Left To Die (32 page)

It could take weeks. Or longer. Assuming they were able to get a good, clear print.

At that moment, the sheriff’s cell phone beeped. “Looks like we got service up here again,” he said, and answered, his expression darkening as he listened. “Yeah…right…good. Send the chopper up. Use one from the state police if you have to, but check out the area. See if there’s any sign of activity. Tracks. Smoke from a chimney. Noise or exhaust from a generator. Any damned thing! Yeah…yeah…I know. Get back to me.”

He hung up and said, “It looks like we might have caught a break. Jillian Rivers’s cell phone company called. They got a ping off her phone and pinpointed it to a tower up on Star Ridge.”

“That’s wicked country up there,” Watershed said.

“Yeah, well, what else is new?” Grayson was already headed back to his Suburban. “The crime scene team can handle this. Let’s go.”

Pescoli didn’t waste a second. Finally, it seemed, they’d caught a break. She felt a surge of satisfaction.
We’re going to get you, you bastard.

Look at them!

Police officers crawling over the “crime scene” like ants on an anthill. Hurrying this way, scurrying that. Not having a clue that I’m here, in the warmth of the bar, sipping a drink of fine Kentucky whiskey as I blend in with the rest of the patrons, the men and women who have stopped in for a drink after work to share conversation, even laughter, and shake off the bitter cold of winter, here in the lower part of the town, in a century-old building overlooking the river.

As one, we stare at the old television mounted over the colored bottles glistening in front of the mirror.

The bar is glossy wood, reflecting the lights overhead, holding up a half dozen sets of elbows of men who’ve come inside after a day’s labor. There are women, too, but most of them are seated at the tables near the fire, where real logs are blazing in a massive stone fireplace that was built over a hundred years earlier, when miners and loggers in cork boots trod on these old plank floors. From the kitchen, the scents of grilled onions and burgers seep through the open doorway, accompanied by the sizzle of the deep-fat fryer.

I, like the other customers, am shaking my head at the senseless horror playing out on the screen.

“I can’t believe it could happen here. Right outside Grizzly Falls,” one sawmill worker says. While he stares up at the images on the flickering television screen, some faint Christmas carol can be heard over the buzz of the patrons. What is it? Oh yeah. “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.”

As if that’s possible in Grizzly Falls tonight.

The guy next to me isn’t small. In fact, his belly is so big it swings up to the bar, seemingly independent of him, as he settles onto a stool. Grease shows around his fingernails, bits of sawdust cling to the long hairs that grow from the back of his neck, hairs that should have been shaved away from his unruly beard.

“The world’s changed,” I say, frowning as if I, too, am aghast at the horror being shown to us via the airwaves. The simpleton thinks I’m agreeing.

“This used to be a safe place.”

“Didn’t it?”

“No more, I guess. Hey!” Crooking one fat finger, he signals to Nadine, the barkeep.

“The usual, Dell?” she asks, sliding a coaster to him and pretending that his ordering her around doesn’t bother her. But she slides me a glance. We both know Dell Blight’s a pig.

“Yeah. A Bud.”

She’s already got a chilled glass under the spigot of a hidden keg. “This is just so horrible. What kind of monster would leave those women out in the forest?” Nadine asks, and looks at my near-empty shot glass. “Another?” She lifts her gaze a bit and our eyes hold for the briefest of seconds.

I nod, return her smile, pretend I don’t really understand what she’s offering.

“You’d think the sheriff could nail this fucker,” Big Belly Blight says with a knowing nod. He believes if he were the sheriff, he’d have “the fucker” behind bars already. “What the hell do we elect him for?”

“Grayson’s doing a good job. And they might just catch the guy.” Nadine obviously isn’t in the mood to take any crap from the likes of Dell Blight. “This woman”—she hooks her thumb toward the television—“she didn’t die.”

What?
Every muscle in my body freezes. “Is that so?” I ask, as if I’m really concerned. Nadine must have her information wrong. The woman is dead. Hannah is dead. She has to be!

“That’s what they’re sayin’,” Nadine assures both me and Dell. “I’d turn up the sound, but, you know, Farley, he likes the volume down so we can enjoy the music.” She makes a sour face. “It’s Christmas, y’know.”

I nod, grinning, but deep down I feel not only fear but a little spark of anger. Nadine has to be wrong. Dead wrong.
Calm down. Take control.
I lift my glass to my lips, as if to sip, but instead take a deep breath, tamp down my fear.

