He squinted as he remembered.
“But before I could get out, Weston Bruder stood up and pointed at me and told the whole congregation I was one of them. Before I knew it, a crowd of folks was blocking my way, and Pastor Brayman was calling on me to repent my ways. I’d already been judged, he said, which was why I’d lost my leg, but it wasn’t too late to save my soul. I had a hell of a time getting away from there without banging up any of the congregation. And ever since then, I’ve never had much good to say about Weston Bruder, nor he about me.”
He paused for a moment.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a religious man. I found another church that really helped me through my rough times. But I sure never went back to the Ephesian Elders.”
Riley thought hard and fast, trying to assess what she was hearing.
She asked, “How did you wind up giving the keychain to Fern?”
He smiled a little at the memory.
“I was on a train a couple of weeks ago, coming home from a trip to Chicago, when she happened to be in the same car with me. She came right over to me, said how sorry she’d always felt about what had happened to me, and how she had quit going to that church right then. She’d never go back, she said, no matter what her father said.”
His eyes moistened.
“Imagine that!” he said, his voice choking a little. “She defied her whole family, her father especially. And all on account of what had happened to me. Right at that moment she seemed like the nicest human being in the world. I didn’t have anything on me to give her except this cheap little thing, but I figured it was better than nothing.”
He hung his head and added sadly, “And now she’s dead. I just don’t know what to make of it. What kind of a world is this, anyway?”
Riley remembered something Weston Bruder had said about his daughter.
“She’d been straying away from us lately.”
Riley felt a pang of pity at the terrible irony. Fern Bruder had good reason to want to get away from Allardt and make a life for herself in Chicago. But she had lost her life during her efforts to do that.
She also remembered the sadness in little Bobby’s face. As young as he was, he wanted to get away too. Fern seemed to have given him the keychain as a gesture of hope. But who did he have to turn to now that his big sister was gone?
She knew that Red Messer had every reason to wonder …
“What kind of a world is this, anyway?”
It was a question that haunted Riley every day.
Red Messer held out the trinket toward Riley.
“I guess you’ll want this back,” he said.
Riley thought quickly. Was it of any use as evidence?
No, she was sure that it wasn’t—as sure as she was that Red Messer wasn’t the killer.
“Keep it,” she said.
Messer smiled and tucked the keychain into his bathrobe pocket.
Before anybody could say anything else, Riley’s cell phone buzzed. She saw that the call was from Sam Flores, the head technician back at Quantico.
“I’ve got to take this,” she said, getting up from her chair.
Then she said something that she hadn’t expected to say when she’d arrived here.
“We’re all very sorry for your loss, Mr. Messer.”
Riley went out into the hall, leaving Jenn and Bill to wrap things up with Red Messer.
When she got Sam Flores on the line, she asked, “What have you got, Flores?”
The technician sounded excited.
“I think maybe I’ve found a person of interest.”
Riley almost gasped with excitement.
“You mean a suspect?”
“No, but maybe the next best thing.”
Sam paused and added, “I may have found the killer’s next victim.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Riley gripped the phone tightly, excited by what Flores had just said.
“The next victim?” she asked. “What do you mean?”
“My team and I have been monitoring the Internet, looking for any activity that might have to do with the case. There’s a lot of buzz online about the murders right now. Of course, we’ve run across the usual crackpots with crazy theories, including a couple of guys claiming to be the killer. Don’t worry, we checked them out, they’re just asshole trolls. But …”
Flores fell silent for a moment.
“There’s a woman on Facebook named Joanna Rohm. She’s been posting that she’s scared she’ll be the next victim. She could be just another crackpot, but …”
Flores paused again.
“I don’t know, Agent Paige. I’ve just got a feeling about what I see here on her page. Maybe the threat is imaginary, but the fear seems genuine.”
Riley knew from experience that Flores’s instincts were very good.
“Where does she live?” she asked.
“In Chicago. I’ve already run down her address and phone.”
Riley gasped a little. Maybe this wasn’t going to be a wasted trip after all. She decided to check Joanna Rohm’s Facebook page herself as soon as she got a chance.
“Send that information to me, Flores,” she said. “But what about the two victims’ cell phones? Have you found anything helpful?”
“Not a thing,” Sam said. “Fern Bruder just communicated with friends and family, nobody suspicious.”
“What about Reese Fisher?” she asked Flores. “Her husband thought she had a lover in Chicago.”
“I know,” Flores said. “But if she did we see no sign of that on her cell phone. She didn’t use hers much at all for calling or texting. I guess she used it mostly to connect to the Internet and use GPS and such.”
Riley thanked Flores and ended the call just as Jenn and Bill came out of the apartment.
“Come on,” she said to her colleagues. “We’ve got a train to catch.”
*
A short time later, Riley and her colleagues were in a coach class car on an hour-long train trip to Chicago. Riley told them about the call from Flores, and they all huddled together as Riley opened her laptop and went online.
Riley logged into Facebook, then searched for the name Joanna Rohm. She found her page immediately.
Her horizontal cover photo was a view of Chicago’s skyline as seen from Lake Michigan. Her profile image was actually an old photograph of a familiar male face, with a quote superimposed over it:
“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
Riley didn’t recognize the quote, and couldn’t quite place the face in the picture.
She asked, “Does anybody know who that is?”
Jenn was the first to speak up. “That’s Oscar Wilde,” she said. “The quote is from The Critic as Artist.”
Riley glanced at her younger colleague. She remembered what Jenn had said a little while ago …
“I was encouraged to read a lot when I was a kid.”
Riley was impressed. Whatever criminal skills Jenn had learned from Aunt Cora, she had obviously gotten a good education along the way.
Riley wasn’t especially surprised that the photo wasn’t of Joanna Rohm herself. Riley had several friends who posted sayings or images for their profile pictures instead of photos of themselves.
Bill pointed to the first post on the page. It simply read …
I’m scared for my life.
Bill said, “I guess that’s what Flores was talking about.”
Riley glanced down the comments thread.
A friend asked …
Why?
An exchange continued between Joanna Rohm and her friends.
Have you heard about the railroad killings in Indiana and Illinois?
Yes.
I think I’m the next intended victim.
Why do you think that?
Riley could see from the thread that Joanna wouldn’t say exactly why she was afraid. And when her friends suggested that she notify the police, she said she didn’t want to, and that she had her own reasons. The thread petered out due to Rohm’s reluctance to share any meaningful information. At least, she hadn’t shared anything more in a public thread.