Taking, page 17
A family, Riley realized.
She and Crivaro both knew that there was no way the actual killer would be traveling with a family.
In a weary voice, Crivaro thanked Perosky for his help. The security man nodded and walked over to the check-in booth. Riley turned off the lights and engine. She and Crivaro sat in the cab of their vehicle. A whole minute passed with neither of them saying anything.
Finally Crivaro said in a sullen voice, “Well, so much for your brilliant theory, Riley. Now what do we do?”
Before Riley could think of anything to say, Crivaro snapped at her …
“Never mind. Your crazy ideas dragged us all the way up here to the goddamn frozen north with no killer in sight. I say we drive back down to Sedona, team up with Chief Wilson again, start from scratch.”
Riley could hardly believe her ears.
“What do you mean, start from scratch?” she said. “Do you seriously think the killer is still anywhere around there?”
“Well, he’s not around here, that’s for sure.”
“How can we be sure?” Riley said.
Crivaro growled, “We can’t be sure of anything. He could be anywhere—east, west, north, or south. That’s why we’ve got to go back and regroup, set up a stable base of operations in Sedona.”
Riley gripped the steering wheel and gritted her teeth.
“No,” she said.
Crivaro said, “Damn it, kid, you can’t go getting mad every time you’re wrong about something. Let’s get out, stretch our legs for a minute, and then I’ll take over the driving. You’re too pissed off to drive.”
“And you’re not?” Riley asked in an angry voice.
Crivaro stared at her, apparently startled by her tone.
Then he said, “You’re just being stubborn.”
Riley felt a twinge of guilt. Maybe she was just being stubborn. She was angry, all right—but was she angry with Crivaro for wanting to go back to Sedona, or at herself for screwing things up so badly?
She sat there for a moment, trying to convince herself that she’d been wrong all along, and that the killer hadn’t come north after all.
But the more she tried, the more stubborn she felt.
She just couldn’t help herself.
Her thoughts thrashed around as she tried to think of something, anything, to allay her own doubts. Suddenly a single word popped into her mind …
Boondocking.
It took a moment for her to remember where she’d heard that word before.
When it came to her, Riley said to Crivaro …
“I’ll bet he’s boondocking.”
Crivaro squinted at her and said, “You bet he’s what?”
“Boondocking. The women back at the Spring View Campground told me about it. It means parking an RV offsite without using any campground utilities—you know, like electricity and water and sewage. I think that’s what our guy must be doing.”
Crivaro rolled his eyes.
“Oh come on, Riley—”
Riley interrupted, “Think about it, Jake. He can’t get too settled down in a particular spot. He’s got to stay mobile. After a killing, he’s got to get on the move again right away. That means he’s not a regular camper. He’s a boondocker.”
Crivaro said, “So what? Even if you’re right, which I’ve got no reason to believe, what are we supposed to do with this great new insight of yours?”
That’s a good question, Riley realized.
Without another moment’s thought, she opened the driver’s door and jumped out.
“Where the hell are you going?” Crivaro yelled.
Riley didn’t reply. Ignoring the cold soaking into her FBI shoes, she walked straight over to the check-in booth and poked her head inside. Perosky was in there talking to another campground employee. Riley heard Crivaro’s footsteps as he came trotting up behind her.
She said to Perosky, “Do you get boondockers in this area?”
Perosky tilted his head with surprise.
“Yeah, we get some,” he said.
The employee he had been talking to added, “They really piss us off, staying off the grid when they ought to be camping right here to pay for our services. Just a bunch of bums as far as we’re concerned.”
Perosky added, “In most other areas, boondockers do their squatting in shopping center parking lots, places like that. We don’t have any shopping centers near here. But lately I drove by a few campers who’d hunkered down over at Thorpe Overlook.”
The employee nodded and said, “Yeah, I noticed them too. It’s illegal there, and I’ve been meaning to call the Highway Patrol to come and clear them out. Not that it would do much good. As soon as you’ve kicked out one bunch, more of them set up someplace else. It’s a real pain in the ass.”
Riley asked for directions to Thorpe Overlook, and the two men told her how to drive there. Then she dashed back to the RV with Crivaro hurrying right behind her. She climbed back into the driver’s side, and Crivaro got back into the passenger seat.
As she started the engine again, Crivaro grumbled, “Where are we going now?”
Riley asked, “Where do you think we’re going?”
Crivaro let out a groan of frustration as Riley started to drive, fishtailing the vehicle on the packed snow in her haste to get away.
“Riley, you’re wrong about this,” Crivaro said. “And damn it, you know you’re wrong.”
Riley wondered, Is he right?
Did she seriously think they were going to find the killer at Thorpe Overlook?
She didn’t feel like she was following any real instincts right now. It felt more like that she was acting out of sheer stubbornness. She just couldn’t seem to admit to herself that she was wrong.
She growled under her breath and thought …
If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.
Life would be a lot simpler if Crivaro never trusted her instincts again, and she just went back to following his orders …
If he doesn’t fire me.
