Chapter 30
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escoli'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, returning 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.”
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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.
And that was the sorry truth.
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“The next of kin for Brenda Sutherland has been notified,” Pescoli announced as she walked into Alvarez's office a little later in the day.
“I heard.” Alvarez had been at the computer all morning and through lunch, catching up on other work while going over all of the evidence for the ice-mummy murders one more time. The autopsy report on Brenda Sutherland wouldn't be in for a few days, but she expected it would be about the same as the two other victims.
So far. Three victims so far. There was still Johnna Phillips who hadn't been accounted for and there could be others as well, women who hadn't yet been reported missing. Somehow they had to stop him. She rotated the kinks from her neck and couldn't help but notice the faint strains of some familiar Christmas song just audible over the noise and clatter of the station. Phones rang, the printers chunked out information, the old heating system rumbled, conversation floated down the hallways and every so often there was a bark of laughter over the click of keystrokes. Still, above it all, a Christmas carol could be heard, if you listened hard enough.
“Darla's going to give another press conference, right? With the FBI?”
“Later. Yeah. The FBI is planning to ask the public for help.” Pescoli was smiling a little.
“What?” Alvarez asked. “You know something ...” She felt a little trickle of excitement in her blood. “What?”
“We finally have the tape from a security camera mounted over the alley behind the music store. The film's pretty grainy, but the computer geeks have cleaned it up. Nigel Timmons might be a pain in the ass, but he knows what he's doing. They've got it in the task force room. I thought you'd want to take a look.”
“Is he on it?” Alvarez asked, shoving back her chair.
“Yep.”
“Who is he?”
“Don't know. Thought you might want to take a look.”
“Hell, yeah, I do.” Already on her feet, Alvarez hurried down the hallway. Was it possible? Could they have the creep? Had he finally fouled up enough that they could ID him and arrest the maniac?
Adrenaline fired her blood as she walked into the task force room. On the largest television screen, a tape had been stopped, but Nigel Timmons, self-important as ever, was explaining how they'd improved the quality of the film.
“Just play it,” Pescoli said to the tech. His faux hawk was a little messy today, his eyes a tad bloodshot from his contacts, but he did as he was bid.
“We've actually spliced the tape of the alley with that from the traffic cams,” he said and Alvarez watched as, in grainy black-and-white, a pickup with a canopy came into view, its license plate obscured, and a big man climbed out of the driver's side, then opened the back end of the truck, where he pulled out a dolly and placed a huge trash can upon it.
“Dear God,” Alvarez said as she realized she was watching the killer. He was dressed all in a dark color, black or navy blue, probably, wearing a ski coat and ski pants, gloves, ski mask and hat, nothing distinctive about any of the apparel. He was even wearing ski goggles, as if he knew that he might be filmed and, even in darkness, was disguising his eyes.
Jerkily, he rolled the trash can on the dolly out of the camera's field of vision but was picked up again, on another camera, this one placed under the awning in the front of the store. Quickly, he moved the plywood carolers as far as the security chain would allow, deposited the ice statue, replaced the singers into their original position and hurried back down the alley pushing the dolly.
“He accomplishes this in less than four minutes,” Nigel said as the truck, obviously left idling, drove away from the screen.
“Just like that,” Pescoli said.
“Here are shots from the traffic cams.” Alvarez watched as a series of pictures that had been spliced together showed up.
“You got those plates, right?”
“Stolen,” Halden said. “Off an '86 Chevy Nova hatchback and put on this truck, a Dodge. Already checked; the report was made six weeks ago. The guy noticed them after a night of drinking at a bar in Missoula. We know the date, he's got a receipt for his drinks, so we're checking there, but he was parked on a side street, no camera.”
The image on the television went back to the perpetrator pushing his trash can on the dolly.
“Didn't anyone see him?”
“Three fifty-seven in the morning. In the middle of a blizzard. And get this, it was garbage pickup morning.”
“Not quite that early.”
“Right. The trucks don't reach that part of town until between six and six thirty, so that was probably just random. Anyway, we'll ask the public today, see if anyone was up looking out their window at that time, but it's a long shot,” Chandler said, and Halden, holding a cup of coffee and staring at the screen, nodded.
“There is nothing identifying about this guy, aside from the fact that he's probably about six foot one, maybe two.”