Once Gone (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #1)

Chapter 19

Riley and Bill arrived at the Behavioral Analysis Unit to find Walder waiting for them at the door.

"We've got him," Walder said, ushering them into the building. "We've got the guy."

Riley could hear both elation and relief in his voice.

"How?" she demanded.

"Agent Paige, you've seriously underestimated Huang and Creighton," Walder said. "After you left, the receptionist told them about a creepy guy who'd been hanging around the clinic recently. His name is Darrell Gumm. Women patients had complained about him. He was always getting too close to them, they said, not respecting their personal space. He also said some pretty unsavory things to them. And once or twice he actually sneaked into the women's restroom."

Riley mulled this over, checking it against her own assumptions about the perpetrator. It could be him, she thought. She felt a flutter of excitement in her throat.

Bill asked Walder, "Didn't anybody at the clinic call the police about Gumm?"

"They were letting their own security guy handle it. The guard told Gumm to stay away. At that kind of facility they do get oddballs from time to time. But Huang and Creighton picked up on the description. They realized he sounded like the guy we're looking for. They got his address from the receptionist, and we all headed over to his apartment."

"How do you know it's him?" Riley asked.

"He confessed," Walder said firmly. "We got a confession out of him."

Riley began to feel a touch of relief herself. "And Cindy MacKinnon?" she asked. "Where is she?"

"We're working on it," Walder said.

Riley's relief faded. "What do you mean, 'working on it'?" she asked.

"We've got field agents sweeping the neighborhood. We don't think he could have taken her very far. Anyhow, he'll tell us very soon. He's doing plenty of talking."

This had better be the guy, Riley thought. Cindy MacKinnon simply had to be alive. They couldn't lose yet another innocent woman to this twisted brute. His timeline was tightening up, but surely she wouldn't already be dead this soon after the abduction. He hadn't had the pleasure of torturing her yet.

Bill asked Walder, "Where is the suspect now?"

Walder pointed the way. "We've got him over in the detention center," he said. "Come on. I'm headed there now."

Walder filled them in as they walked through the extensive BAU complex to the building where suspects were held.

"When we flashed our badges," Walder said grimly, "he invited us to come right in and make ourselves at home. Self-confident bastard."

Riley thought that sounded right. If Darren Gumm really was the perp, the agents' arrival might have been just the denouement he'd been hoping for. He might well have intended to get caught all along, after an all-too-clever, two-year game of cat and mouse with the authorities. Maybe the reward he'd been hoping for all along was fame—a lot more than fifteen minutes of fame.

The trouble was, Riley knew, he could still use his latest captive to toy with them all. And he could well be the type who would do that.

"You should have seen his place," Walder went on. "A filthy little one-room pit, with a fold-out couch and a tiny bathroom that stinks to high heaven. And on the walls, absolutely everywhere, he's got news clippings about assaults and rapes and murders from all over the country. No sign of a computer, he's completely off the grid, but I've got to say, he's got an analog database of psychopathic criminality that a lot of police departments would envy."