CHAPTER NINETEEN

As their cab approached the Stott Hotel, a line kept running through Riley’s mind …

I’m scared for my life.

It was from the Facebook post that Joanna Rohm had shared with her friends. And if Rohm had good reason for her fears, maybe Riley and her team would get their first real break in this case. Maybe they’d be able to stop this ghastly killer before he could strike again.

The cab pulled up in front of the Stott Hotel, and Riley and her colleagues got out. Riley was impressed as she stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the glittering steel and glass building overlooking the river.

“Swanky,” Bill had called it.

He wasn’t kidding, Riley thought.

She wondered—what did that say about the person they were about to meet?

They took the elevator up to the restaurant, which occupied most of the top floor of the building.

A stylish hostess greeted them as soon as they arrived. Riley said, “We’re here to meet Joanna Rohm. Is she here?”

The hostess nodded.

“You’ll find her in the lounge,” she said, indicating the way.

The three agents passed through the clearly very expensive restaurant. Due to the late afternoon hour, only a few customers were there. When they went into the plush lounge, Riley was surprised to see no customers at all.

Where is she? Riley wondered.

Riley and her colleagues walked over to the bar, where a tall female bartender with blonde hair was cleaning some glasses. She wore a clean white shirt and a necktie.

“Excuse me,” Riley said, “but we’re looking for Joanna Rohm.”

“That would be me,” said the bartender.

Riley managed to hide her surprise as she and her colleagues produced their badges and introduced themselves. They sat down on the comfortable, leather-upholstered bar stools.

Riley said, “Now I think I understand why you told us to meet you at four-thirty.”

“Yeah, business grinds to a halt right about now,” Joanna said. “We can talk privately.”

Joanna fell quiet and glanced around nervously.

Then she said, “I’m glad you’re here. Like I said, I’m scared.”

Riley said, “You said you were afraid you might be the railroad killer’s next victim. Why do you think that?”

“I knew Reese Fisher.”

Joanna gave Riley a significant look, holding Riley’s gaze. Riley squinted, trying to understand what the woman was trying to communicate.

It soon began to dawn on her.

She remembered what Chase Fisher had said when they’d talked to him.

“Reese was having an affair.”

Of course! Riley thought.

She said, “You were having an affair with Reese.”

Joanna nodded again.

Bill asked, “But why does that make you think you might be the next victim?”

Joanna hesitated, then said, “The last time Reese was here—just before that terrible thing happened to her—she told me she thought her husband knew about us. He was being quiet about it, she said. She was afraid he was planning something, but she didn’t know what.”

Joanna gulped fearfully.

“Well, she found out what he was planning, didn’t she? And now … I’m scared half to death. Why wouldn’t he come after me next? Doesn’t it only make sense?”

Riley struggled with her thoughts, wondering what she should say—or not say.

Chase Fisher had told them he didn’t know the identity of his wife’s lover, and Riley had felt inclined to believe him. Should she say so to Joanna right now, to help put her at ease?

It didn’t seem at all appropriate.

But what was appropriate under these strange circumstances?

Riley thought for a moment, then said, “Ms. Rohm, I take it you’re aware that there was an earlier murder carried out in the same manner. We now know for certain that the two murders were committed by the same person. This leads us to doubt very strongly that Chase Fisher killed Reese. It’s hard to believe that he committed the first murder solely as some kind of preparation for the next one.”

Joanna’s expression changed. She seemed to be trying to let herself be reassured.

She said, “‘Hard to believe,’ you said. But not impossible, right?”

Riley hesitated. No, of course it wasn’t impossible, but …

“It seems very unlikely,” she said.

There was a dramatic change in Joanna’s expression. The tension of fear began to give way to an equally terrible emotion.

She said, “I hate being scared. It gets in the way of—”

She choked down a sob.

“Your grief,” Jenn said sympathetically.

Joanna nodded and wiped away a tear. Riley understood perfectly. The last thing the woman wanted right now was to be cowering for her life when she really needed to be mourning for someone she loved.

