Chapter 30
Pescoli’s warning, if that’s what you’d call it, followed Alvarez as she drove to the station.
She thought of the frozen women, wearing nothing but pieces of her jewelry.
This is personal.
How? The men who had just cause to hate her, she supposed, Emilio Alvarez and Alberto De Maestro, were nowhere near the area, and the men she’d sent to prison were, for the most part, still incarcerated. Junior Green had tried his best to take her out but failed and was back in custody, and she didn’t think she’d pissed off anyone else, at least not to the point of the guy becoming a homicidal maniac.
That’s not how it works and you know it; this guy is a serial killer, he has a history. Somewhere. A bed wetter. Abused and neglected, probably molested as a child. Someone cruel to animals ... And has crossed your path without you knowing it. Someone who also knew Lara Sue Gilfry, Lissa Parsons, Brenda Sutherland and probably Johnna Phillips. Someone in the community. So ... who? Who?
Frustrated, she spent the day thinking about it in her office while the storm continued to rage, snapping trees, tearing down power lines, freezing pipes and shutting down roads. It was as bad as she’d ever seen it here.
People in this part of Montana were used to blizzardlike conditions in the depths of winter, but even the locals, the residents who had lived here for decades, were forced to batten down the hatches.
The sheriff ’s department called in everyone to help out, so the station was buzzing with deputies, half-frozen, r
eturning from road duty to warm up with hot coffee and Joelle’s rapidly disappearing cupcakes and candy, before heading out again to help elderly shut-ins who were freezing without power, or clearing accidents on the roads that had been plowed, or assisting with tree removal.
On top of the bad weather, the department, along with the FBI and state troopers, was dealing with the serial killer.
The joviality of the Christmas season was buried deep in the icy drifts surrounding Grizzly Falls and even Joelle seemed to have had her spirits dampened; her usual smile was a little forced and she, always in strappy, glittery heels this time of year, had donned knee-high red boots and a black skirt and sweater that were decorated in poinsettias that seemed to be falling from her left shoulder and tumbling to the hem of the skirt on the right side of her body.
“I suppose the church’s bazaar will have to be postponed from this weekend,” she said, tight-lipped as she brushed crumbs from one of the tables.
“Least of our problems, I’d say.” Pescoli had spent a good part of the day in the task force room and had just stepped out to refill her coffee cup. Alvarez, too, was allowed in and had been working the case as well. Grayson had backed down on his edict that she couldn’t be a part of the team and the FBI agents had agreed, thinking that she might offer some insight into the case.
There had been tips called in to the station that the task force had sorted, filed and, of course, verified. Though each tip had been checked out, nothing had panned out, including the call from Sherwin Hahn, who insisted his neighbor was doing “weird things” with his watering trough outside. Sherwin was a farmer whose family had homesteaded around Grizzly Falls generations earlier. Because of a farming accident and crippling arthritis, Sherwin, pushing a hundred years, was relegated to a wheelchair while his son and grandson ran the farm. From his position near the window and with the aid of a telescope, he could look down the hill to his neighbor’s farm, where Abe Nelson raised winter wheat and sheep. It was the sheep trough that had caught Sherwin’s attention, and his imagination had run wild as he was certain Abe was freezing bodies in the trough. As it turned out Abe Nelson was just trying to keep the water from freezing and worked with the troughs every evening and morning. He’d talked to the FBI and Pescoli and Gage, throwing a disgusted glance up the hill to Sherwin Hahn’s old farmhouse and saying, “The blind old fart should just mind his own business. For the record, I don’t like him, nor his son and especially not his grandson!”
They’d looked around; Nelson had invited them to comb his property. “While you’re at it, would you mind looking for a ewe I lost two days ago?” he’d asked, and his wife had even offered them coffee. The tip had been a bust. Like the others. Pescoli had confided to Alvarez later while seated at her desk, “The Nelson farm?” She’d rolled her eyes and shaken her head. “It was just one more wrong tree we managed to bark up.”
His job was officially over, O’Keefe acknowledged as he drove toward the hotel where Aggie and Dave were staying. They were checking out later in the day. As soon as the storm broke and the roads were passable, they intended to head back to Helena to await their son’s arrival at the juvenile center there and meet with an attorney. Gabe was being transported to Helena later in the day, if and when the roads were passable, though no one knew the exact time of his release; it all depended, O’Keefe had heard from Alvarez, upon when a driver was available and the center in Helena could accept him inside their locked gates.
Officially, it was time for him to leave, too, O’Keefe thought, squinting a little, as the snow was really coming down, making visibility almost impossible. Traffic was light but crawling, snow piling only to pack down to ice before piling onto the slick surface all over again.
He’d cleared out of his motel room the day before and his stuff was either in his SUV or Alvarez’s town house. His life, though, was back in Helena. He couldn’t hang out here in Grizzly Falls forever. He had a duplex and an office downtown in Helena, both of which he’d ignored for the past week and a half.
Because of Gabe.
Check that. Originally it was because of Gabe, but now, he was hanging around because of Alvarez. He told himself it was to protect her, that because she was in the killer’s sights, he couldn’t leave now.
But it was more than that, and now, as he drove along the road that rimmed the river, he had to acknowledge the simple fact that he was falling in love with her. Which was just plain stupid. He had mixed feelings about her, of course, and once he’d found out that she’d been raped as a teenager, that her problems with intimacy had sprung from that horrific crime, he should have backed off, perhaps, and gave her space. But he hadn’t and, it seemed, she didn’t want him to leave. She certainly hadn’t had a snit fit when he’d practically moved in the night before.
A twinge of guilt needled his mind, because he hadn’t been completely honest with her. So, he’d pushed the sex thing, unknowingly, of course, but forced her to admit to what had happened to her, how Gabe had been conceived, and now everyone knew; he felt a little guilt for being a party to that, but not too much. It was a good thing, right? He glanced in his rearview mirror and caught his own reflection as if for confirmation.
But he also hadn’t been completely truthful to her either about his reasons for staying.
This time, as he slowed for a red light and looked into the mirror again, he caught recriminations in his bruised countenance. So, he’d lied. So, she’d be pissed as hell when and if she found out. So what?
He remembered the fear that had jolted through him when he realized that Junior Green had her cornered in her garage, that the big man was intent on killing her, that he’d come within inches of taking her life.
O’Keefe had panicked, rolled under the garage door, sweeping the bigger man’s legs out from him and eventually winning that brutal wrestling match, but it had haunted him ever since. What if he hadn’t arrived at just that moment?
True, Selena Alvarez was a trained policewoman, knew how to use a firearm and had taken classes in self-defense and martial arts, but still, would that have been enough when the madman with a loaded .45 had confronted her?
It was a chance he didn’t want to take, not ever again.
Face it, O’Keefe. You’ve got it bad for her. You never really fell out of love with Selena Alvarez.