The Alvarez & Pescoli Series

by Lisa Jackson

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Tell you what, Mom, you handle them. Okay? Can you do that?”

  “Of course!”

  “Great, that would be good. And I’ve got another favor.”

  “Shoot,” her mother said eagerly.

  “Would you call Emily Hardy and explain, then pick up my cat and take care of her until I get back?”

  “Oh, of course, honey. Consider it done!” Linnie loved nothing better than having a mission.

  “Thanks, Mom. I’ll call you in a while, once I get a cell phone. Then I’ll let you know when I’ll be back.”

  “If you’re sure you don’t need me—”

  “I’m fine, but I need you to handle these things for me.” She gave her mother the number of the hospital. “I’m in three twenty-three.”

  “Got it,” her mother said.

  “Thanks. I’ll call soon.”

  “Thank God you’re okay! And don’t you worry about the press. I’ll handle them.”

  I bet.

  “I had planned to visit your sister for the holidays,” she’d said. “Why don’t you join us? I can board the cat and you could meet me there.”

  “I don’t think so. Isn’t Christmas in…what? Three days?” Jillian couldn’t imagine spending time with her sister’s family in San Diego. She loved her nieces—they were both pistols and gave Dusti a run for her money—but she didn’t doubt for a second that her older sister would be uptight about making Christmas “perfect” and in so doing ruining all the fun of the holidays. Not to mention Drew the Drip. God, he was a bore. A tall, good-looking man who worked sixty hours a week. In his spare time he played golf, smoked cigars with “the boys” and talked forever about the stock market. He could drive Jillian up the wall. He’d been pressuring Dusti into getting pregnant again in hopes of fathering a son.

  Yeah, Christmas with the Bellamys sounded like a blast.

  Jillian had decided to pass.

  “Yes. I’m leaving on the twenty-fourth. I’ll…I’ll figure out something for your cat.”

  “Emily might keep her longer.”

  “I’ll check,” Linnie said with relief.

  “Okay. Give Reece and Carrie my love. Tell them Aunt Jillie hopes to see them soon.”

  “Of course! And, as I said, I’ll take care of the reporters, don’t you worry about a thing. We’ll celebrate when we both get home. After the New Year. I’ll…I’ll throw a party.”

  “Oh, don’t, please.” She thought of one of Linnie’s overdone gala events and shuddered. Too much to think about.

  “Whatever you want,” Linnie said, her tone a little wounded.

  Jillian wasn’t going to pick up the guilt card her mother was playing. She loved her mother, yes, but there was no denying the woman was a piece of work. Instead she wrapped up the conversation and plotted how to get herself free of the hospital. She didn’t have time to loll around. Someone seemed hell-bent on killing her, and her savior, Zane MacGregor, was locked up. They’d strapped him into handcuffs, for God’s sake. Her car was wrecked, her cell phone was confiscated and someone was trying to convince her that her first husband was still alive.

  Scratching at her wrist where the tape from the IV was pulling, she tried to think about the future, what she would do when she was released. In the past ten days her life had changed irrevocably. She still didn’t know if Aaron was alive or not, she had no idea who had tried to kill her, and then there was Zane MacGregor, whom she ridiculously felt she was falling for.

  Falling for? You barely know the man. The police think he might be involved in your abduction. Ten days trapped in a cabin does not a love story make. This is crazy. It has to be the Vicadin talking.

  But, the truth was, ever since she’d been “rescued” by the police, her thoughts had been with MacGregor and his dog, one being interviewed by the local cops, the other under a veterinarian’s care. At least Harley had survived the gunshot—one of the few bits of good news from today.

  She edged toward the precipice of the bed, trying to see into the corridor. The door to her room was ajar and over the rustle of footsteps and ding of an elevator she heard bits of disjointed conversations.

  One high-pitched voice was worried about a patient in room 314, afraid that the antibiotics wouldn’t halt his pneumonia. She was wondering where the hell the doctor was.

  Another voice, a male voice, was talking on the phone, trying to give someone on the other end information about dosages of medications.

