Читать книгу The Alvarez & Pescoli Series - Lisa Jackson - Страница 27

Crack!

The sound of a rifle’s report ricocheted through the canyons. MacGregor slowed his snowmobile and let the engine idle as he listened.

Had the sound come from the direction of his cabin?

Jillian?

Had she shot the rifle he’d left her?

Or was it someone else?

Hunters?

He felt dread as he hit the gas and headed out toward his home in the mountains. He could be mistaken. The cabin was miles away and it would take him nearly half an hour to reach it.

Don’t let your imagination run wild, he told himself, but couldn’t shake the sensation that something was wrong. The roads near his place were still impassable for even the toughest SUV, snow having drifted deep into crevices and ravines, but once down the mountain a mile and a half, the roads were clearer, with packed snow and sand giving tires some purchase. If he found a way to haul Jillian on a sled pulled by the snowmobile, he could get her out. Or, better yet, he could take the Arctic Cat into town and get help.

The thought wasn’t pleasant. He’d spent the past ten years of his life avoiding the police, but he might not have a choice. Time was running out; another storm was projected.

He pushed on the throttle and with a roar the Cat took off, skis sliding easily over the snow. Mentally beating himself up, he second-guessed himself about leaving her.

What had been the choice?

He’d wondered what to do with her, hadn’t liked the fact that he was getting used to having her around, that he felt an attraction to her that was just plain stupid. He’d sworn off women long ago; didn’t need one. Didn’t want one.

Then he’d found her trapped in the car, passing out, nearly frozen, and he’d had no choice but to put her in a makeshift sling on poles that he then tied to his rig to drag her to the cabin. He’d gone back for her things, tried to contact the authorities, but then, because the storm had raged so wildly, locked himself in his house with her.

That had been a mistake.

Taking care of her while she slept. Washing and dressing her wounds, warming her body and giving her dry clothes, seeing her naked, all had been his undoing. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t professionally tended women before, but this one…

He guided the snowmobile through the trees and down a hill to the frozen creek bed, now covered in two feet of powder. This was the shortest way back to the cabin, though not the safest, as the terrain was steep and rocky. A few of the boulders peeked through the wide expanse of white.

Sunlight sparkled on the snow, glinting through his tinted goggles. The whole world was shaded in tones of sepia, and so pristine, so isolated, it seemed he was on an uninhabited landscape, like something out of a science-fiction movie.

Trees rushed by as the Arctic Cat strained around a final bend, its engine growling, the drive belt pulling the snowmobile over a final ridge, skis sliding over the icy terrain. He saw the cabin far below this crest. Black smoke curled lazily from the chimney and he felt a little better.

Everything was fine.

It had to be.

He was just rattled because he’d driven to September Creek, to the spot where her mangled Subaru had ended up. The car was long gone, all evidence of it lost in two feet of new snow, but bits of yellow-and-black crime scene tape still caught on a few trees. The police had found her vehicle and were, no doubt, looking for her.

It was time to take her into town.

One way or another.

If he had to rig up the damned sling again.

People would be worried, search parties assembled, the police on alert.

Somehow he would find a way of hauling her into town.

As long as she was all right.

He hit the throttle and tore down the hill, dread chasing after him, a sixth sense telling him that things weren’t as he’d left them.

“The pilot of the chopper thinks he might have found the car,” Grayson said as he clicked off his phone.

Glad for the lead, Pescoli trudged back to her rig, leaving the crime scene investigators to go over every inch of the clearing. Pescoli knew they wouldn’t find anything, but protocol had to be followed.

The dogs had already come up with zero, the broken trail in the snow leading again to an old mining road, one that hadn’t been in use in thirty or forty years. But this guy, the killer, knew all the local roads, every nook and cranny.

A local guy.

Maybe someone she knew? Someone she saw down at Wild Wills having a drink or two, or maybe one of those rabid fathers who coached soccer? She’d met more than her share when Bianca was playing and had watched several of the dads and moms, for that matter, look as if they were going to have an aneurism after what they considered an unfair call against their kid’s team. Then there were always the elders in the local church, the scions of virtue who had a dark undercurrent of evil running beneath their benevolent exterior. Or could the killer be someone she’d booked for a misdemeanor or lesser crime? Perhaps someone with a history of violence?

