Once Craved (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #3) (24 page)

A little while
later, Riley and Bill arrived at Dr. Gordon Poole’s house.

This isn’t where
I’m needed,
Riley thought.

Still, Bill had
persuaded her to follow orders.

Poole had told
Morley that he wouldn’t be in his office today, and had suggested that Bill and
Riley visit him at home.

It was a big,
modern, single-story home spread across a wide green lawn. The front yard was
adorned with hedges and leafy trees. Unlike the little patches of green she had
seen in some Phoenix neighborhoods, the lawns here were expansive, their
wealthy owners pointedly ignoring the desert beneath the city.

They were greeted at
the door by a cheerful but rather tired-looking man of about forty. Dr. Gordon
Poole had thinning hair and a boyish face with an open, kindly expression.

“Gosh, I hadn’t
expected you so soon!” he said. “Come on in!”

Riley was slightly
amused. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard a grown man say “gosh.”
The expression struck her as delightfully quaint.

Poole escorted them
into a comfortable, carpeted living room and invited them to sit down.

“It’s some hot
weather we’re having, isn’t it?” Dr. Poole said. “Maybe the two of you would
like some fresh-squeezed lemonade. I always keep some in the fridge, and I like
to share it when I can. Please say yes!”

Riley was utterly
charmed by his smile and the innocent twinkle in his eye.

“I’d love some,” she
said.

“I would too,” Bill
said.

“Excellent!” Dr.
Poole said. He disappeared into the kitchen.

Bill sat down on the
sofa, but Riley was drawn to a cluster of family photographs hanging on one
wall. They all showed Dr. Poole sharing happy moments with children—his kids,
Riley felt pretty sure. In one, Dr. Poole and a boy of about twelve were
holding a huge fish they’d just caught. In another, Dr. Poole was beaming over
a little girl dressed up as a honeybee.

Must be a
Halloween costume,
Riley thought.
Or maybe for a school play.

Her musings were
interrupted when Dr. Poole came back. He was carrying a tray with glasses and a
pitcher of lemonade.

“I see you’ve
discovered my kids,” he said.

Riley heard a world
of warmth and pride in his voice.

“I take it they’re
at school right now,” Riley said.

A pang of sadness
flashed across his face.

“I’m afraid they don’t
live with me,” he said. “Their mother and I are divorced. Have been for four
years now.”

Riley felt
embarrassed to have touched on such a sensitive subject.

“I’m sorry,” she
said.

“Oh, gosh, don’t be!”
he said, his boyish smile returning. “It was perfectly amicable. She’s a
lawyer, got a job in Connecticut she couldn’t refuse. My roots here are deep,
and I couldn’t just pick up and leave.”

The doctor looked a
bit uncomfortable, standing there still holding the tray. Riley wondered if
having strangers gawking at his family portraits was making him uneasy.

Then he turned and
headed for a pair of doors that stood open on the other side of the room.

“Let’s take our
drinks out back, sit by the pool,” he said. “It’s a shame to waste a beautiful
day like this.”

Riley and Bill
followed him out to a pleasant terrace beside a large pool surrounded by
landscaped gardens. Dr. Poole set the tray down on a deck table and closed the
doors behind them.

As he poured
lemonade and handed each of them a glass, he continued his comments about his
family.

“Still, it’s tough
having the kids on the other side of the country most of the time. But we still
do a lot together. I never miss a chance to spend time with them.”

“Well, I could see
that your kids adore you, Dr. Poole,” Riley said.

“And I adore them,”
he said. “But if you don’t mind, I don’t much like being called ‘Dr. Poole.’
Gordon or Gordy is the usual thing, even with people who don’t know me really
well.” Then with a chuckle he added, “If you really must be formal, ‘Dr. Gordy’
will be OK.”

Riley laughed. She
liked this man more by the minute. She saw signs of weariness in his face and
she could understand why. A man as kindly and dedicated as he seemed to be must
put in very long hours. She could relate to that.

Riley found the
setting to be quite idyllic. Still, she had trouble getting quite comfortable.
All this luxury seemed so far away from the world she’d been immersed in during
the last few days—a world of pimps, prostitutes, and killers. She felt vaguely
guilty just being here.

“I can access
everything we want to know right here,” Dr. Poole said, opening up a laptop
computer that was on the table.

Bill said, “We
understand that you’ve been helping the police investigate drug thefts from
hospitals. Chief Morley says you do that kind of thing pro bono. That’s very
generous of you.”

Dr. Poole shrugged
modestly.

“Well, it’s the
least I can do. Phoenix has been good to me, as you can see. I like to give
something back whenever I can. And the theft of HIV drugs—well, that deeply
troubles me, and I feel like it’s a personal issue. And Elgin tells me that you
think this serial killer might be HIV positive and stealing drugs for himself.”

