However, on the other side of the coin, Grizzly Falls had seen more than its fair share of sadistic killers recently, psychos who had terrorized this area for three years running. As Pescoli had said often enough, “It's the cold around here; the sub-zero temperature brings out the crazies.”
Alvarez, a woman of science, couldn't put her finger on what was the cause of the horrid phenomenon; she just didn't like it. And now, with two women missing, she felt that little tingle at the base of her skull that warned her of bad news.
“We have quite a few missing people,” Taj said, scrolling down on her computer screen. “An elderly man wandered out of an elder facility and he's still not been located; two potential teenaged runaways, a set of twins, probably abducted by their own father; and a baby taken out of the hospital.”
“I'm looking for another woman, somewhere between nineteen and forty, probably, but not necessarily.”
“Well, there's Lara Sue Gilfry,” she said, her eyebrows pushing together. “She went missing about a month ago ... let's see. Okay, here we are.” A serious picture of a redheaded woman with wide, blue eyes and tight, pale lips appeared. “She's twenty-eight and is pretty transient. Moves around a lot. Last seen on November sixth at the Bull and Bear bed-and-breakfast, where she worked as a maid. Said to have a significant scar on her right leg, just above the knee, after a motorcycle accident when she was in her teens, and a tattoo of a butterfly on her left ankle.” Taj tilted her monitor so that Alvarez could get a better look at the missing woman. “She's estranged from her family; her mother died when she was two, father when she was a teenager, and the stepmother has been through a series of relationships. Lara Sue kind of fell through the cracks. Been on her own since she was sixteen.”
Alvarez felt a cold drip of apprehension trickle down her spine. “What about boyfriends? Or cousins? Girlfriends?”
Taj was reading. “No serious boyfriend and she was kind of a loner, kept to herself. The owner of the Bull and Bear let her stay in an attic room as part of her compensation.”
“Did she leave with her belongings?”
“Yeah. So that's why the case is iffy. She could be one of those people who just float from town to town.”
“What about money? Checking account? Bank card?”
Taj shook her head. “According to her employer, he'd pay her, then go to the bank with her so she could cash her check. She paid for everything with cash.”
“Great. What about a computer, a Facebook or Twitter account?”
“So far, none found.”
“All young people do the social-networking thing.”
“If she had one, we couldn't find it.” Taj stared up at her. “And we looked.”
“Okay. So maybe she just took off.”
“Probably.”
“Can you forward what you've got on her to me?”
Taj was nodding. “You got it.”
“Thanks.”
Alvarez left the Missing Persons department with a bad feeling she just couldn't shake.
No bodies.
No crime scenes.
But now three missing women.
Where the hell were they?
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Calvin Mullins had never liked the police. No matter what shape or size, cops made him nervous, even Cort Brewster, one of the deacons in the church and an undersheriff with the county sheriff 's department. A pious man, stalwart in his faith, devoted husband and loving father of breathtakingly beautiful daughters, Brewster was, nonetheless, a cop and that bothered the preacher.
Today in the church office, he was faced with another member of the Pinewood County Sheriff's Department. This one, Detective Regan Pescoli, was causing him to sweat beneath his crisp shirt and sharkskin jacket. He was seated at his desk, his sermon printed out as he just went over it in highlighter, hoping to beef up some of the more salient points, when Pescoli, a brash, arrogant woman if he'd ever seen one, had knocked and stepped inside.
“Your wife said you'd be here,” she'd said before introducing herself and taking a chair without him inviting her inside. Just then Lorraine had texted, and his cell phone, on vibrate, had nearly skittered across his desk, as the warning, “Police detective on her way to see you,” appeared a little too late on the screen. That was the trouble: Lorraine had never learned to text properly and quickly.
High-tech, Lorraine was not, but she was a faithful and forgiving wife, mother of his three daughters.
Pescoli was beautiful, in that hard-edged, woman-in-control way that he found a little bit of a turn-on. A few inches shy of six feet, she stood tall, and what he could see of her hair reddish brown-blond, and a little unkempt. Intelligent eyes assessed him.
He pasted a smile onto his face and hoped it appeared beatific. “What can I do for you?” he said, standing as he shook her hand.
His office was small but neat, decorated with hardbound books on philosophy and religions of the world, given just the right amount of color with pictures on the wall of the Lord and beautiful spots on earth, as well as his framed degrees and awards. Though he believed that pride was a sin, accomplishments were certainly proof of piety, struggle and self-improvement: all good qualities.
A small basket of poinsettias sat on one corner of his desk. Lorraine always made certain that flowers in season, “God's handiwork,” graced his office.
“I'd like to talk to you about Brenda Sutherland.”
“Has she been found?” he asked hopefully. He truly admired Brenda and her faith, her difficulty in raising two stubborn boys alone.
“Not yet.”
“Oh, dear. I pray she comes home safely,” he said and meant it.
“You saw her recently?”
“Yes. Of course. I pop my head into the study groups when I can, and Brenda was with my wife's group the other night. They were discussing our giving tree.” He folded his hands over his sermon, left over right, showing off his wedding ring.
But, as the cop asked a few more questions, he felt his tie tightening and beads of sweat dotting his back. He gave a short history of his ministry, neglecting to mention that he was originally from Bad Luck, Texas, though, from the degrees on the wall, it was obvious that he'd graduated from Southern Methodist University. That's where he met and married Lorraine.
“So how did you end up here, in Grizzly Falls?”
