But he couldn’t stop the tightening in his chest and the feeling of dread stealing over him as he paused at a red light, searching the snowy streets, looking for any trace of her car.
But she was gone.
Not a trace of her little Outback anywhere.
A snowplow was scraping the street near the railroad tracks and a small SUV was climbing the hill, heading toward the newer section of town, but Alvarez’s vehicle had disappeared.
Damn it all to hell!
He tried to calm himself.
It’s going to be all right. She’s fine.
But he didn’t believe it for an instant.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” he told himself and pulled out his phone once more.
Alvarez’s heart was beating faster than that of a frightened hummingbird. She knew she was making a mistake and walking full on into a trap. She would have advised anyone in the same situation to call the police or the FBI, any agency equipped to handle a situation like this, but she couldn’t make the call. This was Gabe, her son, and she didn’t doubt for a second that if she screwed up, the monster who held him would take his life. Probably on camera and send it not only to Alvarez, but the media as well.
“Sick freak.” Driving faster than she should have, she weighed the options. What were the chances of saving Gabe on her own? With the help of all the police resources?
She slid around a corner and tried to get a grip, forcing her racing heart to slow.
It all came down to Preacher Mullins’s Presbyterian church, Pescoli decided as she stared at the legal pad on which she’d made notes. There were printouts spread all over her desk area, and her computer was still cross-referencing every bit of information they had on the victims. But she liked to write. To doodle. To think rather than allow a machine to do all the work for her.
So, she’d come back to the church. Again. She’d thought it might be the key before, as the Presbyterian church was the one connecting link to most of the victims. Lara Sue Gilfry had been to that particular church a couple of times and, in death, encased in ice, had been placed in the nativity scene at the Presbyterian church. Though there were other crèches in the area, six in all, five at different churches and the sixth in the front of the parochial school, for some reason, the freak had chosen Preacher Mullins’s private crèche to display his first victim.
Why?
Originally, Pescoli had thought it was because of the location or the size of the figures, but now she wasn’t so certain. The killer had pinpointed that crèche for a reason.
Then there was victim number two. Lissa Parsons. She, too, had been a parishioner at Mullins’s church, though her attendance had been spotty of late.
Brenda Sutherland, also, had been active in the parish, had even been there for a meeting on the night she was abducted.
Yep, all three connect
ed directly in one way or another to Mullins’s parish.
The fourth woman who had gone missing, Johnna Phillips, had never been a member at Mullins’s church, but her ex-boyfriend Carl’s aunt attended ... That was a stretch, but at least some connection, and so far, they weren’t certain Johnna was a victim or potential victim of the killer.
So how does Alvarez fit into this? “There’s the rub,” Pescoli said aloud.
Alvarez, by her own admission, had been raised Catholic in some tiny spot in Oregon and hadn’t, to Pescoli’s knowledge, attended any church since leaving home. Her baby had been adopted out through the help of the Catholic church and then, sixteen years ago, as far as Pescoli could tell, Selena Alvarez’s relationship with God had either ended or become personal to the level that she never attended church, not even on Christmas or Easter.
She was the one piece of this particular puzzle that didn’t fit. Closing her eyes, she leaned back in her chair. “How does she know you?” she whispered as if the lunatic were standing in the room with her rather than holed up in his damned lair somewhere not far from Grizzly Falls.
As she walked into the task force room, she called Alvarez, wanted her to think about any connection she might have to the church or someone within the church. It was a long shot, but ...
As soon as the call connected, it went straight to voice mail, so Pescoli left a voice message and then wrote a quick text, which, because of her children, she’d learn to do rapidly, without really thinking. Then she hit send and stood in front of the large map of the county, eyeing the different-colored pins representing different areas of this part of the state. Though terrain wasn’t included on the political map, she knew where the mountains rose, the cliffs fell and the forests covered the ground.
So many places to hide.
But the victims had all been found within two miles from the heart of the city. He had to be close by. Someone who knew Alvarez ... She’d checked out the people Alvarez had dated. Kevin Miller, Grover Pankretz, Terry Longstrom and now Dylan O’Keefe. Aside from O’Keefe, there was no history of violence and Alvarez didn’t know any of the ice sculptors who’d shown up for that festival ...
She looked at the pictures of the suspect, blown up and pinned to the same wall where the victims were pictured, their personal information noted. How were they connected?
Johnna Phillips’s photograph had been included, though the question mark beside her name hadn’t been erased.