“That’s right,” Riley
said. “Have you got any suspects in this spate of medicine thefts?”

Dr. Poole squinted
at the computer screen.

“As a matter of
fact, I’m narrowing it down to just a few,” he said. “There’s one in particular
that …”

He paused for a
moment.

“I’m not sure I
should give you this information,” he said.

“Why not?” Bill
asked.

“Well, the person in
question is a rising administrator in a Phoenix hospital. He might be the man
you’re looking for. But the evidence is still thin. And to be perfectly honest,
I hope I’m wrong.”

Dr. Poole shook his
head worriedly.

“I’d hate to ruin an
innocent man’s reputation. Still, I’m sure that Elgin will know how to handle
this.”

He took a pad of
paper out of his pocket and jotted something down.

“I’ll tell you what.
I’ll write down his name right here, and you can pass it along to Elgin. I’ll
leave the whole matter to his discretion.”

He handed Bill the
paper. Riley and Bill thanked him for his time and left his house. While Riley
drove them back to headquarters, and Bill called the name in to Morley.

*

When Riley and Bill
got back to the FBI building, they found Morley pacing in agitation.

“Dr. Poole’s tip
didn’t pan out,” he said. “The man’s been on vacation for two weeks, at a beach
resort in Mexico. There’s no way he could have committed these recent murders.
Of course, Dr. Poole couldn’t have known that. We need to keep him in the loop
in case he has any other ideas.”

Morley stopped
pacing and glared at Riley and Bill. He said, “It seems to me that we’re no
closer to closing this case than we were when you two got here.”

Riley was about to
snap out a reply about all the work they’d put in, but she stopped herself. She
could hear Bill smother a growl. Neither of them wanted to escalate their
tensions with Morley.

The buzzing of her
cell phone was a welcome interruption to the silence.

She didn’t recognize
the number calling her, but she knew the voice on the line very well. It was
Shane Hatcher, a prisoner in Sing Sing Correctional Facility who had been very
helpful in their last case.

“You need to talk to
me,” Hatcher said. “About the case you’re working on out there in Phoenix.”

“Good,” she replied.
“I could use some fresh ideas. Fire away.”

“Oh no, not over the
phone. You know I’ve got to get something out of the deal. An in-person visit
is a requirement—a prerequisite, you might say, for my expertise in matters
such as this.”

“That’s not
possible.”

“I feel sure that
you can make it possible, Agent Paige. I have complete confidence in your
powers of persuasion. After all, you persuaded the last man you and I discussed
to slit his own throat.”

Riley was silent for
a moment. She found it disturbing that this man who was locked away always
seemed to know so much. But right now, she would welcome any source of light on
this case.

“I’ll see what I can
do,” she said, and hung up.

She realized that
Morley and Bill were both looking at her in expectation.

“That was Shane
Hatcher,” she said.

“No kidding?” Bill
said. He told Morley who Shane Hatcher was, and about Riley’s unusual relationship
with him.

Riley said, “He won’t
tell me anything over the phone. I’ll have to go there.”

“That’s ridiculous,”
Morley sputtered. “Sing Sing is in Upstate New York.”

“The BAU plane is
still at the airport,” Riley said. “That will be the fastest way for me to get
there and back.”

“You have work to do
here,” Morley exploded. “You can’t just drop your job every time you get a
notion to do something else.”

Riley saw Morley’s
face redden. She knew that he had just stopped himself from saying that he
wouldn’t authorize the trip. She had ignored his authority before, and he
wouldn’t want to put himself in that position again.

“I’ll get back as
soon as I can,” Riley said as she left the room.

Her mind was already
focused on the man locked up in Sing Sing—the most dangerous man she had ever
known.

If anyone could
unlock this case, she knew, it would be him, with his uncanny perceptions about
serial killers.

But at what price?

Riley spent the next
morning on the FBI jet headed for Upstate New York. The day was almost half
gone by the time she walked into the little visiting room at Sing Sing
Correctional Facility. She’d been here before, but hadn’t expected to come here
again.

It wasn’t a visit
she was happy to make.

And there he was—the
murderer Shane Hatcher, sitting at the visiting table waiting for her. He was a
middle-aged African-American, strong in body and in will, and extremely
intelligent. Riley felt deep down that he was the most dangerous human being
she had ever met.

Hatcher had been
last night’s caller, the man who had cryptically said …

“You need to talk
to me.”

From past
experience, Riley knew that she should take him at his word.

She sat down across
the table from him. As always, he was clad in a dark green jumpsuit and wearing
small-framed reading glasses.

“It’s been a long
time,” he said.

“No it hasn’t,”
Riley said.

In fact, she’d
visited him twice last month. On Mike Nevins’s advice, she’d come to Hatcher
for his insights into the chain killer’s mind.

