Once Chosen (A Riley Paige Mystery—Book 17) Read online

  How could she make sense of sheer madness?

  Maybe it would be nice to get out of law enforcement and settle down to the daily challenges of raising a family.

  Maybe that was something that she and Bill could do together.

  Still lying on the bed, she looked at her watch and saw that it was much too late to call home. She got up and took a shower and got ready for bed.

  *

  Riley found herself outside in the dark, walking along a curving street in an upscale neighborhood. She knew she’d been here before. And once again, she thought the houses all around her looked like toys.

  But what am I doing here? she wondered.

  She turned to ask her partner and realized that no one was with her—neither Ann Marie nor Bill. Whatever task was at hand, she was going to have to figure it out for herself.

  Something to do with Halloween, she thought.

  There was plenty of evidence of that along this street. The whole neighborhood was decorated for Halloween, with ghosts floating in the trees and life-sized plastic skeletons hovering in the yards.

  Then the street began to fill with trick-or-treaters—kids and teenagers dressed up as vampires and zombies and mummies and such.

  Riley was discouraged to see the young people out and about.

  All these make-believe monsters, she thought.

  They’re perfect camouflage for a real one.

  For all she knew, that dancing skeleton with a bag of candy might really be a killer.

  To add to the confusion, the mechanical apparitions were coming down from the trees and yards and porches and mingling among the trick-or-treaters on the street. She was finding it harder and harder to tell the costumed kids from the costumed toys.

  And now a whole chorus of recorded spooky noises—howling and growling and screaming—was so loud that she could barely hear herself think.

  Or were they recordings? That screaming sounded very real.

  Was somebody being brutally murdered nearby?

  Don’t let your imagination run away with you, she told herself.

  Then she saw a new costumed character on the street ahead. Draped in a sheet like a Halloween ghost, the figure was walking directly toward her. As it grew closer, she could see that it was also wearing an oversized mask with enormous eyes and an anguished, open, downturned mouth.

  She recognized that image.

  The theatrical mask of tragedy.

  Then she heard a voice speaking through the mask.

  No, not speaking, she realized.

  Chanting. Singing.

  She struggled to remember something she was supposed to know. It was something Bill had said to her over the phone…

  “The Greek word ‘tragedy’ literally means ‘goat song.’”

  Riley stifled a gasp of alarm.

  Is this him?

  Is this the killer I’m looking for?

  Then the apparition halted in its tracks. Riley took a couple of hesitating steps in its direction. Suddenly the figure was changing, morphing, taking on a completely different form, until it became …

  A goat.

  Or rather, a hybrid creature—half man and half goat.

  The creature stood on two legs glaring at her with an insolent, grinning expression.

  And blood was dripping from its horns and teeth.

  Singing louder than before, the goat turned and begin to walk away.

  I’ve got to stop him, Riley thought.

  I’ve got to stop him before he spills more blood.

  But she realized to her horror that she couldn’t move from where she was standing.

  *

  Riley was awakened by the sound of her phone buzzing. Struggling to shake off the nightmare, she picked up the phone.

  She was alarmed to see that the call was from Sheriff Wightman.

  She took the call and asked, “Has something happened?”

  “Something, yeah,” the sheriff said. “I’m not sure what it is yet. It might—just might—be another body. I’m going to check it out, and I want you and your partner to join me.”

  Wightman gave Riley a street location. She jumped out of bed and got dressed as fast as she could.

  Had she been too slow? Had the Goatman killer struck again even while she was trying to figure things out?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Riley had just gotten dressed and was pulling on her jacket when she heard a knock on her motel room door. She hurried to answer and was surprised to see Ann Marie standing there carrying a little cardboard tray. The smell of coffee reminded Riley that she had been about to rush out without any kind of breakfast.

  “I was already dressed when you messaged me,” Ann Marie said. “So I went by the motel breakfast buffet. Got coffee and doughnuts.” Looking a little nervous, she added, “Unless you’d like something different …”

  “Great idea,” Riley told her. “We can eat in the car on the way.”

  “What’s going on?” Ann Marie asked.

  She showed Ann Marie the piece of paper where she had jotted down the information Sheriff Wightman had given her over the phone.

  Riley said, “I don’t know yet, but the sheriff wants us to meet him at this location. Come on, let’s get going.”

  Ann Marie’s face erupted into a smile. Riley could see that she was thrilled to be getting another chance. But she could also tell from the redness around Ann Marie’s eyes that she’d been crying a lot.

  Riley felt a pang of sympathy.

  The poor kid didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, she thought.

  It was small wonder that she was up and ready to go already. She’d probably given up on trying to sleep. Riley only hoped that the rookie would handle herself better today than she had yesterday.

  For both of our sakes.

  With Ann Marie still carrying the food tray, they headed toward their car. As they crossed the parking lot, Riley’s phone buzzed and she pulled it out of her pocket. She sighed to see that the call was from home. At this early hour on a school morning, it was bound to be about some kind of problem.

  When she answered, she heard April’s voice.

  “Mom, Jilly’s being impossible.”

