Left To Die (13 page)

His partner, however, was a piece of work, at least in Alvarez’s mind. Stephanie “Steff” Chandler was a tall, slim, humorless bitch. With long blond hair pulled back into a tight knot, skin that still looked tanned, as if she spent a lot of time outdoors, and little makeup, she stood in front of the poster boards and stared at the information written near the pictures of the victims, memorizing every word. At previous meetings she’d been dressed in a dark suit, but today, with a nod to the menacing weather, she wore a navy blue jogging suit and long-sleeved, turtleneck sweater. She hadn’t said a whole lot so far, but her lips were folded thoughtfully and there was an unspoken air of disapproval in her stiff-backed stance and narrowed eyes. It seemed, though it hadn’t been said, that she thought she was the only one capable of solving the crime.

Everyone else in the small room, including Pescoli and Sheriff Grayson, were seated, but Chandler, one of those nervous types, began pacing in front of the boards, chewing on a corner of her lip. Alvarez was grateful that she was partners with irreverent, bend-the-rules Pescoli rather than this uptight woman.

At least Regan Pescoli had a sense of humor, dark as it could be at times.

Moving her eyes to the final panel, where Jillian Rivers’s driver’s license picture and mangled car were posted, Chandler shook her head.

“This woman was never reported missing.”

“Her family had no idea that she had even left Seattle. The only one who knew she’d taken off was the neighbor who took care of her cat,” Alvarez said. “Emily Hardy, nineteen. Lives in the same complex of townhouses as Rivers and goes to school at the university. U-Dub.” Chandler frowned as if she didn’t get it. “University of Washington. Instead of U W, it’s called U-Dub. Rivers has her own kind of printing company and does most of the work herself, so co-workers haven’t missed her and we’ve just started talking to her friends and ex-husband.”

“The one that’s still alive,” Pescoli said. “I’ve got a call in to him.”

Alvarez added, “Seattle PD found nothing out of place at her apartment. No desktop computer. Her laptop and purse are missing, likely with her.”

“But not found at the scene?” Halden finished his coffee and tossed the empty paper cup into a nearby trash can.

“Just like the others.” Pescoli frowned as she stared at the panels of the victims. “Same with the tire being shot.”

“Same caliber rifle?”

“Couldn’t find the bullet or the casing, but we’re still looking.”

“Anything different about this one?”

“The insurance information and registration were left behind,” Alvarez admitted. “It’s the one anomaly. But those docs weren’t kept in the usual spots, not in the glove box or above the visor. They were hidden under the driver’s seat and crushed when the car was wrecked. We didn’t find them until the car was back here and the techs went over it.”

“An oversight by the killer?” Chandler asked.

“Probably just couldn’t find them. Maybe she was hurt and he had to get her out of the cold, or maybe he heard something that scared him off.”

“Why would the car’s information be under the driver’s seat?” Chandler rested a hip against the table and her ice-blue eyes zeroed in on Alvarez.

“The papers could have slipped down there after a traffic stop, or maybe she just keeps them there.”

“Or he dropped them as he was pulling her out of the car and didn’t realize it?” Chandler was theorizing, her face tense, the wheels turning in her mind.

“No blood on them.” Alvarez, too, was bothered by the one thing that was different at the scene. “We’re checking for prints.”

Chandler nodded.

Maybe she wasn’t such a bitch after all, Alvarez thought, though she couldn’t quite believe it. She unzipped her vest, as the room was warming up. The furnace was working overtime, wheezing as it blew hot air into the room packed with too many bodies. Through the bank of windows lay a view of the white-packed parking lot, a long plowed road and, less than a quarter of a mile away, the county jail, a two-storied cinder block building with a flat roof. Snow gathered near the foot of the jail’s high fence and clung to the swirled razor wire, almost picturesque.

“Okay,” Chandler said, walking back to the panels on the wall. “So no one has any idea what these notes mean?” Chandler pointed to the blowups of the papers left at each of the scenes.

“Not yet,” Grayson drawled. The sheriff had been taking in the meeting, not saying much from his seat at a corner of the table. His attitude was almost why-don’t you-tell-us, Miss Know-It-All, but if he thought it, he kept it to himself.