In his youth, Hatcher
had been a ruthless gangbanger who specialized in killing with chains. After he
had beaten a cop to an unrecognizable pulp and left the body on his porch for
his wife and kids to find, Hatcher had been convicted and sent to Sing Sing. He’d
been here ever since. He’d probably be here for the rest of his life.

That was fine with
Riley. The truth was, she didn’t think Hatcher deserved to live—no more than
Derrick Caldwell had deserved to live. She’d even said that to his face once,
to his obvious delight.

But she couldn’t
deny that he was a valuable resource. Over the years, he’d given himself a
thorough education in criminology. In fact, he was now an acknowledged expert
in the field. He’d published a number of scholarly articles, which was how he’d
come to Mike Nevins’s attention.

“You said you can
help me,” she said.

“I helped you out
last time, didn’t I?” Hatcher said.

Riley nodded. “How
did you find out about the case?”

Hatcher shrugged and
smiled.

“How do you think?
Newspapers. TV. The Internet.”

Riley looked at him
skeptically.

“And you think you
can help me, based just on media coverage?”

He didn’t reply,
just kept smiling at her.

“You want a favor
for helping me, of course,” Riley said.

“Of course.”

“What do you want?”

He let out a
sinister chuckle. “Merely the pleasure of your company,” he said.

The words made Riley’s
skin crawl. Locked up though he might be, she couldn’t help thinking of him as
a stalker. Was he obsessed with her? Was yesterday’s call just a ruse? Did he
have any intention of helping her at all?

She was determined
to stay focused on the matter at hand.

“There’s been a new
development in the case,” she said. “Our killer seems to have picked up a young
girl. We don’t know whether she’s alive.”

Hatcher tilted his
head with interest.

“An abduction,” he
said. “Interesting. Hardly his MO. Was the girl a teenage hooker?”

“We don’t know. We
haven’t identified her. She seems to have been a runaway. The woman who saw her
said she had a backpack.”

Hatcher stroked his
chin as if deep in thought.

“The whole
prostitution thing—an ugly world, isn’t it? Now, I’m all for men and women
doing whatever they want. But it’s all about
choice.
I’ve made my own
choices and I’ll live with them. Everybody should have that opportunity. But a
kid on the streets, well …”

He paused for a
moment, then said, “There are shelters for kids like that. There are groups
that help get them out of the trade. You need to check them out.”

“We’ll do that,”
Riley said.

Another silence
fell. Riley felt distinctly uneasy. Had she made this trip for nothing?

“I don’t have time
to play games today,” she said. “A girl’s life might be hanging in the balance.
Tell me what you know.”

Again came that grim
chuckle.

“No,” Hatcher said. “Tell
me
what
you
know.”

*

The man who called
himself T.R. sat in a chair in his basement, facing the girl who was bound to
another chair by duct tape. Her mouth wasn’t gagged at the moment. She was too
sedated to scream. She kept rolling her head and moaning.

“You shouldn’t have
run away from home,” he said.

She tried to focus
her eyes on him. He wasn’t sure whether she could understand what he was
saying.

“Your mother must be
worried,” he said. “Didn’t you ever think about how worried she’d be?”

Again, she didn’t
reply.

He didn’t like this
at all. When he’d picked her up yesterday morning, he’d thought she was just
another whore. It was a stupid mistake. He’d been tired, scared, and
unobservant. Besides, she’d said she knew Socorro. He remembered her exact
words …

“We go way back,
Socorro and me.”

It had only taken a
few minutes for him to realize that she was lying. She was just a runaway
teenager who’d say anything for a ride. But by then it was too late. The whore
back on Conover Avenue had recognized him, and now the girl could identify him.

Fortunately, he’d
been able to sedate her right there in the car. And now he had no choice but to
kill her. He wasn’t used to killing out of necessity. There was going to be
nothing epicurean about this murder. It was a nasty thought, having to kill
with no enjoyment.

But it couldn’t be
helped, and he didn’t feel guilty. This was all the girl’s fault, after all,
for running away. And her mother’s too. The girl had been calling for her mom
off and on ever since he’d taken her.

“Your mother should
have taken better care of you,” he said. “You shouldn’t have run away.”

She moaned softly.
She still didn’t seem to understand.

He wasn’t sure just
why he hadn’t killed her already. Keeping her alive was rather a lot of
trouble. Every so often he’d coax her out of her stupor for a little food and
water. A couple of times he’d even unbound her so she could use the basement
bathroom. She was far too drugged to be anything but docile.

Still, killing her
was inevitable, and he knew it. He seemed to be waiting for just the right moment,
and that moment had not yet come. He was, after all, a civilized man who liked
to do things in a civilized way.

But holding her
captive was risky. He’d already had one brush with danger. Another might be his
undoing. He didn’t like risks. He didn’t like danger.

