Deserves to Die (25 page)

“I record it.”

That surprised Pescoli as she’d pegged Alvarez as a workaholic.

“O’Keefe got me started on it, and once in a while I tune in. If the litigants are complaining about loans and gifts or rent and broken leases, it’s usually some woman all up in arms that her friend slept with her boyfriend or husband or whatever. The weird thing is that to a one, they blame the other woman as if it was all that woman’s fault and their poor, dumb husband couldn’t resist. That he was just the patsy in the Jezebel’s lurid, malicious trap, and that’s why he couldn’t keep it in his pants.”

“No one on
Judge Judy
is a killer,” Pescoli pointed out.

“I’m just saying it’s not impossible. We’ve run in our share of women who’ve killed. You know it.”

“But to cut off a finger—”

“What about those women who kill a pregnant woman and cut open her uterus because they want the baby or have somehow convinced themselves that the baby inside is really theirs?”

“Those women are mentally deranged.” Pescoli fought an overpowering need to place her hands protectively over her own midsection and failed.

“Sorry,” Alvarez said, pulling herself up short. “But our killer’s mentally deranged, too. Taking a finger wouldn’t be past a woman. That’s all I’m saying.”

Pescoli glanced at the autopsy report on Calypso Pope, a copy of which lay atop another file on her desk. “A crushed hyoid bone. In both cases. That takes strength.”

“Strength, but not necessarily size. And know-how. Maybe martial arts?”

Pescoli tossed the remains of her banana in the trash. “So you think this Anne-Marie Calderone is our killer?”

“That’s the avenue I’m taking.”

“Doesn’t it seem a little too obvious? To leave a print on the one piece of evidence that’s located? There’s not a second shoe, and that’s the only print on Pope’s Mercedes. Lots of other prints all over that car,” she corrected herself. She was thinking aloud. “The Cantnor woman’s purse wasn’t located, but the second victim’s bag was found fairly easily and it had that identifying print.”

“But any way you look at it, this woman is at the top of the suspect list. Right now, she’s all we’ve got. She’s obviously involved, we just don’t know how. I’ve got a call in to the New Orleans PD and Zoller is checking all the newspaper and police databases, looking for information about Calderone.” Sage Zoller was a junior detective with the department. Tiny and fit, she ran marathons, mentored at-risk teens and was a techno wiz kid. A dynamo. “She’ll report back to us.”

“Good.”

At that moment, Alvarez’s cell phone rang. She answered, “Detective Alvarez,” then held up a finger. “Thanks for calling back, Detective Montoya. We’ve got a situation up here—a couple homicides—and we found the same fingerprint at both scenes. Looks like it belongs to Anne-Marie Calderone. I was hoping you could supply me with a little more information about her as she’s just become a person of interest up here.”

She nodded at Pescoli and headed out of the office.

Pescoli rolled her chair closer to the desk, where she brought up the basic information on Anne-Marie Favier Calderone from New Orleans. The woman’s driver’s license picture and information appeared on the screen and though, more often than not, the photo taken at the DMV was usually pretty damn bad, this woman was stunning with her large eyes, easy smile, and oval face. Her hair was a deep brown with red highlights, shoulder-length and thick, her height and weight consistent with someone who kept herself in shape.

Pescoli stared long and hard at the photo. Was she looking into the face of a cold-blooded killer? A woman who took satisfaction, even joy, in cutting off fingers and diamonds?

She found herself playing with her own ring and stopped. This was insane. Or was it?

“No way,” she said aloud, but, of course, she couldn’t argue the facts. Anne-Marie Calderone was connected to the dead women. Pescoli just had to figure out how.

S
hivering, the cold of the morning seeping into her bones, Anne-Marie said, “I’m not going back to New Orleans.” She stared pointedly at the man in shadow. “Gun or no gun.” But she did climb off the couch, her bare feet touching the floor. “Come on in. You don’t have to guard the damn door. Where do you think I’m going in this?”

As if to add emphasis to her words, the wind squealed around the house and the damn limb started banging against the exterior wall again. Ignoring him, she walked the few steps to the fireplace and went to work, grabbing chunks of split wood she’d hauled inside the night before, prodding at the charred logs with the poker, searching for an ember glowing red beneath the ash. When she had success, she blew on the coals so that they burned brighter, a flame sparking against the moss and dry hemlock as the wood caught fire.

Settling back on her heels, she watched as the flames began to grow, crackling as they devoured the fuel. Her fingers tightened over the poker still in her right hand. She didn’t want to harm Ryder, but she wasn’t going back to Louisiana with him. No way. She never wanted to see her family again and there was a chance that
he
would find her there. Now that she felt a new security, that she realized it was Ryder who had been following her rather than the monster who had tossed her into the Mississippi, she could finally feel some sort of relief and believe that she did have a chance for a new life for herself. A life without any ties to the past and that included Troy Ryder.

