Ready to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“The judge?” She stepped inside the office where she noticed for the first time that the image on Alvarez’s monitor was of Judge Piquard.

“I heard it last night at the hospital. Manny Douglas was more than pleased to drop that particular bomb, and I double-checked this morning, with Taj in Missing Persons. Turns out it’s true. Piquard’s son called it in and claimed the judge was last seen a few days ago, before she took her usual holiday up at her cabin. She goes there every year, the week before Christmas, stays through Christmas Eve, and then always returns Christmas afternoon.”

“But this time she didn’t show up?”

“That’s right. And the family can’t get her to answer her cell, which they swear is always on. Brewster’s already sent deputies to the cabin, which is just this side of the county line, way up in the hills.”

“It hasn’t been twenty-four hours.”

“Doesn’t matter, after the attack on Grayson, the family got worried and called Brewster, as he’s a family friend.”

“They think the two incidents are related?” Pescoli asked, surprised.

“I don’t know what they think, but they’re nervous as hell

and Brewster is concerned.”

“Let’s just hope she just forgot and let her cell phone battery run down.”

“Yeah,” Alvarez said, though she sounded as unconvinced as Pescoli felt. “Just a sec”—she glanced down at her phone, which was trying to vibrate across her desk. “O’Keefe’s texting again.” A bit of a smile brushed her lips. “What a way to spend the holidays—electronically.”

“When are you going to see him?”

“Tomorrow night. Gabe too.” She smiled at the mention of her son. “Better late than never, right?”

“Right.”

“Detective?” Cort Brewster stuck his head into Alvarez’s office, but his gaze was fastened on Pescoli. “I’d like to talk to you. In my office.”

Pescoli couldn’t help but bristle. She’d never liked Brewster and the feeling was mutual. While she considered him an egocentric, hypocritical prick, he thought she was a loose cannon who was a failure as a mother. She thought he hid behind all his churchgoing, long-lasting marriage bullshit, and he thought she was a woman who couldn’t hold on to a man or keep a marriage together.

Now, as she walked down the hallway to his office, she decided maybe they were both a little right about each other. Of course, they were at odds because their children had gotten into serious trouble together in the past, and he was scared to death Jeremy would get his precious little daughter Heidi pregnant. Pescoli could have issued him a news bulletin: She was even more frightened of Cort’s princess getting knocked up than Brewster was.

She snorted. They each blamed the other one’s child. Brewster made no bones about the fact that he considered Jeremy a do-nothing, dope-smoking loser, and Pescoli considered Heidi as conniving and wily as a con woman twice her age. The one thing she and Brewster agreed upon was that the kids weren’t good for each other and should break up, which they did, on a regular basis, only to come back to each other over and over again.

“Have a seat,” Brewster suggested, pointing to one of the visitor’s chairs, then rounding his desk and settling into the executive chair on the other side. He was flanked by bookcases where he displayed awards for service and pictures of his family, including his wife, Bess, to whom he had been married for over a quarter of a century, and their four blond, stepping-stone daughters, the youngest of which was Heidi, who, Pescoli had to admit grudgingly, was drop-dead gorgeous with her wide smile, dynamite figure, and air of innocence. Only her eyes, even in Brewster’s photograph, gave away the essence of her true personality. There was a smoldering naughtiness in them, as if she held some great feminine secret she would just love to share.

Turning her attention away from Brewster’s photo display, Pescoli sat in one of the chairs. Though she wasn’t comfortable seated at Brewster’s desk, at least he hadn’t already claimed Grayson’s office; that would have been too much for Pescoli and a lot of the other officers.

“What’s up?” she asked.

Brewster got right to the point. “You said yesterday you went up to Grayson’s place to talk to him.”

“That’s right.”

“But you didn’t say why.”

“I know.”

Placing his elbows on his desk, he tented his hands. “So what was it about, Pescoli, and don’t tell me again that it doesn’t matter, because everything does in this case. We’re trying to track down the person who put Grayson in the hospital.”

“Yeah, I know . . .” She was reticent to confide in Brewster. Not only had she never really trusted him, even though he’d been an exemplary cop for a solid twenty years or more, but now that Grayson was injured, she didn’t want to stop investigating his attack, didn’t want to give Brewster even the slightest whiff of a notion that she might want to quit the department. But she couldn’t lie; this was an investigation. So she hedged.

“A couple of reasons,” she said, feeling Heidi’s eyes staring down at her from her school picture. “First, I wanted to make sure that I was solidly back with Alvarez again. Gage and I, it was all right, but with Alvarez back from her injury, I needed to know that we were reassigned. Permanently.”

He frowned a little, as if he smelled BS. “You said a couple.”

“I was just going to ask him if he wanted to join my family for dinner. He’s single now, again, and I thought he might like to come over.”