Once Craved. Blake Pierce

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СКАЧАТЬ “I wasn’t positive. Mostly I was eager to get someone good on the case. But what did you see that made up your mind?”

      “There are other ledges that look just like the one he pushed this body over,” she explained. “He used one of those other drop-offs before, and that body sank just like it was supposed to. But maybe he couldn’t find the same spot this time. Or maybe he thought this was the same spot. Anyway, he expected the same result this time. He was wrong.”

      Bill said, “I told you she’d find something there.”

      “Divers will need to search this lake,” Riley added.

      “That will take some doing,” Holbrook said.

      “It’s got to be done anyway. There’s another body down there somewhere. You can count on it. I don’t know how long it’s been there, but it’s there.”

      She paused, mentally assessing what all this said about the killer’s personality. He was competent and capable. This wasn’t a pathetic loser, like Eugene Fisk. He was more like Peterson, the killer who had captured and tormented both her and April. He was shrewd and poised, and he thoroughly enjoyed killing – a sociopath rather than a psychopath. Above all else, he was confident.

      Maybe too confident for his own good, Riley thought.

      It might well prove to be his downfall.

      She said, “The guy we’re looking for isn’t some criminal lowlife. My guess is he’s an ordinary citizen, reasonably well-educated, maybe with a wife and family. Nobody who knows him thinks he’s a killer.”

      Riley watched Holbrook’s face as they talked. Although she now knew something about the case she hadn’t known before, Holbrook still struck her as utterly impenetrable.

      The helicopter circled over the FBI building. Twilight had fallen and the area below was well lighted.

      “Look there,” Bill said, pointing out the window.

      Riley looked down where he pointed. She was surprised to see that from here the rock garden looked like a gigantic fingerprint. It spread out beneath them like a welcome sign. Some offbeat landscaper had decided that this image arranged out of stone was better suited for the new FBI building than a planted garden would have been. Hundreds of substantial stones had been carefully placed in curving rows to create the ridged illusion.

      “Wow,” Riley said to Bill. “Whose fingerprint do you suppose they used? Someone legendary, I guess. Dillinger, maybe?”

      “Or maybe John Wayne Gacy. Or Jeffrey Dahmer.”

      Riley thought it a strange spectacle. On the ground, no one would ever guess that the arrangement of stones was anything more than a meaningless maze.

      It struck her almost as a sign and a warning. This case was going to demand that she view things from a new and unsettling perspective. She was about to probe regions of darkness that not even she had imagined.

      Chapter Nine

      The man enjoyed watching streetwalkers. He liked how they grouped on the corner and pranced up and down the sidewalks, mostly in pairs. He found them to be much feistier than call girls and escorts, prone to easily losing their temper.

      For example, right now, he saw one cursing a bunch of uncouth young guys in a slow-moving vehicle for taking her picture. The man didn’t blame her one bit. After all, she was here to do business, not to serve as scenery.

      Where’s their respect? he thought with a smirk. Kids these days.

      Now the guys were laughing at her and yelling obscenities. But they couldn’t match her colorful retorts, some of them in Spanish. He liked her style.

      He was slumming tonight, parked along a row of cheap motels where streetwalkers gathered. The other girls were less vivacious than the one who had done the cursing. Their attempts at sexiness looked awkward by comparison, and their come-ons were crude. As he watched, one hiked up her skirt to show her skimpy underpants to the driver of a slowly passing car. The driver didn’t stop.

      He kept his eye on the girl who had first drawn his attention. She was stomping around indignantly, complaining to the other girls.

      The man knew he could have her if he wanted her. She could be his next victim. All he had to do to get her attention was to drive along the curb toward her.

      But no, he wouldn’t do that. He never did that. He’d never approach a hooker on the street. It was up to her to approach him. It was the same even with whores he met through a service or a brothel. He’d get them to meet him alone somewhere separately without ever asking directly. It would seem like their idea.

      With some luck, the feisty girl would notice his expensive car and trot right on over. His car was wonderful bait. So was the fact that he dressed well.

      But however the night ended, he had to be more careful than last time. He’d been sloppy, dropping her body over that ledge and expecting her to sink.

      And such a stir she had created! An FBI agent’s sister! And they’d called in big guns from Quantico. He didn’t like it. He wasn’t out for publicity or fame. All he wanted to do was indulge his cravings.

      And didn’t he have every right? What healthy adult man didn’t have his cravings?

      Now they were going to send divers down in the lake to look for bodies. He knew what they might find there, even after some three years. He didn’t like that at all.

      It wasn’t just out of concern for himself. Oddly, he felt bad for the lake. Having divers probe and poke into its every submerged nook and cranny struck him as rather obscene and invasive, an inexcusable violation. After all, the lake hadn’t done anything wrong. Why should it be harassed?

      Anyway, he wasn’t worried. There was no way they were going to trace either victim back to him. It simply wasn’t going to happen. He was through with that lake, though. He hadn’t yet decided where to deposit his next victim, but he was sure he would come to a decision before the night was over.

      Now the vivacious girl was looking at his car. She started walking toward him, with lots of sass in her step.

      He rolled down the passenger window and she poked her head in. She was a dark-skinned Latina, heavily made-up with thick lip liner, colorful eye shadow, and fierce arched eyebrows that seemed to be tattoos. Her earrings were big gold-painted crucifixes.

      “Nice car,” she said.

      He smiled.

      “What’s a nice girl like you doing out so late?” he asked. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

      “Maybe you’d like to tuck me in,” she said, smiling.

      Her teeth struck him as remarkably clean and straight. Indeed, she looked remarkably healthy. That was pretty rare out here on the streets, where most of the girls were “tweakers,” in various stages of meth addiction.

      “I like your style,” he said. “Very chola.”

      Her smile broadened. He could see that she took being called a Latina gangbanger as a compliment.

      “What’s your name?” he asked.

      “Socorro.”

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