Left to Die

Book 1: Alvarez & Pescoli Novel

by Lisa Jackson

Genres: Police Procedurals; Suspense; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Lisa Jackson's novels of romance and suspense race up the best-seller charts. In Left to Die, the Pinewood County Sheriff 's Department is on the trail of a cold-blooded killer who acts as a savior to women stranded during terrible mountain snowstorms before stripping them of their dignity and leaving them to die, a victim of the elements. But the killer's latest victim managed to escape, leading some to believe there may now be an imposter on the loose.

Release date: October 29, 2019

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 432

Sample

Bitterroot Mountains, Montana
November

 

He’s going to kill you.

Right here in the middle of this snow-covered godforsaken valley, he’s going to kill you! Fight, Wendy, fight!

Wendy Ito struggled, battling with the ropes that cut into her bare flesh, feeling the sting of a fierce arctic wind as it howled through the mountain ridges that surrounded them.

She was alone. Aside from the psychopath who had captured her.

God, why had she trusted him?

How in the world had she thought that he was her rescuer? That his mission was to heal her until, after the blizzard, he could call for help or take her to the nearest hospital?

Had she been lured by his sincere concern as he’d come upon her wrecked car? Had it been those blue, blue eyes? His smile? His soft words of assurance? Or had it been because she’d had no choice, because without his aid she would surely die alone in a deep, forgotten ravine?

Whatever the reason, she’d believed him, trusted him.

Fool! Idiot!

He’d proved himself to be her worst nightmare, an evil wolf in sheep’s clothing, and now, oh God, now she was paying the price.

Shivering, certain she would die, she was naked and lashed to a tree, the thick rope cutting into her bare arms and torso, a gag so tight over her lips that she could barely breathe.

And he was close. So close she could feel the warmth of his breath sifting around the trunk of the sturdy pine, hear him grunt as he put all his strength into securing her, see a flash of white neoprene ski pants and parka from the corner of her eye.

Another tug on the rope.

She gasped, her whole body jerking even tighter against the scaly bark of the tree. Pain shot through her and she set her jaw. She just needed him to get close enough so that she could kick him hard. Hit his shin. Or his nuts.

She couldn’t let him get away with this. Wouldn’t!

Her heart raced and she tried to come up with a way to save herself, to break free of her bonds and climb up the snow-covered deer trail he’d dragged her down. Oh, she’d fought him. Wriggling and fighting, flinging herself at him, trying to find some way to free herself, to avoid being brought down here to whatever fate he’d planned. She could still see the fresh tracks in the thick snow. His steady, evenly placed big boot prints and her smaller, wild, erratic barefoot tracks made when she’d tried to get away, even as he’d prodded her with his damned knife. There were drips of blood in the white snow, proving that he’d cut her, that he’d meant business.

Dear God, help me, she silently prayed to the gun-metal gray heavens threatening more snow.

He laced the restraining ropes ever tighter.

“No!” Wendy tried to scream. “No! No! No!” But the foul gag covered her mouth and kept her cries muffled and weak while the panic surging through her blood caused her heart to thunder.

Why? Oh God, why me?

She blinked back tears but felt the salty drops fall from her eyes to stain and freeze upon her cheeks.

Don’t cry. Whatever you do, do not let him see that you fear him. Don’t give the son of a bitch the satisfaction. But don’t fight, either. Pretend to give up; fake it and act like you’ve accepted your fate. Maybe his guard will slip and you can somehow get hold of his damned knife.

Her stomach clenched even tighter and she tried to keep his weapon, a hunting knife used for gutting game, in her sights. Razor sharp, it could slice through the ropes easily. Just as easily as it could pierce and cut her flesh.

Oh God…

Her knees went weak and it was all she could do not to bawl and beg, to mewl and plead, to offer to do anything he wanted if he would just not hurt her.

Go ahead, let him see that you’re resigned to your fate…but keep your eye on the knife, with its menacing, deadly blade.

She was shivering harder now. Shaking so violently that slivers from the bark were digging into her skin. Was she trembling because of the bitter Montana wind, gusts she was certain were blowing down from Canada and the arctic? Or was she quivering from the fear that tore at her insides?

Beneath the gag her teeth chattered and she felt the raw wind buffet her as he worked. She caught glimpses of his legs, warmed by thick hunting socks and the white ski pants, his heavy, fur-lined parka protecting him from the very elements to which she was exposed.

