“It’s just a formality.”
“With who? The CIA or FBI, what Feds? Oh, Jesus—”
O’Keefe said, “A couple of agents with the FBI. It’s no big deal. Both Detective Alvarez and I had to talk to them. Just tell them what you know and that’ll be the end of it.”
“About what? Tell them what I know about what?” His skin had blanched and he looked as if he’d seen a ghost. “Why are they here?” he asked Alvarez, then his eyes narrowed. “Wait ... I heard about this from some kids on the street. It’s that ice-mummy guy, right?” Gabe’s eyes rounded and he looked as if he might wet himself. “They don’t think I’m that guy! Oh, Christ! I had nothing to do with any of that shit!”
“I know,” Alvarez said. “Again, a formality.”
“No! I’m not doing it! I want a lawyer. I want a phone call, don’t I get one?” he demanded, then turned to O’Keefe. “Call my mom. My real mom!”
Before O’Keefe could reach for his phone, the sound of sirens split the air, louder and louder.
“Oh, God!” the kid said, turning on Alvarez, hate burning in his gaze. “You turned me in!”
“So the elusive Gabriel Reeve was waiting for you?” Pescoli asked an hour later as she and Alvarez were seated at a small table in a corner of the task force room. Computers and phones stood ready, and though it was Sunday, the room was filled with tension, officers coming and going, telephones jangling.
Currently Sage Zoller, a junior detective with the department, and Agent Craig Halden were manning the phones. A map of the area, complete with pins indicating where the bodies were found and where the victims lived and were last seen covered one wall. While on another, biographies and pictures of the victim had been placed, along with a timeline of their whereabouts. Pescoli glanced at the missing Brenda Sutherland’s picture; it was included with a big question mark, indicating that she wasn’t considered a victim yet as her body hadn’t been discovered. Would the question mark be erased? Would Johnna Phillips’s picture be the next one posted? God, she hoped not, but who knew?
Earlier, Pescoli had been about to leave the station when all hell had broken out, the kid had been run in, Alvarez and O’Keefe showing up with half a dozen cops who escorted Gabriel Reeve to the juvenile detention center as if he were Billy the Kid reincarnated. Not only was the sheriff ’s department involved, but the Helena PD had sent over a detective and the FBI agents were itching to talk to the boy about the missing jewelry from Alvarez’s apartment
and how it all tied in with the latest lunatic freezing women and putting them on public display.
Pescoli didn’t think the boy knew anything.
Alvarez was nodding, as if agreeing with herself. “Gabe was sitting on my couch, had a blanket wrapped around him, my cat on his lap.”
“All very domestic.”
“All very weirdly domestic,” Alvarez admitted.
“But at least he’s in custody.”
“Yeah,” Alvarez said without enthusiasm. Usually, Selena Alvarez was one of the most rock-steady cops Pescoli had ever met. That’s what being a mother could do to a person. Throw in an ex or two and things only got worse.
“He’s your son?”
“I think so ...” She let out a long sigh and shook her head. “He looks like his father.” Pescoli was about to ask about the man who’d fathered Gabriel Reeve, but Alvarez held up a hand. “I don’t want to go there, not right now.” Pescoli didn’t blame her. Right now, Dave and Aggie Reeve, the only parents Gabriel had ever known, were on their way to Grizzly Falls from Helena. They were already trying to work through O’Keefe and making noise about getting their son a lawyer. Yep, it was getting sticky.
Alvarez, as exhausted as everyone, said, “He thinks I turned him in, though technically it was O’Keefe.”
“But you think this is your earring?” Pescoli pushed the small bag across the table. Visible through the clear plastic, labeled as evidence, a tiny piece of jewelry glinted under the harsh fluorescent illumination of the task room.
Snapped back to the present, she studied the stud. “It’s an earring. The size is all wrong for a regular tongue stud and it was obviously just jammed through the victim’s tongue, there was no healing around the wound and the hole itself was too small. Abnormal. I checked with an expert. Anyway, I think this”—she pointed to the silver stud in the bag—“was stolen from my place. But not by Gabe,” she was quick to add. “I think it was missing before the hoop and locket were taken. It’s as if the killer, or his accomplice or someone, broke into my house before.”
“You mean before the night that Gabriel Reeve broke in?”
“Yeah.”
“What’re the chances of that?”
“I know, I know, it’s a stretch.”
“A damned long one.”
“I know, but I might be missing a ring, too.”
“Might be?” Pescoli asked.