Afraid to Die

by Lisa Jackson

  “It’s early.”

  “I know, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  She withdrew a Christmas card from the red envelope. “You think we have another victim?”

  “Could be.” Pescoli eyed the envelope and grinned. In a singsong voice, she said, “Uh-oh. Looks like someone got a Secret Santa card.”

  Alvarez rolled her eyes. “Could be, I guess.” Then she turned the conversation back to Johnna Phillips. “Let’s hope she’s just avoiding the ex.”

  “Seems like she’s going to extreme measures.”

  “Maybe that’s what you have to do with this guy.” She opened the card. “Oh, damn,” she whispered, her eyes rounding, her face losing all color. She dropped the card onto her desk as if it had burned her fingers. “Son of a bitch!”

  Pescoli saw the flap of the card open. Tucked inside, covering the message, was a photograph of a naked woman. “Oh, no.”

  “It’s Brenda Sutherland,” Alvarez whispered, seeming to pull herself together a bit, though she was still white as a sheet.

  Leaning over the desk, closer to the open card, Pescoli got a better look at the image of a woman who was either dead or nearly so, naked except for a locket on a chain surrounding her neck. And, yes, she was either Brenda Sutherland or her twin. The chain around her neck had been looped twice, the links cutting into Brenda’s flesh, leaving her skin bruised and broken.

  “Sick bastard,” Pescoli whispered.

  Alvarez visibly swallowed hard. “That’s mine,” she admitted. “The locket, it was one I got when I was confirmed in the church. Oh, Lord ...” Alvarez was staring at the open card as if it were the embodiment of evil just as one of those prerecorded greetings that could be tucked inside began playing the tinny notes of “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”

  Chapter 27

  “I don’t know why anyone would single me out,” Alvarez said, answering the same question for what seemed like the seventy-fifth time that day. Sitting in the passenger seat of Pescoli’s Jeep, she stared out the windshield, watching the taillights of the other vehicles and the wipers slap away the ever-falling snow. It had been a long day but finally they were on their way to pick up Alvarez’s car.

  She hazarded a glance out the window as they drove past a school, where a few kids, dressed in jackets, scarves and hats, were playing in the snow on the flocked playground.

  After receiving the sick Christmas card this morning, she’d been escorted into one of the interview rooms to discuss, with Agents Halden and Chandler, any connection she might have to the killer or any of his victims, Brenda Sutherland now confirmed as his third.

  Since his identity was still unknown, she had no idea how she’d ever run across him. As for the victims, she knew Brenda by name, as she worked at Wild Will’s, and she’d seen Lissa Parsons at her exercise club, but she was pretty certain she’d never seen Lara Sue Gilfry in her life. Even when questioning Rod Larimer, the obnoxious innkeeper of the Bull and Bear bed-and-breakfast on a previous case, she’d never run across Lara Sue, who had worked there.

  She’d answered Halden and Chandler’s questions as well as she could, going over her entire life history, but in the end, she’d given them nothing that could connect her to the killer. “Trust me, I’d love to nail the son of a bitch’s hide,” she’d sworn to Halden, “but I have no idea who he is.”

  Nor did they.

  Yet.

  After the intense interview with the FBI agents, Dan Grayson had called her into his office, and while his dog snored from his dog bed in the corner near a potted plant, Grayson had informed her that he was relieving her of her responsibilities in the ice-mummy case. “Somehow, the killer’s targeted you. I don’t know why, nor do you, but I think it would be best if we let someone else handle the case. Pescoli can work with Gage on this one.”

  Brett Gage was the chief criminal detective in the department. As such, he oversaw all of the cases and spent most of his time behind a desk. At forty, he was whip thin, a runner, and this was the first time since she’d been with Pinewood County that Alvarez had seen him in an actual investigative role.

  “You can’t take me off the case.”

  “I can and I will.” He’d stared at her long and hard, this man whom she’d fantasized she’d loved. His eyes looked haunted, as if the weight not only of the county’s safety, but that of the whole damned state rested on his broad shoulders. “I’m the sheriff. Remember?”