“I heard about the latest victim surviving. A bit ago, when I was out back on my break. It was all over the radio,” Nadine assures us with the eager anticipation of one imparting fresh gossip. “They found two women today. One’s dead, but this one, the one the news crew located, she’s alive. In some kind of coma, but alive.”

“Will she make it?” I ask, feigning concern for the stupid bitch who was supposed to expire. What the hell was wrong with her? I left her to succumb to the elements, but, obviously Hannah is stronger than she looks.
Fool. Damned superior fool. You let your ego get the better of your good sense.

“Who knows if she’ll survive?” Nadine touches my hand then. A caress, where her thumb trails down the back of mine.

“
Two
women? They found two? Holy cripes!” Beer Belly Dell shakes his balding head and the scent of fresh sawdust wafts my way. “I don’t get how this guy gets off. They say the women haven’t been raped. No sexual activity whatsoever. The guy’s probably a queer.”

I smile, as if I agree, but the man’s an idiot. Of course an imbecile like Dell Blight can’t understand. His brain is probably the size of a walnut.

But still I’m bothered. Is it possible? Is Hannah alive? Her living would make things difficult.

“Nah,” Ole Olson, the round little guy in the dirty baseball cap sitting next to Dell, pipes up. “He ain’t no queer. If he was, he’d be haulin’ men up there and tyin’ ’em up and doin’ weird shit to ’em. More’n likely he got no balls at all.”

“What do y’mean, no balls? Like a woman?”

“Like no balls. He’s been neutered, he’s…he’s one of them…them…” Ole snaps his thick fingers. “One of them U-nuts.”

“U-nuts?” Dell repeats with a snort, then takes a long drink. “You mean like U-bolts?”

“I think he means eunuch,” I say, then wish I hadn’t even opened my mouth. What would these cretins know?

“What the hell is a fuckin’ U-nick?” Dell’s face is screwed up like he’d just smelled week-old dead fish.

“That’s just it, they can’t fuck cuz they got no balls,” Ole says.

“Enough!” Nadine shakes her head as she scoops up a couple of empty glasses and drops them into a sink. Quick as a rattler striking, she slides the tips across the bar with her polished fingernails and stuffs the bills into the pocket of her apron. She glances up at the television screen, where a reporter is standing in front of the local hospital.

“I hope she survives,” she whispers.

“Who?” Ole, true to character, missed a vital part of the earlier conversation.

“The woman they found in the forest, the one who didn’t die.” Nadine is starting to get pissed.

“She’s seen that psycho,” Ole says, catching on.

I feel an unlikely chill. My face was exposed. She knows my touch, can recognize me.

“Yep. She’ll nail his ass in court.” Nadine nods, stiff red-blond hair unmoving.

Dell snorts before draining his glass and wiggling the empty as a signal for another. “He’s got to be caught first, and my money says that Sheriff Numb-Nuts won’t come close.”

I take a drink to hide my smile.

“Oh, Grayson will catch him all right.” Coming to Grayson’s defense, Nadine looks to me for support.

I lift a noncommittal shoulder that says
Maybe
, though I think
Don’t count on it.

“He will!” Nadine is certain as she snaps a clean towel from a stack under the counter. “You just wait and see.” She swabs the bar with a vengeance.

“Humph. Not by countin’ on the likes of crazy Ivor Hicks. Shit, that nutcase found a body and claimed the aliens sent him there,” Ole says.

“That Crypton, he’s one smart sergeant,” Dell corrects.

“It’s Crytor, moron. And he’s a fuckin’ general. Get it right. An orange reptile and a fuckin’ general.”

They both laugh uproariously.

“The old man hallucinates,” Nadine says quickly, and looks at me, embarrassed. She doesn’t like the way the conversation has turned. The crazy old man’s a regular, too, when he’s not on the wagon. “Give Ivor a break, will ya? And for God’s sake, have some faith in Sheriff Grayson. He’s doing a great job.”

I finish the first drink and wait as she places a fresh glass and coaster in front of me.

“Great job, my ass.” Dell isn’t cutting Grayson any breaks. “Why hasn’t this piece of shit been brought in? Huh? How hard could it be to track a killer in the goddamned snow? What the hell are those tracking dogs for? Hell, do you know what it costs for one of them? Sheeeeiiiiit.”