This lying son of a bitch had no intention of saving you, of healing your wounds after the horrible car wreck. All along, the sick bastard kept you alive, citing the storm as a reason he couldn’t get help, only to kill you. In the time he wanted. In the manner he wanted. He was savoring the anticipation, while you half fell in love with him.

Bile rose up her throat and she nearly wretched at the thought. He’d known it. She’d seen it in his eyes, that he’d read her utter dependency, her silly, stupid and pathetic desire to please him.

If she could, she’d kill him.

Right here. Right now.

She heard him grunt in satisfaction again, as he pulled the taut rope even tighter, forcing her buttocks into the sharp bark, her shoulders to be held fast. She could still kick, but he kept himself far from the damage she might inflict. Even with one leg still sore from the accident, she thought she could wound, and wound badly, because of all her training in the martial arts.

But he was careful to stay on the far side of the tree and keep away from her heels. And the cold was beginning to take its toll. She had trouble focusing, thinking of anything but the ice in her flesh, the sheer frigidity settling in her bones.

Blackness pulled at her vision.

Each breath she drew was labored and thin, her lungs on fire from lack of oxygen.

Maybe unconsciousness would be the way out. The blackness was soothing, taking the sting out of the wind.

But then she saw him move so that he was in front of her, staring at her with his cruel, relentless gaze.

How had she ever thought him handsome? How had she ever fantasized about him? How had she ever considered making love to him?

Slowly he removed the knife from his belt. Its cruel metallic surface winked in the shifting gray light.

She was doomed.

She knew it.

Even before he slowly, inexorably raised the blade.

“Goddamn, son of a bitch.”

Ivor Hicks usually didn’t mind the cold, but he didn’t like the thought that he was being forced to hike in this section of the mountains after the recent blizzard. For the love of God, there could be an avalanche if he coughed too hard, and he was liable to ’cause his lungs felt heavy, as if he might be coming down with something.

Probably from the damned aliens, he decided, though he quickly rid himself of the thought. Criminy, no one wanted to believe that he’d been abducted in the late seventies, used for an experiment that involved his lungs, blood and testicles. The blasted ETs had left his drained and exhausted body in a snowbank two miles from his mountain home. When he’d come out of the drug-induced coma, he’d found himself half frozen, lying in his jockey shorts, an empty bottle of rye whiskey on the other side of a hollowed-out log that was home to a porcupine and beetles. But not one of them damned law enforcement boys wanted to listen to him.

At the time, the deputy he’d complained to, a smartass kid of about thirty, hadn’t even bothered to swallow his smile of disbelief. He just took a quick statement, then hauled Ivor to the local clinic for treatment of frostbite and exposure. Doc Norwood hadn’t been so outwardly disbelieving, but when he’d sent Ivor to the hospital in Missoula he’d suggested psychiatric testing.

Damned fools.

They’d all just played into the aliens’ hands. Crytor, the leader of the pod, who had teleported him into their mother ship, was probably still laughing at the earthlings’ simpleton explanation of alcohol, dehydration and hallucinations that the doctors were sure had been the cause of his “confusion.”

Well, they were just dumb asses all around.

Using a walking stick, Ivor trudged up Cross Creek Pass, his hiking boots crunching in the snow, the sky as wide and blue as an ocean, not that he’d ever really seen one, but he’d seen himself Flathead Lake, which was one big-ass lake. Must be the same, only much, much larger, if those televised fishing excursions on the Fish and Game Channel could be believed.

Breathing heavily, he trudged up the trail, winding through an outcropping of snow-dusted boulders and ancient hemlocks with branches that appeared to scrape the sky. He stopped to catch his breath, watching it fog and cursing the aliens who had forced him up the mountain trail when his arthritis was acting up. The pain now was exacerbated, he was certain, by the experiments they’d done on him and the invisible chip they’d slipped into his body.

“I’m goin’, I’m goin’,” he said when he felt that little pinch at his temple, the prod they used to urge him on, the one that had pushed him out of bed before the sun climbed over the mountain crest. Hell, he hadn’t even had a swallow of coffee, much less a sip of Jim Beam. Crytor, damn his orange reptilian hide, was a more intense taskmaster than Lila had been, God rest her soul. He made the sign of the cross over his chest in memory of his dead wife, though he was not a Catholic, never had been and had no intention of becoming one. It just seemed like the right, reverent thing to do.

