by Lisa Jackson
“It comes with the job, Grace,” Pescoli said, brushing off the woman’s warning, some of her color returning.
“Be careful.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Be more than careful. He’s relentless. A hunter.”
Alvarez snapped to attention. Hunter? She was out of her chair in an instant. “Come on, Grace, let’s go outside and have a talk.” She put a hold on the weird woman and escorted her into the vestibule, while patrons nearly fell out of their seats watching her. They moved past the glowering eyes of the grizzly bear done up in holiday attire and into an empty, dark room used for banquets. Pescoli was only a step behind.
Once away from the interested eyes of the patrons, Selena released Grace and said, “If you know this son of a bitch so well, why don’t you save us all a lot of trouble and tell us who he is.”
Grace frowned. Rubbed her arm as if wounded. “There is no reason to get violent. I’m just warning you. Her.” She slid Pescoli a confused glance.
“What’s this about him being a hunter?” Alvarez asked.
“He hunts his prey.” Grace’s face had a wounded look to it, and she kept rubbing her arm, as if she couldn’t believe the policewoman had been so angry with her for imparting her wisdom.
Alvarez wasn’t backing down, wasn’t buying into the frightened-deer routine. “So why are you warning Pescoli, singling her out?”
“When I walked into the dining area a few minutes ago, I sensed a disturbance in the atmosphere, heard a voice in my head.”
“And what did that voice say?” Alvarez asked with extreme patience.
“Regan Elizabeth Pescoli.”
Alvarez glanced at Pescoli, who nodded and swallowed hard. “You know my middle name?” she asked.
“Not until a few minutes ago.”
“It’s common knowledge,” Alvarez heard herself saying, but Pescoli was shaking her head. “I use my maiden name for my middle name. Regan C. Pescoli. C for Connors. Not E for Elizabeth. I stopped that in grade school.”
Alvarez felt a chill deep in her heart. Something was wrong here. Very wrong.
Pescoli stepped closer to the odd ghost whisperer of a woman. “How did you know what my middle name was, Grace? Have you seen my birth certificate?”
“It came to me. I can’t explain any further. I just know that you’re in danger, and instead of roughing me up and pushing me around, I would think that you’d thank me.”
“Is there a problem in here?” Sandi strode into the darkened banquet room and her pinched lips said it all. “I got me a room full of people trying to eat their lunch here after church and all, and then you go and make a scene.” Her eyebrows were raised high over the frames of her glasses, her green eyelids stretching. “This might be called Wild Wills, but it’s a family kind of restaurant. I’ve no use for any arrests or police shenanigans.”
“It’s all right, Sandi,” Grace said with her usual calm. “I was just warning the detectives.”
“Warning them?”
“Everything’s under control,” Alvarez assured Sandi, and she headed out of the banquet room to the register. “What do we owe you?”
“Just a sec. I’ll get the tab!” Sandi was quick as a cat in retrieving her tickets, adding their bill and handing it to Alvarez.
“I assume I can leave now?” Grace asked Pescoli.
“You’re free to go,” Pescoli said. Grace sent her a strange look as she headed back to the dining area. If she noticed the interested gazes following her, she didn’t show it, didn’t so much as falter in her steps toward her table.
Alvarez retrieved their jackets and met up with Pescoli. “You owe me ten,” she said, stuffing her arms down the sleeves of her down coat.
“I’ll buy next time.”
“You bet you will.”
Together they walked outside. The wind was kicking down the street, smelling of the river, and Alvarez, yanking on her gloves, noticed the clouds beginning to roll in again.
She felt a chill, as much from the scene with Grace Perchant as the breeze plucking strands of hair from the knot at the base of her neck.
As one, she and Pescoli jaywalked to the Jeep. Once again the temperature seemed to be falling.
“Good thing you didn’t smack Grace’s face down in the middle of my catsup and fries,” Pescoli said, as if to break the tension. “Now that would have been a scene.” She unlocked her Cherokee and climbed inside.
