Chosen to Die (4 page)

Alvarez blew her nose and told herself not to worry. After all, Pescoli had called in. Again Alvarez replayed the message:

“It’s me. Hey, I’ve got a personal issue to deal with. Lucky and the kids. It might take a while, so cover for me, will ya?”
Pescoli’s voice had been firm. Determined. Borderline angry.

So what else was new?

But that call had been made yesterday.

No word from her today.

Something was off. Definitely wrong. Pescoli was nothing if not a dedicated cop. Surely she would have called again, especially since there had been an arrest in the Star-Crossed Killer murders. No way would Detective Regan Pescoli have missed out on the action, not after months of trying to track down the whack job.

Sniffing, Alvarez tossed the tissue into her overflowing trash basket tucked under her desk. This cold—flu—she’d contracted was starting to really piss her off.

She doubted that she was overreacting. Even though Pescoli had indicated whatever issue she was dealing with would take some time, this was all wrong.

Alvarez glanced at the clock mounted high on the wall. Pescoli’s message had come in late yesterday afternoon and since that time the Spokane Police Department in Washington state thought they’d arrested the killer.

Alvarez wasn’t so sure.

Nothing seemed right today. But soon Sheriff Dan Grayson would be on his way to verify that the person who had been captured by the Spokane Police Department, and was now accused of being the serial killer who had terrorized this part of Montana, was their sick doer.

But Alvarez doubted the suspect arrested would prove to be the Star-Crossed Killer. The person in custody was definitely a would-be murderer, but so far, Alvarez hadn’t been able to tie the suspect to any of the previous crimes. She glanced at the pictures of the victims lying upon her desk. Five women. Different races and ages with no connection to each other. She bit her lip and tapped her fingers as she thought about how hard Regan Pescoli had worked the case.

She would have moved heaven and earth to be a part of the suspect’s arrest, no matter what her personal issues were. And she would have known about it. The stand-off and arrest had been splashed all over the news. Though most of the members of the press had swooped down on Spokane, a few reporters had stayed on in Grizzly Falls, still camped out in the surrounding streets, hoping for a new angle on the biggest story to hit Grizzly Falls since Ivor Hicks had claimed he’d been transported to a mothership by aliens.

She slid a glance to the clock on the wall. Nearly five
P.M
…. no way would Pescoli miss this kind of action.

Something was definitely wrong.

Alvarez scooted her chair back and tried not to think of the warning Pescoli had received from Grace Perchant, no less. Grace was an odd sort, cursed with some sort of psychic ability, if you believed her. Alvarez didn’t. All she really knew about the odd woman was that Grace raised wolf dogs and talked to ghosts and never made much trouble. But recently, while Pescoli and Alvarez were having lunch at Wild Will’s, Grace had approached the table. Her voice had been low, her pale green eyes troubled.

“He knows about you,” Grace had said to Pescoli, her gaze lost in a middle distance only she could see.

“Who?” Pescoli had asked, playing along.

“The predator.”

Alvarez had felt it then, that dip in the temperature that accompanies fear.

“The one you seek,” Grace had clarified. “The one who is evil. He’s relentless. A hunter.”

Pescoli had been angry and had taken it out on the clairvoyant, but she, too, had been scared. They’d both known that Grace was talking about the maniac the media had dubbed the Star-Crossed Killer.

He’s relentless. A hunter.

That much was true.

And an ace marksman.

He
, Grace had said distinctly. Not
she.
Not the woman demanding to talk to her attorney in Spokane, the one everyone wanted to confront about the killings.

Sniffing some more, Alvarez leaned back in her desk chair. She wasn’t one to scare easy, but today she felt a stark fear she tried like hell to deny.

The horror was spread around her in glossy, colored photographs of the victims. Five in all. Or, she thought as she picked up a picture of Theresa Charleton, the first victim, five that they knew of.

There could be others.

Innocent women naked and bound to trees in the wilderness, abandoned to die a long and painful death in the frigid temperatures of the icy landscape.

“Sicko.” Selena’s jaw hardened as she glanced through a nearby ice-crusted window to the gloomy day beyond. Steely gray clouds huddled over the mountains, dumping snow, threatening a blizzard. Already parts of the county were experiencing downed lines and no power as the temperatures plummeted far below freezing.

“Merry Christmas,” she told herself, as the holiday was just around the corner.