  “What’s the problem?” Riley asked.

  “She insists that I also wear a costume when I take her trick-or-treating tomorrow night.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Riley said.

  “Mom, I’m sixteen years old. Yesterday you said that Jilly was too old to go trick-or-treating. I can’t go walking around the neighborhood in a costume like a kid.”

  When they reached the car, Riley tossed the car keys onto the little food tray, indicating that Ann Marie should drive. Riley climbed into the passenger seat and continued the phone conversation.

  “I don’t see why not,” Riley said. “You wanted to go to a Halloween party. I’m sure you wanted to wear a costume there.”

  “Yeah, but that would be different. I’d be around other kids my age.”

  Riley felt her teeth clench.

  One more word of this and I’ll get a splitting headache, she thought. Gratefully, she reached for the coffee that Ann Marie had just settled into the cup holder. She took a sip before she replied.

  “Mom,” April’s voice protested, “are you still there?”

  “Of course,” Riley snapped. “April, you and your sister have to work this out between yourselves. I just got called in to work, which might mean that a dead body is about to be dug up. That’ll be the second one since yesterday.”

  A brief silence fell.

  “Oh,” April said sheepishly.

  “Now you two girls get ready for school. Gabriela’s surely got breakfast ready for you by now.”

  “OK,” April said.

  Setting up their destination in the vehicle GPS, Ann Marie glanced over at Riley as the call ended.

  “Did I hear you say there might be another body?” Ann Marie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Riley said. “That
’s what we’re on our way to find out.”

  The younger agent pulled the car out of the motel parking lot and followed the GPS directions through Winneway. On the way they both downed coffee and doughnuts. By the time they arrived at the location Sheriff Wightman had spoken of—a parking lot behind Pater High School—Riley felt primed to deal with whatever they might find there.

  The back of the parking lot was already crowded with police vehicles. Several of those vehicles and three cops blocked off part of the parking lot, making sure that nobody came into that area. The guards recognized Riley and Ann Marie and allowed them to pass on through.

  More cops were clustered just off of the paved area, near a row of small trees. From their bright red leaves, Riley realized that they were maples. But since they were only about four feet or so tall, they couldn’t be very old.

  Two cops were energetically digging into the ground around one of the little maples. Several other men stood a few feet away, watching them work. One of those was Sheriff Wightman, who stepped toward Riley and Ann Marie when he saw them arrive.

  “We got this message this morning,” Wightman said, holding out a sheet of paper.

  Like the one they’d seen yesterday, this message was made out of cut-out print letters pasted onto a sheet of paper. It read:

  BLOOD RED FROM THE ROOTS

  THE SAPLING GROWS NICELY NOW.

  ON THE HALLOWED EVE

  GOATMAN WILL SING A NEW SONG.

  “I don’t know what it means,” Wightman added. “But I sure don’t like it.”

  Riley felt her heart sink. The threat to someone’s life on Halloween, tomorrow night, confirmed what she had been expecting. But a sapling with blood red roots was a new image and it didn’t bode well for what they might find here.

  Like the other two messages, this one was attached to a map. Riley saw at a glance that the map showed the school and its environs. The row of trees was clearly visible on the map, and a rectangle was drawn directly over the tree where the digging was now taking place.

  One of the cops looked up from his digging and complained to Wightman, “I don’t see how anybody could have buried anything under here. Are we sure this isn’t like the first time? It’ll be a shame to kill a tree for no good reason.”

  “Just keep digging,” Wightman replied. Then he glanced at Riley and Ann Marie and shook his head.

  “I sure as hell don’t know what to expect,” he grumbled.

  Riley understood just what the sheriff meant. Given the prankish nature of the killer, the cops might well be digging up an empty hole, just like they had a year ago. On the other hand, the words in the message suggested that something sinister could be beneath this small red-leafed tree …

  BLOOD RED FROM THE ROOTS

  Another cop started an electric chain saw and began to gnaw away at some of the exposed roots.

  Riley saw that one of the men who had been standing with the onlookers had turned and begun to pace back and forth in the parking lot.

  “Who is that?” she asked.

  “The school principal,” Wightman replied. “You should meet him.”

  Wightman led Riley and Ann Marie over to the restless man and introduced him as Principal John Cody.

  Wringing his hands, Cody said to Riley and Ann Marie, “Sheriff Wightman told me that you found a dead body yesterday. What do you expect to find here?”

  Rather than try to answer his question, Riley asked, “What can you tell us about this row of maple trees?”

  Cody said, “One of our graduating classes planted them—just a couple of years ago, I believe. Yes, that was the year when …”

  Cody’s voice faded away for a moment, and his eyes widened with alarm.

  “Oh, God,” he said.

  Sheriff Wightman said, “Take it easy, John. We don’t know anything yet.”

  “How long is this going to take?” Cody demanded. “Rumors are already flying around the school. The media is bound to get out here soon. Parents will be asking questions.”

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” Wightman told him. “Just help us keep everybody away from this area.”

  Cody nodded, but he looked more miserable than ever.