Even Crytor didn’t seem to mind.

Through a stand of fir he noticed elk tracks and dung in the snow and wished he’d brought his rifle, though it wasn’t hunting season. Who would ever find out?

Well, besides Crytor.

Rounding a bend in the path, he caught a glimpse of the valley below.

And he stopped short, nearly slipping.

His seventy-six-year-old heart almost quit on him as his gaze, as good as it ever was, focused on a solitary pine tree and the naked woman lashed to the trunk.

“Holy Mother Mary,” he whispered and headed faster down the hillside, his walking stick digging deep through the snow to the frozen ground below as he hurried downward.

No wonder the aliens had wanted him to see this.

They’d probably abducted her, did what they wanted and left her here in this frigid, unpopulated valley. That’s what they did, you know.

He wished he had a cell phone, though he thought he’d heard that the damned things didn’t work up here. Too remote. No towers. He slid and caught himself, moving quickly along the familiar trail. She was probably still alive. Just stunned into submission. He could wrap her in his jacket, and hike back and get help.

Digging his stick deep and fast into the snow, he descended rapidly, hurrying down the switchbacks to the valley floor, where a snow owl hooted softly in an otherwise eerily quiet canyon.

“Hey!” he cried, half-running, nearly out of breath. “Hey!”

But before he reached the woman strapped to the tree, he stopped short and froze.

This was no return of a body from an alien ship.

Hell no.

This was the work of the very devil.

The hairs on the back of his wrinkled neck lifted.

This woman, an Asian woman, was as dead as dead can be. Her skin was blue, snow dusting her dark, shiny hair, her eyes staring without life. Blood lay on her skin, dark and frozen. A gag covered her lips. The bindings strapping her to the tree had cut deep bruises and welts into her arms and chest and waist. Not quite hog-tied. But close enough.

Somewhere a tree branch groaned with the weight of snow and Ivor felt as if unseen eyes might be watching.

He’d never felt more fear in his life.

Not even as Crytor’s prisoner.

Again, wishing he had his hunting rifle, he stepped backward slowly, easing out the way he’d come, until, at the edge of the mountain trail, he turned and started running as fast as his legs dared carry him.

Who or whatever had done this to the woman was the purest and deadliest form of evil.

And it lingered.

God in heaven, it was still here.

 

Detective Selena Alvarez dropped into the chair at her desk. It wasn’t yet seven, but she had piles of paperwork to sift through, and the unsolved case of the two dead women found nearly a month apart, linked by the way their bodies had been left in the snow, was uppermost in her mind.

The images of those bodies—naked, tied to trees, gagged and left in the snow to die—chilled her to her bones. For years any dead bodies discovered in and around Pinewood County were few and far between, usually the result of hunting, fishing, skiing or hiking accidents. One time a jogger was mauled nearly to death by a cougar, and there had always been the domestic disputes gone bad, fueled by alcohol or drugs, a firearm or other weapon in handy reach. But murder had never been common in this part of the country. Multiple murders rarer still. A serial killer in this neck of the woods? Unheard of.

But one was here.

She had only to look on her computer screen and see the dead bodies of Theresa Charleton and Nina Salvadore, two women with little in common, to know that a psychopath was either nearby or had passed through.

She clicked her mouse and the dead body of the first victim, Theresa Charleton, came into view on her monitor. A few more clicks and she split the screen with several images: the woman’s driver’s license picture, procured from the Idaho DMV; a photo of the wrecked green Ford Eclipse, labeled Crime Scene One; and another shot of a lonely hemlock tree in a snowy valley with the woman lashed to the trunk, tagged as Crime Scene Two. The final image was of the note left nailed above the woman’s head: her initials, T C, in block letters, written below a star that had been not only drawn on the white paper but also carved into the bole of the tree about five inches above her head. The lab had found traces of blood in the carving, blood belonging to the victim.

Alvarez’s jaw tightened as she stared at what had been left of the schoolteacher from Boise. She’d had no known enemies. Married for two years, no children, the husband devastated. He’d claimed she’d been visiting her parents in Whitefish and his story had checked out. The victim’s parents and brother were beside themselves with grief and anger. Her brother had insisted the police “find the monster who did this!”

