Chosen To Die

by Lisa Jackson

  “What then?” he demanded, his voice cracking a lit-

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  tle. Holy crap, would he be stuck living with Lucky and Michelle? Could there be anything worse? And what about Mom? Where the hell was she? Alvarez was staring at him as if he was from outer space and he finally realized he was chewing his fingernail and spitting the bits onto the floor—something his mom hated and was always ragging on him about. From the looks the detective was shooting him, she wasn’t keen on his nervous habit either.

  “I’m, um, I’m just worried.” He forced his hand to his lap, but his damned leg was still shaking nervously.

  “I don’t blame you,” she said, a bit more kindly,

  “but you can’t do anything down here. Trust me.”

  He flinched. Whenever an adult started out saying those two words, “trust me,” it meant they were about to try to force you into doing something you just knew in your gut was wrong. “We’re doing everything we can to find her.”

  “It’s not enough,” he said flatly and for the first time noticed the little camera mounted near the ceiling. Oh, God, was he being filmed?

  Footsteps rang behind her and over Alvarez’s shoulder, through the open doorway Jeremy caught a glimpse of a tall man with thin, silvering hair heading their direction.

  Undersheriff Brewster!

  Heidi’s prick of a father.

  Shit!

  “What’s he doing here?” the big buffoon demanded, stepping around Alvarez and looming over Jeremy seated in the uncomfortable chair. In an instant, Jeremy was on his feet, almost standing eye to eye with the tall cop.

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  “He’s worried about his mother.”

  Brewster gave him the evil eye. “You should be in lockup for what you did, Strand.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Got my daughter drunk. God knows what else would have happened if you hadn’t been picked up.” He was mad all over again, his face turning red, his lips bloodless.

  “Cool it,” Alvarez said tautly.

  Brewster hooked a thumb in Jeremy’s direction.

  “All this little jerk-off wants to do is get high and drunk, then go out driving and try to get into my little girl’s pants.” He leveled a hate-filled glare at Jeremy. “You keep your filthy, horny hands off my daughter, you hear me, boy? You so much as call her, I’ll have you arrested.”

  “For what?”

  “Anything you can think of, only worse.”

  “Enough!” Alvarez snapped out. She stepped between Jeremy and Brewster. She was a full head shorter, but she held her ground even though Heidi’s dad was her boss. “Let me handle this, sir,”

  she said, trying to defuse the situation, but it was too far gone.

  Jeremy smelled the fight before the first punch had been thrown. Though his brain warned him, Don’t let the old fart goad you into it. Don’t try to take him down, he felt that sizzle in his blood, the tension in his muscles, the tightness between his shoulders. God, he’d love to land one fist onto Cort HolierThan-Thou Brewster’s smug face. The old man felt it, too. “Come on, punk. Hit me. You know that’s what you want to do.”

  “Undersheriff Brewster!” Alvarez was still wedged between them. “Stand down! Both of you.”

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  “But the punk thinks he can take me. Sick little perverted prick. He wants to screw my daughter and beat the crap out of me. Isn’t that right, Strand? You’re a loser, you know that. A dope-smoking, beersucking loser, and Heidi’s too good for you, so you just stay away.”

  Jeremy’s fist balled so hard it hurt.

  Just one shot, that’s all he wanted. To show this asshole what he was.

  “Try it, sissy.”

  Oh, God.

  His cell phone beeped. Another text message.

  “What’s that?”

  “We’ve got more important things to worry about,” Alvarez pointed out coldly.

  In a second, Brewster lunged and had Jeremy up against the wall, one arm twisted painfully behind his back, his face turned sideways but smashed into the cinder blocks.

  “Stop it!” Alvarez ordered.

  But Brewster pinned him harder and started patting him down. Jeremy squirmed. He couldn’t let Heidi’s dad see the pictures she’d been sending him. Brewster would kill them both. “Let me go!”

  “I think you’ve got some weed on you, punk!”

  “No, I don’t!”

  “Stop it, Brewster,” Alvarez warned.

