Chosen to Die (14 page)

No, it didn’t wash.

But the kill was too neat.

Almost professional.

Not quite. The bullet went into his chest, not his head. A pro would go for a head shot.

As Santana reconstructed the scene, it appeared that Long had been at his desk, rocking out to Guns N’ Roses and whatever else was in the CD changer, having himself a cigar and a drink, when someone got the drop on him.

Who?

Why?

Dozens of people, lots of reasons. Brady Long had made as many enemies as friends in his life. Still…murder?

“Who did you piss off so bad?” he asked the dead man as the sirens screamed louder and he heard Nakita barking from his truck.

Long’s drink, ice cubes melting, was still on the desk. But then the man himself, dead and staring sightlessly, was still in his chair.

He heard something else.

A footstep?

Then a soft thud and another footstep, the unmistakable sound of leather scraping against the floor.

The hairs on the back of Nate’s scalp prickled.

Could the killer still be in the house? Was he coming back to make certain the job was finished? Maybe Santana had interrupted him.

Don’t jump to conclusions.
It could be Clementine; her son could have taken her car. Or she might have left Ross inside when she drove off.

Neither scenario changed the fact that someone had killed Brady Long.

Stealthy as a cat, Santana climbed to his feet, then slipped silently to the side of the room to hide just inside the doors, out of view to anyone who passed. Someone would have to take a step or two inside the room before he would be visible. The only weapon he had on him was the jackknife he used to cut baling twine. Not much good against a pistol or revolver.

He waited.

Thunk.

Step.

Noiselessly he opened his knife. Hearing his own heartbeat, he tensed, ready to spring, his eyes glued on the open doors.

Closer and closer.

The sirens kept screaming and suddenly emergency vehicles, lights flashing, shot into view through the window, spraying snow from their tires in all directions.

“What the—?” a male voice asked, just on the other side of the door.

Santana’s hand tightened over the hilt of his knife.

“Brady? Holy Mother of God!” The warbling voice rose an octave. “The Yeti, he did this to you?”

Yeti?

A second later, Ivor Hicks, using a cane, hobbled into the room.

“I don’t care what you say, I’m not running this investigation using psychos, whack jobs, and/or nutcases!” Sheriff Dan Grayson was in a foul mood as he stalked down the hallway to his office. It didn’t help that one of his best detectives was suggesting the irrational.

“Grace Perchant knows something,” Alvarez, at his side, insisted.

“Trust me, she doesn’t know up from sideways.” He’d been in Spokane going over the notes and records of the copycat killer who’d been captured by the Spokane authorities and had been up most of the night. Early this morning he’d returned to find that not only had Pescoli’s wrecked Jeep been located, but now there was another car impounded that could be part of a possible crime, a red Saturn registered to another missing woman. And Alvarez, one of his most down-to-earth detectives, was suggesting they take advice from Grace She-Who-Talks-to-Ghosts Perchant.

Christ, this was a mess.

“Grace called. She’d had a dream—”

“Oh, for the love of God, that’s it? A dream. Look, I don’t give a damn if she hung upside down by her toes like a sleeping, rabid bat! She’s a nut-case. Everyone in town knows it! Maybe you can convince the FBI to talk to the local loonies, maybe they have some kind of pseudoparanormal division like you see on TV, but not here, not in my department!”

“Not exactly P. C.,” Alvarez pointed out.

“I’m not interested in being politically correct,” he said, irritated. “I’m just trying to hunt down a sick serial killer who has decided to use my jurisdiction as his personal playground.”

“So we should use any means possible.”

Is she really suggesting we talk to Grace Perchant? A self-proclaimed ghost whisperer or some such nonsense?
In Grayson’s estimation Grace was an odd duck, nothing more. Harmless, but an odd duck, all the same. “Next thing I know you’ll be wanting to take statements from Ivor Hicks and Henry Johansen.”

“If it would help the investigation.” Fire in her dark eyes. “I just got a call from the deputy who supervised winching Pescoli’s Jeep from the canyon. Looks like a bullet went through one of her tires.”

Grayson’s deepest fear was realized. “That son of a bitch!”

“Exactly.” Selena was furious now, her cheeks flaming. “So I don’t think we should discount any statement. I just want to see what Grace knows.”

“She was already interviewed.”

“Before Pescoli went missing.”

They were at his office door now and stomach acid was burning a hole in his gut. His thoughts were on Pescoli, a woman he’d worked with for years. Who was he to tell Alvarez, one of his smartest detectives, what to do? It wasn’t as if he had any better ideas. “Do whatever it is you think you should.” He waved her off and knew he was being ornery, but he didn’t care.

