by Lisa Jackson
“How did you get home?”
“Oh, they brought me. Heidi was already at Dixie’s with friends and so we ate there. They brought me home and then left again. They’re probably at her house. She said she had something to show him.”
I’ll bet, Pescoli thought but didn’t say it, though her stomach tightened at the thought of her son under the same roof as her disgruntled—make that so-furious-he-was-frothing-at-the-mouth—boss.
“He’s mad at you, you know,” Bianca said.
Pescoli let out a humorless laugh. “He’d better take a number.” Walking to the refrigerator, she decided she’d have a glass of wine, but the minute she opened the bottle of chardonnay, poured herself a glass, and took a sip, her heartburn acted up again. “What a waste,” she said, then jammed the cork into the bottle and set it back into the refrigerator. “Let me guess why he’s mad at me. Was it because I embarrassed him at work, or because I told him to keep his rifle locked up, or my attitude about Heidi or—”
“Because you didn’t tell us you were getting married,” Bianca supplied.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, ‘oh.’ ”
“I was going to tell you both tonight,” she said, “but I really didn’t think about Jeremy seeing me at the office.” She met her daughter’s curious gaze. “Things have been a little crazy, you know.”
“Aren’t they always?”
She nodded. Walking back to the table, she added, “I didn’t mean to upset you guys.”
“You didn’t upset me.” She said it sincerely, with a dismissive lift of her shoulders. “It’s your life. I kinda like Santana, but Jeremy’s not a fan.”
“I know.”
“And he thinks he’s got to be all protective and stuff. You know, the guy thing.” She rolled her eyes as her phone beeped. For once, she ignored it. “He’s like a total doofus, you know. Jer, he tries to be all cool and grown up, but he’s really . . . just clueless.”
“Did you tell him that?” Pescoli asked.
“I’m not suicidal.” She flashed her mother a smile as she wadded up the empty bag of chips. “He thinks he’s so badass. So, come on, show me your ring.” A little self-consciously, Pescoli thrust her hand across the table and her daughter actually squealed as she touched the stone. “So damned awesome!”
“Oh, I take it you approve?”
“Does it make a difference?”
“I am trying to take your feelings into consideration. But, no, I suppose not.”
“Are you going to have a big wedding and can I, like, be your maid of honor and Jeremy can walk you down the aisle?”
“Oh, God. You’re making my head spin. No.”
She appeared deflated. “So what’s the point?”
For a second Pescoli had forgotten how young she was. “The point is we want to live together.”
“Sooo . . . are we going to move to that new place he’s building? At the Brady Long estate?” she asked, the wheels turning in her mind. “That place is, like, the biggest in the county, right?”
“Not Santana’s portion, but, yes, eventually we’ll move into the new house.”
“Cool!” She reached for her phone. “Just make sure I get a bigger room than Jeremy does!” As she started to text with her rapid-fire precision, she added, “Tiffany Anderson is going to be soooo jealous.”
“Well, that’s important,” Pescoli said before she walked to the window and stared outside. She considered texting Jeremy because he was going to hear what a disaster she’d created, then thought better of it. He’d find out about it when he did. Rotating the kinks from her neck, she decided she needed a long, hot shower. Then she’d go to work again from home.
As long as Verdago was on the loose, she would be obsessed with him. That’s just how it worked with her; the closer she came to closing the case, the more all-consuming it became. And this one was close . . . so close.
She could feel it in her bones.
Chapter 31
Carnie Tibalt was sooo over camping in this pathetic little cabin that barely had running water. What had started out as an adventure, a romantic romp, had ended up being just plain boring. While Maurice left and did whatever it was he did, she was stuck here, in the middle of no-frickin’-where. Worse yet, he had the balls to take her truck all because his loser of a wife wouldn’t let him use her SUV.
That Wanda, what a shrew.
Big, fat, self-centered shrew.
Carnie had only met her once, but Maurice had told her all about Wanda and she believed every last word of it. Still, it would have been nice if he had at least filed the papers to finalize that divorce he kept promising.
