Afraid to Die

by Lisa Jackson

  They’d looked around; Nelson had invited them to comb his property. “While you’re at it, would you mind looking for a ewe I lost two days ago?” he’d asked, and his wife had even offered them coffee. The tip had been a bust. Like the others. Pescoli had confided to Alvarez later while seated at her desk, “The Nelson farm?” She’d rolled her eyes and shaken her head. “It was just one more wrong tree we managed to bark up.”

  His job was officially over, O’Keefe acknowledged as he drove toward the hotel where Aggie and Dave were staying. They were checking out later in the day. As soon as the storm broke and the roads were passable, they intended to head back to Helena to await their son’s arrival at the juvenile center there and meet with an attorney. Gabe was being transported to Helena later in the day, if and when the roads were passable, though no one knew the exact time of his release; it all depended, O’Keefe had heard from Alvarez, upon when a driver was available and the center in Helena could accept him inside their locked gates.

  Officially, it was time for him to leave, too, O’Keefe thought, squinting a little, as the snow was really coming down, making visibility almost impossible. Traffic was light but crawling, snow piling only to pack down to ice before piling onto the slick surface all over again.

  He’d cleared out of his motel room the day before and his stuff was either in his SUV or Alvarez’s town house. His life, though, was back in Helena. He couldn’t hang out here in Grizzly Falls forever. He had a duplex and an office downtown in Helena, both of which he’d ignored for the past week and a half.

  Because of Gabe.

  Check that. Originally it was because of Gabe, but now, he was hanging around because of Alvarez. He told himself it was to protect her, that because she was in the killer’s sights, he couldn’t leave now.

  But it was more than that, and now, as he drove along the road that rimmed the river, he had to acknowledge the simple fact that he was falling in love with her. Which was just plain stupid. He had mixed feelings about her, of course, and once he’d found out that she’d been raped as a teenager, that her problems with intimacy had sprung from that horrific crime, he should have backed off, perhaps, and gave her space. But he hadn’t and, it seemed, she didn’t want him to leave. She certainly hadn’t had a snit fit when he’d practically moved in the night before.

  A twinge of guilt needled his mind, because he hadn’t been completely honest with her. So, he’d pushed the sex thing, unknowingly, of course, but forced her to admit to what had happened to her, how Gabe had been conceived, and now everyone knew; he felt a little guilt for being a party to that, but not too much. It was a good thing, right? He glanced in his rearview mirror and caught his own reflection as if for confirmation.

  But he also hadn’t been completely truthful to her either about his reasons for staying.

  This time, as he slowed for a red light and looked into the mirror again, he caught recriminations in his bruised countenance. So, he’d lied. So, she’d be pissed as hell when and if she found out. So what?

  He remembered the fear that had jolted through him when he realized that Junior Green had her cornered in her garage, that the big man was intent on killing her, that he’d come within inches of taking her life.

  O’Keefe had panicked, rolled under the garage door, sweeping the bigger man’s legs out from him and eventually winning that brutal wrestling match, but it had haunted him ever since. What if he hadn’t arrived at just that moment?

  True, Selena Alvarez was a trained policewoman, knew how to use a firearm and had taken classes in self-defense and martial arts, but still, would that have been enough when the madman with a loaded .45 had confronted her?

  It was a chance he didn’t want to take, not ever again.

  Face it, O’Keefe. You’ve got it bad for her. You never really fell out of love with Selena Alvarez.

  And that was the sorry truth.

  “The next of kin for Brenda Sutherland has been notified,” Pescoli announced as she walked into Alvarez’s office a little later in the day.

  “I heard.” Alvarez had been at the computer all morning and through lunch, catching up on other work while going over all of the evidence for the ice-mummy murders one more time. The autopsy report on Brenda Sutherland wouldn’t be in for a few days, but she expected it would be about the same as the two other victims.

  So far. Three victims so far. There was still Johnna Phillips who hadn’t been accounted for and there could be others as well, women who hadn’t yet been reported missing. Somehow they had to stop him. She rotated the kinks from her neck and couldn’t help but notice the faint strains of some familiar Christmas song just audible over the noise and clatter of the station. Phones rang, the printers chunked out information, the old heating system rumbled, conversation floated down the hallways and every so often there was a bark of laughter over the click of keystrokes. Still, above it all, a Christmas carol could be heard, if you listened hard enough.

  “Darla’s going to give another press conference, right? With the FBI?”

  “Later. Yeah. The FBI is planning to ask the public for help.” Pescoli was smiling a little.

  “What?” Alvarez asked. “You know something ...” She felt a little trickle of excitement in her blood. “What?”

  “We finally have the tape from a security camera mounted over the alley behind the music store. The film’s pretty grainy, but the computer geeks have cleaned it up. Nigel Timmons might be a pain in the ass, but he knows what he’s doing. They’ve got it in the task force room. I thought you’d want to take a look.”

  “Is he on it?” Alvarez asked, shoving back her chair.

  “Yep.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Don’t know. Thought you might want to take a look.”