Her cell phone rang, and she picked it up, turning and heading toward her desk. Damn, he didn’t need a fight.

Inside his office, he hung up his hat and jacket, glanced out the window to the view of the lower part of the town and the nearly frozen river, then dropped into the desk chair and scowled at the stack of messages awaiting him. Whether he liked it or not, it seemed that Pescoli and Elyssa O’Leary were the next intended victims of Star-Crossed.

There had to be a way to catch the bastard, Grayson thought as he cracked his knuckles. He just had to figure out how. And fast. In his mind’s eye he saw Pescoli, a tall, strong woman with a wicked sense of humor who was tough enough to do a damned good job while raising two kids on her own. She was unconventional, bent the rules way too far for his liking, but she always got the job done. And now she was a victim? His jaw tightened as he remembered the other women who’d died naked in the elements, left to freeze to death.

Pushing aside his dark thoughts, he clicked on his computer, read his e-mail, then sent out an e-blast advising everyone working the Star-Crossed Killer case of a meeting at four
P.M
. in the task room. Maybe by then Agents Chandler and Halden from the FBI would have tied things up in Spokane and be back in Grizzly Falls. If not, he’d carry on without them.

He couldn’t wait.

The weather, as always, was a problem, he thought, sliding a glance out the window where snow was collecting and icicles hung from the eaves. It had been a bitch of a winter. One of the coldest on record. And it wasn’t close to being over.

Rubbing his eyes, he heard the familiar sounds of the department on the other side of the door: ringing phones, muted voices in conversation, a humming fax machine, the furnace rumbling, footsteps clipping down the hallway.

God, he was tired. Bone weary. This job that he’d once found so engrossing, that he’d thrown himself into after his wife left him, was starting to wear him down.

Don’t let it. This is your passion; your duty. You just need a little rest.

Leaning back in his chair and propping the heels of his boots on the short filing cabinet, Grayson fought a mother of a headache. It had started near his temples when the chopper that had brought him here from Spokane had landed, just before the next storm had begun to shower this part of the state with snow all over again. It was definitely exacerbated by the fact that a killer was still terrorizing the county. The victims’ families were clamoring for justice, the townspeople were scared out of their wits, the media was demanding more information for the public while both constantly airing “updates” and trying to get exclusives from the husbands, mothers, fathers, and siblings of the dead women.

Not to mention it was the Christmas season.

And now Pescoli looks like she’s the next victim.

No wonder his head throbbed.

But still, he shouldn’t have snapped at Alvarez. She was a good cop. Doing a damned good job. And he knew that she would put science and evidence over theory and statements from the resident nut-jobs. So if she wanted to talk to Grace Perchant or even Eleanor Mackey, the woman who not only cut hair but also read palms and held seances or the like over on Corinthian Avenue, so be it.

He found a jar of aspirin in his desk drawer, unscrewed the cap, and popped a couple, swallowing them dry.

He hadn’t eaten since last night—a burger, fries, and beer in a dive not far from the police station in Spokane—but he didn’t really feel hungry.

His desk phone jangled and he saw it was a call from Joelle.

“What’s up?”

“I’ve got bad news,” she said solemnly.

Was there any other kind? His first thought was of Pescoli. His heart seized. If someone had found her frozen body tied to a tree…“Yeah?”

“Dispatch just called.”

Grayson steeled himself. Set his jaw.

“Brady Long’s been killed.”

Grayson thought he’d heard wrong. “What?”

“Homicide.”

“Brady Long?” he repeated, stunned. “Where? When?”

“The call just came in. Nate Santana phoned from the Long estate.”

“Santana? Wasn’t he just here?” Grayson was certain he’d seen the guy pull out of the station just as he was driving in.

“About an hour ago. Units are on the scene. Deputies Watershed and Connors are there. Ambulance as well.”

“Good.”

“And Ivor Hicks is there, too.”

Grayson closed his eyes and sighed. Could things get any worse? His boots hit the floor. “Does anyone have any idea why Hicks and Santana are there?”

“I think Santana works for the Longs.”

“And Ivor?”

“I don’t know.”

Grayson’s bad day just took a nosedive.

“I’m on my way out there now.” He hung up, slipped on his shoulder holster, checked his sidearm, and slid his arms into his jacket sleeves. He’d been back less than two hours, hadn’t even had time to round up his dog yet, and all hell had broken loose. Again.

Sometimes he wondered why he didn’t resign.

