by Lisa Jackson
In her mind’s eye, she saw Nate, with his sexy, crooked, blindingly white smile and honed, muscular body. He was an outdoorsman, good with animals, and oh so good with her. Yeah, she was into him. Yeah, the sex was phenomenal. No, it hadn’t messed her up with her kids. Nate never came first. The kids did.
But the job—now the job was demanding.
“Jeremy knows you’re dating some drifter type.”
“My private life, or lack thereof, is not relevant to this conversation. I take care of the kids, Lucky, and you know it.”
“You work all the time.”
“Except when I’m screwing my brains out with some drifter, right? Now, you listen to me, Lucky. I was faithful to you from the time we met. You, on the other hand, didn’t seem to realize what the term ‘adultery’ meant, so get off your high horse and leave my personal life out of this. I’ve tried like hell to get along with you because you are Bianca’s father, but if push comes to shove, I’ll take the kids from you.”
“Michelle and I are more stable, more financially secure.”
“And why is that? Because you owe me over seven thousand dollars in back child support and medical expenses? You know, I could use that money. The only reason I haven’t taken you to court already is that I didn’t want the kids to see us fight. I figured you’d be good for it anyway, that when college rolled around, you’d make it up to them. But now I’m not so sure. So take all your ‘emotionally stable, financially secure’ crap and shove it. Tell Jeremy, and Bianca, for that matter, the answer is no. Now I’ve got work to do—”
“Always. You’ve always got work to do.”
“Someone has to pay the bills,” she said, “and it sure as hell isn’t going to be the kids’ stable, secure father, is it?” In the rearview, she watched Cort Brewster walk across the lot to a back door. He didn’t so much as glance in her direction, a bad sign, as they always waved or acknowledged each other. Again her guts tightened.
Lucky wasn’t taking her attack lying down. “You know, Regan, Bianca’s right. You really can be a bitch.”
“That’s hardly a news flash.” But he’d wounded her. Bringing their daughter into the fight, hitting her where it hurt the most. But she wasn’t about to buckle. “Just make sure the kids are both home tonight. Jeremy has chores, which, by the way, you could back me up on. He was picked up last night. He was in the wrong. And when you leave Bianca at the house, leave a check, too. At least a grand. No…make that two, and start the hell whittling that debt down or, trust me, I will take you to court. Merry Christmas!” She snapped off the phone and found herself shaking inside. No one on this earth could make her as crazy as Lucky Pescoli. Even his cute little wife wasn’t as irritating. In fact, given spending an evening with either Michelle or Lucky, Pescoli would probably pick the bubblehead.
“Damn. Damn. Damn.” She climbed out of the car and was still steaming as she marched through the wintry cold and into the back door of the building.
Alvarez had done her homework.
And something was off.
Really off, she thought as she drove into the parking lot of the station, spying the group of news reporters huddled near the front door, the vans parked in the visitors’ lot.
The case had turned on its ear and the press knew all about it. They’d known that MacGregor had been held as a “person of interest,” then released early this morning.
She pulled into the spot reserved for employees, then walked to a back door to avoid the cluster of reporters camped out near the front of the building. She was fighting a headache, and her nose was starting to run, but she’d be damned if she was going to fall victim to a cold virus now, a few days before Christmas, with this case still unsolved.
And just wait until the holiday.
For all the peace and goodwill of the season, there were always the family disputes and suicides and officers taking time off to be with their loved ones.
She could not afford to be less than a hundred percent. Not now. She had far too much to do.
Inside, the sheriff’s office was a madhouse.
All calm shattered.
Everyone who could be was on duty.
Phones rang, people talked, boots scraped on the floor. Somewhere a copy machine was churning out pages, and through it all, barely discernible, was the sound of piped-in music, orchestral arrangements of Christmas classics.
Peeling off her jacket and hat, Selena found her cubicle, checked her e-mail and messages, then, still sniffing, walked into the break room, where she made herself a cup of hot tea. Her grandmother swore by tea with lemon and honey in it; her grandfather always supplemented the home remedy with a shot or two of whiskey or tequila, whatever was handy and out of Grandma Rosarita’s watchful eye.
