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“The sheriff in?” he asked, his glasses starting to fog.
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“Just leaving, I think.”
“Maybe I can catch him . . .” Wincing against arthritis, he hitched himself toward the building. Alvarez was glad to see him go before he started talking about alien abductions and the like, his favorite topic since his own “abduction.” He still claimed to talk to Crytor, the general of the Reptilian alien forces or some such nonsense, and was forever reporting his conversations, all exacerbated by his affinity for Jack Daniel’s, to the police. Today, Ivor was Grayson’s problem.
Alvarez settled behind the wheel of her countyissued Jeep and was out of the lot in seconds, her wipers cutting away any residual ice on the windshield, the heater blasting full force. She melded into the traffic winding its way down the steep streets that sloped down the face of Boxer Bluff. The upper tier of the town, including the sheriff’s department and jail, sat high on the hill overlooking the five-hundredfoot drop to the heart of the original town of Grizzly Falls, or “Old Grizzly” as it was called by the locals. Shops, restaurants, offices, and even the courthouse lined the main street that ran parallel to the river and offered views of the raging falls for which the town was named.
Her police band crackled as she drove through the outskirts of town. She tried the phone again, was directed to voicemail, and tried to tamp down the doubts that gnawed at her mind. There could be a dozen reasons Pescoli wasn’t answering, any number of excuses why she hadn’t shown up. She didn’t necessarily have to be the next victim of a sick serial killer . . .
But her initials work, don’t they? If you really think the killer’s trying to issue a warning, then the R and P of 54
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Pescoli’s name fit perfectly into the theory that the killer is slowly, with each victim’s initials, leaving the chilling note of: BEWARE THE SCORPION or WARY OF THE SCORPION or even WAR OF THE SCORPION.
“What does it mean?” she asked aloud. “Beware the scorpion? Wary of the scorpion? No way.” She stepped on the accelerator as the Jeep angled upward and the houses became sparse, giving way to the icy forest.
Alvarez didn’t expect Pescoli to be holed up in her cabin, not unless she was deathly ill. But even then the woman would have enough sense to call out. Unless she was injured, couldn’t reach the phone. Or had been abducted by a deranged human being. Selena tucked in her shoulders, physically fending that idea off. Pescoli had sounded irritated on the message she’d left, ready to wring her ex-husband’s neck. But that wasn’t a news flash. Regan and Lucky had suffered a bad marriage and, as she’d always said,
“a badder divorce.”
Alvarez didn’t leave a message, just kept driving along the plowed county road where the snow was covered in gravel and had packed hard over the pavement. To access the side roads, a vehicle had to burst through the icy berm that had been left in the wake of the plows.
Fir and pine trees, needles laden with ice and snow, stood guard as she located the private lane leading to Pescoli’s cabin. Snow nearly obliterated the tire ruts; no car, truck, or SUV had come or gone in a long while.
She navigated the winding lane, laying fresh tracks through the trees and across a small bridge before the cabin came into view. Pescoli’s son’s truck was parked to one side, snow piled high, but the garage
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door was down and the only lights that glowed through the windows were the colored strands of a Christmas tree.
Alvarez parked near Jeremy’s truck, grabbed a tissue and swiped at her nose, then climbed outside and broke a path in the snow to the front door. On the porch, she knocked and waited. But the house was quiet. No sounds of voices, or a television, or their yapping little terrier came from within. In fact, the place seemed ethereally silent as night slid through the surrounding thickets.
She hit the doorbell and knocked again, but got no response. “Pescoli?” she yelled. “It’s Alvarez!”
Her voice bounced back at her, echoing through the deep canyons surrounding this isolated little house. On the porch she walked from one window to the next, shading her eyes against the reflection on the glass, noting that the house was empty, not a light on aside from the soft glow of the Christmas tree. Even the television was dark. She spied dishes on the counter and an open pizza box on a small table, but no signs of life. Nor evidence of foul play. She walked around all sides of the cabin that hung on the side of a hill. On the backside, where the hill sloped, she peered into a window to Jeremy’s room, but it, too, was dark. No one was inside.
Once she’d looked through all the windows of the house, she backtracked to the garage, found a small window, and standing on her tiptoes peered inside. Empty.
The whole family was gone.
A bad feeling followed Alvarez as she looked around for places someone would hide a key. Nothing under the mat or in the pots near the front 56
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door. She checked under the eaves and on the window casings. Nada.
She’s a cop. It wouldn’t be near the door. Alvarez retraced her steps to the garage and searched, but found nothing, then circumvented the house again and stopped at the far side near the back of the fireplace where she noticed a vent. Unlikely.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
She pulled the glove off with her teeth, then searched the vent and felt a bit of metal hanging inside. “Eureka,” she muttered. Within seconds, she’d taken it to the back door and walked into the kitchen where the smells of pepperoni and cheese still lingered.
