CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Riley felt her stomach sink at what Cullen had just said. She gripped the phone tightly as she began to pace the room. She put the call on speakerphone so her colleagues could hear.

“Where did it happen this time?” she asked Bull Cullen.

“Just outside of Caruthers, a little town in the western part of the state.”

Riley glanced at her colleagues and sensed that they were thinking what she was thinking.

The killer is moving westward.

He had started in Indiana, then these two were widely separated in Illinois.

She asked, “A town on a line out of Chicago?”

“Yes, another heavily used commuter line,” Cullen said, “Her name was Sally Diehl, and she was killed just like the others, bound by duct tape to railroad tracks a short distance from town, killed by an oncoming freight train.”

“So the MO was exactly the same?” Riley asked.

“Yeah, but with one important difference. Her own car was found parked next to the road that runs along the railroad. Either she drove herself there or the killer drove her in her own car.”

Riley thought it more likely that the latter was the case. Her brain clicked away, already trying to put together a possible scenario for what had happened.

She asked, “Who’s on the scene right now?”

“The local cops headed there as soon as they heard the news from the train crew. I’ve talked to the police chief, Tanya Buchanan. She thinks the killer may still be in the area, so she’s working fast. She says she’s already got roadblocks set up. He shouldn’t be able to get away this time.”

Cullen chuckled and added, “Tanya sounds like one smart cookie.”

Jenn let out an audible groan, and Riley shared her disgust.

Tanya?

One smart cookie?

Riley was sure that Cullen wouldn’t call a male police chief by his first name like that, let alone describe him as a “smart cookie.”

Cullen continued, “I’ve ordered some of my people to get to Caruthers, and Special Agent in Charge Dillard has sent some of the Chicago FBI people. They’re all on their way right now, driving. But we can get there faster. The town’s got an airport, big enough for your jet. I need you to make a call and make sure it’s ready to fly. I’ll pick the three of you up and we’ll fly there.”

“How soon will you be here?” Riley asked.

Cullen chuckled again.

“Sooner than you probably expect,” he said, ending the call.

Hardly a second later there was a knock at the door.

Jenn rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, God—somebody else please answer that.”

Riley went to the door and opened it.

Sure enough, Bull Cullen was standing outside, still holding his cell phone in his hand. He was grinning—although his face sobered instantly when he saw that Riley was the one to greet him.

Riley understood the situation right away. As soon as Cullen had found out about the murder, he’d raced right to the hotel and found out Jenn’s room number at the front desk. He’d made the call while walking to her room.

Doubtless Cullen had hoped to catch Jenn by surprise alone—yet another immature male stunt of his. Riley was sure it was fortunate that he’d found all three of the FBI agents already gathered there instead.

Jenn looked furious, of course.

Riley said to Cullen, “Agent Jeffreys and I just have to pick up our go-bags.”

Jenn had her bag already in hand and actually led the way out the door, with Cullen tagging along behind her.

As she hurried to her room, Riley pulled out her cell phone and contacted the pilot, telling him to have the plane ready for them.

*

A short time later, Riley, her two colleagues, and Bull Cullen were aboard the FBI plane flying to Caruthers. Jenn had managed to claim a seat next to Riley so she wouldn’t have to sit by Cullen.

Cullen had settled in next to Bill in a seat facing the two women. He wasn’t bothering to hide his ogling of Jenn.

The whole thing exasperated Riley. The last thing they needed was a juvenile-minded guy on this job. She hoped Jenn could keep her own irritation under control, at least until they finished this case.

The flight was mercifully short. The plane barely reached cruising altitude before it started its descent into the Caruthers airport. When they landed, they were greeted on the tarmac by a pair of local police officers who drove them away, sirens blaring and lights flashing.

As they neared the crime scene, Riley could see that the local police had done a good job of closing off the area. Reporters had already gathered, but they weren’t able to get past the roadblocks. Even so, Riley wondered—had the barriers been put up fast enough to stop the killer from getting away?

