Once Gone (9 page)

“I’ve got to bring you back!” Riley cried.

 Mommy was smiling sadly at Riley.

“You can’t,” Mommy said. “You can’t bring back the dead.”

Riley sat up, breathing hard, startled from her sleep by a rattling noise. She looked all around, on edge. The house was silent now.

But she’d heard something, she was sure. Like a noise at the front door.

Riley jumped to her feet, her instincts kicking in. She got a flashlight and her gun out of the dresser and moved carefully through the house toward the front door.

She peered through the small glass pane in the door, but saw nothing. All was silent.

Riley braced herself and quickly opened the door wide, shining the light outside. No one. Nothing.

As she moved the light around something on the front stoop caught her attention. A few pebbles were scattered there. Had somebody tossed them at the door, causing that rattling?

Riley wracked her brain, trying to remember if those pebbles had been there when she’d gotten home last night. In her haze, she simply couldn’t be sure one way or the other.

Riley stood there for a few moments, but there was no sign of anybody anywhere.

She closed and locked the front door and headed back down the short hallway to her bedroom. As she reached the end, she was startled to see that April’s bedroom door was slightly open.

Riley pulled the door open wide and looked inside.

Her heart pounded with terror.

April was gone.

“April!” Riley screamed. “April!”

Riley ran to the bathroom and looked inside. Her daughter wasn’t there either.

She ran desperately through the house, opening doors, looking into every room and every closet. She found nothing.

“April!” she screamed again.

Riley recognized the bitter flavor of bile in her mouth. It was the taste of terror.

At last, in the kitchen, she noticed an odd smell wafting in through an open window. She recognized that smell from long-ago college days. Her terror ebbed away, replaced by sad annoyance.

“Oh, Jesus,” Riley murmured aloud, feeling immense relief.

She jerked the back door open. In the early morning light she could see her daughter, still in her pajamas, sitting at the old picnic table. April looked guilty and sheepish.

“What do you want, Mom?” April asked.

Riley strode across the yard, holding out her hand.

“Give it to me,” Riley said.

April awkwardly tried to display an innocent expression.

“Give you what?” she asked.

Riley’s voice choked back more sadness than anger. “The joint you’re smoking,” she said. “And please—don’t lie to me about it.”

“You’re crazy,” April said, doing her best to sound righteously indignant. “I wasn’t smoking anything. You’re always assuming the worst about me. You know that, Mom?”

Riley noticed how her daughter was hunched forward as she sat on the bench.

“Move your foot,” Riley said.

“What?” April said, feigning incomprehension.

Riley pointed at the suspicious foot.

“Move your foot.”

April groaned aloud and obeyed. Sure enough, her bedroom slipper had been covering a freshly crushed marijuana joint. A wisp of smoke rose from it, and the smell was stronger than ever.

Riley bent down and snatched it up.

“Now give me the rest of it.”

April shrugged. “The rest of what?”

Riley couldn’t quite keep her voice steady. “April, I mean it. Don’t lie to me. Please.”

April rolled her eyes and reached into her shirt pocket. She pulled out a joint that hadn’t been lit.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, here,” she said, handing it to her mother. “Don’t try to tell me you’re not going to smoke it yourself as soon as you get a chance.”

Riley shoved both joints into her bathrobe pocket.

“What else have you got?” she demanded.

“That’s it, that’s all there is,” April snapped back. “Don’t you believe me? Well, go ahead, search me. Search my room. Search everywhere. This is all I’ve got.”

Riley was trembling all over. She struggled to bring her emotions under control.

“Where did you get these?” she asked.

April shrugged. “Cindy gave them to me.”

“Who’s Cindy?

April let out a cynical laugh. “Well, you wouldn’t know, would you, Mom? It’s not like you know much of anything about my life. What do you care, anyway? I mean, does it make any difference to you if I get high?”

Riley was stung now. April had gone right for the jugular, and it hurt. Riley couldn’t hold back the tears anymore.

