Once Buried Page 8

  She could hardly believe he’d manipulated her for even this long. She should have seen through him from the very moment she’d set eyes on him. After all, he hardly fit her own instinctive profile of the killer.

  This reptilian man could never have charmed his victims into trusting him.

  She said, “I don’t like being taken for a fool, Mr. Redlich. And I don’t like the way you’ve wasted our time.”

  Redlich’s face twisted into an expression of counterfeit hurt.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Agent Paige.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you do,” Riley said, her voice shaking a little with anger. “You also know that another life is at stake if we don’t find the killer on time. You really get off on this, don’t you?”

  Redlich shrugged.

  “I regret any misunderstanding,” he said. “I thought we were having a rather pleasant conversation. In fact, I—”

  Riley didn’t wait for him to finish his sentence. She stormed back through the house with Bill and Jenn right behind her. When they got outside, Riley was practically hyperventilating with anger and frustration.

  Bill said, “He played us. He played us all along.”

  “He sure did,” Riley said. “And here we are, wasting our time in Williamsburg. What kind of sick bastard gets his kicks playing with life and death like that? I wish to hell we could bring him in for obstruction of justice.”

  “Fat chance of that,” Bill said. “How could we prove it? It would just be our word against his.”

  They had just gotten back to the SUV. Jenn was smiling now.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Jenn said.

  Riley’s spirits quickened. She remembered how Jenn had seemed during the interview—as if she knew something that nobody else did.

  “What do you mean?” Riley asked.

  Jenn reached into her pocket and took out a pocket recorder.

  She pushed a button, and Riley could hear Redlich’s voice loud and clear …

  “Time is of the essence, after all. Literally running out, like sand through your fingers.”

  “Damn!” Bill said. “That’s pretty good evidence! Let’s go back and arrest him.”

  Riley shook her head.

  “We don’t have time. Not right now. He’s not the one we’re looking for.”

  “Okay,” Bill muttered. “But let’s nail him when this whole thing’s over.”

  Riley said, “Jenn, please send me that recording for future reference.”

  “I’ll do that,” Jenn said.

  As she and her colleagues got into the car, she couldn’t help remembering something Redlich had said.

  “Time always wins the battle.”

  As she started the car, she hoped to hell that Redlich was wrong about that.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  As they all got back into the SUV, Riley looked at her watch again.

  She felt a flash of despair as she saw that it was after three o’clock.

  She couldn’t help doing the math in her head.

  There were less than fifteen hours left before this killer would most likely strike again.

  And they were getting nowhere toward catching him. They’d just been wasting precious time.

  It had taken an hour to drive here from Belle Terre, and they’d lost almost two more hours interviewing two irrelevant people in Williamsburg.

  It would take another hour to drive back to Belle Terre.

  But should they drive back to Belle Terre? Was there anything for them to do there that nobody else was already doing?

  The truth was, Riley had no idea what to do now.

  From the passenger seat, Bill asked, “Are you OK, Riley?”

  Riley saw that he was watching her with an expression of concern.

  Do I look that bad? she wondered.

  “I’m just stymied,” she said. “Don’t know where to go next. I’m open to ideas.”

  “I think we should get something to eat,” Bill said.

  Riley stared at him with surprise.

  Bill shrugged and said, “You’re acting like it’s some kind of crazy idea.”

  “Well, it kind of is,” Riley said. “We’re running out of time.”

  Bill said, “Which is why we’ve got to keep ourselves sharp. I haven’t had anything since breakfast. Have you eaten anything at all today?”

  Riley didn’t reply. But she remembered how she’d rushed out of her house that morning with a bagel in her hand after taking a few sips of coffee. That had been many hours ago. She was hungry and groggy. Bill was right. She wouldn’t be able to do her best work if she tried to keep on this way.

  “Food would be OK with me,” Jenn chimed in from the back seat.

  With a sigh, Riley started the car and followed a main road until she found a fast food place. As they all went inside, she said, “I need to check in with Huang and find out what’s going on there.”

  Leaving the others to wait for her burger and coffee, she found a booth and got out her phone. She knew that Craig Huang was now at the Sattler police station running the activities of the BAU team.

  When Huang answered, he asked Riley whether she and her colleagues were having any luck in Williamsburg.

  Riley sighed.

  “We’ve hit not one but two dead ends,” she said. “Please tell me you’ve got some good news.”

  Riley heard Huang clear his throat. Right away she sensed that the answer to her question was no.

  Huang said, “Agent Ridge talked to the medical examiner, who is now positive that both victims died from asphyxiation from being buried alive.”

  Riley drummed her fingers on the table.

  “That’s hardly news,” she said. “What else?”

  “Agent Geraty is still out talking to the people who found the bodies. Agent Whittington interviewed Courtney Wallace’s family, and also her boyfriend. Agent Craft interviewed Todd Brier’s folks. They’re both back, and I’m going over their reports. But it doesn’t look like they found out much.”

  While she listened to Huang, Bill and Jenn arrived with the tray of food. When they passed her burger over to her, Riley realized that she was hungry after all. And even this coffee smelled good.

