by Lisa Jackson
Laying the map flat, she pointed to a red dot she’d inked on the map. “Monarch Drive. This is where the judge’s cabin is, where she was staying.” Moving her finger due north, she stopped at another red spot. “And here’s where the judge’s body was found.”
“Got it. But over here”—she moved her finger west a little bit—“here’s where Vincent Samuels’s more rustic cabin is.”
The three points created a perfect triangle.
“Accessed by this same road where Verdago was heading.”
“With his girlfriend.” Picking up the soda, she chewed thoughtfully on the protruding straw.
“So where’s Vincent Samuels?”
“With them? In the back of the van? Dead?” The possibilities were endless, but Pescoli was beginning to believe the answers to the entire case were hidden in that cabin, holed up with Verdago and his girlfriend.
“Let’s go find out.”
“With backup, right?” Sage said.
“You come with Watershed or Rule or whoever’s available. I’ll get Alvarez. The important thing is to not go in guns blazing. We don’t want to scare them off. They might already be spooked if they’ve realized they got caught by the traffic cam.”
“Right.”
“So we’ll go in softly, check the situation out, and if it pans out and we think we’ve got them, we’ll call for the team.” Kicking her chair back, Pescoli was on her feet and reaching for her sidearm and shoulder holster.
“Aren’t you going to run this by the sheriff?”
“The sheriff is unavailable right now, in the hospital.”
Zoller shot her a look. “I was talking about—”
“Brewster, I know, but he’s out of the office too. Another meeting.” She snapped the holster into place.
“He’s gone more than he’s here,” Zoller said.
“Politics.” And Cort Brewster reveled in them, in the power. In the few days he’d been appointed the acting sheriff, he’d taken his administrative duties to heart, the part of the job Grayson detested. God, she wished Grayson would improve, show some sign of returning. “I’ll get Alvarez. We were about to go see Samuels anyway.”
“I’ll find a partner,” Sage said.
“Where are you going?” a male voice asked from outside the open door.
Damn!
Pescoli ran a litany of swear words through her mind as she recognized Manny Douglas, wearing his signature parka as well as his ever-present smirk, hovering just outside the door.
“How’d you get in here?” she demanded. She didn’t need the press. Not now. Not when she felt the case could finally be breaking.
“I brought him.” From the hallway, Jeremy poked his head into the room and Pescoli’s day, which had so recently been looking up, took a nosedive.
“Don’t you know you need to check with me first?” she asked her son, trying to hold on to her temper. This situation could have been so easily avoided had Jeremy been properly trained. But the worst part of it was that facing off with Jeremy was just the kind of scene she’d been concerned about ever since her son had started volunteering at the offices, the kind of scene she never wanted to experience.
“It was okay the other day,” Jeremy pointed out, his back up as she grabbed her purse and zipped her jacket.
“And I came out to meet him, remember.” For the love of God, her son could be so clueless sometimes. “Always let me know,” she told him. “Always. Give me a heads-up. I could have sensitive material on my desk, or someone else in the room. You can’t just let anyone walk in here.”
“Hey, hey, hey!” Manny butted in. “I insisted. And it’s a good thing. What happened to ‘first call’? That’s what you promised.”
“I know what I said,” she snapped as he backed up a step to allow her to pass, so now, she and Zoller were adding to the clog of people near her doorway. “That call will come when there’s something to report.”
“This seems like a breaking story to me.”
“Nope, it’s not. Not yet. We’ve got nothing so far. As soon as we do, you’re first on my list.”
“Huh,” he snorted.
“Mom!” Jeremy said, a new urgency to his voice. “What’s on your finger . . . are you engaged?”
Everyone stopped to stare at her left hand where her new ring winked under the fluorescent lights.
“Umm, yes . . . yes. I was going to talk to you and Bianca tonight.”
“But—”
“Seriously, Jer. Tonight.”
