Читать книгу Chosen To Die - Lisa Jackson - Страница 10

Pescoli felt as if she’d been hit over and over again with a sledgehammer. Every muscle in her body ached, and just to move caused pain to sizzle up her spine and pound in a mother of a headache.

She let out a low moan as she tried to look around.

Lying on her back, feeling cold seep into her body, she opened an eye and tried to see in the darkness. Where was she? Though it was too dark to see clearly, the only light filtering through an ice-glazed window, she recognized nothing.

Groaning, she attempted to roll over. Her head thundered in pain, her ribs ached, and her muscles were stiff and cold, so damned cold she could barely think. And her shoulder…Dear Jesus, had someone tried to rip it from its socket?

She blinked, her eyes focusing, and she saw that she was in a tiny room with an unlit wood stove in one corner. Above her was a single, high window, and the only piece of furniture was this cot with its thin sleeping bag.

What the hell?

There was a door, probably less than ten feet away, but in her current condition, it might as well have been a thousand. She must’ve cracked her ribs somehow…been injured…hurt her shoulder.

Her mind was foggy, memories shuttered behind a wall of pain. Her left arm throbbed from shoulder to wrist and she hoped to hell she’d only bruised a muscle, that nothing was broken.

Instinctively she reached for her service weapon, but of course, it wasn’t in her shoulder holster; in fact, she was naked, not a stitch of clothes on.

And her right wrist was handcuffed to the cot on which she lay.

Hell.

She was probably trapped by her own damned cuffs. Feeling even more the part of the moron, she tried to move her hand, to slip the cuff over her palm, but she knew better and, of course, she couldn’t extract herself.

“Damn it,” she whispered, trying to collect her wits.

Study your surroundings. Try to see where you are, what’s in the room, if there is anything that will help free you. The son of a bitch could have been cocky enough to leave the key to the handcuffs or your phone or even your pistol nearby.

Squinting in the darkness, Pescoli found nothing that might help her.

There was a cover of sorts, like an army blanket that had worked its way down her body. With an effort, she reached down and tugged, pulling the itchy wool to her chin and noticing for the first time that her teeth were chattering. But nothing else. Not even a glass of water. Just the cot. As far as she could discern.

Someone had brought her here.

Someone could be behind the door.

She started to cry out, but thought better of it.

Think, Regan, think.

She squeezed her eyes closed and concentrated, past the pain, to the memories that lurked in the dark corners of her mind. She’d been driving…Yes. Hell-bent to get to her loser of an ex-husband’s place. He had the kids and Cisco, her dog…right? It was just before Christmas and she’d been in a white-hot fury…driving to her stupid ex-husband’s house. And then?

She couldn’t remember.

Closing her eyes, she tried to recall something, anything…Was there the crack of a rifle? Loud. Echoing. Reverberating through the icy canyons?

Oh, God…Her car…spinning out of control, metal groaning, the windshield shattering…She relived those terrifying moments when her Jeep had plunged over the steep side of a ravine, turning crazily as it propelled its way into the dark canyon.

Shivering, she refused to call out. She concentrated on the memory. The twisted metal, the flying glass, the air bag, the snow falling, and blood…Her hands had been bloody, her face cut, her weapon drawn as she’d waited, crushed within the confines of the Jeep’s mangled interior.

And then…and then…and then what?

She squeezed her eyes tighter, trying to recall how she’d ended up here lying naked and broken on a cot in a shadowy room. The memory teased at her mind and then she heard it, a sound from the other side of the door.

Her heart jolted and she swallowed back a cry as she recognized the noise: a chair scraping back. Wood against stone. Then she heard the pad of heavy footsteps, like bare skin against rock.

She could barely breathe.

Someone was coming for her.

She felt a moment’s relief and then a darker emotion filled her soul. Dread oozed through her blood. A gut instinct told her that whoever was beyond the thick oak planks of the door wasn’t her savior.

