Riley also doubted that they dressed so acceptably when they were on the job. Working for about 250 dollars per hour, they'd surely invested in elaborate wardrobes to cater to all sorts of clients' fantasies. They had been colleagues of Nancy "Nanette" Holbrook at Ishtar Escorts. The clothes Nancy Holbrook had been wearing when she was killed had been markedly less proper. But, Riley figured, when not actually on the job, the women wanted to look respectable.
Although prostitutes had played a role in some of the cases Riley had investigated in the past, this was the first time she'd been called on to work so directly with any of them. These women were potential victims themselves. They might even be potential suspects, although virtually all murders of this type were carried out by men. Riley felt sure that these women weren't the kind of monsters she hunted in her job.
It was late Sunday afternoon. Last night Riley and Bill had settled into their separate and comfortable hotel rooms not far from the FBI building. Riley had phoned April, who was in a Washington, DC, hotel with the history field trip. April had been giggly and happy, and had warned her mother that she didn't really have time for phone calls. "I'll text you tomorrow," April had said, shouting over the teenage clamor in the background.
Riley felt that too much of today had already been wasted. It had taken most of the day to round up the prostitutes and bring them in. Riley had told Special Agent in Charge Elgin Morley that she wanted to talk to the women without any men present. Perhaps they'd be more open with another woman. Now she thought she'd observe and listen to them unseen for a few minutes before actually questioning them. Through the speaker, she could hear their conversation.
Their styles and personalities were distinctive. Short, blonde, buxom Mitzi displayed a certain small-town, girl-next-door image.
"So has Kip popped the question?" Mitzi asked Koreen.
"Not yet," Koreen said with a conspiratorial smile. She was a slender brunette with something of the grace of a ballerina. "I've got a feeling he's bought a ring, though."
"Does he still want to have four kids?" Mitzi asked.
Koreen let out a high, lilting laugh. "I've talked him down to three. But between you and me, he's only going to get two."
Mitzi joined in Koreen's laughter.
Tantra gave Koreen a nudge. She was a tall African-American with a tawny complexion. She seemed to have adopted the glamorous poise of a supermodel.
"Better make sure he doesn't find out what you do for a living, girl," Tantra said.
All three women laughed heartily. Riley was taken by surprise. These three prostitutes were talking about having families, just like any ordinary women in a beauty parlor. Was that kind of normality really in the cards for any of them? She couldn't imagine that such a thing was possible.
Riley decided that she'd kept the women waiting long enough. When she walked into the interview room, she could feel the relaxed atmosphere suddenly pop like a bubble. Now the women were visibly on edge.
"I'm Agent Riley Paige," she said. "I'd like to ask you all a few questions."
All three women let out groans of dismay.
"Oh, God, not more questions!" Mitzi said. "We've talked to the cops already."
"I'd like to ask a few questions of my own, if you don't mind," Riley said.
Mitzi shook her head. "This is starting to feel like harassment," she said.
"What we do is perfectly legal," Koreen said.
"I don't care about what you do," Riley said. "I'm an FBI investigator, not a judge."
Koreen murmured under her breath, "Like hell."
Mitzi looked at her wristwatch. "Can we make this quick?" she said. "I've got three classes today."
"How many credits are you taking this semester?" Koreen asked.
"Twenty," Mitzi said.
Koreen gasped. "That's a pretty big load."
"Yeah, well, I want to get my degree as soon as I can."
Riley was taken aback again.
Mitzi is going to college, she thought.
She had heard that sometimes women pursuing an education chose prostitution as a way of paying tuition. With the money she was making, she might not have to go too deeply in debt. Still, it struck Riley as strangely unsettling.
"I'll try to keep this short," Riley said. "I just want to know more about Nanette."
Koreen's expression suddenly turned pensive. "Poor Nanette," she said.
But Mitzi seemed unperturbed. "What happened to Nanette's got nothing to do with us," she said.
"I'm afraid it does," Riley said. "We have good reason to believe that her murderer is a serial killer. And I can tell you from years of experience, serial killers are relentless. He'll kill again. And one of you might be his next victim."
Mitzi frowned disdainfully.
"Not a chance," she said. "We're not like Nanette."
Now Riley was shocked. Could these women possibly be naive enough to think that what they did for a living was safe?
"But you work for the same business, doing the same kind of work," Riley said.
Mitzi was starting to get defensive.
"Hey, I thought you weren't here to judge," she said. "You can look down your nose at us if you like. But what we do is as respectable as this kind of thing can be. And as safe. We can turn down any clients we don't like. We keep the sex safe, and we get regular check-ups, so we don't have diseases. If a guy gets too kinky or violent, we can walk away. But it usually doesn't come to that."
Riley wondered about that word "usually." Surely their business sometimes took them into pretty dark territory. And how "safe" could hired sex possibly be? How long could they continue without falling prey to AIDS?
"As far as Nanette goes," Mitzi continued, "she was on her way down. She'd lost all her class. She was meeting clients outside of the service, shooting smack, losing her health and her looks. She wouldn't have lasted at Ishtar's a lot longer. She'd have been fired for sure."
As Riley took notes, she eyed the women, trying to understand them better. Little by little, she sensed something behind their placid expressions. She was pretty sure it was denial. They refused to accept that theirs was a losing way of life, and that they'd all fall into the same decline as Nanette sooner or later. Their dreams of family, education, and success were ultimately doomed. And deep down, they knew it.
Riley noticed that Tantra had gotten quiet and was looking off into space. She had something to say, but hadn't yet said it.
