Afraid to Die

by Lisa Jackson

  Before heading home that day, Alvarez put in another call to the dog control center at the county as well as the local vet. But neither the officers in charge of the kennels for the county nor Jordan Eagle had any news on Roscoe. Like Gabriel Reeve, the dog appeared to have vanished. She’d checked with road deputies as well, fearing her dog may have been hit and killed in the streets, but there had been no reports of any injured or dead dogs fitting her puppy’s description.

  As for Reeve, she’d checked with all the local shelters and deputies on patrol in the parks and near schools, the juvenile detention center, even the hospitals, and anywhere she could think the boy might have shown up, searching for any sign of the runaway, but she’d come up empty-handed.

  O’Keefe hadn’t called her either, and she’d expected that he would, if he found the kid.

  She rotated the kinks from her neck and reminded herself that the boy could be out of the area, long gone. All he had to have done was hitch a ride with a long-haul trucker. For all she knew, Gabriel Reeve might be in San Francisco or Albuquerque or Chicago or anywhere. Possibly Canada. Any damned where. There had been enough time for Reeve to have left the snows of Grizzly Falls and Montana far behind.

  Funny that. The kid she’d tried so hard to forget. The one she’d thought of nearly daily, but just fleetingly, now, because he had come crashing back to her world, had become so much more real and tangible, and the old wounds in her heart, the ones she’d so carefully tried to heal, had reopened and oh, so painfully. Now, it had become her mission to find the kid.

  Is that before or after you locate your killer? Hmmm?

  She grabbed her coat, sidearm and laptop before heading through the lunchroom, where Joelle was packing up the few remaining cookies and brownies into a single plastic container, then swiping out the insides of the empty bins.

  “Hey, get this!” Pescoli was heading through the room as well.

  Joelle managed to throw her a dirty look and Pescoli caught it. “Hey, I’m sorry, okay?” she said. “I was in a bad mood and I took it out on your decorations. It was wrong.”

  “Sometimes, Detective, you should think before you speak. And as for your ‘bad mood’? That seems to be a typical state for you. I think you bring your problems at home to work and it wouldn’t surprise me if you take your work home with you and dump it on your family.” Her shiny pink lips pursed a bit. “There should be room for joy, Regan. Even in this place where we deal with criminals, killers and rapists and thieves. That shouldn’t make us so jaded and hard that we don’t look for the good in the world.” She tucked the tubs under her arms and marched out of the lunchroom.

  “I said I was sorry,” Pescoli said as they walked through the back door and heard it slam and lock behind them as a gust of bitter wind hit Alvarez full force. Man, it was cold. But clear. The snow had stopped for the time being, and above the humming street lamps, a few stars had already appeared.

  “Sometimes an apology isn’t good enough. At least not for someone like Joelle.”

  “Oh, God, don’t tell me I have to write a letter or get her some little velvety poinsettia or cute little stuffed animal to place on her desk with a sad emoticon face on a card, cuz I’m not doing it.”

  “No one expects that. In fact, if you did, Grayson would probably order you in for a psych evaluation.” Their boots crunched as they crossed the parking lot. “Just give her a break.”

  “Fair enough.” Pescoli nodded as if agreeing with herself. “I’ve been checking the entrants in that ice sculpture contest in Missoula,” she added. “Twenty-four of ’em.”

  “Seriously?”

  “A quick look says that four have records, one was a DUI, another forgery, but two were violent. Domestic abuse in one case, assault in another. I’m checking those boys out.”

  “Need help?”

  “Not yet. Oh”—she snapped her gloved fingers—“by the way, got a call from Ezzie Zwolski.” They’d reached Alvarez’s Outback. “Seems she wants to come in and talk to me about her boyfriend’s death.”

  “I’ve always thought she’d been holding back.” Ezzie Zwolski had been reticent about discussing Len Bradshaw’s death, but Pescoli had been pressuring her, hoping as Bradshaw’s lover and Martin Zwolski’s wife, she might know more than she was saying.

  “She’s coming in with an attorney,” Pescoli said.

