Left To Die (38 page)

Who was he anyway?

No one she recognized. She slid behind the wheel and glanced in her rearview mirror. Sure enough, the guy who had been reading and drinking coffee was still at his table, but he was looking up, out the window, and for the briefest of seconds Pescoli thought his gaze found hers.

Ridiculous!

Her cop radar was working overtime.

“What did you think about the single guy in the diner?”

“Why? Are you looking for a date?” Alvarez snapped her seat belt into place as Regan fired the engine.

“Very funny. Really, what did you think?”

“Single. Maybe waiting for someone. He kept looking at the door.”

“He pay any attention to us?” Pescoli hit the wipers and they began scraping off the snow that had collected on the windshield.

“A little. Nothing serious.”

“You sure?” She turned the fan onto high and hit the button on the dash labeled
DEFROST
.

“Yeah. Why?” Alvarez asked, and looked over her shoulder to the restaurant, but the guy had turned his attention to his paper again. Lillian was sauntering up with a carafe of coffee, and Pescoli was suddenly uneasy, though the exchange, as Lillian poured more coffee into his cup, seemed routine. Innocent.

Still…

“Don’t know. But he bothers me. Run the plates of the vehicles in the lot, would you?”

“Sure.” That was a simple matter, as the computer was hooked up inside Pescoli’s rig. “But I think this case is getting to you.”

“It’s getting to all of us.” Pescoli pulled out of the tight parking space and shoved her Jeep into drive. The lot was relatively empty, the traffic thin, and the damned snow just kept falling from the sky, covering the parking lots and the streets where tire tracks were visible.

Alvarez checked the system for a few minutes and said, “None of the vehicles were stolen; plates match up. The Buick belongs to Lillian Marsden, the King Cab to a Thomas Cohen, the Toyota to Ernesto Hernandez and the Taurus to—”

“Okay, okay, I get it. I’m being paranoid.”

Alvarez shrugged. “Look, I’m going to call Chandler even though it’s late. The woman never sleeps. I think we’re gonna have to release MacGregor. I’ll call Grayson in the morning.”

“Fine,” Pescoli bit out. She was angry that they’d probably wasted their time. Unless the crime scene people found anything of interest up at MacGregor’s cabin, which hadn’t happened as yet.

She was nearly back at the office, where Alvarez’s car was parked, when her cell phone rang. With a glance, she noticed that the call was coming from the Pinewood Sheriff’s Department. “Guess we’re not off duty.”

“Maybe there’s a break in the case.”

She answered, “Pescoli.”

“Pescoli, this is Rule.”

Kyan Rule was a road deputy, a tall black man with the build of an NBA forward and a crooked smile of white teeth that caused many a female heart to flutter. Pescoli herself wasn’t immune to the man’s serious charms.

“What’s up?” she asked as they passed a snowplow heading in the opposite direction.

“Bad news.” For the first time she noticed the sober tone in his deep voice.

“Oh hell, what now? Don’t tell me there’s another victim.” From the corner of her eye she saw Alvarez turn to look at her.

“No. It’s your son.”

The hospital stood starkly in the night, rising above the surrounding clinics and linked parking lots that serviced the medical community of Grizzly Falls. Small in comparison to the complexes in bigger cities, Pinewood General Hospital was still one of the largest buildings in the city. From its position on the bluff, the hospital overlooked the older part of the town and the river far below. The sheriff’s department was less than three miles away.

Tonight, with snow falling steadily, the hospital lights were muted but still visible in the darkness. Among the rows of empty spaces in the snowy parking lot was a cruiser from the Pinewood County Sheriff’s Department, which indicated, just as an earlier newscast had stated, that she was still a patient and under guard.

The damned woman just wouldn’t die!

And time was running out.

Her room was on the third floor.

Her guard, not the sharpest tool in the shed, sometimes wandered down to the cafeteria for a fresh cup of coffee or a snack. Once in a while he walked to the public restroom to take a leak. Other times he flirted with some of the young nurses. But he was there, nonetheless.

A presence.

So contact couldn’t be made tonight.

But come the morning, only a few hours off, when the hospital staff shifts were changing and the damned guard was getting replaced, then there would be a chance.

If not to kill, then to lure once again…

Away from this place.

