by Lisa Jackson
Picking up that photo, he studied the details of Anne-Marie’s oval face—straight, aquiline nose dusted with fine freckles, naturally arched eyebrows, wide gold eyes, and full lips that, he remembered, stretched into a sexy and secretive smile. Her teeth were straight, incisors a little longer than the others, and the glint in those incredible eyes had caused more than one male heart to beat a little faster. A natural athlete, her hips were slim, her breasts small, her legs long. She was far more clever than he’d given her credit for. Twice, he’d nearly caught her and just as many times she’d given him the slip.
“No more,” he vowed as he found his iPad where he’d stored most of his notes on her. The pictures were on the device as well as his phone, but he liked the photographs as they were easier to pocket and pull out when necessary if he came across someone who might have run into her. They were easier to give to the person rather than let anyone handle his phone with all of its stored data.
Also, it seemed more likely to him that if he were “her brother,” or “her cousin” or “a friend,” all claims he’d made while tracking her down, that he would have an old photo. Bringing out a gallery of different shots stored on a computer file might be off-putting.
He checked his notes again. Her connection to Grizzly Falls was frail at best. Then again, when it came to the chameleon that was Anne-Marie Calderone, what he knew about her was about as solid as quicksand, the lies soft and shifting, hiding the solid footing of the truth.
His jaw grew tense at the thought of how she’d duped him.
All too easily.
Because he hadn’t been thinking with his head when he was around her.
He felt the same cold fire burn through him as he gathered up her pictures and stuffed them back into the plastic bags.
Time to get moving.
He didn’t know where she was. But he knew where to start looking for her.
Cade Grayson.
He shouldn’t be too hard to find. Grayson was an ex-rodeo rider. Hard drinking. Womanizing. Trouble. The kind of man Anne-Marie had found irresistible. So of course, she’d come to seek him out.
From what Ryder had read in the local newspaper, Cade was one of two surviving brothers of Dan Grayson, recent sheriff of Pinewood County and the victim of a homicide. Cade and Zedediah still owned and maintained the Grayson ranch outside town, the place their ancestors had claimed as a homestead.
It seemed the likely place for Anne-Marie to show up. Ryder grabbed his heavy jacket and tucked his pistol and knife within. In a small case, he put the iPad, night-vision goggles, some various spy equipment, and his camera with all of its lenses.
After double-checking that everything, including the packs of chips and jerky, were in place, he zipped up the case and tossed on his jacket.
As he locked the door of the shabby room behind him, he thought of her again. How she’d once been. Without the makeup and disguises. Stripped bare. A natural beauty, a woman of privilege, smarter than most people knew.
He threw open the door of his truck, tossed in his gear, climbed inside, and fired the engine, her visage with him still. He’d trained himself not to think too much about her but sometimes he couldn’t help himself. All his practiced self-control slid away and the door of his memories cracked open. When that happened, as it did as he backed out of the icy parking spot, he couldn’t help but remember her naked body, shining with perspiration, flesh warm and smooth, eyes a smoldering shade as she stared up at him, almost daring him to give in to her.
She had been as erotically sensual and emotionally dangerous a woman as he’d ever met; a deadly combination he’d been unable to resist.
It wasn’t a big surprise that he’d decided to hunt her down, he thought, driving out of the lot and joining a slim stream of traffic heading toward the town of Grizzly Falls.
It was the least she deserved.
Usually nothing about the morgue got to Pescoli. She could deal with the sight of a dead body, blood, and organs, and the cooler temperature in the room hardly registered. The clinical aspect of it was a comfort, if anything, and the smell, though unpleasant, wasn’t a big deal. Even watching the pathologists work, examining and weighing organs while making notes on computers, was more interesting than troubling to her. She’d been there enough times, most often to collect the fingerprints off dead bodies. Nothing about the tiled room with its refrigerated coffin-like drawers, scales, stainless steel tables with sinks, or mutilated bodies really ever bothered her. She figured the dead were dead. Unfeeling.