Deep in thought, Regan climbed behind the wheel of her Jeep. They had already gone through the lists of local men who had been arrested for violent acts, assault, armed robbery and the like over the past five years. They’d pulled in a few men accused of wife battery as well as military marksmen and local hunting experts, but everyone they’d interviewed had come out clean.

Unless they missed something.

Alvarez closed the door to the passenger side and Pescoli wheeled her rig around, following the sheriff’s four-wheel-drive Suburban and thinking.

“Why can’t we find this guy?” Alvarez asked, staring out the windshield as Pescoli adjusted the defroster.

“We will.”

“Yeah, but when? How many other women have to freeze to death?” She was angry as she pulled out her cell phone and dialed. “Yeah, this is Alvarez. Any luck?” A pause. “I know it’s the weekend, Marcia, but we’ve got an unidentified dead woman.” Another long pause. “That’s right, A and R.” She rattled off a description of the dead woman and Pescoli’s stomach tightened. “I’ll bet you dollars to donuts someone’s missing her. Check statewide, and if that doesn’t work, northwest. What? Canada? No, not yet. I know we’re close to the border, but so far all the victims are U.S. citizens. Mmm…yeah, okay. Call me if you find out anything.” She hung up as they reached a mountain road that wound down toward the town.

“All the victims and cars were found within a ten-mile radius,” Pescoli said.

“Square that. What do you get? A hundred square miles of mountains, canyons, cliffs and rivers. Rough territory.”

“And someone who knows it well.” Pescoli reached for her cigarettes and ignored the sharp look she got from her partner. “My rig,” she said.

“My lungs.”

“You know, you should loosen up a bit.”

“I don’t work out, eat right and do yoga so that you can pollute my respiratory system.”

“Give it a rest,” Pescoli said, but didn’t light up. She could wait until they were back at the station in the parking lot. Besides, she didn’t have the habit that bad. It was just to help her think….

Her phone rang about the same time the sheriff’s lights and sirens flipped on. She answered. “Pescoli.”

“We’ve got another one.”

“What?”

Alvarez’s head spun toward her, the unspoken question in her eyes.

Grayson said, “Looks like another woman tied to a tree, up near Broken Pine Lodge. The KBIT helicopter found her. I’ve already sent Van Droz up there; she’s the closest road deputy on the road. She should beat us there and secure the scene.”

“Great,” Pescoli said, more worried than ever.

“Another victim?” Alvarez asked.

“Yeah.” Pescoli was nodding, keeping up both conversations, the one with her partner and the one over the phone.

“Is this guy escalating or what?” Alvarez asked, loud enough that Grayson heard her.

“Looks like,” he responded.

“Found by the news copter,” Pescoli clarified, shifting down.

“That’s what I said,” the sheriff said impatiently. “Film at eleven.”

MacGregor stepped into the cabin.

The interior was as still as death, the fire low, a feeling of abandonment in the air. “Jillian?” he called, looking through the few empty rooms, panic slowly inching up his spine.

She was gone.

Plain and simple.

The rifle he’d left with her was gone, and her crutch was missing.

Along with the dog.

“Harley?” His boots rang hollowly against the old floorboards as he walked through the kitchen to the back porch. The uneasy feeling that had been with him ever since hearing the rifle’s report less than an hour earlier increased. He walked to the front porch and whistled long and low, half expecting the black-and-white spaniel to come bounding through the drifts.

Nothing.

“Hell.”

Quickly, he walked through the house to the back porch and cupping his hands around his mouth, yelled, “Jillian? Harley?” His own voice echoed through the canyons and he grabbed his rifle and walked the length of the porch. A path was broken in the snow and it led toward the woods.

“Son of a bitch.” What was she thinking? Escaping on foot while she was still laid up?

Maybe she’d been forced.

That thought chilled him to the bone and he replayed the gunshot in his mind.

But the prints in the snow were only of the dog and the crutch and her good boot. No others. There was a chance the dog had taken off after MacGregor, or after a marauding racoon or deer. Jillian might have followed.

Damn, fool woman, he thought, but broke into a trot, following the trail of footsteps, leaning down beneath the overhang of branches as he flushed a rabbit through the undergrowth.

“Harley!” he yelled, whistling. Why would the dog take off?