  Bill and Jenn sat on the other side of the booth. Riley noticed that they seemed to be discussing pictures on Jenn’s cell phone. She was pleased to see them working together.

  Riley asked Huang, “Any connection between the two victims?”

  “None that we’ve been able to find. Todd Brier was a pastor at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Sattler. But it doesn’t sound like Courtney Wallace was the church-going type. She worked as an office manager for a local accounting firm, but Brier used a different accountant. If they knew each other through any other venue, we still don’t know about it.”

  Riley swallowed down a groan of discouragement.

  She said, “Keep at it, Agent Huang. You and your whole team.”

  “We’ll do that,” Huang said.

  “You’d better,” Riley said. “The clock is running.”

  Riley ended the phone call and unwrapped her burger. She took a big bite and then sipped some coffee. Bill and Jenn were both still looking something at on the cell phone.

  She asked. “Have you found something?”

  “Maybe nothing,” Jenn said.

  “Or maybe something,” Bill added. He pushed Jenn’s cell phone across the table toward Riley. The photos on the cell phone were the close-ups they’d taken of the tops of the sand timers. He pointed to the wavy lines carved into the woodwork.

  Bill said, “Agent Roston remembered something that Otis Redlich said about the patterns.”

  Jenn nodded and added, “He talked about basing his own patterns on images of plant life. But these wavy lines don’t look like plants to me. They look more like … well, have you ever noticed what sand looks like on a beach at low tide? It gets rippled just like that.”

  Riley looked at the image closely. She re
membered how the beach at Belle Terre had looked when they were there discussing the body. Jenn was right, it had been rippled just like that.

  “So what does it mean?” Riley asked.

  Jenn shrugged and said, “Well, it’s seeming more and more like our killer has some kind of obsession with sand. He used ordinary beach sand in the glasses, which Ellery Kuhl thought was unusual. She said he might have used it for ‘sentimental reasons.’ One of the victims was buried in sand and the other in very sandy soil.”

  Riley didn’t know what to say.

  In an ordinary case, this might seem like a small but important insight, and worth the time of following up on. But how would anybody follow up on the possibility of an interest in sand?

  And time was exactly the thing they didn’t have much of right now.

  Riley said, “Jenn, I don’t know …”

  Jenn just nodded. Rather abruptly, she excused herself and headed for the restroom.

  Riley sighed as she watched the younger agent walk away. Obviously Jenn had picked up on her lack of enthusiasm.

  Riley said to Bill, “What do you think of her?”

  “Agent Roston, you mean?” Bill asked.

  “Well, she insists that I call her Jenn, and she now calls me Riley.”

  Bill’s face twitched a little. Riley had the odd feeling that she’d just said the wrong thing.

  Bill said, “She’s smart, all right. It was a shrewd move, recording our conversation with Otis Redlich. She’s also got a good eye for detail, as she proved just now. But …”

  Bill’s voice trailed off.

  “But what?” Riley asked.

  “Well, her focus seems to come and go. It’s like she’s got something else on her mind. Is she always like that?”

  Riley shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “On our last case together, she stayed perfectly focused.”

  “Maybe it’s just me,” Bill said.

  Riley didn’t say anything in reply. But the truth was, she had been feeling the same way about Jenn today. She’d sometimes seem to drift away with a far-off look in her eye.

  Riley remembered Jenn’s rather odd visit to her office yesterday, when she’d stood in the doorway and said …

  “Riley, I don’t know whether I should tell you …”

  But Jenn hadn’t told Riley what was on her mind.

  “It’s nothing for you to worry about,” she’d said, and left.

  Now Riley was wondering—maybe it was something she should worry about.

  In the short time since she’d known Jenn, she’d sensed that her new partner harbored some dark secrets. Most likely, those secrets were none of Riley’s business.

  But were they going to start adversely affecting Jenn’s work?

  Other things were starting to worry Riley as well.

  She knew that Bill and Jenn had never worked together and barely knew each other. Although they didn’t seem to dislike each other, they didn’t seem to have hit it off especially well either.

  Bill was pulling himself together now, doing better than he had for a while, and he was obviously eager to get back to work. It wouldn’t be good if he and Jenn wound up at odds with each other.

  On a case as urgent as this one was, a distraction like that would be a disaster.

  As Bill sat quietly finishing his sandwich, Riley wondered if he might be feeling like a bit of a third wheel because she and Jenn already had a pretty good rapport.

  What could Riley do to fix that?

  After years of friendship, she’d long since learned that she could talk to him about anything.

  Maybe I should just ask him how he feels about things, she thought.

  But before she could think of what to say, Jenn came back from the restroom. She seemed to be fully engaged again.

  As soon as she joined them, Jenn said, “I’m wondering whether it’s a waste of time looking for connections between the victims. Isn’t it possible that he chooses his victims purely at random? Have you ever known that to happen?”

  Riley looked at Bill. She could tell that he was thinking of the same case she was.