Oh, well, she did have a fabulous ring, she thought smugly, staring down at her left hand where the clear stone glittered in the light from the fire. It was gorgeous. She smiled and dreamed of a fairy-tale wedding, then as the windows rattled with a blast of cold air, she was brought back to reality. She threw on her coat and grabbed up the lantern so that she could cut and haul in some more firewood. Hopefully, she wouldn’t freeze to death.
Outside the back door, she glanced at the woods, dark and foreboding, even with the snow falling and dusting everything. As a little girl she’d thought snow was magical, but now, it seemed little more than a frigid curtain that wouldn’t allow her to see beyond her lantern’s glow.
Who knew what lurked beneath those hemlocks?
Wolves?
Cougars?
Something worse?
With a furtive glance to the forest, she hurried her pace to the garage, deciding once again she wasn’t cut out for this rustic, frontier-like life. From here on in, her idea of roughing it would be at Super Eight motel, sipping drinks by the pool. Forget this snow. Forget the forest. Forget the damned isolation where her cell phone didn’t even work unless she was standing out in the middle of the damned lane.
Of course she wasn’t supposed to use it, she thought, snagging the hatchet from the inside of the lean-to that served as their garage. What a pain. Setting the lantern on the dirt floor, she found some chunks of pine and deftly cut kindling. The sound of the dry wood cracking, though, somehow reminded her of broken bones.
It was probably because of Maurice.
Obviously he was caught up in something illegal and he was an ex-con, so that was a bit of a problem. Hopefully, it was only drugs or burglary . . . he wouldn’t say. “You need to stay out of it, honey,” he’d told her when she’d asked, and so she’d let it go.
Now, as she swung the stupid hatchet and split kindling and froze her butt out here, she was thinking she’d made a mistake. It wasn’t the first time. She’d started saying to Maurice that it was time to move on, that she was bored, that she missed the crew down at the Long Branch, and he’d gotten snappy with her, even once balled his fist.
Man, he’d better never hit her, because she wasn’t about to put up with that kind of crap. She had once before, with Lenny, and lost a tooth because of it before she’d had him up on charges, so Maurice better mind his p’s and q’s.
So far, so good, she thought as she hauled the wood inside and stoked the fire as best she could, urging the flames along, blowing on them and watching as they finally crackled and caught.
She was just about to add some more wood when she heard the engine of the old van and her heart soared. He was back! For a minute all her complaints faded and she thought about greeting him at the door in nothing but her boots. Wouldn’t that surprise him.
Quickly she stripped down, layer after layer, until she tossed her bra into the pile of her clothes and walked to the center of the living area. The boots were more practical than sexy, but they would have to do, so she posed, tossing her hair over one shoulder, placing a hand on the hip she bent out and with her mouth in a perfect, pouty O that she patterned after Pamela Anderson—well, when she was younger, on Baywatch, like around the time she was married to Tommy Lee—and waited.
She heard the sound of footsteps on the porch.
Her
heart swelled and a smile teased her lips. Maurice would be so surprised!
The door opened to bang against the wall.
“Hey, baby,” she cooed before she saw the rifle. “Wha—??”
Blam!!!
The bullet slammed deep into her brain and she dropped.
Pescoli didn’t sleep a wink.
She’d watched the digital display on her clock count off the hours, but while the dogs snored and Bianca holed up in her room, Pescoli thought about the case and tried not to worry about the fact that her son hadn’t bothered to return home. Images came to mind, mental images of Verdago at his sentencing threatening the judge, or Grayson’s body jerking from the attack upon him, or the ashes in Kathryn Samuels-Piquard’s fireplace, or Wanda Verdago’s apartment with the woman’s mouth opening and closing, her words a blur, a sword running through her son’s body . . . She jerked in bed, suddenly fully awake and realizing she’d actually been dozing, hovering at that twilight place at the edge of sleep.