“Sandi would have had a heart attack.” Alvarez climbed into the passenger seat again and rubbed her hands together, trying to get warm. “What do you think about what she said?”
Pescoli checked her sideview mirror and fired up the engine. “About the hunter? God, who knows?”
“No, about you.” Alvarez buckled up as the Jeep darted between two cars. “Her warning.”
“Grace is a nut job.”
“Yeah, I know, but…”
“But nothing, and don’t give me any lip about having a smoke, okay? This is my last one.” She pulled a final cigarette from her pack of Marlboro Lights, and for once Alvarez didn’t make a sarcastic remark as she lit up, cracking the window, holding her filter tip just outside in an effort to draw out the smoke. Whether Regan Elizabeth Pescoli was admitting it or not, she was shaken up. Grace’s predictions weren’t always spot-on, but she had enough of a track record that it would make anyone worry.
“If the sicko comes after me, I’ll be ready.” She snorted. “How stupid would he be to target a cop?”
“Maybe he wants to make a point. Keep showing us how clever he is.”
Regan drew hard on her cigarette, then shot a stream of smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “You know, if anyone wants to get back at me or put a hit on me, it’s my ex. Lucky’s making noise about taking the kids.”
“Really?”
She snorted. “I should let him have ’em. It wouldn’t last a month.” She switched lanes and melded the Jeep into the traffic heading up the hill to Boxer Bluff. Alvarez didn’t like what had gone down in the restaurant and was worried. She stared out the window, where snow was falling rapidly again, and as the Jeep climbed she caught a view of the falls, wild white water tumbling over a ledge of rocks that had forced settlers to homestead on the lower banks nearly two hundred years earlier.
“Right now, Lucky’s the fun parent,” Pescoli went on. “I’m the authoritarian.” She slid a glance in Alvarez’s direction. “I can’t friggin’ win for losin’.”
A cell phone blasted. “It’s mine,” Alvarez said.
“This is Grayson,” the sheriff said when she answered, his voice low and disturbed. “Jillian Rivers checked herself out of the hospital here in town. In the company of Zane MacGregor.”
Alvarez groaned. “Is she nuts?”
“Nothing we can do. She doesn’t want protection. We think she’s not the target of the serial, and my guess is, she’s going out of our jurisdiction. The Feds aren’t involved, since it’s not a kidnapping or part of the ongoing serial-killer investigation.”
“Great.”
“It only gets better,” Grayson assured her. “We just got a call from Chandler up in Missoula. Hannah Estes died this afternoon. Someone pulled her life support before the Feds got up there.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The problem with returning to Spruce Creek was that it was located in the wrong direction. North and west of Grizzly Falls, it was backtracking away from Missoula, where Jillian was certain all the answers to her questions lay.
Or was she?
She still had the feeling that she was missing something, a piece of important information that was right under her nose or locked deep in her damned subconscious. But she’d gone along with this plan, hoping she’d learn something in Spruce Creek, the last place she’d stopped before someone had decided to use her Subaru as skeet practice.
They drove into the small town and had no trouble locating the coffee shop/deli/diner where she’d stopped. MacGregor parked, and with Jillian st
ill using the troublesome crutch, they made their way up a few steps and through ancient glass doors.
The Chocolate Moose Café wasn’t anything to write home about. A once-upon-a-time post office and general store, it had been converted into a coffeehouse and diner, which now seemed to be in the middle of a major renovation. Part of the walls were painted a dusky blue, another part mustard yellow, the rest brick red, and Jillian wasn’t certain if the colors were supposed to be complementary or if the owner had just run out of paint and scrounged around in the garage for whatever was left over.