Still dunking the tea bag in her cup, she walked to Pescoli’s desk.
Her partner was flipping through a thick stack of lab and autopsy reports, witness statements and notes she’d taken. “I can’t believe MacGregor wasn’t our killer,” she groused. “Now we’re back to square one.”
“It happens,” Alvarez said, sharing her partner’s disappointment.
Pescoli rolled her chair back and shook her head. “I just hate being two steps behind this guy.” She rubbed the nape of her neck.
“How’d it go with Jeremy?” Alvarez asked, tossing her tea bag into the plastic wastebasket at the corner of Pescoli’s desk.
Pescoli’s shoulders tightened. “He’s not talking to me. But I think I’ll live.” With a glance toward the undersheriff’s office she added, “So far, I haven’t spoken to Cort. He’s probably gonna want Jeremy run out of town on a rail or strung up by his balls.”
“He’s just a kid.”
“A stupid kid.” She threw up one hand. “For someone as smart as all get-out, he can be dumber than dirt.”
“They all are sometimes. We all made major errors in judgment growing up.”
Pescoli glanced up at her and squinted, as if she were trying to figure out what really made her partner tick. “I stole my dad’s car and wrecked it. Three girls with me. We were all lucky no one was hurt. But there wasn’t any booze or drugs involved. What about you?”
Alvarez didn’t like where this was heading. Too personal. “The usual stuff. Cutting out of school, smoking behind the gym, sneaking out. It wasn’t major, I guess, because I was pretty focused. But I think it’s pretty normal.” She didn’t say that she’d trusted the wrong people, that one in particular had abused that trust and her life had never been the same.
“It’s different when it’s your own kids, y’know? You would lay down your life for them in a heartbeat, and the next second you want to throttle them. I’m gonna have to break the ice with Brewster, but not yet.” She picked up a well-worn stack of papers, her eyes on Brewster’s office.
Alvarez took an experimental sip of her tea. “Did you get the information Zoller retrieved on the vics?”
“Yep.”
“I was going to call you last night,” Alvarez started, but Pescoli waved her aside.
“It was a crazy night,” she said dismissively. “But look at this. I’ve been doing a little research on Jillian Rivers, the victim who’s different from the others. I double-checked her story, you know, about the ex-husband and the photos.” She motioned to a stack of photographs, copies of the originals they’d found with Jillian Rivers’s things at MacGregor’s cabin.
Alvarez picked up the snapshots of the man walking across the street. The photograph was grainy and the man could have been the dead husband, she supposed, as she glanced at another shot, one of Aaron Caruso’s driver’s license, which was over ten years old. There was a resemblance, but nothing definite that she could see, no telltale ID marks like a tattoo or scar or even a mole in the same place.
“I googled Jillian Rivers aka Jillian Caruso, as well as her first husband, and I located newspaper articles from the towns where she lived.”
“You’ve been busy.”
“Got here early,�
� Pescoli explained, again glancing toward Cort Brewster’s closed door. “Anyway, it turns out that this husband she told us about, the first one, Aaron Caruso, he didn’t just disappear. He disappeared with a whole lotta OPM.”
“Other people’s money?” Alvarez was about to drop the photos but stopped. “An embezzler? Scam artist?”
“Bingo. You got it. Look at this.” She handed Alvarez several newspaper articles that she’d printed out, along with reports from an earlier investigation involving the SEC.
Selena placed her cup on the end of Pescoli’s desk as she skimmed the articles. “So Caruso left his wife holding the bag.”
“Only it was empty. Far as anyone can tell. At that time, there was no indication that she had any money. And he took half a million dollars, ten years ago.”
Alvarez stared again at the photos. This guy in the old cap? He absconded with five-hundred grand? “None of the other victims had anything like this in their past.”
