She couldn’t spare the energy—not with such a huge task at hand.
Now she heard another sound. It was the roar of an approaching locomotive. She knew that somewhere nearby a woman was tied to train tracks, and the train was coming nearer by the second.
She knew that she couldn’t stop a locomotive.
And that was why she had to stop time.
But click by click by click, the minute hand kept pushing its way along.
Worse, she could hear the machinery speeding up.
The hand was moving faster.
But how was that even possible?
She finally let out a wail of despair.
“It’s cheating! Time is cheating!”
She heard her father chuckle again.
“Is that any surprise, girl? Time cheats and lies and swindles constantly, and it always screws you in the end. There’s only one thing in the world that’s bigger and stronger and more damned crooked and mendacious than time. I think you know what it is.”
Evil, Riley thought.
That’s what the locomotive really was.
Pure, unstoppable evil.
“What can I do?” Riley called out to her father.
He repeated words that she’d heard him say before.
“Your job. Do your goddamn job. Just don’t get any ideas that you’ll do any good.”
Riley’s eyes snapped open.
Everything was quiet. It took her a moment to realize that no locomotive was bearing down on a helpless victim.
At least not here and now. She was in her dark motel room.
There was a clock, however.
She turned to look at the lighted digital clock on the bed stand. It was 2:13 in the morning.
She lay there thinking.
Time is cheating! No way to stop it.
She remembered what Bill had said earlier in the restaurant.
“Let’s all get a good night’s sleep …”
But Bill had been wrong. Now was no time to sleep.
Like the clock hand in her dream, the killer was moving faster and faster.
What would stop him from killing again tomorrow?
Nothing, Riley realized. Nothing except us.
She felt sure that the time to act was now.
Right now!
We’ve got a job to do.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Riley switched on a light and sat up in bed. She was wide awake now.
She could hear no sounds of activity in the motel. Could she be the only one not sleeping? The urgency of the nightmare was still with her, and she knew she would probably have to wake up the other members of her team.
First, she needed to check out certain information.
She picked up her cell phone, went online, and searched for the coming day’s passenger train schedules between Chicago and Dermott, Wisconsin. She found only one inbound train from Chicago. It was scheduled to arrive in Dermott at 12:30 in the afternoon. It was scheduled to depart again at 1 o’clock.
Less than ten hours from now, Riley realized. That train would arrive in a different town in a different state. Was the next victim going to be on it?
She heard an echo from the dream in her mind. “It’s cheating! Time is cheating!”
She couldn’t stop time. She needed to get ahead of it.
Riley knew that she needed more details. She needed help.
She called the motel desk and asked to be connected to Mason Eggers’s room. A moment later, Eggers answered the phone.
“I’m sorry about the hour,” Riley said.
“Don’t worry,” Eggers said, not sounding the least bit groggy. “I wasn’t able to sleep myself. I’ve been worrying about when the killer might strike in Dermott.”
“Me too,” Riley said.
She told him what she’d just found out about the passenger train.
“That’s right,” he said. “That’s the one that’s worrying me.”
She asked, “Do you think somebody on that train will be in danger?”
“That depends on when the next freight train will pass through there. Like I said earlier, freight trains don’t follow a strict schedule, but …”
Riley waited for him to finish his thought.
“I’ve got a dispatcher friend, Hank Deever, who’s on night duty right now. He’s got a lot of information at his fingertips. He might be able to give me some idea. I’ll give him a call.”
“Please do that,” Riley said. “What’s your room number? I’m coming right over.”
“Fifteen,” Eggers said.
“Just a few doors down,” Riley replied as she hung up.
She hastily put on her clothes without bothering to straighten her hair. Then she hurried outside and down the sidewalk to Eggers’s room and knocked on the door.
Still in his pajamas and a rather old-fashioned robe, Eggers was holding his out-of-date folding cell phone when he answered the door.
“I just talked to Hank,” Eggers told her. “He says a freight train runs through Dermott most days at around two o’clock—about an hour after the passenger train from Chicago departs again.”
Riley felt a chill of apprehension.
Those two trains followed the same pattern as passenger and freight trains had for the other three murders.
Eggers shook his head and added, “Look, I know I’m just a an over-the-hill railroad cop, and maybe I’d do the world more good if I just gave up this kind of work and took up fishing. But I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.”
Riley was struck by the expression on Eggers’s face.
She had a strong gut feeling …
This guy knows exactly what he’s talking about.
She simply had to trust his instincts.
“Get dressed—fast,” Riley said. “Then come to my room—it’s number seven.”
She already knew that Bill and Jenn were in rooms on either side of hers. She hammered on each of their doors, demanding that they get up and get dressed and come to her room. A few minutes later, Bill, Jenn, and Eggers were all in Riley’s room.
Eggers was the only one aside from Riley herself who seemed especially awake. He took a look at the others, then went about setting up the coffeepot that was in the room. In a few moments, the smell of fresh coffee filled the air.
Riley paced the floor, hoping she could persuade her colleagues to agree with her. As she told them about the passenger train and the freight train that would follow soon after it, Eggers passed around cups of coffee.
Then Riley said, “The killer is working faster. And he’s going to kill again tomorrow, in Dermott. We’ve got to do something to stop him.”
Jenn said, “Not if we’ve caught him already. Not if he’s Timothy Pollitt.”
Riley flashed back to the interrogation room.
She remembered what Pollitt had said when Bill asked him about Sally Diehl.
“She was friendly. She liked to talk to us.”
Riley realized something.
Those were the only words that Pollitt had said that sounded truly sincere.
Riley realized that some parts of the puzzle were falling into place in her mind.
She blurted, “Timothy Pollitt didn’t kill Sally Diehl. He didn’t kill anybody. Don’t ask me how I know that, I just do. I’m absolutely sure of it.”
A silence fell in the room.
Am I going to have to beg? Riley wondered.
Jenn looked confused and indecisive.
But Riley noticed a welcome and familiar change in Bill’s expression. After working together for so many years, they’d learned to give each other the benefit of the doubt. And Riley could see that Bill was ready to do that.
He finally said, “OK, what do we do next?”
Riley thought for a moment.
Then, without another word to the others, she picked up the motel phone, called the front desk, and asked to be connected with Bull Cullen’s room. Seconds later, she heard the groggy sound of Cullen’s voice.
“Agent Paige? What the hell do you want?”
Riley said, “Cullen, you can’t take the FBI off the case.”
“Do you have any idea what time it is?”
Riley ignored the question.
“My colleagues and I think there’s an excellent chance that the killer will strike tomorrow just outside of Dermott, Wisconsin, sometime around two o’clock.”
Riley heard a groan of annoyance.
“You really don’t know when to quit, do you, Agent Paige?”
Cullen hung up the phone.
Riley immediately called the front desk again and asked for Cullen’s room number.
Then she put the phone down and headed for the door.
“Come on,” she said to the others.
“Where are we going?” Jenn asked.