She was moaning a
bit more loudly now. She was able to focus her eyes on him. He saw fear rising
in her eyes. He reached for a hypodermic needle and stabbed her arm with it.
She was instantly quiet again.

*

“You’re getting
warm,” Hatcher said with a dark smile.

Riley had no idea
what he meant. What did he think this was, a childhood game of hide and seek?

A full two hours had
passed without either of them moving from their chairs. They had talked
incessantly. So far, Riley hadn’t found the interview to be informative, but it
was far from dull.

Hatcher had grilled
her for specifics that even Morley or Brent Meredith wouldn’t have demanded. He
seemed especially intrigued by the enigmatic Garrett Holbrook, the brother of
victim Nancy Holbrook. Hatcher found it odd that Holbrook had insisted that
Nancy’s murder become an FBI investigation, only to stay on the periphery ever
since. That had struck Riley as odd too.

“What do you make
of him?”
he’d
kept asking Riley.

Riley wished she
knew. She still didn’t know.

But Hatcher seemed
less interested in what she’d observed or learned than in her actions and
reactions—what she’d actually been doing and how it had felt, down to the last
sensory detail.
He demanded to know everything she had experienced since
she and Bill had boarded the FBI jet bound for Phoenix last Saturday.

What had it felt
like to visit an actual brothel? How had she felt when she’d pretended to be a
whore? When she’d rescued a runaway teenager? Or when the suspect slipped
through her fingers at the truck stop?

Then he returned to her
posing as a prostitute.

He said, “That I’d
really like to see.”

When she made no
reply, he added, “You’re a good-looking woman. How are you and your partner
getting along? How does he like it that there are other guys in your life?”

She ignored those
questions too. Finally, he nodded and moved to another topic.

The questions had
become disturbing. Hatcher’s interest in Riley’s inner life struck her as
twisted, even voyeuristic. She felt more and more as if he were obsessed with
her. Had she flown all the way out only to entertain his twisted curiosity?

Eventually, the
conversation had turned toward what Riley couldn’t help but regard as
irrelevancies. He’d demanded to hear a full account of April’s breakdown, and
how Riley had defied Morley to rush back and help her.

And just now, he was
grilling her about her visit to her father, of all things. He was insisting
upon hearing every word of their ugly visit. To the best of her memory, she’d
recited all of it.

Why?
Riley kept wondering.

It was just about
the last thing she wanted to talk about right now. She wanted to be through
with her father once and for all. She hoped with all her heart that she’d never
have to see him again.

Hatcher seemed to be
toying with her. She liked it less and less by the minute.

Finally, he leaned
back in his chair, his glasses resting low on the bridge of his nose.

“You’re getting
warm,” he said again.

The words were
infuriating.

“What do you mean by
that?” she said

He sat there smiling
in silence again.

“I like that daddy
of yours,” he finally said.

Riley stifled the
urge to say that she didn’t like him at all. She said nothing.

“He and I have got a
lot in common,” Hatcher said.

Now Riley had to
stop herself from saying she agreed with him. Hatcher and her father were both
monsters in their way. They both had done more than their share of killing—her
father in Vietnam, Hatcher in the streets of his youth. They were manipulators
and users of other people. And neither one of them seemed truly capable of
regret.

“You don’t give your
daddy enough respect,” Hatcher said.

Riley’s anger was
rising. She fought it down. He’d only enjoy it if she blew up at him.

He leaned forward
toward her, peering deep into her eyes, smiling grimly.

“You’re getting
warm,” he said. “You should listen to your daddy.”

He held her gaze for
a long moment. Then he turned around and called out, “Guard, I think we’re
through here.”

He got up from his
chair as the guard opened the sliding barred door.

“Is that all you’ve
got say?” Riley asked.

“Oh, I’ve said a
lot, honey. I’ve said exactly what you needed to hear. One of these days you’ll
thank me. Believe me, you’ll thank me.”

Hatcher followed the
guard behind the open door. The guard slid the door shut again with a heavy
iron bang.

“And we’ll meet
again,” he said through the bars. “Mark my words, we’ll meet again.”

*

A little while
later, Riley was in the FBI jet watching the Catskill Mountains creep along
below her. Had she learned anything from Hatcher? If so, she couldn’t put her
finger on it. However, he’d been awfully emphatic about something …

“You should
listen to your daddy.”

She’d told him every
word her father had said to her during their visit. He’d picked up on
something. Had her father tipped her off without either of them knowing it?

Riley was tired and
she closed her eyes. She slipped back into the nightmare of her captivity, the
flame gleaming in the darkness. She wondered if maybe she should stay here, in
this memory, in this private darkness. After all, the dark recesses of her mind
had served her well in the past. She’d been able to enter into the minds of the
cruelest of killers.

But then with a
chill, she remembered something her father had said …

“You’re not
dealing with a monster. Hell, you’re not even dealing with evil. You’re dealing
with what folks call
normal
.”