“April, why do you hate me?” she cried.

April looked surprised, but hardly repentant. “I don’t hate you, Mom.”

“Then why are you
punishing
me? What did I ever do to deserve this?”

April stared off into space. “Maybe you ought to spend some time thinking about that, Mom.”

April got up from the bench and walked toward the house.

Riley wandered through the kitchen, mechanically getting out everything she needed to make breakfast. As she took the eggs and bacon out of the refrigerator, she wondered what to do about this situation. She ought to ground April immediately. But how exactly could she do that?

When Riley had been off the job, she’d been able to keep tabs on April. But everything was different now. Now that Riley was back at work, her schedule would be wildly unpredictable. And apparently, so would her daughter.

Riley mulled over her choices as she laid strips of bacon in the pan to sizzle. One thing seemed certain. Since April would be spending so much time with her father, Riley really ought to tell Ryan what had happened. But that would open up another world of problems. Ryan was already convinced that Riley was domestically incompetent, both as a wife and mother. If Riley told him that she’d caught April smoking pot in the backyard, he’d feel absolutely sure of it.

And maybe he’d be right,
she thought miserably as she pushed two slices of bread down into the toaster.

So far, Ryan and Riley had managed to avoid a custody battle over April. She knew that although he’d never admit it, Ryan was enjoying his freedom as a bachelor too much to want to be bothered with raising a teenager. He hadn’t been thrilled when Riley told him that April would be spending more time with him.

But she also knew that her ex-husband’s attitude could change very fast, especially if he had an excuse to blame her for something. If he found out that April had been smoking pot, he might try to take her away from Riley altogether. That thought was unbearable.

A few minutes later, Riley and her daughter were sitting at the breakfast table eating. The silence between them was even more awkward than usual.

Finally April asked, “Are you going to tell Dad?”

“Do you think maybe I should?” Riley replied.

It seemed like an honest enough reply under the circumstances.

April hung her head, looking worried.

Then April pleaded, “Please don’t tell Gabriela.”

The words struck Riley straight to the heart. April was more worried about their housemaid finding out than she was about what her father might think—or her own mother, for that matter.

So things have gotten this bad,
Riley thought miserably.

What precious little that was left of her family life was disintegrating right before her eyes. She felt as if she were barely a mother at all anymore. She wondered if Ryan had any such feelings about being a father.

Probably not. Feeling guilty wasn’t Ryan’s style. She sometimes envied him his emotional indifference.

After breakfast, as April got ready for school, the house fell silent, and Riley began to obsess about the other thing that had happened that morning—
if
it had happened. What or who had caused that rattling at the front door?
Had
there been a rattling at the front door? Where had those pebbles suddenly come from?

She recalled Marie’s panic over strange phone calls, and an obsessive fear was growing inside her, getting out of control. She got out her cell phone and called a familiar number.

“Betty Richter, FBI Forensics Tech,” came the curt reply.

“Betty, this is Riley Paige.” Riley swallowed hard. “I think you know why I’m calling.”

After all, Riley had been making this exact same phone call every two or three days for the last six weeks now. Agent Richter had been in charge of closing up the details on the Peterson case, and Riley desperately wanted resolution.

“You want me to tell you that Peterson’s really dead,” Betty said in a sympathetic tone. Betty was the very soul of patience, understanding, and good humor, and Riley had always been grateful to have her to talk to about this.

“I know it’s ridiculous.”

“After all you went through?” Betty said. “No, I don’t think so. But I don’t have anything new to tell you. Just the same old thing. We found Peterson’s body. Sure, it was burned to a cinder, but it was exactly his height and build. There’s really nobody else it could have been.”

“How sure are you? Give me a percentage.”

“I’d say ninety-nine percent,” she said.

Riley took a long, slow breath.

“You can’t make that a hundred?” she asked.

