Chosen to Die (18 page)

These women are untouchable. If I want to get laid, Nadine with her smoky breath and sexy little tattoo over her buttocks would gladly raise her rump to me, offer herself up. I like it that way, to come in from behind, so that I don’t have to see the whore’s face. She’s willing and wet and hot, but a whore just the same. I feel nothing for her.

These women, the ones I’ve spent so much time hunting down, they are worthy, but if I ever gave in and made love to them, the tide of power would turn. No…I cannot give in.

But my damned penis isn’t paying attention. Stiff and anxious, it impedes me. So I stop at a snow-bank, grab a handful of icy crystals, unzip my ski pants, and jam the snowball into my crotch.

I have to bite my tongue to keep from gasping aloud as the ice instantly shrivels my hard-on and I’m able to think clearly again. I can’t,
won’t
, be impeded from my purpose by my erection.

I reach my destination, a shanty that appears to be falling down: graying wood siding that has withstood the test of nearly a hundred Montana winters; shingles on the roof that bubble and peel; and a window of thin, rattling panes, now completely iced over, painted black on the inside. Unlocking the door, I step into the shack and start peeling off the outer layer though it’s still freezing within the thin walls. They aren’t as bad as they appear from the outside, however, as I’ve insulated and nailed sheet-rock over the panels of fiberglass that help keep out the cold. I walk to a back door, which, too, is padlocked. It creaks as it opens and I light a lantern before descending the stairs to the underground tunnels, built during the silver-mining era.

I’ve spent years improving these tunnels and rooms, updating them, making everything usable for my special purpose. Long before any of the women I’ve chosen were brought here. There are various tunnels that sprout off these steps, some short, others long and, eventually airless. Some have other exits, others dead-end. I’ve explored most of them and use them to store supplies. But today, I ignore them as I traverse the memorized route, using a small flashlight for illumination. The tunnel leads me to my own quarters, barely underground, close enough to the surface that a chimney draws upward, allowing me to keep the caverns warm. I worry about the chimney and the smoke it brings to the surface, for if it is seen by the authorities, my operation could be discovered.

There is a log and stone cabin above my living quarters, a fortress of sorts, where I also keep my guests. If seen, the smoke could be construed as coming from its chimney because the authorities cannot find me.

Not until I’m finished.

Worried, I decide to hurry things along. I had once had a plan, using the Zodiac signs, but it proved too cumbersome and I had to wait too long between the killings…stupid police…Now I’ll have to rush…but maybe that will work well and really throw off the cops. It’s not as if I don’t have more than one who will suffice…And I could really shock Sheriff Grayson and his band of incompetents if I used more than one at a time. Why not up the game?

I smile to myself for all the planning I’ve done here in the old mine. “Clever boy,” I whisper, thinking again how Mother would have been impressed. And shocked. Here, there are so many tunnels, so many secret spots, so many places to hide a person and no one would ever be the wiser. Thank goodness I’ve been thinking ahead. Putting the plan into action. Finding those who are worthy to be left. Making certain I have enough…inventory. Again I smile. I really am far smarter than anyone would ever imagine, especially Mother.

If she could only see me now. And witness the women who have come to love me. To trust me.

Outside the door to my work space I peel off the next layer of clothes—my ski suit—and leave it on a hook, so that it will stay clean and drip on the landing. Then with my key, I let myself in.

Honey, I’m home,
I think and smile at my little joke as I walk through my larger living space to the detective’s door and peer through the peephole.

Somewhere a door creaked.

Damn!

Regan slid onto the cot and closed her eyes, as if she’d been sleeping. The hairs on the back of her arms lifted as she heard soft footsteps.
His
footsteps. Her wrist was bruised and swollen. Though she’d managed to work at the weld, saw that it was cracking, she hadn’t yet broken through the soldered seam. If she just had a little more time, a little more strength.

Don’t give up. You can beat this guy. You can.

But as she felt his gaze crawling up her body, she recoiled inside and she was certain she was in the presence of raw evil. She didn’t care if he was mentally off or not. Depravity fed depravity and this freak needed to be stopped.

It’s up to you.

If you can off him, you can save not only yourself but all the others he has planned for his sick game.

Her heart nearly stopped when she heard the click of tumblers and sensed her door sweep open. Bile rose up her throat as she thought of him watching her. Though the bodies of the women who had been found in the forest had shown no evidence of sexual molestation, surely they had endured some kind of hellish torture at this maniac’s hands.

“I know you’re awake,” he said in that oily smooth voice of his, one that sounded familiar. “You don’t have to pretend with me.”