It was her job to find out why, and if a crime had been committed, to bring the lowlife who’d perpetrated said crime to justice. Knowing the trauma a victim had gone through burrowed under her skin and increased her determination to nail the son of a bitch who’d committed the crime. Her emotions were often volatile, while her partner exuded a cool, almost icy detachment, but Pescoli wasn’t particularly sensitive to the nuances. She just did her job.
At the moment, her senses were all out of whack. The smell alone was awful, that dead, sickly-sweet odor seeming to cling to her nostrils as she viewed the dead body of their Jane Doe lying faceup, her skin a grayish tone, her hair pushed away from her face, her eyes wide open and seeming to stare straight up at the huge body lift suspended over her gurney. Also, Pescoli couldn’t help but let her gaze wander to the refrigerated drawers. Morbidly, she wondered if Dan Grayson’s body was lying within one.
Her lungs constricted for a moment, but she told herself there was no reason to speculate. Forcing her gaze back to the victim, she tried to concentrate on the case.
Obviously, Jane hadn’t been autopsied yet, no Y slice cut into her torso, no thin line sawed across her forehead and into her skull.
“I assume the autopsy has been scheduled?” asked Alvarez. She was standing at the side of the gurney. Her gaze had moved from the vic to the forensic pathologist who had pulled Jane from her resting spot in the refrigerated drawers lining one wall.
“Tomorrow, right after lunch.”
Pescoli’s already queasy stomach turned. “Ugh.”
Alvarez glanced up at her quickly, obviously wondering at the comment that just slipped out.
Dr. Esmeralda Kendrick didn’t even look up. She was one of those women who was all business. Somewhere in her early thirties, she could have been pretty, but made no effort, at least not for work. Pescoli appreciated that. Everything about Dr. Kendrick was professional. Her manner, her speech, her body language. As usual, her blondish hair was scraped back into a no-nonsense ponytail. She wore no makeup, not even a trace of lipstick, and her blue eyes, behind huge glasses, were serious. Though barely five-three, she managed to appear commanding. She wore scrubs, tennis shoes, a lab coat, and the air of someone who was very busy and didn’t like to be interrupted.
The little bit of a tattoo, a shamrock it seemed, peeked from beneath her ponytail, so Pescoli guessed that Dr. Kendrick might not be as straightlaced and cold away from the morgue as she was while doing her job. Maybe.
“You’ve got her personal effects?” Pescoli asked her.
She nodded. “Not much. Just her clothes that have been examined and are laid out and drying, and a pair of earrings. Look like diamonds. Could be cubic z. Not sure yet. Nothing else.”
Pescoli glanced down at the fingers. “Fingernail scrapings?”
“Done at the scene. And an officer came and took prints when the body was brought in,” Kendrick said, looking toward the door which led to an underground parking area where bodies could be brought in discreetly. Across the wide room and through another doorway was a hallway that led to a viewing area, waiting room. Farther along was the staff area, much like the lunchroom at the station.
In the sterile-looking examination room, the feel was decidedly different. An operating room without the intensity, as no anesthesia was being forced into lungs to keep the patient under during surgery, no anxious relatives relegated to a waiting area to hear the outcome of the procedures, no life being saved.
No, the lives here had already been lost, sometimes violently.
Pescoli eyed the surroundings, computer monitors, metal cabinets for equipment, scales, and three long stainless steel tables equipped with faucets, hoses, and gutters, the kind that reminded her of working in the cannery as a youth, where the detritus from the berries on the belt merged with the water running in the gutter to unknown drains, or as the gossip mill insisted, was used in wine making. Sticks, bees, rotten fruit, even a snake once, were pushed into the ever present stream of water flushing out the berries to be canned and sold in markets across the country.
The difference was that in the morgue the gutters were primarily for blood.
