Once Cold. Блейк Пирс

touched.”

      “Yeah, literally. In one of the bars, he handled a drinking glass the killer had touched, smeared up the fingerprints but good.”

      “Weren’t there any fingerprints on the napkins or the matchbooks?”

      “Not after being covered with dirt in a shallow grave. The guy screwed up royally. He should’ve been fired right then and there. He didn’t last long, though. Last I heard he was working in a convenience store. Good riddance.”

      Riley heard a pause in Jake’s typing. She guessed that he now had all his materials ready at hand.

      “OK, now close your eyes,” Jake said.

      Riley shut her eyes and smiled. He was going to put her through much the same exercise she had taught to her students. She had learned it from him in the first place.

      Jake said, “You’re the killer, but you haven’t killed anybody yet. You just walked into McLaughlin’s Pub in Brinkley, and you’ve just introduced yourself to a girl named Melody Yanovich. You’ve put some moves on her, and things seem to be going pretty smoothly.”

      She began to see things from the killer’s point of view. The scene playing out clearly in her mind.

      Jake said, “There’s a little bowl of matchbooks on the bar. In the middle of your pickup, you grab one and pocket it. Why?”

      Riley could practically feel the little matchbook between her fingers. She imagined herself tucking it into her shirt pocket.

      But why? she wondered.

      When the case had been open, there had been a fairly commonsensical theory about that. The killer had left matchbooks from the bars and notepaper from the motels on the victims’ bodies to taunt the police.

      But now she realized – Jake didn’t think so.

      And now she didn’t either.

      She said, “He didn’t even know he was going to kill her – at least not when he was in McLaughlin’s Pub, not that first time. He picked up the matchbook as a souvenir of his impending conquest, a trophy for the good time he expected to have.”

      “Good,” Jake said. “Then what?”

      Riley could clearly visualize the killer helping Melody Yanovich out of his car and escorting her into the motel room.

      “Melody was willing, and he was feeling confident. As soon as they got into the room, she went to the bathroom to get ready. Meanwhile, he picked up a piece of notebook paper with the motel logo – for the same reason he’d picked up the matchbook, as a souvenir. Then he took off his clothes and got under the covers. Soon Melody came out of the bathroom …”

      Riley paused to get a clearer picture.

      Had the woman been naked right then?

      No, not exactly, Riley thought.

      “Melody came out with a towel wrapped around her. Right then he started to get uneasy. He’d had trouble performing in the past. Was he going to have that problem again this time? She climbed into bed with him and pulled off the towel and …”

      “And?” Jake coaxed.

      “And he knew then and there – he couldn’t do it. He was ashamed and humiliated. He couldn’t let the woman get away knowing that he’d failed. A burning rage took him over completely. His fury wiped away his humanity. He grabbed her by the throat and strangled her in the bed. She died very quickly. His rage ebbed away, and he realized what he’d done, and he was seized by guilt. And …”

      Riley’s mind hurried through the rest of the crime. The killer had not only buried the victims in shallow graves, but he’d put the graves close to streets and highways. He knew perfectly well that the bodies would be found. In fact, he’d made sure of it.

      Riley’s eyes snapped open.

      “I get it, Jake. When he first picked up the matchbooks and pieces of notepaper, he was only collecting souvenirs. But after the murders, he used them for something different. He left them with the bodies to help the police, not to taunt them. He wanted to be caught. He didn’t have the nerve to turn himself in, so leaving clues was the best he could do.”

      “You’re catching on,” Jake said. “My guess is, both of the first two murders played out pretty much exactly that way. Now take a look at the local police summary of the murders.”

      Riley looked at the report on her computer screen.

      “How was the last murder different?” Jake asked.

      Riley scanned the text. She didn’t notice anything she hadn’t known already.

      “Tilda Steen was fully clothed when he buried her. It seemed that he hadn’t tried to have sex with her at all.”

      Jake said, “Now tell me what it says about the cause of death for all three victims.”

      Riley quickly found it in the text.

      “Strangulation,” she said. “The same for all of them.”

      Jake grunted with dismay.

      “That’s where the locals went wrong,” he said. “The first two, Melody Yanovich and Portia Quinn, were both definitely strangled. But I found out from the medical examiner – there weren’t any bruises on Tilda Steen’s neck. She’d been suffocated but not strangled. What does that tell you?”

      Riley’s brain clicked along, processing this new information.

      She closed her eyes again, trying to imagine the scene.

      “Something happened when he got Tilda into that motel room,” Riley said. “She confided something to him, maybe something she’d never told anybody else. Or maybe she told him something about himself he wanted to hear. She suddenly became …”

      Riley paused.

      Jake said, “Go ahead. Say it.”

      “Human to him. He felt guilty for what he was going to do. And in a twisted way …”

      It took Riley a moment to put her thoughts together.

      “He decided to kill her as an act of mercy. He didn’t strangle her with his hands. He did it more gently. He overpowered her on the bed and suffocated her with a pillow. He felt so remorseful that …”

      Riley opened her eyes.

      “… he didn’t ever kill again.”

      Jake let out a grunt of approval.

      He said, “That was the same conclusion I came to back in the day. I still think it. I believe he’s still in that general area, and he’s still haunted by what he did all those years ago.”

      A word started echoing through Riley’s mind …

      Remorse.

      Something suddenly seemed crystal clear to her.

      Without stopping to think, she said, “He’s still remorseful, Jake. And I’ll bet anything he leaves flowers on the women’s graves.”

      Jake chuckled with satisfaction.

      “Good thinking,” he said. “That’s what I always liked about you, Riley. You get the psychology, and you know how to turn it into action.”

      Riley smiled.

      “I learned from the best,” she said.

      Jake grumbled his thanks for the compliment. She thanked him and ended the call. She sat in her office thinking.

      It’s up to me.

      She had to hunt down the killer and bring him to justice once and for all.

      But she knew she couldn’t do it alone.

      She needed help just getting the BAU to reopen the case.

      She rushed out into the hall and headed for Bill Jeffreys’ office.

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      Bill