And in a way, that would simplify things too.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
When Riley turned their RV off the highway, she found herself driving through deeper snow than she’d encountered before. However there were fresh tread marks left by other vehicles, so she was sure they’d find someone boondocking at Thorpe Overlook.
Would it be the killer they were looking for?
She carefully followed the treads. Soon the RV headlights picked up several RVs in an open area at the end of the narrow road.
This was obviously the overlook, but her spirits fell when she saw the boondockers. Her headlights fell on a couple of cars with trailers and three or four small campers. There weren’t any large motor homes in sight—nothing close to the size of a Class A vehicle.
Riley heaved a deep sigh.
It’s hopeless, she thought.
She was about to admit her failure aloud when Crivaro spoke up.
“Back up and turn right a little. I think I saw something over that way.”
Riley did as she was told. Sure enough, the lights fell on a vehicle some distance away from the ones they’d already seen.
It was a huge white motor home with a stripe on the side.
She pulled their RV a little closer. It was a Winnebago, exactly the type of RV they were looking for.
Feeling a renewed surge of excitement, Riley said, “That’s got to be him. Why would somebody in a luxury vehicle like that be roughing it out here, with no utilities in sight? It must be because he doesn’t want to attract attention, and also because he needs to be able to move out quickly. And I don’t care what you say—”
Crivaro interrupted with a growl …
“Shut up, Riley. I agree with you.”
Riley looked at him, startled by his sudden affirmation.
“Turn off your headlights,” Crivaro told her. “We don’t want to advertise ourselves.”
Riley turned off the headlights, then the engine, and Crivaro took a flashlight out of his go-bag. When they both climbed down out of their vehicle, they were ankle-deep in snow.
As she felt the cold seeping into her shoes, Riley realized just how unprepared they were for this setting. At least her FBI jacket was holding off the chill.
Some of the smaller campers had lights on inside, but the Winnebago was completely dark. Crivaro kept his flashlight pointed downward at the ground right in front of them, taking care not to shine the beam in the Winnebago’s windows.
As they neared the door to the Winnebago, Riley noticed Crivaro’s hand hover close to his weapon. He rapped sharply on the door and a man’s voice answered …
“Who the hell is it?”
Riley and Crivaro exchanged glances.
“We’re FBI agents,” Crivaro called back. “We just want to come inside and talk.”
They heard a stream of muttered curses on the other side of the door.
Then the voice said, “OK, give me a minute.”
Riley could see Crivaro jerk upright at the sound of those words. Riley guessed that he’d heard them before in situations like this.
A light came on inside the Winnebago, followed by a lot of rattling and banging noises.
Crivaro muttered to Riley, “This is bad.”
Crivaro pulled the latch, and to their surprise the door came open.
Jake stepped up into the motor home and Riley followed. They were just in time to see a man scrambling out through an open sliding window. Before they could reach him, he was gone.
“Shit,” Crivaro said. “Back outside,” he snapped as he whirled around and pushed past Riley.
They both dashed outside, and Crivaro searched the area with his flashlight.
The suspect was taking off through the wooded area beside the overlook, wading through the snow as fast as he could.
Crivaro shouted, “Stop, or I’ll shoot.”
The guy didn’t even slow down.
Of course, Riley knew that Crivaro’s warning was just a bluff. The man they were chasing appeared to be unarmed, and Crivaro would never fire his weapon under circumstances like these.
With a groan Crivaro took off after him. In the shakily focused beam of Crivaro’s flashlight, Riley saw that the fleeing man seemed to be headed off to one side, so she cut in that direction. Even though the woods weren’t thick, running was hard here and the footing was slippery. When the runner slipped and grabbed at a sapling for support, Riley closed in and tackled him.
He struggled as they both fell into the snow and rolled over each other. Fortunately, he wasn’t a very strong opponent and Riley had him subdued when Crivaro caught up with them.
“Good job,” Crivaro told Riley. He holstered his gun and took out a pair of handcuffs. He helped Riley to her feet and handed her the flashlight. Then he pulled the suspect to his feet, put him in handcuffs, and read him his rights.
“This is crazy,” the captive exclaimed in a whining voice. “I was scared maybe the Highway Patrol would show up. I never figured the FBI would come after me. Why me? This is too crazy. I can’t believe this.”
Wondering what he meant, Riley turned the light into the suspect’s face.
Something’s wrong here, she realized.
The man they had just arrested didn’t look anything at all like the killer she’d pictured in her mind. He was a grubby-looking bearded man with stringy hair and bulging eyes. They were looking for a man who had aroused no suspicions at the roadblock, who had charmed several women to their deaths.
She followed along glumly as Crivaro led the captive back inside his Winnebago. Crivaro pushed the man into a seat and said to Riley …
“Check the bathroom. Make sure he hasn’t got another victim.”
Riley went to the bathroom and opened the door.
Her spirits fell.
This was no “kill room,” just a rather dirty RV bathroom. There was no insulation on the walls, no sign of blood.
There was, however, something dark inside the toilet bowl.
She flashed her flashlight into the bowl and saw what it was.
Marijuana.
There must be several pounds of it stuffed in there.
