,” she said.

Jake grumbled his thanks for the compliment. She thanked him and ended the call. She sat in her office thinking.

It’s up to me.

She had to hunt down the killer and bring him to justice once and for all.

But she knew she couldn’t do it alone.

She needed help just getting the BAU to reopen the case.

She rushed out into the hall and headed for Bill Jeffreys’ office.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Bill Jeffreys was enjoying an unusually quiet morning at BAU when his partner burst into his office. He immediately recognized the expression on her face. This was how Riley Paige looked when she was excited about a new case.

He gestured toward the chair on the other side of his desk, and Riley sat down. But as he listened attentively to her description of the murders, Bill grew puzzled about her enthusiasm. Even so, he made no comment while she gave him the complete rundown of her phone conversation with Jake.

“So what do you think?” she asked Bill when she finished.

“About what?” Bill asked.

“Do you want to work the case with me?”

Bill squinted with uncertainty.

“Sure, I’d like to, but … well, the case isn’t even open. It’s out of our hands.”

Riley took a deep breath and said cautiously, “I was hoping you and I could fix that.”

It took Bill a moment to catch her meaning. Then his eyes widened and he shook his head.

“Oh, no, Riley,” he said. “This one is long gone. Meredith isn’t going to be interested in opening it up again.”

He could see that she also had doubts, but she was trying to hide them.

“We’ve got to try,” she said. “We can solve this case. I know it. Times have changed, Bill. We’ve got new tools at our disposal. For instance, DNA testing was in its infancy back then. Now things are different. You’re not working another case right now, are you?”

“No.”

“Neither am I. Why not give it a shot?”

Bill gazed at Riley with concern. In less than a year his partner had been reprimanded, suspended, and even fired. He knew that her career had sometimes hung by a thread. The only thing that had saved her was her uncanny ability to find her prey, sometimes in unorthodox ways. That skill and his occasional covering for her had kept her in the BAU.

“Riley, you’re asking for trouble,” he said. “Don’t rock the boat.”

He could see her bristle at that and immediately regretted his choice of words.

“OK, if you don’t want to do it,” she said, getting up from her chair, turning, and heading for his office door.

*

Riley hated that phrase. “Don’t rock the boat.”

After all, she was a boat-rocker to the core. And she knew perfectly well that it was one of the things that made her a good agent.

She was on her way out of Bill’s office when he called, “Wait a minute. Where are you going?”

“Where do you think I’m going?” she called back.

“OK, OK! I’m coming!”

She and Bill hurried down the hall toward the office of Team Chief Brent Meredith. Riley knocked on their boss’s door and heard a gruff voice call out, “Come in.”

Riley and Bill stepped inside Meredith’s spacious office. As always, the team chief cut a daunting presence with his large physique and his black, angular features. He was hunched over his desk poring over reports.

“Make it quick,” Meredith said without looking up from his work. “I’m busy.”

Riley ignored Bill’s worried glance and boldly sat down beside Meredith’s desk.

She said, “Chief, Agent Jeffreys and I want to reopen a cold case, and we wondered if – ”

Still focused on his papers, Meredith interrupted.

“Nope.”

“Huh?” Riley said.

“Request denied. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got work to do.”

Riley stayed seated. She felt momentarily stymied.

Then she said, “I just got off the phone with Jake Crivaro.”

Meredith slowly lifted his head and looked at her. A smile formed on his lips.

“How is old Jake?” he asked.

Riley smiled too. She knew that Jake and Meredith had been close friends back during their early days at the BAU.

“He’s grouchy,” Riley said.

“He always was,” Meredith said. “You know, that old bastard could be downright intimidating.”

Riley suppressed a chuckle. The very idea that Meredith would find anybody intimidating was rather funny. Riley herself had never been intimidated by Jake at all.

She said, “Yesterday was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Matchbook Killer’s last murder.”

Meredith swiveled toward her in his chair, starting to look interested.

“I remember that one,” he said. “Jake and I were both field agents back then. He never got over not being able to solve it. We talked about it over drinks a lot.”

Meredith folded his hands together and looked at Riley intently.

“So Jake gave you a call about it, eh? He wants to reopen the case, come out of retirement?”

Riley felt a fleeting impulse to lie. Meredith would surely be more open to the idea if he thought it came from Jake. But she just couldn’t do it.

“I called him, sir,” she said. “But it was already on his mind. It always is this time of year. And we talked through some possibilities.”

Meredith leaned back in his chair.

“Tell me what you’ve got,” he said.

She quickly collected her thoughts.

