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Once Gone
Riley asked, “Do you like to go hunting, too?”
“Sure, all the time,” he said enthusiastically. “I’ve got lots of trophies at home. You know, mounted heads of elks and deer. I mount them all myself. I’ve got a real flare for taxidermy.”
Riley squinted at Blackwell.
“Do you have any favorite places? Forests and such, I mean. State and national parks.”
Blackwell stroked his chin thoughtfully.
“I go to Yellowstone a lot,” he said. “I suppose that’s my favorite. Of course, it’s hard to beat the Great Smoky Mountains. Yosemite, too. It’s not easy to choose.”
Bill put in, “How about Mosby State Park? Or maybe that national park near Daggett?”
Blackwell suddenly looked a bit wary.
“Why do you want to know?” he asked uneasily.
Riley knew that the moment of truth – or its opposite – had finally arrived. She reached into her purse and pulled out photographs of the murder victims, taken when they were alive.
“Can you identify any of these women?” Riley asked.
Blackwell’s eyes widened with alarm.
“No,” he said, his voice shaking. “I’ve never seen them in my life.”
“Are you sure?” Riley prodded. “Maybe their names will refresh your memory. Reba Frye. Eileen Rogers. Margaret Geraty.”
Blackwell seemed on the edge of sheer panic.
“Nope,” he said. “I’ve never seen them. Never heard their names.”
Riley studied his face closely for a moment. Finally, she fully understood the situation. She knew all she needed to know about Ross Blackwell.
“Thank you for your time, Ross,” she said. “We’ll be in touch if we need to know anything else.”
Bill looked dumbfounded as he followed her out of the food court.
“What was going on back there?” he snapped. “What are you thinking? He’s guilty and he knows that we’re on to him. We can’t let him out of our sight until we can nail him.”
Riley let out a sigh of mild impatience.
“Think about it, Bill,” she said. “Did you get a look at that pale skin of his? Not even a solitary freckle. That guy’s scarcely spent a whole day outdoors in his life.”
“So he’s not really an Eagle Scout?”
Riley chuckled slightly. “Nope,” she said. “And I can promise you he’s never been to Yellowstone or Yosemite or the Great Smoky Mountains. And he doesn’t know a thing about taxidermy.”
Bill looked positively embarrassed now.
“He really had me believing him,” Bill said.
Riley nodded in agreement.
“Of course he did,” she said. “He’s a great liar. He can make people believe he’s telling the truth about anything. And he just loves to lie. He does it whenever he gets a chance – and the bigger the lies, the better.”
She paused for a moment.
“The trouble is,” Riley added, “he’s lousy at telling the truth. He’s not used to it. He loses his cool when he tries to do it.”
Bill walked silently beside her for a moment, trying to take this in.
“So you’re saying—?” he began.
“He was telling the truth about the women, Bill. That’s why he sounded so guilty. The truth always sounds like a lie when he tries to tell it. He really and truly never saw any of those women in his life. I’m not saying he’s not capable of murder. He probably is. But he didn’t do these murders.”
Bill growled under his breath.
“Damn,” he said.
Riley didn’t say anything the rest of the way to the car. This was a serious setback. The more she thought about it, the more alarmed she felt. The real killer was still out there, and they still didn’t have a clue who or where he was. And she knew, she just knew, that he would soon kill again.
Riley was getting frustrated with her inability to figure this case out, but as she wracked her brain, it suddenly occurred to her who she needed to talk to. Right now.
Chapter 14
They were just a short distance out of Sanfield when Riley suddenly crossed two lanes and veered onto an exit ramp.
Bill was surprised. “Where are we going?” he asked.
“Belding,” Riley said.
Bill stared at her from the passenger’s seat, waiting for more of an explanation.
“Margaret Geraty’s husband still lives there,” she said. “Roy’s his name, right? Roy Geraty. And doesn’t he own a filling station or something?”
“Actually, it’s an auto repair and supply store,” Bill said.
Riley nodded. “We’re going to pay him a visit,” she said.
Bill shrugged doubtfully.
“Okay, but I’m not sure why,” he said. “The locals did a pretty thorough job interviewing him about his wife’s murder. They didn’t get any leads.”
