She wasn’t going to go that far.
“Okay. Now, we both have a helluva lot of work to do. If you want to talk about this when we’re not in the middle of a crisis, fine, but for now—”
“Sheriff?” a woman’s voice said from somewhere behind Pescoli. Straightening, she turned to find Sage Zoller holding on to the edge of the doorframe and sticking her head into the room. “Sorry to bother you, but it looks like they’ve found Judge Samuels-Piquard,” she said solemnly. Obviously the news wasn’t good.
“Is she all right?” he asked, but Zoller was already shaking her head, dark curls shivering around her face.
“She’s dead, sir. Found less than two miles from the cabin where she was staying. Looks like a gunshot wound.”
“She was murdered?” Pescoli said in disbelief, the fears that had been fractured in the back of her brain suddenly gelling.
“I was afraid of this,” Brewster said soberly. “I sent Watershed up there, but he didn’t see anything. Nothing was disturbed . . . I should have known. Pressed it.”
Pescoli met the undersheriff’s gaze and for the first time since striding into his office, she wasn’t angry. “God, Cort, I’m sorry. The judge was a friend of yours.”
“Of my wife’s.” He was nodding. “I was close with her husband, George, while he was alive. We served together. Damn. This is going to kill Bess.” He reached for his jacket, hanging on a peg near the door. “Does the press know?”
“I doubt it, but I’m not sure,” Zoller said, stepping out of the doorway so that he could pass. “I just got the call.”
“I need to stop by the house and talk to Bess. Then I’ll be up there.”
“I’m on my way,” Pescoli said. “What’s the address of the cabin?”
“It’s in the mountains. Somewhere north of Elk Basin, right?” Brewster said to Zoller. “On Spangler Road?”
“Monarch,” Zoller corrected, mentioning the spur. “2700 Monarch. According to the deputies that are out there, it’s not much of a road. Dead end. Only a couple of cabins anywhere near it.”
Pescoli was already out of Brewster’s office and on the hunt for Alvarez, who, as usual, was seated at her desk, phone to her ear, computer monitor showing the most recent report on an older model SUV, which, Pescoli saw, was registered to Wanda Verdago, Maurice’s wife.
“Let’s go,” she said, catching Alvarez’s attention. Her partner looked up, her phone still pressed to her ear. “Kathryn Samuels-Piquard’s body has been found in the foothills.”
“Oh, no,” Alvarez said, then switched her attention back to her phone call. “Sorry. Gotta run. Just e-mail me the report. Thanks!” Hanging up, she twirled in her chair and was on her feet, reaching for her jacket, sidearm, and hat. “What the hell happened?” she asked as together they headed toward the back of the hallway, both skirting around Joelle hurrying the other way. The receptionist, like everyone else in the department, had been grim since the attack on Grayson,
her spirits flagging; though, Pescoli noticed, Joelle was wearing the stupid little holly earrings that Pescoli had bought her, part of her ridiculous “Secret Santa” campaign she organized every holiday season. Today, with Grayson in the hospital and Samuels-Piquard found dead, and Christmas a day past, the tradition seemed even more foolish than ever.
Chapter 15
“You’d think they could have told us this to begin with,” Alvarez complained as she clicked off her phone in the passenger seat of Pescoli’s Jeep.
She was antsy, and it didn’t help her mood that they’d almost reached Judge Samuels-Piquard’s cabin only to be rerouted to backtrack along an old mining road that wound closer to the crime scene. Alvarez had taken the directions while Pescoli put her rig into four-wheel drive and the Jeep had scaled the steep, overgrown road that already showed a single set of tracks from another vehicle.
For most of the drive to the judge’s retreat, Alvarez had been on the phone, still tracking down the whereabouts of Maurice Verdago. The fact that he’d disappeared so quickly after the attack on Grayson was more than suspicious, a very unlikely coincidence in Alvarez’s mind.
To make things more difficult, cell phone service was sketchy in these hills, and of course, Verdago’s friends and family were being of no help whatsoever.
It was frustrating as hell.
While Pescoli seemed to be zeroing in on Grayson’s first ex-wife, Alvarez was checking and double-checking on the violent offenders that Grayson had put away. Those who had served their time and were back on the streets could very well hold a grudge against the sheriff, as well as the judge, as many of the cases overlapped. Dan Grayson had brought the offender to justice and, if guilty, Judge Samuels-Piquard had come up with the appropriate sentence.
Alvarez felt they would find their killer among the criminals Grayson had put away. After serving time, some parolees might walk the straight and narrow, happy to stay as far away from the law as possible, while others jumped right back into their practiced life of crime. But there were also a few who had spent every day of their time behind bars contemplating their sorry lots in life and blaming those who had put them away: witnesses, family members who ratted them out, victims who got away, or law enforcement officers who had sent them up the river. Those cons, the ones who harbored grudges and plotted revenge, were a nasty, hard-assed group. They were the suspects she was trying to weed out of the crowded pack.
Maurice Verdago was at the top of Alvarez’s list of suspects, though he’d climbed to that particular rung mostly due to the fact that he’d been out a while and now, after the shooting, had vanished.
Poof.
Just like that.
Definitely suspicious.