“Jake thinks the killer is still in the general area of the killings,” she said. “And I trust Jake’s hunches. We think he was consumed by guilt – probably still is. And I had this idea that he might regularly leave flowers on the grave of the last victim, Tilda Steen. So that’s something new to check out.”

Riley could tell by Meredith’s face that he was getting interested.

“That could be a really good lead,” he said. “What else have you got?”

“Not much,” she said. “Except Jake mentioned a glass that had been picked up as evidence.”

Meredith nodded.

“I remember. His idiot rookie partner ruined the fingerprints.”

Riley said, “It’s probably still in the evidence locker. Maybe we can get some DNA off of it. That wasn’t much of an option twenty-five years ago.”

“Good,” Meredith said. “What else?”

Riley thought for a moment.

“We’ve got an old composite sketch of the killer,” she said. “It’s not all that good. But maybe our tech guys could age the picture, come up with some ideas about what he might look like now. I could turn it over to Sam Flores.”

Meredith didn’t say anything right away.

Then he looked at Bill, who was still standing near the doorway.

“Have you got any cases going, Agent Jeffreys?”

“No.”

“Good. I want you to work this case with Paige.”

Without another word, Meredith turned his attention back to his reports.

Riley looked at Bill. Like her, he was gaping with surprise.

“When do we start?” Bill asked Meredith

“Five minutes ago,” Meredith said, waving them away. “What’s the matter with you two? Quite wasting time. Get to work.”

Riley and Bill hurried out of the office, excitedly talking about how to get things underway.

CHAPTER NINE

A little while later, Riley was relaxing as Bill drove the FBI car to the town of Greybull, where Tilda Steen had been killed. Riley felt good to be working on a new case, especially one of her own choosing.

It was a warm, sunny day. She felt as though her troubles and anxieties were fading behind her. Now that she had time to clear her head, Riley was beginning to feel quite differently about Ryan’s departure.

Why would she want him to stay, anyway?

She certainly didn’t want him sleeping over now that he was seeing somebody else.

And it was wrong to let the girls keep living with an illusion that he was truly part of their family.

Things could be worse, she thought.

Ryan might have hung around for a much longer time, only to eventually crush the girls’ hopes and expectations even more hurtfully.

Good riddance, she thought.

Just then, Riley’s phone buzzed. She saw that the call was from Blaine. It took her a second to remember that she’d left a message with him just last night, belatedly accepting his dinner offer. So much had happened this morning, it felt like much more time had passed since she’d made that call.

She answered the phone. Blaine sounded upbeat and cheerful.

“Hi, Riley. I got your message. Yeah, the offer still stands.”

“Thanks,” Riley said. “I’m glad.”

“So when do you and your family want to come over to the restaurant? Tonight, maybe?”

Riley hated to put the whole thing on hold. But what else could she do?

“Blaine, I’m out of town right now, working on a case. I’ll be back later today, but I might have to keep working.”

“How about tomorrow, then?” Blaine asked.

Riley suppressed a sigh. Things had gotten awkward fast. The last thing she wanted was for Blaine to think she was pushing him away again. But with a new case underway, she simply didn’t know when she would be able to accept his invitation.

The awkwardness was compounded by Bill’s glances at her from behind the wheel. It was obvious from his mischievous grin that he’d heard who she was talking to.

Riley felt herself blush.

She said, “Blaine, I’m so sorry. I just don’t know right now when it’ll be possible.”

Blaine didn’t reply. Riley knew that he must feel a bit puzzled. After all, she had sounded so eager in her message. She figured that honesty was the best approach.

“I’m not being coy, Blaine. I’m really not. I promise, when this case gets settled, we’ll come to your restaurant the first chance we get. And we’ll return the invitation. Gabriela will cook up something wonderful for you and Crystal.”

Now she could hear a smile in Blaine’s voice.

“Great. I’ll let you get back to work, then.”

They ended the call. Bill’s grin widened, and Riley’s blush deepened.

“So who was that?” Bill asked.

“Mind your own business,” Riley said with a slight giggle.

Bill let out a peal of laughter.

“No, I don’t think I will, Riley. I think I still qualify as your best friend. I’m supposed to be nosy. That was Blaine, wasn’t it? Your nice handsome neighbor.”

Riley silently nodded.

Bill said, “So are you going to tell me what’s going on, or what? The last I heard, Blaine had moved across town and you were trying to fix things up with Ryan.”

Riley remembered how hotly Bill had protested when she told him that she and Ryan were getting back together.

“Do I need to remind you of everything that guy did to hurt you?” Bill had said. “Because I can remember every detail.”

“Whatever you do, don’t say ‘I told you so.’”

