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

Chapter 25

Riley's cell phone buzzed early the next morning. She was sitting at her coffee table, looking at the map she had followed yesterday, planning a new route for today. When she saw that the call was from Bill, her nerves quickened. Would this be good or bad news?

"Bill, what's going on?"

She heard her former partner sigh miserably.

"Riley, are you sitting down?"

Riley's heart sank. She was glad that she was sitting down. She knew now that Bill's tone of voice could only mean one terrible thing, and she felt her muscles weaken with dread.

"They've found Cindy MacKinnon," Bill said.

"And she's dead, isn't she?" Riley said with a gasp.

Bill said nothing for a moment. But his silence answered Riley's question. Riley felt tears welling up—tears of shock and helplessness. She fought against them, determined not to cry.

"Where did they find her?" Riley asked.

"Pretty far to the west of the other victims, in the national forest, almost to the West Virginia line."

She looked at her map. "What's the nearest town?" He told her and she found the approximate location. It wasn't inside the triangle made by the other three sites where bodies had been found. But still, there must be some sort of relationship with the other sites. She couldn't quite place what it was.

Bill continued describing the discovery.

"He put her next to a cliff in an open area, no trees around it. I'm at the scene right now. It's horrible. He's getting bolder, Riley."

And acting faster, Riley thought with despair. He'd only kept this victim alive for a few days.

"So Darrell Gumm really is the wrong guy," Riley said.

"You're the only one who said so," Bill replied. "You were right."

Riley struggled to comprehend the situation.

"So has Gumm been released?" she asked.

Bill grunted with annoyance.

"Not a chance," he said. "He'll be facing obstruction charges. He's got a lot to answer for. Not that he seems to care. But we'll try to keep his name out of the news as much as we can. That amoral prick doesn't deserve the publicity."

A silence fell between them.

"Damn it, Riley," Bill said at last, "if only Walder had listened to you, maybe we could have saved her."

Riley doubted that. It wasn't as if she'd had any solid leads of her own; but maybe with all that redirected manpower, something could have been turned up in those precious hours.

"Have you got any photos?" she asked. Her heart was pounding.

"Yeah, Riley, but—"

"I know you're not supposed to show them to me. But I've got to see them. Could you send them to me?"

After a pause, Bill said, "Done."

A few moments later, Riley was looking at a series of ghastly images on her cell phone. The first was a close-up of that face she had seen in a picture just a few days back. Then the woman had been beaming with love over a happy little girl and her brand new doll. But now that face was pallid, its eyes stitched open, a hideous smile painted over its lips.

As she looked through more pictures, she saw that the display was a match for how Reba Frye's corpse had been arranged. All of the details were there. The pose was precise. The body was naked and splayed, sitting stiffly upright like a doll. An artificial rose was on the ground between her legs.