  “Hell, yeah, I do.” Already on her feet, Alvarez hurried down the hallway. Was it possible? Could they have the creep? Had he finally fouled up enough that they could ID him and arrest the maniac?

  Adrenaline fired her blood as she walked into the task force room. On the largest television screen, a tape had been stopped, but Nigel Timmons, self-important as ever, was explaining how they’d improved the quality of the film.

  “Just play it,” Pescoli said to the tech. His faux hawk was a little messy today, his eyes a tad bloodshot from his contacts, but he did as he was bid.

  “We’ve actually spliced the tape of the alley with that from the traffic cams,” he said and Alvarez watched as, in grainy black-and-white, a pickup with a canopy came into view, its license plate obscured, and a big man climbed out of the driver’s side, then opened the back end of the truck, where he pulled out a dolly and placed a huge trash can upon it.

  “Dear God,” Alvarez said as she realized she was watching the killer. He was dressed all in a dark color, black or navy blue, probably, wearing a ski coat and ski pants, gloves, ski mask and hat, nothing distinctive about any of the apparel. He was even wearing ski goggles, as if he knew that he might be filmed and, even in darkness, was disguising his eyes.

  Jerkily, he rolled the trash can on the dolly out of the camera’s field of vision but was picked up again, on another camera, this one placed under the awning in the front of the store. Quickly, he moved the plywood carolers as far as the security chain would allow, deposited the ice statue, replaced the singers into their original position and hurried back down the alley pushing the dolly.

  “He accomplishes this in less than four minutes,” Nigel said as the truck, obviously left idling, drove away from the screen.

  “Just like that,” Pescoli said.

  “Here are shots from the traffic cams.” Alvarez watched as a series of pictures that had been spliced together showed up.

  “You got those plates, right?”

  “Stolen,” Halden said. “Off an ’86 Chevy Nova hatchback and put on this truck, a Dodge. Already checked; the report was made six weeks ago. The guy noticed them after a night of drinking at a bar in Missoula. We know the date, he’s got a receipt f
or his drinks, so we’re checking there, but he was parked on a side street, no camera.”

  The image on the television went back to the perpetrator pushing his trash can on the dolly.

  “Didn’t anyone see him?”

  “Three fifty-seven in the morning. In the middle of a blizzard. And get this, it was garbage pickup morning.”

  “Not quite that early.”

  “Right. The trucks don’t reach that part of town until between six and six thirty, so that was probably just random. Anyway, we’ll ask the public today, see if anyone was up looking out their window at that time, but it’s a long shot,” Chandler said, and Halden, holding a cup of coffee and staring at the screen, nodded.

  “There is nothing identifying about this guy, aside from the fact that he’s probably about six foot one, maybe two.”

  “Or he’s got lifts in his boots.”

  “Looks like he weighs anywhere from two hundred to two thirty, depending upon how many layers he’s got on.” Halden scowled. “We think his hair is brown, if the one we found in Brenda Sutherland’s car is his. And his blood type is O positive, if the drop we found in the ice belongs to him.” He nodded to Nigel, who hit another switch. A new picture leapt to the screen and Alvarez noticed it was the crowd that had gathered at the first crime scene at the church. “Take a look here. We’ve got some stills, and put ’em together. See the guy, there?” He was pointing with the index finger of the hand surrounding his coffee cup. “That guy’s about the right size. He’s with a group of people, but not really. Standing a little to the side, under that hemlock.”

  “And the truck?” Alvarez asked.

  “Several white ones that passed by. One a Dodge.”

  “Plates?”

  Halden shook his head. “Obscured. But it’s possible the guy drove by, then parked and hiked back to the scene to have a look.”

  Alvarez studied the pictures and she felt as if a ghost were walking on her spine. This was the madman? This was the killer who spent time working tediously on the sculptures so that it was as if you were seeing the woman’s features caught in ice before you actually saw her flesh below the surface? This was the pervert who had sent her the twisted card with the picture of Brenda Sutherland, the creep who had been in her house and taken her dog, stolen her jewelry and had done no telling what else to her place?

  She shuddered as she stared at his pictures, because they were pictures of any man; there was nothing that identified him from any of the men she knew.

  And that, more than anything else, terrified her.

  Chapter 31

  Pescoli’s headache had started out small in the morning, but by seven thirty was a rager. She’d worked all day and heard that the road to her house was closed. Both kids were okay, though, Luke, bless his itty-bitty dark heart, had picked up Bianca when school was closed early in the morning, so she was safely with her father and stepmother.

  Jeremy had called and informed her he was at a friend’s house and, before hanging up, had wheedled that he just needed her signature and three hundred dollars for his part of the lease.

  Pescoli had told him to “join the club” and refused. She bought a sandwich and a Diet Coke out of the vending machine, and while she ate the sandwich, stared at her computer screen, where she studied the footage of the suspect with his dolly and garbage can for what had to be the fortieth time.

