“Hey! Take it easy! Keep your fuckin' hands off me!” the suspect, skinny as a rail, his jeans about to slip off his butt, grumbled. His sweatshirt was wet from melting snow, the hood falling off to expose a shaved head covered with tattoos.
“Come on, Reggie,” the deputy ordered, leading the offender, a perpetual car thief with a particular interest in imports, down the hall just as Pescoli's phone rang. She answered, waved at Alvarez, and with the phone pressed to her ear, took off toward her own office.
Good. Grateful not to have to answer any more questions about O'Keefe, Alvarez turned back to her desk. How could she possibly respond to her partner's insinuations and speculation and flat-out curiosity when she couldn't answer her own?
Once she was alone in her office again and the noise of the station seemed to retreat a bit, Alvarez glanced at her computer screen. Lissa Parsons's autopsy report had come in and she compared it to that of Lara Sue Gilfry. Nothing out of the ordinary, no bruises or marks, cause of death hypothermia.
Her jaw clenched and she thought about how many others there could possibly be. God, they had to find this guy and fast.
She was about to go home when she caught a notation on the first victim's report. That she'd had a tongue stud and the area around the piercing was a little raw, as if it had been recent. Pulling up the file, she flipped through to the missing persons report and scanned the page. In the area where there was mention of identifying marks, her scar and tattoo were listed.
No mention of a tongue stud.
Maybe whoever filed the report didn't know.
Maybe it was too new.
“And maybe it's nothing,” she said as she flipped through the images on the computer of Lara, her identifying marks and eventually the tongue stud. As she stared at the image, she realized it didn't look like any of the studs she'd seen before and yet, it was familiar.
No.
It couldn't be.
Her stomach dropped and she told herself that she was leaping to all the wrong conclusions. But a sick sensation took hold of her as she remembered her hoop earring used as a nipple ring on Lissa Parsons.
Was it possible? A whisper of dread skittered along the base of her skull.
Had the lunatic stolen the silver stud in the picture from her own home and then used it to make a statement on Lara Sue Gilfry?
“No way,” she whispered, but even as the words left her mouth, she was out of her chair, on her way to the evidence room, and knew in her heart the piece of jewelry was hers, stolen from her home, then stuck into the naked victim and left for her to find.
Somehow, some way, the sick son of a bitch had broken into her place and now was mocking her.
And he wanted her to know about it.
Chapter 23
“L
ook, I really don't have time for this,” O'Keefe insisted. Sitting on one of the molded plastic chairs in an interview room, he was slowly going out of his mind.
With concrete walls painted a nondescript green and a tiled floor circa 1962 that showed wear near the door, the room had a mirror on one wall that was, undoubtedly, a window to a darkened room on the other side, where interviews could be observed in private, not that the glass fooled anyone.
O'Keefe had been interviewed by Agents Chandler and Halden for the past two hours and they were getting nowhere fast. “I've told you all I know about Gabriel Reeve and how I tracked him here.” They'd gone over it several times, as if they thought his story would change if he told it often enough. He'd explained how he'd tracked down every lead, looked into any acquaintances Reeve might have in the area, checked cell phone and computer records, talked with people on the street, searched all the areas he thought a kid might go if he was hiding and scared.
“Don't you think it was odd that he ended up in Detective Alvarez's home and later she discovers jewelry missing that ended up on one of the victims?”
“Of course.” He'd answered that one before, too. The agents finally seemed satisfied that he was telling it to them straight, then Chandler brought up the past.
“You and Detective Alvarez, you worked together in San Bernardino, right?”
Here we go,
he thought. “That's right, and we were involved. Romantically. Look, I'm telling you this so we can cut to the chase, okay? You have a killer to catch and I have a suspect to run down.”
“We're working on that, too. Confirmed with the Helena Police Department. Detective Trey Williams. He said you were a deputy of the department, but just for this case.” She waved her fingers as if that information was insignificant. “I'm not exactly sure how that works. It's a little loosey-goosey for me. Not exactly by the book.”
“Not exactly,” O'Keefe allowed.
“And there is that problem in San Bernardino.”
“No problem. My record's clean.”
“Mmm.” She didn't seemed convinced. “Detective Williams has been advised to keep us in the loop, but he insists you've been important to the case; he wants you to work with him,” Chandler said, perusing a file.
“Good.”