Slowly, she opened her eyes. He was standing over her, a big man, still disguised. The goggles covered his eyes, the beard had to be fake, but in the darkness she saw the scrapes to his skin that hadn’t yet healed. Score one for the good guys.

“Good morning, Detective,” he said softly. “Well, it’s really not morning anymore…”

“Who the hell cares?”

“Mmm. See, you
were
playing possum. And not very convincingly.” He dropped a fresh liter of water onto the bedside table, along with some kind of protein bars. “I thought you’d like to know that the world has just been rid of some scum.”

What the devil was he rambling about?

“You’ve heard of Brady Long?”

Hell, yes. Who hadn’t? Brady Long was the only child of one of the richest men, if not the richest man—copper baron Hubert E. Long—in the county. No…wait, that wasn’t quite right. There was another child, wasn’t there? A girl? Had she died? Regan couldn’t remember.

“I see he’s familiar to you. Well, he’s one less citizen the sheriff will have to worry about.” He turned away then, and with his gloved hands, picked up several chunks of cut wood that had been stacked against the wall, shoving them into the front of the stove where the dying embers reacted, crackling and shooting out hungry flames.

“What happened to Brady?” Regan asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.

“He met an unfortunate end, I’m afraid.”

“You killed him?”

He slammed the door of the wood stove shut, then turned to loom over her again. His teeth flashed in a satisfied leer beneath the fake beard. “The story goes that a Yeti took care of him.”

She stared. For the love of God, this guy was really bats. Certifiably insane.

“That’s what the news is reporting.”

“Really?”
Don’t engage him. He’s getting off on it.

“Isn’t it interesting?”

“Not really.”

He clucked his tongue at her naïveté, mocking her that she would try and fool him. “And the more interesting part is the Yeti, he kills with a rifle, a .30 to be exact.”

“How do you know this?”

His horrid grin widened. “Because I was there, Red. Witnessed it all.”

“You did kill him, you son of a bitch.”

“I’ve done the world a favor, but that’s the problem with doing good deeds, you know. They’re always misunderstood.” His smile faded a bit, and in the orange shadows of the fire, his face, with its disguising dark beard and the scratches running down one cheek, looked the very embodiment of malevolence. “But that will change…soon.”

He gazed down at her with purpose and Pescoli felt as if snakes had slithered up her spine. He was planning to kill her, of course, but now she knew it would be soon.

Grace Perchant’s home was something right out of a fairy tale. A cottage in the woods that looked like the Brothers Grimm had designed it, nestled in a cute little spot in the wintry landscape where, despite its charming and picturesque appeal, dark and deadly creatures lay within.

“Must be the cold medication,” Alvarez said as she parked in the rutted lane outside the cabin and followed a broken path in the snow to the front door. It was just a house. Quaint, yes. But a house in the woods. In her three years with the department, she’d been to many a backwoods cabin in the forest. Grace Perchant’s was no different. Not at all.

She’d left Grayson at Brady Long’s estate as he’d elected to stay longer and planned to catch a ride back to the office with the undersheriff. Brewster had shown up just about the time Alvarez was leaving. She’d gotten all the information she could and had stuck around to interview Clementine DeGrazio and her son, Ross. The housekeeper had said she’d received a call from Brady Long the night before, saying he was planning a “quick trip up” if there was a break in the storms. Clementine had made sure the house was stocked with his favorite foods and liquor, then, earlier in the morning, she’d driven with her son to her sister’s house for a pre-Christmas gift exchange as the sister was planning to leave town until after New Year’s. Ross, pretty much a silent, bored-looking teen in sunglasses and stocking cap, had sullenly agreed with his mother and a quick call to the sister had confirmed that Clementine and Ross had been gone all morning.

Though Ross seemed unaffected by Long’s death, Clementine had been beside herself, alternately crying and shredding tissues as she wrung her hands and sniffed back tears. She appeared to be grieving for a man who had more enemies than friends, if most of their sources, including Grayson, and even Nate Santana, were to be believed.

But Clementine had been as grief-riddled as a mother.

Or a wife.

It occurred to Alvarez that Clementine DeGrazio might have been more than Brady Long’s housekeeper. Something to check on.

Now, however, she had to deal with Grace Perchant.

On the tiny front porch, she rapped on the door just as she heard deep growls emanating from the other side of the door. Oh, right. Grace kept wolves or half-wolves, hybrids or something. Presumably, she would keep them at bay.

“Sheena, hush!” a woman’s voice commanded and the noise from within instantly subsided. A second later Grace herself opened the door. “Detective.” Wearing a long cardigan sweater over thick tights and a black turtleneck, she offered the slightest of smiles. “I hoped you’d call or stop by.” She stepped out of the doorway and inclined her head, a wisp of graying hair escaping its topknot. “Come in.”