  Wightman patted the principal the shoulder, then led Riley and Ann Marie back toward the excavation.

  Speaking quietly, he told them, “Two years ago, the vice principal of this school disappeared without any notice. Yvonne Swenson was her name. Naturally Cody is worried … and to tell the truth, I’m worried too. It never made any sense for that lady to just go off like that, but we never found any trace of her.”

  They heard one of the cops who was digging call out.

  “Hey, Sheriff. You’d better have a look at this.”

  When they got back to the excavation, the little tree had been cut free of its roots and laid to one side. The two cops were staring with horror into the hole they’d been digging.

  Riley saw that they’d exposed what looked like a shoulder bone.

  “Aw, damn,” Sheriff Wightman said.

  Everyone watching fell silent as the two cops continued digging carefully with smaller tools, then just pulled dirt away by the handfuls. Soon a ribcage draped in tattered clothing came into view.

  Even Riley found it an unsettling sight.

  Tree roots had wound between the ribs and continued on into the ground. The body was both penetrated and webbed with a mesh of tendrils. Thus the little tree had truly been blood red from the roots.

  The cops kept scraping dirt away from the macabre remains, and they soon revealed a skeletal hand clutching the battered remnants of a purse. With gloved hands, one cop opened the purse. He reached inside, carefully removed something, and laid it on the ground next to the excavation.

  It was a wallet. When he nudged it open, a driver’s license with a photo and a name was clearly visible.

  Sheriff Wightman leaned down to look at it, then let out a groan of despair.

  “It’s her, all right,” he said. “It’s Yvonne Swenson.”

  “I don’t understand,” a voice behind Riley groaned.

  She saw that Principal Cody had joined them. Now he tottered dizzily, then crouched down to keep from fainting.

  “This doesn’t make any sense.” he murmured, obviously struggling not to burst into tears. “I was here when the students planted this tree. I watched them do it.”

  He squinted at Riley and her colleagues and added, “In fact, Yvonne was here too, helping them plant it. How is this even possible?”

  That’s a good question, Riley realized.

  Then she heard Ann Marie speak up rather shyly.

  “I’ve got kind of a theory about that, if anybody would like to hear it.”

  Riley’s young partner was now crouched beside the body, taking pictures of it like she had with the one yesterday. While even Riley herself felt somewhat startled by the grotesque state of these remains, she saw that Ann Marie’s attitude seemed cool and utterly clinical.

  Ann Marie said to the principal, “I take it the trees were planted before Halloween a couple of years ago?”

  Principal Cody nodded and said, “Yes, two or three days before Halloween, if I remember right.”

  Ann Marie stood up and murmured to Riley and the sheriff, “I don’t think the principal should hear what I’ve got to say.”

  Sheriff Wightman took his cue and asked one of his cops to escort Principal Cody back to his office. He also ordered another cop to call the M.E. and tell him to bring his team to the scene. Then he looked expectantly at Ann Marie.

  The young agent spoke clearly and confidently. “We know the trees were planted just two or three days before Yvonne Swenson disappeared. We also know that the killer doesn’t always bury his victims as soon as he’s murdered them.”

  Riley agreed. “He seems to have frozen Allison Hillis’s body for a while before he actually buried her.”

  Ann Marie nodded and continued, “My guess is that the killer snatched Yvonne on Ha
lloween, maybe killed her right away, but put her in deep freeze—just for a couple of weeks, maybe.”

  Riley was starting to understand what Ann Marie was getting at.

  She said, “The tree would still have still been freshly planted after that amount of time.”

  Ann Marie added, “Yes, digging would still have been easy in the newly turned soil, and the trees would have been just foot-high saplings at that point. The killer might have brought the frozen body back late at night. He could have easily removed the tree, buried the body right here, then replanted the tree above the body.”

  Riley observed, “If he did it skillfully enough, nobody would have noticed that anything here had changed.”

  “Right,” Ann Marie said. “And that would explain how these roots grew down through her remains.”

  Riley nodded slowly and said, “That’s a pretty good theory, Ann Marie.”

  The rookie smiled and went back to snapping pictures.

  Suppressing a bitter sigh, Riley said, “Now we know for sure that we’re dealing with a serial killer. He’s murdered two victims, and unless we stop him, he’ll kill more.”

  Sheriff Wightman said, “I’m afraid things might be even worse than that.”

  Riley saw that Wightman’s face had gone pale from some awful realization.

  He stared at her for a moment, then said, “Come on, let’s head over to the station. I’ll explain it there.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Riley’s apprehension grew as she and Ann Marie followed Sheriff Wightman’s car to the police station. Now that they’d found a second body, this case was obviously much worse than she had first expected. But Wightman’s perspective seemed to be even more dire.

  “I’m afraid things might be even worse than that,” he’d said.

  Riley’s mind boggled at what he might possibly mean. What was so important that he insisted they return to the police station to discuss it?

  When they arrived, she parked their car next to Wightman’s vehicle. As she and Ann Marie got out and followed him toward the building, Riley’s heart sank at what she saw.