Though she didn’t know why, couldn’t remember the reason for her distrust, she sensed instinctively that the person who had brought her here wasn’t someone upon whom she could rely.

He’s not your savior, but your jailor.

She swallowed back her fear and tried to think. She believed that the person who had brought her here was consumed with a horrifying and malicious intent.

She braced herself.

Waited.

But the footsteps passed by her door.

For the moment, she’d gotten a reprieve.

But she knew deep in her gut, it wouldn’t last long.

Then in a blinding second of realization, she remembered.

Everything.

Her heart froze and she stared at the door as if her gaze could burn through the thick oak panels of an ancient, scarred door to the room beyond where the goddamned Star-Crossed Killer waited.

“You get hold of her?” the sheriff asked as he passed by Alvarez’s cubicle. Dressed in a sheepskin jacket, boots, and gloves, Grayson was headed outside, his black Lab Sturgis in tow, the brim of his battered Stetson in the fingers of one hand. He paused at Alvarez’s desk.

“Not yet.”

“Aw…shit.” His jaw slid to the side and his eyes sparked in frustration. She supposed that once he would have been described as tall, dark, and handsome. And probably not that long ago. But these days, with winter raging and disabling the county and a serial killer hunting on his watch, Grayson was borderline gaunt, his face craggy, his hair shot with silver, his expression hard-set and grim.

And still, she thought, the most interesting man she’d met in a long, long while.

Grayson, like Alvarez, wasn’t satisfied that the woman being held in the Spokane jail really was the serial killer who had been terrorizing Grizzly Falls. Only when he and the rest of the officers of the sheriff’s department were convinced that the murderer was no longer on the loose, raining terror on the community in the middle of the worst damned blizzard Pinewood County had seen in half a century, would any of them rest easy. Especially with one of the lead detectives on the case gone missing. “This isn’t good,” he said in his low drawl. “Try again.”

“I will, but trust me, Pescoli’s not picking up. I told you the last call I got from her she asked me to cover for her, that she had a personal issue.”

“Family problems, you said.”

“With her ex. About the kids. She didn’t elaborate.”

His eyes darkened. “That was yesterday,” he said, echoing her own thoughts. “Find her. Send someone to check her place. There should be a deputy out in that direction. Rule, maybe. Or Watershed. Check with them.” Kayan Rule was a road deputy for the department who looked more like a power forward for the NBA than a cop. She had no bone to pick with him. Watershed, on the other hand, was a real pain in the ass. A good cop, but a jerk who liked crude jokes and considered himself some kind of lady killer.

“I’ll handle it.” She was already shutting down her computer. “I’ll run by her place. I was gonna head out anyway,” she said, wanting, no, needing to do something, anything other than sit in this office another minute while staring at photographs of Star-Crossed’s victims or trying to decipher the notes that had been found at each of the crime scenes and attempting to mentally connect them to the suspect who had been apprehended.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” Rolling her chair away from her desk, she reached for her service weapon, shoulder holster, and jacket.

“Good.” Grayson glanced at the clock. “And have someone go out and talk with Lucky Pescoli.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “People get crazy this time of year. It’s supposed to be all love and peace on earth, but there’s always a spike in suicides and murders. Domestic violence.” His gaze was steady as it held Alvarez’s. “Detective Pescoli isn’t known for her long fuse.”

Alvarez couldn’t argue with that.

Grayson squared his hat on his head. “Let me know what you find out. Has anyone checked with dispatch? Seen if an alarm has come in?”

“They haven’t heard from her either. No officer in distress came in.”

Rubbing a hand around the back of his neck, Grayson shook his head. “This isn’t like her. See what you can find out.” He glanced out the windows to the snow-covered landscape. “As soon as the weather breaks, I’m flying with Chandler and Halden to Spokane today,” he said, mentioning the two FBI agents who had been assigned to the case.

“The woman the Spokane cops arrested is not our guy,” Alvarez stated flatly.