  A third was gossiping, and Jillian had to set her jaw as she was the subject of the conversation.

  “…just like the others, I guess. Not a stitch on and tied to a tree. Can you believe it?”

  The response was muted; Jillian couldn’t catch it.

  “I know, it’s beyond weird to think a serial killer is around, like, here, in Grizzly Falls. Why here? I keep telling Jason it’s the middle of nowhere, so who would think a psycho would end up here?…What? Oh, I don’t think so. Someone we know? God, wouldn’t that be the creepiest. I mean, we’ve got our share of village idiots. Oh, that’s not P.C. I mean we’ve got more than our share of ‘local color,’ what with Ivor Hicks thinking he was abducted by aliens.”

  “Abducted, and he still gets orders from them,” the other woman said, and Jillian recognized Nurse Claire’s nasal tone. “Don’t forget Grace Perchant, who found one of the cars. She’s the gal who’s always seeing ghosts.”

  “Spirits. Like she’s got a direct line to the ghost world.”

  “Oh, sure. If you ask me, that Grace is already in another world.”

  They chuckled together as a phone rang, interrupting their conversation.

  Great, Jillian thought, more anxious than ever to get out of the hospital. She’d been in her room only a few hours, but already the four walls were beginning to close in on her.

  She tried to convince herself she should stay. A voice in her head reminded her of the fact that she wasn’t a hundred percent yet. What’s wrong with letting someone else take care of you? Why can’t you relax, sleep in a warm bed, let the doctors and nurses monitor your injuries? Then you can pull yourself together, think about leaving in the morning or even later, after you’ve slept and eaten breakfast, had a shower and put everything into perspective. Then you can figure out what you’re going to do.

  So far her care here at Pinewood General had been good. She’d been served a dinner of broiled chicken, green beans, some kind of squash, a dinner roll and a cup of fruited Jell-O. Not exactly five-star restaurant fare, but not bad. And an aide had bathed her with warm rags that had felt like heaven, though she still couldn’t wait for a long, hot shower.

  So what’s the rush?

  Are you going to start looking for Aaron again?

  Or are you going back to Seattle?

  Closing her eyes, she couldn’t decide. And then there was MacGregor. She couldn’t just leave him or Harley…. Dear Lord, she was a mental case!

  What about the police? You’re not done with them yet.

  She groaned at the thought of another interview.

  The last thing she wanted to do was talk to the police again. She’d already given her statement and suffered through an interview with not only two female detectives, but also a team of agents from the FBI, all of whom seemed to think that she was a victim and that Zane MacGregor was the twisted sicko who had been terrorizing this area of the Bitterroot Mountains.

  Jillian knew better now.

  Ever since he’d cut her away from that solitary cedar tree and carried her to safety, she’d trusted him. Zane MacGregor meant her no harm, and now, from what she understood, he was in jail, trying to explain himself.

  Her conversations with the police had been tedious and tense. First she’d undergone questioning from the two female detectives from the Pinewood Sheriff’s Department, Regan Pescoli and her partner, the quieter Selena Alvarez. That interview had been before a fun Q and A with the FBI.

  It seemed that everyone associat
ed with the police wanted to hang MacGregor for the recent spate of killings. They clearly wanted answers—a solution—and they were hell-bent on pinning the blame on someone, someone like MacGregor.

  Jillian had made it clear that she wasn’t buying into any of their theories against the man she insisted had saved her. The cops had been irritated with her that she had been more concerned with Zane MacGregor’s fate and his dog’s health than she was about trying to nail him as a serial killer.

  “That’s ridiculous,” she’d told them, unable to hide her anger as Alvarez had taken notes and taped the conversation on a small recorder. Petite, with sharp features and hair black enough to shine blue under the fluorescent lights, she seemed the more serious, less explosive of the two.

  The taller detective, Pescoli, had stood near the doorway, as if giving herself and Jillian a little space. Tanned and slightly freckled, though it was the dead of winter, she’d obviously spent lots of time outdoors. But under the fluorescent glow of the hospital lights, Pescoli had appeared dead on her feet, dark smudges showing under her eyes, curly red-brown hair surrounding an angular, uncompromising face. She seemed intense. Driven. Angry.

