Taking, p.12
Taking, page 12
She finally decided …
Maybe it’s time to clear the air.
She took a deep breath and said …
“Agent Crivaro, I don’t understand why you wanted me to make that phone call to Brett’s mother.”
“You don’t?” Crivaro replied.
“No. There was nothing to learn from her. And it was a really tough call to make—emotionally, I mean. Both she and I felt lousy by the end of it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Crivaro said.
Riley felt sure she heard a note of sarcasm in his voice.
She swallowed hard and said …
“I can’t help wondering …”
But she stopped without finishing her thought.
“Wondering what?” Crivaro said, glancing at her. “Wondering if it was maybe some kind of punishment for how you’d screwed up yesterday?”
Riley was startled.
She said, “Yeah, that’s exactly what I was wondering. That, and whether you’re through with me, and you’re just trying to get me to quit and go home. If that’s what you’ve got in mind, I wish you’d just fire me and get it over with. Because until you do, I’m just going to hang around and be a pain in the ass.”
Crivaro shook his head and said, “So you didn’t find out anything new from the mother.”
“No. And I think you knew perfectly well that I wouldn’t.”
Crivaro chuckled a little and said, “Are you sure you didn’t find out anything?”
“What was there to find out?” Riley asked.
“That’s what I’m asking you,” Crivaro said. “Are you absolutely sure you ended that call without knowing anything you didn’t know before?”
Riley replayed some of the painful conversation in her mind.
She remembered Mrs. Parma asking Riley about her daughter.
“Can you tell me why she went away like that?”
It had struck Riley as such a strange, sad, and desperate question. And yet somehow she felt as though she had known the answer.
She gathered her thoughts and said to Crivaro …
“I guess I learned … that Brett Parma was unhappy with her life. She was very nearly estranged from her mother, and she was bored with North Platte. She’d lived there all her life, but she felt like a stranger. She felt like she was all alone, even with people she’d always known. She didn’t feel close to anybody anymore. She wondered if she ever would again.”
Crivaro chuckled again and said, “Well, that sounds like something. I find it pretty interesting.”
“Why?” Riley said. “Brett was murdered by a serial killer, someone who murdered his first victim in Colorado. Brett barely knew him, if she knew him at all. Her life back in North Platte and everybody she knew and grew up with there—all that stuff is pretty irrelevant. It’s got nothing to do with how she died.”
Crivaro shrugged and said, “If you say so.”
“Well, don’t you think so too?” Riley asked.
“How should I know?” Crivaro said. “You’re the one who can figure it out—or can’t.”
Riley stared at him with her mouth hanging open. The way he was speaking in riddles was frustrating her to no end. She wondered—had he figured out something she ought to have figured out herself by now?
Crivaro said in a stern voice, “Just remember—a murder case is like a living organism. It’s all of a piece, and everything about it is connected to everything else. It’s up to you to find out how. Sometimes even what seem to be blind alleys can lead you somewhere important. Then again, sometimes they don’t. Either way, you’ve got to follow wherever they lead you.”
Riley sat staring out the window, trying to make sense of what he was telling her. Whatever it was, maybe it would dawn on her later on. Meanwhile, she felt some relief that he was going to the trouble of teasing her along this way. He was acting like a mentor again …
Not like someone who wants to get rid of me.
She wondered how long it would last.
*
After a couple of hours of driving, Riley and Crivaro pulled off the freeway. Following the directions Crivaro had gotten from the Phoenix office, they wound their way up a smaller road. Riley knew they’d arrived at their destination when they came to a roadblock with a cluster of vehicles parked just beyond it.
A small camper was also parked there—the victim’s camper, Riley guessed. It was a good bit smaller than the one Riley and Crivaro had rented, but it looked shiny and new.
Riley and Crivaro got out of their car, walked past the roadblock, and ducked under a line of yellow police tape. That attracted the attention of a uniformed cop who emerged from between the parked vehicles.
He yelled at them, “Hey, can’t you see the tape? No tourists allowed through here right now!”
Crivaro pulled out his badge and introduced himself, and so did Riley.
The cop looked skeptical. He reached for Jake’s badge and said, “Lemme see that.”
Crivaro yanked the badge away from him, looking incredulous that anyone would doubt its authenticity.
Riley smiled a little.
Crivaro seemed to have forgotten that they were both still dressed like vacationers, in T-shirts, shorts, and sandals.
I guess our cover’s pretty convincing after all, she thought.
The cop who’d stopped them didn’t move aside, but another uniformed officer appeared behind him and yelled, “Hey, Arlo, what’s the matter with you? If they say they’re FBI, they’re really FBI. The chief is expecting them.”
Still looking annoyed, Arlo finally stepped out of their way. The friendlier cop led Riley and Crivaro past the police cars and the medical examiner’s van. Riley noticed a terrified-looking man and woman sitting in the back of one of the police cars. Riley guessed they were the couple who’d found the body.
