Afraid to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“Bad news. I told you about Johnna Phillips?”

“Banker. Works at First Union. Her boyfriend was worried about her?”

“Recent ex-boyfriend. I checked with her work. So far she hasn’t shown.”

“It’s early.”

“I know, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

She withdrew a Christmas card from the red envelope. “You think we have another victim?”

“Could be.” Pescoli eyed the envelope and grinned. In a singsong voice, she said, “Uh-oh. Looks like someone got a Secret Santa card.”

Alvarez rolled her eyes. “Could be, I guess.” Then she turned the conversation back to Johnna Phillips. “Let’s hope she’s just avoiding the ex.”

“Seems like she’s going to extreme measures.”

“Maybe that’s what you have to do with this guy.” She opened the card. “Oh, damn,” she whispered, her eyes rounding, her face losing all color. She dropped the card onto her desk as if it had burned her fingers. “Son of a bitch!”

Pescoli saw the flap of the card open. Tucked inside, covering the message, was a photograph of a naked woman. “Oh, no.”

“It’s Brenda Sutherland,” Alvarez whispered, seeming to pull herself together a bit, though she was still white as a sheet.

Leaning over the desk, closer to the open card, Pescoli got a better look at the image of a woman who was either dead or nearly so, naked except for a locket on a chain surrounding her neck. And, yes, she was either Brenda Sutherland or her twin. The chain around her neck had been looped twice, the links cutting into Brenda’s flesh, leaving her skin bruised and broken.

“Sick bastard,” Pescoli whispered.

Alvarez visibly swallowed hard. “That’s mine,” she admitted. “The locket, it was one I got when I was confirmed in the church. Oh, Lord ...” Alvarez was staring at the open card as if it were the embodiment of evil just as one of those prerecorded greetings that could be tucked inside began playing the tinny notes of “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”

Chapter 27

“I don’t know why anyone would single me out,” Alvarez said, answering the same question for what seemed like the seventy-fifth time that day. Sitting in the passenger seat of Pescoli’s Jeep, she stared out the windshield, watching the taillights of the other vehicles and the wipers slap away the ever-falling snow. It had been a long day but finally they were on their way to pick up Alvarez’s car.

She hazarded a glance out the window as they drove past a school, where a few kids, dressed in jackets, scarves and hats, were playing in the snow on the flocked playground.

After receiving the sick Christmas card this morning, she’d been escorted into one of the interview rooms to discuss, with Agents Halden and Chandler, any connection she might have to the killer or any of his victims, Brenda Sutherland now confirmed as his third.

Since his identity was still unknown, she had no idea how she’d ever run across him. As for the victims, she knew Brenda by name, as she worked at Wild Will’s, and she’d seen Lissa Parsons at her exercise club, but she was pretty certain she’d never seen Lara Sue Gilfry in her life. Even when questioning Rod Larimer, the obnoxious innkeeper of the Bull and Bear bed-and-breakfast on a previous case, she’d never run across Lara Sue, who had worked there.

She’d answered Halden and Chandler’s questions as well as she could, going over her entire life history, but in the end, she’d given them nothing that could connect her to the killer. “Trust me, I’d love to nail the son of a bitch’s hide,” she’d sworn to Halden, “but I have no idea who he is.”

Nor did they.

Yet.

After the intense interview with the FBI agents, Dan Grayson had called her into his office, and while his dog snored from his dog bed in the corner near a potted plant, Grayson had informed her that he was relieving her of her responsibilities in the ice-mummy case. “Somehow, the killer’s targeted you. I don’t know why, nor do you, but I think it would be best if we let someone else handle the case. Pescoli can work with Gage on this one.”

Brett Gage was the chief criminal detective in the department. As such, he oversaw all of the cases and spent most of his time behind a desk. At forty, he was whip thin, a runner, and this was the first time since she’d been with Pinewood County that Alvarez had seen him in an actual investigative role.

“You can’t take me off the case.”

“I can and I will.” He’d stared at her long and hard, this man whom she’d fantasized she’d loved. His eyes looked haunted, as if the weight not only of the county’s safety, but that of the whole damned state rested on his broad shoulders. “I’m the sheriff. Remember?”

“But—”

“Don’t argue, Detective,” he’d said, all business. “And I’ll see to it that your place is watched.”

“You don’t have to do that.” She knew the department was stretched thin, despite the help from the state police and the FBI on this particular case. With the freezing of creeks and snapping of electrical lines, and a major blizzard predicted, there just weren’t enough deputies to go around. Having one assigned to watch her just wasn’t in the budget.