Once Craved. Blake Pierce

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СКАЧАТЬ 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?”

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