Her head pounded and she felt a general malaise. Tossing and turning, she finally gave up at four-thirty and decided to get on with what promised to be the day from hell.
After letting the confused and yawning dogs outside, she brewed coffee and grabbed one of Bianca’s protein bars that tasted about as good as it sounded, then threw on her clothes, made a quick stab at her makeup, and scribbled a note to her daughter and ghost of a son.
“Be good,” she warned the dogs in a whisper before peeking into Bianca’s room to find her daughter sleeping soundly, her pink duvet wrapped around her like a cocoon.
The house was locked tight, Bianca secure with two dogs to protect her. Pouring hot coffee into a travel mug, she shrugged into her coat and took off.
For some reason, she was jazzed. Maybe it was the caffeine or the lack of sleep, but she was energized and ready to take on the day no matter how it played out, even though she knew it would be a rough shift at the station.
Not long ago, she’d been considered a hero; she and Alvarez having brought several serial killers to justice. But today, and for the rest of the year and into the next, probably, she would be the goat.
“Okay, it’s on,” she told herself as she pulled into the parking lot just before five. Usually this section of Grizzly Falls with its busy street that cut through some of the county offices was bustling with activity, but at this early hour the sheriff’s department was quiet, the few cars in the parking lot covered with two inches of snow, no one on the street.
Spying the paper stand, and inwardly cursing herself for being a masochist, she found the right change and saw, through the glass of the box, her picture front and center. Muttering under her breath, she was able to pick up the early edition of the Mountain Reporter.
Tucking the paper under her arm, she made her way inside and spread the newspaper open, reading the long article:
DETECTIVES INVOLVED IN “WILD ELK” CHASE
“Thanks, Manny,” she said as she scanned the article that put Alvarez and herself in a very unpleasant light.
No wonder she had sixteen calls on her voice mail already this morning, over half of them from local news stations.
That’s what you get for being an idiot and even talking to Douglas.
It was going to be a long day.
Pushing aside her thoughts about what was literally yesterday’s news, she painstakingly went over all the evidence on the case, then wrote her report about the events leading up to, and what had actually happened at, Samuels’s cabin.
Half expecting a text or a call from Jeremy, she kept an eye on her phone as she would have liked to give him a heads-up about what had happened. After eight, she sent him a text, but still he didn’t respond, and she decided he either had the day off or was marked to show up in the afternoon. Hopefully by then some of the backlash from yesterday’s botched assignment would have dissipated.
As the morning progressed and the day shift arrived, the familiar noises of the department reached her ears: phones ringing, the fax machine chunking out information, the old heating system rumbling, and the click of Joelle’s heels as she arrived. Cell phones buzzed or chirped while the smell of coffee seeped through the offices and feet shuffled or marched in the hallway outside her door. Brett Gage’s belly laugh erupted from somewhere near the interrogation rooms, and she couldn’t help but wonder if she were the butt of the department’s recent jokes.
Now you really are getting paranoid, that inner voice kept reminding her.
She refilled her cup of coffee in the lunchroom and told herself the sidelong glances from the other officers weren’t smirks, that the open paper with her picture on the front page wasn’t all that unusual. People read the paper every day.
Besides, most of them were too busy with their own workload to worry about her screwup.
“Hey, Pescoli?” Rick Hanson called to her. He was a thin guy with short-cropped red hair, tall enough to have played basketball, and sometimes thick as a brick. He and his partner, Dale Connors, were seated at the table, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the sports page before hitting the road. “I heard you made a big catch yesterday.” Hanson was grinning wide, glad for a chance to needle her.
Polishing the lenses of his glasses with a napkin, Connors, who had his partner beat by a good fifty pounds, chuckled. “So what’re you serving for New Year’s? I hear elk steaks are great.”
“Or a roast,” Hanson said. “Hey, Pescoli, how about everyone coming over to your place for a roast?”
Connors added, “Of you!” as if she hadn’t caught the joke.
“Sure. Why not?” She wasn’t going to let them get to her.