Betty sighed. “Riley, I can’t give you a hundred percent certainty about much of
anything
in life. Nobody can. Nobody’s a hundred percent sure the sun is going to rise tomorrow morning. Earth might get smacked by a giant asteroid in the meantime, and we’ll all be dead.”

Riley emitted a rueful chuckle.

“Thanks for giving me something else to worry about,” she said.

Betty laughed a little too. “Any time,” she said. “Glad to be of help.”

“Mom?” April called out, ready to go to school.

Riley ended the phone call, feeling a bit better, and prepared to go. After drop-off, she had agreed to pick up Bill today. They had a suspect to interview that fit all the demographics.

And Riley had a feeling he just might be the savage killer they were looking for.

Riley turned off the engine and sat before Bill’s house, admiring his pleasant two-story bungalow. She’d always wondered how he managed to keep that front lawn such a healthy green and those ornamental shrubs so immaculately trimmed. Bill’s domestic life might be in turmoil, but he sure did keep a nice yard, a perfect fit for this picturesque residential neighborhood. She couldn’t help wondering what all the backyards looked like in this little community so close to Quantico.

Bill came out, his wife, Maggie, appearing behind him and giving Riley a ferocious glare. Riley looked away.

Bill got in and slammed the door behind him.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he growled.

Riley started the car and pulled away from the curb.

“I take it all is not well at home,” she said.

Bill shook his head.

“We had a big fight when I got home so late last night. It all started up again this morning.”

He was silent for a moment, then added grimly, “She’s talking about divorce again. And she wants full custody of the boys.”

Riley hesitated, but then she went ahead and asked the question that was on her mind, “And I’m part of the problem?”

Bill was silent.

“Yeah,” he finally admitted. “She wasn’t happy to hear that we’re working together again. She says you’re a bad influence.”

Riley didn’t know what to say.

Bill added, “She says I’m at my worst when I’m working with you. I’m more distracted, more obsessed with my job.”

True enough,
Riley thought. She and Bill were both obsessed with their jobs.

Silence fell again as they drove. After a few minutes, Bill opened up his laptop.

“I’ve got some details about the guy we’re going to talk to. Ross Blackwell.”

He scanned the screen.

“A registered sex offender,” he added.

Riley’s lip curled in disgust.

“What charges?”

“Possession of child pornography. He was suspected of more but nothing was ever proved. He’s in the database but no restrictions on his activity. It was ten years back, and this photo is pretty old.”

Sneaky,
she thought.
Maybe hard to trap.

Bill continued reading.

“Fired from several jobs, for vague reasons. The last time he was working in a chain store in a big mall in the Beltway—really mainstream commercial stuff, and its market is mostly families with kids. When they caught Blackwell posing dolls in kinky positions, they fired and reported him.”

“A man with a quirk about dolls and a record of child pornography,” Riley muttered.

So far, Ross Blackwell fit the profile that she was starting to put together.

“And now?” she asked.

“He’s got a job in a hobby and model shop,” Bill replied. “Another chain store in another mall.”

Riley was a bit surprised.

“Didn’t the managers know about Blackwell’s record when they hired him?”

Bill shrugged.

“Maybe they don’t care. His interests seem to be entirely heterosexual. Maybe they don’t figure he’ll do much harm in a place that’s all about model cars and airplanes and trains.”

She felt a chill run through her body. Why would a guy like that even be able to get another job? This man seemed likely to be a vicious killer. Why would he be let out every day to cruise around among those who were vulnerable?

They finally made their way through the relentless traffic to Sanfield. The D.C. suburb struck Riley as a typical example of an “edge city,” largely made up of malls and corporate headquarters. She found it to be soulless, plastic, and depressing.

She parked outside the huge shopping mall. For a moment, she just sat in the driver’s seat and stared at the old photograph of Blackwell on Bill’s laptop. There was nothing distinctive about his face, just a white guy with dark hair and an insolent expression. Now he would be in his fifties.

She and Bill got out of the car and made their way on foot through the consumers’ utopia, until they saw the scale model store.