Riley and her colleagues were soon on the road making the two-hour trip from Barnwell, Illinois, to Allardt, Indiana. Bill was driving, and Jenn was sitting beside him in the front passenger seat.
Riley sat behind them trying to keep herself occupied, doing her best to push last night’s ugly dream out of her mind.
She exchanged text messages with the chief of police in Allardt, alerting him to their upcoming visit. Then she studied Bull Cullen’s report of his interview with Fern Bruder’s family in Allardt. He’d sent it to her last night at her request. According to Cullen, the family didn’t have any idea why their daughter had been murdered, or by whom.
Cullen’s report struck Riley as perfectly thorough and competent, and it was entirely possible that she and her colleagues weren’t going to learn anything else from the victim’s family. But Riley knew better than to leave any stone unturned.
Words still rang in her mind …
“Do your goddamn job.”
She also studied official reports of the first killing, searching for any variations between the two murders. It was an important consideration. Contradictory details might support their “copycat” theory, that either Chase Fisher or his wife’s lover had deliberately imitated the earlier murder.
But Riley soon realized that she simply couldn’t tell one way or the other. Grisly photos of the first murder were circulating all over the Internet. Reporters and gawkers had apparently gotten past the barriers that the local police had set up to close off that crime scene. A would-be copycat could find all the information he needed online. It wouldn’t be at all difficult to duplicate the first murder quite precisely.
While Riley was poring over this information, she listened to Bill and Jenn chatter away as Bill drove. He was telling Jenn stories about Riley herself. Riley had to admit that some of them were hilarious. Bill regaled Jenn about Riley’s more outrageous detective methods, and the many times she’d been taken off a case, or suspended, or fired. Jenn laughed and laughed, thoroughly amused by it all.
Riley felt embarrassed, of course, and she half-wished that Bill would keep his mouth shut about her. Still, she couldn’t help but be pleased that Bill and Jenn were finally starting to hit it off. During the last case the three of them had worked on together, Bill hadn’t been entirely confident about Jenn.
Maybe we’ll wind up making a good team, she thought.
At the same time, she couldn’t help but worry about when or if something in Jenn’s dark past was going to catch up with her.
If it did, was Riley going to wind up in trouble along with her?
After all, Riley was already covering for her.
And what about Bill, who knew nothing about Jenn’s involvement with the sinister Aunt Cora? Would he wind up in trouble as well?
Riley wished she could get Jenn alone and ask what had been bothering her yesterday. But so far there had been no opportunity, not with Bill around.
And that was what made Riley most uncomfortable—not being completely open with Bill. In all their years together, they’d always been able to confide in each other completely. Was that no longer true?
And was it Riley’s own fault?
Riley’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Bill’s voice.
“We’re just entering Allardt.”
Riley looked up to inspect the areas they passed through. Allardt had upscale neighborhoods that must be populated by commuters, which she understood to be true of all stops on the train lines from Chicago. But they soon drove past those, into an older district that must have been in place long before the affluent sections came into being.
This part looked like a perfectly ordinary Midwestern town, with bungalows and ranch-style houses and old buildings. None of it looked especially prosperous, and they passed through a poor area on their way downtown. Poverty seemed to be creeping in, and some businesses were boarded up.
Riley also saw graffiti here and there. Gangs had obviously found their way into Allardt, as they had into too many American small towns in recent years.
And Riley knew that gangs meant drugs, and drugs meant despair.
Riley remembered what Chase Fisher had said about Barnwell—that it had been ranked the third most boring town to live in.
She wondered what list Allardt might top.
When they reached the police station, Bill parked their car in front of it and they all went inside. They identified themselves and were promptly taken to Chief Bryce Dolby’s office.
Of course, the chief had been expecting them, and he greeted them pleasantly and offered them seats.
“Such an awful thing about what happened to Fern Bruder,” he said. “I hated to hear that it happened again over in Barnwell. A serial killer! We don’t get that kind of thing here in Allardt.”
Chief Dolby immediately struck Riley as a kindly man. But his face looked tired, and she guessed that he was younger than he actually looked. She was used to that sort of weary expression on the faces of big-city cops, who routinely saw too much of violence and the worst in human nature. But in her experience, small-town cops usually looked much more cheerful and light-hearted.
He continued, “I wish I could be of more help to you about all this. My people and I are out of our depth with this kind of case. The truth is, I haven’t got a single shred of information that might help you.”
“That’s understandable,” Riley said. “The fact that a murder happened here doesn’t make it a local case. The killer might be absolutely anywhere. That’s why we’ve been called in.”
Chief Dolby drummed his fingers on his desk.
He said, “I understand that you want to re-interview Fern Bruder’s family. I called them to let them know you’d be paying them a visit this morning. They’ll be expecting you.”
He paused for a moment, then added, “If it’s all right with you, I’d just as soon not come with you.”
Riley was surprised.
“Why not?” she asked.
“I went there with Deputy Chief Cullen just the other day. One visit to Weston Bruder—Fern’s dad—will hold me for a while. I hadn’t seen him lately, and I’d rather not see him again until I absolutely have to.”
He smiled slightly and added, “I guess that sounds rather petty of me. The truth is, we just don’t like each other very much.”
Riley looked at him carefully and asked, “Anything we should know about?”
“It’s personal, nothing for you to worry about.”
Riley couldn’t help but feel uneasy about what Dolby might be leaving unsaid.
She asked, “How do people feel about him generally here in Allardt?”
Chief Dolby knitted his brow. Riley sensed that he was trying to choose his words carefully.
“Well, it depends on who you talk to,” he said. “Some folks will tell you that Weston Bruder is one of the town’s finest citizens, a good Christian and a pillar of the community. But other folks …”
He shrugged.
“I don’t want to speak ill of him,” he said. “And anyway, it doesn’t matter—not for your purposes.”
Riley wasn’t sure why, but she wished Dolby would tell them more. But what was the point of asking? She and her colleagues weren’t here to indulge in small-town gossip. They were here to solve a murder case.
As they left the station and got back into the car, Riley felt apprehensive.
It already seemed obvious to her that Allardt fell far short of being a quaint and charming Midwestern town. And she sensed that she and her colleagues were about to get a lesson in what was wrong with it deep down.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sitting in the back seat again as Bill drove across the town of Allardt, Riley kept wondering …
Just who is this Weston Bruder?
Chief Dolby had expressed a definite aversion to the father of the first victim.
She told herself that must be the reason for her own bad gut feeling about him.