CHAPTER SIXTEEN

 

Riley and her colleagues moved quietly into the apartment building. Fortunately, none of the residents were out and about, so they didn’t have to worry about clearing away unwary civilians. They stopped just outside the door to Apartment A and exchanged uneasy glances.

Like Riley, Bill and Jenn had their hands near their weapons.

Riley knocked sharply on the door. They waited a few moments, but there was no reply.

She hesitated. Of course it was possible that Red Messer wasn’t home.

If he didn’t answer the door, maybe they should check in with Chief Dolby to try to find out more about him—including where he might be at the moment.

Riley didn’t much like that idea. If Messer really was their killer, she wanted to arrest him here and now, before he got wind that they were after him.

Before he could possibly get away.

She knocked again. After another moment of silence, she heard footsteps inside the apartment, coming toward the door.

Then she heard a grumbling voice. “Who is it? What do you want?”

There was a peephole in the door. Riley held up her badge and introduced herself and her colleagues.

“Are you Red Messer?” she said through the door.

“That’s what they call me,” came the reply.

“We’d like to speak with you about Fern Bruder’s murder five days ago. And a similar murder that happened in Illinois yesterday.”

A brief silence followed. Riley’s hand edged closer to her weapon.

Then she heard the sound of the door chain rattling and the dead bolt turning.

The door swung open to reveal a husky man wearing a bathrobe, pajamas, and bedroom slippers. He had long gray hair and a beard. Judging from his face, Riley guessed that the gray was premature, and that he was actually in his thirties.

She also noticed that he had a distinct odor.

He works in a kitchen, she realized.

There was no sign that he might be armed, and she could see her colleagues relax a little. Riley tried to do the same.

The man squinted as if half asleep.

“I guess you folks want to come in,” he said in tired voice, stepping aside so that the agents could all enter. “Make yourselves comfortable.”

Riley saw that Bill was watching the man closely as he followed them inside. But Bill made no comment and they all sat down. It was a modest apartment with sturdy furniture that Riley suspected had either come with the apartment or been bought used.

Red Messer looked around groggily.

“Maybe you’d like some coffee,” he said.

“I’m fine,” Riley said, and her colleagues agreed.

“Well, I sure need some,” Messer said. “Excuse me just a moment.”

As Messer headed for the kitchen, Riley noticed that he walked with a slight limp. He rattled around for a few moments, then made his way back with a mug of steaming coffee and sat down.

He took a sip and shook his head wearily.

“Horrible thing, what happened to poor Fern. If I can help you with it somehow, I’d love to. But I can’t imagine how I can help. I sure don’t know anything about it.”

Riley was startled at his opening up this line of conversation.

She asked, “So you knew the victim?”

“A little. I wish I’d known her better. She was a nice lady.”

Riley took the heart-shaped trinket out of her pocket and showed it to him.

“I believe you gave this to her,” she said.

The man stared at the trinket for a moment.

“Good Lord,” he said in a hushed voice.

Then he looked around at the agents and stammered, “Where did you …? How did you …? I mean, how did you know that I …?”

Riley said, “She gave it to her little brother, Bobby. She told him she’d gotten it from you.”

“Yeah, she sure did,” Red Messer said. “I told her it was a little piece of heart-shaped love, flaming red like I used to be.”

He fingered his hair.

“All this used to be bright red, like a ripe old strawberry. I guess you’d never know it now, but that’s why they started calling me Red when I was a kid. My real name’s Jesse.”

He held out his hand for the trinket, and Riley reached over and passed it to him.

He turned it over with his fingers.

“I told her not to keep it too long,” he said. “I told her to pass it along soon to someone else who she thought might need it. Pay it forward, if you know what I mean. I guess that’s why it wound up with little Bobby.”

He sat staring at the trinket in his hand.

Riley studied his face. Was he a killer? He certainly didn’t show any sign of a murderous nature. But Riley knew from hard experience not to judge from appearances or even from first impressions. And she reminded herself of what Weston Bruder had said about him …

“He’s a wicked man.”