Riley said, "We believe that Nanette was killed about a week ago, probably on Saturday. Do you know who her client was that night?"
Koreen shrugged. "I've got no idea."
"Me, neither," Mitzi said. "Actually, that's none of our business, you'd have to ask Ishtar about that."
Riley knew that the local agents were already looking for the escort service owner and would bring her in for questioning.
"What about other places of work?" Riley asked.
"We're contracted to Ishtar," Mitzi said firmly. "We're not allowed to follow our line of work through any other agency or on our own."
The other two women were looking downward, avoiding Riley's eyes. She asked the question more directly.
"Did Nanette ever do extra work anywhere else? Did she ever go out on her own without having a date made through Ishtar?"
The room was silent. Finally, in a barely audible voice, Tantra said, "She told me she'd just started working at Hank's Derby."
"What?" Mitzi said, sounding surprised.
"She didn't want me to tell anybody," Tantra told the other women.
"Jesus," Mitzi said. "So she was turning into a lot lizard. She was in worse shape than I'd thought."
Riley's mind was buzzing with questions.
"What's a 'lot lizard'?" she asked.
"It's the lowest class kind of whore," Koreen said. "They work truck stops, like Hank's Derby. It's really a rock bottom life."
"She was just so strung out," Tantra said. "She wasn't getting the clients she used to at Ishtar's. She told me she wasn't making enough to feed her habit. She said she was just doing it on the side. I told her how dangerous it was. I mean, hookers just disappear from truck stops without a trace, it happens all the time. But she wouldn't listen."
A cloud of gloom had settled over the women. Riley didn't guess that they had a lot more information to give. They'd given her one important lead already.
"That will be all," Riley told them.
But as they got ready to leave, the women started chatting again as though nothing unusual was going on.
They really don't understand, Riley thought. Or they don't want to understand.
"Listen," she said, "this killer is dangerous. And there are many other men like him. You're making yourself into targets. If you think you're safe doing what you do, you're just lying to yourselves."
"And just how much safer is your job, Agent Paige?" Mitzi asked.
This retort left Riley speechless.
Is she really comparing what she does with what I do? she wondered.
As she followed the women out of the interview room, Riley's heart sank. She felt as hopeless for them as she would if they had been common streetwalkers. In a way, this seemed worse. Their superficial veneer of respectability concealed a life of degradation even from themselves. But there was nothing she could say or do to make them face the truth.
Riley felt sure that this killer wasn't finished murdering prostitutes. Was his next victim here right now, or would she be someone Riley hadn't yet met and warned?
*
Riley was in the field office hallway looking for Bill when her cell phone buzzed. She saw that the call was from Quentin Rosner, head of the dive team that was searching Nimbo Lake.
Her heart quickened. Surely he and his divers had found the second body by now.
"Hello, Mr. Rosner," she answered eagerly.
The voice on the line said, "I called Special Agent in Charge Morley. He told me I should report to you directly."
"Good," Riley said. "What have you got for me? Have you found the other body in the lake?"
She heard a faint, wordless grumble, followed by, "Agent Paige, you're not going to like hearing this."
"Well?"
"There's no body in that lake. It's a big area but we've looked everywhere."
Riley had trouble believing her ears. Had her hunch been wrong?
No, she still felt sure that Nancy Holbrook's killer had previously dumped a different body in that lake. It helped explain why he hadn't gone down to the water to make sure that his latest victim had disappeared into the lake's depths.
As she puzzled over what to say, she saw Bill walking down the hall.
"I'm headed out to interview Ishtar Haynes," he said. "At her place of business. Want to come along?"
Riley nodded yes, but first she had to sort things out with Rosner.
"How was the visibility?" Riley asked.
"I won't lie to you, it really sucks down there," Rosner said. "Flooding a canyon stirs up a lot of sod and rotting vegetation and it can take several years for the water to clear up. Anything dumped here when the lake was new could actually be buried under debris."
"The body I'm looking for could have been put there several years ago."
"Then that's a problem. But we know what we're doing, Agent Paige. We're a well-trained unit. And we're really sure there's no body to be found in this lake."
Riley thought for a moment. She deeply wished that Morley had called in actual FBI divers. The Underwater Search and Evidence Response Team was amazing and those divers would have considered every possible angle without any prompting. Instead Morley had called in help from a local dive training school. He'd said that there was no legitimate reason for the FBI to be involved in this case anyhow. He wasn't going have an FBI team fly in here from LA.
She realized that in spite of what Riley had reported to him, Morley was still thinking of this as a single murder that they were investigating as a favor to a fellow agent. She would just have to work with the team they had. But what might these guys have missed?
She asked, "Have you looked at maps of the canyon before it was flooded?"
Rosner was silent for a moment.
"No, but what good would that do?" he said.
Riley stifled a groan of impatience.
How much training does this guy actually have? she wondered. Do I really have to tell him how to do his job?
She said, "How can you be sure that you checked every nook and cranny without knowing more about the terrain?"
Another silence fell.
"You should be able to call it up on your laptop," Riley added.
"We'll get on it," Rosner finally said, sounding gloomy.
"You do that," Riley told him.
She ended the call and stood in the hall wondering what to believe. Was there no second body after all? If there wasn't, then this probably wasn't even a serial case. She felt a flood of mixed feelings. She hated making mistakes. Even so, the possibility that Nancy Holbrook's murder hadn't been the work of a serial killer might be good news.
But Riley's gut still told her that there was another body in the lake. That this was a familiar type of monster who would strike again.
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