Observing the dead usually wasn’t a big deal, just part of her job, until today, when the smell kept causing her stomach to roil uneasily and she’d had to fight to keep the nausea at bay.
“So what do we know about her?” Pescoli asked.
“We’ll X-ray the body, look for anything out of the ordinary in the results, of course. There’s not much in the form of distinguishing marks, other than a scar on her right forearm, probably from an accident when she was a kid, and a small tattoo of a flower—a daisy—on her ankle.
“She may have drowned,” Dr. Kendrick said, her eyebrows pulling together thoughtfully. “Again, we won’t be certain until we examine her lungs. There is a little bruising at her throat, but I can’t be certain that the hyoid was crushed. We do know that she wasn’t sexually assaulted, she wasn’t pregnant, and the only serious and outward sign of trauma is her ring finger, which was sliced off cleanly and neatly.”
Pescoli’s gaze went to the hand in question where the stump was visible, then, once more, she looked at the woman’s face. Serene in death. Who are you? she wondered. And what the hell happened ?
Chapter 8
Jessica adjusted the padding around her waist, hips, and torso and stared at her reflection in the mirror she’d purchased at a thrift shop and mounted on the bathroom door. The suit wasn’t comfortable, but necessary, she knew, hiding her otherwise slim frame. She’d already donned the dark contacts and wig, then eyed her reflection in the mirror. Not bad. She added a little more makeup, far more than she ever wore, changing the contour of her lips and eyes, then slid a mouthpiece over her natural teeth, changing her smile before pushing a pair of glasses onto the bridge of her nose. From a distance, the transformation would hide her identity. Close up, if anyone really knew her and was on to her disguises, she might not be able to get away with denying who she really was.
Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to; not until she talked to Cade and decided upon her next move. She struggled into her uniform, a gold-colored dress with a front zipper, gingham trim, and red piping, like something waitresses wore in a 1950s diner, something Nell Jaffe had decided would attract customers. Slowly, she was converting the bland interior of the diner into a copy of something straight out of American Graffiti, a movie she outwardly adored.
After locking the cabin, Jessica drove into town and kept one eye on the rearview mirror. So far, she thought she was safe. But she wasn’t going to let her guard down. She’d been in Grizzly Falls only a few days so she was still on pins and needles, fearing that, at any moment, she would run into him again, that he would find her. Her stomach twisted at the thought and her chest became tight, feelings she battled by breathing slowly and relaxing her muscles, even stretching her fingers rather than holding on to the steering wheel in a death grip.
The falling snow had abated and the plows had been at work, ruts being replaced by smooth roads where pavement was visible in some spots. Even the diner’s lot had been partially cleared. After parking in the rear of the restaurant, she grabbed her backpack and hurried inside where the furnace was working overtime and already the smells of warm coffee and sizzling bacon greeted her.
Near the storage closet where fresh linens were kept, she yanked off her boots and stepped into the shoes she’d brought in her backpack, then exchanged her jacket for an apron and started sorting silver ware. She was scheduled to work through the noon crush, then have some time off before dinner. Nell had asked her to return as two other waitresses were out sick. Nell had pulled a face and made quotes with her long fingers as she’d mentioned the flu, but as they were shorthanded, Jessica was fine with it. The more work, the better, though she’d probably have to put off tracking down Cade Grayson.
“Leave that for Marlon,” Misty advised as she swept through the swinging doors and caught Jessica wrapping napkins around sets of knives, spoons, and forks. “Coffee’s already on and, okay, the first of the local yokels who need their caffeine fix should be here in . . . uh”—she glanced down at her watch—“eleven minutes. Hear that, Armando? Kip Cranston will be pounding on the door soon. He’ll want the usual.”
“Already got it going,” Armando said, not even looking over his shoulder as he tossed some onions onto the grill. They sizzled and filled the kitchen with their sweet aroma. Jessica’s stomach growled and she realized she’d forgotten to eat her usual container of yogurt.