Riley didn’t say anything for a while. She knew all this already. Still, she felt as if there was something yet to be learned. Some sort of loose end must have been left hanging in Belding, just a short drive away through Virginia farm country. She just had to find out what it was – if she could. But she was starting to doubt herself.
“I’m rusty, Bill,” Riley muttered as she drove. “For a while back there, I was really sure that Ross Blackwell was our killer. I ought to have known better at first glance. My instincts are shot.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Bill replied. “He seemed to fit your profile.”
Riley groaned under her breath. “Yeah, but my profile was wrong. Our guy wouldn’t pose dolls like that – and not in a public place.”
“Why not?” Bill asked.
Riley thought for a moment.
“Because he takes dolls too seriously,” she said. “They hold some really deep significance for him. It’s something personal. I think he’d be offended by little stunts like Blackwell’s, the way he posed them. He’d consider it vulgar. Dolls aren’t toys to him. They’re… I don’t know. I can’t quite get it.”
“I know how your mind works,” Bill said. “And whatever it is will come to you eventually.”
Riley fell silent as she mentally replayed some of the events of the last few days. That only heightened her sense of insecurity.
“I’ve been wrong about other stuff, too,” she told Bill. “I thought the killer was targeting mothers. I was sure of it. But Margaret Geraty wasn’t a mother. How could I get that wrong?”
“You’ll hit your stride soon,” Bill said.
They reached the outskirts of Belding. It was a tired-looking little town that must have been there for generations. But the nearby farms had been bought up by wealthy families who wanted to be “gentleman farmers” and still commute to power jobs in D.C. The town was fading away and one might almost drive through it without noticing it.
Roy Geraty’s auto repair and supply store was impossible to miss.
Riley and Bill got out of the car and went into the rather seedy front office. No one was there. Riley rang a little bell on the counter. They waited, but no one came. After a few minutes, they ventured into the garage. A single pair of feet poked out from beneath one vehicle.
“Are you Roy Geraty?” Riley asked.
“Yeah,” came a voice from under the car.
Riley looked around. There wasn’t another employee in sight. Had things gotten so bad that the owner had to do everything by himself?
Geraty came rolling out from under the car and squinted at them suspiciously. He was a bulky man in his middle to late thirties, and he was wearing oil-stained coveralls. He wiped his hands on a dirty cloth and got to his feet.
“You’re not local,” he said. Then he added, “Well, what can I help you with?”
“We’re with the FBI,” Bill said. “We’d like to ask you some questions.”
“Ah, Jesus,” the man growled. “I don’t need this.”
“It won’t take long,” Riley said.
“Well, come on,” the man grumbled. “If we’ve got to talk, we’ve got to talk.”
He led Riley and Bill into a little employee break area with a couple of banged-up vending machines. They all sat down on plastic chairs. Almost as if nobody else was there, Roy picked up a remote and turned on an old television. He fumbled around switching channels until he found an old sitcom. Then he stared at the screen.
“Just ask what you want and let’s get it over with,” he said. “These last few days have been hell.”
Riley found it easy to guess what he meant.
“I’m sorry your wife’s murder is back in the news,” she said.
“The papers say there have been two more like it,” Geraty said. “I can’t believe it. My phone’s been ringing off the hook with reporters and just plain assholes. My email inbox is flooded too. There’s no respect for privacy anymore. And poor Evelyn – my wife – she’s really shook up about it.”
“You’ve remarried?” Bill asked.
Geraty nodded, still staring at the TV screen. “We tied the knot seven months after Margaret…”
He couldn’t make himself finish the sentence.
“Folks around here thought it was too fast,” he said. “It didn’t seem too fast to me. I’d never been lonelier in my life. Evelyn’s been a gift from heaven. I don’t know what would have become of me without her. I guess maybe I’d have died.”
His voice grew thick with emotion.
“We’ve got a baby girl now. Six months old. Her name’s Lucy. The joy of my life.”
The sitcom laugh track on the TV erupted with inappropriate laughter. Geraty sniffed and cleared his throat and leaned back in his chair.
“Anyway, I sure can’t figure what you want to ask me about,” he said. “Seems to me I answered every kind of question you can think of two years ago. It didn’t do any good. You couldn’t catch the guy then, and you’re not going to catch him now.”