Bruder certainly seemed to believe that Red Messer was his daughter’s killer.

Riley needed to find out the truth fast.

“How well did you know Fern’s family?” Riley asked.

“Well, in a little town like this, everybody knows the Bruders. But old Weston Bruder and I were never friends. Far from it.”

Riley sensed that Jenn was eager to ask the next question. She gave her a nod to go ahead.

“Mr. Messer, can you tell us where you were at the time of Fern’s death?”

“Yeah, but if you’re looking for an alibi, it won’t be much help for mine. You said somebody else was killed yesterday?”

Jenn nodded and said, “A woman named Reese Fisher. She died on the tracks near Barnwell, Illinois. It happened in the morning, about the same time of day as the murder near here.”

Messer shrugged and said, “I was here alone asleep both times. I don’t suppose that’s what you want to hear, but it’s the truth. I keep strange hours, because I’m the night shift cook at a local all-night diner. Midnight to eight. I sleep during the day, and I was asleep when you folks knocked on the door. However …”

He pulled up the right leg of his pajamas. Riley was startled to see a prosthetic leg, which had been covered by the pajamas and his bedroom slipper. That obviously explained the limp.

He said, “Maybe this will do for an alibi.”

Bill asked, “Iraq?”

Red Messer answered, “That’s right.”

Riley realized that Bill had picked up on the handicap right away. But she thought that the man had seemed quite mobile despite his prosthesis. Then she remembered the footprints she’d seen at the murder scene back near Barnwell. They’d looked perfectly even. She doubted that they could have been left by a man with a prosthetic leg.

Messer explained, “I lost my leg back in oh-four, during the Second Battle of Fallujah. I was an Army sergeant at the time.”

He smiled a bitter, ironic smile.

“I can’t tell you how eager I was to go and serve my country. I was afraid the Army wouldn’t take me. I had reason to worry. Those were the days of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”

“You’re gay?” Jenn asked.

Messer nodded.

“I wasn’t very open about it here in Allardt. Some folks knew and were all right with it, and others weren’t so all right with it. As far as the Army goes—well, they didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell, so I guess you could say I got lucky.”

Tapping his artificial leg, he added, “Or not. Depends on how you look at it. But I was glad to do my duty. I’d like to think it was all worth it somehow.”

Messer was quiet for a moment.

Then he said, “I was a real mess when I came back home. Mad at the Army, mad at myself, mad at the world. I needed something to make me feel whole again. I decided to check out the Ephesian Elders church, see if maybe some religion could help me.”

Messer let out a scoffing sound.

“I didn’t know what I was in for. The Sunday I went, Pastor Brayman happened to deliver a hellfire sermon about all the people the church was against—Jews, Catholics, Muslims, and of course homosexuals. No question about it—that wasn’t the church for me. I quietly got up from my pew and tried to leave without making too much fuss about it.”

He squinted as he remembered.

“But before I could get out, Weston Bruder stood up and pointed at me and told the whole congregation I was one of them. Before I knew it, a crowd of folks was blocking my way, and Pastor Brayman was calling on me to repent my ways. I’d already been judged, he said, which was why I’d lost my leg, but it wasn’t too late to save my soul. I had a hell of a time getting away from there without banging up any of the congregation. And ever since then, I’ve never had much good to say about Weston Bruder, nor he about me.”

He paused for a moment.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a religious man. I found another church that really helped me through my rough times. But I sure never went back to the Ephesian Elders.”

Riley thought hard and fast, trying to assess what she was hearing.

She asked, “How did you wind up giving the keychain to Fern?”

He smiled a little at the memory.

“I was on a train a couple of weeks ago, coming home from a trip to Chicago, when she happened to be in the same car with me. She came right over to me, said how sorry she’d always felt about what had happened to me, and how she had quit going to that church right then. She’d never go back, she said, no matter what her father said.”

His eyes moistened.

“Imagine that!” he said, his voice choking a little. “She defied her whole family, her father especially. And all on account of what had happened to me. Right at that moment she seemed like the nicest human being in the world. I didn’t have anything on me to give her except this cheap little thing, but I figured it was better than nothing.”