“Toast ready?” Misty called. “You know Kip likes rye and Jimmy is always looking for a stack of pancakes. And Patch wants his sausage cooked all the way through, no pink.”
“Sì. I told you! I got this.” Armando flung the words over his shoulder then turned away and muttered something in Spanish under his breath.
None of it, Jessica suspected, was good.
“I’m unlocking the door.” Misty found the keys in a drawer and tucked them into her pocket.
“Sì, sì. I heard you. Dios! ¿Te crees que soy sordo?”
“No, I don’t think you’re deaf,” Misty replied, her lips pursing, her eyes, with their iridescent lilac lids, narrowing. “Just stubborn.”
“Like the bull. El toro. Yes?” With a snort, Armando returned to his work.
Over his mutterings, the roar of the fan, and the popping grease, Jessica heard the thrum of heavy bass and loud rumble of exhaust pipes announcing that Marlon, in his tricked-out Honda, had arrived.
“The Dashing Dishwasher has decided to make an appearance,” Misty said before heading into the dining area. “Now, it’s officially showtime.”
Jessica followed her inside and sure enough, a group of men in their sixties and seventies were huddled under the portico. As Misty unlocked the door and pulled it open, they walked briskly inside. With red faces, stocking caps, bulky jackets, and gloved hands in their pockets, they streamed to the two tables that she had already pushed together.
“ ’Bout time you opened the damn doors,” a grizzled old fellow said good-naturedly. “I was like to freeze, and Ed there, he claimed he’d have to go warm up in the cab of his truck where he keeps a bottle of Jack handy.”
“No need for extreme measures,” she said, falling into an easy banter. “Coffee all around, except for you, Syd? You want decaf.”
“Yeah,” a short guy said, showing a wide girth matched by a grin that stretched from one side of his bearded face to the other. “Not what I want, but I’d better if I don’t want my ticker to start racing.”
“You got it.” Misty flitted around the table like the pro she was, juggling two pots of hot coffee while the regulars turned up the cups on their tables indicating they’d like a little morning jolt. She poured and chatted while a couple showed up and took a table by the window, away from the crowd in the middle of the room where the group of eight was talking, several conversations buzzing at once.
As Jessica brought water and tea for her table, she heard snippets of gossip. Dan Grayson’s name was mentioned several times but there was another topic of interest, a woman’s body found in a creek on a ranch several miles out of town. She told herself not to make more of it than it was, that it had nothing to do with her, but as she brought an order of a farmer’s breakfast and a veggie omelet to a middle-aged couple near the door, she heard the word mutilation.
Her heart stopped for a fraction of a second.
“What do you mean mutil
ation?” the woman asked as she found Jessica hovering near the table. In her mid-seventies, she turned her face upward and lifted a hand, catching Jessica’s full attention. “Oh, dear, sorry to bother you, but could you get us a fresh bottle of catsup? This one”—she indicated the small, full bottle resting near the napkin holder and salt and pepper—“is a little, well, you know. It’s got a little bit of gunk around the lid.”
Jessica picked up the offensive glass bottle though she saw nothing other than fresh red catsup within. “Certainly.”
“And could I bother you for another knife? I see a spot on this one’s blade.” Smiling, the woman held up the flatware in question and yes, there was a bit of a water stain on the stainless steel.
“No problem. I’ll be right back.”
“Wait! Please bring some hot water, would you be a dear? My tea’s already gone cold.” Her smile was beneficent, but a little malicious gleam shone in her eyes, as she narrowed her gaze on Jessica through rimless glasses. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
“Not at all.” Jessica was off and the woman turned to her husband again.
“Harry?” she said, catching his attention. “I asked you what you mean by mutilation?”
Though he answered, Jessica couldn’t hear the conversation, whispered as it was. When she returned with the requested items, the woman ended her conversation quickly, then eyeballed the new knife and bottle skeptically.