Once Gone (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #1)

  Chapter 18

  As she drove to the address the clinic receptionist had given her, Riley felt her usual dread at having to interview victims’ families or spouses. She somehow sensed that this time was going to be even worse than usual. But the abduction was fresh.

  “Maybe this time, we’ll find her before he kills her,” she said.

  “If the evidence team can get a clue on this guy,” Bill replied.

  “Somehow, I doubt that he’s going to turn up in any database.” The image that Riley was forming in her mind wasn’t of a habitual offender. This thing was deeply personal to the killer in some way that she hadn’t been able to identify. She would figure it out, she was sure. But she needed to figure it out fast enough to stop the terror and agony that Cindy was going through right now. No one else should have to endure the pain of that knife … or of that darkness … of that searing flame …

  “Riley,” Bill said sharply, “that’s it right there.”

  Riley jerked back to the present. She pulled the car over to the curb and looked around at the neighborhood. It was a little rundown but all the more warm and inviting because of that. It was the sort of low-rent area where young people without a lot of money could pursue their dreams.

  Of course, Riley knew that the neighborhood wouldn’t stay this way. Gentrification was undoubtedly scheduled to kick in any day now. But maybe that would be good for an art gallery. If the victim got back home alive.

  Riley and Bill got out of the car and approached the little storefront gallery. A handsome metal sculpture was displayed in the front window behind a sign that announced “CLOSED.”

  The couple’s apartment was upstairs. Riley rang the doorbell, and she and Bill waited for a few moments. She wondered who was going to come to the door.

  When the door opened, she was relived to be greeted by the compassionate face of FBI victim specialist Beverly Chaddick. Riley had worked with Beverly before. The specialist had been in this job for at least twenty years, and she had a wonderful way dealing with distraught victims and family members.

  “We need to ask Mr. MacKinnon some questions,” Riley said. “I hope he’s up for it.”

  “Yes,” Beverly said. “But go easy on him.”

  Beverly led Bill and Riley upstairs to the little apartment. It immediately struck Riley as heartbreakingly cheerful, decorated with a marvelous clutter of paintings and sculptures. The people who lived here loved to celebrate life and all of its possibilities. Was all that over now? Her heart ached for the young couple.

  Nathaniel MacKinnon, a man in his late twenties, was sitting in the combined living and dining room. His lankiness made him look all the more broken.

  Beverly announced in a gentle voice, “Nathaniel, Agents Paige and Jeffreys are here.”

  The young man looked at Bill and Riley expectantly. His voice croaked with desperation.

  “Have you found Cindy? Is she okay? Is she alive?”

  Riley realized that she could say nothing helpful. She was all the more grateful that Beverly was here, and that she’d already established a rapport with the distraught husband.

  Beverly sat down next to Nathaniel MacKinnon.

  “Nobody knows anything yet, Nathaniel,” she said. “They’re here to help.”

  Bill and Riley sat down nearby.

  Riley asked, “Mr. MacKinnon, has your wife said anything recently about feeling fearful or threatened?”

  He shook his head mutely.

  Bill put in, “This is a difficult question, but we have to ask. Do either you or your wife have any enemies, anybody who might wish you harm?”

  The husband seemed to have trouble understanding the question.

  “No, no,” he stammered. “Look, there are sometimes little feuds in my line of work. But it’s all just stupid little things, squabbles among artists, not people who would do something like …”

  He stopped in mid-sentence.

  “And everybody … loves Cindy,” he said.

  Riley detected his anxiety and uncertainty about using the present tense. She sensed that questioning this man was probably futile and possibly insensitive. She and Bill should probably cut things short and leave the situation in Beverly’s capable hands.

  Meanwhile, though, Riley looked around the apartment, trying to pick up the slightest trace of a clue.

  She didn’t need to be told that Cindy and Nathaniel MacKinnon didn’t have children. The apartment wasn’t big enough, and besides, the surrounding artworks were anything but childproof.

  She suspected, though, that the situation was not the same as with Margaret and Roy Geraty. Riley’s gut told her that Cindy and Nathaniel were childless by choice, and only temporarily. They were waiting for the right time, more money, a bigger home, a more settled lifestyle.

  They thought they had all kinds of time, Riley thought.

  She thought back to her early assumption that the killer targeted mothers. She wondered yet again how she could have gotten it so wrong.