The dog, Sheena, lay on a padded bed near an antique-looking and dusty couch. A fire burned brightly in the hearth. Every window ledge and end table was covered with pots of small, trailing plants and softly burning candles, dripping wax. A tinderbox ready to ignite.

“You’re here about your partner. Please sit.” Grace waved Alvarez into her seat and the dog, watching every movement, didn’t rouse.

“A few days ago, at Wild Will’s, you warned me and Pescoli that she would be taken. I think your exact words were ‘he’s relentless. A hunter,’ and you were speaking about the Star-Crossed Killer. You said you heard a voice and the voice said ‘Regan Elizabeth Pescoli,’ and you touched her and said she was in ‘grave danger.’ I think that was it.”

“You have a good memory. Yes. And I was right,” she pointed out as she sat on a chair near the fire and next to the dog’s bed where Sheena had curled into a ball, her golden eyes slowly closing.

“How did you know?”

“The usual way. I saw parts of it. Kind of a dream.”

“I always heard you talked to the dead,” Alvarez said, picking her words carefully. “So, you have dreams, too?”

Grace stared out the window, where the tiny flames of the candles reflected on the panes and ice outside. “No. Not usually, but the dead, when they talk to me, they allow me some insight…” She smiled a little sadly, as if she knew she sounded crazy. “I heard a voice a few days ago, a voice from a dead girl. The one who you found in Wildfire Canyon. The hairdresser.”

A frisson of disbelief tickled the thin little hairs on Alvarez’s nape. “Wendy Ito? She talked to you?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“A few days ago.”

“How?”

Grace turned to face the detective again and her pale eyes cut straight to Alvarez’s soul. “I heard her.”

“How did you know who she was?”

“I saw her face. Blue and frozen. She spoke to me, but her eyes didn’t move, nor did her lips. She warned me. Gave me your partner’s name. When I asked how she knew, she explained that she’d seen things. Documents. Of different women. The only one she could tell me about was that of Regan Elizabeth Pescoli.”

Alvarez held up a hand. “Now wait a minute—”

“That’s all she said, but once she mentioned your partner, I had a dream and the images were scattered and sharp, didn’t make any sense. But I think they were of Regan Pescoli.”

“A dream? While you were sleeping.”

“Yes…I found myself outside. With the dog.”

“Has this happened to you before?”

Grace shook her head. “Never. Not until these killings,” she said. “What’s happening to me now is different. The dead want justice, I believe. They’re reaching out to me with more insistence than ever before.” She said it with a conviction that worried Alvarez. This woman really believed that the dead talked to her.

On the floor beside Grace, the wolf dog stretched and yawned, large teeth showing before Sheena closed her golden eyes and slept again, her breath whistling softly through her nostrils.

“In this dream did you see her killer? Did Wendy happen to mention his name? Describe him? You said ‘he,’ which we assume, but is there anything about him that you can tell me, something that would help us locate him?” As she heard the words pass her lips, Selena cringed a little inside. She was a woman who believed in science and evidence. She didn’t trust psychics or visions or dreams or anything that couldn’t be explained by fact. Yet here she was, hoping this woman who most of the townspeople thought was off her rocker could help.

“I only have a sensation. A man in white. He camouflages himself to blend in, I think. With the landscape. The snow.”

“But Wendy saw him.” As had all the victims. Alvarez was convinced that they had come to trust him, to believe in him, though she had no proof of that; it was only her theory.

“She saw him, but she didn’t transfer his image or description to me. I’m sorry.” And she looked it, seated on the corner of the dusty couch, her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes nearly luminescent.

Alvarez asked a few more questions and Grace answered quickly, honestly it seemed, but who knew? The woman could be as loco as everyone thought. But Alvarez urged Grace to tell her anything she could remember.

“There were some things that I was told about,” Grace said, her silver hair catching the hearth light.

“By Wendy Ito?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of things.”

Almost as if she were in a self-imposed trance, Grace stared into the fire, then started talking about seeing a needle, a hypodermic. And a straitjacket, and a stretcher of some kind. Alvaez tried to press her when she trailed off, but Grace could give nothing concrete: no name, no description, no address.

Nothing to tie one person to the crimes.

Grace slowly surfaced and said, “You need to help her,” which only fueled Alvarez’s feelings of anxiety and inadequacy.

“I will,” she promised, then headed back outside. Climbing into her Jeep, she was just turning around when her cell phone rang. She picked up as she drove onto the main road, her wipers fighting like hell to clear the windshield of the damned snow that showed no sign of letting up. “Alvarez.”