Riley wanted to say …

“Go right ahead and cry.”

… but of course, there would be time for that later, probably in another setting.

Joanna cleared her throat and said, “Reese and I met several months ago at an assisted living facility. Her mother lives there, and so does my dad. It’s been so terrible to see my dad slipping away from me. He doesn’t remember me or my name most of the time anymore. Reese had been going through the same thing with her mother. We just got to talking about it. I’d been feeling so alone about it until I met her.”

A tear trickled down her cheek, and she didn’t bother to wipe it away.

“Unless you knew her … oh, you have no idea how kind and caring and open she was. She was so outgoing and so full of empathy. She made friends simply everywhere. I fell in love with her right away. You see, I’m a writer—fiction and poetry, mostly. I’m afraid I’m not very successful at it—not yet, anyway. Which is why I work here.”

She smiled slightly.

“Yeah, I know the cliché—‘Don’t quit your day job.’ I know better than to do that. But Joanna read my work and said it really touched her. She understood every single word I wrote and just loved it. She was the only person in the world who ever made me believe I could do it—be a writer, I mean. And now …”

An expression of fear started creep over her face again. But Riley sensed that it was a different fear from fear for her life.

It was fear of being alone.

“I don’t know how I’ll go on without her,” Joanna said.

Riley wished she could remember the Oscar Wilde quote Joanna had put on her Facebook page …

Something to do with dreamers.

Joanna was a dreamer, all right. And in Reese Fisher, she had found and lost the only person in her world who had understood her dreams.

Riley fell silent as Bill and Jenn continued to ask Joanna some routine questions. She was quietly amazed by the irony of it all. She remembered the sadness in Chase Fisher’s voice when he’d talked about Reese’s lover—how he’d hoped that she’d found some rich and cultured man …

“Somebody who could take her to art galleries, plays, symphonies, the opera.”

The truth was quite different. Reese’s lover was a struggling woman writer, not some wealthy man. Even so, part of Chase Fisher’s hope for his wife had proven true. She had found somebody who …

“… could really help fill what was missing from her life.”

What would he think if he knew? Riley wondered.

She quickly pushed the question from her mind. It was none of her business, after all.

When Bill and Jenn wrapped up their questions, Joanna asked, “So you really think I’m safe?”

Riley and her colleagues exchanged glances. She sensed that Bill and Jenn felt the same way she did about the question.

What does “safe” even mean?

Of course, an FBI agent’s job was to ensure the safety of people like Joanna.

But who could say what might happen to this woman when she left work tonight, or at any other moment in her life?

No, Riley didn’t think she was in any danger from the railroad killer. But she couldn’t know that for absolute certain.

Besides, the world was full of countless other dangers.

For a moment, Riley flashed back to last night’s dream—of trying to save countless bound women from the inexorable, crushing force of an approaching locomotive.

Her whole life’s work was like that.

Neither she nor Bill nor Jenn were in any position to make promises.

Instead, she handed Joanna her card.

She said, “Please contact me if you feel like you’re in any danger.”

Riley and her colleagues left the restaurant and got on the elevator. On their way down, she asked, “So what do we do now?”

Bill looked at his watch and said, “It’s getting late, and there’s not much else we can do today. Let’s stop by the station and pick up our go-bags and get settled into a hotel of our own. Then we can talk about what to do tomorrow.”

Riley and Jenn agreed.

As they left the elevator and headed out of the building, Riley found herself thinking about what Red Messer had told her about Fern Bruder.

“She seemed like the nicest human being in the world.”

From what Joanna Rohm had said, the same words could be used to describe Reese Fisher. Although Riley was still having trouble profiling the killer, she was starting to get a vivid profile of his victims. And she knew that somewhere, a generous, kind, and vivacious woman had no idea what kind of danger she might be in.

That unstoppable locomotive in her dream was hurtling mercilessly toward her.

And Riley had no way to warn her.