  Bill said, “Last November we took down a killer named Orin Rhodes. He was a real sadist—shot his victims again and again, making sure they were in tremendous pain before they died. But there wasn’t any real rhyme or reason to how he picked his victims. He just killed whoever was handy.”

  Riley shuddered at the memory.

  “You’re forgetting something, Bill,” she said. “Orin Rhodes did have a specific victim in mind. It was me. I was his ultimate target. He wanted revenge for my killing his girlfriend in a gunfight sixteen years earlier. His killings were meant to draw me out and make me suffer until he could kill me and my family.”

  Jenn looked at Riley sympathetically.

  “I read about that case,” she said. “That must have been hard for you.”

  Riley gulped hard as the horror of that case came back to her. Orin Rhodes had come perilously close to killing April and Riley’s ex-husband, Ryan.

  You’ve got no idea, she thought.

  Then Jenn said, “Still, Orin Rhodes did also choose random victims. So it’s not unheard of. Some overriding purpose or motive or obsession is what really matters to some kinds of killers. In fact, that’s something serial killers all have in common, even when it is focused on specific types of victims.”

  “So our killer is obsessed with sand?” Bill asked.

  “Definitely,” Jenn replied. “But probably most of all with burying people alive.”

  Both Bill and Jenn looked at Riley expectantly.

  Again, Riley didn’t know what to say. It was a good insight, she couldn’t deny that.

  But how were they going to make use of it in the time they had left? How could they research records for anyone who had ever been traumatized by sand? Or who had reason to obsess about being buried alive? That kind of thing probably wouldn’t even be in any records.

  She wasn’t concerned about making Walder’s silly six p.m. deadline. But she was getting very worried about stopping the next early-morning murder.

  Before Riley could think things through, her cell phone rang. Her heart jumped when she saw that the call was from Chief Belt.

  When she answered, she put the call on speakerphone so that Bill and Jenn could listen in.

  “What have you got?” she said.

  “A real break, I hope,” Belt said, sounding quite excited. “A local woman, Hope Reitman, just came into the station here in Sattler. She says she was jogging on that beach around the time of the murder. She hadn’t thought she’d seen anything, which is why she hadn’t contacted us earlier. In fact, she hadn’t realized how close she’d been to the scene of the murder. She thought it had happened someplace else.”

  “And?” Riley asked.

  “Well, when she went out for her run, she saw a man putting a big sand timer among Rags Tucker’s stuff at about the time in question. She hadn’t thought anything about it at the time. Lots of people bring odds and ends to Tucker’s wigwam, including her. But when she heard on the news about how the killer had left sand timers at the murder sites, she came right here to tell us about it.”

  Riley felt a tingle of excitement.

  “Where is she right now?” she asked.

  “Right here in the station, working with a composite sketch artist. We should have a facial image to work with pretty soon.”

  Riley looked at Jenn and Bill and sensed that they shared her excitement.

  She said to Chief Belt, “We’re on our way back right now. We should be there in an hour.”

  As soon as Riley ended the call, she, Jenn, and Bill sprang to their feet and headed out to the SUV. None of them spoke, but Riley knew that they were all getting their hopes up.

  How could they help it?

  They were finally getting a break in this case.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  There was a feeling of excitement in the stuffy air of the little
conference room when Riley and her colleagues arrived. Chief Belt had called his own cops and other members of the FBI team together in the Sattler police station. The meeting was already in progress.

  Chief Belt got up from his chair at the end of the table.

  He said, “Agents Paige, Jeffreys, Roston—you got here just in time! I think we’ve got something.”

  Projected on a screen behind Belt was a composite sketch of a youngish man. Riley guessed it was the drawing that had been made from the eyewitness’s description.

  Chief Belt said to one of the cops sitting at the table, “Officer Goodner, bring the agents up to speed on what you just told us.”

  Goodner was a young police officer with a roundish face. Riley recognized him as one of the cops who’d been at the beach.

  “The sketch looks to me like Grant Carson. He’s an ill-tempered creep that I recognized from a previous encounter.” With a smirk, he turned to another cop and asked, “And you remember him too, right, Bryant?”

  Bryant was middle-aged and balding. Riley had also seen him at the beach.

  “I sure do,” Bryant said. “He’s been in and out of trouble since he was a kid—shoplifting, vandalism, getting into fights, public intoxication, cruelty to animals …”

  That last detail really caught Riley’s attention. Killers often spent their early years mistreating animals. It was a well-known warning sign.

  Bryant continued, “Goodner and I busted him for burglary some four or five years ago. And you’re right, Goodner, he wasn’t pleasant about it.”

  Chief Belt scratched his chin and looked carefully at the face on the screen.

  “I think I remember him too,” Belt said. “Yeah, he was convicted of one count of Class Three felony burglary. The last I heard, he was serving a five-year sentence.”

  “He got paroled a few months back,” Goodner said. “He’s in vocational rehab now, working at Droullard Building Company as a carpenter.”

  A carpenter! Riley thought.

  After all, the killer was almost certainly skilled at woodwork. Could the identification be right?

  She told herself not to get her hopes up.