Once Taken by Blake Pierce

along this same route that both Boyden and Alford used. There was no other way into the area between the warehouse and the train tracks. It seemed likely that someone would have seen the killer’s vehicle, although they might not have thought it unusual.
    The Reedsport Police Department was nothing more than a little brick storefront right on the town’s main street. Alford, Riley, and Lucy went inside and sat down in the chief’s office.
    Alford placed a stack of folders on his desk.
    “Here’s everything we’ve got,” he said. “The complete file on the old case from five years ago, and everything so far on last night’s murder.”
    Riley and Lucy each took a folder and began to browse through it. Riley’s attention was drawn to the photos of the first case.
    The two women were similar in age. The first one worked in a prison, which put her at some degree of risk for possible victimization. But the second one would be considered a lower risk victim. And there was no indication that either of them frequented bars or other places that would make them especially vulnerable. In both cases, those who knew the women had described them as friendly, helpful, and conventional. And yet, there had to be some factor that drew the killer to these particular women.
    “Did you make any headway on Marla Blainey’s murder?” Riley asked Alford.
    “It was under the jurisdiction of the Eubanks police. Captain Lawson. But I worked with him on it. We found out nothing useful. The chains were perfectly ordinary. The killer could have picked them up at any hardware store.”
    Lucy leaned toward Riley to look at the same pictures.
    “Still, he did buy a lot of them,” Lucy said. “You’d think some clerk would have noticed someone buying so many chains.”
    Alford nodded in agreement.
    “Yeah, that’s what we thought at the time. But we contacted hardware stores all around these parts. None of the clerks picked up on any unusual sales like that. He must have bought a few at a time, here and there, without attracting a lot of attention. By the time he got around to the murder, he had big pile of them handy. Maybe he still does.”
    Riley peered closely at the straitjacket the woman was wearing. It looked identical to the one used to bind last night’s victim.
    “What about the straitjacket?” Riley asked.
    Alford shrugged. “You’d think something like that would be easy to track. But we got nothing. It’s standard issue in psychiatric hospitals. We checked all the hospitals throughout the state, including one real close by. Nobody noticed any straitjackets missing or stolen.”
    A silence fell as Riley and Lucy continued looking at reports and photos. The bodies had been left within ten miles of each other. That indicated that the killer probably didn’t live too far away. But the first woman’s corpse had been dumped unceremoniously on a riverbank. Over the five years between murders, the killer’s attitude had changed in some way.
     “So what do you make of this guy?” Alford asked. “Why the straitjacket and all the chains? Doesn’t that seem like overkill?”
    Riley thought for a moment.
    “Not in his mind,” she said. “It’s about power. He wants to restrict his victims not just physically but symbolically. It goes way beyond the practical. It’s about taking away the victim’s power. The killer wants to make a real point of that.”
    “But why women?” Lucy asked. “If he wants to disempower his victims, wouldn’t it be more dramatic with men?”
    “It’s a good question,” Riley replied. She thought back to the crime scene—how the body had been so carefully counterbalanced.
     “But remember, he’s not very strong,” Riley said. “It might be partly a matter of choosing easier targets. Middle-aged women like these would probably put up less of a fight. But they also probably stand for something in his mind. They weren’t selected as individuals, but as women —and whatever it is that