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Tomorrow, at eleven. Thought you might want to be there.”

  “It’s Saturday.”

  “Go figure. She couldn’t come in today, or wouldn’t, and I didn’t want to wait until Monday, just in case she changed her mind. So she wrangled her lawyer into spending a couple of hours on Saturday with me.”

  “Yeah, I’ll want to be a part of it, but Ezzie wasn’t there when Bradshaw was killed.” That fact had already been established. She’d been at work, verified by her boss at the grocery store, her time sheet and footage from the store’s security cameras.

  “I know, but Ezzie has the unique position of having been intimate with both men. And she did the books for the company when Len made off with all the cash. I’m thinking she could give us some insight as to motive and how close the partners were, maybe even how long her ex might hold a grudge ... Couldn’t hurt.”

  “Suppose not. You know, it might be just as Martin insists. An accident.”

  “Maybe we’ll find out tomorrow.” She seemed about to head to her Jeep, then hesitated. “You know, I’m still waiting.”

  “For what? Ezzie to come clean?”

  “Not Ezzie. You. I thought maybe you’d tell me what’s really going on with you, O’Keefe and the runaway kid wanted for armed robbery.”

  “Yeah, I know.” She glanced up the street to the coffee shop she and Pescoli often frequented. That wouldn’t do. Too many people she knew might be frequenting the cozy little space. She definitely needed more privacy for what she was about to confide. “Look, how about I buy you a drink?”

  “Does it come with a shot of the truth?”

  “Oh. Yeah.” Alvarez opened the door of her Subaru and added, “In fact, it’s two-for-one night.”

  Chapter 15

  “So the kid in the armed robbery in Helena could be your son?” Pescoli said, trying not to sound as stunned as she felt as she stared at her partner across a stained table in a private booth in the Elbow Room tavern, a hole-in-the-wall on the outskirts of town. Here, it was dark, the neon of beer signs shining in bright colors, the smell of beer pervasive, and the patrons played pool, watched sports on the televisions mounted over the bar and shucked free peanuts onto the old concrete floor.

  Pescoli had been a witness to a lot of shocking things in her life as a cop. The killers who’d haunted the woods around Grizzly Falls had been cruel and bizarre. However, Alvarez’s confession that she was the mother of a kid she’d given up for adoption set Pescoli on her heels. She’d thought she’d had her partner pegged and would never have guessed that the by-the-book cop with a master’s degree in psychology and a diet and exercise regimen that would make a professional trainer envious would have such a dark secret that apparently had eaten her up inside. “You could have told me you had a kid,” Pescoli said with a lift of a shoulder. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “It is ... was ... to me.” Alvarez took a sip of her wine, another shocker as she usually stuck to water and green tea and all things healthy.

  “So when Grace Perchant wandered up and said your kid was in danger, you knew it was Reeve?”

  “I don’t believe anything Grace Perchant says. For the love of God, she thinks she talks to ghosts!” Alvarez snapped, irritated.

  “Ouch! Sorry. Hell, I’ve been saying that a lot lately. Everyone tells me I’m insensitive or always pissed off or out of line, and I end up apologizing. Doesn’t seem right.” She took a long swallow from her frosted glass. “Go on.”

  Alvarez stared into her glass as if she could see the future in six ounces of merlot. “I didn’t even know his name.” S
he was shaking her head. “I had no contact. None. That’s the way I thought I’d wanted it.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I just want to find him.” Her dark eyes were troubled and she twisted the stem of the glass between her fingers.

  “What about your son’s father?”

  “Out of the picture. Actually, never in it,” she said darkly. “Didn’t even know I was pregnant.”

  “High school boyfriend? Something like that?”

  Alvarez hesitated, then said, “Something. Not part of the equation, okay?”

  Obviously a subject that was off-limits. “Okay. So what about O’Keefe? He’s tracking the kid, too.”

  “Yeah.”

  Pescoli took a long swallow from her beer as the pool balls clicked from the table around the corner. “I did check on him, y’know. With that Helena detective, Trey Williams. He said the guy was legit, kind of a deputy, but not official.”