“We’re working on it,” Alvarez said to herself as she opened a file and saw a copy of the note.

The star, similar to the one cut into the tree over the victim’s head, had been drawn high over the letters:

 

T      C

 

Why? Alvarez wondered. What did it mean to the killer? The sheriff’s department had checked on the people who had seen her last and come up with nothing so far. They’d thought the incident was a single murder—until the next victim had been found in an identical situation.

Again Alvarez clicked her mouse and another image, so similar to the first that it turned her blood to ice, flickered onto the screen. A naked woman with long dark hair was bound to the trunk of a fir tree. Different location, but eerily similar.

Victim number two was Nina Salvadore, a single mother and computer programmer from Redding, California. She, too, had been found tied to a tree in a tiny valley within the wilds of the Bitterroots. Her body had been two miles from her vehicle, a Ford Focus wrecked into a nearly unidentifiable crush of red paint, metal and plastic, found several weeks earlier.

The star cut into the tree over Salvadore’s body was located in a slightly different position in relation to her body, and the note that had been left at the scene was slightly different as well. This time, though the star had been drawn on a standard-size piece of printer paper, new letters had been written on it. It appeared that both sets of the victims’ initials had been interwoven:

 

T      SC     N

 

Was the killer playing with them? Trying to communicate? If he wanted credit for both killings, why not write T C N S, the order of the women’s first and last names? Why mix the initials up?

Alvarez narrowed her eyes. She was a computer wizard and had run several programs trying to find out if the four letters meant anything. So far, she’d come up dry.

“Bastard,” she muttered, trying to imagine what kind of monster would do something so brutal and cruel as to leave a woman to freeze in the wilds of Montana in the winter.

Interviews with those closest to Nina Salvadore had provided no additional clues. She’d been on her way back to California, though she’d planned to meet up with friends in Oregon first, and had driven from Helena, Montana, where she’d been visiting her sister. The missing persons report had been filed in Oregon first, when she hadn’t arrived in the small town of Seaside and had been missing for twenty-four hours. In Helena, Nina’s sister had filed a similar report that same day.

Despite combing the crime scenes, bodies and wrecked cars, and working with police in the hometowns where the women had lived, the department had no suspects.

Random killings?

Or victims who had been targeted and stalked?

Alvarez bit her lip and found no answers.

After staring at the screen for a few minutes, she gave up, left her cubicle and made her way down a long hallway. She veered to the left and through a doorway to the lunchroom, a windowless area complete with small kitchen and a few scattered tables.

A glass pot of congealing coffee sat on a warmer. Left over from the night shift. Selena dumped the dark liquid and the pre-measured packet of grounds and started over, rinsing the pot, filling the reservoir with water and finding a fresh package of dark roast in a drawer.

All the while the coffee machine sputtered, dripped and brewed, she considered the bizarre killings. The lab had found traces of bark in both victims’ hair. The wood splinters matched those of the trees to which they had been lashed. The bruises and contusions on their bodies had been consistent with being tethered to the trees, and they each had a cut or two from a knife, nothing deep, just a quick little slice, or prick, as if whoever had been urging them to their ultimate place of death had prodded them along.

But other wounds had begun to heal, according to the autopsies. Injuries consistent with what had been sustained in their car wrecks had begun to heal: broken metacarpals, cracked ribs and a fractured radius in Theresa Charleton’s case; a broken clavicle and dislocated knee for Nina Salvadore. Each woman’s bones appeared to have been set, her abrasions tended to. Salvadore even appeared to have had recent stitches on her right cheek and an area of scalp where some hair had been shaved away.

Where had he kept them?

And why?

Why bring them somewhat back to health only to leave their naked bodies out in the weather? Why heal them only to let them die?

According to the ME, neither woman had been sexually molested.

The case was odd. Nerve-wracking. And Alvarez had spent dozens of hours of overtime trying to get into the killer’s head. To no avail.

The FBI was being consulted. Field agents from Salt Lake City had come and left again.

On the kitchen counter the coffee machine gurgled and sputtered its last drops just about the same time Joelle Fisher, secretary and receptionist for the department, breezed in.