“Oh, the mighty, how they have fallen,” Connors added, sliding his glasses onto the bridge of his nose and smirking. He’d always been a jerk, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he bugged the crap out of her.
She didn’t bother responding, just walked out of the lunchroom doing a slow boil.
“Do you know what time it is?” Wanda Verdago was not pleased to be woken up even though, according to Alvarez’s watch, it was after ten in the morning. In the same too-small bathrobe but without makeup, she looked younger and fresher. “I don’t know why you’re here. I told you everything I know!”
“I just need to clear up a few details,” Alvarez assured her.
“Couldn’t you have called?”
“I was over here anyway,” Alvarez lied and waited while Wanda reluctantly opened the screen door and let her inside an apartment that hadn’t changed much since their previous interview. Alvarez purposely hadn’t called because she wanted to catch the woman’s reaction.
“I read that you and that partner of yours really messed up yesterday, looking for Maurice and coming up with a poacher.” She plopped into her spot on the couch again, on the opposite end from an overflowing basket of laundry. “What is it you want to know?”
“It’s about Joey Lundeen,” Alvarez said, sitting down and watching the big woman stiffen slightly.
For a split second, fear flashed in her eyes, though as quickly as it flared, it vanished. “I didn’t know him.”
“But you heard he disappeared, right, around fifteen years ago. You were with Maurice then, when he was out of the military.”
“We were married,” she agreed, frowning at the mention of her husband. “Okay, I know that he and Joey had it out the night before Joey disappeared. The police came nosing around then, too, but they couldn’t pin anything on Maurice.” The hint of a smile teased her pale lips. She was holding out and proud of whatever it was she was hiding.
“Now that your husband has gone missing and might be involved in some other crimes, the Joey Lundeen disappearance is being looked into again.”
“So what?”
“So, if you know anything, this would be the time to let me know.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because it’s a crime to withhold evidence. For example, say we find out that Joe
y didn’t just leave the area, that he actually was murdered and you knew something about it, then you would be tried as an accomplice.” That maybe stretched the truth a bit, but it had the desired effect. Wanda looked quickly away and fiddled with the “cubic Z” ring that had returned to her left ring finger since Alvarez’s last visit.
“It would be a shame if you had to do time for something Maurice did, especially since he’s thrown you over for Carnie Tibalt and—”
“I’m still married to him!” Wanda cut in, her face an angry, red pout. “She’s nothing to him, just something to play with. He loves me!” she said, hooking a thumb at her chest, where her robe gapped to display her ill-fitting pajamas.
“You’ve talked to him?”
“No . . . I . . .” She swallowed hard, tears again filling her eyes.
“Well, think about it, Mrs. Verdago. You might believe you’re saving him, but what about you? If the situation were reversed and he had to cover for you, would he do it? I don’t think so. What’s he ever done for you besides lie to you and place a fake diamond on your finger?”
Wanda Verdago blinked and sniffed, her jaw set as Alvarez left her card on the coffee table. “Call me if you change your mind.” She took three steps toward the door to let herself out, when Wanda let out an unhappy sob.
“Wait,” she called, the waterworks flowing steadily now. “Okay. You’re right. I . . . I do have some information. About Joey. About what happened. But I want a lawyer and immunity if I testify. I don’t want to set one foot in jail.” She shuddered in her tight bathrobe. “I’ve seen enough episodes of Law and Order. I know my rights.”
It was one thing to be the butt of the jokes of morons who hadn’t bothered growing up, it was quite another to agree with them that she’d made a major screwup.
What had she missed? What, what, what?
Again, Pescoli looked at the maps, and again she went over the information . . . the traffic cam was located at the last major intersection out of town, the road Verdago had been driving on headed into the hills. Because of the time of the photograph—at 3:17 in the morning—she’d just assumed he’d been returning to his hideout. That, as Brewster had so definitely pointed out, was wrong. Settling back in her chair, she eyed the county and state maps.