  “O’Keefe doesn’t always play by the rules.”

  “So I gathered.”

  “But he’s effective.”

  “That’s what Williams said. So far I haven’t seen much evidence of that. The kid’s his cousin?”

  “Gabe’s adoptive mother, Aggie Reeve, is O’Keefe’s cousin.”

  “Okay, ... like a second cousin, or something. This just keeps getting more and more fun.”

  Alvarez’s head snapped up and she shot a look at her partner that was hard as steel. “Definitely not fun.”

  “Bad choice of words. But you were involved with O’Keefe, right?” Before Alvarez could answer, Pescoli held up a palm. “Don’t go into the whole denial thing, okay? I’m not an ace detective for nothing. I get paid to figure out this crap.”

  “Fine.” Alvarez’s jaw tightened a little. “We were involved.”

  Pescoli raised an eyebrow.

  “Not like that. Well, not really.” Alvarez looked down and swore under her breath. “We were close. I mean, the act is just a technicality, I guess. I thought ... fleetingly that I was in love with him, that he might be ‘the one,’ ”—her mouth twisted with remembered bitterness—“if you believe in all that garbage, which, by the way, I don’t. But before things got too complicated, I backed out. Well, at least I thought I did. Turns out I was wrong.” She twisted the stem more violently, watching, as if in fascination, as the bloodlike liquid sloshed against the bowl of the glass.

  “And that’s when everything went down in San Bernardino.”

  “Yeah. The upshot is that I left the department and so did O’Keefe. His actions were under review, and though technically he was cleared of any criminal charges when Alberto De Maestro was shot, De Maestro, who survived, sued everyone associated with the shooting.”

  “Including the department?”

  “Oh, yeah. Especially the department. Got a lot of press out of that.”

  “So O’Keefe quit.”

  “You read about it?”

  “What I could. The facts. What I didn’t get was the emotional story.”

  “So now you’ve got that.”

  “And you’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”

  “With O’Keefe?” Alvarez shook her head but didn’t meet Pescoli’s eyes. “Nah. It was a fling, make that almost a fling.”

  “And you’re a liar, Alvarez.” Pescoli was tired of the BS and Alvarez trying to convince everyone, herself included, what a badass she was. “You were in love with him then and you still are. So don’t tell me any differently.” She checked her watch and signaled their waitress. “You said two-for-one. I think I need another beer.”

  He’d run out of ideas.

  O’Keefe sat in his hotel room, propped against the pillows of the bed, laptop balanced on his legs, an open bottle of beer on the nightstand next to a half-eaten bag of chips, dinner compliments of the minimart down the street. The television on the dresser at the foot of the bed was turned on, the volume low and casting flickering images from a local news program. He’d caught the weather from an earlier newscast and it wasn’t good, more snow predicted, a blizzard blowing in from Canada.

  Which wouldn’t help him in trying to find the kid.

  “Hell,” he muttered and took another swig, draining his bottle.

  With the help of Trey Williams in Helena, he’d checked Gabriel Reeve’s cell phone records, but the phone hadn’t been used and so far hadn’t been located. The GPS system in it had been disabled. O’Keefe had checked the bus station and local hangouts where a kid could get lost, but Gabe had either not shown up or was like a ghost. He’d gone through Gabe’s Facebook account and any other social media he could find, but Gabe’s page was dark, hadn’t been updated since before the robbery had taken place. No help; even the posts leading up to that day hadn’t offered the hint of a clue as to what the kid had been thinking.

  He’d been in contact with the Helena PD, who had been working the case and had been closemouthed about it, of course. However, O’Keefe’s one contact, Trey Williams, had been a little more forthcoming and had reported that none of Gabe’s friends were copping to hearing from him.

  O’Keefe knew for a fact that Gabe’s family hadn’t had any contact with him.

  It was as if the kid had just disappeared.

  And that was worrisome. Had O’Keefe spooked him and Gabe had left the area? He could have stolen a car or hitchhiked, or God knew what else. But the boy had zeroed in on Selena Alvarez’s apartment; that couldn’t have been a random act. Really—what were the odds?