  “But—”

  “Don’t argue, Detective,” he’d said, all business. “And I’ll see to it that your place is watched.”

  “You don’t have to do that.” She knew the department was stretched thin, despite the help from the state police and the FBI on this particular case. With the freezing of creeks and snapping of electrical lines, and a major blizzard predicted, there just weren’t enough deputies to go around. Having one assigned to watch her just wasn’t in the budget.

  He’d slid three pictures across his desk, one of each of the victims. Including the most recent of Brenda Sutherland, the picture that had been sent to her from the killer. “These women are wearing pieces of your jewelry. Taken from your place. Isn’t that what you said?” His jaw, beneath a day’s worth of whiskers, had been set in stone.

  “Yes.”

  “Thought so. And the boy, Gabriel Reeve, he’s most likely your son, isn’t that so?”

  She nodded.

  “Reeve showed up at your place at the same time as the killer.”

  “It seems so,” she’d admitted.

  “Quite a coincidence.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in coincidences.”

  “I don’t.” When Grayson had looked at her again, Alvarez had thought she’d glimpsed more than just the concern of a man who happened to be her boss; she’d seen a flicker of some deeper emotion that he’d quickly masked. He’d cleared his throat, then said, “Change your locks. Immediately. And don’t argue with me about the surveillance of your place. This is your safety we’re talking about. And take Sturgis with you. He’ll raise a ruckus if anyone tries to break in.”

  She’d looked over at the sleeping lab. His tail thumped at the sound of his name, but Sturgis hadn’t so much as lifted his head.

  “Thanks, but I want my dog back.”

  “It’s just until you get your dog.”

  “No ... really ... But I appreciate the offer.” Alvarez knew how much the lab meant to Grayson, and she wasn’t going to borrow the dog, not even for a night. Despite the freak who had the nerve to break into her house and steal her things. Who was the guy? How did he know her? And more importantly, how the hell was she going to run him in?

  There had to be some way.

  Grayson had scratched at his beard. “If you change your mind ...”

  “I’ll let you know.” She’d left his office feeling stripped bare for the world to see, that all of her carefully kept secrets were suddenly thrown open for public viewing, and public discussion. It made her more than uncomfortable. It made her mad. Worse than that, it frightened her, caused her nerves to tighten, made her jump at shadows. Damn it all to hell, it freaked her out. She knew the son of a bitch had wanted to scare the liver out of her, and he’d just about done it.

  Just about.

  Now, driving to pick up her Subaru, her partner was once again asking her about her connection to the killer.

  “It’s got to be someone from your past,” Pescoli said as she drove along the road winding down Boxer Bluff to the lower part of the city.

  “I don’t know who. We’ve been through this over and over again.”

  “Someone who knew Lara Sue Gilfry, Lissa Parsons and Brenda Sutherland.” Since Alvarez had received the horrifying Christmas card this morning and turned it in, everyone associated with the ice-mummy case knew that Brenda Sutherland was, indeed, in the clutches of one of the sickest serial killers in the history of the state. The speculation of her being a runaway mother or anything else had been positively sque
lched. “I gave Chandler and Halden a list of everyone I’ve ever helped incarcerate, all my known enemies, everyone I’ve ever dated, anyone who might have a problem with me and anyone else I could think of, but no one whom I think would actually do this.”

  Pescoli braked at the base of the hill at the train tracks where the barriers had descended to block the road, lights flashing a warning. A freight train barreled past, clacking loudly on the tracks, and oddly, Alvarez remembered a time, long ago, when, growing up, she and her siblings, all piled in the old station wagon would, at railroad crossings, count the cars as they raced past. Alvarez had always wondered what was hidden in the boxcars and had guessed where the train was headed. It has always been to some exotic destination, the big cities of Los Angeles or San Francisco or Denver or Seattle, anywhere far from the little town of Woodburn.