The suspect, obviously not very intelligent, had tried to get rid of an enormous stash down a toilet that wasn’t even hooked up to any sewage system. Even if he got it flushed, it wouldn’t be going anywhere.
In a resigned and weary voice, she called out …
“Agent Crivaro, I think you’d better have a look at this.”
*
Within minutes, Riley and Crivaro pretty much understood the entire situation. The man they had caught was not the killer they had hoped to find.
He was now all too eager to talk, anxious to convince them that he wasn’t guilty of whatever terrible crime they thought they’d arrested him for. He was just an ordinary but reasonably prosperous drug smuggler driving his merchandise north to Salt Lake City.
Crivaro took out his cell phone and called Perosky at the campground, who in turn called the Highway Patrol. The troopers arrived in about twenty minutes.
By then, a few boondockers stood outside their campers gawking at the action. Other faces were peering out through their RV windows. Riley noticed that at least two vehicles had slipped away, perhaps alarmed by the activity or perhaps wanting to avoid any attention to themselves.
Even though boondocking here wasn’t legal, the troopers ignored the bystanders. They took the guy Riley and Jake had caught into custody and whisked him away, leaving a man behind to guard the suspect’s RV until they could pick it up.
Once they were free to go, Riley took a moment to change into dry clothes from her go-bag. She wiped off her wet FBI shoes, hoping that they weren’t ruined. Finally she found a pair of bright-colored sneakers in their camper’s gear and put those on.
She felt angrier than she could remember ever feeling in her life.
And she was angry with no one but herself.
After all, she had no one else to blame.
As she climbed back onto RV driver’s seat, Crivaro asked …
“Hey, where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“I don’t know, Agent Crivaro,” she hissed. “Somewhere. Anywhere. Nowhere. Does it even matter?
She heard Crivaro heave a deep, weary sigh as she started the engine.
“No, I don’t guess it does,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
As Sally Marino ordered a much-too-expensive margarita in the swank clubhouse at the Delphi RV Resort, she wondered …
Oh, God.
Have I made a terrible mistake?
Earlier in the day back at that truck stop, she’d told that man, Pete, that she was coming to this exclusive campground. In fact, she had planned no such thing. But she’d come here anyway, just because she’d said she would.
What on earth had she been thinking?
I was just trying to impress him, she thought with a sigh.
As soon as she’d seen him sitting at that table, she had really liked the looks of him—or more specifically his expensive Rolex watch and the fancy Winnebago he was driving. She’d gone straight over to his table and introduced herself. She’d even told him a lot about herself.
The problem was, quite a bit of it wasn’t truthful.
While it was true that she was a “free spirit” who liked to travel, it wasn’t at all true that she’d inherited a lot of money from her dead parents and was able to do pretty much whatever she liked for as long as she liked.
The reality was, she’d left her working-class family behind years ago and hadn’t looked back. She had traveled everywhere, but not in the style she’d led him to believe. She’d actually been backpacking across Europe, hitchhiking wherever it was still legal in the United States, and just generally going wherever suited her fancy. She’d lived by her wits and taken whatever jobs she’d needed to get by, ranging from washing dishes to a brief stint as a disk jockey for a country radio station.
And through it all, she’d relished her freedom and had made few human attachments.
But she’d just turned thirty-five this year, and her nomadic existence was starting to wear her down. For example, it took a lot longer to recuperate after a vigorous hike than it used to. She’d been wondering whether it might be time to finally settle down, maybe even reunite with her long-estranged family …
She’d also started taking a hitherto nonexistent interest in prosperous-looking single men, which was why she’d started flirting with Pete back at that truck stop. She’d liked him more and more as she’d talked to him, and she’d even begun to fantasize …
What?
That he might take an interest in me?
That we might have a relationship?
Now she was shocked by her own romance-novel shallowness. What was getting into her—aside from a fear of winding up old and broke and all alone in the world?
Anyway, here she was, at one of the most exclusive campgrounds in the west. As soon as she’d gotten here she’d maxed out her credit card to become a member, just so they’d let her in.
And all because she’d harbored some hope of meeting Pete here!
She looked all around the clubhouse and didn’t seen any sign of him.
But then, had she really expected him to show up?
She smirked to herself as she considered the possibility that Pete, too, had been lying about coming here just to impress her, and that he wasn’t on his way here at all.
Wouldn’t that be a joke?
Of course, the joke would be on her—and it wouldn’t be very funny.
She was going to have to start rebuilding her precarious finances all over again.
She glanced over at the bar and wondered …
I wonder if they’re hiring any bartenders.
And yet, if Pete did show up, what would that lead to? If they struck up any chemistry together, wouldn’t she have to come clean about the lies she’d told about herself?
What would he think of her then?
He might be amused, she considered.
For all I know, he harbors some secrets of his own.
Meanwhile, she was here and she might as well spend the rest of one night here. Not that any of it looked appealing to her. She looked out the window at the spacious grounds where mostly high-end RVs were spaced nicely apart, rather like an upscale suburban neighborhood where her own little Starcraft trailer looked distinctly out of place.
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