But what the Chocolate Moose Café lacked in ambiance it made up for in enthusiasm, as there were moose replicas everywhere—all reigned over by a huge stuffed moose head hanging over a potbellied stove that no longer seemed to work. There were moose salt and pepper shakers, napkin holders, napkins, pot holders, and moose silhouettes in the plaid of the checked tablecloths and stenciled on the walls in the opposing colors of paint. Each chair had a moose head painted on its back and there was moose memorabilia for every kind of collector.
The word “overkill” sprang to mind.
They ordered sandwich wraps and coffee, then sat at a table wedged between a staircase and a bank of pane windows that looked out onto a rustic front porch. Outside planters, now filled with dirt and not much else, sat ready to be filled with colorful annuals once the weather turned.
“I do remember being here,” Jillian said as she eyed the row of bar stools located at the counter that separated the baristas and kitchen staff from the dining area.
Today there were a smattering of patrons lounging over coffee and reading the paper, listening to music or using their laptops.
“Was anyone else here that you’d recognize?”
She shook her head. “I was in such a hurry, I just came in, used the restroom and grabbed a coffee drink to go. There were a few people, kind of like this, I guess, and I was behind a woman with a little girl of maybe five or so. They were bundled up in snow gear and the little girl was having trouble deciding what kind of muffin she wanted with her hot chocolate, but that’s about it. I ordered my coffee, paid for it and worried a little about the weather.”
“No one followed you?”
“Not that I noticed.”
They talked and ate and even spoke to the same girl who had waited on Jillian before, who said, as she wiped the nozzle of the foam dispenser, that she’d answered the same questions from the police a while ago and remembered nothing unusual about that day.
“Strike one,” MacGregor said as he helped Jillian into the truck. They took off again, this time turning around, pointing the nose of the loaned truck south, with the full intention of continuing her original journey to Missoula. Using her cell phone, Jillian called her mother and left a message that she was out of the hospital. Then, finding the card Detective Alvarez had left her with in the hospital, she put in a call to the cop’s cell phone.
Alvarez picked up on the second ring, and when Jillian explained where she was and what she was doing, the detective listened, then graciously gave her an update—sparing her the directives of what she should or shouldn’t be doing that Jillian had half-expected. Zane drove on with a scowl on his face. He didn’t trust the cops, any cops, and who could blame him? But Jillian was glad she’d placed the call. He just kept driving steadily southeast toward Missoula.
When Jillian hung up, she cradled the phone in her hand and said thoughtfully, “They don’t think I’m a victim of the Star-Crossed Killer.”
Zane threw her a look. “What do you mean?”
“They think whoever did it is a copycat, that he lured me here and used the same MO to throw everyone off.”
“What brought them to that?”
“I don’t know.” She relayed as much information as she’d learned, then said, “They’re obviously not telling me everything but at least I’m not the target of some maniac.”
“No? You’re a target of someone. I suppose it might be better that you’ve got your own personal head case. At least there could be a motive that makes sense and leads us to him, rather than some random sicko picking off a group of women.”
“That doesn’t sound better. I really do have to find him, Zane. Going home won’t help. He’ll hunt me down.”
MacGregor’s jaw tightened. “That’s what this trip is all about—hunting the hunter.”
“So you’re my personal bodyguard?” She half-smiled.
“Something like that.” He slowed for a corner. “This all started with the e-mails and phone calls and pictures concerning your first husband. So it has to do with him, someone who knows him.”
“Seems likely, doesn’t it?”
“But you don’t think it’s your ex? The Rivers guy?”
“The only reason I thought Mason might know something about it is because of the postmarks, but no, I don’t see any reason to think he’s behind it. Originally, I was so determined to find out what happened, I was headed to Missoula and I was going to start with Mason.”
“But now?”
“Now, I just don’t get why he would be involved. I guess I’ve had more time to think about it, and there’s really no reason for him to want me dead.”
“What about his wife?”
“Well, she hates me. That’s for sure. But I don’t think she’d do anything to bring me closer to him. I think Sherice would like it if I moved to Anchorage or Tokyo or Istanbul. The farther away, the better.”
