Left To Die (21 page)

“They arrested you?”

“Yep.”

“But just until everything was straightened out.”

He turned to face her, his eyes dark, his lips curved in irony. “Nothing ever got straightened out. The guy died that night. Cracked his skull wide open. Intracranial hemorrhage, I think it’s called. Bleeding in the brain.” MacGregor sighed through his nose. “And the wife…her name was Margot, not that it matters. Margot claimed that I was the one who was beating her, that I tried to rape her, that her husband Ned was the hero.”

“What?” Jillian whispered, horrified.

“Yeah.” He shook his head. “The evidence proved otherwise. The toes of good old Ned’s boots told the story, but the end result was that he was dead. If I hadn’t stuck my neck out for Margot, he could have survived. The baby wouldn’t have, regardless. Margot miscarried. But I was directly responsible for Ned Tomkins’s death. At least that’s what the coroner and judge decided. I pled down to a lesser charge and spent sixteen months in jail.”

“That’s terrible!”

“Margot blamed me for losing her husband and baby.” He managed a humorless smile. “So much for being a good guy.” He nodded toward her beer. “You still haven’t touched it.”

She ignored that. “Then what?”

“The upshot was that I got out and the last I heard, from one of the guards who knew her, Margot hooked up with another loser who beat the crap out of her, too.” He walked to the gun closet, unlocked it with a key he kept in his jeans and pulled out a long-barreled rifle, then locked the cabinet again.

“What’re you doing?” Jillian watched with sudden trepidation.

“Going out.”

“Now?” What the hell was he thinking? After telling her he’d killed a man, he pulls out a rifle? Was he trying to freak her out?

“Before it gets dark.” He found some shells in a drawer of the bookcase and carried his Winchester and pack of ammo to the pegs near the front door, grabbing his jacket. Stuffing his arms down the sleeves, he said, “I need to check the roads. If the storm really does break, maybe we’ll be able to get out of here soon.”

Jillian didn’t dare believe it. But then, she had trouble believing a lot of things, maybe even MacGregor’s latest story. Was it true? It sure seemed like it was. The pain etched across his face, the anger burning deep in his eyes—it all seemed real enough.

And, he hadn’t done anything to hurt her.

It appeared, also, that he wanted to get rid of her as much as she wanted to leave.

And yet…he still put her on edge. Especially with a rifle in his hands.

Get over it, Jillian. If he’d wanted to hurt you, he would have done it by now.

“You’re making me nervous.”

He looked up, saw her staring at the rifle and nodded. Quickly he opened the door and set the gun on the porch. “Bad timing.”

“Horrible timing.”

“I just realized how dark it was getting. And there are cougars and bears in this neck of the woods, not that they would attack, but just to be safe.” He flashed her a guileless smile as he pulled a pair of snowshoes from the spot where they hung over the door. As he stretched upward, his jacket and sweater moved upward and she caught a glimpse, as she had before, of taut, rock-hard muscles.

He caught her looking at him and she pulled her gaze away, picking up her beer and finally taking a sip as he left the snowshoes by the door, then walked through the kitchen. “I’d better leave you with some more wood.”

Dutifully, he brought in more firewood and stacked it on the hearth. Then he strapped the snowshoes over his boots while Harley danced around his feet, ready for an adventure, but MacGregor shushed him. “You stay. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Harley started to whine, but MacGregor snapped his fingers. “None of that.”

The dog quieted and sat, gaze focused on his master.

“Good boy.” MacGregor pulled on a ski mask, cap and gloves. “You hold down the fort.” He glanced over at Jillian and her breath nearly stopped in her lungs. Tall and looming, all in black. Was he the person she’d thought she’d seen while she’d been trapped in the car, the evil presence she’d sensed?

“I’ll be back soon.”

“And if you’re not?”

“You’ll survive. The rest of the beer’s in the garage and there’s enough canned food to keep you and Harley alive until the spring thaw.”

“Comforting.”

He smiled, walked out the door and shut it behind him with a thud, the catch clicking into place.

