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Glancing outside to the darkness, where no exterior lights offered the slightest illumination, she said, “Come on, Trace!” The lights had gone off in the barn and stable, too. . . . Surely he’d return ASAP.
In the meantime . . .
Following the week, thin light from the flashlight, she mounted the stairs. Darkness seemed to sink into her from every corner of this old, unfamiliar house. She rounded the corner of the landing and heard another thud against the house.
What the hell was that?
Eli?
Swallowing back her fear, she thundered up the remaining stairs, swung around the newel post in the hallway, and pushed open the door to Eli’s room.
The bed was empty; sheets and blankets had slithered onto the floor. “Eli!” she cried, searching crazily, swinging the beam of her flashlight through the room. “Eli!” She threw open the closet door and found nothing but clothes, then ran through the bathroom and Trace’s room, the flashlight growing weaker but giving up no trace of the boy. “Eli!” Oh, God, oh, God! Where was he?
Now in a full-blown panic, Kacey was sweating despite the cold, fear clawing at her throat. She looked through the third bedroom, around the draped furniture, under the hems, through the maze of boxes and pictures stacked around the bed and mattress, pushed up against the wall. “Eli!” she called and then, thinking he might be as frightened as she was, said, “It’s Kacey, honey. Where are you?”
Oh, sweet Jesus, she’d lost him!
CHAPTER 34
Pescoli drove.
She didn’t care that Missoula was out of their jurisdiction.
She didn’t give a rat’s ass that the FBI was stepping in.
She wanted answers and she wanted them now.
So, while Alvarez was on the phone with one of their junior detectives who’d been left in charge of turning Gerald Johnson’s life inside out, Pescoli squinted through the windshield where the wipers were having trouble keeping up with the relentless snow falling from the night sky.
It was times like these she craved a cigarette and if Alvarez weren’t such a health nut, Pescoli, who’d learned her glove box stash of Marlboro Lights was totally depleted, might break down and stop at a local convenience store for a pack of smokes and a super-sized cup of Diet Coke. That’s the combo she needed to keep her fired up.
Gerald Johnson lived in a gated community, part of a resort that flanked a private golf club where the buy-in was more than her house was worth and the dues would eat up more than a chunk of her salary. She only hoped the bastard was home.
Armed with Kacey Lambert’s theories and Alvarez’s sketchy proof, she and her partner were going to see the old man, shake him up. Though she’d come to the party late, disbelieving Alvarez’s suspicions that the victims could be related by blood, Pescoli was now on board. She’d finally bought into the wild idea that women were being killed because they were 727’s sperm bank daughters. Why, was another matter. Who, the most critical piece of all.
The weather was a bitch, but then, this was Montana in the winter. What did she expect?
“. . . okay, got it,” Alvarez said into her cell as the radio crackled with news of a robbery and fleeing suspect on Main Street. “Keep looking. Anything you can find on Johnson, his kids, and the clinic ... call me back.” She clicked off and glanced at Pescoli, her face tense as oncoming headlights flooded the interior with glaring light for a few seconds. “Leona’s on it.” Leona Randolph was a junior detective who had recently joined the department. Highly skilled in all things technical, Leona had the command of the Internet that amazed Pescoli. Though the girl was only a few years ol
der than Jeremy, Leona was light-years ahead of him in maturity, ambition and direction. Her son could take a lesson!
“I think the turn-off is about a mile ahead,” Alvarez said as the snow blew down in sheets, making visibility almost an impossibility. Pescoli slowed out of necessity. The traffic had been reduced to a crawl. Now, when she felt time was of the essence, that the killer was escalating, that the clock was ticking, she was stymied by the blizzard.
“There’s the private road to Cougar Springs,” Alvarez said, pointing, just as the beams of Pescoli’s headlights washed up against a wide turn.
They plowed through the snow and up a road that wound through the sparse timber of a mountain resort and past a gatehouse where Pescoli flashed a badge at the guard and mentioned Gerald Johnson’s name. Once the gate swung open, she put the Jeep into a lower gear and drove it up the steep, winding lane. A quarter of a mile in they passed a three-storied glass and cedar lodge, warm lights glowing from windows that climbed to the sharply pitched, snow-covered roof. Tonight only a few cars, unidentifiable as they were half-buried in the snow, were parked in the lot.
Still upward they drove past forested lots with huge, rambling houses tucked into the hillside. Many of them, the summer homes, were dark, only a few showed warm patches of light blazing from windows—those owned by people who lived here year-round or spent their holidays on the nearby ski trails.
“Rough life,” Pescoli muttered.
“Boring life,” Alvarez added.
“I might be tempted to take a year or two of ‘boredom’ like this.”
“Oh, sure. You’d be climbing the walls inside of a week. Back on the force within two.” She slid a look at her partner. “Who are you trying to kid? Me? Or yourself?”
“Both of us, maybe,” she muttered.
