CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

As Riley and Jenn flagged down a cab in the busy traffic in front of the hotel, Bill looked up at the late afternoon sky that was framed by Chicago’s towering structures. He couldn’t help feeling that it ought to be dark out by now. It had already been a long day—two long days, actually—and he and his colleagues had nothing to show for all their hard work.

And he was tired—more tired than he ought to be.

Why? he wondered.

The case was wearing him down, of course. But he knew that something else was bothering him. He couldn’t put his finger on it exactly.

A cab pulled up and they all climbed into it. The cab driver drove them back to Union Station, the solid-looking building squatting among taller ones. The driver waited while they retrieved the go-bags they’d left in the station lockers.

“Where to now?” the driver asked when they got back into the car.

Bill automatically repeated the name of a modestly priced nearby hotel where he and Riley had stayed during previous cases in the Windy City. He was glad that Bull Cullen hadn’t bothered to book a crummy room for them again. This time they could get three simple but comfortable rooms on the FBI’s dime.

After they checked into the hotel and dropped off their go-bags in their rooms, they regrouped in Jenn’s room to discuss the situation. As they sat down together, Bill felt another wave of tiredness. He realized that he was also hungry.

“Let’s order food,” he said. “We haven’t had anything to eat today since snacks on the train.”

“Good idea,” Jenn said. “My brain seriously needs recharging.”

He called room service and ordered hamburgers and soft drinks. As they waited for their food to arrive, Riley phoned Proctor Dillard, the FBI field office chief they’d met with earlier, to check for updates.

Bill could tell from her expression that Dillard had nothing new.

Riley confirmed that lack of progress when she ended the call. “His people still haven’t found any relationship between the two victims, and no indication that anyone had anything personal against them.”

Bill shook his head with discouragement. He was all too familiar with the stagnation that could set in during an investigation. Most cases had periods of tediously picking through theories, discarding some and following up others until something pointed them in the right direction. Or until Riley’s sixth sense picked up on something that was invisible to everybody else. So far, she hadn’t mentioned anything at all about this case kicking in her unusual powers of perception.

He said, “We’d better check in with Coroner Hammond back in Barnwell to find out the results of Reese Fisher’s autopsy.”

Jenn made that call. When it was over, her expression was as lackluster as Riley’s had been. She said, “Nothing new or surprising. Death was instantaneous, of course. Like Fern Bruder before her, she had flunitrazepam in her bloodstream. There were also telltale bruises around her neck.”

Jenn growled slightly and added, “So I guess Cullen was right about how the killer choked both victims before injecting them with a date rape drug. I know it’s petty of me, but I hate it when the son of a bitch is right.”

Their burgers and soft drinks arrived, and the three of them sat down to eat. They also did their best to brainstorm theories and ideas.

They certainly had plenty of questions.

Jenn asked, “Do we think the victims knew the killer at all?”

Bill couldn’t think of any reason they could answer that one way or the other. But a glance at Riley told him that she felt differently.

Riley said, “Both victims were charming and outgoing. I know, that might just be a coincidence, like their physical resemblance. But I’ve got a hunch otherwise. I think the killer engaged their trust. I doubt that either of them had long-term relationships with him. But he wasn’t a total stranger. I think they struck up at least one conversation with him.”

“Of course, that would make it easier for him to gain control of each prospective victim,” Bill agreed.

“On the train, do you think?” Jenn asked.

“Possibly,” Riley said. “Or possibly not. Perhaps they met him in Chicago, and he learned everything he needed to know about them there and traveled on his own to Allardt and Barnwell to kill them. Or I guess they might have met him in their home towns …”

Bill shook his head.

“That sounds like a bit of a stretch. I find it hard to believe that he hops from town to town looking for women who happen to commute to and from Chicago.”

Jenn agreed. “If he started from their home towns, he’d have to have some more personal reason to look up these particular women.”

Riley added, “And either way we’re still stuck with the question of why these two.”

The conversation continued without settling anything. As they all talked, Bill felt his exhaustion taking over, and he had trouble focusing on what was being said. It began to occur to him what at least part of the problem was.

Chemistry.

He knew that he wasn’t working well with Riley and Jenn as a unit, at least not yet. He missed the old days when he and Riley were one-on-one partners and had an uncanny ability to connect with each other, sometimes communicating their ideas without even speaking at all. They’d constantly boosted each other’s energy. Working with Riley had never drained him or made him feel tired.

In fact, they’d always been best friends, able to confide in each other completely and with absolute trust. But they hadn’t even had a private moment to talk since they’d started to work on this case.

Bill bitterly missed that. He wished he could talk to Riley about his own life—his sadness and loss now that his ex-wife, Maggie, had remarried and moved to Saint Louis, taking their two boys away from him. He was losing touch with the boys, and it pained him terribly. And although his PTSD reactions to the debacle in California had subsided over the past six months, he sometimes felt that he still wasn’t back to full capacity.

In the old days, he could have turned to Riley for sympathy, understanding, and even wise advice.

Now he felt left out.

Riley and Jenn seemed to understand each other better than he understood either of them.

Bill felt embarrassed to be thinking such thoughts. Was he actually jealous of the rapport that seemed to be growing between the two women?

Was he letting himself feel like the proverbial “third wheel”?

Their conversation shifted to trying to profile the killer himself. They kept coming back to the same old ideas—that the killer was fascinated by trains, that the women reminded him of someone in his past, and that he was acting out of some sort of guilty compulsion. Most of all, he seemed to resist any textbook profiles they might otherwise come up with about him.

As they talked, Bill realized little by little …

It isn’t just me.

Riley looked tired, and so did Jenn.

He realized that they both also looked worried.

About what? Bill wondered.

Bill had been plenty concerned about Riley lately. He knew that she’d been taking on huge obligations at home—too much, he thought, for an active FBI agent who was a single parent. The last he’d heard she was in the process of adopting Jilly, and she also had that boy named Liam living with her.

Unless all that’s changed, he thought.

The truth was, he didn’t know a thing about what was going on with Riley’s life, including whether she was still dating that guy named Blaine, who seemed like a decent man. He wondered if he should just come out and ask. But he didn’t feel comfortable with that idea, not with all three of them in the room.

And there it was—his concern about that third person. Jenn was still an enigma to him. He couldn’t complain about her behavior toward him. In fact, Jenn had covered for Riley on a recent case when he’d had a suicidal spell and Riley has slipped away to help him out.

Bill had returned the favor when Jenn herself had briefly gone AWOL last month.

But he still didn’t even know why that had happened. It was obvious that Jenn harbored some sort of dark secret. Apparently Riley knew what it was, but she wasn’t willing to confide in Bill about it.

Bill seriously didn’t like being left out of the loop.

If something was lurking in Jenn’s background that might disrupt everything at any moment, he felt as though he ought to know all about it. In their line of work, information blackouts could be dangerous, even a matter of life or death.

Eventually Riley said, “It’s getting late, and we’re just spinning our wheels here. I’m heading back to my room. We all really ought to turn in and get some rest so we can be fresh for tomorrow.”

Jenn nodded, and Bill agreed gratefully. But as he and Riley got up to leave, he heard Riley’s phone buzz.

He paused on his way to the door, waiting to see if the call had anything to do with the case.

When Riley answered the phone, her eyes widened with shock.

She turned pale as she walked back to the bed and sat down.

Bill felt a chill of apprehension.

What’s happened? he wondered.