“We’re still trying,” Riley said. “We’ll bring him to justice.”
But she could feel the hollowness in her own words.
She paused a moment, then asked, “Do you live near here? I was wondering if we might be able to visit your house, have a look around.”
Geraty knitted his brow in thought.
“Do I have to? Or do I have a choice about it?” he asked.
His question took Riley slightly aback.
“It’s just a request,” she said. “But it might be helpful.”
Geraty shook his head firmly.
“No,” he said. “I’ve got to draw a line. The cops practically moved into my place back in those days. Some of them were sure I’d killed her. Maybe some of you guys are thinking the same thing now. That I killed somebody.”
“No,” Riley reassured him. “That’s not why we’re here.”
She saw that Bill was watching the mechanic very closely.
Geraty didn’t look up. He just went on. “And poor Evelyn – she’s home with Lucy, and she’s already a nervous wreck from all the phone calls. I won’t put her through any more of it. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be uncooperative. It’s just that enough is enough.”
Riley could tell that Bill was about to insist. She spoke before he could.
“I understand,” she said. “It’s all right.”
Riley felt sure that she and Bill probably were not likely to learn anything important from a visit to the Geraty home anyhow. But maybe he would answer a question or two.
“Did your wife – Margaret, your first wife – like dolls?” Riley asked cautiously. “Did she collect them, maybe?”
Geraty turned toward her, looking away from the TV for the first time.
“No,” he said, looking surprised at the question.
Riley realized that no one would have asked that particular question before. Of all the theories the police might have had two years ago, dolls wouldn’t have been among them. And even in the harassment he was undergoing now, no one else would have made a connection with dolls.
“She didn’t like them,” Geraty continued. “It wasn’t like she hated them. It’s just that they made her sad. She couldn’t – we couldn’t – have children, and dolls always made her think about that. They reminded her. Sometimes she’d even cry when she was around dolls.”
With a deep sigh, he turned back toward the TV again.
“She was unhappy about it during those last years,” he said in a low, faraway voice. “Not having kids, I mean. So many friends and relatives, having kids of their own. It seemed like everybody except us was having babies all the time, or had kids growing up. There were always baby showers to go to, mothers always asking her to help out with birthday parties. It really got her down.”
Riley felt a lump of sympathy form in her throat. Her heart went out to this man who was still trying to put his life back together after an incomprehensible tragedy.
“I think that will be all, Mr. Geraty,” she said. “Thanks so much for your time. And I know it’s awfully late to be saying so, but I’m sorry for your loss.”
A few moments later, Riley and Bill were driving away.
“A wasted trip,” Riley said to Bill.
Riley looked in the rearview mirror and saw the little town of Belding vanishing behind them. The killer wasn’t there, she knew. But he was somewhere in the area that Flores had shown them on the map. Somewhere close. Perhaps they were driving by his trailer right now and didn’t even know it. The thought tortured Riley. She could almost feel his presence, his eagerness, his urge to torture and kill that was becoming an ever more compelling need.
And she had to stop it.
Chapter 15
The man was awakened by his cell phone alarm. At first he didn’t know where he was. But he knew right away that today was going to be important. It was the kind of day he lived for.
He knew that he had awakened in this strange place for a very good reason – because it was to be that kind of day. It would be a day of delicious satisfaction for him, and of sheer terror and indescribable pain for someone else.
But where was he? Still half-asleep, he couldn’t remember. He was lying on a couch in a small, carpeted room, looking at a refrigerator and a microwave. Morning light streamed through a window.
He got up, opened the door to the room, and looked out into a dark hallway. He flipped on the room light beside the doorframe. Light shined out into the hallway and into an open door across the hallway. He could make out a black-upholstered medical examination table with some sterilized white paper stretched along it.
Of course, he thought. The free medical clinic.
Now he remembered where he was and how he’d gotten here. He congratulated himself on his stealth and cunning. Yesterday he’d arrived at the clinic late in the day, when it was especially busy. In the midst of the bustle of patients, he had asked for a simple blood pressure test. And she had been the nurse who tested him.
The very woman he had come here to see. The woman he had been watching for days, at her home, when she was shopping, when she came here to work.