“It seems odd that the position of the star is different in each case. He’s so precise with these notes; the letters are all the same size, blocked out perfectly. So, the fact that the star isn’t in exactly the same spot each time is for a reason. He’s trying to tell us something.”

“More likely taunting us,” Pescoli said.

“Yeah, that, too. He seems intelligent and careful. These aren’t rash, random killings. He’s planned this, down to the smallest detail. He’s organized. Thinks he’s smarter than we are and it’s unlikely that he would miss a detail like the car documents.” Chandler walked to the panels and pointed to the enlarged notes. “Look at the placement of the stars. They’re where they are for a reason, yet they vary from one note to the other. I think that’s significant.”

Alvarez nodded. She’d always thought so. “Then he’s trying to leave us a message with the letters. The women aren’t random.”

“I think they’re targeted,” Chandler said.

Pescoli said, “But not raped.”

Chandler’s gaze swung to the taller detective. “Another anomaly. A lot of organized serial killers get off on holding their victims, getting close to them, torturing them and sexually molesting them.” She rubbed her chin. “We’ve discounted the possibility of a female killer, right? Big shoe prints, strength necessary to get into the wrecked cars and haul the victims away.”

“If it’s a woman, she’s big. Strong.” Pescoli added her two cents. “Our female victims are all on the petite side, anywhere from a hundred and five to a hundred and twenty-five pounds. But most serials are men.”

“A female killer feels wrong to me,” Chandler admitted. “Off.”

“To me, too,” Pescoli agreed and no one argued. Outside the closed door Alvarez heard a phone ringing and footsteps as someone walked past the room.

Chandler went on, “We think he either kidnaps or leaves the women to die around the twentieth of the month. We’ve got three known victims and one potential, so let’s check star alignment on those dates, September through December, and then if we find anything noteworthy, let’s project to January.”

“We haven’t found the December victim yet,” Pescoli pointed out, “and you’re already thinking about January?”

“That’s right.” Craig Halden’s usually affable expression was missing. His face was grim. “Our guy, he’s not stopping.” Halden shoved his chair back and walked around the table to the oversized topographical map that covered a large section of one wall. It was marked with the scenes where the wrecked vehicles and victims had been found. “Have we talked to everyone who lives or has a summer cabin in this area?” he asked, one of his hands arcing over the mountainous terrain on the map.

“Started,” Grayson said. “We’ve got a list from the assessor’s office. Lots of summer cabins. The area covers miles of rugged country.”

Chandler said, “Vastly unpopulated.”

Grayson nodded slowly. “We’ll keep on it.”

Between the pushpins, lines had been drawn in the hopes that some intersecting point would reveal the area where the killer lived, but the areas where the lines crossed were usually uninhabited.

But that was the way with organized serial killers, Alvarez knew from her research. These psychos went to great lengths to hide themselves and elude detection. They thought about their crimes long and hard, picked out their quarry, planned each move, got off on toying with their victims before they killed them. And all the while they enjoyed outwitting the police.

Sick bastards.

Halden walked back to his chair as his partner asked, “Have we had any ideas about the notes?”

That was a sore point with Alvarez, who had spent countless hours at night trying to figure out what the killer was trying to tell them. “
We
don’t have much,” she admitted.

“Let’s put a cryptographer on it.”

“Already have,” Sheriff Grayson said. “One of the best in the country. So far nothing. Said he’d never seen anything quite like it.”

Craig Halden settled into his chair. “We’re getting the same info. Nothing in the database matches up to this guy. He seems to be our own special loony.”

“Ain’t we lucky?” Pescoli muttered and slid Alvarez a glance.

Chandler finally took her seat and flipped through several pages of her notes. “Okay, about the people who discovered the crime scenes. According to your records, the car registered to Jillian Rivers was discovered by a woman who communes with the dead.”

“Well,” Grayson said, “we’re not sure she actually makes contact. All we know is, she thinks she talks to spirits, but the jury’s definitely out on her ability to…what do they call it, ‘cross over’?”

“Something like that,” Pescoli said.

“And Wendy Ito was found by a man who claims to be a victim of an alien abduction,” Chandler said, looking pointedly at Grayson. “Isn’t that odd?”

