Afraid to Die Read online

  Of course she was and now they were headed out of town, Pescoli behind the wheel, the scent of cigarette smoke tingeing the air. Though Pescoli had quit years ago, she was known to sneak a smoke whenever she got stressed.

  The holidays tended to do that to people.

  Pescoli explained about the phone call from Sandi Aldridge as her Jeep climbed the hills outside of town. The snow, thankfully, had stopped falling and the countryside seemed deceptively serene. “But there’s no body,” Pescoli said. “No report of violence. No missing persons report.”

  She turned her vehicle down Elkridge Drive, and not two hundred yards in, she noticed the abandoned vehicle.

  “Why wasn’t this called in?” Alvarez asked as Pescoli passed the snow-covered car and parked on the side of the road, fifteen yards ahead of it.

  “Deputies stretched thin. Wrecks, electrical outages, fires from space heaters, you name it and this isn’t a major road, so it’s not patrolled often.”

  “What about the neighbors?”

  “That’s the problem,” Pescoli said. “Not many up here. Not year-round at least.”

  That much was true, Alvarez thought. This area in the mountains was spattered with a few summer homes, all closer to the lake. They climbed out of the Jeep, breaths fogging in the subfreezing temperatures, careful as they approached the car. Over four inches of snow covered the roof. “Been here a while,” Pescoli thought aloud and brushed the snow from the icy driver’s side window to shine the beam of her flashlight inside. “Nothing.”

  Alvarez looked through the frosty pane as well. The car appeared empty except for a plastic sack from which peeked a glassy-eyed stuffed animal. Looked like a reindeer.

  “Christmas gifts?” Pescoli muttered.

  “Maybe.”

  “Why leave them?”

  “Why leave at all?”

  “Good question.”

  Pescoli called the abandoned vehicle in, then, to cover their bases, Pescoli secured a search warrant not only for the car but also Brenda Sutherland’s house as well. After waiting for the tow truck and a deputy to stay with the vehicle, Pescoli drove onward, taking a sharp right and following a twisting, snow-covered lane through stands of icy hemlock and pine that opened to a small clearing and the missing woman’s home, a two-bedroom cottage tucked far from the road.

  Pescoli parked.

  Alvarez yanked her gloves a little higher on her wrists. “No lights except for the Christmas strand.” She nodded toward the house.

  “It’s late.”

  “Yeah, but ...” She looked at the house.

  The front porch seemed to sag a bit, but a string of Christmas lights had been strung over the eaves. Alvarez checked her sidearm as she climbed out of the Jeep. Clicking on her flashlight, she surveyed the area and noted the path to the front door was covered in snow, one set of footprints softened with the falling snow approaching and encircling the house before leaving again.

  “Sandi Aldridge said she knocked on the door and poked around the house, trying to see inside to check on Brenda Sutherland,” Pescoli explained as she ran her flashlight’s beam over the tracks.

  “The only set.” She made her way up the front steps and shined the beam of her flashlight over the exterior. Though the downspouts showed rust and wear, the little cabin, set between thickets of trees, appeared homey. A bike had been left on the porch near a pair of boots that had been kicked off randomly. Several pots held dying plants and the welcome mat was worn thin.

  Aside from a breath of wind, the night was silent. Pescoli knocked on the door and rang the bell. Chimes echoed inside the house, but no footsteps approached.

  “Mrs. Sutherland?” Pescoli called through the solid oak panels. “Brenda?”

  Nothing. Just the sigh of the wind and creak of frozen branches.

  “She could have taken advantage of the no-kid thing and taken off,” Pescoli thought aloud. “But it doesn’t seem likely. One of the boys, his name is Dave or Darren or Don or ... no, it’s Drew, that’s right. He’s in Bianca’s class, or she has some classes with him; I’ve heard the name before and I think the mom was pretty devoted. Besides, as a single mom, she probably wouldn’t have ditched the job.”

  “Or the car.”

  “Good point.”

  They walked around the house, investigated the empty garage where clutter abounded and a dark stain on the cement floor suggested that Brenda Sutherland’s car might be leaking some kind of fluid.

  The yard was empty, thick with snow, and they climbed the back steps to another wide porch, this one complete with retractable clothesline and empty hornets’ nests tucked in the roof.

  Pescoli pounded on the back door until it rattled, then checked. Unlocked.

  “Got lucky,” she said and pushed it open.

  No snarling guard dog bolted from the interior, so they stepped cautiously inside, walking quickly through a small kitchen, where the faucet dripped over a sink of dirty dishes and the smell of tomato sauce hung heavy in the air.

  Moving quickly through a small dining cove with a red laminated table circa 1960 where two milk glasses and cereal bowls had been left, they entered the living area, which was much tidier, the worn furniture with straightened pillows and a rag rug coiled over scratched hardwood floors. A woodstove stood on one wall, cold to the touch, ashes piled within. The two bedrooms were empty, one with a set of bunk beds and clothes scattered everywhere, the other with a neat double bed, Bible on the nightstand, flannel nightgown and matching robe hung on a hook on the back side of the door. Her closet had a meager, if functional, set of clothes and the bathroom was small, cluttered and well used.

  No upstairs.

  No basement.

  No Brenda Sutherland.

  “Definitely missing,” Pescoli said, stating the obvious to the empty rooms. “Guess we’d better have a chat with the ex.”

  “I can’t help thinking this is a lot like Lissa Parsons.”

  “Don’t even go there,” Pescoli warned, but Alvarez could tell from her tone of voice and the worry in the lines of her forehead that she’d already come to the same conclusion that the two missing women were somehow linked.

