Once Cold

She thrashed about, but he was much stronger than she was.

She tried to scream, but before she could, he grabbed a pillow and pressed it onto her face.

Soon, he knew, it would all be over.

CHAPTER ONE

Suddenly, the lights snapped on in the lecture hall, and Agent Lucy Vargas’s eyes hurt from the glare.

The students sitting around her started murmuring softly. Lucy’s mind had been focused deeply in the exercise – to imagine a real murder from the killer’s point of view – and it was hard to snap back.

“OK, let’s talk about what you saw,” the instructor said.

The instructor was none other than Lucy’s mentor, Special Agent Riley Paige.

Lucy wasn’t actually a student in the class, which was for FBI Academy cadets. She was just sitting in today, as she did from time to time. She was still fairly new to the BAU, and she found Riley Paige to be a source of limitless inspiration and information. She took every opportunity she could to learn from her – and also to work with her.

Agent Paige had given the students details of a murder case that had gone cold some twenty-five years ago. Three young women had been killed in central Virginia. The killer had been nicknamed the “Matchbook Killer,” because he left matchbooks with the victims’ bodies. The matchbooks were from bars in a general area near Richmond. He’d also left napkins imprinted with the names of the motels where the women had been killed. Even so, investigating those places had not brought any breaks in the case.

Agent Paige had told the students to use their imaginations to recreate one of the murders.

“Let your imagination loose,” Agent Paige had said before they started. “Visualize lots of details. Don’t worry about getting the little things right. But try to get the big picture right – the atmosphere, the mood, the setting.”

Then she’d turned out the lights for ten minutes.

Now that the lights were on again, Agent Paige walked back and forth in front of the lecture hall.

She said, “First of all, tell me a little about the Patom Lounge. What was it like?”

A hand shot up in the middle of the hall. Agent Paige called on the male student.

“The place wasn’t exactly elegant, but it was trying to look more classy than it was,” he said. “Dimly lit booths along the walls. Some kind of soft upholstery everywhere – suede, maybe.”

Lucy felt puzzled. She hadn’t pictured the bar as looking anything like this at all.

Agent Paige smiled a little. She didn’t tell the student whether he was right or not.

“Anything else?” Agent Paige asked.

“There was music, playing low,” another student said. “Jazz, maybe.”

But Lucy distinctly remembered imagining the din of ’70s and ’80s hard rock tunes.

Had she gotten everything wrong?

Agent Paige asked, “What about the Maberly Inn? What was it like?”

A female student held up her hand, and Agent Paige picked her.

“Kind of quaint, and nice as motels go,” the young woman said. “And pretty old. Dating to before most of the really commercial motel chain franchises came along.”

Another student spoke up.

“That sounds right to me.”

Other students voiced their agreement.

Again, Lucy was struck by how differently she’d pictured the place.

Agent Paige smiled a little.

“How many of you share these general impressions – both of the bar and the motel?”

Most of the students raised their hands.

Lucy was starting to feel a little awkward now.

“Try to get the big picture right,” Agent Paige had told them.

Had Lucy blown the whole exercise?

Had everyone in the class gotten things right except her?

Then Agent Paige brought up some images on the screen in front of the classroom.

First came a cluster of photographs of the Patom Lounge – a night shot from outside with a neon sign glowing in the window, and several other photos from inside.

“This is the bar,” Agent Paige said. “Or at least this is how it looked back around the time of the murders. I’m not sure what it looks like now – or if it’s even there.”

Lucy felt relieved. It looked much like she had imagined it – a rundown dive with cheaply paneled walls and fake leather upholstery. It even had a couple of pool tables and a dartboard, just like she’d supposed. And even in the pictures, one could see a thick haze of cigarette smoke.

The students gaped in surprise.

“Now let’s take a look at the Maberly Inn,” Agent Paige said.

More photos appeared. The motel looked every bit as sleazy as Lucy had imagined it – not very old, but nevertheless in bad repair.

Agent Paige chuckled a little.

“Something seems to be a little off here,” she said.

The classroom laughed nervously in agreement.

“Why did you visualize the scenes like you did?” Agent Paige asked.

She called on a young woman who held up her hand.

“Well, you told us that the killer first approached the victim in a bar,” she said. “That spells ‘singles bar’ for me. Kind of cheesy, but at least trying to look classy. I just didn’t get an image of some working-class dive.”