“You said you would talk to us first before you did anything,” he said. “But it looks like you’ve already made your decision.” He was positively stricken.
“Not keeping promises, Detective?” Manny asked.
“Tonight, Jer,” she said again firmly. Before he could argue any further, she shouldered past him and Manny, and said in an undertone to Zoller who was right on her heels, “Under the radar. No sirens, no lights.”
“See you there . . .” Zoller said quietly as she headed down the hall and Pescoli turned into Alvarez’s office.
“What do you mean, she’s getting married?” Bianca asked and Jeremy wondered how his smart little sister could be such an idiot sometimes. He’d picked her up from her current BFF Amy’s house and now they were cruising through the lower section of town, near the falls, and were scouting out food, cheap food as neither of them had a job and therefore no extra cash.
“It musta happened last night. That’s why she had to leave, to be with that douche bag Santana.” He looked around. “There’s nothing good down here. Let’s check the hill.”
“You think Santana’s a douche?” Bianca asked as they headed toward the road that connected the upper part of Grizzly Falls, which was above this section near the river.
“I don’t know.”
“I think he’s kind of sexy, well, in an old man kind of way.”
Jeremy groaned. “Are you kidding?” As they passed the courthouse, he shot a glance her way and caught her smothering a smile. “Oh, yeah, you’re so funny.”
“What’s really bugging you?”
“I just don’t think we need some jerkwad coming into the house and telling us what to do,” he said, though she was right, he was irritated at his mother, in fact, mad as hell. His mom thought she could tell him who he could date and what her opinion was about his choice, but man, he couldn’t give her advice on anything, and the way she’d chewed his butt in front of the other detectives and that reporter today was a real pisser. Then again, he didn’t like Santana much either. They’d come to blows before and it could happen again.
“Maybe he won’t get in our way.”
“Jesus, Bi, what planet are you living on?”
She looked at him as if he were from Jupiter; then she reached over and turned the heater up, as if that would help.
“It’s broken. Remember?” he said.
“Get it fixed. It’s freezing in here.”
“When I get some extra money.” Shifting down, he turned the nose of his truck up the hill and bounced over the railroad tracks. Man, did he need new shocks, but he couldn’t afford them yet. Just like he couldn’t fix the heater. Not while he was a volunteer; he needed a paying job and was almost to the point of begging for his old job back at Corky’s Gas and Go, but he’d left there on bad terms, to the point he wasn’t sure he even could use the service station/mini-mart as a reference for another job. Nor could he ask the mechanic on duty to give him a deal any longer. So he’d had to let the maintenance on his pickup lag.
He gave the truck some gas as the road was steep as it cut into the sheer cliffs of Boxer Bluff. As a kid he’d imagined the cliff face splitting and falling down on their car, burying his mom’s old Explorer and them in it, but he’d gotten over that somewhere along the line.
“You’re just being overprotective,” Bianca theorized as her cell phone buzzed for like the zillionth time since he’d picked her up. “It’s because she’s the only mother you have.”
>
“The only parent I have,” he clarified. “You’ve got Lucky.”
She wrinkled her nose and thought about it as she scanned the text. “Yeah, I guess, and Michelle.”
“They don’t count. Not for me.”
If Bianca was surprised at his feelings for the couple she embraced so wholeheartedly, she didn’t show it as she texted back with lightning speed.
“What’s so important?”
Again she looked at him as if he were from outer space. “Like everything. My life.”
They crested the top of the hill and drove past the sheriff’s department. He glanced at the parking lot, saw his mom’s Jeep was missing, and wondered where she was. It worried him, how gung ho she’d been to go after the judge’s killer. She was a little reckless at times, and as he’d heard Heidi’s father remark so often, she could be kind of a “loose cannon.” Not that he really put much stock in Sheriff Brewster’s opinion. That guy was a bastard with a capital B and it irked Jeremy that he had to suck up to him.
But someday it would all be different.
When he was a cop and Heidi was his wife.
