by Lisa Jackson
Then, as she watched in horror, while the strains of “White Christmas” played from speakers mounted high on the cave’s walls, he moved the macabre ice sculpture, wheeling it out of the cavern, past her cell and along a natural hallway into the darkness beyond.
Chapter 29
At seventy-five, Harry Barlow hated snow.
He also hated small, loud children.
And tiny, yappy dogs.
And now he was outside, in the middle of winter, with the storm those idiots on the weather channel had been predicting for days bearing down on him.
The wind was raw as it howled down the river’s canyon, the snow in tiny, icy pellets and flying all over the place, smashing against his glasses, stinging his cheeks as he walked his wife’s damned dog.
If he had his way, he’d be back living in Florida on a golf course and drinking mai tais or gimlets. He’d go back to one of those adult-only communities, like The Palms, where, if there were small, irritating dogs, the gators would take care of them.
But because three years ago, after his beloved Winnie had passed on, he’d fallen in love with another lady in the church, Phyllis, who had been Winnie’s best friend, things had changed for Harry. He’d expected to settle in with Phyllis just as he had with Winnie, that essentially, he’d just gotten a new wife who would fill the four-hundred-dollar shoes of his first love.
Not so.
The trouble was that Phyllis, much more practical than his first wife, had decided that along with buying sensible, sturdy shoes, she and Harry needed to move from the warmth of the Sunshine State to here, in the middle of no-damned-where freezing Montana, what the locals referred to as the Treasure State. Oh, right. Such a treasure!
However, Harry was committed to Phyllis so he’d traded in his golf-cart lifestyle for an austere way of living in what he unaffectionately called The Sticks.
In Florida, people mounted marlin on the walls, here ... moose heads or antlers off dead deer, or even cougar hides were considered interesting art. It was enough to give Harry the willies.
But Phyllis had insisted they come to this godforsaken wasteland and take care of her mother, so now, the three of them were living in Mom’s apartment overlooking the falls. Somehow it had become Harry’s job to walk Baby, Mom’s nasty little toy poodle–Chihuahua mutt. Baby knew that Harry didn’t like him, too. He’d growl and bark and snap his sharp little fangs at him to the point that one time Baby had Harry cornered behind the pocket door of the half bath. For some reason Phyllis had found that incident uproariously funny.
It was enough to make him blush.
He was grateful only that Ralph and Bubba and Wiley, his golf buddies at The Palms, couldn’t see him bundling up twice a day, leash and plastic bag in hand, following after the foul-tempered Baby and cleaning up after him.
Enough was enough!
He’d warned Phyllis that, after the first of the year, he was flying south. She could come with him or stay here in this damned ice fortress.
Baby, whose real name was Baby Love Supreme–dear God, help me—after the ’60s singing group that Phyllis still adored, was in a particularly reticent mood this morning. He didn’t want to get on the elevator and had refused to lift his little leg on any of his usual bushes.
Worse yet, the second they got into the elevator car to the lower part of town, he decided to piss on the door.
Great.
January second, and not a day later! Harry was out of this frozen hellhole, without the stupid dog!
At least no one was in the elevator at this early hour, so Baby’s defiling of a public landmark might go unnoticed ... well, except for the camera mounted overhead.
Damn!
The car descended, and as it opened, another blast of winter wind rushed inside. Harry adjusted his gloves and watch cap, then walked the damned thing onto the sidewalk that had once been shoveled clear of snow, but now was piling up again.
Miserable weather!
Morning traffic had barely started threading through the empty streets, as it was still dark, too early for most people to be on their way to work. Streetlights offered thin blue illumination in the blustery snowfall, but the morning was cold as a Viking’s bare ass. He tugged on the leash and thought about leaving Baby tied to a parking meter while he went into one of the coffee shops and got his first cup. But the mutt, even dressed in his ridiculous green sweater, could conceivably freeze.
Phyllis wouldn’t be pleased if the thing died on him.
