Blake Pierce - Once Craved

Hands were shaken all around, and the four agents sat down to talk.

“Thank you for coming,” Holbrook said. “This whole thing has been pretty overwhelming.”

“Tell us about your sister,” Riley said.

“I can’t tell you much,” Holbrook said. “I can’t say I knew her very well. She was my half-sister. My dad was a philandering jerk, left my mom and had children with three different women. Nancy was fifteen years younger than me. We barely had contact over the years.”

He stared blankly at the floor for a moment, his fingers picking absent-mindedly at the arm of his chair. Then without looking up he said, “The last I heard from her, she was doing office work and taking classes at a community college. That was a few years ago. I was shocked to find out what had become of her. I had no idea.”

Then he fell silent. Riley thought he looked like he was leaving something unsaid, but she told herself that maybe that was really all the man knew. After all, what could Riley say about her own older sister if anyone asked her? She and Wendy had been out of contact for so long that they might as well not be sisters at all.

Even so, she sensed something more than grief in Holbrook’s demeanor. It struck her as odd.

Morley suggested that Riley and Bill go with him to Forensic Pathology, where they could take a look at the body. Holbrook nodded and said that he’d be in his office.

As they followed the Agent in Charge down the hall, Bill asked, “Agent Morley, what reason is there for thinking we’re dealing with a serial killer?”

Morley shook his head. “I’m not sure we’ve got much of a reason,” he said. “But when Garrett found out about Nancy’s death, he refused to leave it alone. He’s one of our best agents, and I’ve tried to accommodate him. He tried to get his own investigation underway, but didn’t get anywhere. The truth is, he hasn’t been himself this whole while.”

Riley had certainly noticed that Garrett seemed to be terribly unsettled. Perhaps a little more so than a seasoned agent would usually be, even over a relative’s death. He’d made it clear that they weren’t close.

Morley led Riley and Bill into the building’s Forensic Pathology area, where he introduced them to its team chief, Dr. Rachel Fowler. The pathologist pulled open the refrigerated unit where Nancy Holbrook’s body was being kept.

Riley winced a little at the familiar odor of decomposition, even though the smell hadn’t gotten very strong yet. She saw that the woman had been short of stature and very thin.

“She hadn’t been in the water long,” Fowler said. “The skin was just beginning to wrinkle when she was found.”

Dr. Fowler pointed to her wrists.

“You can see rope burns. It looks like she was bound when she was killed.”

Riley noticed raised marks on the crook of the corpse’s arm.

“These look like track marks,” Riley said.

“Right. She was using heroin. My guess was that she was slipping into serious addiction.”

It looked to Riley like the woman had been anorexic, and that seemed consistent with Fowler’s addiction theory.

“That kind of addiction seems out of place for a high-class escort,” Bill said. “How do we know that’s what she was?”

Fowler produced a laminated business card in a plastic evidence bag. It had a provocative photo of the dead woman on it. The name on the card was simply “Nanette,” and the business was called “Ishtar Escorts.”

“This card was on her when she was found,” Fowler explained. “The police got in touch with Ishtar Escorts and found out her real name, and that soon led to identifying her as Agent Holbrook’s half-sister.”

“Any idea how she was asphyxiated?” Riley asked.

“There’s some bruising around her neck,” Fowler said. “The killer might have held a plastic bag over her head.”

Riley looked closely at the marks. Was this some kind of a sex game gone wrong, or a deliberate act of murder? She couldn’t yet tell.

“What did she have on when she was found?” Riley asked.

Fowler opened up a box that contained the victim’s clothing. She had been wearing a pink dress with a low neckline – barely respectable, Riley observed, but definitely a notch above a streetwalker’s typical trashy attire. It was the dress of a woman who wanted to look both very sexy and suitably attired for nightclubs.

Nestled on top of the dress was a clear plastic bag of jewelry.

“May I have a look?” Riley asked Fowler.

“Go right ahead.”

Riley took out the bag and looked at the contents. Most of it was fairly tasteful costume jewelry – a beaded necklace and bracelets and simple earrings. But one item stood out among the rest. It was a slender gold ring with a diamond setting. She picked it up and showed it to Bill.

“Real?” Bill asked.

“Yes,” Fowler replied. “Real gold and a real diamond.”

“The killer didn’t bother to steal it,” Bill commented. “So this wasn’t about money.”

Riley turned to Morley. “I’d like to see where the body was found,” she said. “Right now, while it’s still light.”

Morley looked a bit puzzled.

“We can get you there by helicopter,” he said. “But I don’t know what you expect to find. Cops and agents have been all over the site.”

“Trust her,” Bill said knowingly. “She’ll find out something.”

The broad surface of Nimbo Lake looked still and tranquil as the helicopter approached it.

But looks can fool you , Riley reminded herself. She knew well that calm surfaces could guard dark secrets.

The helicopter descended, then wobbled as it hovered in search of a place to land. Riley felt a little queasy from the unsteady movement. She didn’t much like helicopters. She looked at Bill, who was sitting next to her. She thought he looked equally uneasy.

But when she glanced over at Agent Holbrook, his face seemed blank to her. He had barely said a word during the half-hour flight from Phoenix. Riley didn’t yet know what to make of him. She was used to reading people easily – sometimes too easily for her own comfort. But Holbrook still struck her as an enigma.

The helicopter finally touched down, and all three FBI agents stepped out onto solid ground, ducking through the churning air under the still-spinning blades. The road where the chopper had landed was nothing more than parallel tire tracks through the desert weeds.

Riley observed that the road didn’t look heavily used. Even so, it appeared that enough vehicles had passed over it during the past week to conceal any tracks left by whatever the killer had been driving.

The noisy helicopter engine died down, making it easier to talk as Riley and Bill followed Holbrook on foot.

“Tell us what you can about this lake,” Riley said to Holbrook.

“It’s one of a series of reservoirs created by dams along the Acacia River,” Holbrook said. “This is the smallest of the artificial lakes. It’s stocked with fish, and it’s a popular recreation spot, but the public areas are on the other side of the lake. The body was discovered by a couple of teenagers stoned on pot. I’ll show you where.”

Holbrook led them off the road to a stone ridge overlooking the lake.

“The kids were right where we’re standing,” he said. He pointed down to the edge of the lake. “They looked down there and saw it. They said that it just looked like a dark shape in the water.”

“What time of day were the kids here?” Riley asked.

“A little earlier than it is right now,” Holbrook said. “They had cut school and gotten stoned.”

Riley took in the whole scene. The sun was low, and the tops of the red rock cliffs across the lake were ablaze with light. There were a couple of boats out on the water. The sheer drop from the ridge down to the water wasn’t far – a mere ten feet, maybe.