This couldn’t be ...
But as she brushed away the fresh powder, her heart thundering in her ears, the sound of the delivery car’s engine revving as Arvin started to turn around and head back toward town, Mabel caught sight of something blue and ... “Holy crap ... Oh, dear God!” she cried, stepping back, her flashlight falling into the snow as the dead woman’s eye, wide open and fixed, stared unseeing through a slab of ice.
Chapter 17
“It’s Lissa Parsons,” Alvarez whispered, sick at the thought of the once-lively woman she’d seen working out at the gym. Now, as she shined her flashlight’s beam at the block of ice, light piercing the heavy, clear layer to illuminate the face of the naked woman inside, Alvarez felt a fresh rush of anger sluicing through her veins. Who the hell would do this thing? What kind of creep—
“Damn it all to hell! I knew it!” Pescoli glared at the victim. Snow was collecting on her hat and shoulders, the wind starting to pick up. “That son of a bitch is a serial! God damn, son of a bitch! I was hoping—”
“That Lara Sue Gilfry was an isolated incident and the other women weren’t in his clutches?” Alvarez finished for her. “Yeah, I know.” She glanced at the still-dark sky, felt snowflakes catch on her cheeks. “Could be a copycat.”
Pescoli snorted. “Yeah, right. Looks like we’ll be letting the FBI know we’ve got ourselves another one.”
This crime scene, a patch of lawn stretched between two houses on the outskirts of Grizzly Falls was about as remote as the first, and just as chilling. No, there were no religious overtones to the crime as there seemed to have been in the display of the first victim’s body, but once again the killer showed some macabre sense of humor as Lissa’s sculpted ice coffin had been set up against a snowman in the yard, a snowman, Mabel had raved, that had been created by her grandchildren a couple of days earlier.
What the hell was that all about?
Who was this sicko who wanted to kill women, then display them in some kind of intricately macabre ice sculpture? They’d already talked briefly to the Enstads and their neighbors and now deputies were taking more complete statements.
Alvarez, after a rotten night’s sleep, was already awake when the call had come through from dispatch. She’d phoned Pescoli’s cell, roused her groggy partner, and they’d met here, arriving within minutes of each other.
Now the snow continued to fall and the arctic blast that raged caused the beams of their flashlights to cast weird shadows over the strange ice sculpture. The area had already been roped off with crime scene tape and the owners of the property, bundled in winter jackets, hats, gloves and scarves, were huddled together on the wraparound porch. A deputy was questioning the Enstads, and though she couldn’t hear what was being said, Alvarez noticed that the woman—Mabel—was doing most of the talking. She was gesturing wildly, not only at the victim, but also to the neighboring house where a group of four had gathered on the cement steps.
A second deputy was talking to the Swansons, who were huddled together, mom, dad and two sons. The mother, Mandy, was nervously smoking a cigarette and the father had one arm around her shoulders as if to hold her upright.
Alvarez’s stomach dropped as she stared at Lissa Parsons. Though she hadn’t known her very well, they’d come across each other at the gym often enough to smile and say, “Hi.” No more. Her short, dark hair was spiked, somehow caught standing straight up in the ice, her eyes wide open as if she were staring straight ahead and she was naked except for a glistening object in the flashlight’s glare, a slim gold ring hanging from the nipple of her right breast. “It’s mine,” Alvarez said disbelieving, her stomach knotting as she stared at the gold hoop with its winking bloodred stone.
“What’s yours?” Pescoli asked. “Wait a second. The nipple ring?” Pescoli’s eyebrows lifted skeptically, as if she didn’t believe her partner for a second. “Are you kidding?”
“No, not a nipple ring ... Oh, hell, it’s the earring that went missing after the break-in. I recognize it because of the stone, it’s red glass, supposed to look like a ruby. A gift from my grandmother.”
“The earring that disappeared with the kid?” Pescoli clarified, her own beam now centered on the victim’s breast.
“Yes!” Alvarez nodded, her mind racing with the possibilities. How could Gabriel Reeve be mixed up with the whack job who had killed two women? Or, had he dropped the earring and the killer found it? Was it possible that Gabe had pawned it or sold it on the street? Or had he been with the killer when he’d broken into the house, or ... had the killer come alone and taken the earring himself?
“Jesus H. Christ. You’re sure it’s yours?”
“Of course!” she snapped, suddenly frantic, her thoughts tearing through her brain. Dear God, where the hell was Gabe? With the psycho? Held captive? Oh, God, not in league with the maniac! No, no, no ... pull it together! Think, Selena, think. Rationally. Don’t panic. Do NOT panic! She had to focus. To take her emotions out of the case. To find the sadistic madman who was killing local women and enshrouding them in ice. Somehow this lunatic was connected to her boy.
Anxiety surged through
her. “We have to locate this maniac,” she said, attempting to sound calm despite the panic that was erupting inside of her. “Soon.”
“I know.” Pescoli was looking at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Calm down.”
“I am calm!”
“Whoa!” Pescoli grabbed her by the crook of her arm. “Take yourself out of this, Alvarez. Right now! Or I’ll get someone else to help me with this one.” She was dead serious.
“No! Wait ... no, I’m ... I’ll be ... fine,” Alvarez insisted, letting out her breath in a cloud as the crime scene team arrived and took over the area. Within two minutes, not one but two news vans arrived, parking on the street, technicians and cameramen adjusting the satellites and cameras while the reporters set up shop.
Alvarez didn’t want to think for a second that the media might learn about her earring and learn that it was lost in a break-in by a runaway teenaged boy wanted for armed robbery at a judge’s house in Helena. However, the news was sure to leak.
She would become besieged. More questions would be asked ... Dios!
“Great. I think I’m going to find out what Hank Yardley and George Flanders were up to last night. Wonder if they have alibis?”
Eyeing the huge vehicles from the news stations, Alvarez let out her breath slowly. Why the media bothered her, she couldn’t say. Really, the press had helped notify the community of impending danger and had spread the word in looking for lost kids or finding suspects. She decided it wasn’t the press so much as a few reporters who really got under her skin. One of the worst of the lot was Manny Douglas of the Mountain Reporter. No doubt he would soon appear. She said, “Get ready. The media circus has already begun.”