She changed the subject by asking Chief Dillard, “Has somebody followed up on the alibi that Weston Bruder gave us for the time of his daughter’s murder?”
Dillard replied, “We checked out each of the people he said he’d spoken to. We didn’t tell them where Bruder had claimed to be, but their responses all backed up his story.”
“Has anyone talked to Reese Fisher’s mother?” Riley asked.
Dillard nodded. “I sent a couple of my people to Tandy Place, the assisted care facility where she’s living. The poor woman is deeply demented and can’t fully grasp what happened to her daughter. She certainly couldn’t give us any useful information.”
Riley nodded and looked at her list of loose ends. There was just one more topic that she’d left a question mark beside.
“I take it the footprints at the two crime scenes also match,” Riley said.
“They do. They were definitely left by the same man,” Dillard said.
And that man didn’t have a limp, she remembered. It wasn’t Red Messer. She hadn’t thought it could be, but she was glad to have him cleared.
“I’m glad we’ve cleared up those little details,” Riley said. “So now it seems most likely that we are dealing with a serial killer, not a one-off followed by a copycat. That’s important information. We weren’t sure of it till now.”
Bill added, “You brought us from Quantico to give you a profile. And it seems unlikely that we’re dealing with the type of killer who’s going to stop after two murders. The pressure is still on us. We can’t let another victim die.”
“Are you sure that he’ll—” Cullen began.
“You’d better count on it,” Jenn said.
Cullen’s mouth dropped open and his face reddened.
This isn’t helpful, Riley thought.
After all, Cullen was in charge of the railroad police here in Chicago, and Riley and her colleagues had just made him look foolish on his own turf—not only in front of his own agents and detectives, but the Chicago FBI people as well. Tweaking a male ego like Cullen’s served no useful purpose in a situation as dire as this.
Besides, Riley knew that Cullen’s assumption that the killings were over and done with wasn’t stupid—not coming from a law enforcement officer used to dealing with collisions, suicides, and even the occasional murder or terrorist threat. He simply had no knowledge of psychopaths.
Riley said, “Look, I can think of one scenario under which the killer might actually be finished killing. It’s not likely, but it’s possible. Deputy Chief Cullen, I asked you to have your agents keep track of Chase Fisher, the second victim’s husband. How is that going so far?”
Cullen seemed to be regaining his poise.
“My people have been tracking his every movement,” he said. “He’s not doing anything suspicious.”
Riley was anything but surprised.
“Well, keep watching him. There’s still a chance—a really dim one, I think—that he killed Reese Fisher because of her infidelity. If so, he could have set up the earlier killing as a ruse, to make us think we were dealing with a serial killer. If that’s the case, he might not bother to kill again. As I said, it’s not a likely scenario, and we’d better not count on it, but we can’t ignore it.”
Bill said, “The victims’ lives don’t seem to have been related in any way, except that they both sometimes rode a commuter train in and out of Chicago. We have to proceed with the most likely assumption. That it’s a serial with a more generalized personal motive.”
Riley paused for a moment.
Then she said, “Can you bring up pictures of the two victims? When they were alive, I mean?”
Cullen clicked his remote, and ID photos of Fern Bruder and Reese Fisher appeared side by side on the screen.
Pointing, Riley said, “The women were ten years apart in age—Fern was twenty-five and Reese was thirty-five. One was married, one was single. Still, we can see a certain physical resemblance between them. Both had brown, curly hair, slender faces, aquiline noses. Those similarities might just be coincidental and tell us nothing about the killer’s tastes and preferences. But they also might be meaningful. For example, women with those features might remind the killer of someone in his past.”
Special Agent in Charge Dillard spoke up.
“Agent Paige, you say that Chase Fisher is a long shot as a suspect. Why is that?”
Riley thought for a moment.
“As Agent Jeffreys just said, it’s likely that there’s a more generalized motive behind these murders. In serial cases we often encounter killers driven by their own demons, their own compulsions. This man might not want to kill, but can’t stop himself, despite intense feelings of guilt. His motives are probably murky, even to himself. But the railroad is part of his obsession somehow. He’s triggered by something in his past, and it has something to do with trains.”
Riley drummed her eraser on the table. She wasn’t very satisfied with what she’d just said. It wasn’t much of a profile, and it wasn’t much to go on. But in her gut, she was wary of the usual textbook assumptions she might otherwise make. The killer clearly had psychiatric problems, but she somehow suspected that he’d never actually been institutionalized. And since neither victim had been sexually assaulted, the killer didn’t seem to be sexually motivated.
Riley’s eye was drawn to a tall, gray-haired man who seemed to be lost in thought, jotting down notes on a notepad. He didn’t quite seem to belong to any group here—neither the railroad police nor the Chicago FBI.
Cullen apparently noticed who had attracted her attention. He looked along the table at the older man, then grinned and said, “Any ideas you’d like to share with us, Grandpa?”
The man cringed a little, and so did Riley. She could tell by Cullen’s patronizing tone that “Grandpa” was a less-than-respectful nickname.
The man looked up from his notepad.
“Just playing around with a little theory,” he said.
“Yeah? And what’s that?”
The man shook his head.
“I’m not ready to say. I need more data.”
Riley’s interest was piqued. She wished she could get a look at whatever was written on that notepad.
Cullen chuckled and said, “Well, good luck with that, Grandpa. Let us know when you’ve cracked the case.”
The man looked hurt now—understandably so, Riley thought. Without another word, he got up from his chair, opened the door, and stepped out of the room. He closed the door quietly behind him.
When he was gone, Riley asked Cullen, “Who was that man?”
Cullen laughed.
“His name is Mason Eggers—just a retired old fart who can’t accept the fact that he’s retired. He was a railroad cop for years, not a bad one in his day. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself anymore, and he keeps coming around whenever there’s a new case. He’s always got ideas and theories, and sometimes they’re not bad, as long as they don’t have to do with anything more serious than vandalism or theft. The poor guy was past his prime years ago, but I let him hang around.”
Riley felt a tingle that told her …
Cullen underestimates that guy.
She had an impulse to dash out of the room and catch up with Mason Eggers, but thought better of it.
The discussion at the table shifted to other details. Because both victims had taken trains out of Union Station, the Chicago team had checked and found that no railroad personnel had been at work on both trains.
They’d also pored over platform surveillance tapes, both in Chicago and at their destinations. So far they’d spotted both victims boarding or leaving their trains, but nobody suspicious following them. They couldn’t identify any passengers in common for both trains.
Of course, they couldn’t discount the possibility that the killer had a good knowledge of the surveillance system and had deliberately escaped detection. And unfortunately, the trains in question didn’t have security cameras inside the passenger cars. Such cameras were planned for commuter trains in the future, but hadn’t yet been installed.
After some discussion, Cullen made general assignments all around, and the meeting came to a close.