She and Crivaro followed the cop past a sign that read TRANSEPT TRAIL. As they walked onto the trail, the cop pointed out a few boot prints that went both ways along the trail—the killer’s own footprints, Riley assumed.
“We got lucky,” the cop said. “Rained a little last night. Maybe we can get something from these.”
As the three of them stepped carefully around the prints, Riley looked at the prints closely. She figured the man must have left these when he’d brought the body out here after the rain. Just like at Phoenix, he’d committed the actual murder elsewhere. Any other footprints seem to have been washed away.
The boot prints looked perfectly ordinary, so Riley didn’t think they’d get much useful information from them. She guessed the man to be of average height. Although the trail wasn’t the least bit challenging, he must have been fairly strong to carry the body along here without stumbling.
The cop led them a short way along the trail and up a slight rise. On the flat area at the top, several people were standing under a tarp that had been set up to protect the crime scene.
A uniformed man wearing an outback hat stepped forward to meet them, and Riley and Crivaro produced their badges again.
The man nodded and introduced himself as Trevor Wilson, Sedona’s chief of police. He introduced Riley and Crivaro to Jay Faulkner, the county medical examiner.
Chief Wilson said, “I take it we’re dealing with a serial killer.”
“Yeah, that’s why we’re here,” Crivaro replied.
Wilson shook his head and said, “Not to sound callous, but that’s the last thing we need in a tourist town like this. I hope we can put a stop to it soon.”
“We’ll do what we can,” Crivaro said. “What do you know so far?”
“She was Shelby Eden from Phoenix,” Wilson told him. “She’d been staying at the Spring View Campground right here in Sedona. Not much more than that. Cards in her wallet identified her with a thing called Eden Financial Services in Phoenix. When we called there, we were told she was no longer connected with that company. Seems her ex-husband is in charge. We haven’t reached him yet.”
As Crivaro and Wilson discussed the possibility of the ex-husband being implicated, Riley gazed down at the body. The victim lay sprawled carelessly, untouched by scavengers this time, and for a moment Riley found it hard to believe she was really dead. It looked more as though an actor had been hired to lie here and play the part of a corpse—an actor who had put on some kind of pale body paint that made her skin look almost like white porcelain. Riley wondered …
Was Shelby Eden unhappy with her life? Was she as eager to get away as Brett Parma had been? Is that what tied the two victims together?
It didn’t feel right somehow. There must be something else.
An eerie feeling came over Riley as she looked away from the porcelain body and up at their surroundings. The whole setup seemed unreal. In the distance impressive buttes and reddish sandstone boulders stood out against an intense blue sky. In the area where the woman lay dead the trail widened out to form a sort of stone platform, almost like a big altar with the body at its center.
Remembering the name of the trail, Riley asked Wilson …
“Why is this called Transept Trail?”
Wilson pointed and explained …
“It’s because of the way the path here intersects with the ridge to form a kind of cross shape, like the transept of a church.”
Looking intrigued, Crivaro asked, “Is there anything special or significant about this spot?”
Wilson shrugged and said, “Not that I know of. But I wouldn’t take my word for it. New Agers are always finding supposed power spots and mini-vortexes and such around Sedona, places where they go to meditate—places with shamanic qualities, they’ll try to tell you. For all I know, this might be one of those spots. But if that’s what it is, not many people know about it, or I’d have heard of it.”
Riley got an eerie tingling feeling as she realized …
Yes, this is one of those spots.
And suddenly she felt a strong sense of the killer’s presence.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A powerful sense of connection with the killer swept over Riley, so strong it made her take a few steps back. She wondered if this could really be some kind of “power spot.”
Then she reminded herself sternly…
There’s nothing mystical about this.
It was like Crivaro had told her yesterday.
“This isn’t magic, and it isn’t mind-reading or anything psychic.”
What she was good at was telling herself a story—a story that had a good chance of bearing a strong resemblance to what had really happened.
That’s what I’ve got to do now, she thought.
Tell a story.
She heard Crivaro chattering with the chief and the ME. She was glad nobody seemed to be paying much attention to her right now. She could slip into a reverie without anybody noticing.
She took a deep breath and pictured what this place must have looked like last night, possibly not long after sunset.
It wouldn’t have been completely dark.
Back at the Wren’s Nest Campground last night, she’d noticed a bright full moon in the sky. But the cop had just said it had rained here some, which meant there must have been clouds as well.
Riley retraced her steps back down the trail a bit, then started walking toward the altar-like spot again, taking in the view just as the killer must have done. She felt sure that he’d known he’d find the woman here. Somehow, he’d been stalking her and knew she was going to be taking this hike alone …
He feels a deep satisfaction as he spots her, sitting there meditating silently in the moonlight. All he has to do now was take care not to alarm her—and to thoroughly win her trust.
He knows it will be easy to do.
He walks beside her and says in a gentle voice …
“Do you mind if I join you?”
The woman opens her eyes and looks at him—startled at first, but then pleased.
She says, “I didn’t expect anybody else to be here.”