They’d already talked marriage, though he knew it was in the far-off distance. Heidi was pushing him, but he wasn’t ready, and as stupid and immature as his mother seemed to think he was, he knew better than to tie the knot before he’d figured out his life and she’d figured out hers.
So he put up with her dad. For now. And even Heidi was coming around about him, saying he’d “changed” ever since becoming sheriff, that he wasn’t around as much or as into his family.
Just like his mom had warned. But that’s what happened when you were an officer of the law. So Heidi better get used to it, because someday, she was going to marry one.
“How about Dixie’s?” he asked Bianca, as he spied the neon sign of the local burger hut at the next stoplight.
She was still texting like mad, not paying much attention. “Do they still have garden burgers?”
“I think.”
“Okay.”
Bianca flirted with becoming a vegetarian, just as she flirted with bulimia. Their mother was wising up to the fact, and Jeremy had given Bianca a lecture because it was just plain stupid, in his mind. Yeah, he’d heard it was a serious eating disorder, but he just wanted her to stop being so dumb. Bianca seemed to be coming around, or so he thought as he pulled into the parking lot of the burger joint and, smiling, caught a glimpse of Heidi Brewster seated in one of the booths.
The night was suddenly looking better.
Chapter 28
Cade’s patience had run thin.
He ordered a beer at the bar of the Black Horse Saloon and nursed it slowly. Country music twanged from the speakers, pool balls clicked at a table in the corner, and several televisions were turned onto a variety of sporting events, none of which held his attention.
J.D. and Zed were handling the evening chores, so a few hours earlier Cade had driven to Missoula to check on Dan.
It hadn’t gone well.
With each passing day, the usually cheery nurses and aides at the hospital seemed less hopeful for his brother’s recovery, or at least that was the impression that Cade had gotten. The security guard posted outside the ICU wing was ever changing and appeared to become either more grim at each of his visits or more bored. Neither boded well.
Finally, just two hours earlier, he’d cornered an ICU doc entering the unit as he was leaving and, sick and tired of what he perceived as the runaround, he’d demanded answers.
Though the doctor, a neurologist, tried to be encouraging, there was something in her eyes that warned Cade against expecting miracles.
“Some people recover, if not fully, then nearly,” she’d said to Cade, “but some people don’t. We’re doing everything we can and I, personally, have talked to my colleagues around the country who have dealt with this kind of trauma. That’s the good news, that we’re linked by computer to the best hospitals in the world, so I can assure you we are giving your brother the best level of care possible.” She smiled and touched Cade on the arm. “I hear the sheriff’s a fighter, so try to have some faith,” she suggested while her eyes had soundlessly warned him to brace himself.
He’d left Northern General and Missoula with the feeling of doom dragging him down.
It hasn’t yet been a week, he reminded himself as the attack had been Christmas morning, but New Year’s was fast approaching, and in a few days he wouldn’t be able to offer himself that bit of false hope.
Then there was Hattie and the girls.
What a mess that was.
The bartender, a redhead with a tattoo peeking from the open collar of her blouse and who definitely didn’t look old enough to serve, slid an old-fashioned glass filled with peanuts his direction. He caught it before it went past and she offered him a sexy little smile. He tipped his head, silently thanking her, but that was the end of it.
There had been a day when he’d taken any subtle flirtation as an invitation and reacted. Usually, whatever had ensued had ended up badly.
But he wasn’t interested, he thought, downing his beer and leaving enough cash on the bar to cover a hefty tip.
Not tonight.
Maybe not ever again.
Alvarez didn’t share Pescoli’s enthusiasm that they were going to catch Verdago, haul him off, and extract a confession for the attempted murder of the sheriff and the killing of Judge Samuels-Piquard. Just because a vehicle that looked like Carnie Tibalt’s was heading in the general direction of Vincent Samuels’s cabin, didn’t mean that Verdago was holed up there, and the picture of the van wasn’t as clear as it could have been, the image of the driver and his companion blurry. She wasn’t even sure that the passenger was a woman, much less Carnival Tibalt.
