CHAPTER SIX

When Jake Crivaro pulled up to the apartment building, Riley Sweeney was already waiting outside. Jake noticed that she looked more than a little pale as she got into the car.

“Not feeling well?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” Riley said.

She doesn’t look fine, Jake thought. She doesn’t sound fine, either.

Jake wondered if maybe she’d partied too hard last night. These young interns did that sometimes. Or maybe she’d just had too much to drink right at home. She’d certainly seemed discouraged when he’d dropped her off yesterday—and small wonder, after the chewing out he’d given her. Maybe she’d tried to drown her sorrows.

Jake hoped his protégé wasn’t too hung over to function.

As he pulled away from the building, Riley asked …

“Where are we going?”

Jake hesitated for a moment.

Then he said, “Look, we’re going to start from scratch today.”

Riley looked at him with a vaguely surprised expression.

He continued, “The truth is, what you did yesterday—well, it wasn’t entirely a screw-up. You found the Madison brothers’ drug money. And that burner phone turned out to be plenty useful. It had some important phone numbers in it, which made it possible for the cops to round up a few gang members—including Malik Madison, the brother who was still at large. It was stupid of them to buy a prepaid phone and not dump it after using it. But I guess they just didn’t think anybody was going to find it.”

He glanced her way and added, “They were wrong.”

Riley just kept staring back at him, as if she was having trouble understanding what he was saying.

Jake resisted the impulse to say …

“I’m really sorry I gave you such a hard time.”

Instead he said, “But you’ve got to follow instructions. And you’ve got to respect procedure.”

“I understand,” Riley said tiredly. “Thanks for giving me another chance.”

Jake growled under his breath. He reminded himself that he didn’t want to give the kid too much encouragement.

But he did feel bad about how he’d treated her yesterday.

I’m overreacting to things, he thought.

He’d pissed off some colleagues at Quantico by pushing for Riley to get into the program. One agent in particular, Toby Wolsky, had wanted his nephew Jordan to be an intern this summer, but Jake had gotten Riley in instead of him. He’d thrown his considerable credentials into that effort and called in a couple of favors owed him.

Jake didn’t think much of Wolsky as an agent, and he had no reason to think his nephew had any potential to speak of. But Wolsky had friends in Quantico who were now unhappy with Jake.

In a way, Jake could understand why.

For all they knew, Riley was just some ordinary college psych graduate who’d never even thought about getting into law enforcement.

And the truth was, Jake didn’t know much more about her either—except that he’d seen her instincts at work, up close and personal. He remembered vividly how readily she’d understood the killer’s thoughts back in Lanton, with just a little coaching from him. Aside from himself, Jake had seldom met anyone with those kinds of instincts—gut-level insights that very few other agents could even understand.

Of course, he couldn’t discount the possibility that what she’d done in Lanton had been little more than a fluke.

Maybe today he’d get a better idea of what she could do.

Riley asked again …

“Where are we going?”

“To a murder scene,” Jake said.

He didn’t want to tell her anything more until they got there.

He wanted to observe how she reacted to a really bizarre situation.

And from what he’d heard, this murder scene was about as bizarre as a murder scene could get. He’d gotten called about it just a little while ago himself, and he was still having trouble believing what he’d been told.

We’ll see what we see, I guess.

*

Riley thought maybe she was feeling a bit better as she rode along with Agent Crivaro.

Still, she wished he’d tell her what this was all about.

A murder scene, he said.

That was more than she’d bargained for in the summer program—let alone on her second day. Yesterday had been unexpected enough.

She wasn’t sure how she felt about it.

But she was pretty sure that Ryan wouldn’t like the idea at all.

She realized she hadn’t yet told Ryan that she was shadowing Jake Crivaro. Ryan wouldn’t approve of that either. Ryan had mistrusted Crivaro from the start, especially for the way he had helped Riley get a glimpse into a killer’s mind.

She remembered what Ryan had said about one of those episodes …

“Are you telling me that FBI guy—Crivaro—played mind games with you? Why? Just for fun?”