  “He’s targeting you.” Pescoli was reaching into the console, her fingers scrabbling inside until she came up with a crumpled pack of cigarettes. “Empty. Damn. Check the glove box, would you?”

  Alvarez opened the compartment but found only tissues, eyeglass cases and a raft of papers. “Nuh-uh.”

  “Crap!”

  “You’ll live,” Alvarez predicted, though she knew her partner, in times of great stress, would sneak a smoke or two, never really taking up the habit again but never completely and cold-turkey quitting. “Probably lots longer.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  The train sped past, the last car flying past and the barriers, lights still flashing, slowly lifting.

  Pescoli tossed the empty pack on the floor. “Did you hear me? I said the son of a bitch is targeting you.”

  “Yeah, I know. I just don’t know why.”

  “Or who,” Pescoli thought aloud.

  “The FBI is working on it,” Alvarez said uncomfortably. She’d never been one to like the limelight and now she was squarely in the middle of it. Because of the Christmas card with Brenda Sutherland’s photo inside, Alvarez’s life was being torn apart and examined under a microscope. Like the victims and those close to each of the women who had gone missing, Alvarez, too, was dealing with having her life studied and dissected. When pressed about the possibility of Gabriel Reeve being her son, she’d been forced to bare her soul. Emilio’s name had come up as the boy’s father. As she’d told Pescoli, everyone she’d ever dealt with had all of a sudden become potential suspects, especially anyone she’d thwarted. All the people she’d known, the men she’d dated, those criminals she’d helped convict and their families, were being stored in computer banks, cross-referenced to the known victims.

  She thought now, as Pescoli wheeled into the garage where her car was parked, that it was really weird to be the subject of an investigation rather than being the detective investigating an incident. And now, she was off the case.

  “So no one has a key to your place?” Pescoli asked, and Alvarez sent her an I-can’t-believe-you-asked-me-that look. “You dated a couple of guys ...”

  “As I told Chandler and Halden, no. Not even the handyman who comes around and, no, I don’t keep a key hidden outside, so I don’t know how the guy got in.”

  “Could one of the men you dated have ... ‘borrowed’ a key and had another one made?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted, thinking back to the few times that a man had brought her home from a date or picked up her purse at a ball game ... or ... who knew? Could one of them have taken an impression or found the spare key in the side pocket of her purse and made a duplicate only to return it? She didn’t think so, but then when she remembered the look in Grover Pankretz’s eyes when she’d broken it off with him, she’d felt a chill that ran surprisingly deep. He, though, was married now, presumably happily.

  “You changed the locks when you bought the place?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Okay, okay. Just asking.” Pescoli drove over the tracks and pulled into a convenience store. “This’ll just take a sec. Want anything?”

  “No.” She was still shaking her head as Pescoli unstrapped her seat belt and let herself out of the car. She left the engine running, the wipers still flicking away snow accumulation, the police band crackling while officers and dispatch communicated crimes in progress. Within minutes she was back, a fresh pack of cigarettes and two drinks in her hands. “Here ya go. Diet Coke,” she said as she handed one drink to Alvarez and stashed hers in a cup holder near the console.

  “I don’t drink diet.”

  “Then put it in your holder and I’ll take care of it.” After stashing the Marlboro Lights into the console and a second in the glove box, she put the Jeep into gear and wheeled out of the parking lot.

  They drove along the river, past the falls, to an industrial section of town, where the department’s garage was located, a tall fence with razor wire surrounding the building and parking area. As they pulled into the lot, Pescoli said, “I don’t like that this psycho’s got you on his radar.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Grayson will see that you’re protected,” Pescoli said, though she sounded concerned.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Pescoli parked and let the Jeep idle. “For the record, I’m not crazy about working with Gage. When was the last time he actually worked a case? In the nineties?”

  “Ouch! Careful. I think he’s younger than you.”

  “Probably, it seems like everyone who’s hired these days is about three years older than Jeremy, and let me tell you, that’s a scary thought.”