A muscle tightened in Grayson’s jaw. “I hope to hell you’re wrong.”

She glanced to the notes strewn across her desk. “The person who’s been arrested; she doesn’t fit the pattern. I’ll bet she’s got an alibi for all the homicides.”

“The Feds are checking.”

“So am I.” Alvarez wasn’t trusting anyone else in dealing with the Star-Crossed Killer. Not even the FBI.

“In the meantime, find Pescoli.”

“I will,” she promised, sliding her arm through her shoulder holster and strapping it on. Grayson slapped the top of her cubicle wall and started toward the door, only to be roadblocked by Joelle Fisher, the receptionist and resident busybody for the department. Pushing sixty, she looked a good ten years younger than her age, and was forever dressed in spiky high heels and short, tight dresses with prim little jackets. Her platinum hair was piled as near a 1950s beehive as she dared and never was a single hair out of place.

It was an odd look, a step out of time, but somehow Joelle pulled it off.

Now, all in red, she was chattering on about a holiday party as if the horror of the last few months were the last thing on her mind.

“Cort’s wife has promised to bring in her prizewinning crown jewel cookies. They took second at the church bazaar, you know, and only because Pearl Hennessy decided to enter her gingersnaps, the ones that have a hint of orange. Well, who would beat those, I ask you?”

Alvarez didn’t stop to find out. The less she knew about the family of Cort Brewster, the undersheriff, the better. Alvarez didn’t really like the man, though she couldn’t put her finger on why. Brewster was a stand-up guy, been with the department for years, married to the same woman for nearly a quarter of a century. A devoted father of four, he was deacon in the local Methodist church and all that, but there was something about him that made her edgy, something that didn’t seem to ring true.

That’s because you’re always suspicious, have been since your early teens, but you know why, don’t you? Just your little secret that you don’t dare share.

Ignoring that nasty little voice in her mind, she decided it was okay not to like Brewster. Just recently there had been an incident that reaffirmed Alvarez’s opinion of the undersheriff: Pescoli’s son, Jeremy, was found to be dating Heidi Brewster, Cort’s pistol of a fifteen-year-old daughter. The kids had been busted for underage drinking and the tension inside Brewster had been palpable.

Merry Christmas.

All of Joelle’s talk was falling on the sheriff’s deaf ears.

“Fine, fine, whatever you think,” Grayson muttered as his cell phone blasted and he picked up.

Alvarez hustled past the Christmas cookie discussion before Joelle could turn her attention her way. Tucking her scarf into her jacket, she headed outside where the wind whistled and the air seemed to crackle. She yanked on her gloves as she passed the flagpole where Old Glory was snapping and shivering in the stiff wind.

From the corner of her eye she noticed a news van, the last remaining one parked across the street, the driver cradling a cup of coffee that was so hot steam nearly obliterated the window. Most of the other members of the media had taken off, chasing the story in Spokane. Except for this lone newsperson, a die-hard still camped near the sheriff’s department. An orange slash and the call letters of KBTR were scripted across the side of the dirty white van.

Alvarez avoided the KBTR van like the plague. Her dealings with the media had been few and she preferred it that way. Better to keep her private life just that. Her boots crunched across the snow as she found her Jeep. Scraping an inch of snow and a layer of ice off the windshield, she spied Ivor Hicks’s truck rolling up the street. Great, she thought, watching Hicks as he huddled over the steering wheel of his wheezing truck. A hunter’s cap complete with orange earmuffs was pulled low over his head and his eyes seemed twice their size behind thick glasses.

Owlish.

And a nutcase that made Grace Perchant, Pinewood County’s resident ghost whisperer, look sane.

Ivor parked on the street and slid out, his heavy boots sinking into the snow that had been plowed into a dingy, deep drift near the curb.

“The sheriff in?” he asked, his glasses starting to fog.

“Just leaving, I think.”

