Lisa Jackson
“It’s me. Hey, I’ve got a personal issue to deal with. Lucky and the kids. It might take a while, so cover for me, will ya?” Pescoli’s voice had been firm. Determined. Borderline angry. So what else was new?
But that call had been made yesterday.
No word from her today.
Something was off. Definitely wrong. Pescoli was nothing if not a dedicated cop. Surely she would have called again, especially since there had been an arrest in the Star-Crossed Killer murders. No way would Detective Regan Pescoli have missed out on the action, not after months of trying to track down the whack job.
Sniffing, Alvarez tossed the tissue into her overflowing trash basket tucked under her desk. This cold—flu—she’d contracted was starting to really piss her off.
She doubted that she was overreacting. Even though Pescoli had indicated whatever issue she was dealing with would take some time, this was all wrong.
Alvarez glanced at the clock mounted high on the wall. Pescoli’s message had come in late yesterday afternoon and since that time the Spokane Police Department in Washington state thought they’d arrested the killer.
Alvarez wasn’t so sure.
Nothing seemed right today. But soon Sheriff Dan Grayson would be on his way to verify that the person who had been captured by the Spokane Police Department, and was now accused of being the serial killer who had terrorized this part of Montana, was their sick doer.
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But Alvarez doubted the suspect arrested would prove to be the Star-Crossed Killer. The person in custody was definitely a would-be murderer, but so far, Alvarez hadn’t been able to tie the suspect to any of the previous crimes. She glanced at the pictures of the victims lying upon her desk. Five women. Different races and ages with no connection to each other. She bit her lip and tapped her fingers as she thought about how hard Regan Pescoli had worked the case.
She would have moved heaven and earth to be a part of the suspect’s arrest, no matter what her personal issues were. And she would have known about it. The stand-off and arrest had been splashed all over the news. Though most of the members of the press had swooped down on Spokane, a few reporters had stayed on in Grizzly Falls, still camped out in the surrounding streets, hoping for a new angle on the biggest story to hit Grizzly Falls since Ivor Hicks had claimed he’d been transported to a mothership by aliens.
She slid a glance to the clock on the wall. Nearly five P.M. . . . no way would Pescoli miss this kind of action.
Something was definitely wrong.
Alvarez scooted her chair back and tried not to think of the warning Pescoli had received from Grace Perchant, no less. Grace was an odd sort, cursed with some sort of psychic ability, if you believed her. Alvarez didn’t. All she really knew about the odd woman was that Grace raised wolf dogs and talked to ghosts and never made much trouble. But recently, while Pescoli and Alvarez were having lunch at Wild Will’s, Grace had approached the 38
Lisa Jackson
table. Her voice had been low, her pale green eyes troubled.
“He knows about you,” Grace had said to Pescoli, her gaze lost in a middle distance only she could see.
“Who?” Pescoli had asked, playing along.
“The predator.”
Alvarez had felt it then, that dip in the temperature that accompanies fear.
“The one you seek,” Grace had clarified. “The one who is evil. He’s relentless. A hunter.”
Pescoli had been angry and had taken it out on the clairvoyant, but she, too, had been scared. They’d both known that Grace was talking about the maniac the media had dubbed the Star-Crossed Killer. He’s relentless. A hunter.
That much was true.
And an ace marksman.
He, Grace had said distinctly. Not she. Not the woman demanding to talk to her attorney in Spokane, the one everyone wanted to confront about the killings.
Sniffing some more, Alvarez leaned back in her desk chair. She wasn’t one to scare easy, but today she felt a stark fear she tried like hell to deny. The horror was spread around her in glossy, colored photographs of the victims. Five in all. Or, she thought as she picked up a picture of Theresa Charleton, the first victim, five that they knew of. There could be others.
Innocent women naked and bound to trees in the wilderness, abandoned to die a long and painful death in the frigid temperatures of the icy landscape.