He spread his hands. “I go where the church needs me,” he said, and it really wasn't a lie. After spending a decade basking in the warm Arizona sun at a parish in Tucson, there had been a problem, a minor indiscretion with an eighteen-year-old daughter of Cecil Whitcomb, one of the church deacons. Peri had come to him for guidance and he hadn't been able to ignore her lips, always glossy and full, her tongue, how it flicked against her teeth so seductively, or the pull of her T-shirts across breasts that could fill a man's hands and then some.
Peri had needed comforting during the time of her parents' separation.
He'd obliged.
And things had heated up, with this young, perfect woman willing to do things in the bedroom that Lorraine considered “vile” and “animal.” Even now, when he remembered mounting Peri from behind, her smooth rump pressing hard into his abdomen, those glorious breasts hanging into his willing hands, his teeth and lips pressing hard into the back of her neck, just to nip, mind you ... oh, dear Lord. It had been ecstasy, sinful, joyous ecstasy. And when Peri's luscious warm mouth and tongue had worked her magic on him ... he'd been transported to an erotic state of pure heaven ...
“Preacher Mullins? Did you hear the question?” the cop asked, and he jerked back to the present, grateful for the desk that separated them so that she couldn't witness the bulge at his crotch. What had he been thinking, letting his mind wander so. “Do you know Brenda Sutherland's ex?”
“No ... uh, I knew she was divorced, of course,” he added, trying to appear concerned, “that there were some ... issues ... because of their sons, but, no, Ray Sutherland isn't a member of the church and I've never even seen him.”
She asked a few more questions, nothing all that worrisome, at least concerning him, but he wondered if she'd be back. No doubt she'd start digging into his past and then his little indiscretion would come to light.
He couldn't imagine Lorraine standing at his side again, holding his hand, lifting her tiny chin proudly in a show of solidarity and support for her unfaithful fallen husband once more.
Dear Father, why now? When things were going so well? She would leave him if all the old demons were brought to light; he knew it. He'd be further disgraced and now she was with child again, possibly the son he'd been praying for. His daughters were a joy, oh, yes, three delightful girls, eight, six and four, all with near-white hair and pale blue eyes. But this time, he was so hoping for a boy. A big, loud, strapping son who looked less ghostlike than the girls, who were carbon copies of their mother.
Lorraine was a good woman, but it would help him if she could ever just come close to having an orgasm. If so, then she might understand that all the carnal pleasures of the flesh, at least between a man and his wife, were not repulsive.
He walked to the window and stared through the frosty panes to the crèche decorating the side yard of the church. Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, all cloaked in a new mantle of snow, the angled floodlight showing off the backdrop of the stable.
Preacher Mullins had thought being banished to this godforsaken tundra had been the worst punishment possible after his problems in Arizona, but now, if what had happened in Tucson was discovered by the police and the press, he might be sent somewhere else. Just when his flock was coming together and his wife finally, at least on the surface, seemed to have forgiven him.
He bowed his head. “Father, be with me. Give me strength. Let me never fall into temptation again. Please, Father of all, lead me. Give me strength. I pray for this and all things in Jesus's name. Amen.” Letting out a long, shuddering sigh, he hoped for divine intervention.
Today, it didn't reach him.
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The music took him away.
Soft. Melodic. Instrumental versions of traditional Christmas carols and those classical pieces associated with Christmas. Nothing frothy, light or the least bit irreverent today. He needed to
feel
the piety resounding in the notes that filled this cavern and resounded in his heart.
Thankfully, his new subject had quieted down. He couldn't afford the distraction of her moans. She was past pleading with him now, nearly succumbing to her fate, so he was able to concentrate.
As he slathered the woman in water, watching in fascination as ice formed over her naked body, he felt that supreme satisfaction that comes with a job well done. She was in the perfect position, her legs bent so that she appeared to be kneeling, her head bowed, her hands folded in prayer. That had been tricky.
Moving unwilling body parts into precise position took strength, patience and a practiced eye. He'd been careful to nudge toes, fingers and vertebrae into the correct position. Now, as the water sluiced over the body, firming up, he glanced to the desk he'd fashioned out of a crude workbench, and lining it, pinned to the corkboard he'd installed, were dozens of photographs of kneeling women. He'd enlarged five diagrams that showed a praying body from different angles and was able with the freezing temperatures to ensure that his creation was in the exact position he needed.
Oh, yes.
As he surveyed her, he grinned. Her expression was perfect, serene and pensive, absolutely pious, nearly enraptured. Yes ... oh, she was ready, though there were hours of work to be done, layers of ice to enwrap her, painstaking sculpting to finish the job, but when he was done, she would be a masterpiece and so different from his first.
Of course he was talented, to deny it would be obscene, but his gift was not only special but vast. Though his work would bear his signature, no two statues would be alike. He took the time to marvel at his first piece, so near completion. It was a bit whimsical, the frozen woman, who'd been lying down as he'd molded the ice around her, now standing, her arms raised, her hands curved toward the coved ceiling of this cave. Her expression was joyous, a wide grin visible through the ice, her eyes open wide.
She was ready for display.
He felt a little sizzle of excitement at the prospect. He knew just where to place her.
With his first sculpture, he'd gone for the frivolous, happy aspect of the holidays and she'd turned out perfectly. But he couldn't sit on his laurels, oh, no. Never. His time was limited to the frigid days of winter so he couldn't slack off.
And he had to show his diversity. Of course. So while Number One was light spirited, with this newest piece, Number Two for lack of a better name right now, he'd taken a more serious approach, trying to create a sense of reverence. Of piety. Of pure devotion.