CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Riley stared back at Lawrence as she holstered her weapon and snatched her flashlight from the hobo who had picked it up.

“A Mercedes?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Some of our guys picked him up in the train station parking lot. It’s real close to here, and he must have run straight there when I started after him. He was trying to drive off in the Mercedes when they nabbed him.”

Riley shook her hand to try to make the stinging pain from the punch to Dutch’s face go away. She knew she should get some ice on it, but none was readily available, and everything else seemed more important anyhow.

The hobos who had been so threatening just a moment before seemed docile now. Dutch, the one who had attacked her, was sitting on the ground moaning softly. One of his buddies handed him a rag that looked reasonably clean to mop up the blood on his face.

Riley quickly decided it wasn’t worth trying to arrest any of them—not even Dutch.

“Do you guys have a first aid kit?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Weasel said. “We can take care of him.”

“Come on,” she said to Officer Lawrence. “Let’s go see what’s going on.”

Riley and Lawrence left the hobos behind and scrambled up the embankment. When they emerged from the ravine, a vehicle was already approaching. When it stopped alongside side of them, Riley saw that Bill and Jenn were inside. So was Bull Cullen, who had seated himself safely away from Jenn. His nose was swollen and red but no longer bleeding.

Riley and Lawrence got into the car. There was a rather strained silence in the group, but it took only a few moments to drive the rest of the way to the train station. That explained how the hobo had managed to get there so quickly.

The driver took them to a long-term parking lot near the station, where a couple of local cops were doing their best to keep reporters away from a big Mercedes. Riley and the others got out of the car and had to push their way past a cluster of questioning reporters to reach the vehicle.

A patrol car had pulled up in front of the Mercedes, blocking it from the exit. Beside the car, a couple of local cops were holding a man in handcuffs. Riley recognized him as the hobo who had fled—the one the others had called “Spider.”

As they walked toward him, Jenn said, “Do you think maybe that’s our killer?”

Riley thought quickly, then said, “I guess it’s possible. He’s a transient hobo, a freight-hopper. Maybe he gets from one murder location to the next on freight cars, then spots his victims and abducts them. Maybe he steals vehicles to help transport the victims.”

She remembered that the killer had used the same SUV for the first two victims, then had abandoned it in a field and burned it. It seemed likely that he’d stolen it to begin with. After all, he’d definitely stolen Sally Diehl’s hatchback.

And now, here was a hobo trying to drive away in a Mercedes.

Another stolen vehicle, she thought. At least this time he hadn’t gotten away with the car. But did this mean he’d already abducted his next victim?

Might a woman be bound to railroad tracks at very moment, helpless before the next train that came along?

No, it didn’t quite all fit together—not if the whole point of stealing the vehicles had been to carry the victims to the murder scenes. And since this car had been left in the long-term parking section of the station lot, it had probably been here for quite some time—days or even weeks.

A couple of local cops were rummaging through the car, so Riley walked over to them and asked, “Have you found out who owns the car?”

One of the cops handed a registration card to Riley.

He said, “It belongs to someone named Timothy Pollitt. He lives in Chicago.”

Riley breathed a little easier.

Not a woman, she thought.

The other cop held up a time-stamped ticket. “This was inside too. Mr. Pollitt left his car here two weeks ago.” He also produced a printed receipt. “Looks like he paid for a month in advance. I guess he must be off on a long trip.”

“And the keys were right under the seat,” the first cop said. “All somebody had to do was jimmy the door. If this perp was able to drive the car right out of here, the owner might not have even known it was missing.”

“Dumb luck,” the second cop commented.

Riley realized that whoever and wherever Timothy Pollitt was, he was almost certainly not the next intended victim.

But what was this hobo doing, trying to get away in someone’s expensive car? Wouldn’t it have been smarter to grab something less conspicuous? Or did he have some way of knowing that the keys were inside?

She asked the cop, “Have you searched the hobo for any ID?”

“Yeah, and he doesn’t have anything on him—not even a wallet. Just a few loose bills and some change.”

Another vehicle was approaching from the direction of the crime scene. When it stopped, Chief Buchanan got out. So did the Chicago FBI field office chief Proctor Dillard, who came toward Riley and the others.