Maybe, she thought. But she suspected that he was too sharp to hang around. He had probably left as soon as he tied the woman down.

Local cops waved the police vehicle through the barriers, where it pulled up behind a small hatchback that had been parked on the shoulder of the road—the victim’s vehicle, Riley realized. It was a dark, overcast night and she could see lights darting about nearby. They looked like oversized fireflies.

Flashlights, Riley realized.

Some of the local cops had already gathered there, but flashlights were the only illumination available. Riley took her own flashlight out of her go-bag, and saw that Jenn and Bill had theirs too.

When they walked over to the crime scene area, the moving lights revealed a handful of investigators surveying the area. The spectacle of the beheaded body under the glancing, dancing beams of light looked truly surreal.

A huskily built uniformed woman strode toward them.

She said, “I’m Tanya Buchanan, the chief of police here in Caruthers. I take it you folks just flew in from Chicago.”

Riley and the others all introduced themselves. Chief Buchanan shined her flashlight down at the body and shook her head.

“I sure as hell never thought I’d see something like this,” she said. “I’d heard about the other murders, of course, but even so I never imagined …”

The woman’s voice trailed off and she shuffled her feet anxiously.

Then she pointed along the railroad tracks.

“The train stopped down there about a mile away. The conductor called us as soon as he and the engineer could get stopped. Those poor guys, they’re really a mess. We’ve already put them in their own motel rooms. A railroad shrink is supposed to get here before too long to help them deal with it.”

Riley hoped Chief Buchanan was right. While it was true that Jenn had dealt with the engineer at the Barnwell crime scene delicately and sensitively, Riley and her colleagues weren’t here to offer therapy. They were here to solve a crime. And the time between these grisly deaths seemed to be getting shorter.

There had been four days between the first killing and the second one. But this time the monster had only waited a day to carry out another murder. Whatever was driving him must be growing stronger.

That meant they had no time for distractions of any kind.

The first thing Riley noticed was a curve in the train tracks, the same as the Barnwell crime scene. The killer had chosen this spot carefully, knowing that the engineer wouldn’t see the woman until it was much too late to stop.

Riley crouched beside the body and studied it with her flashlight. The headless corpse was twisted in a writhing position, similar to Reese Fisher’s body. Like Reese, this woman had been all too conscious during the last moments of her life, and she had desperately tried to thrash her way loose.

Riley turned her flashlight toward the head that had rolled down the embankment. Riley felt a chill as the woman’s dead, terrified eyes seemed to stare directly into her own.

She quickly noted the resemblance to the other two women—the same thin face, longish nose, and curly brown hair.

The killer is fixated on a physical type, all right, she thought.

She heard Jenn ask her, “What do you think about the car?”

Riley shined her light over at the parked hatchback.

A scenario had been forming in her mind ever since Bull Cullen had mentioned that the woman’s own car was found at the scene.

Riley walked over to the car, followed by Bill, Jenn, Cullen, and Chief Buchanan. Riley saw that the passenger door and driver door were both still open.

She felt a welcome shift in her mental focus as she began to get a faint sense of the killer’s thoughts and actions.

She walked slowly around the car, telling the others what she was thinking …

“Her car was parked somewhere else a while ago—a place where she often parked The killer knew exactly where to find it, and when to expect her to come back to it. He knew there weren’t likely to be a lot of people around. He lay in wait for her out of sight near the car.”

She stood beside the driver door and said …

“She took out her keys and opened the driver door. At that moment, everything was right for the killer. No one was watching. He made his move. He subdued her with a blood choke, then injected her with flunitrazepam. As she lost consciousness, he had no trouble pushing her into the car and over into the passenger’s seat.”

Riley leaned into the driver’s seat. She reached out and touched the wheel lightly. “Then he drove directly here. He got out, walked around to the passenger side, pulled the woman out, and carried her over to the tracks. He bound her to the tracks, just as he had the others. Then he …”

Riley paused.

