Once Shunned

Blaine nodded in agreement and said, “Yes, please be careful.”

Riley kissed Blaine lightly and headed on out of the house. Her go-bag was already packed and ready in the car, so she didn’t need to make any further preparations.

She felt a surge of anticipation. She knew that she was about to step out of a world of coziness and comfort into a much-too-familiar realm of darkness and evil. A world inhabited by monsters.

The story of my life, she thought with a bitter sigh.

CHAPTER TWO

Riley felt a sharp tingle of urgency in the air when she walked into Special Agent in Charge Brent Meredith’s office in the BAU building. The daunting, broad-framed Meredith was sitting at his desk. In front of him, Bill Jeffreys and Jenn Roston stood holding their go-bags.

Looks like this is going to be a short meeting, Riley thought.

She figured that she and her two partners would probably be flying out of Quantico within minutes, and she was glad to see that they’d all be working together again. During their most recent case in Mississippi, the three of them had broken even more rules than usual, and Meredith had made no secret of his displeasure with all of them. After that, she’d been afraid that Meredith might split them up.

“I’m glad all of you could get here so quickly,” Meredith said in his gruff voice, swiveling slightly in his desk chair. “I just got a call from Rowan Sturman, Special Agent in Charge at the New Haven, Connecticut, FBI office. He wants our help. I take it all of you’ve heard about the recent death of Vincent Cranston.”

Riley nodded, and so did her colleagues. She’d read in the newspapers that Vince Cranston, a youthful heir in the multibillionaire Cranston family, had died just last week under mysterious circumstances in New Haven.

Meredith continued, “Cranston had just started his first year at Yale, and his body was found early one morning on the Friendship Woods jogging trail. He’d just been out for a morning jog, and at first his death seemed to be from natural causes—a cerebral hemorrhage, it looked like.”

Bill said, “I take it the medical examiner came to a different conclusion.”

Meredith nodded. “Yeah, the authorities have kept it quiet so far. The ME found a small wound that ran through the victim’s ear straight into his brain. He’d apparently been stabbed there with something sharp, straight, and narrow.”

Jenn squinted at Meredith with surprise.

“An ice pick?” she asked.

“That’s what it looked like,” Meredith said.

Riley asked, “What was the motive?”

“Nobody has any idea,” Meredith said. “Of course, you can’t grow up in a wealthy family like the Cranstons and not acquire more than your share of enemies. It’s part of your inheritance. It seemed like a good guess that the poor kid was the victim of a professional hit. Narrowing down a list of suspects looked like it was going to be a formidable task. But then …”

Meredith paused, drumming his fingers on his desk.

Then he said, “Just yesterday morning, another body was found. This time the victim was Robin Scoville, a young woman who worked for a literary magazine in Wilburton, Connecticut. She was found dead in her own living room—and at first, the cause of her death also looked like maybe a cerebral hemorrhage. But again, the ME’s autopsy revealed a sharp wound through the ear and into the brain.”

Riley’s mind clicked away as she processed what she was hearing.

Two ice pick victims in one little state, over the course of just one week.

It hardly sounded coincidental.

Meredith continued, “Vincent Cranston and Robin Scoville were about as different as two people can get—one a wealthy heir in his freshman year in an Ivy League school, the other a young divorcée of markedly modest means.”

Jenn asked, “So what’s the connection?”

“Why would anyone want them both dead?” Bill added.

Meredith said, “That’s just what Agent Sturman wants to know. It’s already a nasty case—and it’s liable to get a lot nastier if more people get killed this way. No connection of any kind has turned up, and it’s hard to make sense out of this killer’s behavior. Sturman feels like he and his New Haven FBI team are way out of their depth. So he called me and asked for help from the BAU. That’s why I called you three.”

Meredith stood up from his chair and growled …

“Meanwhile, you’ve got no time to lose. A company plane is ready and waiting for you on the landing strip. You’ll fly to the Tweed–New Haven Regional Airport, and Sturman will meet you there. You’ll get right to work. Needless to say, I want this solved quickly.”

Meredith paused and leveled his intimidating stare at each of the agents.

“And this time, I want you to do everything by the book,” he said. “No more shenanigans. I mean it.”

Riley and her colleagues all sheepishly muttered, “No, sir.”

Riley certainly meant it. She didn’t want to face Meredith’s anger again, and she was sure Bill and Jenn didn’t either.

Meredith escorted them out of his office, and a few moments later they were walking across the tarmac toward the waiting plane.

As they walked, Jenn remarked, “Two ice pick murders, two apparently unrelated victims—maybe even random. Does that sound weird or what?”

“We ought to be used to weird by now,” Riley said.

Jenn scoffed. “Yeah, ought to be. I don’t know about you two, but I’m not there yet.”

With a chuckle, Bill said, “Look at it this way. I hear the weather in Connecticut’s lovely this time of year.”

Jenn laughed as well and said, “It sure ought to be nicer than Mississippi.”

Riley grimaced as she remembered the heavy, suffocating heat in the disagreeable coastal town of Rushville, Mississippi.

She felt sure that late summer weather in New England couldn’t help but be an improvement.

Too bad we’re probably not going to get much of a chance to enjoy it.

*

When the plane landed at the Tweed–New Haven Regional Airport, Special Agent in Charge Rowan Sturman greeted Riley and her colleagues on the tarmac. Riley had never met Sturman, but she knew him by reputation.

Sturman was in his early forties, about the same age as Riley and Bill. In his younger years he’d been considered a promising, up-and-coming agent who was expected to climb high in the ranks of the FBI. Instead, he’d contented himself with running the New Haven FBI office. Rumor had it that he simply hadn’t wanted to move to D.C. headquarters or Quantico or anywhere else. His roots and family were planted firmly right here in Connecticut.

Of course, Riley figured, he might not have had an appetite for the political maneuvering that could play a role in those power centers.

She could relate to that possibility.

Riley liked being at the Behavioral Analysis Unit because investigating strange personalities drew on her unique abilities. But she hated the way the power plays of higher-ups sometimes interfered with investigations. She wondered how soon that sort of thing would kick in over the death of an heir to great wealth.

Riley immediately found Sturman to be warm and likeable. As he walked them to a waiting van, he spoke in a pleasant New England twang.

“I’m taking you straight to Wilburton, so you can get a look at where Robin Scoville’s body was found. That’s the fresher crime scene, and I’ve called the local police chief to meet us there. Later I’ll show you where Vincent Cranston was killed. I sure hope you folks can figure out what’s going on, because my team and I can’t make any sense of it.”