CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

 

Riley sat staring at the picture on her computer screen—a newspaper photograph of a smiling young woman with a slender face, an aquiline nose, and curly brown hair.

She kept reading the name in the caption over and over again …

 

Arlene Eggers

 

… the name of Mason Eggers’s wife, who had died fifty years ago.

Riley kept murmuring aloud to herself …

“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.”

But that wasn’t true.

She did believe it. She believed it completely.

She just didn’t want to believe it.

Aunt Cora had triggered Riley’s research effort with her words about Eggers.

“I hear you’ve met a nice widower.”

It had been a hint, of course.

So Riley had checked to see how the retired railroad cop had been widowed. And she had discovered that the victims of the serial killer looked very much like the wife Eggers had lost.

Aunt Cora had also said …

“I’ve been following that case you’ve been working on.”

Now Riley realized that the mysterious woman had also been doing her own research, coming up with her own theories.

Riley shivered deeply.

All this hinting and teasing.

So much like Shane Hatcher.

In fact, this was too much like Shane Hatcher for comfort. Was another criminal mastermind trying to gain control of an FBI agent? Did Aunt Cora already have her hooks in Jenn? Was she now working on Riley?

There was no time to figure that out now. But she couldn’t avoid the main question in her mind.

Why didn’t I know all along?

Surely the thought should have occurred to her at the third murder scene, when she’d wondered how the killer had escaped from the scene of Sally Diehl’s murder without taking the car he had stolen.

He hadn’t escaped at all.

He’d been right there, talking with Riley.

How had her instincts failed her so badly?

Then it dawned on her …

My instincts didn’t fail me.

From the very first time she’d seen Eggers at that meeting in Chicago, he’d stood out to her. Unlike everyone else in the room—especially Cullen—she’d sensed that he had some special insight into the case.

She’d sought him out for that very reason.

She also remembered how he’d reacted when she’d said …

“I see you’re married.”

… how he’d covered up his wedding ring with a look of pain.

Right then she’d sensed the depth of the grief of an elderly widower.

She remembered, too, something she had decided about him.

He doesn’t like to talk about himself.

She’d been right about all of it.

Mason Eggers was all that he seemed to be—intelligent, kindly, restless, lonely, misunderstood …

But he was also something else.

He was also a murderer.

Riley just hadn’t looked hard or deep enough.

And the reason she hadn’t was very simple. She’d actually felt a kinship with him, thought of him as a colleague, and something of an oddball like herself, someone whose best work and ideas often seemed to others like pure craziness—at least until facts bore out those ideas.

She didn’t want to see that he harbored his share of demons …

Just like I do.

… for Riley could remember surrendering to her own internal darkness with acts of brutality against her adversaries. She remembered how she’d killed one especially vicious man who had captured and tormented April—how she’d beaten him savagely to death with a rock, smashing him in the face time and time again.

To this day, she had no regrets about it.

She’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Riley shuddered deeply, then reminded herself …

I’m different.

I’m not like Mason.

I kill monsters.

I don’t kill innocent women.

But why did Mason Eggers kill innocent women?

Riley reread the newspaper article, looking for some hint of explanation.

Fifty years ago on this very night, Mason Eggers’s wife, Arlene, had committed suicide by lying down on railroad tracks in front of an oncoming freight train just outside the little Michigan town of Dunmore.

She’d just left the home of some friends, who had said she seemed very sad when they’d last seen her. They hadn’t known why.

It seemed that everybody in Dunmore liked Arlene Eggers, and she liked everybody in return.

But all of her friends and loved ones used the same word to describe her.

“Sad. So often sad.”

She’d been a chronically melancholy person, and no one could understand why—least of all her loving husband, a respected and well-liked local cop named Mason Eggers.

Riley felt a stab of sympathy for the poor woman—and for her husband, too.

She knew that fifty years ago clinical depression was poorly understood, its ravages and terrors underestimated. Today’s antidepressant drugs didn’t yet exist. People routinely died from depression, often by their own hands, without anyone knowing why.

Mason Eggers had carried this terrible loss with him for years. He’d surely felt guilty for his wife’s death. How could he possibly understand why she might kill herself, unless it was somehow his fault?

And now, she could see into the killer’s mind for the first time.