To a new killing ground.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“My son?” Pescoli repeated.

Her heart nearly dropped out of her chest.

With suddenly shaking hands she guided the Jeep onto the side street leading to the cluster of county buildings where the sheriff’s department was located, high on Boxer Bluff.

“Jeremy?” she whispered, flashing on blood-chilling images of his body in a mangled car that had slid off an icy embankment, or on a respirator in a hospital gasping for life. Oh dear God, what would she do if she lost him?

“He’s all right,” Rule assured her. He’d barely paused in the conversation, but in the span of a heartbeat, Regan Pescoli had faced her worst fears—the fear that every time she came upon an accident scene, one of her children would be trapped in the car, covered in blood, skin the gray of death. “But he’s been arrested.”

“Arrested?” she repeated, letting out her breath. Thank God he was alive. Unhurt. “For what?”

“MIP,” Rule said. “He’s pretty wasted. We sent him to the juvenile facility but he’s yelling that he wants you to bail him out.”

In an instant, her deepest fears turned to anger. “He was drinking?”

“He and three others. One of them is Brewster’s daughter.”

She wheeled with controlled fury into the parking lot, her tires sliding just a bit. “Don’t tell me: Heidi.” Brewster’s youngest. His baby. His pampered princess. Even though he’d made no bones about “trying for a son” before his wife got pregnant with his last two girls, Heidi, the youngest, had become the apple of his eye.

“That’s the one.”

Regan swore beneath her breath. “She’s only fifteen.”

“Exactly what Brewster’s saying.”

Regan could almost hear the undersheriff spouting off about her no-good, useless son. “And not all he’s saying, I’m guessing.”

“Uh…no…”

Things were going rapidly from bad to worse. She threw her Jeep into park. “I’ll be right in. I’m here. In the parking lot.”

“Good.”

She hung up, hit the steering wheel with her fist and swore a blue streak.

“Trouble?” Alvarez asked mildly as Pescoli cut the engine.

“Big trouble. But at least my son’s not dead. Yet. Not until I personally throttle that kid!” She’d gone from scared to death to furious in less than two seconds. She tried to remind herself how she’d feel if the call had been about her son being zipped into a body bag. Worse yet, what if not only Jeremy, but also Heidi and whomever they were with, and maybe some innocent driver heading in the opposite direction, had been killed? “How in God’s name could he be so stupid?”

“He’s a teenager.”

“He’s an idiot. I mean, it’s not like he doesn’t know what’s up. I’ve told him over and over again…preached to him about drinking and driving and…no matter what I say it seems to go in one ear and out the other.”

“Jeremy’s a good kid.”

“Who’s in a lot of trouble.” She was shaking her head, and inside, her guts were quivering. It was hard to believe her reaction, even to herself, as hard-nosed a cop as she was. She’d witnessed horrific crimes, seen charred, bludgeoned and butchered bodies, and was always able to keep her emotional distance from the victims, to keep a level head while solving a crime. But when it came to her own kids, she was just a damned wuss, a mother bear who would do anything to protect her cubs. “Geez, Jer,” she said, as if her son was in the car.

“Take a breath,” Alvarez suggested as Pescoli threw open the driver’s door and a blast of cold air swept into the Jeep.

But Pescoli was having none of it. Ignoring the snow falling all around her, she charged toward the sheriff’s office.

If she could, she’d spit nails.

Dead on her feet, Alvarez followed her partner inside. She gave Pescoli some space and headed instead to the task force room, where one of the deputies, a junior detective named Zoller, was handling all the incoming calls.

“How’s it going?” Alvarez asked.

The junior detective lifted a shoulder. “Lots of action earlier, after the newscasts about the current victims, but they’ve dwindled to nothing.” She climbed out of her chair and stretched, a phone bud still in her ear. All of five feet two, Zoller was fit and trim, a thirty-year-old who ran marathons, mentored teens struggling with school and worked her ass off for the department. “A call came in an hour ago from an upset parent. Seems his kids had snuck out to go sledding up at Timber Junction, and in one of their runs, guess what they came across?”

“Oh God, another dead body,” Alvarez guessed, thinking the worst.