“Oh, you already made the coffee. That’s my job, you know,” she said with one of her ever-present smiles. Nearing sixty, Joelle looked ten years younger except for the fact that she insisted upon wearing her platinum hair in some kind of teased hairdo reminiscent of the fifties screen sirens Alvarez remembered from watching old movies with her mother.

“Yeah, I know.”

Joelle’s pretty face squinched up as she quickly picked up some old napkins and stir sticks left on one of the tables, then wiped the surface. “You’ll get me in trouble with the sheriff.”

Pouring herself a cup, Selena didn’t think Dan Grayson gave a flying fig about who made the coffee, but she kept her views to herself. Joelle’s smug self-satisfaction about all things domestic was no big deal. If she considered the kitchen her little kingdom, so be it.

“Hey!” Cort Brewster, the undersheriff, strode in with a newspaper tucked under his arm.

“How’s it going?” Alvarez asked, offering him just a hint of a smile. Brewster was a good guy, happily married, the father of four, but there was something about him that put her on edge a bit. A glint in his eye, maybe, or the way his smile didn’t always meet his gaze. Or maybe she was being super-sensitive. Brewster had never done anything untoward to her, or to anyone else in the department as far as she knew.

“If the coffee’s not to your liking, I’m sorry,” Joelle said, flinging up her hands in resignation. “It was, er, already brewing when I got here.” Her perfect little pink-tinged lips puckered a bit and her eyebrows shot up as if she were a schoolmarm pointing out that little Timmy had been playing with himself under the table.

“My fault if the coffee tastes like sewer sludge,” Alvarez admitted. “I made it.”

Brewster laughed as he found a ceramic mug in the cupboard and poured himself a tall cup.

Joelle, miffed, strutted out of the kitchen, her high heels tapping indignantly down the hallway.

“Looks like you stepped on someone’s toes this morning,” Brewster observed.

“It’s every morning.” Selena poured herself a cup. “Working here should be considered hazardous duty.”

“Meeeow,” Brewster murmured into his cup.

“Comes with the territory.” She shrugged and headed to her desk. Her shift wasn’t due to start for another forty-five minutes, but a few of the night crew were trading stories and packing up.

Her phone rang and she answered it with a grunt of acknowledgment as she sat down.

“Alvarez? This is Peggy Florence in dispatch. I’ve got a call I think you should hear.”

From the tone of the dispatcher’s voice, Selena guessed what was coming and braced herself.

“Came in two minutes ago. From Ivor Hicks. If he can be believed, we’ve got ourselves another one.”

 

“…and it’s another sub-zero-degree day in this part of Montana, blizzard conditions on the roads and another storm rolling in this afternoon.” The radio announcer sounded way too chipper considering the news he was delivering. “Coming up after this, we’ve got an extensive road report and school-closure list, so stay with us at KKAR at ninety-seven point six on your FM dial.”

He segued into the first notes of “Winter Wonderland.”

Regan Pescoli buried her face into her pillow and groaned at the thought of rousing. Bing Crosby crooning about the joys of snow wasn’t exactly what she wanted to hear, not this morning. Her head was thundering, her mouth tasted like garbage and the last thing she needed was to roll out of a nice warm bed and head to the sheriff’s department office where all hell was surely breaking loose with this last storm.

Besides, it was still only November. There was still a lotta time before Christmas.

She slapped at the damned radio without opening her eyes, missed and realized belatedly that she wasn’t in her own bed. Holy crap! Lifting an eyelid, she focused on her surroundings only to recognize the scarred, shabby furniture of room seven at the North Shore, a small, local motel where she stayed overnight with her sometime lover. Never mind that the low-slung concrete-block motel was situated at the south end of town, near the county line, and there was no shore, no river, no lake and certainly no ocean for miles.

She blinked at the mocking, red digital display of the clock radio: 7:08. If she didn’t get cracking, she’d be late for work.

Again.

“Oh hell,” she muttered, untangling her legs from the faded striped quilt of the queen-sized bed.

He was just lying there, snoring softly, his incredible, muscular back to her, his hair black and gleaming against the pillowcase.

“Sweet dreams, hotshot,” she muttered ungraciously as she searched in the dark for her clothes. Black lacy undies, matching bra, slacks and a sweater.

“Back atcha, sunshine,” he whispered without so much as lifting his head.

“Some of us have to work.”

“Really?” He rolled over then, instantly awake, and grabbed her hard, pulling her back down onto the bed.