A pitiful whine whistled through the pines and MacGregor’s blood turned to ice.

Heart thudding, he threw the bolt on his rifle, ready to shoot as he rounded a large boulder and saw his dog, lying on his side in the snow, black-and-white fur matted and stained red. Too much blood had pooled beneath him. Even so, the spaniel gazed up at him, whined and gave one feeble thump of his tail. “Hang on, buddy,” he said, stripping off his jacket and tearing out the lining. He moved the dog onto his jacket and tied the sleeve over his back leg, where a bullet hole gaped. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “Son of a goddamned bitch.”

Kneeling beside Harley, he noticed the tracks. Not just Jillian’s but a second set, decidedly larger, heading east, in the direction of an old abandoned sawmill that was over two miles away.

There was no way Jillian could hobble that far.

He hated to abandon the dog but he had no choice.

Jillian Rivers’s life was at stake.

Rifle held in a death grip, defying the cold, following the tracks, Zane MacGregor took off at a dead run.

He only hoped he wasn’t too late.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Brewster stared at the woman who’d been lashed to the tree and looked as if he were about to throw up. Pescoli and Alvarez hurried forward. The scene was nearly identical to the last one, except the naked woman had been cut down from a solitary white pine tree in a small alpine meadow. She was lying on a jacket, her eyes glassy and vacant as they stared upward. Bruises covered her body and her lips were chapped. Deputy Trilby Van Droz worked over her, squatting in the mashed snow around the tree.

Van Droz, hearing them approach, looked up and yelled, “She’s alive. I’ve already called for an ambulance.”

“Alive,” Pescoli repeated, as overhead, marring the clear blue sky, a news-crew helicopter hovered, a cameraman hanging out a window while filming the scene.

“Damned fool idiots,” Grayson said, waving them off. “Someone call KBIT and tell them to clear the airspace in case a rescue copter has to land.”

Brewster was on his walkie-talkie, calling back to the department offices, relaying orders.

“At least they found her,” Alvarez said. “I’ll be in charge of the crime scene sheet.” The area had to be roped off and protected. Everyone who showed up here had to sign in.

Grayson scribbled his name. “Is she conscious?” he yelled.

“No. But I found a pulse and she’s breathing.” Van Droz was performing first aid, trying to keep the victim warm, just as the sound of a siren cut through the still mountain air.

Pescoli signed into the crime scene and, trying not to disturb any of the evidence, hurried to the victim’s side, where she knelt in the snow and tried to help. “Is she Jillian Rivers?”

“Don’t know.”

“No,” Watershed said from somewhere over her right shoulder. He was standing back, eyeing the message nailed to the gnarled bark of the pine. “The letters aren’t right.”

Pescoli glanced up and caught a glimpse of the weird message.

Sure enough, Jillian Rivers’s initials weren’t written down. There was the R from the last note but no J.

Now the note read:

WAR T HE SC I N

“What the hell does that mean?” Watershed whispered.

Trilby Van Droz was still on her knees at the victim’s side, Pescoli beside her. The sheriff ordered Brett Gage, the chief criminal deputy, to follow the trail broken in the snow. He, along with a deputy in charge of the dogs, took off toward the east end of the clearing.

“How the hell would someone get in here?” Grayson asked as the ambulance’s siren screamed louder.

Pescoli rubbed the woman’s wrist. “Can you hear me?” she asked. From the corner of her eyes, she saw the ambulance slide to a stop in the old, snow-covered parking lot of the dilapidated lodge. “What’s your name? Who did this to you?”

“She’s unresponsive,” Deputy Van Droz said. “I haven’t been able to get a word out of her.”

Two EMTs, carrying their equipment, hurried toward the woman lying in the snow. With one quick examination the shorter of the two rescue workers, a black woman with a no-nonsense look on her face, whipped out a two-way and called for a chopper. “We need to get her out of here,” she said, giving the helicopter directions, then hanging up. “It’ll take too long to drive her back to the hospital.” Her dark eyes moved back to the victim as she told the detectives, “Chopper on its way. Should be here in five. So all of you just back the hell up and let us work!”

The detectives and FBI agents took a few steps backward, while the woman and her partner, a tall man still in his twenties, worked quickly, monitoring the victim’s vital signs, administering oxygen, covering her and tending to her. In the distance, the sound of a helicopter’s rotors sliced through the air.