“Another anomaly.” Pescoli leaned back in her chair and tapped the ring finger of her right hand with her thumb. “Jillian Rivers is the victim who falls away from the usual MO. The killing site was only partially correct. The little open space in the forest and the single tree with her tied up naked—that was right. But that’s about as far as it goes. The note left at the scene wasn’t right, the star carved over her head wrong. The rope that bound her was different. The shoe size of the doer was smaller, the fact that he carried her rather than prodded her along in her bare feet another difference. This isn’t an evolving MO. It’s something else.” She held Alvarez’s gaze, squinting a little as she thought. “I bet whoever wants Jillian Rivers dead was just trying to throw us off. They’re the copycat.”
“So we need to go back to motive,” Alvarez thought aloud.
“Exactly. I think we should find out who inherits if Ms. Rivers meets an untimely end. She’s probably got some assets. Life insurance. Bank accounts. Retirement plans. Real estate. Whatever. Let’s see if she has a will. She’s got no kids, right?”
“Just a mother and a sister with a couple of kids.”
“And an ex who’s an attorney, lives in the state and might have drawn up her will while they were still married. If she hasn’t changed it, then he could inherit. Maybe he got wind of the fact that she was going to rewrite it?”
“A big leap there,” Alvarez pointed out. “Just because he’s an ex—”
“Yeah, well, I go by the theory that the only good ex-husband is a dead ex-husband.”
“What about the other victims?”
Pescoli scowled. “Therein lies the problem. Nina Salvadore had a small insurance policy on herself; the beneficiary was her kid. Theresa Charleton and Wendy Ito had no insurance and, as far as we can tell, their estates aren’t worth much. Neither owned their homes and their cars are totaled. Theresa Charleton’s Ford Eclipse isn’t worth much now, and Wendy Ito still owed a lot of money on her Prius, so the bank will get the insurance proceeds to pay off the loan. Neither woman had a will, so whatever Charleton had will go to her husband, and Wendy Ito’s estate, if there is anything, will go to her parents.”
“We’re still missing a car.”
Pescoli nodded. “But when we find it, I’m betting it’s emptied out. Just like the others.”
“And all the heirs seem grief-riddled?”
“You got that right. If I get one more call from Lyle Wilson, I might just scream.”
“Wilson? The brother of Theresa Charleton?”
“He seems to think that if he calls more often, we’ll catch the killer sooner. Like we’d slack off if he didn’t keep nudging us.”
“He feels helpless and doesn’t know what to do.”
“Well, he can back the hell off, that’s what he can do.”
“You tell him that?” Alvarez took another long swallow of tea, the hot liquid soothing her throat.
“Not in so many words, no. But he got the message.”
“I bet he did.” Alvarez coughed, nearly spilling her tea.
“Hey, are you sick or something?”
“Nah, maybe a cold coming on.”
“You’ve got to nip that in the bud.” She opened a drawer to showcase an array of over-the-counter meds. “I’ve got anything you need…take the daytime non-drowsy stuff.” She found a packet of cold tablets and a bottle of ibuprofen.
“This is like a drugstore,” Alvarez said.
“Yeah, I know, but I can’t afford to be sick.” She tossed the packet to Alvarez, who caught it without slopping any of her tea. “Neither can you.” She glanced at her watch. “Get ready, we’ve got a meeting in half an hour. The phone lines in the task force room have been going nuts, the Feds have been doing their own thing and Grayson’s got to come up with a statement for the press.”
“Sounds like fun,” Alvarez muttered as she slid out the card of cold tablets and popped one from its blister pack. Usually she wasn’t a fan of medication bought without a prescription, but today she was willing to try anything.
“Fun?” Pescoli glanced at her partner. “You really do need to get out more.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
It took Jillian nearly two hours to secure her release from the hospital.
Dr. Haas, tall, reed-thin, with short silvery hair and deep crow’s feet around his eyes, tried to intervene, to convince her that she needed more time to allow her system to recuperate, but she was having none of it.