He hung his head and added sadly, “And now she’s dead. I just don’t know what to make of it. What kind of a world is this, anyway?”

Riley remembered something Weston Bruder had said about his daughter.

“She’d been straying away from us lately.”

Riley felt a pang of pity at the terrible irony. Fern Bruder had good reason to want to get away from Allardt and make a life for herself in Chicago. But she had lost her life during her efforts to do that.

She also remembered the sadness in little Bobby’s face. As young as he was, he wanted to get away too. Fern seemed to have given him the keychain as a gesture of hope. But who did he have to turn to now that his big sister was gone?

She knew that Red Messer had every reason to wonder …

“What kind of a world is this, anyway?”

It was a question that haunted Riley every day.

Red Messer held out the trinket toward Riley.

“I guess you’ll want this back,” he said.

Riley thought quickly. Was it of any use as evidence?

No, she was sure that it wasn’t—as sure as she was that Red Messer wasn’t the killer.

“Keep it,” she said.

Messer smiled and tucked the keychain into his bathrobe pocket.

Before anybody could say anything else, Riley’s cell phone buzzed. She saw that the call was from Sam Flores, the head technician back at Quantico.

“I’ve got to take this,” she said, getting up from her chair.

Then she said something that she hadn’t expected to say when she’d arrived here.

“We’re all very sorry for your loss, Mr. Messer.”

Riley went out into the hall, leaving Jenn and Bill to wrap things up with Red Messer.

When she got Sam Flores on the line, she asked, “What have you got, Flores?”

The technician sounded excited.

“I think maybe I’ve found a person of interest.”

Riley almost gasped with excitement.

“You mean a suspect?”

“No, but maybe the next best thing.”

Sam paused and added, “I may have found the killer’s next victim.”

 

 

 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

 

Riley gripped the phone tightly, excited by what Flores had just said.

“The next victim?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

“My team and I have been monitoring the Internet, looking for any activity that might have to do with the case. There’s a lot of buzz online about the murders right now. Of course, we’ve run across the usual crackpots with crazy theories, including a couple of guys claiming to be the killer. Don’t worry, we checked them out, they’re just asshole trolls. But …”

Flores fell silent for a moment.

“There’s a woman on Facebook named Joanna Rohm. She’s been posting that she’s scared she’ll be the next victim. She could be just another crackpot, but …”

Flores paused again.

“I don’t know, Agent Paige. I’ve just got a feeling about what I see here on her page. Maybe the threat is imaginary, but the fear seems genuine.”

Riley knew from experience that Flores’s instincts were very good.

“Where does she live?” she asked.

“In Chicago. I’ve already run down her address and phone.”

Riley gasped a little. Maybe this wasn’t going to be a wasted trip after all. She decided to check Joanna Rohm’s Facebook page herself as soon as she got a chance.

“Send that information to me, Flores,” she said. “But what about the two victims’ cell phones? Have you found anything helpful?”

“Not a thing,” Sam said. “Fern Bruder just communicated with friends and family, nobody suspicious.”

“What about Reese Fisher?” she asked Flores. “Her husband thought she had a lover in Chicago.”

“I know,” Flores said. “But if she did we see no sign of that on her cell phone. She didn’t use hers much at all for calling or texting. I guess she used it mostly to connect to the Internet and use GPS and such.”

Riley thanked Flores and ended the call just as Jenn and Bill came out of the apartment.

“Come on,” she said to her colleagues. “We’ve got a train to catch.”

 

*

 

A short time later, Riley and her colleagues were in a coach class car on an hour-long train trip to Chicago. Riley told them about the call from Flores, and they all huddled together as Riley opened her laptop and went online.

Riley logged into Facebook, then searched for the name Joanna Rohm. She found her page immediately.

Her horizontal cover photo was a view of Chicago’s skyline as seen from Lake Michigan. Her profile image was actually an old photograph of a familiar male face, with a quote superimposed over it:

 

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”

 

Riley didn’t recognize the quote, and couldn’t quite place the face in the picture.