After the blood pressure test he’d squeezed himself into a tight space deep inside a supply closet. How innocent all the staff had been. The clinic had closed and everyone had gone home without even checking the closets. Then he’d crept out and made himself at home right here, in the little staff lounge. He’d slept well.
And today was going to be a very remarkable day.
He turned the ceiling light off immediately. No one outside must know that anyone was in the building. He looked at the time on his cell phone. It was just a few minutes before seven a.m.
She would arrive any minute now. He knew this from his days of surveillance. It was her job to get the clinic ready for both physicians and patients every morning. The clinic itself didn’t open until eight. Between seven and eight, she was always alone here.
But today was going to be different. Today she would not be alone.
He heard a car pull into the parking lot outside. He adjusted the venetian blinds just enough to look outside. It was her, all right, stepping out of the car.
He had no trouble steadying his nerves. This was not like those first two times, when he had felt so fearful and apprehensive. Ever since the third time, when everything had flowed so smoothly, he knew he had really hit his stride. Now he was seasoned and skillful.
But there was one thing he wanted to do a little differently, just to vary his routine, to make this time a little different from the others.
He was going to surprise her with a little token – his own personal calling card.
* * *
As Cindy MacKinnon walked through the empty parking lot, she mentally rehearsed her daily routine. After getting all the supplies in place, her first order of business would be to sign refill requests from pharmacies and make sure the appointment calendar was up to date.
Patients would be waiting outside the door by the time they opened at eight. The rest of the day would be devoted to sundry tasks, including taking vital signs, drawing blood, giving shots, making appointments, and fulfilling the often unreasonable demands of the registered nurses and physicians.
Her work here as a licensed practical nurse was hardly glamorous. Even so, she loved what she did. It was deeply gratifying to help people who otherwise couldn’t afford medical care. She knew that they saved lives here, even with the basic services that they offered.
Cindy took the clinic keys out of her purse and unlocked the glass front door. She stepped inside quickly and locked the door behind her. Someone else would unlock it again at eight o’clock. Then she immediately punched in the code to deactivate the building alarm.
As she walked into the waiting area, something caught her eye. It was a small object lying on the floor. In the dim light, she couldn’t make out what it was.
She switched on the overhead lights. The object on the floor was a rose.
She walked over to it and picked it up. The rose wasn’t real. It was artificial, made of cheap fabric. But what was it doing there?
Probably a patient had dropped it yesterday. But why hadn’t someone picked it up after the clinic closed at five p.m.?
Why hadn’t she seen it yesterday? She had waited until the cleaning woman was finished. She had been the last to leave and she was sure the rose hadn’t been there.
Then came a rush of adrenaline and an explosion of pure fear. She knew what the rose meant. She wasn’t alone. She knew she had to get out. She didn’t have a split second to lose.
But as she turned to run toward the door, a strong hand seized her arm from behind, stopping her in her tracks. There was no time to think. She had to let her body act on its own.
She raised her elbow and whirled around, throwing her whole weight to the side and back. She felt her elbow strike a hard but pliable surface. She heard a fierce, loud groan and felt the weight of her attacker’s body tilting upon her.
Had she been lucky and hit his solar plexus? She couldn’t turn around to see. There wasn’t time – a few seconds, if even that.
She ran toward the door. But time slowed down, and it didn’t feel like running at all. It felt like moving through thick, clear gelatin.
Finally she reached the door and tried to pull it open. But of course she had locked it after coming inside.
She groped frantically through her purse until she found her keys. Then her hands shook so badly that she couldn’t hold them. They fell clattering to the ground. Time stretched out even further as she bent over and picked them up. She fumbled among the keys until she found the right one. Then she stabbed the key at the lock.
It was useless. Her hand was useless from shaking. She felt as if her body were betraying her.
At last, her eye caught a glimpse of movement outside. On the sidewalk beyond the parking lot a woman was walking her dog. Still gripping the keys, she raised her fists and pounded against the impossibly hard glass. She opened her mouth to scream.
But her voice was stifled by something tight across her mouth, pulling painfully at the corners. It was cloth – a rag or a handkerchief or a scarf. Her attacker had gagged her with merciless and implacable force. Her eyes bulged, but instead of a scream, all she could emit was a horrible groan.
She flailed her arms, and the keys fell again from her hand. She was pulled helplessly backward, away from the morning light into a dark, murky world of sudden and unimaginable horror.
