by Lisa Jackson
“Great.” Jenna tried to put a smile into her voice and push all thoughts of the tragedy that had propelled her to Oregon out of her mind. “I’m hoping you can help me. I’ve got a problem with my pump and—”
“Can you hold?”
Before Jenna could respond, the woman clicked to another line and Jenna was left listening to silence. Hoping the woman on the other end of the line hadn’t disconnected her, Jenna waited and nothing happened. The line seemed dead. She hung up and retried, but the phone line was then busy. Of course. Today nothing was going right. She tried again and got nowhere.
“Great,” she said, and hung up feeling cursed. “Get over it,” she told herself as she rested against the window ledge and glanced through the glass to the wintry twilight where the ranch’s few security lights were blazing, giving an eerie blue glow to the grounds. The wind had finally died and with it came a stillness that seemed weird and out of place. Unearthly.
The calm before the storm, she thought, and felt a shiver as cold as death trickle down her spine. There was something about the coming night, something dark and lurking, something deadly. She could feel it.
Stop it! Don’t do this to yourself, she silently admonished and noticed the first few flakes of snow beginning to fall from the sky.
She was there.
Inside.
Somewhere in the rambling log home.
No doubt Jenna Hughes felt secure. Safe.
But she was wrong.
Dead wrong.
As the flakes of winter snow drifted from the gray sky, he watched from his hiding spot, a blind he’d built high in the branches of an old-growth Douglas fir that towered from this high ridge. Her ranch stretched out below in frozen acres that abutted the Columbia River.
The rustic old house was the core of what he considered her compound. Graying logs and siding rising upward to peaked gables and dormers. From the ice-glazed windows, cozy patches of light glowed against the frozen ground, reminding him of his own past, of how often he’d been on the outside, in the freezing weather, teeth chattering as he stared at the smoke rising from the chimney of his mother’s warm, forbidden house.
That was long ago.
Now, focusing the military glasses on the panes, he caught a glimpse of her moving through her house. But just a teaser, not much, not enough to focus on her. Her image disappeared as she turned down a hallway.
He refocused, caught a bit of movement in the den, but it was only the old dog, a broken-down German shepherd who slept most of the day.
Where was she?
Where the hell had she gone?
Be patient, his inner voice advised, trying to soothe him.
Soon you’ll be able to do what you want.
The snowflakes increased, powdering the branches, covering the ground far below, and he glanced down at the white frost. In his mind’s eye he saw drops of blood in the icy crystals, warm as they hit the ground, giving off a puff of steam, then freezing slowly in splotches of dark red.
A thrill tingled up his spine just as a stiff breeze, cold as Lucifer’s piss, screamed down the gorge, stinging the bit of skin above his ski mask. The branches above and around him danced wildly and beneath the mask, he smiled. He embraced the cold, felt it was a sign. An omen.
The snow was now falling in earnest. Icy crystals falling from the sky.
Now was the time.
He’d waited so long.
Too long.
A light flashed on in the master bedroom and he caught another glimpse of her, long hair braided into a rope that hung down her back, baggy sweatshirt covering her curves, no makeup enhancing an already beautiful face. His pulse accelerated as she walked past a bank of windows, then into a closet. His throat went dry. He refocused the glasses, zoomed in closer on the closet door. Maybe he’d catch a glimpse of her naked, her perfectly honed body, an athlete’s body with large breasts and a nipped-in waist and muscles that were both feminine and strong. His crotch tightened.
He waited. Ignored a light being snapped on in another part of the house. Knew it was probably one of her kids.
Come on, come on, he thought impatiently. His mouth turned dry as sand and lust heated his chilled blood. The master bedroom with its yellowed-pine walls and softly burning fire remained empty. What the hell was taking her so long?
How he wanted her. He had for a long, long time.
He licked his lips against the cold as she reappeared, wearing a black bra and low-slung black jeans. She was beautiful. Nearly perfect in those tight pants.