“Drop it,” he ordered.

Still crouching near the grate, she looked over her shoulder to see that he still had the gun pointed at her. For the love of God, did he really think she believed for a second that he would shoot her? She didn’t let go of the poker, but stared at him over her shoulder. He was still near the door, about eight feet from her. If she sprang and swung, she might be able to hit him hard. She needed to take his advantage away and somehow, remove his gun. She had the poker, and her little switchblade was hidden in the folds of the clothes she’d piled near the couch.

Maybe there was some way to disarm him, gain the upper hand. As the fire burned brighter and hotter, the room lightened. Finally she saw his face, no longer in complete shadow and her heart twisted again. His was a rugged visage. His features were oversized—his jaw strong, big eyes deep in his sockets, a nose that had been broken a couple times, a hard line of a mouth, and a square jaw covered in a couple of days’ worth of stubble.

“I said, ‘drop it,’ Anne-Marie. Don’t even think about it.”

Her grip tightened.

“Jesus, are you serious? You think you’re going to get the better of me with a poker?”

“You won’t shoot me. I’m not going back to New Orleans. Not ever.” The fire popped then and her muscles jumped. Then, as if he’d been reading her thoughts all along, she saw him reach into his pocket with his free hand only to withdraw a stick of some kind . . .

Click!
Her switchblade snapped open in his hand, its spring-loaded blade suddenly reflecting the shifting light from the fire.

“How—?” Inadvertently, her gaze slid to the stack of folded clothes where she was certain she’d hidden the deadly knife. She didn’t finish the sentence. Her mind spinning, she wondered how the hell he’d known she had it, how he’d found it as well as the gun. She’d assumed he’d guessed she had hidden a weapon under her pillow, but the knife from her clothes? Had he rifled through her things while looking for the pistol and found the switchblade first, then continued his stealthy search while she’d been restlessly sleeping unaware or had he . . .

“You
spied
on me?” she charged, astounded, her mind taking hold of the idea and churning wildly. “You were in here before and planted devices and
spied
on me?” That was a big leap, a major vault, but he didn’t immediately deny it. She remembered feeling as if she were being watched, that though the shades had been drawn, the doors locked tightly, that there had been hidden eyes following her every move. “What is wrong with you?”

“I had to make certain that Jessica Williams was really Anne-Marie Calderone. And that my leads were right, that Jessica was also the same person as Stacey Donahue in Denver and Heather Brown earlier on.”

Dear God, how long had he been following her? He knew
all of it.

“I wasn’t going to barge in on the wrong person, so I had to make sure.”

She shook her head, disbelieving, not even understanding how he, a damn half-broke rodeo rider, could understand about high tech electronics. It suddenly occurred to her that because their romance had been so white-hot and rushed and she’d decided to marry him after knowing him only a few weeks, there was much more to the cowboy from somewhere in West Texas than met the eye. She hadn’t known him and his secrets any better than he’d known her and the lies that were the bones of her past.

But now she wanted to.

“Who
are
you?”

After hanging up from Detective Montoya, Alvarez coordinated the information he’d given her with what was known about the crimes in Montana. Zoller had e-mailed some information on Anne-Marie Calderone and was checking to see if there had been any similar killings in the last year in other parts of the country. So far, the department hadn’t heard of women who had been murdered, the ring fingers of their left hands severed, nor had they found any other crimes where the Calderone woman’s fingerprints had shown up.

But,
she told herself,
it is still early.

The Pinewood Sheriff’s Department might be on the track of one of the most deadly female serial killers in history.

I’m getting ahead of myself,
she thought, leaning back in her desk chair and taking a sip of her tea that she’d gotten from the break room. It was stone-cold, the tea bag still steeping in it, the orange-spice so strong she nearly gagged. Setting her cup aside, she concentrated on her computer screen, reminding herself that most likely there were no other identical crimes anywhere close by or she would have already found mention of it. Because of computers and communication systems, like crimes were more quickly identified.

She glanced at her e-mail, searching for more reports and heard a text come into her cell phone. One look and she smiled.

The short missive was from Gabriel, her biological son with whom she’d recently reconnected. No school!!! Along with the two words he’d attached a winking smiley face.

She quickly texted back, Have fun. See you soon.

Her heart swelled at the thought of him, the teenager who’d been raised by Aggie and Dave Reeve. Aggie was Dylan O’Keefe’s cousin and not all that happy that her son had discovered his birth mother, but the two women were working things out. Alvarez kept her distance as she didn’t want to intimidate the woman who had spent all of Gabe’s life caring for him, raising him, teaching him right from wrong.

She added a smiley face to her text despite the fact that she loathed all the emoticons.
But when in teenaged Rome . . .
She hit
SEND
.