  Something else about the apartment was starting to dawn on her. She saw no photographs anywhere of Nathaniel or Cindy. This wasn’t especially surprising. As a couple, they were more interested in the creativity of others than in pictures of themselves. They were anything but narcissistic.

  Even so, Riley felt the need to get a clearer image of Cindy.

  “Mr. MacKinnon,” she asked cautiously, “do you have any recent photographs of your wife?”

  He looked at her blankly for a moment. Then his expression brightened.

  “Why, yes,” he said. “I’ve got a new one right here on my cell phone.”

  He brought up the photograph on his phone and passed it along to Riley.

  Riley’s heart jumped up in her throat when she saw it. Cindy MacKinnon was sitting with a three-year-old girl on her lap. Both she and the child were glowing with delight as they held a beautifully dressed doll between them.

  It took Riley a moment to start breathing again. The kidnapped woman, a child, and a doll. She hadn’t been wrong. At least not completely. There had to be a connection between this killer and dolls.

  “Mr. MacKinnon, who is the child in this picture?” Riley asked, as calmly as she could manage.

  “That’s Cindy’s niece, Gale,” Nathaniel MacKinnon replied. “Her mother is Cindy’s sister, Becky.”

  “When was this photograph taken?” Riley asked.

  The man stopped to think. “I think Cindy sent it to me on Friday,” he said. “Yes, I’m sure that’s when she sent it. It was at Gale’s birthday party. Cindy helped her sister with the party. She left work early to help out.”

  Riley struggled with her thoughts, unsure for a moment just what to ask next.

  “Was the doll a gift for Cindy’s niece?” she asked.

  Nathaniel nodded. “Gale was thrilled with it. That made Cindy so happy. She just loves to see Gale happy. The girl’s almost like a daughter to her. She called me right away to tell me. That’s when she sent the photograph.”

  Riley struggled to keep her voice steady. “It’s a lovely doll. I can see why Gale was so happy with it.”

  She hesitated again, staring at the doll’s image as though it could tell her whatever it was that she needed to know. Surely that painted smile, those blank blue eyes, held a key to her questions. But she didn’t even know what to ask.

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see Bill watching her intently.

  Why would a brutal killer pose his victims to look like dolls?

  Finally Riley asked, “Do you know where Cindy bought the doll?”

  Nathaniel looked genuinely puzzled. Even Bill looked surprised. Doubtless he wondered where Riley was going with this. The truth was, Riley wasn’t entirely sure yet herself.

  “I’ve got no idea,” Nathaniel said. “She didn’t tell me. Is that important?”

  “I’m not sure,” Riley admitted. “But I think it could be.”

  Nathaniel was growing more agitated now. “I do
n’t understand. What’s this all about? Are you saying my wife was abducted over a little girl’s doll?”

  “No, I’m not saying that.” Riley tried to sound calm and convincing. Of course, she realized, she was saying that. She thought that his wife probably was abducted over some little girl’s doll, even though that made no sense at all.

  Nathaniel was visibly distressed. Riley saw that Beverly Chaddick, the victim specialist who was seated nearby, was eyeing her uneasily. With a slight shake of her head, Beverly seemed to be trying to communicate that Riley needed to go easier on the distraught husband. Riley reminded herself that interviewing victims and their families was not her own forte.

  I’ve got to be careful, she told herself. But she also felt an urgent need to hurry. The woman was in captivity. Caged or tied, that didn’t matter. She didn’t have long to live. Was this any time to hold back on any source of information?

  “Is there any way to find out where Cindy bought it?” Riley asked, trying to speak in a gentler tone. “Just in case we do need that information.”

  “Cindy and I keep some receipts,” Nathaniel said. “Just for tax-deductible expenses. I don’t think she would have kept the receipt for a family gift. But I’ll look.”

  Nathaniel went to a closet and took down a shoebox. He sat down again and opened the box, which was full of paper receipts. He started looking through the them, but his hands were trembling uncontrollably.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” he said.

  Beverly gently took the box away from him.

  “That’s all right, Mr. MacKinnon,” she said. “I’ll look for it.”

  Beverly began to rummage through the box. Nathaniel was near tears.

  “I don’t understand,” he said in a broken voice. “She just bought a gift. It could have been anything. From anywhere. I think she was considering several possibilities, but she finally decided on a doll.”