“Strip ’em, Jenna,” he muttered under breath that fogged through his insulated mask.
Her breasts nearly fell from the sexy black undergarment. But she headed into her bathroom and he readjusted the lens as she leaned over a sink and applied lipstick and mascara. He saw her backside, that sweet, sweet ass, straining against the black denim as she leaned closer to the mirror; within that smooth glass surface, he stared at her wide eyes, silvery green and rimmed in thick black lashes. For a second she seemed to catch his eye, to look right at him, and she hesitated, mascara wand in hand. Little lines appeared between her arched eyebrows, a hint of worry. As if she knew. Her eyes narrowed, and his heart pounded hard against his ribs.
Turning quickly, she stared out the window, to the gathering darkness and the snow now falling steadily. Was it fear he saw in her green eyes? Premonition?
“Just you wait,” he whispered, his voice soft in the deadly quiet forest, the snow becoming thick enough that her image was blurred, his erection suddenly rock-hard as he conjured up pictures of what he would do to her.
But that instant of fear was gone, and her lips pulled into a half smile, as if she’d been foolish. She flipped off the bathroom light, then headed back to her bedroom. Once in her cozy master suite, she yanked a sweater from her bed and pulled it over her head. For a few seconds he felt ecstasy, watching as her arms uplifted and for a heartbeat she was blindfolded and trapped in the garment, but then her head poked through a wide cowl neck and her arms slid through the sweater’s sleeves. She pulled her rope of hair from the neckline and walked quickly out of view, snapping the lights off as she entered the hallway.
Hot desire zinged through his blood at the thought of her.
Beautiful.
Arrogant.
Proud.
And soon, very soon, to be brought to her knees.
CHAPTER 9
“Get this,” BJ said, as Carter walked into the courthouse the next day. He’d spent the last three hours at the scene of an accident where a semi had jackknifed on I-84. The huge truck had hit a patch of black ice and slammed into an SUV filled with teenagers on their way to the mountain for night skiing. One kid had been treated by EMTs and released, two others had been sent by ambulance to local hospitals, and a third had been life-flighted to Portland. The driver of the eighteen-wheeler had escaped without injury except for the mental anguish he was putting himself through.
“Just don’t tell me it’s more bad news,” Carter said, yanking off his gloves. He was cold, tired, and hungry, as he’d missed both breakfast and lunch. Freezing rain had snarled traffic, the schools had closed, and now a blizzard was blowing down the gorge.
BJ ignored his bad mood as he stopped in the small kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot simmering in the coffeemaker. He took a long sip and felt the hot liquid splash against the bottom of his empty stomach. Finally, as they headed toward his office, she asked, “What is it you’ve been bugging me about for over twenty-four hours?”
“The autopsy on the Jane Doe.”
“Bingo.” She flashed him a smile. “Just ask and ye shall receive.”
It was on his desk. He unzipped his coat and hung it on a peg, then picked up the computer pages and scanned them quickly. “Cause of death hasn’t been determined.”
“That’s right, but check out the teeth. Definitely filed down. No dental work to be found, so we can’t ID her that way. No flesh on her fingers, so no
prints. Not enough left of her to identify her from physical marks. No tattoos or scars, none of her bones were ever broken, well, at least none of the ones we’ve discovered. But they did analyze the stuff in her hair.”
Carter had already seen the note. “Latex?”
“Yep, but foam, not paint.”
“Foam,” he repeated. “Like the rubber stuff.”
“Mmm. And some of it was inside her. Now, check the other stuff they found. Alginate.”
“What the hell’s that?”
“It’s manufactured from a seaweed source, comes in a powder that, when added with water, creates the stuff that dentists use to make molds of teeth. Have you ever been fitted for a crown and had to bite into a mold filled with some cherry-flavored goop? That’s alginate.”
“How do you know that?” he asked. BJ always amazed him.
“I’m Internet-friendly.”
