Afraid to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“Or he’s got lifts in his boots.”

“Looks like he weighs anywhere from two hundred to two thirty, depending upon how many layers he’s got on.” Halden scowled. “We think his hair is brown, if the one we found in Brenda Sutherland’s car is his. And his blood type is O positive, if the drop we found in the ice belongs to him.” He nodded to Nigel, who hit another switch. A new picture leapt to the screen and Alvarez noticed it was the crowd that had gathered at the first crime scene at the church. “Take a look here. We’ve got some stills, and put ’em together. See the guy, there?” He was pointing with the index finger of the hand surrounding his coffee cup. “That guy’s about the right size. He’s with a group of people, but not really. Standing a little to the side, under that hemlock.”

“And the truck?” Alvarez asked.

“Several white ones that passed by. One a Dodge.”

“Plates?”

Halden shook his head. “Obscured. But it’s possible the guy drove by, then parked and hiked back to the scene to have a look.”

Alvarez studied the pictures and she felt as if a ghost were walking on her spine. This was the madman? This was the killer who spent time working tediously on the sculptures so that it was as if you were seeing the woman’s features caught in ice before you actually saw her flesh below the surface? This was the pervert who had sent her the twisted card with the picture of Brenda Sutherland, the creep who had been in her house and taken her dog, stolen her jewelry and had done no telling what else to her place?

She shuddered as she stared at his pictures, because they were pictures of any man; there was nothing that identified him from any of the men she knew.

And that, more than anything else, terrified her.

Chapter 31

Pescoli’s headache had started out small in the morning, but by seven thirty was a rager. She’d worked all day and heard that the road to her house was closed. Both kids were okay, though, Luke, bless his itty-bitty dark heart, had picked up Bianca when school was closed early in the morning, so she was safely with her father and stepmother.

Jeremy had called and informed her he was at a friend’s house and, before hanging up, had wheedled that he just needed her signature and three hundred dollars for his part of the lease.

Pescoli had told him to “join the club” and refused. She bought a sandwich and a Diet Coke out of the vending machine, and while she ate the sandwich, stared at her computer screen, where she studied the footage of the suspect with his dolly and garbage can for what had to be the fortieth time.

Biting into the tuna on rye, she also looked through the names she’d gotten from the DMV of Dodge trucks registered in Pinewood and the surrounding three counties. Though all the victims lived, worked and had been abducted in Pinewood, it didn’t mean the killer didn’t live somewhere else, somewhere nearby and just used the area around Grizzly Falls as his personal hunting ground.

“Prick,” she muttered as she saw him on the screen one more time and set her sandwich aside. There was something about him that seemed familiar.

Of course there is; you’ve been studying him all day.

No, she thought, taking another look. She knew this guy; she was sure of it, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was.

It’s his eyes. Why the hell does he keep covering them up?

It was true, as she flipped through all of the shots of the suspect, his eyes were covered. Ski goggles at the music store, and at the scene with the church, when he stood under the tree, it seemed as if he, again, was wearing some protective covering though it wasn’t quite light.

What was that all about?

She searched the pictures of the crowd that had collected near the Enstad place where the second victim, Lissa Parsons, was found. No white truck showed in any of the pictures and she couldn’t pinpoint the guy, but she knew he was there, hiding in the shadows, like the sick coward he was.

“We’re gonna get you,” she said, her gaze returning to her computer screen, where his likeness as he wheeled the dolly by the music store had been enlarged. She took a long swallow of her Diet Coke. “And when we do, you loser, I’m going to make it my personal mission to make sure you never see the light of day again.”

Trilby Van Droz drew the short straw.

Because every other road deputy and officer in the department was out helping with emergencies, she got the duty of driving the juvenile back to Helena.

Go figure.

Already bone weary, she chewed gum and sipped coffee as she drove toward Helena. The storm was really gathering force, dumping snow at an incredible rate, and yet, here she was. For some reason she didn’t understand, probably due to Judge Victor Ramsey himself, it was imperative that Gabriel Reeve return to Helena tonight.

This road, usually fairly busy, was already nearly impassable, traffic extremely light as people hunkered down to wait out what the newscasters were calling “the storm of the century.” Yeah, well, wasn’t that what they’d called last year’s blizzard?

As it was, her Jeep was sliding a bit, but she was used to driving in bad weather. A native Montanan, she wasn’t scared by a little snow ... well, make that a lot of snow.

Glancing in the rearview mirror, she saw her charge staring back at her. Reeve’s dark eyes were filled with hate ... or was it fear? How bad could he be? Geez, he was only sixteen, just a year older than her daughter. It wasn’t as if he was a hardened criminal, for God’s sake, just a kid who’d taken a wrong turn, one his family was trying to straighten out.

Weird that. The gossip running through the department was that the kid was Detective Alvarez’s biological son, but other than the fact that he was obviously Latino, there wasn’t a lot of resemblance, at least none that Trilby could see.