“You said there are dozens of places to hide in this section of Montana. Verdago might not be at Samuels’s cabin.”
“Maybe.”
“But you think he’ll be there.”
“I’m hoping.” She hit the wipers as the snow that had been falling off and on all day was definitely on again, dusk descending, darkness ahead as the lights of the city faded behind them. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
“Yeah,” Alvarez said as Pescoli drove north of the city,
“Maybe Verdago will be sitting around a table playing poker with the Zodiac Killer, D.B. Cooper, and Jack the Ripper.”
“Fun group,” Pescoli said dryly.
“Masters of evasion.”
Zoller had rounded up Pete Watershed and they were following, about a mile behind, keeping in contact via the radio and cell phones. Of course, Manny Douglas was probably in the mix as well, following at a distance, but wanting to be on the scene and, probably, getting in the way. Though Pescoli had ordered him to back off, that was unlikely. The man wasn’t stupid; he wouldn’t blow the assignment or get in the line of fire. Hopefully.
“Did you know that Brewster had a rifle stolen recently? Remington .30-06. Same caliber we’re looking for. Stolen right after Thanksgiving and, I checked, he reported it.”
“Coincidence?” Pescoli asked.
“Maybe. Common gun.”
“What the hell is that all about? His house is broken into and then the attacks?” Pescoli’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I. I’m going to do some more digging.”
“Good.” The road wound upward, through the forest, where the frozen conifers, covered in white, knifed upward, seeming to pierce the darkening sky.
They talked about the break-in at Brewster’s house, trying to fit it into the mix, and all the while Alvarez’s nerves were strung tight as she thought about the upcoming confrontation. Would they find Verdago, armed to the teeth? She glanced at her partner and noticed, as Pescoli turned a tight corner, the ring on her left hand. “So, you gave in to the ultimatum, huh? The one you went off about the other day in the diner.”
“What?”
“You’re engaged,” Alvarez said.<
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“Oh. Yes. Thanks to my son, the whole department heard.” Pescoli glanced at her partner. “Don’t tell me you’re going to be pissed that I didn’t tell you personally.”
“I was just going to offer congratulations.”
“Good.”
“Just thought I’d acknowledge it. You can tell me about it later, when we’re not in the middle of this.”
“Maybe then I’ll be in the mood to talk about girlie stuff.”
“Not likely.”
She finally scared a smile out of Pescoli, who changed the subject with, “Okay, I think we turn off in about a quarter of a mile.”
“Got it.” Alvarez said, focusing again on the task at hand. She called Watershed and Zoller, explaining their position, as Pescoli cranked the wheel and the Jeep veered off the main highway and headed deeper into the mountains. The plan was to park the cars out of view from the cabin and hike in. Pescoli and Alvarez would secure the front of the building, Zoller and Watershed the back. Two other units were patrolling the area and were on standby should they need to be called in. Alvarez prayed that wasn’t the case, and that the capture of Maurice Verdago would be swift and without incident.
Then there was Manny Douglas, jonesing for a story, anxious to be a part of the action and record it all, though Pescoli had been firm and succinct when she’d ordered him to stay put. When, if ever, had that happened?
“Here we go,” Alvarez said, checking her GPS, which could be spotty in these desolate areas, but today, at least was working. The lane into the cabin showed tire tracks. “Someone’s been here recently.”
“Maybe it’s just Samuels,” Pescoli said.
But Alvarez could feel her excitement, the electricity in the car, and it infected her as well.
Pescoli checked the rearview. “Zoller and Watershed caught up.” Her hands flexed and opened over the wheel, her gaze focused hard on the narrow, winding double set of ruts cutting through the stands of hemlock, pine, and spruce. No lights glittered through the massive trunks; no sounds reached their ears as they pulled closer to the lake and Vincent Samuels’s hideaway.