Left To Die (25 page)

The calm before the storm, she thought as she grabbed her purse and pushed back her chair. The lights had been turned down and her footsteps, in the boots she’d worn to the courthouse, rang loudly on the stairs. The whole place was kind of empty and eerie. Alvarez usually liked working alone in the office, late at night, when the phones didn’t ring and the buzz of conversation, the laughter, and angry outbursts from suspects didn’t bother her, but tonight was different.

Maybe it had been testifying in court. She’d been on the witness stand only a few minutes, explaining how a five-year-old had been killed in a hit-and-run accident by a drunk driver. But the mother’s tortured, tear-streaked face, her guilt for having taken her eyes off her son for just a second, had gotten to her. And on the other side of the courtroom sat the defendant, a boy of no more than twenty, scared and remorseful and guilty as sin of being drunk, leaving the scene of an accident, being a minor in possession of alcohol and on and on.

So many lives ruined.

She walked outside and hit a button on her keyless remote to unlock her rig, a department-issued Jeep not unlike Pescoli’s, snow covering the roof and hood.

Using a scraper she kept in the pocket inside the door, she brushed the snow free from the windshield and climbed behind the steering wheel. It had been a long day. A long week. Hell, it had been a long few months since the body of Theresa Charleton, the single schoolteacher from Boise, had been found. That had been the start, clear back at the end of September. Her body hadn’t been in the forest long; there’d been minimal decomposition and animal activity when they found it. And ever since, her brother Lyle Wilson had been calling, demanding answers.

“If only,” Alvarez said as she started her SUV and pulled out of the lonely parking lot, where only a few vehicles remained. She angled down a side street before connecting to the main artery that cut down the hillside to the heart of Old Grizzly, the part of the town that was first settled. Where the brick courthouse was flanked by narrow streets lined with offices and shops that had been built over a hundred years earlier. Located nearly five hundred feet below the hill where the sheriff’s offices and jail sat, this part of town had been built on the banks of the Grizzly River, just below the falls. It had originally been inhabited by miners and loggers, an old sawmill downriver giving testament to the boom of the early 1900s.

Rather than head straight to her empty apartment, she found a parking space on the street near Wild Wills, one of her favorite haunts and a place she knew she could get a decent meal. She climbed out of the SUV and felt a coldness on the back of her neck, a premonition of someone staring at her.

She turned and saw a man across the narrow street. Wearing a thick parka, his face hidden in shadow, he sent one final glance her way and ambled off toward the river.

Your cop radar is on overload
, she told herself as he disappeared around the corner, and she decided there was no reason to give chase. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since a carton of yogurt and an apple that were supposed to be lunch.

Adjusting the strap of her purse, she walked through the cold night air to the restaurant.

Wild Wills, sporting an 1880s western/wilderness theme, was decorated with rough plank walls, hanging wagon-wheel chandeliers and the mounted heads of moose, deer, elk, big-horned sheep and antelope, all with glassy fixed eyes staring down at the patrons. A stuffed grizzly bear, his mouth open in a perpetual bared-tooth growl, greeted the customers as it stood on hind legs near the front door. He’d been dubbed “Grizz” by the townspeople and the owners had always decorated him with the seasons. The huge, shaggy bear had been known to wear a red, white and blue top hat reminiscent of Uncle Sam on the Fourth of July, a small flag wedged between his sharp claws, and last Halloween, he’d been outfitted in one of those freaky masks from the
Scream
movies, which had somehow been pinned over his face and gaping snout. His props had been a chain saw and witches’ caldron…kind of mixed signals, but hey, it had been Halloween.

Personally, Alvarez had always found it weird and disturbing, but she’d kept her opinions to herself, and today, as she shoved open the glass doors, she found Grizz decorated to the max, glittery angel wings appearing out of his back, matching halo propped over his head, a necklace of colored lights strung around his furry neck.

All the while, his glittery glass eyes glowered in rage and his lips pulled back to expose his wide mouth and sharp teeth, despite the open book of Christmas carols tucked into his outstretched paws.