“Fine.” The doctor, thin lips pinched, nostrils slightly flared, finally acquiesced, albeit unwillingly, as MacGregor waited, leaning insouciantly against the wall, jean-clad hips resting on the edge of the counter that encased the sink. “I can’t stop you.” Haas handed her a prescription and signed the orders for her release. With a final disapproving glance, he swept out of the room, and Jillian, after hobbling to the bathroom, dressed with difficulty in the clothes that the sheriff’s department had left for her. Shoes were a problem, as nothing fit over her wrapped ankle, but her boot-cut jeans were a godsend.
“I don’t know how you think you’re going to track down your dead husband and outrun a killer on crutches,” MacGregor commented.
“One crutch,” she corrected, “and remember, I have you, right?”
He inclined his head. “I think I’ve got as much at stake in this as you do. The sheriff’s department and the FBI released me, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still on their radar for this mess.”
“And you’re not willing to sit around and wait for them to catch the guy either.”
“Nope.” His face was grim. “Whoever he is, he set me up, too. Shot my dog. Left you out in the woods to die. Pointed the authorities in my direction. No, Jillian, I’m not going to wait for the detectives. They’d just as soon pin this on me and I wouldn’t be the first innocent man locked away.”
She knew he was thinking of the time he’d done in Colorado. “Good, then let’s get out of here. I was thinking we should start in Missoula, since that’s where the envelopes that I received were postmarked. That’s where I was heading in the first place.”
“Any place special?”
“Well, I was going to start with Mason, my ex. He’s the only person I know there, I mean, the only one who has any axe to grind with me.” She paused. Something wasn’t right about the whole Missoula thing. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was an idea tugging at the back of her mind, a notion that she couldn’t quite grasp, a feeling that Missoula, Montana, was all wrong. Even a decoy. But that sensation faded in an instant, a wispy thought that escaped her.
MacGregor seemed to sense it. “What?”
“Nothing, just…I don’t know. Missoula seems off somehow. As if whoever sent me the photographs wanted me to head there. I knew it before I left Seattle but I couldn’t help myself.” She tried to call back the image that escaped her. “I feel like if we go to Missoula, we’re playing into his hands.”
Frowning, MacGregor walked to the window and stared outside, where sunlight was
beginning to melt some of the snow. “Have you got any other ideas?”
She shook her head. “Not really.”
“Then for right now let’s go somewhere private. Plan our next move without the chance of anyone overhearing. Somewhere out of town.”
“What about Harley?”
“We’ll stop by the veterinary clinic. I’ve already called Jordan. She’s waiting.”
“Jordan?”
“The vet.” He picked up Jillian’s travel case. “She’s a friend of mine.”
“A good friend?” she asked, more than curious. There was something in the tone of his voice that caused a bit of envy to run through her veins.
He glanced over his shoulder as he held the door to the room open. “Very good,” he said as she hitched her way through with one crutch.
“Should I be jealous?”
His smile spread easily over his beard-darkened chin. “Very.”
For the first time since meeting the two FBI agents, Alvarez finally understood what Craig Halden’s role was in his partnership with Stephanie Chandler. Usually content to let his partner do most of the talking, he’d always hung in the background, making a few comments, but mostly watching from the sidelines. A good ol’ country boy who was skating along on his job.
Not so.
Today the show was all Halden’s, and his affable demeanor evaporated under the new, hard-nosed agent who was stepping up in the investigation. Not that Stephanie Chandler took a backseat; that wasn’t her style. But today, when all hell was breaking out among the news people and the public, and the case against Zane MacGregor, who had been their only serious suspect, had broken down, Halden had stepped up.
He stood at the head of the long table in the task force room and brought everyone up to speed. The FBI, too, was convinced that MacGregor wasn’t their man, that Jillian Rivers’s abduction was the result of a personal attack against her, someone who was using the Star-Crossed Killer as a decoy. The psycho they were looking for was an organized, systematic serial killer. He wouldn’t have made the mistakes that had occurred at the intended killing site of Jillian Rivers.