Spying the sign for Joltz, he crossed at the light and headed toward the small storefront. As he did, he passed Wild Will’s, the restaurant with the macabre stuffed animals lining the walls, and a small music store that had a display near the front door. A set of three wooden carolers, dressed as if they were in the 1890s, were chained to a ring in the building, to ensure they wouldn’t be stolen, he supposed.
Baby nosed around the two-dimensional man in his top hat and morning coat. He stood between two women, one in a shirtwaist and pin-striped skirt, the second in a red dress, all of whom were holding songbooks, their mouths rounded as if they were indeed caroling.
“Get on with it,” he muttered to the dog, who poked around behind the wooden people and began to whine. “For God’s sake, what’s wrong now?” he said, just as he noticed the fourth figure, different from the others, hidden slightly behind the tall figure in the top hat, tucked in the shadows of the store’s awning.
What the devil? he wondered, peering more closely. A half scream bubbled in his throat as he realized he was looking at a sculpted block of ice with a very dead and very naked woman inside!
“We found Brenda Sutherland,” Pescoli said when Alvarez answered her cell. Standing at the sink where she was filling a teapot, she’d answered on the second ring. “Right downtown, get this, across from Wild Will’s, same as the others, naked and entombed in ice, placed behind a set of plywood carolers that Woody’s Music always puts out this time of year. I know you’re officially off the case, but ... oh, hell. The way I see it, we can use all the manpower, or make that womanpower, we’ve got.”
Alvarez, realizing the teapot was overflowing, turned off the water.
“That son of a bitch set her up right in the heart of downtown, wearing nothing but your damned locket. Found by a man walking his dog about half an hour ago. Freaked the hell out of him.”
“I’ll bet. So ... the body wasn’t far from the courthouse?”
“Right. Finally, the guy fouled up,” Pescoli was saying, and the roar of the wind could be heard as she half yelled into her phone.
Alvarez had already forgotten the tea and was starting up the stairs.
“There are store and traffic cameras all over the place. We’ll get him this time. A vehicle the size of his, we’ll find it, and Woody, the owner of the music store, he’s got surveillance cameras all over his display windows. We’ll get this bastard.”
“I’ll be right there,” Alvarez said, flying up the rest of the stairs.
“Good girl.”
Alvarez heard the smile in Pescoli’s voice and knew she was about to hang up. “Hey, wait!”
“Yeah?”
“Have you heard anything about Gabriel Reeve?”
“Other than the fact that the mother insists you stay away from him?” Pescoli asked. “Well, yeah, I have. He’s being transferred back to Helena.”
“So, it’s today?”
“Looks like it. But with all of this and the storm, it might be hard to find a driver. The Helena PD might have to come and get him and ... don’t even suggest that you could do it, okay? Grayson won’t go for it, nor will the parents.”
Alvarez wanted to argue, but before she could, Pescoli added, “I’ve got to go,” and clicked off.
In the bedroom, she found Dylan lying crosswise over the bed, sheets and duvet wrapped around his naked body, his form barely visible in the half-light from windows. “Rise and shine,” she said as she flipped on a bedside lamp, and Jane, still dozing, raised
her furry head. O’Keefe blinked and winced, turning away from the light while the cat stretched, arching her back, yawning widely to show off her pink tongue and wicked little teeth.
“What the hell?” he grumbled, his voice still sounding sleepy, his hair spiked up at weird angles.
“We’ve got ourselves another one.” She was already stepping into thermal underwear and locating a pair of jeans. Her boots were right where she’d left them on the closet floor and she zipped them on quickly.
“What do you mean?”
“Brenda Sutherland.” Stretching her arms through the insulated undershirt, she added, “Found downtown.” She poked her head through the neck hole and unpinned her hair, running her fingers through it before winding it onto the top of her head a little more neatly.
“What time did you get up?” Running a hand over his stubbled jaw, he glanced at the clock on her side of the bed. The digital readout blinked a bright red six thirteen.
“Hours ago,” she lied.
He stretched, arms over one side of the bed, bare feet out the other, the covers unfortunately hiding his bare buttocks. “And what the hell time did that guy walk his dog?”
“Who knows? Early.”
A blast of wind howled past the town house, rattling the windows.