“Hey! I don’t have time for this—”

“Sure you do.”

“Really, I—”

But he’d already stripped her of the bra she’d just put on and had yanked off her panties in one quick, sure motion. He rolled her atop him and she felt his erection, thick, hard and ready.

“You miserable son of a bitch,” she said as he thrust up inside her.

“That’s me.”

God, he was good. Her juices began to flow within seconds and his hands, kneading her breasts before he rose up to suckle her nipples, made her cry out in pleasure.

His movements were quick. Sure. Long.

She was panting, her breath fast and shallow, her blood coursing hot through her veins, her mind spinning in images of lovemaking and desire.

Her fingernails bit into the muscles of his shoulders as she felt herself begin to spasm. One rocking contraction after another as she leaned back her head, her eyes shut. An orgasm started deep inside and shook her to her soul. “Oh God…Oh God…”

He held her tight, strong hands gripping her waist, keeping their bodies pressed together as he jerked upward, thrusting in and out, faster and faster, causing her breath to get lost somewhere in her lungs and her mind to spin out of control again. “Oooooh,” she whispered as at last he lunged upward, thigh muscles straining and taut. With a growl and one last, hard, mind-numbing thrust, he let go, releasing himself into her.

She felt him stiffen, his back muscles convulse, and when she opened her eyes she found him staring at her, as he always did whenever they made love.

“Damn you,” she said, sweat running down her back and curling the hairs around her nape. “Damn you straight to hell.”

“Too late,” he said and laughed, pulling her down into the rumpled bedclothes. “I’m already there.”

“I know.” She let out a long sigh, telling herself she really, really had to get up. “Me, too.”

“You’re late, you know.”

“You love it, don’t you?”

“Love what?”

“Being a prick.”

His grin was a wicked slash of white in the semi-dark. “No, darlin’, you love it.”

She snorted and rolled off the bed, swiped up her clothes and, before he could grab her again, dashed into the bathroom, where the air was so cold her breath came out in clouds of steam. What was it about him that was so insidiously tempting? Why could she never say no and mean it? What was it about him that she found so damned sexy? Hadn’t she sworn over and over again that she was going to get over him, that she wasn’t about to tumble into his trap again?

Yeah, well, a lot of good that did.

If only he weren’t so unabashedly good-looking.

Oh hell. She’d known a lot of men. Many good-looking. Most with rock-hard bodies. But this one…this one was different.

Really? Isn’t he just another bad boy in a long line starting with Chad Wheaton in the eighth grade? Face it, Regan, you have horrible taste in men and enough signed divorce decrees to prove it.

She glanced in the mirror and cringed. Bloodshot eyes, messy hair, ruined makeup, a hickey the size of New Hampshire on her neck. What was the phrase? Rode hard and put away wet? That’s what she looked like. And she didn’t have time to go home and step into a long, hot shower.

Deftly she cleaned herself with warm water and a cloth. Dampening her face, she scrubbed off the traces of last night’s mascara and lipstick. Then she dabbed the cloth at her armpits and between her legs.

Within five minutes she was ready. Clothes on and somewhat unwrinkled, makeup refreshed, hair snapped back into a curly knot at the base of her skull, she stepped into the darkened bedroom and heard him snoring again.

“Bastard,” she muttered, trying to sound angrier than she actually was.

“I heard that.” Muffled, from within the pillow.

“Good.” She pulled on the boots she’d kicked off at the door and snagged her jacket from the back of a chair. Then she slipped on her shoulder holster, checked the safety of her sidearm and tucked her wallet with her badge in her pocket.

Without another word Detective Regan Pescoli pushed open the motel room door and stepped into the bitter cold of another Montana winter morning.

What was wrong with her? she wondered as she walked to her Jeep, unlocked the rig and climbed behind the wheel. Her cell phone chimed as she backed out of the pockmarked parking space and she checked caller ID. Luckily, the caller wasn’t her ex-husband or his sickening Barbie doll of a wife calling about the kids.

But it wasn’t good news. She recognized the cell phone number: her partner, Selena Alvarez.

“Pescoli,” she answered, eyeing her rearview mirror, then shoving the Jeep into drive.

“We got another one.”

Regan’s heart nose-dived. She knew what was coming. Another dead body had turned up in the icy crags and valleys of the Bitterroot Mountains, compliments of their very own serial killer. “Shit. Where?”