She turned her attention back to the matter at hand—running Anne-Marie Calderone to the ground. Whether the woman who’d left her fingerprint on the belongings recovered from the victims was the actual killer or an accessory, or something else, she had some explaining to do. Some serious explaining.

Taking a swing at him wouldn’t help, so Anne-Marie let loose of the poker, stood, and dusted her hands.

“Who am
I?”
Ryder repeated. “I’m not the one with myriad disguises, a series of fake IDs, and multiple aliases.”

“But you were spying on me. I don’t remember you being some kind of techno geek who could bug rooms. Where the hell are they?” she demanded and turned around in a tight circle, searching in the dark corners, the lamps, wherever.

“You never bothered to find out that I was in the Special Forces and specialized in communications, did you?” When she looked at him as if he were mad, he admitted, “Afghanistan. Nothing I really want to dwell on.”

“Was this pre- or post-cowboy?”

“Between,” he admitted, snapping the switchblade closed and putting it, along with her gun, into a pocket.

Now that it was light, she could see that pocket was already bulging. “Wait a minute. You have your own damn gun?”

He smiled then. That reckless, roguish smile she’d found so irresistible. “You didn’t think I’d come in here unarmed.”

“But you stole my gun.”

“Didn’t feel like having you use it on me.”

“I wouldn’t have . . . well, if I’d known it was you, anyway.”

Apparently satisfied that she wasn’t going to flee or attack him, he started stripping small microphones and cameras from the tiniest of places around the room—a crack in the fireplace, a dark corner of the bookcase, even the damn wood box.

“Really?” she said, watching in disbelief and suddenly

feeling bare and vulnerable, all of her worst fears coming to the fore. He’d been observing her every move, whether she’d been awake or asleep. He’d seen her break down or flop in despair or rail at the heavens. “I can’t believe you would do all this—”

“Believe,” he said without emotion.

She was trying to make sense of it all but couldn’t. She’d thought, once they’d broken up, she would never see him again. He’d been so furious with her that she’d thought he might strangle her. He’d said as much. “Go to hell, Anne-Marie,” he’d said, “and don’t look over your shoulder.”

So, why would he be there now, dissecting her life . . . no, injecting himself back into it . . . trying to force her to retrace her steps and return to a city she’d sworn she’d never set foot in again?

“I don’t understand why you want me to go back to New Orleans,” she said.

“I’ve actually got a couple reasons,” he admitted. “The first is that after you and your husband disappeared—”

“Me and my husband?” she interrupted.

“Yes, after—”

“He left, too?” The dread that had temporarily abated came flooding back.

“You know that.”

“No.” She shook her head and swallowed with difficulty. Dear God, she was back to where she’d started. “Why would he leave?”

“You two had a major fight. The neighbors heard it.”

Her knees went suddenly weak at the memory and cold terror slipped through her veins. She dropped back onto the mussed sleeping bag covering the couch.

“My name came up,” Ryder said.

Of course. Oh. Sweet. Jesus.

“So, you both go missing and guess who’s left holding the emotional bag? Yours truly.”

“But you had nothing to do with it.”

“As I tried to explain, but the police had a different idea. A guy by the name of Detective Montoya? He’s pretty sure that somehow I’m involved in both disappearances.”

“What? No!” She couldn’t believe it. “But that’s insane.”

“Insanity to you and me.
Motive
to the police. The theory is that I might have been so damn pissed about the affair blowing up in my face the way it did, that I went into a jealous rage and got rid of you both.”

“You’re lying.”

“That’s your department, darlin’.” Ryder’s voice was cold. “The police are grasping at straws, and I told them that. But my alibi of being on the road that night didn’t hold any water with them. That hotheaded homicide detective? Montoya? He’s a real piece of work and he never quite believed my story. The only good news was that he didn’t have a body, not even one . . . with two people missing, so they couldn’t build a case against me. Not that he isn’t trying. So, it would be a big favor to me, if you’d go prove that you’re not dead.”

“That still leaves my husband,” she whispered.

“Your problem. Not mine.”

“Oh, God,” she whispered, believing Ryder’s story, knowing she’d left a mess behind her when she’d worked so hard to disappear. And the mess kept following her. The only good news was that she was more convinced than ever that the two women who’d been recently killed around Grizzly Falls had nothing to do with her.

“So pack up because we’re leaving.”

“There’s a storm outside,” she reminded.

“Always a storm of one kind or another, always a road block.” He cast a glance in her direction. “We’ll take our chances.”

“That’s nuts.”

“All relative, especially where you’re concerned.” He pocketed yet another camera, then walked into the kitchen and small bath.

He’d even seen her showering or on the toilet or . . . “You’re a pervert, Ryder,” she yelled, but her eyes were on the front door. She only needed her keys and she could race to the Tahoe and peel out of there. Or—
Crap!
Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Her cell phone. It was . . .