  Riley felt sick to her stomach. Somehow, deciding on a doll had led Cindy MacKinnon into a nightmare. If she had decided on a stuffed animal instead, would she be at home today, alive and happy?

  “Will you please explain to me what this doll business is all about?” Nathaniel insisted.

  Riley knew that the man more than deserved an explanation. She could think of no gentle way to put it.

  “I think—” she began haltingly. “I think that your wife’s abductor—might be obsessed with dolls.”

  She was aware of the instant responses from the others in the room. Bill shook his head and turned his gaze downward. Beverly’s head snapped up in shock. Nathaniel gazed at her with an expression of hopeless despair.

  “What makes you think that?” he asked in a choked voice. “What do you know about him? What aren’t you telling me?”

  Riley searched for a helpful reply, but she could see an awful dawning realization in his eyes.

  “He’s done this before, hasn’t he?” he said. “There have been other victims. Has this got something to do with—?”

  Nathaniel struggled to remember something.

  “Oh my God,” he said. “I’ve been reading about it in the news. A serial killer. He killed other women. Their bodies were found in Mosby Park, and in that national park near Daggett, and somewhere around Belding.”

  He doubled over and began to sob uncontrollably.

  “You think that Cindy’s his next victim,” he cried. “You think she’s already dead.”

  Riley shook her head insistently.

  “No,” Riley said. “No, we don’t think that.”

  “Then what do you think?”

  Riley’s thoughts were in turmoil. What could she tell him? That his wife was probably alive, but utterly terrified, and about to be hideously tortured and mutilated? And that the cutting and the stabbing would go on and on—until Cindy was rescued or dead, whichever came first?

  Riley opened her mouth to speak, but no words at all came out. Beverly leaned forward and put one hand on Riley’s arm. The specialist’s face was still warm and friendly, but the fingers were quite firm.

  Beverly spoke very slowly, as if explaining something to a child.

  “I can’t find the receipt,” she said. “It’s not here.”

  Riley understood Beverly’s unspoken meaning. With her eyes, Beverly was telling her that the interview had gotten out of control, and that it was time for her to leave.

  “I’ll take it from here,” Beverly mouthed in a barely audible whisper.

  Riley whispered back to her, “Thank you. I’m sorry.”

  Beverly smiled and nodded sympathetically.

  Nathaniel sat with his face buried in his hands. He didn’t even look up at Riley as she and Bill stood up to leave.

  They left the apartment and went back down the stairs to the street. They both got into Riley’s car but she didn’t start the engine. She felt her own tears welling up.

  I don’t know where to go, she thought. I don’t know what to do.

  It seemed to be the story of her life these days.

  “It’s dolls, Bill,” she said. She was trying to explain her new theory to herself as much as to him. “It’s definitely got something to do with dolls. Do you remember what Roy Geraty told us in Belding?”

  Bill shrugged. “He said that his first wife—Margaret—didn’t like dolls. They made her sad, he said. He said they sometimes made her cry.”

  “Yeah, because she couldn’t have kids of her own,” Riley said. “But he said something else. He said she had all kinds of friends and relatives having kids of their own. He said that she was always having to go to baby showers, and to help out with birthday parties.”

  Riley could see by Bill’s expression that he was starting to understand now.

  “So she sometimes had to buy dolls,” he said. “Even if they did make her sad.”

  Riley struck the steering wheel with her fist.

  “They all bought dolls,” she said. “He saw them buying dolls. And he saw them buy the dolls in the same place, in the same store.”

  Bill nodded. “We’ve got to find that store,” he said.

  “Right,” Riley said. “Somewhere in our thousand-plus-square-mile area, there’s a doll store that all the kidnapped women went to. And he went there too. If we can find it, maybe—just maybe—we can find him.”

  At that moment, Bill’s cell phone rang.

  “Hello?” he said. “Yeah, Agent Walder, this is Jeffreys.”

  Riley stifled a moan. She wondered what kind of hassle Walder was about to cause them now.

  She saw Bill’s mouth drop open with stunned surprise.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Jesus. Okay. Okay. We’ll be right there.”

  Bill ended the call and stared at Riley, dumbstruck for a few seconds.

  “Walder and those kids he brought along,” he said. “They’ve caught him.”