Of course Riley knew that Crivaro hadn’t put her through all that “just for fun.”

He’d been dead serious about it. Those experiences had been absolutely necessary.

They had helped make it possible to eventually catch the killer.

But what am I in for now? Riley wondered.

Crivaro seemed to be being deliberately cryptic.

When he parked the car along a street with houses on one side and an open field on the other, she saw that a couple of police cars and an official van were pulled up nearby.

Before they left the car, Crivaro wagged his finger and said to her …

“Now remember the goddamn rules. Don’t touch anything. And don’t speak unless you’re spoken to. You’re only here to observe the rest of us at work.”

Riley nodded. But something in Crivaro’s voice made her suspect that he expected something a little more from her than just watching quietly.

She wished she knew what that something might be.

Riley and Crivaro got out of the car and walked into the field. It was scattered with lots of debris, as if some kind of big public event had taken place here recently.

Other people, some wearing police uniforms, were standing near a stand of trees and bushes. A wide area around them was cordoned off with yellow police tape.

As Riley and Crivaro approached the group, she realized that the bushes had concealed something on the ground.

Riley gasped at what she saw.

Nausea swelled up in her throat again.

Lying on the ground was a dead circus clown.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Riley felt so dizzy that she thought she might faint.

She managed to stay on her feet, but then she worried that she was going to throw up, like she had back at the apartment.

This can’t be real, she thought.

This has to be a nightmare.

The cops and other people were standing around a body that was in a full clown outfit. The suit was puffy and brightly colored with huge pompoms as buttons. A pair of outsized shoes completed the attire.

The stark white face had a bizarre painted smile, a bright red nose, and exaggerated eyes and eyebrows. A huge red wig framed the face. A canvas tarp was bunched up next to the body.

It dawned on Riley that the body was actually a woman.

Now that her head was clearing, she noticed a distinct and unpleasant odor in the air. As she looked around the area, she doubted that the smell was from the body—or at least not much of it. Trash was strewn everywhere. The morning sun was bringing out the odor of various kinds of human residue.

A man wearing a white jacket was kneeling beside the body, studying it carefully. Crivaro introduced him as Victor Dahl, the DC medical examiner.

Crivaro shook his head and said to Dahl, “This is even weirder than I’d expected.”

Rising to his feet, Dahl said, “Yeah, weird. And it’s just like the last victim.”

Riley thought …

The last victim?

Had another clown been killed before this one?

“I just got briefed a little while ago,” Crivaro said to Dahl and the cops. “Maybe you folks can fill in my trainee here on what this is all about. I’m maybe not fully up to speed on this case myself.”

Dahl looked at Riley and hesitated for a moment. Riley wondered if she looked as sick as she felt. But then the medical examiner began to explain.

“Saturday morning, a body was found in the alley behind a movie theater. The victim was a young woman named Margo Birch—and she was dressed and made up pretty much like this victim. The cops figured it was a weird murder, but one of a kind. Then this corpse turned up last night. Another young woman all painted up and dressed this way.”

It hit Riley then. This wasn’t an actual clown. This was an ordinary young woman dressed up as a clown. Two such women had been bizarrely dressed and made up and murdered.

Crivaro added, “And that’s when it became an FBI case, and we got called in.”

“That’s right,” Dahl said, looking around the debris-strewn field. “There was a carnival here for a few days. It moved out on Saturday. That’s where all this junk came from—the field hasn’t been cleaned up yet. Late last night some neighborhood guy came out here with a metal detector, looking for coins that might have gotten dropped during the carnival. He found the body, which was covered by that tarp at the time.”

Riley turned to see that Crivaro was watching her closely.

Was he just making sure she was minding her own business?

Or was he monitoring her reactions?

She asked, “Has this woman been identified?”

One of the cops said, “Not yet.”

Crivaro added, “We’re focused on one particular missing person’s report. Yesterday morning a professional photographer named Janet Davis was reported missing. She’d been taking pictures at Lady Bird Johnson Park the night before. The cops are wondering if this might be her. Agent McCune is paying her husband a visit right now. Maybe he can help us make an ID.”