“Wildfire Canyon.” Alvarez was all business as she gave Pescoli directions to the killing ground.

“I’ll be there in thirty,” she said and hung up. The remains of yesterday’s super-sized soda, probably frozen, sat in the cup holder between the bucket seats. She didn’t think twice, just grabbed the soggy paper cup, placed her lips around the straw and took a long swallow of the flat diet cola. As she nosed her way onto the county road, she dug in her glove box for the single pack of Marlboro Lights she kept hidden inside. She was down to one pack a week. Not bad considering her habit had once been three packs a day. But this son of a bitch who was killing women and leaving them in the freezing cold, he was playing havoc with all her good intentions.

She planned to quit all together after the New Year, less than two months away, but between the pressures of her ex-husband, her job and this sicko numb-nuts who got off torturing his victims in the Montana cold, she feared all her good intentions and resolutions might just go by the wayside.

She flipped on her siren and lights and trod hard on the accelerator. The man in the motel room flitted through her mind for a second, then she pushed him steadfastly to that locked corner of her brain she rarely opened, the one that reminded her she was still a sensual, sexy woman with needs.

For the moment, and for most of her life, she was a cop.

Bad boys be damned, she had a homicide to investigate.

Alvarez ignored the bite of the wind as she surveyed the crime scene where a naked woman was lashed to a solitary tree. Tree branches rattled and snow blew off the heavily laden branches.

Selena Alvarez had never felt so cold in her life.

Dressed in county-issued coat and pants, she stared at the frozen corpse, and her own blood seemed to freeze in her veins.

The victim was Asian from the looks of her. Straight black hair capped with snow, once-smooth flesh showing bruising and contusions, blood discoloring the snow at the base of the tree. Snow that had at one time been mashed beneath boots and bare feet, then crusted over, was now, with a fresh blanket of white, slightly uneven.

Forensic techs were hoping to take casts of what remained of the prints or gather evidence in the form of soil, hair, fibers or any kind of debris that might have dropped from the attacker’s clothing or the soles of his boots.

Alvarez held out little hope, as the killer, so far, had been either meticulous or just damned lucky.

As in the other cases, a note had been left at the scene, nailed over the victim’s head, and a star hewn out of the bark a few inches above her crown. Though again, the star seemed in a slightly different position, the same being true of its placement on the single sheet of paper.

This time, the note read:

 

W     T     SC  I  N

 

“What the hell does that mean?” Brewster, who had driven out with Alvarez, asked.

“Don’t know.”

“Is it some kind of warning, explanation?”

Alvarez shook her head. “He’s just screwing with us. Obviously the victim’s initials are W and I, though who knows which is her first name and which is her last.”

“You mean like Wilhelmina Ingles or Ida Wellington?”

“Yeah,” she said sarcastically, slowly walking around the tree, though at a short distance away. “Like Wilhelmina.” Already the forensic techs and ME were examining the body, trying to establish a time of death and maybe a cause, as well as searching the area for any other pieces of evidence, anything at all.

As for the cause of death, Alvarez was willing to bet the cause was the same as the others: exposure. Though this woman’s body had a few more bruises and cuts upon it, Alvarez thought the end result would be the same. Maybe the killer was growing more violent, getting off on torturing the women first. Or maybe this small woman fought harder than the others, or had fewer injuries from the “accident” where her vehicle had skidded off the icy road.

“No car found,” Brewster said, as if reading her thoughts.

“Yet.” She glanced up at him. There was no playful flirting now. “Only a matter of time.” From the corner of her eye, she saw movement coming down the trail they’d used to access this canyon, then her partner, Regan Pescoli, all five feet ten inches of her, appeared and signed in to the crime scene with the road deputy who’d been first to arrive at the site.

Pescoli was wearing sunglasses, though it wasn’t all that bright and clouds were rolling in, and the same unflattering outerwear as the rest of the detectives and road deputies on the scene.

“So we got ourselves another one,” she said as she reached Alvarez and Brewster. Her face was flushed, red hair coiling wildly from beneath her stocking cap, and the smell of cigarette smoke clung to her like a shroud.

Alvarez didn’t doubt for a minute that Pescoli had been partying the night before, hooking up with yet another loser, but she kept her mouth shut. As long as what her partner did off-hours didn’t affect her ability to handle her job, it wasn’t really any of Selena’s business.