“So while I’m out freezing my butt off in the worst storm of the century, you’re surfing the Web,” he accused, leaning one hip on the edge of his desk as he reread the report.
“And drinking hot cocoa and eating bonbons, while I’m at it.” One reddish eyebrow arched impishly. “Isn’t that the way it should be?”
“Absolutely,” he said sarcastically as he tried to wrap his brain around this new information. “Why alginate and latex?”
“It might have something to do with why her teeth were filed down.”
Looking up, he asked, “You think we’ve got a sadomasochistic dentist on the loose?”
“I don’t know what we’ve got.” Suddenly she wasn’t kidding. Carter felt the humor disperse with the chill in the air. “But I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I.”
“They think she’s been dead nearly a year.”
Carter nodded, reread the notes on the report.
“Any other information?”
“The crime lab’s working on it, but they didn’t find any tire tracks or footprints to cast and, so far, no other evidence in the surrounding area.”
“She didn’t crawl into the log by herself.”
“No, but whoever did it covered his tracks, and it’s been a long time, nearly a year. Seasons change, wild animals drag off body parts, soil erosion and rain wash away footprints. Any evidence that might have been left could be buried deep. So far, though, metal detectors have found nothing.” BJ ran a hand through her short hair. “You know what bothers me? The teeth. I keep coming back to that. Why kill someone and take the time to file down her teeth?”
“Maybe he did it while she was still alive.”
“Jesus. Don’t even say it. I hate dentists and drills and…God, that’s just so twisted.”
“Maybe it’s how he gets off.”
“Then we’ve got to nail the bastard.”
“If he’s still around. A year’s a long time. Maybe he’s already slipped up and is serving time. The State Police are checking to see if there are any other cases, solved or unsolved, like this one.”
“Nothing’s like this one,” she said. “At least I hope not.”
“Me, too,” he agreed as she headed down the hall and he settled into his chair. He checked with Missing Persons again, and finished a report on the accident on the freeway while taking calls and keeping one eye on the window where snow was piling against the icy panes.
Jenna pulled her ski mask over the lower half of her face and walked the three blocks from the garage to the post office. According to Skip Uhrig, the owner of the garage, her Jeep would be ready within the next couple of hours. All that was wrong with her rig was a faulty alternator.
One problem down, a few thousand to go, she thought as she crossed the street and tried to avoid slipping on the icy pavement. Snow was slanting from the gray sky, thick enough that it was impossible to see the length of the street; both her kids were at home, as the schools had let out early because of the weather, and so far, none of the repairmen she’d called had shown up. “It’s still early,” she told herself as she pushed her way past the glass door into the post office, a yellow-brick building that had been erected before the turn of the last century.
There was counter space for four clerks, but only one person was helping customers. Not that it mattered. Only two people were waiting and one, a tall woman bundled in parka, scarf, and ski pants, kept looking over her shoulder to eye Jenna as she opened her post office box and withdrew a stack of mail. Jenna didn’t pay much attention. It happened all the time. Either people recognized her and were suddenly tongue-tied in the face of her celebrity, or they studied her surreptitiously, the wheels in their minds turning quickly to try and connect a face with a name. Those people didn’t expect to see her in a small town, running the same errands they were.
Since she had some hours to kill, she decided to walk the few blocks to the theater and see if Rinda wanted to go to a late lunch or grab a cup of coffee at the local café. Stuffing the mail into her purse, she shouldered open the door and hustled down the street. Few people were on the sidewalks and the usual slow traffic had dwindled.
Think of it as an adventure, she told herself, as she made her way down an alley where trash bins, parked cars, and garages were covered in four inches of snow. She hurried briskly through a parking lot to the old theater. Its steeply pitched roof was covered in white, its belltower knifing upward to the dark sky, its stained-glass windows glowing from the lights within. The once-upon-a-time church appeared bucolic and had a Currier and Ives nostalgia, until you looked more closely and noticed the blistered and peeled paint, some rot in the siding, crumbling mortar on the brick walkways, and a dark spire that seemed incomplete and somewhat sinister without a cross mounted at its highest point.
Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself, but had thought the old church was a little eerie, an odd choice for the theater, despite whatever tax breaks Rinda had received for restoring the historic building.
Rather than walk up the front steps, she cut around the back and stepped through a door that opened to a landing of a staircase. It wound up to the main part of the theater and curled down to the basement where the kitchen and dressing rooms were located in what had been Sunday-school classrooms fifty years earlier.
Voices echoed through the stairwell—one she recognized as Rinda’s, the other she couldn’t place other than it was male and, from the sounds of it, irritated.
“…I told you to talk to Winkle,” the man was saying.
“And I told you that would be a waste of time. He and I have a history.”
“I know, but that wouldn’t keep him from doing his job.”
“Look, Shane, I’ve got a problem here.”
“Because someone’s stealing trinkets that belonged to a celebrity?” he replied gruffly, and Jenna realized Rinda was talking to the sheriff. Great. Jenna melted back into the shadowy staircase as the man behind the badge ranted on. “Is that really a surprise? What do you expect, Rinda? It doesn’t matter if it’s Jenna Hughes or Jennifer Lopez or Drew Barrymore or anyone with a face and name that people recognize—people are going to try and get close to her, either by asking for her autograph, or befriending her, or taking a little something that was once hers. Celebrities ask for this kind of thing to happen. It comes with the territory. The price of fame.”
“That’s a pile of garbage, Shane, and you know it. Thievery is thievery. It doesn’t matter who you are.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“You could have sent one of the deputies.”
“Not today,” he shot back. “They’re too busy. I’m here on my lunch hour as a personal favor to you, okay? Now, I’ll look around, but you’ve already said there isn’t any evidence of forced entry, that the only things missing were donated by Jenna Hughes, and that you’ve searched the entire premises. Have you asked the people that work here?”
“Most of them.”
“Most?” he repeated, not hiding his sarcasm.
“Not everyone has been in since I discovered the dress
was missing, and I called those I could, but I haven’t reached a few.”
“Keep trying,” he advised. “And talk to Ms. Hughes. Maybe she decided she didn’t want to donate the things after all.”
Jenna bristled. Why would he think she’d take back her old costumes after giving them to the theater?
“She wouldn’t do that,” Rinda protested.
“Someone did.”
“Not Jenna.”
“Then who?”
“That’s what I expect you to find out.”
He swore under his breath and all Jenna could make out was “…the last time, okay? Damned Hollywood types…more trouble than they’re worth…should stay in California where they belong.”
Jenna had heard enough. She stomped her way up the half flight to what had been the apse, where she walked through the open door and found Rinda and the sheriff standing at the middle aisle between the first row of pews.
Here we go, she thought, as she stepped out of the stairwell and faced the tall man. He was at least six-feet-two or three. Wide shoulders that tapered to a narrow waist and slim hips suggested he was either naturally athletic or that he worked out. Dressed in his uniform, but bareheaded, the brim of his hat twisting in the fingers of one large hand, he was a presence, a male presence. No two ways about it.
“I think I heard my name,” she announced.
“Uh-oh.” Rinda winced and leaned against the arm of one pew, but the sheriff, his rugged face a mask of indifference, merely looked over his shoulder.
Near-black eyes assessed her without the slightest bit of interest. “You did if you’re Jenna Hughes.” His gaze skated over her face and he nodded as if to confirm her identity to himself. “So, yeah, you did.”
At least he wasn’t pretending he didn’t recognize her. “Thought so. And…from what I gather, you’ve already decided you don’t trust me.”
“I don’t trust many people,” he drawled. “Comes with the territory.”
“I figured,” she said as she walked in front of the first row of pews. “But that’s too bad.” Extending her hand, she stopped directly in front of him, the toes of her boots nearly touching his.