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 older 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.
“What’s eating you?”
“My kids. What else?” She would have liked to blame her pent-up anger on the case, and that was part of it, of course, but with Jeremy, who seemed hell-bent on being a big, fat zero, and Bianca, whose grades were slipping and was turning increasingly boy crazy, was the real source of her angst. And it didn’t help that she was getting pressure from Santana.
“Turn here,” Alvarez ordered.
Pescoli cranked on the wheel, slid just slightly, then her tires caught and the Jeep whined up a final bend where the road emptied into a circular drive belonging to Gerald Johnson.
“Showtime,” Pescoli said as she parked in front of a garage large enough to house a fleet of vehicles. Gaslights flickered near each of the carriage-style doors mounted on the stone facade. Snow blanketed the walkways, but Pescoli followed Alvarez to the front door. As Alvarez poked a gloved finger at the bell, the door suddenly opened and Gerald Johnson, appearing more forceful and athletic than he had in any of the pictures Pescoli had seen, greeted them.
“Officers,” he said, “Floyd at the gatehouse called and said you were on your way.” He stepped back from the door. “Come in. Ever since Acacia left my office this afternoon, I’ve been expecting you.”
Pescoli and Alvarez were allowed into the Johnson home, and just as they were asking Johnson about the clinic where he’d been a sperm donor, Gerald’s wife appeared on the upper landing and then quickly descended the wide staircase.
“Don’t, Gerald! I don’t know what these people want, but don’t tell them anything!”
“We’re here because of several recent homicides of women,” Alvarez said. “Their deaths, which we originally thought were accidents, have been on the news.” She pulled a plastic envelope with the pictures from her pocket. “Elle Alexander whose van was forced off the road, Jocelyn Wallis who, we believe, was pushed over the side of Boxer Bluff, possibly Shelly Bonaventure—”
“The actress in that god-awful vampire series?” Noreen Johnson asked, disbelieving.
Pescoli nodded. “And now, most recently, a local woman named Karalee Rierson.”
“Karalee,” Noreen squeaked, a hand flying to her lips.
“You know her?” Alvarez asked.
“I know of her.”
Alvarez handed Noreen the pictures and she took one look at the photo of Karalee Rierson and almost retched. “Oh, God. She was the nurse at a clinic where Gerald. .” She turned to him, examining his grim expression.
“We believe they’re homicides made to look like accidents,” Alvarez said.
“Homicides?” she repeated. “Murder? But what do we have to do with any of this? I. . I don’t know the others. Just Karalee.”
Pescoli said, “We have reason to believe they may have all been fathered by Mr. Johnson.”
“What? Fathered them?” Noreen flapped a hand at them. “That’s insane! Gerald, do not talk to these people!”
Alvarez watched the woman’s features, where a gauntlet of emotions, everything from despair, to denial, to rage, played across her face. Dressed in designer jeans and a silvery knit sweater that covered her hips, she was rail thin, nearly bony, the expensive diamonds at her throat, wrist, and fingers accentuating the bones and sinews that were visible beneath her tanned skin. Her near-white hair was cut boyishly, the skin of her face stretched taut as a drum, her makeup excessive.