Left To Die (31 page)

Alvarez closed the door to the passenger side and Pescoli wheeled her rig around, following the sheriff’s four-wheel-drive Suburban and thinking.

“Why can’t we find this guy?” Alvarez asked, staring out the windshield as Pescoli adjusted the defroster.

“We will.”

“Yeah, but when? How many other women have to freeze to death?” She was angry as she pulled out her cell phone and dialed. “Yeah, this is Alvarez. Any luck?” A pause. “I know it’s the weekend, Marcia, but we’ve got an unidentified dead woman.” Another long pause. “That’s right, A and R.” She rattled off a description of the dead woman and Pescoli’s stomach tightened. “I’ll bet you dollars to donuts
someone’s
missing her. Check statewide, and if that doesn’t work, northwest. What? Canada? No, not yet. I know we’re close to the border, but so far all the victims are U.S. citizens. Mmm…yeah, okay. Call me if you find out anything.” She hung up as they reached a mountain road that wound down toward the town.

“All the victims and cars were found within a ten-mile radius,” Pescoli said.

“Square that. What do you get? A hundred square miles of mountains, canyons, cliffs and rivers. Rough territory.”

“And someone who knows it well.” Pescoli reached for her cigarettes and ignored the sharp look she got from her partner. “My rig,” she said.

“My lungs.”

“You know, you should loosen up a bit.”

“I don’t work out, eat right and do yoga so that you can pollute my respiratory system.”

“Give it a rest,” Pescoli said, but didn’t light up. She could wait until they were back at the station in the parking lot. Besides, she didn’t have the habit that bad. It was just to help her think….

Her phone rang about the same time the sheriff’s lights and sirens flipped on. She answered. “Pescoli.”

“We’ve got another one.”

“What?”

Alvarez’s head spun toward her, the unspoken question in her eyes.

Grayson said, “Looks like another woman tied to a tree, up near Broken Pine Lodge. The KBIT helicopter found her. I’ve already sent Van Droz up there; she’s the closest road deputy on the road. She should beat us there and secure the scene.”

“Great,” Pescoli said, more worried than ever.

“Another victim?” Alvarez asked.

“Yeah.” Pescoli was nodding, keeping up both conversations, the one with her partner and the one over the phone.

“Is this guy escalating or what?” Alvarez asked, loud enough that Grayson heard her.

“Looks like,” he responded.

“Found by the news copter,” Pescoli clarified, shifting down.

“That’s what I said,” the sheriff said impatiently. “Film at eleven.”

MacGregor stepped into the cabin.

The interior was as still as death, the fire low, a feeling of abandonment in the air. “Jillian?” he called, looking through the few empty rooms, panic slowly inching up his spine.

She was gone.

Plain and simple.

The rifle he’d left with her was gone, and her crutch was missing.

Along with the dog.

“Harley?” His boots rang hollowly against the old floorboards as he walked through the kitchen to the back porch. The uneasy feeling that had been with him ever since hearing the rifle’s report less than an hour earlier increased. He walked to the front porch and whistled long and low, half expecting the black-and-white spaniel to come bounding through the drifts.

Nothing.

“Hell.”

Quickly, he walked through the house to the back porch and cupping his hands around his mouth, yelled, “Jillian? Harley?” His own voice echoed through the canyons and he grabbed his rifle and walked the length of the porch. A path was broken in the snow and it led toward the woods.

“Son of a bitch.” What was she thinking? Escaping on foot while she was still laid up?

Maybe she’d been forced.

That thought chilled him to the bone and he replayed the gunshot in his mind.

But the prints in the snow were only of the dog and the crutch and her good boot. No others. There was a chance the dog had taken off after MacGregor, or after a marauding racoon or deer. Jillian might have followed.

Damn, fool woman
, he thought, but broke into a trot, following the trail of footsteps, leaning down beneath the overhang of branches as he flushed a rabbit through the undergrowth.

“Harley!” he yelled, whistling. Why would the dog take off?

A pitiful whine whistled through the pines and MacGregor’s blood turned to ice.

Heart thudding, he threw the bolt on his rifle, ready to shoot as he rounded a large boulder and saw his dog, lying on his side in the snow, black-and-white fur matted and stained red. Too much blood had pooled beneath him. Even so, the spaniel gazed up at him, whined and gave one feeble thump of his tail. “Hang on, buddy,” he said, stripping off his jacket and tearing out the lining. He moved the dog onto his jacket and tied the sleeve over his back leg, where a bullet hole gaped. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “Son of a goddamned bitch.”