  The next day, things definitely started out on the wrong foot. For some reason Alvarez’s alarm didn’t go off, probably because she’d slapped the clock silly the day before, and she realized, belatedly, after letting Roscoe out the door, that she’d missed her session with her martial arts instructor. He hadn’t called but left a text and she responded, apologizing and feeling out of sorts.

  What was wrong with her?

  She never was late. Never missed an appointment. Never bought anyone else’s excuses about being flaky. Sure she’d had a bad night’s sleep with Jane Doe up half the night and thoughts of the missing women running in circles through her brain, but still, she shouldn’t be so off-kilter. “Pull it together,” she told herself, feeling a headache coming on as she stepped into the shower. Cold needles of water pounded her bare skin for just an instant before she jumped out of the tiled enclosure. Wrapping a towel quickly around her shivering body with one hand, she checked the temperature of the shower spray with the other, wiggled the handle and discovered not a drop of hot water anywhere.

  “Great,” she muttered, wondering what else could go wrong. The answer, of course, was plenty. And it did. She threw on her clothes and realized the puppy wasn’t tagging after her. Nor did she hear him. With the dread that comes only with the experience of being a mother or pet owner, she hurried downstairs and found Roscoe, pillow in his mouth, stuffing flying through the air like snow in a snow globe. “Stop! Drop it!” she ordered and he, thinking it was a game, ran around the coffee table and bounded through the kitchen. “I don’t have time for this,” she warned, nearly catching him only to have him streak by, tail between his legs, ears flopping. “You are in so much trouble!”

  When she finally cornered him in the powder room, she was breathing hard and her temper had cooled a bit. “Oh, come on.” S
he didn’t have time to clean up the feathers and stuffing littering her living area, but she put him in his pen, grabbed her purse, wallet, sidearm and badge and left him standing behind the wire mesh managing to look as miserable as any dog on earth. “You’ll be fine,” she said, feeling ridiculously guilty before locking the door behind her and heading for the garage.

  Though it wasn’t yet eight in the morning, she called the maintenance man for the building and asked him to check on her water heater. He was a lazy twenty-six-year-old who preferred spending nights as the bass player for his band rather than his days fixing up the property, but he was cheap and, if given enough time, was handy enough. He’d done some side jobs for Alvarez in the past and she was certain he could determine what the hell was wrong with her hot water tank. She only hoped she wouldn’t have to replace the damned thing.

  At the office, she found a cup of blistering-hot coffee and tried to shake herself out of her bad mood by munching on a reindeer cupcake, eating first the sugar-coated antlers and then its whole damned head. It didn’t help.

  Twenty minutes later, she was just answering some e-mail when Pescoli dropped by her desk. “Want some bad news?” she asked.

  Alvarez glanced up. “You mean some more bad news?” she asked. “It hasn’t exactly been a stellar morning and so, the answer is no.”

  “Yeah, well, I think you’d better hear this. Your buddy J. R. has just been released from prison. A technicality and his lawyer screamed loudly enough that it looks like there might be a whole new trial.”

  “Crap.” The headache that had started early this morning and had been exacerbated by the couch pillow evisceration was really beginning to pound inside her skull. J. R. “Junior” Green, the creep of all creeps, was an ex-pro football lineman who had turned coach and pedophile. Alvarez had been instrumental in sending him up the river and he’d sworn that he’d return the favor by ruining her life. “He’s guilty!”

  “As sin. We just have to prove it all over again.”

  Her headache throbbed, and as Pescoli walked off, Alvarez’s cell phone rang. She checked the number, saw that it was Terry Longstrom and didn’t pick up. She couldn’t deal with him right now, at least not personally. If he needed to talk to her about business, he could leave a message; then she might call him back. Maybe.

  She reached into the top drawer of her desk, found a bottle of Excedrin she used only if her periods were severe. Those times she washed the painkillers down with some kind of herbal tea. Today she popped two into her palm, tossed them into her mouth and swallowed them dry.

  It wasn’t yet nine in the morning, and so far, the day was turning into a nightmare.

  A couple of hours later, while Pescoli was checking with several members of the Bible study group at Brenda Sutherland’s church, the members of which were some of the people who’d last seen Brenda alive, Alvarez headed over to Missing Persons, where she made some inquiries, asking Taj about other women who may have been reported missing.

  “Let me see,” Taj said, typing into her keyboard and studying her monitor.

  Alvarez was antsy. She’d been waiting for hours to talk to Taj, as all night she’d tossed and turned, wondering what connection, if any, there was between Lissa Parsons and Brenda Sutherland.

  She wasn’t one to believe in coincidences, and if the past few winters had taught her anything, it was to be wary. For a small town, Grizzly Falls had its share of nuts. There were the harmless ones, like Ivor Hicks, who, pushing eighty, still swore that he’d been abducted by aliens years before on Mesa Rock. He’d been brought to the mother ship and was experimented upon by a reptilian race headed by a particularly nasty general named Crytor. He’d sworn that his experience with the aliens had not been due to his intimate relationship with Jack Daniel’s. Alvarez wasn’t convinced. Then there was Grace Perchant, a woman who lived alone with not one, but now two wolf-dogs, her older female named Sheena and a newer addition, a big male that she called Bane. So now, in Alvarez’s opinion, Grace had a bona fide pack. Great. Convinced she spoke with ghosts, Grace was always making weird predictions that strangely came to be. Again, she was, at least to Alvarez’s way of thinking, for the most part, benign.

  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?

  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.