Chapter 16
“Do you feel kind of out of place?” Bill asked.
“Yeah,” Riley said. “And I’m sure we both look it, too.”
A seemingly random mix of dolls and people were seated in the leather-upholstered furniture of the ostentatious hotel lobby. The people – mostly women, but a few men – were drinking tea and coffee and chatting with one another. Dolls of sundry types, both male and female, sat among them like perfectly behaved children. Riley thought it looked like some bizarre kind of family reunion in which none of the children were real.
Riley couldn’t help staring at the odd scene. With no more leads to follow, she and Bill had decided to come here, to this doll convention, hoping she might stumble upon some lead, however remote.
“Are you two registered?” he asked
Riley turned to see a security guard eyeing Bill’s jacket, undoubtedly having detected his concealed weapon. The guard held his hand near his own holstered gun.
She thought that with this many people around, the guard had good reason to worry. A crazed shooter really could wreak havoc in a place like this.
Bill flashed his badge. “FBI,” he said.
The guard chuckled.
“Can’t say I’m surprised,” he said.
“Why not?” Riley asked.
The guard shook his head.
“Because this is just about the weirdest bunch of people I ever saw in one place.”
“Yeah,” Bill agreed. “And they’re not even all people.”
The guard shrugged and replied, “You can bet that somebody here has done something they shouldn’t have.”
The man jerked his head to one side then the other, scanning the room.
“I’ll be glad when it’s all over.” Then he strode away, looking wary and alert.
As she wandered with Bill into an adjoining hallway, Riley wasn’t sure what the guard was so worried about. Generally speaking, the attendees looked more eccentric than menacing. The women in view ranged from young to elderly. Some were stern and dour looking, while others seemed open and friendly.
“Tell me again what you hope to find out here,” Bill muttered.
“I’m not sure,” Riley admitted.
“Maybe you’re making too much of the whole doll thing,” he said, clearly unhappy to be here. “Blackwell was creepy about dolls, but he wasn’t the perp. And yesterday we learned that the first victim didn’t even like dolls.”
Riley didn’t reply. Bill might well be right. But when he had showed her a brochure announcing this convention and show, she somehow couldn’t help following through. She wanted to make another try.
The men Riley saw tended to look bookish and professorial, most of them wearing glasses and more than a few of them sporting goatees. None of them appeared quite capable of murder. She passed a seated woman who was lovingly rocking a baby doll in her arms and singing a lullaby. A little farther on, an elderly woman was carrying on a rapt conversation with a life-sized monkey doll.
Okay, Riley thought, so there is a little bit of weirdness going on.
Bill pulled the brochure out of his jacket pocket and browsed it as they walked along.
“Anything interesting happening?” Riley asked him.
“Just talks, lectures, workshops – that kind of thing. Some big manufacturers are here to bring store owners up to date on trends and crazes. And there are some folks who seem to have gotten famous in the whole doll scene. They’re giving talks of one kind or another.”
Then Bill laughed.
“Hey, here’s a lecture with a real doozy of a title.”
“What is it?”
“‘The Social Construction of Victorian Gender in Period Porcelain Dolls.’ It’s going to start in a few minutes. Want to check it out?”
Riley laughed as well. “I’m sure we wouldn’t understand a word of it. Anything else?”
Bill shook his head. “Not really. Nothing to help understand the motives of a sadistic killer, anyway.”
Riley and Bill moved on into the next big open room. It was a gigantic maze of booths and tables, where every conceivable kind of doll or puppet was on exhibit. They ranged from as tiny as a single finger to life size, from antique to fresh out of the factory. Some of them were walking and some were talking, but most of them just hung or sat or stood there, staring back at the viewers who clustered in front of each one.
For the first time Riley saw that actual children were present – no boys, only small girls. Most were under their parents’ immediate supervision, but a few wandered loose in unruly little groups, putting exhibitors’ nerves on edge.
Riley picked up a miniature camera from a table. The attached tag claimed that it worked. On the same counter were tiny newspapers, stuffed toys, handbags, wallets, and backpacks. On the next table were doll-sized bathtubs and other bathroom fixtures.
