Left To Die (3 page)

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.

Chapter Two

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.”