  “What is this . . . Oh, here we go.” He reached into Jeremy’s pocket and pulled out his wallet and cell phone.

  “Give that back!” Jeremy said, panicked. Oh, God, the guy was going to look at his cell phone. “It’s mine!”

  “What’s it got on it? Your dealer’s number?”

  “No, Mr. Brewster, please, don’t—” The change 246

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  of tone was a mistake. Jeremy saw it in the flare of interest in Brewster’s eyes.

  “Then you’ve got nothing to hide.”

  “Isn’t this an invasion of privacy or—?” Jeremy’s voice dropped as Brewster opened the phone and dark red color climbed up his neck to burst into his face, so that his blue eyes looked about to pop from his head.

  “What the hell is this?” he hissed. “What did you do to my daughter?”

  “Nothing!”

  “Are you trying to tell me that Heidi sent you these of her own free will, you little snot?” He was advancing on Jeremy again and this time Alvarez stood between them.

  “Stand down, sir! If you don’t stop harassing this boy, I’m going to arrest you.” Alvarez was all business. Jeremy thought she might draw her damned weapon.

  “Arrest me? Are you out of your mind, Detective?” Brewster snarled.

  “You don’t want the department to face assault charges. Sir.” Her voice was like steel. Brewster snorted, “This punk’ll hide behind the law over my dead body.”

  “Fine!” Before he could think, Jeremy rounded on the man, his fist smashing into Brewster’s jaw. The older man’s head snapped back and he went reeling against the far wall, Jeremy’s cell phone clattering to the floor. Jeremy looked down and saw the picture, the one of Heidi in the Santa hat and red panties, her beautiful tits with their dark nipples completely bare while she was sucking on a candy cane and winking at the camera.

  Oh, Jesus.

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  “You little pervert!” Cort Brewster sputtered, back on the balls of his feet and rubbing his cheek, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction. “You’re under arrest!” He glanced at Alvarez. “Read him his rights, Detective, and make sure he understands that he’s in my custody now.”

  “Sir, his mother is—”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Brewster pointed a shaking finger at Jeremy. “This kid’s a troublemaker. Walkin’ a thin line. Now put his butt in jail. He assaulted me. The way I figure it, we’re doing his mother a favor.”

  Brewster, looking like he would like to kill Jeremy, turned on his heel and strode out of the room.

  “That was a dumb thing to do,” she hissed to Jeremy once they were alone. “Real dumb.”

  “He’s an asshole.”

  “And the undersheriff.”

  “He wanted to fight me.”

  “You took the first swing, so you have to go down to a holding tank for a while.” She bent down, picked up the phone, and saw the picture of Heidi. Her lips twisted downward and she shook her head.

  “And you might want to remind your girlfriend to keep her clothes on when there are cameras or cell phones around.” She pocketed his phone and led him through the department.

  “You’re not really going to arrest me.”

  “I don’t really have a choice,” she said tiredly. She didn’t bother with cuffs, but did read him his rights as she walked him down to a room where he was to be booked. “I’l
l try to square it with Brewster. Talk to Sheriff Grayson, if I have to. Everything that happened is on camera, so I think we can work things out. We here at the department have a lot more to worry about than Heidi’s attempts to pose for Play- 248

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  boy. But her dad has to cool off a while before that happens. It could take a little time.”

  “How much?” he asked, the thought of being locked up again starting to panic him. Why the hell had he let that son of a bitch spur him into hitting him?

  “I don’t know.” He didn’t say anything and she pushed a finger into his forearm. “Got it?”

  He did, but he didn’t like it. “Yeah,” he mumbled.

  “Good. Hang tough.” She paused a moment and added, “I’m going to get myself a sandwich from the vending machine. Want one?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Sure? It’s been a long day.”

  He shook his head. He had a feeling this long day was going to get longer.

  The task force meeting brought everyone up to speed. Stephanie Chandler and Craig Halden, the two FBI agents, had returned and they sat at the table in the task force room with Sheriff Grayson, Undersheriff Brewster, Alvarez, Zoller, and a few others.