“Maybe I can catch him…” Wincing against arthritis, he hitched himself toward the building. Alvarez was glad to see him go before he started talking about alien abductions and the like, his favorite topic since his own “abduction.” He still claimed to talk to Crytor, the general of the Reptilian alien forces or some such nonsense, and was forever reporting his conversations, all exacerbated by his affinity for Jack Daniel’s, to the police.

Today, Ivor was Grayson’s problem.

Alvarez settled behind the wheel of her county-issued Jeep and was out of the lot in seconds, her wipers cutting away any residual ice on the windshield, the heater blasting full force. She melded into the traffic winding its way down the steep streets that sloped down the face of Boxer Bluff. The upper tier of the town, including the sheriff’s department and jail, sat high on the hill overlooking the five-hundred-foot drop to the heart of the original town of Grizzly Falls, or “Old Grizzly” as it was called by the locals. Shops, restaurants, offices, and even the courthouse lined the main street that ran parallel to the river and offered views of the raging falls for which the town was named.

Her police band crackled as she drove through the outskirts of town. She tried the phone again, was directed to voicemail, and tried to tamp down the doubts that gnawed at her mind. There could be a dozen reasons Pescoli wasn’t answering, any number of excuses why she hadn’t shown up. She didn’t necessarily have to be the next victim of a sick serial killer…

But her initials work, don’t they? If you really think the killer’s trying to issue a warning, then theRandPof Pescoli’s name fit perfectly into the theory that the killer is slowly, with each victim’s initials, leaving the chilling note of:BEWARE THE SCORPIONorWARY OF THE SCORPIONor evenWAR OF THE SCORPION.

“What does it mean?” she asked aloud. “Beware the scorpion? Wary of the scorpion? No way.” She stepped on the accelerator as the Jeep angled upward and the houses became sparse, giving way to the icy forest.

Alvarez didn’t expect Pescoli to be holed up in her cabin, not unless she was deathly ill. But even then the woman would have enough sense to call out. Unless she was injured, couldn’t reach the phone.

Or had been abducted by a deranged human being.

Selena tucked in her shoulders, physically fending that idea off. Pescoli had sounded irritated on the message she’d left, ready to wring her ex-husband’s neck. But that wasn’t a news flash. Regan and Lucky had suffered a bad marriage and, as she’d always said, “a badder divorce.”

Alvarez didn’t leave a message, just kept driving along the plowed county road where the snow was covered in gravel and had packed hard over the pavement. To access the side roads, a vehicle had to burst through the icy berm that had been left in the wake of the plows.

Fir and pine trees, needles laden with ice and snow, stood guard as she located the private lane leading to Pescoli’s cabin. Snow nearly obliterated the tire ruts; no car, truck, or SUV had come or gone in a long while.

She navigated the winding lane, laying fresh tracks through the trees and across a small bridge before the cabin came into view. Pescoli’s son’s truck was parked to one side, snow piled high, but the garage door was down and the only lights that glowed through the windows were the colored strands of a Christmas tree.

Alvarez parked near Jeremy’s truck, grabbed a tissue and swiped at her nose, then climbed outside and broke a path in the snow to the front door. On the porch, she knocked and waited. But the house was quiet. No sounds of voices, or a television, or their yapping little terrier came from within. In fact, the place seemed ethereally silent as night slid through the surrounding thickets.

She hit the doorbell and knocked again, but got no response. “Pescoli?” she yelled. “It’s Alvarez!” Her voice bounced back at her, echoing through the deep canyons surrounding this isolated little house. On the porch she walked from one window to the next, shading her eyes against the reflection on the glass, noting that the house was empty, not a light on aside from the soft glow of the Christmas tree. Even the television was dark. She spied dishes on the counter and an open pizza box on a small table, but no signs of life. Nor evidence of foul play.

She walked around all sides of the cabin that hung on the side of a hill. On the backside, where the hill sloped, she peered into a window to Jeremy’s room, but it, too, was dark.

No one was inside.