“We're all on the same side here,” Halden pointed out. Slouching just a bit in his uncomfortable chair, Craig Halden was the friendlier of the two, almost seemed like the kind of guy you'd like to have a beer with. However, that could be all an act, a way to get O'Keefe to open up. Halden didn't have that cold exterior that Agent Chandler worked so hard to exude. From her blue eyes to her platinum hair to the set of her jaw and unsmiling lips, everything about her was about as warm as New Year's Eve in Alaska. Never displaying any emotion, Stephanie Chandler was as much an automaton as O'Keefe had ever seen in a woman, as much as he'd ever want to see. Halden said, “We're all part of a team. You, usâ” Flipping his hand back and forth to indicate both himself and Chandler, he added, “Grayson and his deputies, including Detective Alvarez, we're all just trying to nail some bad dude's ass to the wall.”
“I agree.” O'Keefe said, reassessing his opinion of the agents. So they weren't idiots. Nor morons. But they were didactic, it seemed, in their quest to be thorough. And time was ticking by; O'Keefe felt each second as it passed. “So let's work together. I need to find Gabriel Reeve.”
“And we need to find ourselves a killer,” Halden said, even offering his good-old-boy smile that seemed genuine enough, though it didn't quite touch his eyes.
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“Let me get this straight,” Pescoli said to the caller on the other end of the line. She had one arm through her jacket and had been on her way home when her cell phone had jangled and she'd caught it on the fly. “You got my number from Luke Pescoli?”
“Yeah, uh, he said you were his ex and that you were a detective with the sheriff 's department.”
Terrific!
“And he gave you my
personal
cell phone number?” she clarified, ready to kill her ex-husband, not for the first time. Resting her hips against the edge of her desk, she shrugged out of her jacket and watched as it fell to the floor of her office.
“Yeah. Look, I'm worried. Because of my girlfriend, Johnna, uh, Johnna Phillips, she didn't come home last night. And, you know, with everything that's happening around here, I got worried, so I called up Lucky and he said I should call you.”
Pescoli sighed and grabbed a piece of paper she kept near her computer monitor.
“What's your name again?”
“Carl. Anderson. I worked with your husband when I drove a truck.”
“I got that and he's my
ex
-husband.”
“Oh, yeah. He said that.”
Amen for small blessings.
“Your girlfriend's name is Johnna Phillips?”
“Yeah, but, oh, technically, she's kinda my ex, too.”
“How kinda?”
“We broke up the night before last.”
That explained a lot. “And now she won't take your calls?” This was beginning to sound like a wild goose chase. She caught the neckline of her jacket with the edge of her boot, kicked it upward and caught it in her free hand.
“It's not like that. And I went to the house and she hasn't been back since last night when she went to that bank party. She works for First Union. In the loan department. And her car isn't at the apartment and she hasn't been back. I still have a key and I went in, you know, to try and work things out, and she wasn't there.”
“Maybe she went home with ... a friend?” Pescoli suggested, thinking the guy on the other end of the connection was dumb as a stone. The girlfriend had probably just moved on, hopefully to someone with a higher IQ and a better set of acquaintances than a group that included Lucky Pescoli.
You married him. You chose him to be the father of your daughter. People in glass houses ...
“I don't think so. She hadn't been feeling all that sharp and she was just going to the party because it was kind of, you know, expected. What did she call it? A royal something or other?”
“Command performance?”
“Yeah, that was it!” he said, amazed.
“Have you called all her friends?”
“Oh, yeah. And her sister and ... and that Stephanie chick from the bank. No one's seen her and Stephanie said they had plans to meet up today and walk in the park. Johnna didn't show; but she thought maybe she just slept in. But she didn't.”
“At least not at home.”
“No. She ... no.”
Uh-oh. Now the
ex
was catching on.
Pescoli dropped the jacket over the back of her desk chair. “What's her address?”
“Number two-one-five at the Park West Apartments.” He gave her the address and she wrote it down. “Like I said, I probably wouldn't have called, but there's all this crazy shit goin' down and I'm worried. I've texted her and called and she's not picking up or returning my calls. I checked online at Facebook and, like ... nothing for over twenty-four hours. And she's on there
all
the time. I even sent IMs to her friends and no one's sayin' they, like, heard from her. It's weird, man, I'm tellin' ya. Somethin's not right.”
