lit up at night,” Alford said. “So he’s bold, and I’ll bet he’s pretty fast, even if he isn’t very strong.”
At that moment there came a sharp, loud crack outside.
“What the hell?” Alford yelled.
Riley knew immediately that it was a gunshot.
Chapter 9
Alford drew his gun and charged out of the warehouse. Riley and Lucy followed with their hands on their own weapons. Outside, something was hovering in circles around the pole where the body was hanging. It made a steady buzzing sound.
Young Officer Boyden had his pistol drawn. He had just taken a shot at the small drone that was circling the body and was getting ready to take another.
“Boyden, put that damned gun away!” Alford shouted. He holstered his own weapon.
Boyden turned toward Alford with surprise. Just as he was putting away his weapon, the drone rose higher and flew away.
The chief was fuming.
“What the hell did you think you were doing, firing your weapon like that?” he snarled at Boyden.
“Protecting the scene,” Boyden said. “It’s probably some blogger taking pictures.”
“Probably,” Alford said. “And I don’t like that any more than you do. But it’s illegal to shoot those things down. Besides, this is a populated area. You ought to know better.”
Boyden hung his head sheepishly.
“Sorry, sir,” he said.
Alford turned toward Riley.
“Drones, hell!” he said. “I sure do hate the twenty-first century. Agent Paige, please tell me we can take that body down now.”
“Have you got more pictures than the ones I saw?” Riley asked.
“Lots of them, showing every little detail,” Alford said. “You can look at them in my office.”
Riley nodded. “I’ve seen what I needed to see here. And you’ve done a good job keeping the scene under control. Go ahead and cut her down.”
Alford said to Boyden, “Call the county coroner. Tell him he can stop waiting around twiddling his thumbs.”
“Got it, Chief,” Boyden said, taking out his cell phone.
“Come on,” Alford said to Riley and Lucy. He led them to his police car. When they got in and were on their way, a cop waved the car past the barricade onto the main street.
Riley took careful note of the route. The killer would have brought his vehicle in and out along this same route that both Boyden and Alford used. There was no other way into the area between the warehouse and the train tracks. It seemed likely that someone would have seen the killer’s vehicle, although they might not have thought it unusual.
The Reedsport Police Department was nothing more than a little brick storefront right on the town’s main street. Alford, Riley, and Lucy went inside and sat down in the chief’s office.
Alford placed a stack of folders on his desk.
“Here’s everything we’ve got,” he said. “The complete file on the old case from five years ago, and everything so far on last night’s murder.”
Riley and Lucy each took a folder and began to browse through it. Riley’s attention was drawn to the photos of the first case.
The two women were similar in age. The first one worked in a prison, which put her at some degree of risk for possible victimization. But the second one would be considered a lower risk victim. And there was no indication that either of them frequented bars or other places that would make them especially vulnerable. In both cases, those who knew the women had described them as friendly, helpful, and conventional. And yet, there had to be some factor that drew the killer to these particular women.
“Did you make any headway on Marla Blainey’s murder?” Riley asked Alford.
“It was under the jurisdiction of the Eubanks police. Captain Lawson. But I worked with him on it. We found out nothing useful. The chains were perfectly ordinary. The killer could have picked them up at any hardware store.”
Lucy leaned toward Riley to look at the same pictures.
“Still, he did buy a lot of them,” Lucy said. “You’d think some clerk would have noticed someone buying so many chains.”
Alford nodded in agreement.
“Yeah, that’s what we thought at the time. But we contacted hardware stores all around these parts. None of the clerks picked up on any unusual sales like that. He must have bought a few at a time, here and there, without attracting a lot of attention. By the time he got around to the murder, he had big pile of them handy. Maybe he still does.”
Riley peered closely at the straitjacket the woman was wearing. It looked identical to the one used to bind last night’s victim.
“What about the straitjacket?” Riley asked.
Alford shrugged. “You’d think something like that would be easy to track. But we got nothing. It’s standard issue in psychiatric hospitals. We checked all the hospitals throughout the state, including one real close by. Nobody noticed any straitjackets missing or stolen.”
A silence fell as Riley and Lucy continued looking at reports and photos. The bodies had been left within ten miles of each other. That indicated that the killer probably didn’t live too far away. But the first woman’s corpse had been dumped unceremoniously on a riverbank. Over the five years between murders, the killer’s attitude had changed in some way.
“So what do you make of this guy?” Alford asked. “Why the straitjacket and all the chains? Doesn’t that seem like overkill?”
Riley thought for a moment.
“Not in his mind,” she said. “It’s about power. He wants to restrict his victims not just physically but symbolically. It goes way beyond the practical. It’s about taking away the victim’s power. The killer wants to make a real point of that.”
“But why women?” Lucy asked. “If he wants to disempower his victims, wouldn’t it be more dramatic with men?”
“It’s a good question,” Riley replied. She thought back to the crime scene – how the body had been so carefully counterbalanced.
“But remember, he’s not very strong,” Riley said. “It might be partly a matter of choosing easier targets. Middle-aged women like these would probably put up less of a fight. But they also probably stand for something in his mind. They weren’t selected as individuals, but as women– and whatever it is that women represent to him.”
Alford let out a cynical growl.
“So you’re saying it was nothing personal,” he said. “It’s not like these women did anything to get captured and killed. It’s not like the killer even thought they especially deserved it.”
“That’s often how it goes,” Riley said. “In my last case, the killer