“It’s Joelle. Are you coming back here?”

“On my way.”

“Good, good.”

Alvarez got a bad feeling about the conversation. Joelle hadn’t just called to suggest she be part of the Christmas cookie bake-off. “What’s up?”

“It’s Regan’s son.”

“Jeremy?” Alvarez whispered, her heart sinking. The kid was already in a helluva lot of trouble; he didn’t need any more. “What about him?”

“He’s down here at the station, demanding to know what’s happening with his mother. I tried to calm him down and suggested he go home, even offered him some cookies and fruitcake.”

Like always.

“But he’s determined to talk to someone about Pescoli and considering how things are with Undersheriff Brewster, I thought you might be able to talk to him.”

“I’m on my way,” Alvarez promised and hung up. She didn’t know what she’d say to the kid. She wasn’t good with teenagers, but she’d give it her best shot.

“It’s no big deal,” Bianca said, miffed that Michelle would even try to deter her. Bianca was nervous, wanted to get out. Her worries about her mom ate at her and, as she flipped through the channels of her father’s monstrous television, she couldn’t concentrate on the reality shows that she usually loved. As many stations as the satellite dish provided, there wasn’t one that caught her interest. So she’d texted her boyfriend and they’d made plans.

But Michelle, usually so cool, seemed to think she needed to suddenly assert her stepmotherly authority.

As if!

“Chris and I are just going down to the concert at the courthouse,” Bianca said from the couch. She rolled her head around, so she could see into the dining room where Michelle was adjusting the strands of silvery tinsel that she’d looped through the chandelier that hung over a round glass and wrought-iron table.

“Is that right?” Obviously Michelle wasn’t buying Bianca’s admittedly lame excuse. “Why?”

“Duh! It’s Christmas.”

“I think you should stay home. Does your mom let you go out on dates? Does Chris even drive?” Michelle’s neatly plucked eyebrows drew together as she looped the tinsel through a curlicue of wrought iron.

“His brother is taking us. He’s got his license.”

“And what time is the concert?”

Michelle sure wasn’t the pushover Bianca had thought she’d be. At least not since she’d lost her job as a teller in a local bank that had shut its doors. Now she was taking this whole stepmothering job a little too far. “Around seven? I’m really not sure. We were going to get something to eat and then go there.”

“In this?” Michelle looked through the window to the falling snow. “I don’t think so, honey.”

“But—”

“Look.” Michelle spread her fingers wide, red fingernails decorated with tiny white snowflakes standing out like claws. “Your dad’s got a lot to worry about with the storms shutting down the interstate so he can’t make his usual run,” she said. That much was true. As a truck driver, Lucky was losing money daily while the roads were impassable. He’d planned to take some time off at Christmas, his first ever that Bianca could remember, but the weather had taken away his options. “And let’s face it, he’s worried about your mom.”

Maybe. Maybe not.

“Don’t give me that look. He is. And then there’s Jeremy. Your brother blew out of here and we can’t get him on the cell phone. He’s supposed to be grounded.”

“But I’m not,” Bianca wheedled, reminding Michelle that she was the “good kid” of the two.

“Just hear me out, Bianca.” Michelle’s voice had a tone in it that Bianca didn’t like, hadn’t noticed before.

“You’re not my mom.” And at that Bianca felt tears bloom in her eyes. Hot, scared tears. She’d tried not to think about what might be happening to her mother, and she’d spent the last few hours texting and talking to Chris, but she couldn’t just stay cooped up here.

The back door slammed shut and she looked up to see her father walk inside, the scent of cigarette smoke clinging to him as he hung up his jacket in the front closet. He caught the angry glare Michelle tossed his way.

“What?”

Michelle appeared about to snap back a hot retort, then thought better of it. “She’s your daughter. You deal with her,” she said, then turned and, pink high-heeled slippers clipping in a furious staccato rhythm, she hurried into the sanctity of “her” kitchen.

Bianca glared after the woman her father had married. An airhead, that’s what Mom called her, but Bianca wasn’t so sure.

“Okay, what’s going on?” he demanded.

“I just want to go to hear a Christmas concert tonight,” she complained, crossing her arms under her breasts and pouting.

“I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

Her father looked at her as if she’d lost her mind, then launched into the same tired arguments she’d already heard from Michelle. The weather was bad. She was too young. Jeremy was already MIA and in big trouble and blah, blah, blah. That was the trouble with being the second one, the first ruined everything.

“…so if Chris wants to come over here and…hang out…play games or something…that would be okay.”

“Play games?” She rolled her eyes. What did he think she was? Seven?