Kneeling beside Harley, he noticed the tracks. Not just Jillian’s but a second set, decidedly larger, heading east, in the direction of an old abandoned sawmill that was over two miles away.

There was no way Jillian could hobble that far.

He hated to abandon the dog but he had no choice.

Jillian Rivers’s life was at stake.

Rifle held in a death grip, defying the cold, following the tracks, Zane MacGregor took off at a dead run.

He only hoped he wasn’t too late.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Brewster stared at the woman who’d been lashed to the tree and looked as if he were about to throw up. Pescoli and Alvarez hurried forward. The scene was nearly identical to the last one, except the naked woman had been cut down from a solitary white pine tree in a small alpine meadow. She was lying on a jacket, her eyes glassy and vacant as they stared upward. Bruises covered her body and her lips were chapped. Deputy Trilby Van Droz worked over her, squatting in the mashed snow around the tree.

Van Droz, hearing them approach, looked up and yelled, “She’s alive. I’ve already called for an ambulance.”

“Alive,” Pescoli repeated, as overhead, marring the clear blue sky, a news-crew helicopter hovered, a cameraman hanging out a window while filming the scene.

“Damned fool idiots,” Grayson said, waving them off. “Someone call KBIT and tell them to clear the airspace in case a rescue copter has to land.”

Brewster was on his walkie-talkie, calling back to the department offices, relaying orders.

“At least they found her,” Alvarez said. “I’ll be in charge of the crime scene sheet.” The area had to be roped off and protected. Everyone who showed up here had to sign in.

Grayson scribbled his name. “Is she conscious?” he yelled.

“No. But I found a pulse and she’s breathing.” Van Droz was performing first aid, trying to keep the victim warm, just as the sound of a siren cut through the still mountain air.

Pescoli signed into the crime scene and, trying not to disturb any of the evidence, hurried to the victim’s side, where she knelt in the snow and tried to help. “Is she Jillian Rivers?”

“Don’t know.”

“No,” Watershed said from somewhere over her right shoulder. He was standing back, eyeing the message nailed to the gnarled bark of the pine. “The letters aren’t right.”

Pescoli glanced up and caught a glimpse of the weird message.

Sure enough, Jillian Rivers’s initials weren’t written down. There was the R from the last note but no J.

Now the note read:

WAR      T      HE      SC      I N

“What the hell does that mean?” Watershed whispered.

Trilby Van Droz was still on her knees at the victim’s side, Pescoli beside her. The sheriff ordered Brett Gage, the chief criminal deputy, to follow the trail broken in the snow. He, along with a deputy in charge of the dogs, took off toward the east end of the clearing.

“How the hell would someone get in here?” Grayson asked as the ambulance’s siren screamed louder.

Pescoli rubbed the woman’s wrist. “Can you hear me?” she asked. From the corner of her eyes, she saw the ambulance slide to a stop in the old, snow-covered parking lot of the dilapidated lodge. “What’s your name? Who did this to you?”

“She’s unresponsive,” Deputy Van Droz said. “I haven’t been able to get a word out of her.”

Two EMTs, carrying their equipment, hurried toward the woman lying in the snow. With one quick examination the shorter of the two rescue workers, a black woman with a no-nonsense look on her face, whipped out a two-way and called for a chopper. “We need to get her out of here,” she said, giving the helicopter directions, then hanging up. “It’ll take too long to drive her back to the hospital.” Her dark eyes moved back to the victim as she told the detectives, “Chopper on its way. Should be here in five. So all of you just back the hell up and let us work!”

The detectives and FBI agents took a few steps backward, while the woman and her partner, a tall man still in his twenties, worked quickly, monitoring the victim’s vital signs, administering oxygen, covering her and tending to her. In the distance, the sound of a helicopter’s rotors sliced through the air.

“The scene’s been destroyed,” Chandler said, frowning, her gaze traveling over the mashed snow and solitary tree.

“It’s like the others,” Pescoli said.

“But there may be evidence buried here.” Chandler’s gaze scanned the trodden-down snow and the poor woman who lay motionless on the gurney.

“The crime scene investigators will figure that out,” Pescoli said as the rescue helicopter came into view and the news chopper flew to a spot higher in the sky, never quite giving up its vantage point.