Riley heard sounds of vehicles stopping nearby in the street. She looked and saw that a couple of TV news vans had pulled up.

“Damn,” one of the cops said. “We’d managed to keep the clown angle about the other murder quiet until now. Should we cover her back up?”

Crivaro let out a growl of annoyance as a news crew poured out of one of the vans with a camera and a boom mic. The crew hurried out onto the field.

“It’s too late for that,” he said. “They’ve already seen the victim.”

As other media vehicles approached, Crivaro and the ME mobilized the cops to try to keep the reporters as far back from the police tape as they could.

Meanwhile, Riley looked at the victim and wondered …

How did she die?

There was no one to ask at the moment. Everybody was busy dealing with the reporters, who were noisily asking questions.

Riley carefully stooped over the body, telling herself …

Don’t touch anything.

Riley saw that the victim’s eyes and mouth were open. She’d seen that same terrified expression before.

She remembered all too well how her two friends had looked after their throats were cut back in Lanton. Most of all, she remembered the staggering amounts of blood on the dorm room floors when she’d found their bodies.

But there was no blood here.

She saw what appeared to be some small cuts on the woman’s face and neck showing through the white makeup.

What did those cuts mean? They surely weren’t large enough to have been fatal.

She also noticed that the makeup was painted on clumsily and awkwardly.

She didn’t put it on herself, she thought.

No, someone else had done that, perhaps against the victim’s will.

Then Riley felt a strange shift in her consciousness—something she hadn’t felt since those terrible days in Lanton.

Her skin crawled as she realized what that feeling was.

She was getting a sense of the mind of the killer.

He dressed her like this, she thought.

He’d probably put on the costume after she was dead, but she had still been conscious when he smeared her face with makeup. Judging from her dead, open eyes, she’d been all too aware of what was happening to her.

And he enjoyed it, she thought. He enjoyed her terror as he painted her.

Riley also understood the small cuts now.

He teased her with a knife.

He taunted her—made her wonder how he was going to kill her.

Riley gasped and rose to her feet. She felt another wave of nausea and dizziness and almost fell down again, but someone caught her by the arm.

She turned and saw that Jake Crivaro had stopped her from falling.

He was looking straight into her eyes. Riley knew that he understood exactly what she’d just experienced.

In a hoarse, horrified voice she told him …

“He frightened her to death. She died of fear.”

Riley heard Dahl let out a yelp of surprise.

“Who told you that?” Dahl said, walking toward Riley.

Crivaro said to him, “Nobody told her. Is it true?”

Dahl shrugged a little.

“Maybe. Or something like it, anyway, if she’s like the other victim. Margo Birch’s bloodstream was pumped full of amphetamines, a fatal dose that made her heart stop beating. That poor woman must have felt scared out of her mind right until the moment she died. We’ll have to do toxicology on this new victim, but …”

His voice trailed off, and then he asked Riley, “How did you know?”

Riley had no idea what to say.

Crivaro said, “It’s what she does. It’s why she’s here.”

Riley shivered deeply at those words.

Is this something I really want to be good at? she asked herself.

She wondered if maybe she should have submitted that resignation letter after all.

Maybe she shouldn’t be here.

Maybe she should have no part in this.

She was sure of one thing—Ryan would be horrified if he knew where she was right now and what she was doing.

Crivaro asked Dahl, “How hard would it be for the killer to get hold of this particular amphetamine?”

“Unfortunately,” the medical examiner replied, “it would be easy to buy on the street.”

Crivaro’s phone buzzed. He looked at it. “It’s Agent McCune. I’ve got to take this.”

Crivaro stepped away and talked on his cell phone. Dahl continued to stare at Riley as if she were some kind of freak.

Maybe he’s right, she thought.

Meanwhile, she could hear some of the questions the reporters were asking.

“Is it true Margo Birch’s murder was just like this?”

“Was Margo Birch dressed and made up the same way?”

“Why is this killer dressing his victims up like clowns?”