  Biting into the tuna on rye, she also looked through the names she’d gotten from the DMV of Dodge trucks registered in Pinewood and the surrounding three counties. Though all the victims lived, worked and had been abducted in Pinewood, it didn’t mean the killer didn’t live somewhere else, somewhere nearby and just used the area around Grizzly Falls as his personal hunting ground.

  “Prick,” she muttered as she saw him on the screen one more time and set her sandwich aside. There was something about him that seemed familiar.

  Of course there is; you’ve been studying him all day.

  No, she thought, taking another look. She knew this guy; she was sure of it, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was.

  It’s his eyes. Why the hell does he keep covering them up?

  It was true, as she flipped through all of the shots of the suspect, his eyes were covered. Ski goggles at the music store, and at the scene with the church, when he stood under the tree, it seemed as if he, again, was wearing some protective covering though it wasn’t quite light.

  What was that all about?

  She searched the pictures of the crowd that had collected near the Enstad place where the second victim, Lissa Parsons, was found. No white truck showed in any of the pictures and she couldn’t pinpoint the guy, but she knew he was there, hiding in the shadows, like the sick coward he was.

  “We’re gonna get you,” she said, her gaze returning to her computer screen, where his likeness as he wheeled the dolly by the music store had been enlarged. She took a long swallow of her Diet Coke. “And when we do, you loser, I’m going to make it my personal mission to make sure you never see the light of day again.”

  Trilby Van Droz drew the short straw.

  Because every other road deputy and officer in the department was out helping with emergencies, she got the duty of driving the juvenile back to Helena.

  Go figure.

  Already bone weary, she chewed gum and sipped coffee as she drove toward Helena. The storm was really gathering force, dumping snow at an incredible rate, and yet, here she was. For some reason she didn’t understand, probably due to Judge Victor Ramsey himself, it was imperative that Gabriel Reeve return to Helena tonight.

  This road, usually fairly busy, was already nearly impassable, traffic extremely light as people hunkered down to wait out what the newscasters were calling “the storm of the century.” Yeah, well, wasn’t that what they’d called last year’s blizzard?

  As it was, her Jeep was sliding a bit, but she was used to driving in bad weather. A native Montanan, she wasn’t scared by a little snow ... well, make that a lot of snow.

  Glancing in the rearview mirror, she saw her charge staring back at her. Reeve’s dark eyes were filled with hate ... or was it fear? How bad could he be? Geez, he was only sixteen, just a year older than her daughter. It wasn’t as if he was a hardened criminal, for God’s sake, just a kid who’d taken a wrong turn, one his family was trying to straighten out.

  Weird that. The gossip running through the department was that the kid was Detective Alvarez’s biological son, but other than the fact that he was obviously Latino, there wasn’t a lot of resemblance, at least none that Trilby could see.

  That, at least, wasn’t her problem, she reminded herself as she cranked up the heat in the Jeep. All she had to do was haul him to Helena, let the local boys deal with him and return to Grizzly Falls, if the roads allowed.

  She yawned and sipped some hot coffee from her travel mug. She had her own problems with her own kid. Her teenaged daughter was giving her fits, sneaking out, and it was all Trilby could do to keep an eye on her at night while working overtime as a deputy with the sheriff’s department. It was times like these that she hated being a single mother, though the thought of remarriage was enough to make her shudder. Her ex had cured her of ever trusting in the idea of marital bliss, and whenever she thought being alone and raising a kid was tough, she remembered being married and feeling as if she was mother to her husband, too.

  No, she’d deal with her kid by herself, and aside from the fact that finances were tight, she could handle it. She knew people who married, divorced, got along and shared parental responsibilities. Her friend Callie’s husband was involved with his kids, even paid more than what the court ordered and his new wife was incredible with Callie’s sons.

  Trilby hadn’t gotten so lucky, and on days like this, when she hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before and a damned blizzard was sweeping across the country, she felt stretched to the max.

  It was only the thought of overtime that kept her going.

  She tur
ned the wipers up a notch, noticed that ice was starting to form on the windshield and that the police band was going nuts with calls about traffic accidents, power outages and a possible drowning in September Creek where someone had fallen through the ice.

  “Damn,” she said under her breath and realized it was going to be another long day. She’d get this kid to Helena and...

  She saw something in her headlights. Something in the road. “What in God’s name?” A large van had slid halfway into the ditch on the side of the road. Its emergency lights were flashing, the front end still sideways in the road, its engine rumbling as it idled.

  “Great.” Slowing, she flipped on her own lights, radioed her position and, when the Jeep came to a stop, climbed out of the car.

  “Hey,” she said as she saw a guy in front of the van, caught in the twin beams of his headlights, snow falling all around, collecting on his jacket and cap. He was bending down, on one knee, and there was an animal in front of him, an animal that wasn’t moving. “Sir, is there a problem?”

  “It’s the dog. He just came out of nowhere. Shot across the road and ... I hit the brakes, but ...” His voice cracked as he looked over his shoulder at her. “I skidded, but I couldn’t avoid him ... I think it’s still alive. Oh, God.”

  “Let’s see,” she said, moving for a better look at the motionless dog. Was it even breathing? And where was the blood? Wait—