He chuckles a little and says, “Neither did I. Strange, isn’t it?”
She looks at him silently for a moment with an expression of keen interest.
She shyly asks, “Are you … another seeker?”
He nods and flashes his most charming smile.
“Of course,” he says. “Why else would I be here?”
Her eyes are glittering in the moonlight. He senses that he is working a rarer spell on her than he’d expected. She obviously knows that their meeting here can’t be coincidence. Of course she has no idea of what had really brought him here. Instead, she seems to think that more spiritual forces are involved, that they might even be …
Soul mates.
The idea amuses him.
Yes, everything is going perfectly.
She pats the ground next to her and says …
“Please, do sit down, let’s meditate together.”
He sits down next to her cross-legged and closes his eyes. After a few moments, he opens his eyes again and looks at her sitting there.
Her eyes are still closed and she has a rapt and tranquil expression on her face.
He, too, feels joyfully calm, although for very different reasons.
He is imagining her fear and agony as the blood pours out of her wrists.
He is imagining how exquisitely pale she’ll look when she is dead.
Just then he feels a few sprinkles of water.
It’s starting to rain, he realizes.
The woman’s eyes snap open.
“Oh!” she says with a gasp. “I guess we’d better get out of the rain!”
They both laugh as they jump to their feet and hurry back along the path the way they’d come. He puts his arm around her as they go—which doesn’t keep off the rain, of course, but she seems to enjoy the gesture. She trusts him completely.
Yes, he knows that’s the secret of his success …
Trust.
Riley yanked herself out of her reverie as that word echoed through her head …
Trust.
Something was starting to come together in her mind now. She remembered what Crivaro had said when he’d nagged her about her phone call to Brett Parma’s mother.
“Are you sure you didn’t find out anything?”
Indeed, she had found out something, although it hadn’t occurred to her that it was important at the time. She’d found out that Brett was unhappy and bored and felt alienated from people she’d known since she was a child. She was going through a bitter time in her life, and she probably wasn’t inclined to trust people.
And yet …
She’d apparently trusted the killer enough for him to abduct her and kill her, perhaps without a lot of effort.
And so had the woman who was lying here right now.
She thought about saying so to Crivaro, but he was still busy talking with the Sedona police chief and the county ME. Instead, Riley walked over to the body and crouched down for a better look at it.
Again, she was struck by how different this body looked from the one she’d seen in the morgue back in Stover. Brett Parma’s body had been so horribly mangled after her death that Riley had felt distracted from the wounds that had actually killed her.
But that wasn’t the case with this woman. The cause of death was easy to see. Her clothes were stained with the blood that had spurted from her forearms, which bore the same wild wounds as the other two victims. The ground underneath her was startlingly pristine, showing no sign that she’d done any serious bleeding here.
Now Riley found herself staring at the woman’s hands. The nails were torn and the knuckles cut and bruised. She knew that the other corpses had similar wounds, but Riley hadn’t given them much thought before.
But now …
Riley shuddered as she flashed back to last night’s nightmare. She remembered her horror when she realized she was bleeding from her own wrists. Then she’d found herself in a dark, tight space, clawing away at four walls …
She gasped aloud as she realized …
That’s exactly what happened to this victim.
She walked over to Crivaro and interrupted his conversation by touching him on the arm.
“Agent Crivaro, I think I know something about how the victim died.”
Crivaro turned and looked at her with interest.
She said, “She bled to death in a small room—a really, really small room. An extremely tight space.”
Crivaro squinted at her curiously. For a moment, Riley worried that he considered this to be a trivial detail.
Then Crivaro said to the medical examiner, “Do you know Paco Arau, the ME down in Stover?”
Faulkner nodded and said, “Yeah, Paco and I are good pals.”
Crivaro scratched his chin and said, “Well, Paco will be examining whatever he finds under Brett Parma’s fingernails—hairs, fibers, any other kind of materials. I want you to do the same with this corpse and then get in touch with Paco and compare notes. And also compare whatever the two of you find with the information we’ve got about the victim in Colorado. If you need any help, let me know, and I’ll get some FBI forensics experts to work with you.”
“I’ll do that,” Faulkner said, then glanced at the corpse and added, “If it’s OK with you, I’d like my team to take the body to the morgue now. It’s been outdoors long enough.”
“Go ahead and do that,” Crivaro said.
Crivaro fell silent for a moment. Riley could tell he was mulling over an idea.
Then he said to Riley and the police chief, “Come on, let’s go back to the road.”
The three of them walked back to where the vehicles were parked. Riley noticed the distraught-looking couple was still sitting in the police car. Crivaro pointed down to some tire tracks and said to Chief Wilson …
“I take it you found these tracks when you got here.”
Wilson nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been careful to keep them from being disturbed. My bet is they’re from the perpetrator’s vehicle. It looks like it pulled out of here after the rain stopped. I don’t think you’ll get a lot of information from these tracks, though. The treads are pretty pristine, no distinguishing marks or flaws that I can see.”
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