“Why not?” Bill asked.

Riley sighed aloud now.

There’s no use fighting it, she thought.

There was nothing she could do except swallow her pride.

“Because you did. Tell me so. And you were right. Ryan’s the same old insufferable, unreliable Ryan.”

“He bailed on you, huh? I’m sorry to hear that.” He sounded genuinely sympathetic. “It must be tough on the kids.”

Riley couldn’t bring herself to tell him how true that was.

“Anyway,” Bill said, “I’m glad you’re finally giving ‘Mr. Right’ a chance.”

Riley groaned with exasperation. She wanted to throw something at him. Instead, she joined in his laughter.

Her phone buzzed again. She saw that it was a message from Sam Flores.

Riley was glad to have her attention snapped back to the job at hand. Before they’d left Quantico, she and Bill had talked to Sam Flores, the head of the lab team. They asked him to get right to work looking for DNA on the glass and aging the old composite sketch.

Riley checked her tablet computer. Sure enough, Sam had sent her some new sketches of the suspect.

“He sent the new pics,” Riley said.

“How do they look?”

“They’re not much to look at, but they’ll do,” Riley said.

Riley compared the sketches Sam and his team had put together to the old sketch. The original hadn’t been very lifelike. The artist had been too careful. In Riley’s experience, a little imagination and creativity sometimes helped capture a suspect’s personality.

Still, Riley could see that Sam and his tech people had done a good job with what they had to work with. They’d tried to cover a range of possibilities. In one of the sketches, the man looked much as he had in the old sketch, except with more lines and wrinkles and graying hair. In another, he had put on more weight, and his jowls drooped. A third showed him with a beard and mustache.

Riley knew better than to show all three new sketches to potential witnesses at the same time. They’d only get confused. She had to choose just one of them.

She had a hunch that the sketch that most closely resembled the original would be the best one to work with. She didn’t know exactly why. Something about the original’s expression suggested someone who might not deliberately change his appearance over the years. Also, the man seemed to have a distinctly thin body type. Riley guessed that he wouldn’t have put on much weight.

Of course, she could be completely wrong. But she knew that it was best to trust her instincts.

Just then they pulled into the sleepy little town of Greybull. Riley figured that it had a population of less than a thousand people.

“Where’s our first stop?” Bill asked.

“The cemetery,” Riley said.

She gave Bill directions, and they arrived at the cemetery within minutes. Riley brought up a map of the cemetery on her tablet. She and Bill got out of the car and wended their way among the tombstones.

Soon they found the grave that they were looking for. It was marked by a modest, average-sized stone with the inscription …

TILDA ANN STEENbeloved friend and daughter1972–1992

The dates startled Riley. Of course she already knew that Tilda had been twenty when she’d been killed. But Riley hadn’t really stopped to think that Tilda would be forty-five if she were still alive. What might her life have been like? Would she have stayed in this little town and raised a family, or would she have gone far away and pursued an altogether different kind of life? Riley had no idea. And the truth was, nobody would ever know.

Riley suddenly felt more determined than ever.

I’ve just got to solve this case.

Riley saw that two sets of flowers decorated the grave. One was a little bucket of daffodils in cheerfully mixed shades of yellow, orange, and white.

“Those are pretty,” Bill said, pointing to the daffodils. “Do you think they’re what we’re looking for?”

Riley didn’t think so. The flowers didn’t look store bought.

She leaned down and opened a little note that was tied to the bucket handle. The message was short, simple, and heartfelt.

Dear Tilda,

Honey, I still miss you. I’ll always miss you. I’ll always love you.

Mother

“They’re from Tilda’s mother,” Riley told Bill. “I’m sure the flowers are from Paula’s own garden.” She could imagine Paula carefully cultivating a bed of bulbs she’d planted in a sunny area for early blooms.

“Does Paula live here in Greybull?” Bill asked.

“No. Tilda’s parents moved away soon after the murder. Paula still lives in Virginia, though, over on the other side of Richmond. Her husband died last year.”

Riley felt a pang of sympathy as she remembered Paula telling her on the telephone …

“What would we become if I forgot Justin or you forgot your mother? I don’t ever want to become that hard.”

Paula had always struck Riley as a brave person. But she knew that Paula was also intensely private.

How lonely she must be! Riley thought.

The other flowers were a more formal bouquet with gladiolas and carnations – an arrangement that might come from a florist. They were held in a plastic cone that had been stuck into the ground.

Obviously thinking about fingerprints, Bill put on plastic gloves and picked up the cone of flowers, then emptied out the water. He put the arrangement in a plastic bag that he’d brought along for this very purpose.