Waiting

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.