“The scene’s been destroyed,” Chandler said, frowning, her gaze traveling over the mashed snow and solitary tree.

“It’s like the others,” Pescoli said.

“But there may be evidence buried here.” Chandler’s gaze scanned the trodden-down snow and the poor woman who lay motionless on the gurney.

“The crime scene investigators will figure that out,” Pescoli said as the rescue helicopter came into view and the news chopper flew to a spot higher in the sky, never quite giving up its vantage point.

“War to the scientists,” Watershed said.

“What?” Pescoli frowned.

“The note.”

“We can figure that out later,” she snapped, uninterested in the stupid clues the killer had left behind. Now they had a victim who was alive, one they could save, one who could potentially name her attacker.

To hell with the damned note.

“Did that copter happen to find the car?” Chandler asked as a basket was lowered. “We’re still missing two cars, assuming this person isn’t Jillian Rivers.”

“She’s not,” Pescoli said as she noted the victim’s tiny nose and wide mouth. Her hair was short and streaked with shades of blond, a widow’s peak was evident, and her eyes were a brown so intense they were nearly black. She was tall and thin, probably five nine or ten, so gaunt her ribs showed, her feet at least a size nine. Pescoli remembered the pictures she’d seen of Jillian Rivers. Even if Rivers lost weight, cut and dyed her hair and wore dark contacts, she wouldn’t resemble either woman they’d found today.

“So where the hell is she? Why do we have her car and not this woman’s or the Jane Doe we found up at Cougar Pass?” Agent Chandler asked, her eyebrows knit in frustration, her breath fogging in the cold air.

“We’ll find her,” Halden, her partner, said. He was the calmer of the two, though he, too, was irritated, his mouth set and grim, his eyes scanning the surrounding area, where the dilapidated, graying buildings of what had once been a profitable hunting lodge were partially hidden by snow-laden trees and rocky hills. It was desolate up here, the whole area looking decrepit and forgotten, a testament to death.

The victim was transferred to the rescue basket and winched skyward as the helicopter started moving, heading back to Grizzly Falls, just as the crime scene team arrived.

“How the hell did he get them to two different places, miles apart?” Chandler muttered angrily.

“One at a time. First the victim at Cougar Pass and now this Jane Doe.”

“Her initials being HE or EH, if the pattern remains the same.”

“It is,” Chandler said. “He’s just escalating.”

“Not just escalating,” Pescoli said. “So far he’s duplicating. He’s not killing closer together; it’s like he’s doing a two-for-the-price-of-one thing. Two women in one day.” She was worried as she stared at the note and the tree to which the victim had been lashed. Traces of blood were visible on the bark, and drops of red dotted the snow. Whoever this woman was, she had struggled and fought.

“What the hell does that mean?” Grayson asked.

“I don’t know.” Stephanie Chandler was shaking her head. “We need to find out who these women are.”

“I’ve already called in both sets of initials to Missing Persons on the walkie,” Alvarez said. She was still standing near the entrance to the crime scene, making certain everyone was signing in as she waited for the crime scene team to arrive. “They’re checking.”

“Call dispatch. Have them bring in every available detective,” Sheriff Grayson said. “And I don’t want to hear any complaints about it being Sunday or a few days before Christmas or even that their kid has the flu. I want every available road deputy at the department when we get back into town. Overtime’s no problem. Screw the damned budget. Are the cell phone towers working again?”

“Not all of them, not yet,” Watershed said. “Just like the electricity. It’s spotty.”

A muscle worked in the sheriff’s jaw and his lips were flat beneath his moustache. He lifted his hat from his head, and staring at the pine tree, the would-be death scene, he raked stiff, gloved fingers through his hair. “I hate this son of a bitch,” he muttered under his breath.

Pescoli silently agreed. She prayed that they had found this victim in time. That EH or HE or whoever she was would live. And not just survive. Oh no. Pescoli hoped that the woman would be able to name her attacker and testify against him at the prick’s trial.

Yeah, that’s what she wanted, Pescoli thought as she shaded her eyes against the lowering sun and watched the helicopter disappear over the craggy summit of the mountain.

It would serve the bastard right.

