“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said. “When will I learn to mind my own business? That was so out of line!”
“No, it wasn’t,” the man said.
After all, she was absolutely right. He was eaten away inside by guilt and obsessions and impulses far beyond his own control. And he wished he could talk to somebody about it—somebody just like her.
He said, “Maybe someday I’ll tell you.”
He regretted the words the second they were out. It was a lie, of course. He shouldn’t have said it. It was wrong.
It was time to change the subject.
“Tell me what else is going on in your life,” he said.
She started into some familiar topics—her work as a third-grade teacher in Caruthers, Illinois, and how hard it was to be a divorced woman in a small Midwestern town.
Meanwhile, the voice in his head was whispering to him, reminding him of his plans.
She had no idea that he, too, was going to get off the train in Caruthers. She thought he always stayed on the train to Wendover, where he’d told her he lived.
The truth was, he’d secretly followed her off the train the other times they’d met, skillfully avoiding the station’s surveillance cameras, learning her every movement by heart.
He knew what to do, and he knew exactly how to do it.
The voice was saying again and again …
“It’s time. It’s time. It’s time.”
He wished the voice would be quiet.
He only wanted to drink in this woman’s words.
After today, he’d never be able to do that again.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
As Riley and Jenn flagged down a cab in the busy traffic in front of the hotel, Bill looked up at the late afternoon sky that was framed by Chicago’s towering structures. He couldn’t help feeling that it ought to be dark out by now. It had already been a long day—two long days, actually—and he and his colleagues had nothing to show for all their hard work.
And he was tired—more tired than he ought to be.
Why? he wondered.
The case was wearing him down, of course. But he knew that something else was bothering him. He couldn’t put his finger on it exactly.
A cab pulled up and they all climbed into it. The cab driver drove them back to Union Station, the solid-looking building squatting among taller ones. The driver waited while they retrieved the go-bags they’d left in the station lockers.
“Where to now?” the driver asked when they got back into the car.
Bill automatically repeated the name of a modestly priced nearby hotel where he and Riley had stayed during previous cases in the Windy City. He was glad that Bull Cullen hadn’t bothered to book a crummy room for them again. This time they could get three simple but comfortable rooms on the FBI’s dime.
After they checked into the hotel and dropped off their go-bags in their rooms, they regrouped in Jenn’s room to discuss the situation. As they sat down together, Bill felt another wave of tiredness. He realized that he was also hungry.
“Let’s order food,” he said. “We haven’t had anything to eat today since snacks on the train.”
“Good idea,” Jenn said. “My brain seriously needs recharging.”
He called room service and ordered hamburgers and soft drinks. As they waited for their food to arrive, Riley phoned Proctor Dillard, the FBI field office chief they’d met with earlier, to check for updates.
Bill could tell from her expression that Dillard had nothing new.
Riley confirmed that lack of progress when she ended the call. “His people still haven’t found any relationship between the two victims, and no indication that anyone had anything personal against them.”
Bill shook his head with discouragement. He was all too familiar with the stagnation that could set in during an investigation. Most cases had periods of tediously picking through theories, discarding some and following up others until something pointed them in the right direction. Or until Riley’s sixth sense picked up on something that was invisible to everybody else. So far, she hadn’t mentioned anything at all about this case kicking in her unusual powers of perception.
He said, “We’d better check in with Coroner Hammond back in Barnwell to find out the results of Reese Fisher’s autopsy.”
Jenn made that call. When it was over, her expression was as lackluster as Riley’s had been. She said, “Nothing new or surprising. Death was instantaneous, of course. Like Fern Bruder before her, she had flunitrazepam in her bloodstream. There were also telltale bruises around her neck.”
Jenn growled slightly and added, “So I guess Cullen was right about how the killer choked both victims before injecting them with a date rape drug. I know it’s petty of me, but I hate it when the son of a bitch is right.”
Their burgers and soft drinks arrived, and the three of them sat down to eat. They also did their best to brainstorm theories and ideas.
They certainly had plenty of questions.
Jenn asked, “Do we think the victims knew the killer at all?”
Bill couldn’t think of any reason they could answer that one way or the other. But a glance at Riley told him that she felt differently.
Riley said, “Both victims were charming and outgoing. I know, that might just be a coincidence, like their physical resemblance. But I’ve got a hunch otherwise. I think the killer engaged their trust. I doubt that either of them had long-term relationships with him. But he wasn’t a total stranger. I think they struck up at least one conversation with him.”
“Of course, that would make it easier for him to gain control of each prospective victim,” Bill agreed.
“On the train, do you think?” Jenn asked.
“Possibly,” Riley said. “Or possibly not. Perhaps they met him in Chicago, and he learned everything he needed to know about them there and traveled on his own to Allardt and Barnwell to kill them. Or I guess they might have met him in their home towns …”
Bill shook his head.
“That sounds like a bit of a stretch. I find it hard to believe that he hops from town to town looking for women who happen to commute to and from Chicago.”
Jenn agreed. “If he started from their home towns, he’d have to have some more personal reason to look up these particular women.”
Riley added, “And either way we’re still stuck with the question of why these two.”
The conversation continued without settling anything. As they all talked, Bill felt his exhaustion taking over, and he had trouble focusing on what was being said. It began to occur to him what at least part of the problem was.
Chemistry.
He knew that he wasn’t working well with Riley and Jenn as a unit, at least not yet. He missed the old days when he and Riley were one-on-one partners and had an uncanny ability to connect with each other, sometimes communicating their ideas without even speaking at all. They’d constantly boosted each other’s energy. Working with Riley had never drained him or made him feel tired.
In fact, they’d always been best friends, able to confide in each other completely and with absolute trust. But they hadn’t even had a private moment to talk since they’d started to work on this case.
Bill bitterly missed that. He wished he could talk to Riley about his own life—his sadness and loss now that his ex-wife, Maggie, had remarried and moved to Saint Louis, taking their two boys away from him. He was losing touch with the boys, and it pained him terribly. And although his PTSD reactions to the debacle in California had subsided over the past six months, he sometimes felt that he still wasn’t back to full capacity.
In the old days, he could have turned to Riley for sympathy, understanding, and even wise advice.
Now he felt left out.
Riley and Jenn seemed to understand each other better than he understood either of them.
Bill felt embarrassed to be thinking such thoughts. Was he actually jealous of the rapport that seemed to be growing between the two women?