Zoller shook her head, springy curls shivering around her small, elfin face. “No, thank God. A wrecked car. Four-year-old Ford Explorer. Beck O’Day has already been to the scene and roped it off. Waiting for the crime scene technicians, who are going up there to see if there’s any evidence. They can’t wait until morning light with all the snow falling.”

“No body?”

“None.”

“Same MO as the others?”

“O’Day hasn’t reported back in, but she was going to check the tires, see if they’ve been shot. I do know this: she called in the plates and the SUV is registered to C. Randall Jones of Billings, Montana. The C stands for Coolidge, like the president.”

Alvarez snorted. “No wonder he uses an initial.”

“Better than Polk.”

“Why do I think he wasn’t at the wheel?” She thought of the two unidentified women they’d found earlier in the day. One dead. One hanging on by a thread. Both victims. “Jones…none of the notes had a J in them. If our theory is right, the driver wasn’t his wife or daughter or mother.”

“Not married. No kids. I’m waiting for a callback. An officer from the Montana State Police was going to visit him.”

“Good.” If it weren’t for the horrendous nature of the crimes, the police would have waited until the morning to contact him. As it was, time was of the essence and C. Randall would have to get out of bed to answer the door. “Anything else?”

“A list from Missing Persons of people with the initials we found on the notes. These are Caucasian women within the age group we’re looking for who have gone missing in the past two months in a thousand-mile radius within the United States.”

“Amazing what computers can do,” Alvarez said as Zoller handed her the short printout. Only a few names appeared: Helena Estavez, Elle Holden and Hannah Estes for the women with the initials EH or HE, and Roberta Artez, Roxanne Anderson, Rona Anders, Annabelle Rollins and Alicia Rhodes for the others. Two of the women, Helena Estavez and Roxanne Anderson, had been crossed off the list. “Why are these two off?” she asked.

“Anderson’s driver’s license photo was way off from our victim, and Estavez showed up at home earlier tonight. The family called the Idaho State Police but her name hadn’t been taken out of the computer.”

“And it was verified that she returned?”

“Yeah, an Idaho State Trooper called half an hour ago.”

“Where are the other pictures?”

“I’m waiting for them. They’re supposed to be e-mailed to me, but with the holiday people are a little slow to respond. So far none have come in, but it should be soon.”

Unbuttoning her coat, Alvarez studied the list as Zoller made her way back to the desk, where a laptop computer, phone, legal pad and can of Pepsi were at the ready.

“Rona Anders,” Alvarez said aloud. “It says she’s from Billings, Montana?”

“That’s right.”

“But not the same address as where the SUV was registered, so she’s not living with the owner of the Explorer.”

“Doesn’t mean she didn’t borrow his car.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Alvarez thought aloud as she glanced out the window to the snowy night. If she were going to be traveling through the mountains and didn’t have a four-wheel-drive vehicle, she might borrow a friend’s.

“We’ll know soon enough,” Zoller said, and settled back into her chair. She picked up her drink while Alvarez walked over to the maps on the wall, eyeing the terrain, noticing where new pushpins had been placed on the map. All the victims and cars were confined to a circle with a ten-mile radius. Jillian Rivers, too, had been found in that area, her car located within the boundaries of the imaginary circle.

So what was in the middle?

She stared at the map and found its center, a spot not far from what was left of Broken Pine Lodge, where they’d found the victim who’d survived, and only a quarter of a mile away from Star Fire Canyon, where Wendy Ito’s Prius with its vanity plates had been discovered. But that area was uninhabited, for the most part. Mesa Ridge, a flat-topped mountain, was the biggest attraction in the area for hikers in the summer months and snowshoers and cross-country skiers in the winter.

She narrowed her gaze on that mountaintop and wondered why there was something about it that bothered her.

She heard Zoller typing on her computer. “Hey,” she said, “looks like the first of the pictures is coming through. Your Jane Doe in the hospital? Her name is Hannah Estes and she lives in Butte. Got her address here.”

“Good. I’ll call the hospital and we’ll try to find out what she was doing in the Bitterroots in the middle of a storm, while you keep on looking for her friends and family.”

“This might be the break we’re looking for,” Zoller said, already making a call.

“Let’s hope,” Alvarez said, without much enthusiasm. The map of the Montana wilderness was flattened in front of her on the wall, a daunting picture of rough terrain where a smart killer was hiding. “Let’s hope.”