Detective Gage returned with the dogs and the bad news that the trail had gone cold, ending up at a lower parking lot for the old lodge where tire tracks led away. The crime scene team would take tire and footprint casts, which were tricky but not impossible in the snow. With Snow Print Wax sprayed onto the tracks several times and followed by the dental stone impression material, clear casts could be created. Once the impression material hardened, experts would make duplicate prints and study them, trying to figure out the make and imperfections in the tire tread and boot prints. Methodically, experts would go through the painstaking process of finding out who had bought those particular tires in a hundred-mile radius of the area and start comparing the tread, vehicle by vehicle.

It could take weeks. Or longer. Assuming they were able to get a good, clear print.

At that moment, the sheriff’s cell phone beeped. “Looks like we got service up here again,” he said, and answered, his expression darkening as he listened. “Yeah…right…good. Send the chopper up. Use one from the state police if you have to, but check out the area. See if there’s any sign of activity. Tracks. Smoke from a chimney. Noise or exhaust from a generator. Any damned thing! Yeah…yeah…I know. Get back to me.”

He hung up and said, “It looks like we might have caught a break. Jillian Rivers’s cell phone company called. They got a ping off her phone and pinpointed it to a tower up on Star Ridge.”

“That’s wicked country up there,” Watershed said.

“Yeah, well, what else is new?” Grayson was already headed back to his Suburban. “The crime scene team can handle this. Let’s go.”

Pescoli didn’t waste a second. Finally, it seemed, they’d caught a break. She felt a surge of satisfaction. We’re going to get you, you bastard.

Look at them!

Police officers crawling over the “crime scene” like ants on an anthill. Hurrying this way, scurrying that. Not having a clue that I’m here, in the warmth of the bar, sipping a drink of fine Kentucky whiskey as I blend in with the rest of the patrons, the men and women who have stopped in for a drink after work to share conversation, even laughter, and shake off the bitter cold of winter, here in the lower part of the town, in a century-old building overlooking the river.

As one, we stare at the old television mounted over the colored bottles glistening in front of the mirror.

The bar is glossy wood, reflecting the lights overhead, holding up a half dozen sets of elbows of men who’ve come inside after a day’s labor. There are women, too, but most of them are seated at the tables near the fire, where real logs are blazing in a massive stone fireplace that was built over a hundred years earlier, when miners and loggers in cork boots trod on these old plank floors. From the kitchen, the scents of grilled onions and burgers seep through the open doorway, accompanied by the sizzle of the deep-fat fryer.

I, like the other customers, am shaking my head at the senseless horror playing out on the screen.

“I can’t believe it could happen here. Right outside Grizzly Falls,” one sawmill worker says. While he stares up at the images on the flickering television screen, some faint Christmas carol can be heard over the buzz of the patrons. What is it? Oh yeah. “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.”

As if that’s possible in Grizzly Falls tonight.

The guy next to me isn’t small. In fact, his belly is so big it swings up to the bar, seemingly independent of him, as he settles onto a stool. Grease shows around his fingernails, bits of sawdust cling to the long hairs that grow from the back of his neck, hairs that should have been shaved away from his unruly beard.

“The world’s changed,” I say, frowning as if I, too, am aghast at the horror being shown to us via the airwaves. The simpleton thinks I’m agreeing.

“This used to be a safe place.”

“Didn’t it?”

“No more, I guess. Hey!” Crooking one fat finger, he signals to Nadine, the barkeep.

“The usual, Dell?” she asks, sliding a coaster to him and pretending that his ordering her around doesn’t bother her. But she slides me a glance. We both know Dell Blight’s a pig.

“Yeah. A Bud.”

She’s already got a chilled glass under the spigot of a hidden keg. “This is just so horrible. What kind of monster would leave those women out in the forest?” Nadine asks, and looks at my near-empty shot glass. “Another?” She lifts her gaze a bit and our eyes hold for the briefest of seconds.

I nod, return her smile, pretend I don’t really understand what she’s offering.

“You’d think the sheriff could nail this fucker,” Big Belly Blight says with a knowing nod. He believes if he were the sheriff, he’d have “the fucker” behind bars already. “What the hell do we elect him for?”

“Grayson’s doing a good job. And they might just catch the guy.” Nadine obviously isn’t in the mood to take any crap from the likes of Dell Blight. “This woman”—she hooks her thumb toward the television—“she didn’t die.”