“She’s afraid Mason still has feelings for you?”
“I don’t know what she thinks. She’s got…issues. But why try to kill me now? Why bring me to her with all this Aaron business? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Then who else in Missoula?”
“No one that I can think of.”
Her words hung in the air as he drove for a few miles. When they reached Grizzly Falls again, and after they’d filled the gas tank and cleaned the windshield, MacGregor pulled to the side of the attached convenience store and cut the engine.
“Maybe whoever is after you has set a trap and is trying to lure you to Missoula. He nailed you on your way there, so he anticipated the move. Now that you’re out of the hospital, he’d expect you to do one of two things: return to Seattle or continue on to Missoula. Knowing you, which I have to assume he does, he’d know you wouldn’t back down. Am I right?”
She lifted a shoulder and felt that little niggle of something teasing her brain, the same idea that had tugged at her after her dream in the hospital, only to disappear.
“What?”
“I…I agree…something about this is out of kilter. Well, lots about it is. But I feel that my brain isn’t quite in full gear, that I’m missing something, something important.” She thought hard as she stared out the windshield. “Something that’s been in front of my face all the time.”
He waited a few seconds, and she listened to the sound of traffic rushing by, the tick of the engine as it cooled, the hiss of air as someone filled his tires.
What was it?
And why did Missoula, the only destination that held one iota of sense, feel wrong?
Because whoever this is, whoever is trying to kill you, wouldn’t be that careless. No way. Missoula is just the bait. Then what? If you don’t follow the obvious lead, then where will you go? You can’t return home; you can’t allow yourself to be a sitting duck. Her stomach twisted as she thought about being left alone in the cold, without a stitch on, in the freezing temperatures…a copycat? Someone had used another twisted monster’s plan to get back at her. That’s why it was happening now, because whoever her personal nut job was, he was taking advantage of a serial killer’s sick scheme.
And now he would stop at nothing to finish the job. She knew it. Sensed it. Her skin crawled at the thought.
MacGregor touched her lightly on the shoulder and she nearly jumped out of her seat.
“He’s never going to stop,” she said, scared and angry as hell. “Whoever tried to kill me won’t
back off.”
“I agree. He’s an opportunist,” MacGregor said, and she nodded, glancing in the sideview mirrors, watching as a van pulled up to the pumps. A man in his early twenties with a scrubby beard and baseball cap pumped gas as his very pregnant woman of about the same age picked her way through the pumps to the store. The man glanced at their pickup and she froze.
Did he really need gas? Or had this couple been following them? The van had no side windows…and what about the pickup with the camper, facing the other way? That guy, too, a big man with a sour expression, had cast a look in their direction.
She shivered.
“Cold?”
“Scared, I think. No…more like paranoid.” She kept her eye on the mirror, watching the twenty-something replacing the nozzle.
“Don’t be.”
The man walked into the convenience store and a few seconds later returned with his pregnant woman and a sack filled to overflowing with chips. A few seconds later they were in the van and driving away, no longer appearing sinister.
Jillian shook her head. “I’m…I’m jumping at shadows and it pisses me off. You know, the creep really did a number on me. I was never one of those scaredy-cats who run around with Mace or have triple locks on their doors or rely on alarm systems and big dogs. I’ve just never been really frightened.” She glanced at him. “Until now.”
“You’re not exactly locking yourself into a bunker and demanding police protection or changing your identity.”
“No, but…it’s unsettling.”
“To say the least. But maybe we’re going about this all wrong. What’s happening now appears to have started a long time ago. With your first husband.”
“You think this is really about him?”
“He was the reason you dropped everything and headed this way.” He didn’t say it, but the question hung between them: Are you still in love with him, this man who left you? This con artist who may have faked his own death?
And the answer was a hard, resounding no. Aaron Caruso was a scam artist and a user, a man she’d thought she’d loved years before but really hadn’t known at all.