“Not around here,” Pescoli said, and Grayson sent her a sharp look.

“They aren’t exactly the most stable witnesses.”

“Does it matter?” Pescoli asked. “It’s not as if they were giving statements about the killer. All they did was lead us to one victim and one car. Yeah, they’re both missing a screw or two, but they did help us out.”

Grayson added, “Both Ivor and Grace were out in below-freezing weather, walking around. At least it was clear when Ivor made his discovery. Now, Grace, she was out with her dog in the middle of a damned blizzard. I don’t think it’s strange that they aren’t rowing with all their oars in the water. Who else would be out in this weather?”

Touché, Sheriff,
Alvarez thought, twirling her pen between her fingers. It bothered her that Chandler came in with “attitude,” as if they were all country bumpkins and she was the big-city specialist. Alvarez altered her first impression. There was a good chance that Field Agent Stephanie Chandler was a little like the agents portrayed in movies after all.

Grayson was staring straight at both agents. “Theresa Charleton was found by hikers, Nina Salvadore by cross-country skiers. Charleton’s car was seen by a trucker who happened to park his rig on a bridge and saw a glint of something up the creek bed, Salvadore’s by teenagers out partying. None of them connect to each other; none of them knew the victims. None of them with priors—well, except for one of the kids who found the Ford Focus. He was driving on a suspended license.”

“Good to know that all of the reports weren’t from people guaranteed certifiable.” Chandler offered Grayson a smile that wasn’t the least bit warm. Yep, she was a bitch. “I’d like to look through your files on these cases.”

“Be my guest,” Grayson offered, the slightest of tics near the corner of his left eye belying a little of his irritation. “You can have copies of the files and see the vehicles, talk to anyone here. All the trace evidence collected is with the crime lab in Missoula.”

“Thanks.” Halden nodded, even though he had to have already known where the evidence was. He had turned his attention back to the map. “We’re still missing the vehicle for victim three and the body for victim four.”

“We’re hoping to find Jillian Rivers alive,” Alvarez said, and Stephanie Chandler caught her gaze.

There wasn’t the slightest bit of hope in those ice-blue eyes. “Let’s just hope there aren’t others out there. We’re all assuming our killer started with Theresa Charleton, but that’s just because she was the first body found. He could have started earlier and we just haven’t located either the victims or their vehicles. This is pretty rugged country.”

“Wouldn’t the notes have had other initials if there were other victims? Hell, is it hot enough in here?” Pescoli pushed back her chair and walked to the thermostat. “Seventy-five? That’s like an effin’ sauna! Aren’t we in some kind of energy crisis?” She played with the electronic temperature control before returning to her seat. “Sorry,” she said, but didn’t appear the least bit contrite.

Chandler didn’t miss a beat. “Signature serial killers rarely alter their signature, though their MOs can evolve as they experiment and learn. But this guy’s different. We already mentioned that he’s not raping them, there’s no hint of sexual activity of any kind and he crosses race lines. Charleton and Rivers are Caucasian, Salvadore is Latino and Ito, Asian. This guy is organized, but he’s all over the map.” Chandler looked at the large topographical map on the far wall. “We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

Sheriff Grayson’s cell phone rang sharply and he shoved his chair back from the table. “All right, then. Anything we can do for ya, let us know. We’ll take all the help we can get to nail this son of a bitch.”

Jillian’s head pounded.

Her ankle was on fire.

Her chest ached every time she moved.

She opened a bleary eye and looked around a darkened room lit by kerosene lanterns and a fire burning in a woodstove. She was warm, but sensed that was new. She’d been cold. So very, very cold.

And she’d heard someone moaning…

Or had she cried out herself?

She blinked, trying to figure out where she was. Bits of memory assailed her. The drive in the snow, spinning out, her tire blowing, glass shattering.

Someone had come to her rescue.

A man in dark ski wear who had yelled at her.

She remembered that and not much else.

So why wasn’t she in a hospital?

What was this dark cabin all about? She was lying on a cot of some kind, tucked in a sleeping bag. She tried to push herself into a sitting position and the pain pounding in her ankle made her cry out.

Oh God, what had she gotten herself into?