What? Every muscle in my body freezes. “Is that so?” I ask, as if I’m really concerned. Nadine must have her information wrong. The woman is dead. Hannah is dead. She has to be!

“That’s what they’re sayin’,” Nadine assures both me and Dell. “I’d turn up the sound, but, you know, Farley, he likes the volume down so we can enjoy the music.” She makes a sour face. “It’s Christmas, y’know.”

I nod, grinning, but deep down I feel not only fear but a little spark of anger. Nadine has to be wrong. Dead wrong. Calm down. Take control. I lift my glass to my lips, as if to sip, but instead take a deep breath, tamp down my fear.

“I heard about the latest victim surviving. A bit ago, when I was out back on my break. It was all over the radio,” Nadine assures us with the eager anticipation of one imparting fresh gossip. “They found two women today. One’s dead, but this one, the one the news crew located, she’s alive. In some kind of coma, but alive.”

“Will she make it?” I ask, feigning concern for the stupid bitch who was supposed to expire. What the hell was wrong with her? I left her to succumb to the elements, but, obviously Hannah is stronger than she looks. Fool. Damned superior fool. You let your ego get the better of your good sense.

“Who knows if she’ll survive?” Nadine touches my hand then. A caress, where her thumb trails down the back of mine.

“Two women? They found two? Holy cripes!” Beer Belly Dell shakes his balding head and the scent of fresh sawdust wafts my way. “I don’t get how this guy gets off. They say the women haven’t been raped. No sexual activity whatsoever. The guy’s probably a queer.”

I smile, as if I agree, but the man’s an idiot. Of course an imbecile like Dell Blight can’t understand. His brain is probably the size of a walnut.

But still I’m bothered. Is it possible? Is Hannah alive? Her living would make things difficult.

“Nah,” Ole Olson, the round little guy in the dirty baseball cap sitting next to Dell, pipes up. “He ain’t no queer. If he was, he’d be haulin’ men up there and tyin’ ’em up and doin’ weird shit to ’em. More’n likely he got no balls at all.”

“What do y’mean, no balls? Like a woman?”

“Like no balls. He’s been neutered, he’s…he’s one of them…them…” Ole snaps his thick fingers. “One of them U-nuts.”

“U-nuts?” Dell repeats with a snort, then takes a long drink. “You mean like U-bolts?”

“I think he means eunuch,” I say, then wish I hadn’t even opened my mouth. What would these cretins know?

“What the hell is a fuckin’ U-nick?” Dell’s face is screwed up like he’d just smelled week-old dead fish.

“That’s just it, they can’t fuck cuz they got no balls,” Ole says.

“Enough!” Nadine shakes her head as she scoops up a couple of empty glasses and drops them into a sink. Quick as a rattler striking, she slides the tips across the bar with her polished fingernails and stuffs the bills into the pocket of her apron. She glances up at the television screen, where a reporter is standing in front of the local hospital.

“I hope she survives,” she whispers.

“Who?” Ole, true to character, missed a vital part of the earlier conversation.

“The woman they found in the forest, the one who didn’t die.” Nadine is starting to get pissed.

“She’s seen that psycho,” Ole says, catching on.

I feel an unlikely chill. My face was exposed. She knows my touch, can recognize me.

“Yep. She’ll nail his ass in court.” Nadine nods, stiff red-blond hair unmoving.

Dell snorts before draining his glass and wiggling the empty as a signal for another. “He’s got to be caught first, and my money says that Sheriff Numb-Nuts won’t come close.”

I take a drink to hide my smile.

“Oh, Grayson will catch him all right.” Coming to Grayson’s defense, Nadine looks to me for support.

I lift a noncommittal shoulder that says Maybe, though I think Don’t count on it.

“He will!” Nadine is certain as she snaps a clean towel from a stack under the counter. “You just wait and see.” She swabs the bar with a vengeance.

“Humph. Not by countin’ on the likes of crazy Ivor Hicks. Shit, that nutcase found a body and claimed the aliens sent him there,” Ole says.

“That Crypton, he’s one smart sergeant,” Dell corrects.

“It’s Crytor, moron. And he’s a fuckin’ general. Get it right. An orange reptile and a fuckin’ general.”

