This time, the note read:
W T SC I N
“What the hell does that mean?” Brewster, who had driven out with Alvarez, asked.
“Don’t know.”
“Is it some kind of warning, explanation?”
Alvarez shook her head. “He’s just screwing with us. Obviously the victim’s initials are W and I, though who knows which is her first name and which is her last.”
“You mean like Wilhelmina Ingles or Ida Wellington?”
“Yeah,” she said sarcastically, slowly walking around the tree, though at a short distance away. “Like Wilhelmina.” Already the forensic techs and ME were examining the body, trying to establish a time of death and maybe a cause, as well as searching the area for any other pieces of evidence, anything at all.
As for the cause of death, Alvarez was willing to bet the cause was the same as the others: exposure. Though this woman’s body had a few more bruises and cuts upon it, Alvarez thought the end result would be the same. Maybe the killer was growing more violent, getting off on torturing the women first. Or maybe this small woman fought harder than the others, or had fewer injuries from the “accident” where her vehicle had skidded off the icy road.
“No car found,” Brewster said, as if reading her thoughts.
“Yet.” She glanced up at him. There was no playful flirting now. “Only a matter of time.” From the corner of her eye, she saw movement coming down the trail they’d used to access this canyon, then her partner, Regan Pescoli, all five feet ten inches of her, appeared and signed in to the crime scene with the road deputy who’d been first to arrive at the site.
Pescoli was wearing sunglasses, though it wasn’t all that bright and clouds were rolling in, and the same unflattering outerwear as the rest of the detectives and road deputies on the scene.
“So we got ourselves another one,” she said as she reached Alvarez and Brewster. Her face was flushed, red hair coiling wildly from beneath her stocking cap, and the smell of cigarette smoke clung to her like a shroud.
Alvarez didn’t doubt for a minute that Pescoli had been partying the night before, hooking up with yet another loser, but she kept her mouth shut. As long as what her partner did off-hours didn’t affect her ability to handle her job, it wasn’t really any of Selena’s business.
“Yep, looks like,” she agreed. She brought Pescoli up to speed about the fact that no vehicle had been found, there were new letters on the same kind of note as left at the previous scenes, there was a slight repositioning of the star and the body had been found by Ivor Hicks.
“Old Man Hicks was up here?” Pescoli repeated, her eyes, behind shaded lenses, scanning the desolate area.
“Walking.”
“Who the hell walks up here before dawn?”
“It was the aliens again,” Brewster explained. “They made him do it.”
Pescoli’s lips twisted into a wry smile. “Was it Crytor, the reptilian genius, who sent him up here?”
“General, the reptilian general. Not genius,” Brewster corrected. Everyone in the department knew about Ivor Hicks’s transportation to the “mother ship” for experiments and tests by the aliens. The story had been written up in the local paper in the seventies, and then again recently, on the thirtieth anniversary of the abduction.
“Ivor been drinking?” Pescoli asked.
Alvarez shook her head. “Doesn’t seem like it.”
“He drinks a lot.”
“I know.”
Brewster snorted. “The aliens who did all those tests on him? Wonder if they ran a Breathalyzer.”
Alvarez smiled faintly.
“Yeah, they probably think all humans run around blowing a point-three-two in a blood alcohol level.”
Pescoli stared at the victim as the paramedics bagged her hands and feet, then cut her free and placed her into a body bag. “I don’t think Ivor has the strength, smarts or wherewithal to be our guy. What’s he tip out at, maybe a hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty pounds?” She shook her head. “You talk to him?” she asked Alvarez.
“At length. He’s in Deputy Hanson’s rig, if you want a word.”
“I do,” Pescoli said.
“You know he’ll go to the press as soon as he gets back into town.”
Pescoli pulled a face. “We’ve kept some details from the press but if Ivor shoots off his big mouth—”
“Every nutcase who wants a little publicity will come forward,” Alvarez said, unhappily considering the wasted man-hours that would be spent separating the wannabes from the real deal. The time ill-used sifting through the BS would take away from time that could be spent trying to find the killer.
“He’s all yours.” Alvarez hitched her chin toward the trail they’d all used to make their way into the canyon and Pescoli took off in the hopes that she could jar a little more information out of Ivor Hicks’s alcohol-shriveled brain.
“Good luck,” Alvarez muttered.
“Thanks.” Pescoli’s smile held no warmth. “I’ll radio in to missing persons, ask them about any missing Asian or Amer-Asian women with our vic’s description. I’ll also have them look for anyone missing in the last week with initials that include W and I.”
“Make it more than statewide. Have missing persons check Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Wyoming and California.”
“Got it.” Pescoli was already walking along the trail toward the idling rig where Ivor Hicks was waiting to insist everything he did was because of aliens.
Not exactly the most credible witness.
Alvarez watched as the body bag was carried out. “Guess we’re done here.”
“Yeah.” Brewster shook his head. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Don’t know.” They, too, began walking out of the snow-covered open space. “Before the next storm sets in, we need choppers and vehicles searching all the roads in a two-mile radius from this point. The other two victims’ bodies were found about a mile and a half from the point where their vehicles slid off the road. Pay special attention to the roads that curve sharply over a ravine.”
Brewster snorted. “You’re talking about every damned road in this part of the county.”
“I know.” She looked up at the sky where clouds were definitely gathering. They didn’t have a lot of time, but the longer they waited the more likely the Asian woman’s vehicle would be buried until the spring thaw and any evidence from the car would be lost or degraded. In the meantime she’d go back to the office and chart out each crime scene, see where, if at all, the two-mile radius from each separate area intersected.
Maybe then she’d be one step closer to finding the son of a bitch.
Sheriff Dan Grayson’s day had gone from bad to worse.
And it didn’t look like things were going to improve any time soon. With his heartburn acting up, he stood behind the desk in his office and stared out the window at the approaching storm. At five in the afternoon, the lights of the city were already glowing, reflecting bluish in the snow-covered streets. As the sheriff’s office and jail were perched on the top of Boxer Bluff, he had a view of the river and the falls, located nearly a mile downhill, where much of the town, including the brick-and-mortar, hundred-plus-year-old courthouse, was located.
The press, in the form of microphone-wielding