Once she’d looked through all the windows of the house, she backtracked to the garage, found a small window, and standing on her tiptoes peered inside. Empty.

The whole family was gone.

A bad feeling followed Alvarez as she looked around for places someone would hide a key. Nothing under the mat or in the pots near the front door. She checked under the eaves and on the window casings.

Nada.

She’s a cop. It wouldn’t be near the door.

Alvarez retraced her steps to the garage and searched, but found nothing, then circumvented the house again and stopped at the far side near the back of the fireplace where she noticed a vent. Unlikely.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

She pulled the glove off with her teeth, then searched the vent and felt a bit of metal hanging inside. “Eureka,” she muttered. Within seconds, she’d taken it to the back door and walked into the kitchen where the smells of pepperoni and cheese still lingered.

“Pescoli?” she called, slowly making her way through the small house. A living room with an attached dining area and the kitchen were empty. The Christmas tree leaned precariously in the corner near the mantel, a few scattered packages beneath its decorated limbs. Magazines and yesterday’s newspaper, with a bold headline about the Star-Crossed Killer, were scattered over a battered coffee table and well-used couch. The bathroom, choked with hair and skin products, was bone dry, no moisture clinging to the mirror or beads of water in the tub/shower combo. Regan’s daughter’s room was a mess. CDs, nail polish bottles, DVDs, and clothes strung over her twin bed and floor. The bookcase was filled to overflowing with stuffed animals and dolls that, Alvarez suspected, Bianca had just about outgrown.

Regan’s bedroom, only slightly bigger and only slightly neater, was vacant.

Alvarez ventured down the squeaky stairs and pushed open the door to Jeremy’s room, a ten-byten space complete with a television, some kind of electronic game system, and desktop computer huddled at the foot of his bed. It was dark except for a lava lamp giving out a weird, shifting glow. Dirty dishes peeked out from beneath the bed and posters of pro ball players and rock bands covered the walls. Above it all was the lingering sweet, smoky scent of marijuana.

So Jeremy was a pothead.

Perfect, she thought. Just what Pescoli needed: a teenage daughter growing up too fast and a son who was using drugs and involved with the undersheriff’s spoiled daughter. She eyed Jeremy’s room and wanted to kick the kid to kingdom come.

But of course, he wasn’t around.

On the nightstand was a picture of Joe Strand, Jeremy’s biological father, though Lucky Pescoli had basically raised the kid and was the main father figure in Jeremy’s life.

Maybe I’d smoke dope, too, if that were the case, Alvarez thought. Then there was Pescoli’s daughter, Bianca, whose self-involvement was awe-inspiring.

As a single mom, Pescoli had her hands full.

Nothing in Jeremy’s room gave Alvarez a clue to Pescoli’s whereabouts. She walked upstairs again and into the kitchen. Standing at the stove, where a frying pan showed remnants of hash browns, she felt like an intruder, a voyeur examining her partner’s life. “So where are you?” she asked, walking to the desk where a few envelopes were displayed, a couple of bills marked Past Due in bold red letters.

There was no sign of a struggle. No indication of any kind of violence whatsoever, just scratches on the exterior doors near the bottom of the wood, no doubt from the little mutt of a dog that was missing, though there was still water in a dish on the floor.

Through the window, she stared at the snow in front of the garage. Slight depressions showed where the last vehicle had driven through. Four, maybe five inches of new snow had piled over the old. Meaning Pescoli had been gone—? At least twelve hours. Maybe longer.

Alvarez took the door into the garage and frowned as she ran the beam of her flashlight over the wet puddles where Pescoli’s Jeep had been parked. How long ago?

Returning the key to its hiding place, she was left with a feeling of dread. Slow-growing but sure.

Something was definitely wrong.

Walking back to her Jeep, she studied the cabin and placed a call to Grayson. When he didn’t pick up, she left a message on his voicemail, then headed to the road that would eventually lead her to Lucky Pescoli’s house.

She only hoped the son of a bitch was home.