They both laugh uproariously.

“The old man hallucinates,” Nadine says quickly, and looks at me, embarrassed. She doesn’t like the way the conversation has turned. The crazy old man’s a regular, too, when he’s not on the wagon. “Give Ivor a break, will ya? And for God’s sake, have some faith in Sheriff Grayson. He’s doing a great job.”

I finish the first drink and wait as she places a fresh glass and coaster in front of me.

“Great job, my ass.” Dell isn’t cutting Grayson any breaks. “Why hasn’t this piece of shit been brought in? Huh? How hard could it be to track a killer in the goddamned snow? What the hell are those tracking dogs for? Hell, do you know what it costs for one of them? Sheeeeiiiiit.”

“Grayson will get the guy,” Nadine insists, with a look at me, as if she and I, the two of us, have a secret. As if we co-conspirators realize that Big Belly is an oaf and we, of far superior intellect, have the good sense to trust Sheriff Dan Grayson.

“What’s he waitin’ for?” Big Belly Dell is staring up at the television, where the cameraman in the chopper zooms in on Grayson’s worried, hard face.

“Grayson’s an asshole,” a voice from my other side affirms. “I went to school with him. He don’t know up from damned sideways. Hey, Nadine, how about another?”

“Whiskey sour is it, Ed?” she asks, and flashes him a grin meant to tease the biggest tip possible from Ed’s slim wallet. Nadine knows how to work the crowd. She’s flirty and sassy enough to keep the men interested. On the skinny side, smelling of cigarettes, she nonetheless has teeth that always show a brilliant white behind lips always glossed to a fine peach shine. And her blouse is always buttoned low enough to allow the regulars a glimpse of the tops of her breasts. She wears low-cut jeans with a silvery belt that dangles low and offers just a hint of skin and the tease of a tattoo peeking above her waistband. Turquoise and pink swirls rise up her backbone, widening visibly before dipping suggestively below the denim and giving a man a hard-on just thinking about what naughty splay of colors might be caressing her buttocks.

I hear the men speculate.

“I think it’s a butterfly,” one bearded young man once said.

“No way. It’s like some kind of Chinese symbol,” his compatriot argued.

Another said, “I’ve got it on good account that it’s humming birds, a whole flock of ’em, some peering out from between her butt cheeks.”

This caused some raucous laughter but none of the simpletons had the faintest idea of the intricacies that really lay beneath her clothes, that sexy, wild series of waves that undulate around her hips as she slowly undresses.

Few have had the privilege of actually seeing her lying naked, butt up, hips tilted, suggesting she wants to rut like a mare in heat, those pink-tinged waves offering a warm, wet sea for me to thrust into.

I look at her and she catches the glance.

Doesn’t say a word.

But she knows.

I take a long pull from my drink and suck in ice cubes, cracking them between my teeth, as I turn my attention back to the television screen, where now the sheriff, hanging up his phone, begins striding away from the crime scene.

That’s not right.

Another mistake. You made another mistake!

I won’t think of it, but I can feel my nerves tighten as I see the detectives rushing to their vehicles. I zero in on Regan Pescoli, that bitch of a woman. Beautiful and rough. Tough as nails.

Or so she thinks.

I feel my eyes narrow upon her as the fantasy unwinds in my mind…. Get ready, I think, but her time has not yet come.

I have others…one not yet discovered.

Or am I wrong?

Is that possible?

Why are the cops hurrying away from the scene, running to their vehicles, lights on their SUVs flashing red and blue as they peel out of the lot of the old lodge.

Where the hell are they going?

My heart nearly stops.

I crack an ice cube so loudly, Dell slides a glance my way.

“Jesus, you got jaws of steel or what?”

I laugh. “’Course I do,” I say, trying to appear calm, attempting to hide my agitation, as on the screen the posse drives away and deep inside fear threatens to consume me. I couldn’t have erred again. Couldn’t have.

“See what I mean? A real asshole,” Dell says, looking upward at the television. “Grayson’s useless.”

Of course he is.

I calm.

Tamp down my momentary fear.

As Burl Ives’s voice starts to sing “A Holly, Jolly Christmas” from hidden speakers, my gaze meets Nadine’s and we share a secretive smile.

The kind exchanged by secret lovers.

Holly, jolly, my ass.