Around noon, she drove home and took a crazed Roscoe out for a jog. The walking trails through a nearby park had their paths cleared of snow for the most part, so she walked him into the entrance of the park on Boxer Bluff, then started jogging, urging him to follow on the leash. The air was crisp and cold, burning a little in her lungs as she started breathing harder, but the trail was scenic, winding through the trees on the cliffs high over the river. She hadn’t bothered with her iPod or iPhone, and instead of listening to music, heard her own breathing, the slap of her running shoes on the asphalt and the rush of the Grizzly River pouring over the falls for which the town was named. The park was serene, the thick blanket of snow covering the winter grass and clinging to the boughs of the evergreen trees.
She met a few other walkers, bundled in heavy jackets and wool hats and gloves, their breath fogging in the air.
“On your left,” she heard as a tall, athletic runner passed her as if she were standing still, then nearly tangled in Roscoe’s leash as the rambunctious pup lunged playfully at him.
“Hey!” the runner said angrily, his pace thrown off.
And merry Christmas to you, too.
Alvarez watched him disappear as snow began to fall again. The dog slowed on mile two, and by the third and final mile, Roscoe’s tongue was hanging out and he was panting. “Feel good?” Alvarez asked as they walked back to her town house and she let him inside.
Three miles, come hell or high water, and the dog was good for the day. So tired, he spent the rest of the day in his bed until she returned at night.
As she heated soup in the microwave, she walked through the shower and threw on her clothes. With one eye on the television news, she ate quickly while Jane Doe curled on her lap and the dog eyed her every bite. “Mine,” she reminded him when he belly-swamped across the kitchen linoleum to her and looked up with pitiful dark eyes. “You’ll get dinner when I return.”
He thumped his tail but didn’t stop staring at her. “I’m not buying it.” After finishing her soup, she placed her dish and spoon in the dishwasher, then, as both her pets settled in for their afternoon naps, she bundled up and headed out again.
At four o’clock on the nose, Joelle let her assistant handle the front desk and marched into the lunchroom with her red Santa’s hat with the well-worn fake white fur. Inside it, Pescoli knew were the names of everyone in the department. “Come in for the drawing!” Joelle yelled. “Secret Santa time!”
“I thought we just did this,” she muttered under her breath to no one in particular. She’d returned to the station only minutes before and now wished her interview of the Bradshaw family had taken longer.
“Come on, come on! You, too, Detective,” Joelle said at the doorway to Pescoli’s office.
“This can’t be mandatory. Isn’t it violating my workplace rights or religious rights in some way?”
“Oh, pooh!” Joelle was having none of it. “Don’t be a grinch!” She stood on a little stool in the middle of the lunchroom and seemed oblivious to the fact that other people had serious work to do. Waggling the ridiculous hat, she motioned anyone in the lunchroom closer and the assault wouldn’t stop there, Pescoli knew from experience. If someone didn’t partake, that employee was hunted down to his or her desk to draw from the hat. If that didn’t work, then a name was drawn at random and left in an envelope at the declining employee’s work area. It was an unwritten law that everyone, regardless of religious background, partake.
“Santa Claus is nondemoninational!” Joelle had proclaimed one year when Pescoli had played the religion card.
“You mean denominational,” Cort Brewster, the undersheriff, had corrected.
Joelle had winked at him and wrinkled her nose, as if she were being cute—the bimbo. “Of course that’s what I meant.”
Now, as her iPod played her Christmas carol rotation that seemed to include only Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas,” Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and Burl Ives’s “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” the sheriff himself sauntered into the lunchroom; Pescoli rolled her eyes and whispered, “Do something.”
“I will.” To her dismay, Grayson was the first one to draw a name. “Your turn,” he said out of the side of his mouth as he checked the name on his tiny scrap of paper.
Nigel Timmons, the dork from the lab, was up next. His thinning hair was sculpted into a faux hawk, and he’d recently given up glasses for contacts that seemed to bother him and give him a wide-eyed stare. His skin was sallow, his frame slight and he was a genius when it came to anything to do with chemistry or computers. As irritating as he was, the twenty-six-year-old was invaluable to the department and he knew it. Smirking to himself—while once again, Bing was crooning, “I’m dreaming of a ...”—Timmons withdrew a piece of paper from the hat, looked it over and read the name upon it, then, being the goof he was, placed it in his mouth, chewed and swallowed. “Top-secret stuff,” he explained and Alvarez looked pained.
“We’re not in sixth grade,” she said.
“Speak for yourself.” Timmons flashed her a grin and started perusing the remainder of the day’s baked goods before snagging a cookie that he held in his mouth while he picked over the fudge and cupcakes.
“I think Timmons had graduated from Yale by the sixth grade,” Pescoli whispered and Alvarez’s pained expression grew more intense.
“Don’t remind me that he’s freakin’ brilliant, okay?”
Everyone took their turn, then walked back to their desks, and Pescoli, rather than suffer Joelle’s ridicule for the second year in a row, plucked a name from the hat. Anyone but Cort Brewster, she thought, as she’d had to deal with him last year and their relationship was anything but smooth, as her son, Jeremy, and his daughter, Heidi, couldn’t quite break up. Each parent blamed the other for the kids getting into trouble. She opened the scrap of paper, and damn if it didn’t have the undersheriff’s name on it. “Sorry, it’s my own,” she said hastily, returning the label to Joelle’s hat before the receptionist could protest. Brenda Lee was rockin’ away. Quickly, Pescoli swiped another scrap and this time saw Joelle’s name on the paper. God, that was worse, but she was stuck. As it was, Joelle eyed her suspiciously, so she walked quickly back to her desk and wondered what the hell would she get a grandmother who looked like Barbie and was stuck in the sixties. God, that was half a century before.
Pescoli didn’t have time for this nonsense. If she were going to fret about Christmas gifts, it damned well better be for her kids or Santana. Good Lord, what was she going to get him this year?
“How about nothing?” he’d suggested when she asked him what he wanted for Christmas. “Then after I unwrap the box, you could put it on.”
“Not funny,” she’d said but had to swallow back a smile.
“And you’re a liar.” They’d been alone at his cabin and he’d advanced on her, then kissed her and carried her into the bedroom.
That had been a new and heart-racing experience. She’d never been petite and, though not fat, wasn’t small. Santana hadn’t seemed to notice as he’d hauled her over the threshold and tumbled with her onto the bed, then made love to her as if she were the only woman in the universe.