Because you love it, Grayson. Who the hell do you think you’re kidding?
Muttering under his breath, he grabbed his hat off the coatrack and walked down the hall to Alvarez’s cubicle.

“You heard?”

She was at her desk examining copies of the notes taken from the crime scenes where the victims of the Star-Crossed Killer had been found. On her computer screen were anagrams using the initials of the women who had been abducted. He noted that she was already trying to add the initials of Elyssa O’Leary and Regan Pescoli into the cryptic message from Star-Crossed.

“About Brady Long?” She nodded.

If she was still pissed about their last conversation, she didn’t show it. “I’m on my way there now.”

“Wanna go together?”

“Sure. You can drive.”

She shot him a look as she secured her pistol into her shoulder holster. “Even if I take a detour on the way back to interview Grace Perchant?”

He actually felt his lips twitch. “Not on a dare, Alvarez.”

She didn’t smile either, but her dark eyes weren’t quite as hostile as they had been. “Then I guess you’ll be walking back. Let’s go.”

She was dead tired, her wrist aching, her body spent. Regan flopped onto her cot and wondered if she’d ever break free. It felt as if she’d been working to break the damned weld for hours and all the while she’d been afraid that at any second she’d hear him return.

You can’t give up,
she told herself and began to shiver with the cold, the sweat on her body chilling.
Just a few minutes. I just need a few minutes to rest.

She let out her breath slowly and gathered her strength.

What if the weld doesn’t give?

What if it’s stronger than you expect?

“It will,” she whispered, refusing to allow in the doubts that plagued her. It was too easy to fall prey to fear in here. All alone. Cold. Totally dependent on the psycho.

She couldn’t let the isolation get to her.

Letting out her breath, she heard the slap of wind against the high window, but nothing else. No rattling of timber, no shaking of walls.

Why was that?

And the small window, it was covered with snow, the view obliterated.

She’d looked around her gloomy room over and over again trying to get some clue, a little insight, as to where she was, but for the first time, she thought she understood. The window was high and alone because this room was underground. That would explain the dankness, the feeling of moisture that had made her skin crawl, the lack of sound from the outside.

She’d thought it was her imagination, but no…and that would explain, at least partially, why they, the police, had never found the creep.

She had no idea where she was. She barely remembered the ride in the back of a truck, a white truck with a matching camper, she thought. A big, full-sized truck. Domestic. Ford? Chevy? She’d caught a glimpse of it before he’d decided to tie a blindfold over her eyes, and damn it, she had only caught two letters of the license plate: 7 and 3, or had it been 8, with snow covering part of the numeral?

She couldn’t remember. She’d been so out of it because of the drug he’d injected in her, and she hadn’t been able to fight as he’d pinned her arms inside a straitjacket, then forced a gag over her mouth that smelled of vomit and chlorine bleach, as if he’d tried, and failed, to clean it. She’d almost retched, but had somehow kept the contents of her stomach down, knowing if she’d let go that she might drown in her own puke.

Would it have been a worse fate than this?

Of course!

She couldn’t let her mind wander down any crooked and dark path that suggested death was better than this. Succumbing to the seduction of the Grim Reaper was only being a coward.

Don’t go there.

At the moment of her abduction her mind had been addled, but she knew he’d strapped her to some kind of stretcher—or had it been a canoe?—that he’d dragged through the snow. Lying supine, unable to use her hands to brush away the snowflakes, she’d stared up at brittle, naked branches of trees, frozen and white. When he’d pulled her into a clearing, she’d spied the truck. And in a second he’d recognized his mistake and blindfolded her, yanking back her hair in the knot of the scarf, uncaring of any further pain he caused.

He hadn’t said a word; just gone about his task of trussing her and tossing her into his truck. She was treated with all the skill and indifference of a hunter used to dressing a kill and hauling it out of the forest.

He’d smelled of sweat and some underlying soap or cologne, but she’d only caught a whiff of it before he’d tossed something in beside her—the stretcher? Had it been collapsible so that it would fit?

Before she could wrap her mind around whatever it was that was lying next to her on the cold metal bed, he’d snapped the tailgate shut, walked to the cab, and started the truck. The engine had caught immediately.

With the crunch of breaking snow and ice, the pickup had rumbled forward from the canyon somewhere beneath Horsebrier Ridge. She’d tried to concentrate, to listen to the sound of the tires, counting how many seconds it was until the feeling within the bed of the truck changed, when the tires either started to hum against bare pavement, or echo over a bridge, or reverberate with the crunch of gravel, but she was fuzzy and lost count, and the tenor of the grip of the tires against the snowy terrain never changed.