Then he what? she wondered.

He hadn’t used the woman’s car as a getaway vehicle. Did that mean he’d had his own car parked and waiting nearby? Or did he slip away on foot?

Riley’s connection with the killer suddenly vanished.

She stifled a sigh. The feeling had been much too fleeting.

Were her instincts never going to kick in reliably on this case?

She said to the others, “A forensics team will need to scour the car for DNA.”

Not that it will probably do any good, she thought.

She had no idea how many people might have ridden in Sally Diehl’s car. And she felt sure that the killer wasn’t an idiot—he would have worn gloves, so there wouldn’t be any of his DNA on the wheel.

She turned away from the car and asked Chief Buchanan, “What can you tell me about Sally Diehl?”

The uniformed woman scratched her head.

“Well, Sally had lived here in Caruthers for two or three years. She taught third grade in our public school. She was single—divorced, I think. Yeah, I believe she told me that she got divorced before she moved here. I don’t know where her ex-husband might live. She doesn’t have any family here in town.”

“What about friends?” Riley asked.

Buchanan smiled sadly.

“Oh, she had friends, all right. Me included. She was sweet and charming. Everybody liked her. Which is why it’s so hard to imagine …”

The police chief’s voice faded away again.

Riley asked, “Do you have any idea where she was or what she might have been doing today before this happened?”

Buchanan thought for a moment.

“Well, it’s Sunday, so she wasn’t teaching school. I wouldn’t know where she was. But somebody else might. I’ll ask my team to talk to people around town who knew her, ask if anybody knows.”

Riley’s head began to fill up with unanswered questions. She knew which one she wanted to ask first.

“Did she sometimes travel to Chicago?”

Chief Buchanan tilted her head.

“As a matter of fact, she did. I think she had a brother there, and she visited him from time to time. I have the impression that he was in and out of trouble a lot.”

“Did a passenger train come into Caruthers from Chicago today?” Riley asked.

“Why, yes,” Chief Buchanan said. “About an hour or so before this happened.”

Riley looked knowingly at Bill and Jenn.

Jenn nodded and said what Riley was thinking. “The other two victims were on trains from Chicago shortly before they were killed.”

Bill said, “Maybe Sally Diehl was on that passenger train.”

“We need to find out,” Riley said. “If she was, somebody needs to try to find people who were on the train who might have seen her or talked to her. We still don’t know whether the killer might have been on the train as well, but we can’t overlook the possibility.”

Just then Riley heard wailing sirens and saw the flashing lights of several approaching official vehicles. She remembered Bull Cullen saying that he’d ordered his own railroad cops and FBI agents from the Chicago field office to come straight here.

They made it here in a hurry, Riley thought.

In a matter of seconds, a swarm of law enforcement personnel poured out of the vehicles. Led by the Chicago field office chief Proctor Dillard, the FBI people hauled an electrical generator and floodlight stands out of a truck and set them up around the body.

When the lights snapped on, the already surreal crime scene suddenly became a whole lot weirder. The glare of the floodlights was as intense as sunlight, making the whole place seem like some sort of movie set.

But this scene was all too real.

Riley, Jenn, and Bill helped Chief Dillard organize the newly arrived personnel, assigning them different tasks.

Soon Riley noticed a tall, older man in plainclothes mingling among the others. He was looking around the crime scene with a mixture of horror and intense interest, writing down notes in a notepad.

Where have I seen that man before? she wondered.

Then she remembered.

It was Mason Eggers, the retired railroad cop who had caught Riley’s interest at the meeting in Chicago. She remembered being intrigued by his keen concentration at the meeting in Chicago earlier that day.

She also remembered what he’d said shortly before his abrupt departure.

“Just playing around with a little theory.”

Riley headed toward him.

It was time to find out what had been on his mind.