Willing to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“We don’t have any sample of Brady Long’s DNA,” Carson Ramsby explained, as if Alvarez, seated at her desk and looking over an autopsy report, didn’t understand basic genetics. “We’ll have a helluva time refuting Garrett Mays’s claim.”

“Or substantiating it. Not that it’s our problem.” Alvarez looked up and saw that he was standing in the doorway to her office. Dressed in a puffy ski jacket and a watch cap, he was obviously on his way out of the office. So go already. She tried not to let Ramsby bug her, but he did. Plain and simple. The guy just got under her skin. Worse yet, earlier today, Alvarez had seen Pescoli, her old partner, standing in the very spot Ramsby now occupied. It was funny, she thought, and a tad ironic that Pescoli had, at the onset of their partnership, bothered Alvarez as well. Alvarez had always gone by the rules; Pescoli never had. But this guy—Ramsby—he wrote the book about going by the book. He was forever second-guessing Alvarez and remarking that whatever she was doing wasn’t precisely protocol.

You didn’t know how good you had it, she thought now.

“See you tomorrow,” he said.

She grunted a quick and thankful, “Bye,” then noticed that he hadn’t left at all. When she looked past the open door and a few steps down the hallway, she spied him brown-nosing his way into Sheriff Blackwater’s office.

Did the kid have no shame?

What about a better place to be?

Wasn’t there a girl to chase? A brew to drink? A sporting event to get lost in? Wasn’t that what normal twenty-something males did?

But then there was nothing normal about Carson Ramsby, ex-jock, but with an IQ that was supposedly off the charts. She’d seen no evidence of that, at least none that she would admit to, but that was the rumor.

Her phone rang and she picked up automatically. “Alvarez.”

“It’s Rule,” the deputy said on the other end of the line. “You better get out here. And by here, I mean on a little to nothin’ logging road off Cougar Pass, near an old hunting cabin.” He gave her the exact locale and explained, “I got a call about a couple of kids out snowshoeing and coming across what they thought were a couple of dead bodies and they were right. Apparent gunshot victims.”

“Murder-suicide?” she thought aloud.

“Don’t think so. Just by the first look at the wounds I don’t even think they were killed in the truck where the kids found them, but that’s for you and the forensics team to figure out.”

“Where are the kids now?”

“Huddled in my SUV.”

“Keep them there. I’m on my way.”

“Got it.”

Alvarez grabbed her service weapon, strapped it into a shoulder holster, then forced her arms into her jacket. Double-checking for the gloves and hat she kept stuffed into a pocket, she headed for the exit, just stopping long enough to check out one of the four-wheel-drive vehicles owned by the county.

Ramsby caught up with her at the desk. “Double?” he asked.

“That’s right. How’d you know?”

“Rule called the sheriff after he got hold of you and the crime techs.”

“Good. Then let’s roll.”

He fell into step with her. “What happened?”

“Don’t know more than that. Guess it’s up to us to find out.” She was already pushing open the back door that led to the employee lot where personal cars and department-issued vehicles were parked, collecting snow. She eyed her Subaru, but made her way to the department-issued rig and unlocked the doors. “Get in.”

She thought he might want to drive—they’d had that argument before—but she was wrong. For once Ramsby did as he was told and rode shotgun while she turned on siren and lights and stepped on the gas.

* * *

“I got the papers,” Bianca said as she helped clear the table. Dinner was finished, later than usual as Pescoli had driven Sarina to the airport. Ivy was refusing to leave. For now, her aunts agreed, she could stay, though why she wanted to relocate to Montana was a mystery. Her insistence that she didn’t feel safe anywhere near San Francisco and that Pescoli was her only relative who lived far away just didn’t hold water as she barely knew her. The fact that she insisted her mother had advised her to seek shelter with Pescoli if something happened to her and Ivy was in trouble, rang a little truer. Now, of course, there was the Jeremy fa

ctor, too, whatever that meant.

Dear God.

Ivy had already headed upstairs. Jeremy, presumably, was still pumping gas at Corky’s Gas and Go, the local gas station/mini-mart, but he was due home at any time. The baby, usually crabby this time of night, was seated in his bouncy chair on the island, watching the action from his elevated position. And Sarina was now at the airport awaiting her flight and probably on the phone with her kids or Collette, still upset that she hadn’t been able to convince Ivy to return with her. Their private conversation hadn’t apparently gone well. Whatever had been said upset Sarina, but she’d departed as planned, leaving Ivy in a sullen mood where the girl had barely spoken a word as she’d picked her way disinterestedly through a taco salad that Bianca had put together during Pescoli’s airport run to Missoula.