“Yep, looks like,” she agreed. She brought Pescoli up to speed about the fact that no vehicle had been found, there were new letters on the same kind of note as left at the previous scenes, there was a slight repositioning of the star and the body had been found by Ivor Hicks.

“Old Man Hicks was up here?” Pescoli repeated, her eyes, behind shaded lenses, scanning the desolate area.

“Walking.”

“Who the hell walks up here before dawn?”

“It was the aliens again,” Brewster explained. “They made him do it.”

Pescoli’s lips twisted into a wry smile. “Was it Crytor, the reptilian genius, who sent him up here?”

“General, the reptilian general. Not genius,” Brewster corrected. Everyone in the department knew about Ivor Hicks’s transportation to the “mother ship” for experiments and tests by the aliens. The story had been written up in the local paper in the seventies, and then again recently, on the thirtieth anniversary of the abduction.

“Ivor been drinking?” Pescoli asked.

Alvarez shook her head. “Doesn’t seem like it.”

“He drinks a lot.”

“I know.”

Brewster snorted. “The aliens who did all those tests on him? Wonder if they ran a Breathalyzer.”

Alvarez smiled faintly.

“Yeah, they probably think all humans run around blowing a point-three-two in a blood alcohol level.”

Pescoli stared at the victim as the paramedics bagged her hands and feet, then cut her free and placed her into a body bag. “I don’t think Ivor has the strength, smarts or wherewithal to be our guy. What’s he tip out at, maybe a hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty pounds?” She shook her head. “You talk to him?” she asked Alvarez.

“At length. He’s in Deputy Hanson’s rig, if you want a word.”

“I do,” Pescoli said.

“You know he’ll go to the press as soon as he gets back into town.”

Pescoli pulled a face. “We’ve kept some details from the press but if Ivor shoots off his big mouth—”

“Every nutcase who wants a little publicity will come forward,” Alvarez said, unhappily considering the wasted man-hours that would be spent separating the wannabes from the real deal. The time ill-used sifting through the BS would take away from time that could be spent trying to find the killer.

“He’s all yours.” Alvarez hitched her chin toward the trail they’d all used to make their way into the canyon and Pescoli took off in the hopes that she could jar a little more information out of Ivor Hicks’s alcohol-shriveled brain.

“Good luck,” Alvarez muttered.

“Thanks.” Pescoli’s smile held no warmth. “I’ll radio in to missing persons, ask them about any missing Asian or Amer-Asian women with our vic’s description. I’ll also have them look for anyone missing in the last week with initials that include W and I.”

“Make it more than statewide. Have missing persons check Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Wyoming and California.”

“Got it.” Pescoli was already walking along the trail toward the idling rig where Ivor Hicks was waiting to insist everything he did was because of aliens.

Not exactly the most credible witness.

Alvarez watched as the body bag was carried out. “Guess we’re done here.”

“Yeah.” Brewster shook his head. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Don’t know.” They, too, began walking out of the snow-covered open space. “Before the next storm sets in, we need choppers and vehicles searching all the roads in a two-mile radius from this point. The other two victims’ bodies were found about a mile and a half from the point where their vehicles slid off the road. Pay special attention to the roads that curve sharply over a ravine.”

Brewster snorted. “You’re talking about every damned road in this part of the county.”

“I know.” She looked up at the sky where clouds were definitely gathering. They didn’t have a lot of time, but the longer they waited the more likely the Asian woman’s vehicle would be buried until the spring thaw and any evidence from the car would be lost or degraded. In the meantime she’d go back to the office and chart out each crime scene, see where, if at all, the two-mile radius from each separate area intersected.

Maybe then she’d be one step closer to finding the son of a bitch.

 

Sheriff Dan Grayson’s day had gone from bad to worse.

And it didn’t look like things were going to improve any time soon. With his heartburn acting up, he stood behind the desk in his office and stared out the window at the approaching storm. At five in the afternoon, the lights of the city were already glowing, reflecting bluish in the snow-covered streets. As the sheriff’s office and jail were perched on the top of Boxer Bluff, he had a view of the river and the falls, located nearly a mile downhill, where much of the town, including the brick-and-mortar, hundred-plus-year-old courthouse, was located.

The . . .