  Alvarez didn’t say a lot, just sipped her tea and hoped the half of a chicken-salad sandwich she’d choked down before the meeting would sustain her. She’d popped a couple of daytime cold capsules, too, working to keep her symptoms at bay. So far so good. She had yet to straighten out the mess with Regan’s son, but she would. She owed her partner that much. And Brewster, just because he was the damned undersheriff, couldn’t get away with being

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  a bully, a cop who let his emotions get the best of his judgment.

  She sent a look his way, but Brewster steadfastly avoided her gaze. Some of his anger had evaporated and he was feeling a little more like the jerk he was.

  Good.

  For now, Jeremy hadn’t been booked. Alvarez would like to keep it that way.

  The discussion moved from the copycat killer to Star-Crossed and then touched on Brady Long’s death. The lab hadn’t yet reported if the bullet found at the Lazy L proved to be a match for others they’d discovered at the scenes where the wrecked vehicles of the victims had been located. But everyone was edgy, wondering if Star-Crossed had changed his M.O.

  “What would be the point?” Chandler asked. She was tall and slim, her blond hair scraped away from a face with high cheekbones that hinted at a Nordic heritage. A pair of sunglasses was propped on her head and Alvarez had never seen her without them.

  “I mean, he’s gone through all the trouble of leaving notes, using the victims’ initials, leaving his victims to die naked in the freezing weather. Now, out of the blue, he walks into Brady Long’s house and just fires at the guy point-blank and leaves? Where’s the organization, the planning, the attention to detail that our boy has shown? And why?”

  Grayson said, “It took some planning and waiting for Long to show up.”

  “Not the usual victim,” she argued. She held up fingers as she counted the ways this crime was different. “Not female. Not traveling across the state in 250

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  a vehicle. Not injured. Not left to die in the wilderness . . . Oh, hell, I could go on and on.”

  Halden held up a calming hand. “We’re just being cautious,” he said. “We already got fooled once, by a real copycat.”

  “Anyone ever figure out how that killer knew so much about Star-Crossed?”

  “There were clippings of all the killings, videotapes of the press conferences, and a lot of stories that the television and radio stations had run. She pieced together most of it, but there’s a chance she had a mole.”

  “A mole? Like a spy? Here? ” Grayson was on his feet and pointing at the floor as if to indicate the entire sheriff’s department.

  “As in some one with police ties. Not necessarily anyone from this department.”

  Grayson muttered under his breath. He was tired and it showed, the lines around his eyes deeper than normal, his usual slow-spreading smile nowhere to be found. His feathers ruffled, he sat down next to Alvarez and across the table from the federal agents.

  “Okay, so you guys will find out how the copycat got her information,” he said to Halden. “But right now let’s concentrate on the original. He’s still at large, still using my county as his personal hunting ground, still got one of my detectives and at least one other woman, and he’s really pissing me off.

  “I’ve got a press conference in”—he checked his watch—“less than an hour, so let’s get to it. Go over what we do know.”

  “I know that Ross DeGrazio, Brady Long’s housekeeper’s son, owns the same caliber weapon and he’s a helluva shot,” Brewster offered. “Saw him in a

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  competition I entered. He almost beat me. Came in second.”

  “The college kid?” Grayson looked skeptical, then lifted a hand in acquiescence. Nothing made sense.

  Halden said, “We’ll check out his weapon and alibis.”

  Selena made a mental note to look into Clementine’s kid herself. Was it possible?

  “Any other ideas?” Grayson asked.

  “The boyfriend of Elyssa O’Leary,” Chandler put in, checking her notes. “Cesar Pelton. He was a marine. Dishonorable discharge. Spent some time as a security guard before he had domestic assault charges leveled against him by his ex-wife.” She suddenly had everyone’s attention. “But he has no connection to the other victims. As for an alibi? We’re not even sure Elyssa’s car was hit. He lives in Missoula, so it’s close enough to be possible, but we have no corroborating evidence other than he’s abusive.”

  “So . . . he’s not a suspect?” Selena asked.