She could actually feel his anguish. The sensation was so strong that for a moment she almost believed he was in the room with her. After he’d retired guilt had started pressing in on him again.

And with a deep chill, she realized something else about him. Something was wrong in his mind. Something, whether physical or emotional, had twisted his perceptions. And as that horrible fifty-year anniversary came nearer, his demons had taken over, and he’d begun to kill.

Tonight, Riley realized. He’s going to finish his work tonight.

He was going to kill one last time—on the same date, in the same place, where his beloved wife had taken her own life.

It was the most powerful gut feeling Riley had gotten on the case so far.

But was it correct?

She couldn’t risk being wrong again.

She brought up a map and saw that Dunmore was just a short distance from Detroit. Then she searched for a train schedule and saw that a passenger train had already left from Chicago on a four-hour trip to Detroit.

He’s on that train, she realized.

He had to be stopped as soon as he arrived in Detroit—before he had a chance to abduct anybody, much less kill again.

She needed help—but who could help her?

Who would even listen to her theory?

Proctor Dillard, she thought.

She and Bill had worked with the special agent in charge of the Chicago FBI Field Office. If anybody would listen to her, he would. And he could alert agents at the Detroit FBI Field Office to arrest him straight off the train there. Eggers wouldn’t even make it all the way to Dunmore.

She found Dillard’s emergency phone number.

When she got him on the line, she said, “Agent Dillard, this is Riley Paige. Please listen to me. I know who the killer is. I know where he’s going to strike next. He’s going to kill tonight. I need for you to—”

Dillard interrupted her.

“Agent Paige, just stop. Whatever it is, I can’t help. My hands are tied.”

Riley could hardly believe her ears.

Dillard continued, “I got a call from Carl Walder in Quantico today. He was very specific. I’m not to have anything more to do with you, at least pertaining to this case. He really meant it.”

Riley suppressed a growl of rage.

That bastard Walder!

She said, “Listen! The killer is Mason Eggers!”

A long pause fell.

Then Dillard said, “Agent Paige, you know I’ve got all the respect in the world for you. But everybody knows you’ve been off your game on this case. And I’ve known Eggers too many years to think he could possibly be a murderer.”

“But Agent Dillard—”

“And anyway, it’s out of my hands. Orders are orders. I don’t want to lose my job.”

“Please listen—”

“I’m sorry, but I’m hanging up now.”

He ended the call.

Riley felt about to hyperventilate from frustration. She struggled to calm herself. There had to be some way to handle this.

Who else could she call?

Could she try contacting Walder himself, try to make him understand her theory?

Impossible, she thought. He’ll never listen.

And even if she could make him listen, she’d lose precious time in the effort.

But who else was there?

Bull Cullen?

No, the very idea of trying to persuade him was laughable. He wouldn’t even take her call, much less seriously listen to her.

Who, then?

Of course! The Detroit police.

They could catch Eggers as soon as the train arrived there.

She quickly found the phone number and punched it into her cell phone.

When a voice answered, she said, “I need to talk to whoever is in charge there right now.”

“How can I help you?”

“This is Riley Paige with the FBI. I’m calling to report—”

The voice interrupted, “Wait a minute! Riley Paige? The FBI woman I saw on the news today, the one who screwed up so bad in Wisconsin?”

She heard him call out to someone else nearby, “Hey, guys! I’ve got that batshit crazy FBI woman on the line!”

Riley felt her face redden with rage and humiliation.

She wondered—how long would it take to undo the damage her reputation had taken during this case?

She ended the call. What else could she do?

She sat down slowly behind her desk, trying to collect her nerves.

It’s up to me, she thought. I’ve got to stop him myself.

Nobody else is going to.

She ran a computer search for plane schedules and found what she needed. If she left right now, she could catch a late-night commercial flight from Reagan International Airport. She’d arrive at Detroit’s Wayne County Airport about an hour and a half later—before Eggers’s train reached that city.

She could stop him right then and there at the Detroit train station.

She wondered …

Should I contact Bill and Jenn?

Of course, she realized. They at least deserved to know what she was trying to do. She typed a text message to both of them that included a link to the article she’d found. She briefly explained her theory and gave them her flight schedule.

She scribbled a note to her sleeping family explaining that she had gone away to work on the case again. She grabbed her gun and car keys, left the note on the living room coffee table, and raced out the front door.