“Is this the work of a serial killer?”

“Are there going to be more clown murders?”

Riley remembered what one of the cops had just said …

“We’d managed to keep the clown angle about the other murder quiet until now.”

Obviously, rumors had already been circulating even so. And now there was no keeping the truth quiet.

The cops were trying to say as little as possible in reply to the questions. But Riley remembered how aggressive reporters had been back in Lanton. She understood all too well why Jake and the cops weren’t happy that these reporters had shown up. The publicity wasn’t going to make their work any easier.

Crivaro walked back toward Riley and Dahl, tucking his phone in his pocket.

“McCune just talked to the missing woman’s husband. The poor guy’s worried sick, but he told McCune something that might be helpful. He said she has a mole just behind her right ear.”

Dahl stooped down and peeked behind the victim’s ear.

“It’s her,” he said. “What did you say her name was again?”

“Janet Davis,” Crivaro said.

Dahl shook his head. “Well, at least we’ve ID’d the victim. We might as well get her out of here. I wish we didn’t have to deal with rigor mortis, though.”

Riley watched as Dahl’s team loaded the corpse onto a gurney. It was a clumsy effort. The body was stiff like a statue, and the puffily clad limbs extended in all directions, protruding from underneath the white sheet that covered it.

Finally dumbstruck themselves, the reporters gawked and stared as the gurney rattled across the field toward the ME’s van carrying its grotesque burden.

As the body vanished into the van, Riley and Crivaro pushed past the reporters and headed back to their own vehicle.

As Crivaro drove them away, Riley asked where they were going next.

“To headquarters,” Crivaro said. “McCune told me that some cops have been searching around Lady Bird Johnson Park where Janet Davis went missing. They found her camera. She must have dropped it when she was abducted. The camera is now at FBI headquarters. Let’s go see what the tech people can find out about it. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll give us some evidence.”

That word jarred Riley …

“Lucky.”

It seemed like a strange word to use when talking about something so singularly unlucky as a woman’s murder.

But Crivaro had obviously meant what he said. She wondered at how hardened he must have become, doing this work for as many years as he had.

Was he completely immune to horror?

She couldn’t tell from his tone of voice as he continued …

“Also, Janet Davis’s husband let McCune look through photos she’d taken during the last few months. McCune found a few photos that she had taken in a costume store.”

Riley felt a tingle of interest.

She asked, “You mean the kind of store that might sell clown costumes?”

Crivaro nodded. “Sounds interesting, doesn’t it?”

“But what does it mean?” Riley said.

Crivaro said, “It’s hard to say just yet—except Janet Davis was interested enough in costumes to want to take pictures of them. Her husband remembers her talking about doing that, but she didn’t happen to tell him where. McCune is now trying to figure out what store the pictures were taken in. He’ll call me then. It shouldn’t take him very long.”

Crivaro fell silent for a moment.

Then he glanced over at Riley and asked, “How are you holding up?”

“Fine,” Riley said.

“Are you sure?” Crivaro asked. “You look kind of pale, like you’re not feeling well.”

It was true, of course. A combination of morning sickness and the shock of what she’d just seen had definitely gotten to her. But the last thing in the world she wanted to tell Crivaro was that she was pregnant.

“I’m fine,” Riley insisted.

Crivaro said, “I take it you got some gut feelings about the killer back there.”

Riley nodded silently.

“Anything more I should know—aside from the possibility that he’d scared the victim to death?”

“Not much,” Riley said. “Except that he’s …”

She hesitated, then found the word she was looking for. “Sadistic.”

As they drove on in silence, Riley found herself remembering the spectacle of the body splayed atop the gurney. She felt a resurgence of horror that the victim had to suffer such humiliation and indignity even in death.

She wondered what kind of monster would wish this on anybody.

As close as she’d momentarily felt to the killer, she knew that she couldn’t begin to understand the sick workings of his mind.

And she was sure she didn’t want to.

But was that what was in store for her before this case was over?

And what about afterward?

Is this what my life is going to be like?