  “It doesn’t seem right. The ex-wife is a liar and Pelton’s been pretty visible around Missoula this whole time. He’s quick with his fists, but is he organized enough? He can barely hold down a job. Keeps overdrawing his accounts and gets into trouble with the law. Doesn’t appear to be near as smart as our guy.”

  The FBI agent seemed frustrated and tired. Alvarez had done some checking on Pelton as well and had nearly written him off, too. “We’ll keep looking at him,” Chandler said, but she sounded a little disinterested. Brewster said, “My money’s still on DeGrazio. Or someone who lives closer to Grizzly Falls.”

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  Grayson checked his watch. “Anything else?”

  The discussion went on, different theories bandied about, all tips that had come through the hotline discussed and doled out, the notes left at the crime and map of the area where the cars and bodies were found passed around.

  They’d about wrapped up the meeting when there was a tap on the door and Joelle poked her head into the room. “Sorry,” she said, and Alvarez half expected her to come clipping in with a tray of snickerdoodles, cranberry pinwheels, and Mexican wedding cakes, but instead she said, “I know you asked not to be disturbed, but Officer Slatkin is on the phone and he says he’s got some information you’re wanting.”

  Everyone went silent.

  “Put him through on line one.” Grayson motioned to Zoller, who was seated at the desk with the phones. “Put it on speaker.” She did and in a few seconds the connection was made.

  “This is Grayson. What’ve ya got, Mikhail?”

  “First a confirmation. The bullet that was lodged in the back of Brady Long’s chair is a match to those we found at two of the sites where the wrecked cars were located.”

  Alvarez’s heart sank. So Star-Crossed had changed.

  “Okay, what else?” Grayson asked.

  “The tox screen came back on Wendy Ito. There were traces of Rohypnol in her blood.”

  “The bastard gave her a roofie,” Chandler said coldly. “Date rape.”

  Alvarez frowned. “Except he didn’t rape her. Never does.”


  “That’s right. No sign of sexual molestation,”

  Mikhail Slatkin agreed over the speakerphone. “We’re

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  doing deeper tox screens on all the victims, to see if there are traces of any other date rape drugs, but they pass through the body fairly quickly.”

  “Do what you can,” the sheriff said. “Thanks.”

  Zoller hung up as Dan Grayson surveyed his team. “Looks like this investigation just changed course.” He rubbed the back of his neck and scowled. “I want to know who benefits from Brady Long’s death. Find his will. Dig up what you can on his ex-wives or anyone he screwed over. Who he’s dating, who he dumped, who he cheated, anyone with a bone to pick.” Tapping the table with his fingers, he added, “Could be a pretty long list. Then check out his father, see if he’s alive or dead.”

  “Holding on by a thread. Hospice has already been called in; Hubert’s tough, he could last another two months or two minutes,” Brewster said. “I called the nursing home and that’s all they would tell me, but he won’t be long for this earth.”

  Eyes thinning, Grayson said, “Then what about the sister? Paige, is it?”

  “Padgett,” Alvarez corrected.

  “That’s right. I’m thinking she’s about to become a very rich woman.”

  Stephanie Chandler said coolly, “Searching for Long’s killer is all well and good. However, there are still five dead women as well as two missing, including one of your detectives.”

  A tic developed near Grayson’s left eye, and it was evident that he was trying to keep his simmering anger under control. “Make no mistake, Agent Chandler, nothing has changed as far as the victims of the Star-Crossed Killer are concerned. The investigation is ongoing and intense. We aren’t letting up an inch. We’re going to use every resource of this 254

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  department to find that son of a bitch, but now the investigation has widened, taken an unforeseen turn. We’re not only looking for a killer who gets off on letting his victims freeze in the wilderness, we’re searching for a murderer with another reason to kill as well. Maybe something deep and personal. A vendetta, perhaps. I’d say the psychological profile of Star-Crossed just changed, so we’re going to adapt.” He was standing now, leaning across the table, the tic intense and rapid. “But it’s my intention, no, make that my personal mission, to find the twisted prick and throw his ass in jail before he takes another life!” He looked around the table. “Now, let’s make it happen.”