“Nasty out there,” he observed, but he was already rolling off the bed, scooping up his boxers and jeans.
“You got any ski pants? It’s crazy cold outside. Saw it on the news already; the storm they’ve been predicting for a week has hit.”
As if to punctuate her observation, the lights went out.
“Crap,” he said as, fumbling, she turned on the flashlight app on her iPhone, then found a flashlight in the drawer and tossed it to him.
“Get a move on, O’Keefe; I need to get my car out of the garage.”
“You know how to disable the electricity to the garage door opener?”
“Yeah, but it would be nice if you’d help.”
He flashed her a grin in the half-light, a sexy slash of white that touched her heart. “You got it, Detective,” he said and, as she walked by, took a playful swipe at her rump.
Once again the crime scene appeared to be a madhouse, Pescoli thought, though the department had contained it, separating the area from the rest of town. This time, since Woody’s was located in the heart of the old town on the lower level of Grizzly Falls, the roads around the block had been cordoned off, barriers put in place and county vehicles were parked around the perimeter, their flashing lights in competition with the holiday strands strung over the city, with harsh-faced deputies ensuring that the crowd that had gathered was held at bay.
Despite the frigid temperature and blizzard-force winds, dozens of bystanders had collected, people on their way to work, clients on their way to appointments, joggers whose daily run was interrupted, even suspects who were being hauled into court. The heart of town was at a standstill, compliments of the Ice Mummy Killer, whoever the hell he was.
But they would catch him, Pescoli was certain, this time the maniac had fouled up. It would be impossible for him not to have been seen or captured on camera. Hopefully he would be identified.
She checked out the body, saw that it, like the others, had been posed, set in a public place, a woman trapped in an ice sculpture behind plywood cutouts of carolers holding songbooks, their two-dimensional faces posed as if they were singing, their garb reminiscent of a rudimentary version of something seen in a Currier and Ives lithograph. Brenda Sutherland was naked aside from the locket, just as she had been in the photograph sent to Alvarez in the twisted Christmas card.
Security tapes for the store were only kept a day, and the camera was motion activated, but certainly it would give some clues as to the creep who had been brazen enough to leave his latest victim on the sidewalk of the main street of town.
“There’s someone who insists on talking with you,” Pete Watershed said as he approached. “It’s Sandi Aldridge from Wild Will’s.”
Pescoli’s heart sank, but she walked to the barrier in front of the restaurant, where Sandi, wearing a thick ski jacket and matching pants, stood under the awning. There were other people gathered in the relative protection of the building, but Sandi stood a little apart from them. Her arms were wrapped around her middle and her jaw seemed to tremble a bit. Pescoli approached and saw that Sandi’s glasses were a little fogged with the cold, but she stared through them with frantic eyes shaded in a brilliant purple. “It’s Brenda, isn’t it? Oh, God, I was afraid of this.”
She lifted a gloved hand to her mouth and bit into it, as if to stop herself from breaking down and sobbing.
“It’s early. Next of kin hasn’t—”
“Screw next of kin. Brenda was like a daughter to me! I knew it. I knew that whack job had her.” She sniffed loudly. “You’ve checked on that louse of an ex-husband of hers, right? I swear—”
“I know, Sandi. We’re looking at everyone.”
“But Brenda ...” Her voice broke. “It’s just not fair!”
It never is.
Pescoli was called away and Sandi shuffled off, shoulders shaking as she made her way into the restaurant. “Crime scene team’s here,” Watershed told her. “And Detective Alvarez.”
“Good.” If anyone wanted to pick a fight with her about her partner being involved, well, bring them on. Pescoli didn’t have time for protocol and now, as she saw Brett Gage approaching, she inwardly groaned. The guy was a good enough cop, just a little soft for her liking.
Fortunately Alvarez had shown. She was talking to the cop and signing in to the scene. She walked up to Pescoli and said, “Show me.”
Gage looked about to say something, but Pescoli held up a gloved hand, warning him to tread lightly. “Over here,” she said, leading the way to the front of the music store, where techs were taking pictures of the scene, complete with the plywood decorations and the ice sculpture. “Yours?” she asked, shining her flashlight directly onto the dead woman and the locket that hung from a tiny gold chain at her neck.
