Once Gone

“Look at the picture he’s trying to show us. Blue contacts to make the eyes look like they’re not real. Eyelids stitched so the eyes stay wide open. The body propped up, legs splayed out freakishly. Vaseline to make the skin look like plastic. A wig pieced together out of pieces of little wigs – not human wigs, doll’s wigs. He wanted both victims to look like dolls – like naked dolls on display.”

“Jesus,” Bill said, feverishly taking notes. “Why didn’t we see this last time, back in Daggett?”

The answer seemed so obvious to Riley that she stifled an impatient groan.

“He wasn’t good enough at it yet,” she said. “He was still figuring out how to send the message. He’s learning as he goes.”

Bill looked up from his notepad and shook his head admiringly.

“Damn, I’ve missed you.”

As much as she appreciated the compliment, Riley knew that an even bigger realization was on its way. And she knew from years of experience that there was no forcing it. She simply had to relax and let it come to her unbidden. She crouched on the boulder silently, waiting for it happen. As she waited, she picked idly at the burrs on her pants legs.

What a damned nuisance, she thought.

Suddenly her eyes fell on the stone surface under her feet. Other little burrs, some of them whole, others broken into fragments, were lying amid the burrs she was plucking off now.

“Bill,” she said, her voice quavering with excitement, “were these little burrs here when you found the body?”

Bill shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Her hands shaking and sweating more than ever, she grabbed a bunch of pictures and rifled through them until she found a front view of the corpse. There, between her splayed legs right around the rose, was a group of little smudges. Those were the burrs – the very burrs she had just found. But nobody had thought they were important. Nobody had bothered to take a sharper, closer picture of them. And nobody had even bothered to sweep them away when the crime scene was cleaned up.

Riley closed her eyes, bringing her imagination fully into play. She felt lightheaded, even dizzy. It was a sensation that she knew all too well – a feeling of falling into an abyss, into a terrible black void, into the killer’s evil mind. She was stepping into his shoes, into his experience. It was a dangerous and terrifying place to be. But it was where she belonged, at least right now. She embraced it.

She felt the killer’s confidence as he lugged the body down the path to the stream, perfectly sure that he wasn’t going to get caught, in no hurry at all. He might well have been humming or whistling. She felt his patience, his craft and skill, as he posed the corpse on the boulder.

And she could see the grisly tableau through his eyes. She felt his deep satisfaction at a job well done – the same warm feeling of fulfillment that she always felt when she’d solved a case. He had crouched on this rock, pausing for a moment – or for as long as he liked – to admire his own handiwork.

And as he did, he had plucked the burrs off his pants legs. He took his time about it. He didn’t bother to wait until he’d gotten away free and clear. And she could almost hear him saying aloud her own exact words.

“What a damn nuisance.”

Yes, he’d even taken the time to pluck off the burrs.

Riley gasped, and her eyes snapped open. Fingering the burr in her own hand, she noted how sticky it was, and that its prickles were sharp enough to draw blood.

“Gather these burrs,” she ordered. “We might just get a bit of DNA.”

Bill’s eyes widened, and he immediately extracted a ziplock bag and tweezers. As he worked, her mind ran in overdrive, not done yet.

“We’ve been wrong all along,” she said. “This isn’t his second murder. It’s his third.”

Bill stopped and looked up, clearly stunned.

“How do you know?” Bill asked.

Riley’s whole body tightened as she tried to bring her trembling under control.

“He’s gotten too good. His apprenticeship is over. He’s a pro now. And he’s just hitting his stride. He loves his work. No, this is his third time, at least.”

Riley’s throat tightened and she swallowed hard.

“And there won’t be much time now until the next one.”

Chapter 7

Bill found himself in a sea of blue eyes, none of them real. He didn’t usually have nightmares about his cases, and he wasn’t having one now – but it sure felt like one. Here in the middle of the doll store, little blue eyes were simply everywhere, all of them wide open and sparkling and alert.

The dolls’ little ruby-red lips, most of them smiling, were troubling also. So was all the painstakingly combed artificial hair, so stiff and immobile. Taking in all these details, Bill wondered now how he could have possibly missed the killer’s intention – to make his victims look as doll-like as possible. It had taken Riley to make that connection.

Thank God she’s back, he thought.

Still, Bill couldn’t help but worry about her. He had been dazzled by her brilliant work back at Mosby Park. But afterward, when he drove her home, she’d seemed exhausted and demoralized. She’d barely said a word to him during the whole drive. Maybe it had been too much for her.

Even so, Bill wished that Riley was here right now. She’d decided it would be best for them to split up, to cover more ground more quickly. He couldn’t disagree with that. She’d asked him to cover the doll stores in the area, while she would revisit the scene of the crime they’d covered six months ago.

Bill looked around and, feeling in way over his head, wondered what Riley would make of this doll store. It was the most elegant of the ones he’d visited today. Here on the edge of the Capital Beltway, the store probably got a lot of classy shoppers from wealthy Northern Virginia counties.

He walked around and browsed. A little girl doll caught his eye. With its upturned smile and pale skin, it especially reminded him of the latest victim. Although it was fully clothed in a pink dress with lots of lace on the collar, cuffs, and hem, it was also sitting in a disturbingly similar position.

Suddenly, Bill heard a voice to his right.

“I think you’re looking in the wrong section.”

Bill turned and found himself facing a stout little woman with a warm smile. Something about her immediately told him that she was in charge here.

“Why do you say that?” Bill asked.

The woman chuckled.

“Because you don’t have daughters. I can tell a man who doesn’t have a daughter from a mile off. Don’t ask me how, it’s just some kind of instinct, I guess.”

Bill was stunned by her insight, and deeply impressed.

She offered Bill her hand.

“Ruth Behnke,” she said.

Bill shook her hand.

“Bill Jeffreys. I take it you own this store.”

She chuckled again.

“I see you’ve got some kind of instinct, too,” she said. “I’m pleased to meet you. But you do have sons, don’t you? Three of them, I’d guess.”

Bill smiled. Her instincts were pretty sharp, all right. Bill figured that she and Riley would enjoy each other’s company.