“War to the scientists,” Watershed said.

“What?” Pescoli frowned.

“The note.”

“We can figure that out later,” she snapped, uninterested in the stupid clues the killer had left behind. Now they had a victim who was alive, one they could save, one who could potentially name her attacker.

To hell with the damned note.

“Did that copter happen to find the car?” Chandler asked as a basket was lowered. “We’re still missing two cars, assuming this person isn’t Jillian Rivers.”

“She’s not,” Pescoli said as she noted the victim’s tiny nose and wide mouth. Her hair was short and streaked with shades of blond, a widow’s peak was evident, and her eyes were a brown so intense they were nearly black. She was tall and thin, probably five nine or ten, so gaunt her ribs showed, her feet at least a size nine. Pescoli remembered the pictures she’d seen of Jillian Rivers. Even if Rivers lost weight, cut and dyed her hair and wore dark contacts, she wouldn’t resemble either woman they’d found today.

“So where the hell is she? Why do we have her car and not this woman’s or the Jane Doe we found up at Cougar Pass?” Agent Chandler asked, her eyebrows knit in frustration, her breath fogging in the cold air.

“We’ll find her,” Halden, her partner, said. He was the calmer of the two, though he, too, was irritated, his mouth set and grim, his eyes scanning the surrounding area, where the dilapidated, graying buildings of what had once been a profitable hunting lodge were partially hidden by snow-laden trees and rocky hills. It was desolate up here, the whole area looking decrepit and forgotten, a testament to death.

The victim was transferred to the rescue basket and winched skyward as the helicopter started moving, heading back to Grizzly Falls, just as the crime scene team arrived.

“How the hell did he get them to two different places, miles apart?” Chandler muttered angrily.

“One at a time. First the victim at Cougar Pass and now this Jane Doe.”

“Her initials being HE or EH, if the pattern remains the same.”

“It is,” Chandler said. “He’s just escalating.”

“Not just escalating,” Pescoli said. “So far he’s duplicating. He’s not killing closer together; it’s like he’s doing a two-for-the-price-of-one thing. Two women in one day.” She was worried as she stared at the note and the tree to which the victim had been lashed. Traces of blood were visible on the bark, and drops of red dotted the snow. Whoever this woman was, she had struggled and fought.

“What the hell does that mean?” Grayson asked.

“I don’t know.” Stephanie Chandler was shaking her head. “We need to find out who these women are.”

“I’ve already called in both sets of initials to Missing Persons on the walkie,” Alvarez said. She was still standing near the entrance to the crime scene, making certain everyone was signing in as she waited for the crime scene team to arrive. “They’re checking.”

“Call dispatch. Have them bring in every available detective,” Sheriff Grayson said. “And I don’t want to hear any complaints about it being Sunday or a few days before Christmas or even that their kid has the flu. I want every available road deputy at the department when we get back into town. Overtime’s no problem. Screw the damned budget. Are the cell phone towers working again?”

“Not all of them, not yet,” Watershed said. “Just like the electricity. It’s spotty.”

A muscle worked in the sheriff’s jaw and his lips were flat beneath his moustache. He lifted his hat from his head, and staring at the pine tree, the would-be death scene, he raked stiff, gloved fingers through his hair. “I hate this son of a bitch,” he muttered under his breath.

Pescoli silently agreed. She prayed that they had found this victim in time. That EH or HE or whoever she was would live. And not just survive. Oh no. Pescoli hoped that the woman would be able to name her attacker and testify against him at the prick’s trial.

Yeah, that’s what she wanted, Pescoli thought as she shaded her eyes against the lowering sun and watched the helicopter disappear over the craggy summit of the mountain.

It would serve the bastard right.

Detective Gage returned with the dogs and the bad news that the trail had gone cold, ending up at a lower parking lot for the old lodge where tire tracks led away. The crime scene team would take tire and footprint casts, which were tricky but not impossible in the snow. With Snow Print Wax sprayed onto the tracks several times and followed by the dental stone impression material, clear casts could be created. Once the impression material hardened, experts would make duplicate prints and study them, trying to figure out the make and imperfections in the tire tread and boot prints. Methodically, experts would go through the painstaking process of finding out who had bought those particular tires in a hundred-mile radius of the area and start comparing the tread, vehicle by vehicle.