Waiting. Блейк Пирс

He said she has a mole just behind her right ear.”

      Dahl stooped down and peeked behind the victim’s ear.

      “It’s her,” he said. “What did you say her name was again?”

      “Janet Davis,” Crivaro said.

      Dahl shook his head. “Well, at least we’ve ID’d the victim. We might as well get her out of here. I wish we didn’t have to deal with rigor mortis, though.”

      Riley watched as Dahl’s team loaded the corpse onto a gurney. It was a clumsy effort. The body was stiff like a statue, and the puffily clad limbs extended in all directions, protruding from underneath the white sheet that covered it.

      Finally dumbstruck themselves, the reporters gawked and stared as the gurney rattled across the field toward the ME’s van carrying its grotesque burden.

      As the body vanished into the van, Riley and Crivaro pushed past the reporters and headed back to their own vehicle.

      As Crivaro drove them away, Riley asked where they were going next.

      “To headquarters,” Crivaro said. “McCune told me that some cops have been searching around Lady Bird Johnson Park where Janet Davis went missing. They found her camera. She must have dropped it when she was abducted. The camera is now at FBI headquarters. Let’s go see what the tech people can find out about it. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll give us some evidence.”

      That word jarred Riley …

      “Lucky.”

      It seemed like a strange word to use when talking about something so singularly unlucky as a woman’s murder.

      But Crivaro had obviously meant what he said. She wondered at how hardened he must have become, doing this work for as many years as he had.

      Was he completely immune to horror?

      She couldn’t tell from his tone of voice as he continued …

      “Also, Janet Davis’s husband let McCune look through photos she’d taken during the last few months. McCune found a few photos that she had taken in a costume store.”

      Riley felt a tingle of interest.

      She asked, “You mean the kind of store that might sell clown costumes?”

      Crivaro nodded. “Sounds interesting, doesn’t it?”

      “But what does it mean?” Riley said.

      Crivaro said, “It’s hard to say just yet—except Janet Davis was interested enough in costumes to want to take pictures of them. Her husband remembers her talking about doing that, but she didn’t happen to tell him where. McCune is now trying to figure out what store the pictures were taken in. He’ll call me then. It shouldn’t take him very long.”

      Crivaro fell silent for a moment.

      Then he glanced over at Riley and asked, “How are you holding up?”

      “Fine,” Riley said.

      “Are you sure?” Crivaro asked. “You look kind of pale, like you’re not feeling well.”

      It was true, of course. A combination of morning sickness and the shock of what she’d just seen had definitely gotten to her. But the last thing in the world she wanted to tell Crivaro was that she was pregnant.

      “I’m fine,” Riley insisted.

      Crivaro said, “I take it you got some gut feelings about the killer back there.”

      Riley nodded silently.

      “Anything more I should know—aside from the possibility that he’d scared the victim to death?”

      “Not much,” Riley said. “Except that he’s …”

      She hesitated, then found the word she was looking for. “Sadistic.”

      As they drove on in silence, Riley found herself remembering the spectacle of the body splayed atop the gurney. She felt a resurgence of horror that the victim had to suffer such humiliation and indignity even in death.

      She wondered what kind of monster would wish this on anybody.

      As close as she’d momentarily felt to the killer, she knew that she couldn’t begin to understand the sick workings of his mind.

      And she was sure she didn’t want to.

      But was that what was in store for her before this case was over?

      And what about afterward?

      Is this what my life is going to be like?

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      As Riley and Crivaro walked into the clean, air-conditioned J. Edgar Hoover Building, she still felt the ugliness of the murder scene clinging to her. It was as if the horror had gotten into her very pores. How was she ever going to shake it off—especially the smell?

      During the drive here, Crivaro had assured Riley that the smell she’d noticed in the field hadn’t been from the body. As Riley had guessed, it was just from the trash left scattered from the carnival. Janet Davis’s body hadn’t been dead long enough to produce much of a smell—and neither had the bodies of Riley’s murdered friends when she’d found them back in Lanton.

      Riley still hadn’t experienced the stench of a decomposing corpse.

      Crivaro had said as they drove …

      “You’ll know it when you smell it.”

      It wasn’t something Riley looked forward to.

      Again, she wondered …

      What do I think I’m doing here?

      She and Crivaro took an elevator to a floor occupied by dozens of forensic labs. She followed Crivaro down a hall until they came to a room with a sign that said “DARKROOM.” A lanky, longhaired young man stood leaning next to the door.

      Crivaro introduced himself and Riley to the man, who nodded and said, “I’m Charlie Barrett, forensic tech. You got here just in time. I’m taking a break after processing the negatives out of that camera they found at Lady Bird Johnson Park. I was just going back in to make some prints. Come on in.”

      Charlie led Riley and Crivaro into a short hallway bathed in amber-colored light. Then they passed through a second door into a room awash with the same weird light.

      The first thing that really struck Riley was the pungent, acrid smell of chemicals.

      Curiously, she didn’t find the smell to be at all unpleasant.

      Instead, it seemed almost …

      Cleansing, Riley realized.

      For the first time since she’d left the field where they’d found the body, that clinging, sour stench of trash was gone.

      Even the horror lifted somewhat, and Riley’s nausea disappeared.

      It was a true relief.

      Riley peered around through the dim, alien light, fascinated by all the elaborate equipment.

      Charlie held up a sheet of paper with rows of images and examined it in the dim light.

      “Here are the proofs,” he said. “It looks like she was one hell of a photographer. A shame what happened to her.”

      As Charlie laid out strips of film on a table, Riley realized that she’d never been in a darkroom before. She’d always taken her own rolls of exposed film to a drugstore to be processed. Ryan and some of her friends had recently bought digital cameras, which didn’t use film at all.

      Janet Davis’s husband had told McCune that his photographer wife had used both kinds of cameras. She tended to use a digital camera for her professional work. But she considered the shots she was taking in the park artwork, and she preferred the film cameras for that.

      Riley thought that Charlie also seemed to be an artist, a true master at what he was doing. That made her wonder …

      Is this