“At least you’re still alive and almost well,” she said aloud, and her voice seemed to echo a bit. Already the cabin seemed quieter, darker, lonelier. “Just your imagination,” she reminded herself. She sipped from her bottle, though she really wasn’t much of a beer drinker. “Give me a glass of Cabernet any day of the week,” she said, and Harley, with his two-toned face, looked over at her and cocked his head. At least he wasn’t growling and snarling and acting as if he would tear her limb from limb. No, he was planted near the door, staring at the panels, waiting for some indication MacGregor would return.

“Looks like it’s just you and me,” she said to him, wondering at her need to converse with the animal. Was it because the cabin seemed so quiet and desolate, so cut off from any kind of human contact?

She glanced out the window to the bitter cold and wondered when he’d return. Or
if
he’d return. She could be up here alone for days or weeks. She shuddered, suddenly cold to the marrow of her bones. Whether he was friend or foe, she wasn’t sure. But she had to admit she felt better when Zane MacGregor was around.

Chapter Thirteen

In the task force room, most of the team had assembled by the time Alvarez entered. One uniformed officer sat manning the phones on a desk shoved in a corner near the windows. Even the typically tardy Pescoli was seated at the table with the sheriff and two FBI agents. As Alvarez took an empty chair next to Pescoli, Cort Brewster, the undersheriff, showed up, as did Detective Brett Gage, the chief criminal deputy.

“Something up?” Alvarez asked, but Pescoli shook her head, a whiff of cigarette smoke suggesting she was once again smoking. Not that it was a big surprise. From the day Alvarez had met Regan, she’d discovered that in times of great stress, Pescoli took up the habit again. In the time since they’d become partners, which was nearly two and a half years now, Pescoli had quit four times.

“Since it’s nearly the weekend and some of you will be officially off duty, whatever that means around here,” Halden said, “we thought we should bring each other up to speed. It looks like Wendy Ito’s Prius has been found in a ravine about four miles west of town.” He walked to the map and pointed to a spot in Star Fire Canyon, about three miles from where Ito’s body was discovered. “An officer has secured the scene. The car looks the same as the others, wrecked and pried open, tire shot out, only this car was nearly buried in a foot of snow. We’ll all be rolling out there in a couple of minutes.”

“Who found the car?” Alvarez asked.

Gage interjected, “Bob Simms. Lives up the road. Looking for firewood during a break in the storm.”

“Or setting traps,” Pescoli said with a scowl. “Simms thinks it’s still the eighteen hundreds and he can do whatever the hell he wants. Kills and traps whatever he can without permits. Sells pelts on the black market. You name it.”

Gage agreed. Around forty, whip thin, with a prominent nose, glasses and brown hair starting to show the first evidence of gray, the chief criminal deputy snorted. “Hell, he’s an anarchist.”

“With a dead wife and half a dozen boys running wild. All those kids have been in trouble with the law,” Grayson reminded.

“That’s the trouble—they don’t believe in government or the law. I’m surprised Simms took the trouble to call it in.”

Pescoli said, “Even anarchists have consciences.”

Gage snorted. “At least he found the car and not another body.”

“Yet,” Agent Chandler said. Today she was in government-issued outerwear, her blond ponytail sticking out of the back of a navy baseball hat, her jacket unzipped to show off a navy blue sweater. “We’re still looking for Jillian Rivers. Something we’ve got to consider is the timing of the deaths. Because of the frozen conditions of the corpses, it’s tough to pinpoint, but it looks like our guy tries to kill them around the twentieth of the month. September for Charleton, October for Salvadore, November for Ito, and now, December for Rivers. The dates are a little off, and we’re basing this on when the women were reported missing and when the ME guesses they died. They all went missing around the middle of the month, killed what appears to be a few days later, found later still. So, Jillian Rivers might already be dead.”

“Jesus,” Brewster said, and tossed his pen onto the table in disgust.

Chandler didn’t miss a beat. “It could be that the stars carved over the victims’ heads and on the notes have something to do with timing. Where a star might be positioned in the sky during the time of abduction.”

“Or death,” Halden added.

Chandler nodded. “Maybe our guy is into stargazing or astronomy or astrology.”

Alvarez frowned. She’d thought of the night sky, of course. She’d also thought about witchcraft, or devil worship, or anything to do with the dark arts. Stars meant a lot of different things to different people.

“He could just be jerking our chain,” Brewster said. “Maybe the stars are for decoration.”