She tossed the picture of the first victim onto her desk with the rest and gazed at the grouping. Alvarez felt as if she knew all the victims intimately:

Theresa Charleton, married, no children, a schoolteacher from Boise, Idaho, who had been visiting her parents in Whitefish, Montana. Her nude body had been found lashed to the bole of a hemlock tree, her initials and a star cut into the bark, a note nailed above her head with the same information from the killer, the man whom they suspected shot out the tire of her green Ford, then, after the car had spun out of control and been totaled, extricated Charleton from the wreckage and took her somewhere to nurture her back to health. This before cruelly and savagely hauling her to a remote spot in the forest, tying her to a tree, and leaving her to die with her initials carved into the bark of the tree. A note had been left, her initials printed in bold block letters:
T C

Now Alvarez stared at the picture of Theresa’s face taken at the crime scene far from where her car had been located. The other victims had each suffered a similar fate: Nina Salvadore, a single mother from Redding, California, whose crushed red Focus had been discovered miles from her body. The note left at that scene had read:

TSC N

No one, not even cryptologists nor agents with the FBI with cryptogram-busting computer programs, had understood the meaning of the notes. Afterward, in rapid succession, the bodies of Wendy Ito and Rona Anders had been located. Then Hannah Estes had been found alive near an abandoned hunting lodge by a news crew and taken to a hospital, only to die later as the disguised killer had boldly entered the hospital, yanking her life support and making certain she expired. Hannah hadn’t been able to tell what she knew, or identify her killer, nor had any of the hospital cameras taken a decent photo of his image.

Bad damned luck.

All of the women had been driving alone through this area of the Bitterroot Mountains when their cars had been assaulted and they’d been taken from the original crime scene to be nurtured, then, like Charleton and Salvadore before them, had been strapped to a tree in a remote location and left to die an icy, brutal death. The notes and carvings at the scenes had only been different because of the positions of the stars and initials, but the result had been the same: Five women dead, the final note now reading:

WAR THE SC I N

With each victim’s initials added into the text, the sheriff’s department and FBI had come up with different ideas for the meaning of the letters, thinking perhaps that they could be jumbled, or that the killer was just screwing with them, that there was no meaning at all.

But deep down, they all knew that the killer, a very organized and clever person, was not only trying to tell them something, he was lording it over them that he was smarter than they. If his note was to make any sense, then he’d obviously picked out his victims before they’d been put through his personal emotional gauntlet of wrecking their vehicles, “saving” them, nursing them back to health somewhere, and then ruthlessly and cruelly leaving them to die in the wilderness.

He hadn’t sexually molested any of them.

That seemed out of place.

His dominance wasn’t physical, so much as emotional.

As far as they could tell, he set the women up, could just as easily have killed them, shot them in the head, or left them to die in their vehicles, but he rescued them, then abandoned them, assured they would die.

So far, he’d been right.

Except that now, if the Spokane Police and press were to be believed, the killer had supposedly been unmasked and captured…and
he
had turned out to be a
she.

No way.

Alvarez took a sip of her cooling tea, then found a cough drop and sucked on it as she read over her notes for the dozenth time. As she did she was more certain than ever that Regan Pescoli was in trouble.

She tried Lucky Pescoli’s house phone one more time and heard a cheery little voice, that of his wife Michelle, nearly giggling as she said, “You’ve reached Lucky and Michelle. We’re out right now, but leave a message and maybe…you’ll get Lucky!”

Puke.
Alvarez hated those pathetically cutesy voicemail greetings. She didn’t bother leaving a message. Just sucked on her menthol drop and flipped through copies of the notes the killer had left.

Craig Halden, one of the FBI field agents working the case, had carefully mapped out the stars left on the notes and chiseled into the bark of the trees where the women had been found. Using tracing paper he had overlapped the notes to show the position of the stars and in so doing decided the killer had chosen the constellation of Orion focusing on Orion’s belt. Alvarez had done her own research on the subject and found that in mythology Orion was stung by a scorpion, then flung high into the sky.

If her theory was right and the last word of the note was scorpion as in
WAR OF THE SCORPION,
or, the phrase she was partial to, due to the spacing of the letters:
BEWARE THE SCORPION,
then theoretically, Regan Pescoli, with her initials of R and P, could be in real trouble.

As Grace Perchant had predicted.

“Damn.” Selena’s heart contracted as she took one last glance at the photographs of the Star-Crossed Killer’s victims and plucked another tissue from her rapidly dwindling box.

Was Pescoli to be the next victim?

Alvarez’s eyes narrowed. If so, then her car would be disabled somewhere, a shot through a front tire, a perfect shot from an expert sniper.

And if that were the case, sooner or later, Pescoli’s Jeep would be found.

Or could she have had it out with her ex? A confrontation that had turned violent?

Either way it was bad.

She sniffed a third time and popped a couple of DayQuil tablets, hoping to hell she was wrong.

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.