“I just heard the news,” he said. “Have we got our guy?”

“We don’t know yet,” Riley said, handing the car registration to Dillard. “But we need to contact the owner of this car. It’s likely that he parked it here himself, but we need to find out if he reported it stolen.”

“We’ll get right on it,” Dillard said.

Meanwhile, Riley noticed that the local police were pushing the hobo into a cop car.

“Come on,” she said to her colleagues. “Let’s follow them to the police station.”

*

A short while later, Riley, Bill, Jenn, and Cullen were facing the seated, handcuffed hobo in the station’s interrogation room. At Riley’s request, a local cop had given her a small bag full of ice for her hand. She noticed that Cullen didn’t ask for one for his nose.

Too proud, she guessed. Or too embarrassed.

Riley studied the hobo more closely, now that she could see him better in this light than she’d been able to down in the ravine.

He was predictably filthy, wearing cheap ragged clothes and broken-down shoes. He smelled bad, and he was bearded and his hair was long.

But he struck Riley as somehow different from the other hobos down in that ravine. He was tall, but not as hard and muscular as the others. And something about his manner seemed different. Riley couldn’t yet put her finger on how or why.

The man had already asked for a lawyer. According to Chief Buchanan, one was on his way.

“What’s your name?” Cullen asked.

“They call me Spider,” the man said.

“I mean your real name,” Cullen said.

“They call me Spider,” the man repeated.

He looked around at Riley and her colleagues.

“So what’s this all about?” he said. “Who called in some sort of team?”

“That’s what we were hoping you could tell us,” Riley said. “For one thing, where did you get that nice car?”

The man smiled. Although his teeth were hardly clean, Riley could see that they were straight and healthy.

“I bought it,” he said.

Bull Cullen let out a sarcastic chuckle.

“Yeah, right,” he said.

Riley darted Cullen a disapproving look. She really wanted him to keep his mouth shut. She was anxious to hear whatever the man had to say for himself—no matter whether he was lying or telling the truth.

In fact, she figured it might be worth encouraging him in a lie.

“Where did you buy the Mercedes?” she asked.

“In Chicago,” Spider said.

“So you didn’t steal it?” Riley asked.

“Why would you think I did?”

Riley said, “Well, you hardly strike me as the Mercedes type.”

“I might surprise you.”

Riley asked him, “Why did you run away from us?”

“I had things to do, places to go.”

He chuckled a little and added, “I’m a busy man.”

His smiled faded, and a look of anxiety crossed his face.

“You still haven’t told me what this is about. I’ve got no idea. You said a while ago that a woman was killed on the tracks. I don’t know anything about that. Whenever it was, I’m sure I’ve got an alibi. I passed the day panhandling around the station. Then I went down to join up with the vagabonds under the bridge. Those gentlemen can account for my whereabouts.”

His wording caught Riley’s attention …

“… passed the day … vagabonds … account for my whereabouts … gentlemen.”

He sounded like a well-educated man.

She wondered—should she be surprised? Wasn’t it possible that a hobo had once seen better days?

Anyway, she wasn’t interested in checking this man’s alibi with the rest of them. They’d seemed to consider him one of their own, and they’d surely say just about anything to protect him.

Spider continued, “Nobody has said I’m under arrest for anything. Unless you’re going to charge me with something, like maybe stealing my own car, I want out of here. I know my rights. And I’m still waiting for that lawyer.”

The man was fidgeting a little, and Riley sensed that he was genuinely eager to be released.

Was it because he was guilty of murder? She was having trouble reading him.

Bill asked, “Did you know the victim—Sally Diehl?”

“We were acquainted. All the guys knew her from around the train station.”

“Tell us what you knew about her,” Bill said.

“She was friendly,” Spider began. “She liked to talk to us …”

As Bill kept the man talking, Riley observed him carefully. His hands were dirty, but his fingernails were neatly trimmed. Although his hair was long and unkempt, it wasn’t scraggly or uneven.

She kept wondering …

What’s off about this guy?

Then she remembered what he’d said about the Mercedes.

“I bought it.”

In a flash, Riley realized who this man must actually be.