  Alvarez chuckled as she stepped out of the Jeep. “See ya tomorrow.” But it was weird to say the words knowing that Pescoli would be still knee deep in the case and she’d be relegated to something else, most likely Len Bradshaw’s death, which was about to be ruled accidental.

  That, of course, was all for show.

  No way would she stop investigating the ice-mummy murders. She knew it, Pescoli knew it and, of course, Dan Grayson knew it as well.

  Pescoli lit up the minute she was out of the parking lot. She rolled the window down, of course, allowing the smoke to curl out the window and the frigid breath of winter into the Jeep’s interior. Who did she think she was kidding? Everyone in the department, her kids and even Santana knew in times of deep stress she had a cig or two. That was it. Then she was done until the next calamity hit, which, unfortunately at this rate, would push her back to her pack-a-day habit again.

  She took a long drag, then stubbed the damned thing out. She just needed to clear her head and think, and sometimes, it seemed, nicotine helped that process along.

  Okay, she knew she was kidding herself, but as she drove out of town toward her little cabin in the woods, she drove by rote, or on automatic pilot, as she referred to it to everyone but her children. To Jeremy and Bianca, she swore that she was always completely alert behind the wheel, that she never once spaced out.

  Following a van from the senior center that was so slow she wanted to scream, she turned off the main road and took surface streets through the heart of town and behind the courthouse. She caught a glimpse of the First Union bank sign and felt her heart sink.

  Johnna Phillips had never shown up for work, and when the deputies had checked throughout the day, they discovered she’d apparently never returned home. Just like the ex-boyfriend, Carl Anderson, had said when he’d called Pescoli’s cell.

  She still was going to give Luke a very sharp piece of her mind about handing out her cell phone, but in this case, she almost understood, as Carl, the recently dumped ex, was scared out of his mind to think his girlfriend had been abducted by the sadistic killer who worked so hard to kill his victims without any marks, then display them publicly.

  “Who are you, you bastard?” she asked as she passed out of the business section where the office fronts gave way to apartments and houses, some decorated with hundreds of glowing lights, a few with lawn decorations that served to remind her only of the extra wise man in Preacher Mullins’s nativity scene and the snowman in
Mabel Enstad’s yard. Now, because of the sick Christmas card sent to Alvarez, the police knew that Brenda Sutherland, no doubt already dead, would probably be joining the others in someone’s Christmas display.

  “Where, you creep?” she asked as the police band crackled in the console and she left the streetlights of Grizzly Falls behind her. Snowflakes danced in the beams of her headlights, and the open fields, blanketed in white, stretched away from the road as she considered the case and the victims, all different ages, sizes and shapes. The FBI was checking everyone associated with the Enstads and the Presbyterian church, cross-referencing them with friends, enemies or acquaintances of the victims. Alvarez was right, her own life was about to be thrown open to public scrutiny and Pescoli wondered about the men she’d sent up the river, or dated, or somehow wronged. Gabriel Reeve’s biological father would be questioned, and even Alberto De Maestro would be tracked down and grilled.

  Pescoli even flirted with the idea that the killer might be a woman, but it just didn’t seem right; there were too many sexual innuendos involved, the naked bodies, the snow woman positioned as if the snowman was “doing” her from behind. No ... Pescoli couldn’t see a woman going to those lengths.

  Anything’s possible. Maybe the killer is trying to throw you off ... Keep an open mind.

  Despite the arguments running through her mind, she’d bet her next five months’ salary that the creep was a man. Again, she thought of the “artists” who sculpted ice, those that had been in Missoula over the weekend, none of which could be detained, all who had rock-solid alibis. Hank Yardley and George Flanders had been her best guesses, especially that hothead Flanders, who had wielded an ice pick before, sending his neighbor to ICU. As a farmer, he worked his own hours, but he was married and the current Mrs. Flanders was her husband’s alibi.

  And Pescoli was looking into everyone who’d ever come into contact with Alvarez on a personal level, just checking their backgrounds to find out if there was a history of violence in their earlier years.