  “MacGregor didn’t try to hurt me,” Jillian argued. “He saved me, for God’s sake. You saw him carrying me away from the tree where I…where I’d been tied and left. If it weren’t for Zane MacGregor, I’d be dead!”

  The cops were unmoved. “But if you didn’t see your attacker, how do you know it wasn’t him?” Pescoli had folded her arms over her chest, almost defying Jillian to lie to her.

  “I just know,” she asserted. “I got the sense that the person who jumped me from behind wasn’t as tall as MacGregor or as heavy.”

  Alvarez had stepped in. “But you really didn’t catch a glimpse of his face or any identifying marks?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see his hands?”

  “I saw nothing. Just…black gloves. I felt the weight of him as he forced me to the ground. He pressed a rag over my face and I fought but couldn’t push him off. I passed out.”

  Pescoli nodded. “But it’s true that MacGregor had been gone for several hours, right? You didn’t really know where he was.”

  “He left me with a rifle. Not a move I’d expect if he were just going to kill me.”

  They didn’t respond.

  Jillian added, “He damned well didn’t shoot his own pet!”

  Calmly Pescoli said, “He’s done time for murder.”

  “Manslaughter,” Jillian corrected, irritated beyond belief. This was nuts! “He told me all about it.”

  “Did he?” Pescoli hadn’t bothered to hide her skepticism as she’d walked closer to stand near the side of Jillian’s elevated bed. “All you heard was his side.”

  “True. And I believe him.” She’d met the bigger cop’s stare. “I want to see him.”

  “He’s in custody,” Pescoli said.

  “For what? My God, didn’t I just tell you? The man saved my life!” Jillian had understood why they’d considered MacGregor a suspect, but to actually hear the words from the detectives made it so much more real, so much more painful.

  The softer-spoken detective, Alvarez, suggested, “Why don’t you just tell us what happened from the beginning? Why were you in Montana in the first place? You’re from Seattle, right?”

  So Jillian told them everything she could remember, from the time in Seattle when she’d received the phone calls from an anonymous caller about Aaron to when she received the pictures of the man who was supposed to be her dead husband. She explained what she remembered of her car accident and the rescue, then of waking up in Zane MacGregor’s cabin. She didn’t hold back. She was convinced that MacGregor had saved her life. She believed she’d seen someone else lurking in the trees on the day of the accident and later MacGregor had found evidence that someone had been watching the cabin. MacGregor had not only offered her a loaded rifle but he’d also left her with the dog to guard her.

  Pescoli and Alvarez interrupted her a few times, but for the most part, they listened as she explained that Zane MacGregor had been as desperate as she to find a way out of the cabin and into town. He’d been worried about her, had wanted to get her to a doctor.

  She had been convinced the truth would only help MacGregor. But she’d been wrong.

  After the interview, she realized that the more she tried to assure Pescoli and Alvarez that Zane MacGregor was innocent, the less they had believed her.

  Which was downright infuriating.

  The good news, if there was any, was that they’d brought her things to her. The suitcase with her clothes, as well as her purse with her wallet, ID and credit cards. They were still “processing” her bags, whatever that meant. The only item missing was her cell phone, which, Alvarez had explained, they wanted to hold on to for “a day or so.” It bugged the hell out of Jillian not to have the phone. In the cell’s memory were stored all of the phone numbers of her friends, family and business associates, as well as text and voice messages she’d saved.

  Assured that they would release the cell phone “as soon as possible,” they’d asked a few more questions and thanked her, as if to end the interview. Alvarez had clicked off the recorder and Pescoli was one step from the door.

  “Wait a minute,” Jillian had called, and both women stopped in their tracks. “I just want to say again that Zane MacGregor never did anything that would indicate he wanted me dead and he had ample opportunity. I was unconscious, unable to walk on my own, nearly immobile with my bruised ribs. If he wanted me dead, believe me, I would be.”

