“Near the bridge, it looks like. We found a couple tubes of lipstick and a case for eyeglasses by that section of fence.” She pointed to an area not quite under the bridge’s span, where snow had drifted near the tall pickets.
“Who called it in?” Pescoli asked.
“Over there.” Spitzer, whose walkie-talkie began to crackle, pointed to a sheriff’s cruiser.
For the first time, Pescoli and Alvarez saw Grace Perchant, the nutcase who claimed to talk with ghosts and predict the future among her many talents. Pale as a corpse herself, Grace was dressed in a long white coat, gloves, and tan boots. Her graying blond hair was anchored by a knit cap but whispered around her face. At her side were a pair of dogs, both half-wo
lf, one black, the other silvery gray. On slack leashes, each animal watched the approaching detectives with intelligent, if wary, eyes.
“Hello, Grace,” Pescoli said. “Mind if we ask you a few questions?”
“Not at all.” Grace gave some unspoken command and both dogs sat, obviously more relaxed.
“You found the body?”
“Yes. I was taking the dogs out. Sometimes we come down here, walk across the bridge. Sheena and Bane love the river, so this morning, just before dawn, I parked across the river, and we walked over the bridge. I didn’t notice anything on the way over, probably because I was on the far side of the span. Then, we walked into town and around several blocks down here.” She motioned behind her, past the buildings and their loading zones to indicate part of the city between the river and the high cliffs of Boxer Bluff.
“I wanted to take the steps up to the overlook,” she said, mentioning a concrete staircase of nearly a thousand steps that wound up the hillside to a point above the river where one could get a bird’s eye view of Grizzly Falls. “But it was so cold, we just went a few blocks down here and headed back. The dogs were a little whiny, they both kept trying to look over the railing and then I felt it. You know, a disturbance.”
“Disturbance?” Pescoli repeated.
Both detectives had dealt with Grace numerous times in the past. With her dire predictions, she was a frequent visitor to the sheriff’s department. Was she accurate in foretelling the future? Probably about fifty percent of the time. But she had made personal predictions about Pescoli and Alvarez that had been surprisingly on the mark—chillingly so. Neither detective could completely discount the self-proclaimed psychic’s abilities.
“When I was returning to the car and recrossing the bridge, I was on the other side of the road, on the falls’ side of the span. The dogs began acting up. You know, pulling at their leashes and whining, noses into the wind. Bane”—she indicated the bigger dog with the lighter coat—“was all over the railing, trying to get over. I looked then and noticed something floating down by the rocks. It wasn’t quite light yet, but I thought it was a body and called 9-1-1.” She shrugged, her pale green eyes unreadable.
There was something about the woman that made Pescoli uneasy. Maybe it was Grace’s infinite calm despite her predictions of disaster and death, or maybe the aura of peace that she insisted surrounded her. Or maybe it was the fact that she lived alone with two wolf-dogs in the middle of the forest.
You live with two dogs, she reminded herself. You’re often alone now that your kids are always looking for ways to escape. You live and breathe your job and are as isolated as she is in many ways. Yet, you’re not weird. Right?
“I waited,” Grace was saying, “And now, here we are.”
And where is that? Pescoli wondered, staring at the arch of the bridge backlit by the rising sun, then watching as the body bag was loaded into the ME’s van. Just where the hell is that?
The buzz in the diner was all about the body that had been pulled from the river this morning, customers chattering and gossiping, bits of information floating in the din of the dining room. Over the clatter of forks, rattle of ice cubes, and gurgle of the espresso machine, the conversation was centered on a second body found in so short a time.
“It just never seems to end,” Misty confided to Jessica when both were at the serving counter, picking up orders. “Hey, Armando, this omelet’s supposed to come with guac!”
“Sì, sì!” he snapped, irritated. He found a dish of guacamole and placed it on the platter. “Where is Denise? I cannot do this by myself!”
Denise Burns was a fry cook sous-chef. And she was over an hour late.
“She called Nell. Got caught in that mess of traffic near the bridge.” Misty surveyed her two platters, then pulled them from the counter. To Jessica, she said, “We’ve already had one psycho this season and now this.”
“You think there’s a madman running around?” Jessica asked, eyeing a platter that Armando slid onto the counter. “Wheat toast,” she said to the head cook, “not sourdough.”
“Dios! I cannot work like this!” Armando grumbled just as Denise, in a gust of cold air, walked through the back door.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” she said, holding up her hands as if she expected Armando to open fire. “It’s impossible to get through town right now. The damn bridge I usually use is closed and all the roads are backed up.” She was stripping off her jacket as she came inside and threw her purse, scarf, and phone into her locker. It banged shut as she reappeared, wrapping an apron around her slim waist. “Bring me up to speed,” she said to Armando as she twisted her hair into a net and began washing her hands.
After slapping a stack of wheat toast onto the counter, he began reading off the orders to her, rapid-fire.
Jessica carried her platters to a table near the windows where a mother of three kids under six was trying to convince her three-year-old daughter to eat “one more bite” of a barely touched waffle. The baby was picking at Cheerios on the high chair tray, and the third child, around five, was plucking the blueberries out of his pancakes.
“Sorry for the delay,” Jessica said, finally delivering the parents their breakfasts.
The mom said, “No problem,” though it sounded as if it really was a major inconvenience. The dad didn’t look up from his cell phone.
“Can I get you anything else?”