She asked, “Does anybody know who that is?”

Jenn was the first to speak up. “That’s Oscar Wilde,” she said. “The quote is from The Critic as Artist.”

Riley glanced at her younger colleague. She remembered what Jenn had said a little while ago …

“I was encouraged to read a lot when I was a kid.”

Riley was impressed. Whatever criminal skills Jenn had learned from Aunt Cora, she had obviously gotten a good education along the way.

Riley wasn’t especially surprised that the photo wasn’t of Joanna Rohm herself. Riley had several friends who posted sayings or images for their profile pictures instead of photos of themselves.

Bill pointed to the first post on the page. It simply read …

 

I’m scared for my life.

 

Bill said, “I guess that’s what Flores was talking about.”

Riley glanced down the comments thread.

A friend asked …

 

Why?

 

An exchange continued between Joanna Rohm and her friends.

 

Have you heard about the railroad killings in Indiana and Illinois?

 

Yes.

 

I think I’m the next intended victim.

 

Why do you think that?

 

Riley could see from the thread that Joanna wouldn’t say exactly why she was afraid. And when her friends suggested that she notify the police, she said she didn’t want to, and that she had her own reasons. The thread petered out due to Rohm’s reluctance to share any meaningful information. At least, she hadn’t shared anything more in a public thread.

Bill said to Riley, “Check her personal information.”

Riley clicked the “About” tag. It showed almost no useful information at all, only a few innocuous “Likes”—music, books, and movies. She didn’t even say where she lived, although Riley had already found out from Flores that she lived in Chicago. Rohm only had twenty-six friends.

“Just some crackpot?” Bill asked.

“Flores doesn’t seem to think so,” Riley said. “At least, it got his attention enough to pass it on to me.”

“What do you think?” Jenn asked Riley.

Riley thought for a moment. She was somehow fascinated by what she saw here—or rather what she didn’t see. With so few online contacts, Rohm seemed to be borderline reclusive, but she was alarmed enough to make a public statement about it.

Riley said, “Let’s see if we can get her to talk to us.”

She brought up the message bar and typed a message to Joanna Rohm.

 

I’m FBI Special Agent Riley Paige. I’m here with my colleagues, Agents Jeffreys and Roston. We’re investigating the railroad murders. We want to know why you’re afraid you’ll be the next victim.

 

Riley had no idea how long they would have to wait for a reply. But in a matter of seconds, her message was marked “seen.”

Then came a reply …

 

How do I know you’re who you say you are?

 

Jenn said, “Sounds a little paranoid.”

“Maybe,” Riley said. “But as they say, even paranoids have enemies.”

She typed again.

 

Check my own Facebook page.

 

She knew what Joanna Rohm would find there. Although Riley spent little time on Facebook, her information was very specific about her work and career, and her cover photo showed the FBI’s seal and motto. The woman would have to be remarkably mistrustful not to believe her.

After a few moments, Joanna Rohm replied …

 

I see it.

 

Riley typed …

 

Do you think you’re in danger right now?

 

Rohm quickly replied …

 

No. I think I’m in a safe situation at the moment.

 

Riley typed …

 

We need to talk.

 

As Riley waited for a reply, Jenn said, “Flores gave you her address. Maybe you could suggest that we meet her there.”

“No,” Riley said. “It might spook her to know that we’ve tracked down that information. Let’s just be patient for a few seconds.”

Finally the woman typed …

 

Meet me at the restaurant at the Stott Hotel at 4:30.

 

Before Riley could type a reply, she saw that Joanna Rohm had suddenly gone offline.

Bill said, “Stott Hotel—yeah, I was there once. It’s not far from Union Station.”

Riley glanced at the time. Hopefully the meeting Cullen had set up would be over in time for them to meet with Joanna Rohm by 4:30.

Bill added, “It’s a swanky place with a really high-class restaurant. This woman could just be some kind of rich eccentric who wants attention.”

“Maybe,” Riley said.

But she had a gut feeling that the truth was somewhat different.

She also felt sure that Flores was right. Joanna Rohm was genuinely scared.

The question was—of what?