Like, oh yeah, he was trilling away on “Silent Night,” the page to which the book had been opened. Well, all wasn’t calm tonight, nor was it bright, she thought as she walked through the foyer to the main dining hall, where the decor only got worse.

As she headed to the back of the large room, she passed tables and booths filled with patrons and guarded by hundred-year-old dead herbivorous animals staring down at her, all their antlers dressed in winking lights or draped in tinsel.

It was damned freaky.

Welcome to Grizzly Falls
, she thought, struggling out of her jacket and realizing that some of the customers were gazing at her, questions in their eyes for the cop who was trying and failing to find a maniac.

Ignoring the garish display on the walls and the customers, who turned back to their meals, she settled into a booth near the back. She sat facing the door, a cop habit she couldn’t shake. She just couldn’t stand it if she couldn’t see who was entering or leaving a restaurant.

Sandi, the owner-waitress, came by. In her hands were two steaming coffeepots. “You want coffee? Or somethin’ stronger? The drink special tonight is what we call a Wild Christmas.”

“I hate to ask.” The last drink special had been known as a Wild Will Hiccup and had been a god-awful blend of whiskeys.

“Eggnog, cream de cacao, a splash of cola and a shot of Wild Turkey.” One of Sandi’s eyebrows lifted over the rims of her jeweled glasses. “You can have another kind of whiskey if you want. We use Wild Turkey because of the name.”

“I think I’ll stick with decaf,” Alvarez said, turning up one of the cups on her table and watching the warm stream of dark liquid flow.

“Any luck gettin’ that psycho?” Sandi asked. She was a tall woman with a long, gaunt face and eyes darkened with heavy liner and, today, probably in a nod to the season, glittery green eye shadow. She had once been married to William Aldridge, for whom the establishment had been named, but Will and she had divorced, or so rumor had it. Will had ended up with his favorite pickup, the RV, a hunting cabin and a twenty-year-younger-than-Sandi girlfriend, and Sandi had become full owner of Wild Wills, expanding the bland fare to include exotic dishes created from local trout and venison. She lived in an apartment upstairs and was at the restaurant 24-7, or so it seemed. Sandi also hadn’t been able to hide her satisfaction when she’d heard Will’s younger girlfriend had “dumped his sorry ass.” She’d confided this little morsel of information to anyone who had sat in the faux-leather booths and café chairs in the past two years.

“We’re working on it.”

“Well, speed it up, will ya? It’s got everybody in town nervous as hell. No one’s talkin’ about this blasted weather, uh-uh. Nope. It’s all about the Bitterroot Killer. That’s what Manny over at the
Reporter
calls him.”

Alvarez had seen the article written by Manny Douglas of the
Mountain Reporter
, Grizzly Falls’s answer to the
L.A. Times
. “We’ll get him,” she said.

“I have faith.” But it was a lie. Alvarez saw the nervousness in the edge of Sandi’s glossy-red lips as she slid a menu across the table. “The special is buffalo steak with a wild huckleberry reduction and red potatoes or rice pilaf. It comes with a house salad of spinach, green apples and hazelnuts or a cup of cream of broccoli soup.”

A man at a nearby table held up his empty drink glass and Sandi scurried off toward the bar in search of another Wild Christmas or something about as palatable.

Selena glanced around the room, where normal citizens, some with shopping bags, were clustered around tables or stuffed into booths. She listened to bits of conversation over the soft music, country-western ballads whispering through the speakers that battled with the loud thrum of the furnace and hiss of the fryer whenever the doors to the kitchen opened. As upscale as Sandi wanted to make the place, most of the patrons ordered steaks, burgers and fresh-cut fries or onion rings.

“…what kind of a monster would do it? My goodness. This was such a nice town,” a woman wearing a gray wig and large gold cross around her neck said to the man seated opposite her. Their meal finished, they were lingering over two cups of coffee and sharing a slice of coconut cake.

“…if ya ask me, we should get ourselves a posse goin’, search the hills ourselves.” The man, waiting for his new drink, was already a little flushed and full of Old West bluster. “We all got guns around here. Maybe it’s time to take justice into our own hands…. Damned police…Aaah, thank ya, dear,” he said to Sandi as she deposited the fresh glass onto the table in front of him. He picked it up and nodded. “These are real good. Real good.”

