Chosen To Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

Grazio and her son, Ross. The housekeeper had said she’d received a call from Brady Long the night before, saying he was planning a “quick trip up” if there was a break in the storms. Clementine had made sure the house was stocked with his favorite foods and liquor, then, earlier in the morning, she’d driven with her son to her sister’s house for a pre-Christmas gift exchange as the sister was planning to leave town until after New Year’s. Ross, pretty much a silent, bored-looking teen in sunglasses and stocking cap, had sullenly agreed with his mother and a quick call to the sister had confirmed that Clementine and Ross had been gone all morning.

Though Ross seemed unaffected by Long’s death, Clementine had been beside herself, alternately crying and shredding tissues as she wrung her hands and sniffed back tears. She appeared to be grieving for a man who had more enemies than friends, if most of their sources, including Grayson, and even Nate Santana, were to be believed.

But Clementine had been as grief-riddled as a mother.

Or a wife.

It occurred to Alvarez that Clementine DeGrazio might have been more than Brady Long’s housekeeper. Something to check on. Now, however, she had to deal with Grace Perchant. On the tiny front porch, she rapped on the door just as she heard deep growls emanating from the other side of the door. Oh, right. Grace kept wolves or half-wolves, hybrids or something. Presumably, she would keep them at bay.

“Sheena, hush!” a woman’s voice commanded

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and the noise from within instantly subsided. A second later Grace herself opened the door. “Detective.” Wearing a long cardigan sweater over thick tights and a black turtleneck, she offered the slightest of smiles. “I hoped you’d call or stop by.” She stepped out of the doorway and inclined her head, a wisp of graying hair escaping its topknot. “Come in.”

The dog, Sheena, lay on a padded bed near an antique-looking and dusty couch. A fire burned brightly in the hearth. Every window ledge and end table was covered with pots of small, trailing plants and softly burning candles, dripping wax. A tinderbox ready to ignite.

“You’re here about your partner. Please sit.”

Grace waved Alvarez into her seat and the dog, watching every movement, didn’t rouse.

“A few days ago, at Wild Will’s, you warned me and Pescoli that she would be taken. I think your exact words were ‘he’s relentless. A hunter,’ and you were speaking about the Star-Crossed Killer. You said you heard a voice and the voice said ‘Regan Elizabeth Pescoli,’ and you touched her and said she was in ‘grave danger.’ I think that was it.”

“You have a good memory. Yes. And I was right,”

she pointed out as she sat on a chair near the fire and next to the dog’s bed where Sheena had curled into a ball, her golden eyes slowly closing.

“How did you know?”

“The usual way. I saw parts of it. Kind of a dream.”

“I always heard you talked to the dead,” Alvarez said, picking her words carefully. “So, you have dreams, too?”

Grace stared out the window, where the tiny 230

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flames of the candles reflected on the panes and ice outside. “No. Not usually, but the dead, when they talk to me, they allow me some insight . . .” She smiled a little sadly, as if she knew she sounded crazy. “I heard a voice a few days ago, a voice from a dead girl. The one who you found in Wildfire Canyon. The hairdresser.”

A frisson of disbelief tickled the thin little hairs on Alvarez’s nape. “Wendy Ito? She talked to you?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“A few days ago.”

“How?”

Grace turned to face the detective again and her pale eyes cut straight to Alvarez’s soul. “I heard her.”

“How did you know who she was?”

“I saw her face. Blue and frozen. She spoke to me, but her eyes didn’t move, nor did her lips. She warned me. Gave me your partner’s name. When I asked how she knew, she explained that she’d seen things. Documents. Of different women. The only one she could tell me about was that of Regan Elizabeth Pescoli.”