Once Cold

Riley began to pore over old police records to refresh her memory.

The victims didn’t seem to be connected in any way. The killer had used much the same MO for all three murders. He’d picked up young women in bars, driven them to motels, and killed them. Then he’d buried their bodies in shallow graves not far from the murder scenes.

The local police had had no trouble locating the bars where the victims had been picked up and the motels where they had been killed.

As some serial killers do, he had left clues for the police.

With all of the bodies, he had left matchbooks from the bars and notepaper from the motels.

Witnesses at the bars and motels were even able to give fairly good descriptions of the suspect.

Riley pulled up the composite sketch that had been created years ago.

She saw that the man looked fairly ordinary, with dark brown hair and hazel eyes. As she read witness descriptions, she noticed a few more details. Witnesses had mentioned that he looked strikingly pale, as if he worked at a job that kept him indoors and out of the sun.

The descriptions hadn’t been very detailed. Even so, it seemed to Riley as though the case shouldn’t have been all that tough to crack. But somehow it had been. The local police never found the killer. The BAU took over the case, only to conclude that the killer had either died or left the area. Continuing the search nationwide would be like looking for a needle in a haystack – a needle that might not even exist.

But there had been one agent, a master at cracking cold cases, who had disagreed.

“He’s still in the area,” he had told everybody. “We can find him if we just keep looking.”

But his bosses hadn’t believed him, and they wouldn’t back him up. The BAU had let the case go cold.

That agent retired from the BAU years ago and moved to Florida. But Riley knew how to get in touch with him.

She reached for her desk phone and dialed his number.

A moment later, she heard a familiar rumbling voice. Jake Crivaro had been her partner and mentor back when she joined the BAU.

“Hello, stranger,” Jake said. “Where the hell have you been? What have you been doing with yourself? You don’t call, you don’t write. Is that any way to treat the lonely, forgotten old buzzard who taught you everything you know?”

Riley smiled. She knew he didn’t mean it. After all, they’d seen each other fairly recently. Jake had even come out of retirement to help her with a case just a couple of months ago.

She didn’t ask, “How have you been?”

She remembered his litany the last time she’d asked.

“I’m seventy-five years old. I’ve had both knees and a hip replaced. My eyes are shot. I’ve got a hearing aid and a pacemaker. And all my friends except you have croaked. How do you think I’ve been?”

Asking him would only get him started complaining all over again.

The truth was, he was still physically spry, and his mind was as sharp as ever.

“I need your help, Jake,” Riley said.

“Music to my ears. Retirement stinks. What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking into a cold case.”

Jake chuckled a little.

“My favorite kind. You know, cold cases were a specialty of mine back in the day. They still are, as a kind of hobby. Even in retirement, I can collect and review stuff that nobody solved. I’m a regular packrat that way. Do you remember that ‘Angel Face’ killer in Ohio? I solved that one a couple of years ago. It had been cold for more than a decade.”

“I remember,” Riley said. “That was some good work for an over-the-hill old codger.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere. So what have you got for me?”

Riley hesitated. She knew that she was about to stir up unpleasant memories.

“This case was one of yours, Jake,” she said.

Jake fell silent for a moment.

“Don’t tell me,” he finally said. “The Matchbook Killer case.”

Riley almost asked, “How do you know?”

But it was easy to guess the answer.

Jake was obsessed with past failures, especially his own. Doubtless he was keenly aware of the anniversary of Tilda Steen’s death. He’d probably also noted the anniversaries of the other victims’ deaths. Riley guessed that they probably haunted him every year.

“That was before your time,” Jake said. “Why do you want to dredge up all that ancient history?”

She heard bitterness in his voice – the same bitterness she remembered hearing from him when she was still a young rookie. He’d been furious with the powers-that-be for shutting the case down. He’d still been bitter when he retired a few years later.

“You know I’ve been in touch with Tilda Steen’s mother over the years,” Riley said. “I talked to her just yesterday. This time …”

She paused. How could she put it into words?

“It hit me harder than usual, I guess. If nobody does anything, the poor woman will die without her daughter’s killer getting brought to justice. I don’t have any other cases going and I …”

Her voice trailed off.

“I know just how you feel,” Jake said, his voice suddenly sympathetic. “Those three dead women deserved better. Their families deserved better.”

Riley felt relieved that Jake shared her feelings.

“I can’t do much without BAU support,” Riley said. “Do you think there’s any way I could reopen the case?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Let’s get right to work.”

Riley could hear Jake’s fingers rattling on his computer keyboard as he brought up his own files.

“What went wrong when you worked on it?” Riley asked.

“What didn’t go wrong? My theories didn’t fit with anybody else’s at the BAU. The area was fairly rural back then, just three little small towns. Even so, along an interstate that close to Richmond, there were plenty of transients. The Bureau just decided it must have been some drifter who moved along. My gut told me something different – that he lived in the area and might live there still. But nobody cared what my gut had to say.”

While he was typing, he grumbled, “I might have cracked this thing years ago if it weren’t for my shit-for-brains partner.”