A short time later, Riley and Lucy were in their car again, following along behind Slater. As always when approaching a crime scene, Riley felt her senses quicken into sharper alertness.
It hadn't been easy to persuade Slater to lead them there. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing at all to see—especially after all these years. Even so, Riley was anxious to get a look at the site where Marla Blainey's body had been left. She knew that photographs couldn't tell her what actual places sometimes could.
A short distance out of town, the two-lane road crossed the railroad tracks and continued along the edge of the river. Slater pulled onto the shoulder of the road. Riley pulled their car in behind him.
"I think this is where it was," Slater said, getting out of his car. "It's hard to remember after all these years."
"Let me look at those photos again," Riley said.
Slater handed her the folder full of photos of the Blainey crime scene. Riley peered through the trees at the side of the road. The bank sloped sharply down to the river's edge, which was only about fifteen feet away.
Riley compared the spot to a photo of the body that had been taken from the road. The underbrush had changed over the years, and for a moment it was hard to see any resemblance between the photo and the actual place.
In the photo, she saw that Marla's body, bound in chains and a straitjacket, lay in a heap against a fallen tree trunk. Riley stepped into the long grass beside the road. There it was, the same tree trunk down there next to the water's edge.
"You're right, this is the place," she told Slater. "How do you think he got the body down there?"
Slater shrugged. "There wasn't much to it," he said. "He pulled his vehicle about where we are right now. Then he just rolled the body down the bank. The grass and brush were mashed down all the way."
He pointed to the photo Riley was holding.
"You can see just the edge of a tire track right there on the shoulder," he said. "Probably a van, but we couldn't track down the vehicle. Nobody noticed the body for several days—not until someone saw buzzards circling."
As Riley compared the photo and the actual scene, she realized that she was standing on the exact spot where the killer had dumped the body. She gazed down the slope for a long moment, taking in the scene. She began to picture the chained and straitjacketed body rolling down the hill. Then she noticed that Lucy was staring at her intently. It struck her as odd. She returned Lucy's gaze with quizzical look.
"Oh, I'm sorry for staring," Lucy said, a bit embarrassed. "It's just that … well, I've heard you've got uncanny instincts when you're at a crime scene. They say it's like you get right into a killer's head, feel what he felt, see what he saw, understand exactly what he was thinking."
Riley didn't know what to say. She often did, indeed, become deeply absorbed in crime scenes. And her capacity to identify with a killer's perspective sometimes disturbed even her. It was just her way of doing things, but Lucy was making it sound like an almost legendary skill. It made Riley feel uncomfortable and self-conscious.
In any case, she wasn't getting any vibes from where she was standing, no sense of the killer's thoughts. She didn't know whether that was because the place was too nondescript or because of the other people watching.
"Hold this for a moment," she told Lucy, handing her the folder.
Then Riley scrambled down the slope, leaving Lucy and Slater watching in surprise.
"You be careful," Slater called after her.
"Do you want me to come too?" Lucy asked.
"No, I'm okay," Riley called back. "You stay there."
The slope was steep and more treacherous than it looked from the roadside. She stumbled down against brush and branches, scraping herself a good bit along the way. The sharp descent was also a stern reminder that she was still hurting from her recent injuries. Muscles that had just started to feel better suddenly began to ache again.
Finally, she reached the bottom of the slope. She stood beside the fallen log, only about a yard away from the water's edge. This was it—the place where Marla's body had fallen and stayed until it was discovered. The quiet was interrupted by the noise of a speedboat tearing down the river a short distance away. Its wake of gentle wavelets broke against the log, then died away into stillness.
Drawing upon the memory of the photo, Riley pictured Marla's body lying at her feet. She could see it clearly. She also realized that, if not for the log, the body would probably have kept right on rolling into the river. It had only gotten caught here by accident. Working in the dark, the killer might not have even realized that the body hadn't gone all the way into the water.
Judging from the slope, Riley guessed that the water was deep right here. Weighted down with chains, the body might well have sunk without a trace. It might never have been found.
At last, she began to feel a tingle of understanding. This woman's body, like the place itself, had meant nothing to the killer by the time he dumped it here. It might be discovered or it might not be—it didn't matter to him one way or the other. The chains and the straitjacket had been solely a matter between him and his victim. They were used to torment the women, and they had some special meaning for the killer. They hadn't been for public display.
Something drastic had changed between the two killings. Now the killer wanted desperately for everyone to see the full horror of his deed. With the second victim, he was trying to communicate something that he hadn't cared about the first time.
Riley groaned under her breath. It was likely to mean that the killer was going to accelerate. Whatever was driving him was stronger now. Whatever he'd kept under control for five years was pushing harder at him to show the world his pain.
At that moment, her phone buzzed. She took it out of her pocket. She was surprised to see that it was a text from April.
Hey Mom, it said simply.
Riley felt deeply startled by the sheer incongruity. Here she was, standing exactly where a corpse had once been abandoned, receiving a text from her daughter who oftentimes wanted nothing to do with her. Should she explain that now was not a good time to exchange texts?
Hi April, she wrote back. What's going on?
The reply came quickly …
School ends tomorrow. I have my last exam in the morning.
Riley typed, Are you ready?
I dunno, April replied.
Riley sighed. Her conversation with her daughter had already become perfectly meaningless.
But then April typed:
I want to talk.
Riley's heart surged with unexpected emotion.
Me too, she typed. Could you wait till I get back to my room?
April's next text took her thoroughly by surprise.
Not on the phone. Right here. Come home and let's talk.