“I heard they were tortured and tied to trees with some kind of weird Satanic symbol cut into the bark.” Another woman, wearing a hand-quilted jacket and dour expression and seated at a table not far from Alvarez’s, was leaning over the remains of her buffalo steak special and stage-whispering to her friend.

“Who would think, here, in Grizzly Falls?” her companion replied with the kind of relish that meant she was savoring every tidbit of gossip cast her way.

Alvarez turned her attention away.

Who indeed?

For years, she’d hoped to be part of an investigation of a major case, one that would get her juices flowing, one that would offer some recognition, one that might even garner national attention.

But not this one. Not a case where women were held, probably tortured, then, when the sicko was finished playing with them, left naked in the woods.

She ordered trout almondine with risotto and spinach salad, and though she tried, she couldn’t take her mind off the case and the victims. Theresa Charleton had been left around the twentieth of September, near the cusp of the astrological signs, just as Chandler had pointed out. Nina Salvadore a month later, then Wendy Ito and now Jillian Rivers.

Was the killer really a Zodiac copycat?

Or something else? She glanced around the room and noted the normal-looking people out for dinner or drinks. Grizzly Falls had its share of nutcases, but now, did they have a twisted killer?

He had to know the area. He had to know his victims. He had to keep them somewhere close by. In a lair of sorts—a cabin, a cave, a basement, a barn, a shed, a damned attic—but hidden away.

And right under your damned nose.

Everyone was working nearly ’round the clock, but still, it was almost as if they were spinning their wheels, getting nowhere in a big hurry.

Pescoli was working on the maps, the FBI was checking files and creating a profile. Alvarez had calls into missing persons departments throughout Montana and the surrounding states. People of interest were being interviewed and re-interviewed. Everyone was going over notes and talking to friends and family, people in the area who might have seen something. The public had been alerted, the sheriff’s department asking for citizens to report anything they deemed suspicious. Men, dogs, four-wheel-drive units and helicopters had been searching for more victims or abandoned wrecked vehicles or any damned piece of evidence they could find whenever the weather allowed.

All in all, it was frustrating.

There weren’t enough leads and certainly not enough hours in the day.

So much for the glory of a major case, she thought as a sizzling platter was placed in front of her and a country Christmas carol sung by Wynonna Judd filtered through the speakers. So far they had no idea who was wreaking terror on this usually sleepy little Montana town.

She picked up a knife and looked at her plate, where a rainbow trout, head attached, seemed to stare up at her. Everywhere, it seemed, eyes were watching her. The man in the parka outside the restaurant, the other patrons here at Wild Wills, the heads of dead animals mounted high on the walls, the unseen eyes on the street outside and now, even her damned food.

Ah, well. She stared the trout down and cut into it, slicing out a flaky bite.

Bon appetit.

It’s time for the next phase.

As I stare at her. I know.

The woman is healing well enough. With little assistance she can walk on her own, make her way through the snow. I think about that, how I will rope her and prod her. She’ll try to curse me, of course, as well as herself, but she’ll not be able to do anything but what I wish.

As I sit in the cabin, the fire crackling and warm, I’m keyed up and anxious to get rid of her. Keeping her much longer will only up my chances of being detected. The police, as ever, are clueless, but that could change.

I must not underestimate them.

Besides, my note is ready, the letters perfect, the position of the star precise. But then, of course it is: I made the letters as soon as I determined whom the women I would sacrifice would be. And the star alignment—that was preordained.

My nerves are jangled, my mind already playing ahead to the time when she realizes that I’ve duped her, that I’m not setting her free after all.

That moment—when they realize I have ultimate power over their fate, when I notice not only fear, but a bit of wary resignation in their faces—that is the sweetest moment of all. Nearly orgasmic.

Soon, I tell myself. Only a few more hours.

But I’m tired of pretending, playing a character that is foreign to me.

Flirting.

Laughing.

Appearing easygoing and affable.

It wears on me.