  The cops didn’t say a word and she couldn’t help but add, “I know you’ve got a serious problem on your hands with this serial killer. You have to find him. But keep looking. You’ve got the wrong man.”

  Alvarez met her gaze. “We’re checking into all possibilities, Ms. Rivers. MacGregor is only one person of interest.”

  “But I told you—” she started, then read something she didn’t like in the smaller woman’s eyes. Though she had been trying to hide it, Detective Selena Alvarez, the one detective she’d trusted, hadn’t believed her story, or at least not all of it.

  “Oh my God,” Jillian had whispered, aghast. “You think…you think what? That I’m lying? Or…or that I’m confused or that I’ve fallen for my abductor?” Her heart sank as the two women stood in front of the doorway, blocking her view of the nurses’ station.

  “Right now, Ms. Rivers,” Pescoli said, “we’re not sure what to think.”

  “I’m telling you, it’s not MacGregor.”

  “Duly noted. Thanks.” Pescoli, obviously irritated, stepped out of the room.

  “We might have more questions later,” Alvarez said and took the time to return to Jillian’s bedside. “If you think of anything else, or have questions of your own, please call.” She left her card on the table near Jillian’s water glass. “This,” she added, tapping the card with a slim finger, “has my direct line at the sheriff’s office, as well as my cell. Thanks again.”

  And then she left, walking briskly to catch up with her partner.

  Jillian had picked up the card and slipped it into her wallet. She’d thought she’d been finished with questions but she’d been wrong.

  Within the next hour the FBI had sent agents Halden and Chandler to double-team Jillian one more time. As if she’d remember something new.

  They’d gone over the same information but were a little more reserved and held back their emotions better than the local cops had.

  Not that Jillian had liked them much better.

  Stephanie Chandler, tall, blond and athletic, without so much of a hint of a smile in her blue eyes, had led the interview, while her partner, with his slight southern drawl and easy smile, had come up with a few questions of his own. Of the two, Craig Halden had seemed vastly more relaxed and approachable. But Jillian had suspected the good ol’ boy charm was an act and she was damned tired of answering questions.

  “Okay,�
� she’d finally said, her eyes focused on Chandler. “I’ve already said everything I know to Detectives Pescoli and Alvarez. You can check with them. It’s all on tape.” She shifted in the bed, her IV tugging on her wrist, the bedclothes starting to wrinkle.

  Halden, as if he agreed with her, had nodded thoughtfully. He’d offered the kind of aw-shucks grin meant to put her at ease. The country-boy smile had only had the opposite effect and ratcheted up her anxiety level. “Yeah,” he said. “We know. This is just routine.”

  “I wouldn’t think there is anything routine about a serial-killer investigation,” Jillian countered, and for the first time saw a twitch in his partner’s arched eyebrows. Despite her cool façade, Stephanie Chandler was an intelligent woman who didn’t miss a trick.

  Which wasn’t surprising. The woman was an FBI agent, after all.

  So Jillian had felt a little outgunned and unnerved. In the span of her lifetime, Jillian had never considered the police the enemy. Sure, she worried about speeding tickets whenever she was being followed by a police cruiser, but her uncle had been an Oregon State police officer and one of her cousins was with the Reno, Nevada, police department. Aside from a few drinks before she was twenty-one, experimenting with pot a total of twice and inadvertently running a red light or pushing the pedal to the metal on the freeway, Jillian had never broken the law.

  The only time she’d had the slightest inclination to think the authorities might not be looking out for her best interests had been in Suriname when Aaron had gone missing. Maybe it had been the language barrier, or a natural distrust of foreign police fostered by the news and movies or her own prejudices. Whatever the reason, Jillian had doubted that the men in power in that remote area of the jungle were on the up-and-up.

  “The thing is,” Jillian told the federal agents, “the only reason I was in Montana in the first place was because of the pictures I was sent, the phone calls I received, all indicating that my first husband, Aaron Caruso, was alive.”

  “Caruso as in Robinson Crusoe?”

  “Spelled differently,” Chandler said.

  So they had already checked. “You’ve looked into it,” Jillian said.