  Uh-uh. Not a coincidence. Gabe had come here. To Grizzly frickin’ Falls rather than a larger city where he could have more easily blended in and gotten lost. Also, he’d broken into Selena Alvarez’s home. Not a neighbor’s. Not one down the street. He’d beelined for her town house. Weird that. It was as if the kid knew she could be his mother.

  O’Keefe had a call in to the attorney who had set up the original adoption, wanted to find out if Gabe had contacted the firm, but so far, O’Keefe hadn’t heard back.

  The kid was smart. Near-genius IQ. A computer wizard. But he was still only sixteen. How could he disappear so easily?

  Because you screwed it up. You almost had him!

  Pushing aside all of his recriminations, O’Keefe glanced at the television again as he noticed that footage of the crime scene at the church was being played again, the camera panning over the snow-covered crèche where the body had been found. Alvarez would be up to her eyeballs in that one.

  Selena Alvarez!

  His jaw tightened.

  Was it bad luck or fate that had brought him face-to-face with her again?

  He considered another beer tucked away in the mini-fridge that he’d stocked earlier, then decided against it.

  On the news, he caught an image of a man standing in a snowy parking lot with two boys at his side. He turned up the volume and heard the guy’s pleas for his wife to come home. The boys, teenagers, looked miserable and everywhere but at the camera, but the man stared straight into the camera’s lens and asked his wife to come home.

  It was obvious he feared the fate that had happened to the woman found in the block of ice could have happened to his wife. Or actually, as the news reporter clarified, his ex-wife. Nonetheless, he seemed worried sick.

  Poor bastard.

  And the kids ... Jesus.

  He clicked off the set, grabbed his sidearm and decided to talk to Selena Alvarez again. Like it or not, she was the one connection he had to Gabe.

  Telling Pescoli about the baby was probably a mistake, but Alvarez felt cornered, that the truth was bound to come out soon anyway. Gabriel Reeve had seen to that. As she drove home, she thought about the boy and wondered what she’d say to him once he was found.

  “Why did you run into my house?”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “Were you looking for me?”

  “Do you know that giving you up was the hardest decision of my life?”

  Her throat closed as she thought of seeing him fac
e-to-face.

  “Don’t go there,” she warned herself as she turned down the street near her condo complex and recognized O’Keefe’s old Explorer parked near her driveway.

  Her fingers tightened over the steering wheel and she felt her pulse elevate. Did he know anything about Gabe? Her anxiety level ratcheted up a notch. As she pulled into the drive, the door to his SUV opened and he stepped into the street.

  “Any news?” she asked as she climbed out of the Outback and slammed the door shut.

  “Just what I was going to ask you.”

  “Great. I was hoping you’d found my son.”

  “And I was hoping you’d have a lead.”

  “Been busy,” she said. “If you haven’t noticed.”

  “I did.” He reached for her computer case, but she ignored his outstretched hand and walked to the front door of her condo. She didn’t want to be around him; it was just too difficult, but now, because of Gabe, she didn’t have much of a choice.

  As she unlocked the door of her town house, she reminded herself that she had to keep this investigation professional, no matter how personal it seemed. Regardless if he was her son or not, Gabriel Reeve had an adoptive mother and father, a real family complete with siblings. She couldn’t mess with that.

  As for O’Keefe, he was definitely off-limits. She wasn’t going to get involved with him again. Not that he’d shown any outward interest in rekindling their romance, but there was an undeniable chemistry with him, a passion she was determined to keep under wraps.

  Once inside the foyer, she tossed her keys on a side table and slid out of her jacket and boots. O’Keefe, though not actually invited in, did the same as she called for the cat. When Jane Doe appeared on the stairs, poking her face through the rails, O’Keefe actually laughed. “She’s a clown,” he said, and the cat, as if she knew he was talking about her, hurried down the remaining stairs and rubbed up against his leg.

  “No, she’s a traitor, from the looks of it.” But Alvarez felt a smile tug at the corners of her lips. “She was an orphan, her owner killed, and since I was investigating the case and no one seemed to want her, I adopted her.”