“Looks like.”
Pescoli snapped off her light. “Figured.” She gazed at the ice mummy. “This whack job, he’s got a thing for you, Alvarez.”
“So you said.”
“No, I said he was targeting you. But I think it goes deeper than that. He was in your house, stole your things, displays them along with the women he kills. It’s more than targeting,” she thought aloud. “This is personal.”
Chapter 30
Pescoli’s warning, if that’s what you’d call it, followed Alvarez as she drove to the station.
She thought of the frozen women, wearing nothing but pieces of her jewelry.
This is personal.
How? The men who had just cause to hate her, she supposed, Emilio Alvarez and Alberto De Maestro, were nowhere near the area, and the men she’d sent to prison were, for the most part, still incarcerated. Junior Green had tried his best to take her out but failed and was back in custody, and she didn’t think she’d pissed off anyone else, at least not to the point of the guy becoming a homicidal maniac.
That’s not how it works and you know it; this guy is a serial killer, he has a history. Somewhere. A bed wetter. Abused and neglected, probably molested as a child. Someone cruel to animals ... And has crossed your path without you knowing it. Someone who also knew Lara Sue Gilfry, Lissa Parsons, Brenda Sutherland and probably Johnna Phillips. Someone in the community. So ... who? Who?
Frustrated, she spent the day thinking about it in her office while the storm continued to rage, snapping trees, tearing down power lines, freezing pipes and shutting down roads. It was as bad as she’d ever seen it here.
People in this part of Montana were used to blizzardlike conditions in the depths of winter, but even the locals, the residents who had lived here for decades, were forced to batten down the hatches.
The sheriff ’s department called in everyone to help out, so the station was buzzing with deputies, half-frozen, r
eturning from road duty to warm up with hot coffee and Joelle’s rapidly disappearing cupcakes and candy, before heading out again to help elderly shut-ins who were freezing without power, or clearing accidents on the roads that had been plowed, or assisting with tree removal.
On top of the bad weather, the department, along with the FBI and state troopers, was dealing with the serial killer.
The joviality of the Christmas season was buried deep in the icy drifts surrounding Grizzly Falls and even Joelle seemed to have had her spirits dampened; her usual smile was a little forced and she, always in strappy, glittery heels this time of year, had donned knee-high red boots and a black skirt and sweater that were decorated in poinsettias that seemed to be falling from her left shoulder and tumbling to the hem of the skirt on the right side of her body.
“I suppose the church’s bazaar will have to be postponed from this weekend,” she said, tight-lipped as she brushed crumbs from one of the tables.
“Least of our problems, I’d say.” Pescoli had spent a good part of the day in the task force room and had just stepped out to refill her coffee cup. Alvarez, too, was allowed in and had been working the case as well. Grayson had backed down on his edict that she couldn’t be a part of the team and the FBI agents had agreed, thinking that she might offer some insight into the case.
There had been tips called in to the station that the task force had sorted, filed and, of course, verified. Though each tip had been checked out, nothing had panned out, including the call from Sherwin Hahn, who insisted his neighbor was doing “weird things” with his watering trough outside. Sherwin was a farmer whose family had homesteaded around Grizzly Falls generations earlier. Because of a farming accident and crippling arthritis, Sherwin, pushing a hundred years, was relegated to a wheelchair while his son and grandson ran the farm. From his position near the window and with the aid of a telescope, he could look down the hill to his neighbor’s farm, where Abe Nelson raised winter wheat and sheep. It was the sheep trough that had caught Sherwin’s attention, and his imagination had run wild as he was certain Abe was freezing bodies in the trough. As it turned out Abe Nelson was just trying to keep the water from freezing and worked with the troughs every evening and morning. He’d talked to the FBI and Pescoli and Gage, throwing a disgusted glance up the hill to Sherwin Hahn’s old farmhouse and saying, “The blind old fart should just mind his own business. For the record, I don’t like him, nor his son and especially not his grandson!”