“Why don't you come in and file a report?” Pescoli suggested. Unconvinced that the ex-girlfriend wasn't just not responding to him, Pescoli was hesitant to follow up. However, he seemed so convinced that Johnna Phillips was really missing and had actually called searching for her, which gave Pescoli pause. She didn't want to take any chances, not with a lunatic terrorizing the area. “Check with Missing Persons. That's the department where you need to file the report.”
“Cool!”
Not really, but she wasn't going to tell him.
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Driving home in a department-issued vehicle, Alvarez decided she probably should have told Pescoli her theory about the earring but hadn't wanted to go off half-cocked. Just because she was missing an earring didn't mean the one found in Lara Sue Gilfry's tongue belonged to her. She wouldn't even have thought of it, as the silver stud wasn't all that unique, except for the hoop earring found pierced through Lissa Parsons's nipple.
That one was definitely hers.
So, she wondered, was it that much of a leap to think that the killer would use another one ... no, make that the stud, the first piece of jewelry, if he'd killed the women in the order in which they'd been discovered? Because their bodies had been frozen, determining time or day of death was tricky, if not impossible.
She flipped on the Jeep's wipers, as snow was falling again, dusk slipping away, the police band crackling as she nosed down Boxer Bluff. This year, colored spotlights had been trained on the falls, and the river, not yet frozen, tumbled wildly, a rushing froth in green and red as it flowed past the courthouse and shops lining the street that flanked its deep banks.
She wasn't the only one who'd seen the new display. Sunday evening traffic was worse than usual as drivers slowed to take in the sight.
By the time she turned down her street, she was nervous and a little agitated. If the silver stud did prove to be hers, her life was going to be a lot more complicated. The FBI would be all over her and some connection made between the killer and her.
What the hell is that all about? Why has he targeted you? This is NOT random, Selena, you know that!
Troubled, she pulled into her drive and reached for the nonexistent garage-door opener. Of course, it was still in her Subaru.
“Lovely,” she said, ramming the gearshift into park. As soon as she made the determination that her stud earring was really and truly missing and that the remaining one was the twin of the bit of metal yanked out of Lissa Parsons's mouth, she'd call Pescoli as well as O'Keefe, whom she left at the station without so much as a good-bye.
Dylan O'Keefe was another issue, one she'd prefer to keep private. That being the case, she didn't want anyone from the department searching her place for her earring or evidence from a week-old break-in and coming up with any personal item from O'Keefe. She just wasn't ready to start answering questions about their relationship or lack of relationship; it was all too complicated and would certainly bring up the mess in San Bernardino and Alberto De Maestro again.
That, she would definitely like to avoid.
Grabbing her things, she stepped into the cold of winter again and walked swiftly through a fresh dusting of snow to her front door. On the porch, she inserted her key into the lock, and as she did, the door swung open, as if it hadn't been locked or latched.
Again?
Someone had broken in?
Her heart kicked into overtime as she tried to remember leaving early this morning, but she was certain the door had been shut and locked . . or had it?
From habit she reached for her gun and pushed the door open farther.
No sound.
But there was a flickering light emanating from within ... the gas fire? She
knew
she hadn't left it burning.
The hairs on the back of her neck rose.
Someone was in the house.
Heart hammering, every nerve stretched tight, her fingers wrapped tightly over the butt of her pistol, she stepped quietly inside.
Still no noise, no shuffling of frantic feet, but if she listened hard, she could hear the hiss of the fire as it burned.
This is nuts! Go outside. Call for backup!
Her heart thundered in her ears.
Holding her breath, she took one more step.
“Don't shoot!” a voice yelled frantically as she reached the living room. “Please, don't shoot!”
She froze.
The lights snapped on.
Looking haggard and scared out of his mind was a teenaged boy with shaggy black hair, a coppery complexion and fear in his dark, suspicious eyes. He was huddled in the corner of the couch, closest to the fire; a blanket was tucked around him and Jane Doe had curled herself into his lap.
“Please,” he said, his hands raising to the side of his head, the cat, startled, leaping off the blanket to dive under a nearby table. “You're Selena Alvarez, right?” Before she could answer, he said, “Please, you have to help me!” His voice cracked with desperation and she felt something inside of her break as well. Still, she trained the muzzle of her gun straight into the face of Gabriel Reeve, the son she'd given up half a lifetime before.