“Grayson will get the guy,” Nadine insists, with a look at me, as if she and I, the two of us, have a secret. As if we co-conspirators realize that Big Belly is an oaf and we, of far superior intellect, have the good sense to trust Sheriff Dan Grayson.

“What’s he waitin’ for?” Big Belly Dell is staring up at the television, where the cameraman in the chopper zooms in on Grayson’s worried, hard face.

“Grayson’s an asshole,” a voice from my other side affirms. “I went to school with him. He don’t know up from damned sideways. Hey, Nadine, how about another?”

“Whiskey sour is it, Ed?” she asks, and flashes him a grin meant to tease the biggest tip possible from Ed’s slim wallet. Nadine knows how to work the crowd. She’s flirty and sassy enough to keep the men interested. On the skinny side, smelling of cigarettes, she nonetheless has teeth that always show a brilliant white behind lips always glossed to a fine peach shine. And her blouse is always buttoned low enough to allow the regulars a glimpse of the tops of her breasts. She wears low-cut jeans with a silvery belt that dangles low and offers just a hint of skin and the tease of a tattoo peeking above her waistband. Turquoise and pink swirls rise up her backbone, widening visibly before dipping suggestively below the denim and giving a man a hard-on just thinking about what naughty splay of colors might be caressing her buttocks.

I hear the men speculate.

“I think it’s a butterfly,” one bearded young man once said.

“No way. It’s like some kind of Chinese symbol,” his compatriot argued.

Another said, “I’ve got it on good account that it’s humming birds, a whole flock of ’em, some peering out from between her butt cheeks.”

This caused some raucous laughter but none of the simpletons had the faintest idea of the intricacies that really lay beneath her clothes, that sexy, wild series of waves that undulate around her hips as she slowly undresses.

Few have had the privilege of actually seeing her lying naked, butt up, hips tilted, suggesting she wants to rut like a mare in heat, those pink-tinged waves offering a warm, wet sea for me to thrust into.

I look at her and she catches the glance.

Doesn’t say a word.

But she knows.

I take a long pull from my drink and suck in ice cubes, cracking them between my teeth, as I turn my attention back to the television screen, where now the sheriff, hanging up his phone, begins striding away from the crime scene.

That’s not right.

Another mistake. You made another mistake!

I won’t think of it, but I can feel my nerves tighten as I see the detectives rushing to their vehicles. I zero in on Regan Pescoli, that bitch of a woman. Beautiful and rough. Tough as nails.

Or so she thinks.

I feel my eyes narrow upon her as the fantasy unwinds in my mind….
Get ready
, I think, but her time has not yet come.

I have others…one not yet discovered.

Or am I wrong?

Is that possible?

Why are the cops hurrying away from the scene, running to their vehicles, lights on their SUVs flashing red and blue as they peel out of the lot of the old lodge.

Where the hell are they going?

My heart nearly stops.

I crack an ice cube so loudly, Dell slides a glance my way.

“Jesus, you got jaws of steel or what?”

I laugh. “’Course I do,” I say, trying to appear calm, attempting to hide my agitation, as on the screen the posse drives away and deep inside fear threatens to consume me. I couldn’t have erred again. Couldn’t have.

“See what I mean? A real asshole,” Dell says, looking upward at the television. “Grayson’s useless.”

Of course he is.

I calm.

Tamp down my momentary fear.

As Burl Ives’s voice starts to sing “A Holly, Jolly Christmas” from hidden speakers, my gaze meets Nadine’s and we share a secretive smile.

The kind exchanged by secret lovers.

Holly, jolly, my ass.

Chapter Nineteen

Jillian had never been so cold in her life.

Teeth chattering, mind numb with fear, she struggled to free herself, to slip through the bonds. Her mind was sluggish and dull, but she forced herself to think, to find a way to extricate herself from the rope that held her fast to the tree.

The sick smell of ether still clung to her nostrils and she coughed and spat as her mind began to clear. Vaguely she recalled being attacked as she tried to save the dog, of having a rag held over her nose and mouth as she flailed wildly, fighting for a breath of air, feeling her good leg wobble and battling the darkness that encroached upon her vision and dragged her under.

Then her thoughts were scattered and vague. She remembered nothing clearly and the memories she did have were dull, mainly sensations. She sensed she was being dragged, that whoever had attacked her was laboring, having trouble breathing, and obviously hadn’t planned on having to carry her. But other than that, she remembered little.