The T-shirt station printed shirts for dolls and for full-size people, but the hair salon was for dolls only. The sight of several small carefully styled wigs gave Riley chills. The FBI had already found the manufacturers of the wigs from the murder scenes and knew that they were sold in countless stores everywhere. Seeing them lined up like this brought back images that Riley knew that other people here didn’t share. Images of dead women, naked, sitting splayed like dolls, wearing ill-fitting wigs made out of doll hair.
Riley felt sure that those images would never fade from her mind. The women treated so callously, yet so carefully arranged to represent… something she couldn’t quite pin down. But of course that was why she and Bill were even here.
She stepped forward and spoke to the perky young woman who seemed to be charge of the doll-hair salon.
“Do you sell these wigs here?” Riley asked.
“Of course,” the woman responded. “Those are just for display, but I have brand new ones in boxes. Which one would you like?”
Riley wasn’t sure what to say next. “Do you style these little wigs?” she finally asked.
“We can change the style for you. It’s a very small additional charge.”
“What kind of people buy them?” Riley said. She wanted to ask whether any creepy guys had been around to buy doll wigs.
The woman looked at her, wide-eyed. “I’m not sure what you mean,” she said. “All kinds of people buy them. Sometimes they bring in a doll they already have to get the hair changed.”
“I mean, do men often buy them?” Riley asked.
The young woman was looking distinctly uncomfortable now. “Not that I recall,” she said. Then she turned abruptly away to deal with a new customer.
Riley just stood there for a moment. She felt like an idiot, accosting someone with such questions. It was as though she had thrust her own dark world into one that was supposed to be sweet and simple.
She felt a touch on her arm. Bill said, “I don’t think you’re going to find the perp here.”
Riley could feel her face flush. But as she turned away from the doll-hair salon, she realized that she wasn’t the only strange lady that the exhibitors here had to deal with. She almost walked into a woman desperately clutching a newly bought doll, weeping passionately, apparently with joy. At another table, a man and a woman had gotten into a shouting match over which of them would get to buy a particularly rare collector’s item. They were engaged in a physical tug-of-war that threatened to tear the merchandise apart.
“Now I begin to see why that security guard was worried,” she said to Bill.
She saw that Bill was intently watching someone nearby.
“What?” she asked him.
“Check out that guy,” Bill said, nodding toward a man standing at a nearby display of large dolls in frilly dresses. He was in his mid-thirties and quite handsome. Unlike most of the other males here, he didn’t look bookish or scholarly. Instead, he cut the appearance of a prosperous and confident businessman, properly dressed in an expensive suit and tie.
“He looks as out of place as we do,” Bill muttered. “Why is a guy like that playing with dolls?”
“I don’t know,” Riley replied. “But he also looks like he could hire a real live playmate if he wanted to.” She watched the businessman for a moment. He had stopped to look at a display of little girl dolls in frilly dresses. He glanced around, as if to be sure that no one was watching.
Bill turned his back to the man and leaned forward as if talking animatedly with Riley. “What’s he doing now?”
“Checking out the merchandise,” she said. “In a way I really don’t like.”
The man bent toward one doll and peered at it closely – maybe a little too closely – and his thin lips curled up into a smile. Then he again scanned the others in the room.
“Or looking for prospective victims,” she added.
Riley was sure she detected a certain furtiveness in the man’s manner as he fingered the doll’s dress, examining the fabric in a sensuous manner.
Bill glanced at the man again. “Jesus,” he murmured. “Is this guy creepy or what?”
A chilly feeling seized Riley. Rationally, she knew perfectly well that this couldn’t be the murderer. After all, what were the chances of stumbling across him in public like this? Still, at that moment Riley was convinced that she was in the presence of evil.
“Don’t let him get out of sight,” Riley said. “If he gets weird enough, we’ll ask him some questions.”
But then, reality blew those dark thoughts away. A little girl about five years old came running up to the man.
“Daddy,” she called him.
The man’s smile widened, and his face beamed innocently with love. He showed his daughter the doll he had found, and she clapped her hands and laughed with delight. He handed it to her and she hugged it tightly. The father took out his wallet and got ready to pay the vendor.
Riley stifled a groan.
My instincts miss again, she thought.
She saw that Bill was listening to someone on his cell phone. His face looked stricken as he turned toward her.
“He’s taken another woman.”