“They’re part of his MO,” Chandler disagreed. She traced her finger over the stars on each of the notes, which had been blown up and put near the pictures of the victims. “He’s too precise. See how perfectly the initials are written, almost as if he traced them? If you put the pages one atop the other, you’ll see that the letters remain in exactly the same positions, but the star moves. I’m willing to bet he’s on some kind of astronomical calendar.”

“Hey, isn’t the twentieth when the astrological sign switches? Around the twentieth of the month, the signs of the zodiac change,” Pescoli offered. “Though I think it varies a little; I’m not really into it. If it means anything.”

“I don’t like the word ‘zodiac,’ not when we’re talking about serial killers,” Grayson said.

“Jesus, no,” Brewster agreed. “That bastard terrorized San Francisco during, what? The sixties or seventies? I remember my mother talking about it. She had a sister in the Bay Area at the time and was worried sick.”

“Made a movie out of it,” Alvarez said.

Pescoli nodded. “Never caught, was he?”

“Never.” Chandler’s face grew even more taut, the sharp angles of her cheekbones and chin prominent. “But Zodiac would be too old to be our guy, if he were alive, which I doubt.”

“Could be a copycat. Someone who knows about the original. The killings are different, yeah,” Pescoli said, “but the Zodiac’s name might have been inspiration. And he plans the murders meticulously.”

Alvarez had a mental image of a man with a pen, sitting at a desk, carefully creating his notes, all the while plotting the death of the woman he had captured, a woman probably bound and caged, locked in a dark, airless room, a frightened, injured woman who couldn’t comprehend the extent of her jailor’s depravity.

A killer who planned out his victim’s capture and death in minute detail, all around the position of the stars in the heavens.

“These killings are way different from Zodiac’s. Let’s go check on Ito’s car, unless you have anything else,” Grayson said. Chandler and Halden discussed tips that had come in, none of which had developed into a true lead, then concluded the meeting.

Alvarez was left cold inside. Just the mention of the Zodiac killer chilled her to the bone. The monster had been on a rampage, picking out his victims, sometimes disabling cars. One woman had nearly been decapitated, others were shot at point-blank range, sometimes trophies were taken and the police were forever being taunted.

And he was never caught. Never.

Grayson scooted his chair back and gave a short whistle to his dog, a black Lab named Sturgis who rarely left his side. The dog, a reject from the K-9 unit, had been with Grayson for a couple of years, ever since the department had decided not to “hire” him. They’d been inseparable ever since and Alvarez had wondered if the Lab was some kind of replacement for the wife who had dumped him. Usually the retriever stayed in Grayson’s office, but today, he’d been allowed into the task force room and now trotted happily, tail wagging, at the sheriff’s boot heels. They disappeared into his office as Alvarez and Pescoli headed for the side door to the parking lot.

She walked with Pescoli outside to the parking lot and tucked her hair into a stocking cap. A sharp wind was blowing, dusk descending rapidly, and it was cold as hell. Already Pescoli’s Jeep was collecting ice on its windshield.

“Cheery little meeting,” Pescoli said, unlocking her Jeep and climbing behind the wheel while Alvarez slid into the passenger side.

“Yeah, a real upper.”

They discussed the case as Pescoli flipped on the heater and wipers, driving away from the town, toward the hills. “Merry Christmas,” Pescoli said under her breath as she reached in the console for her pack of cigarettes, cracking the window. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Yeah, but it’s not gonna stop you, is it?”

“Sure it will. For a while.” Pescoli dropped the cigarette into her near-empty pack, which she tucked back into the console. Meanwhile, the police band crackled, officers talking to each other while they drove through the foothills. She didn’t light up until she’d driven to Star Fire Canyon, near the area where the car was discovered, and parked as close as possible.

This time there was no safe way down to the bottom of the ravine, though two deputies and a firefighter rappelled down the side of the sheer hillside to the narrow creek bed below.

“How the hell did Bob Simms find the car?” Alvarez asked.

“He patrols all the woods around here. Doesn’t matter what the weather,” Deputy Pete Watershed said.

“He must be half mountain goat.” Pescoli drew hard on her filter-tip and stared down the embankment. “Hell, that’s a drop.”

“He wears snowshoes or cross-country skis.”