Chosen To Die. Lisa Jackson

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      Grayson squared his hat on his head. “Let me know what you find out. Has anyone checked with dispatch? Seen if an alarm has come in?”

      “They haven’t heard from her either. No officer in distress came in.”

      Rubbing a hand around the back of his neck, Grayson shook his head. “This isn’t like her. See what you can find out.” He glanced out the windows to the snow-covered landscape. “As soon as the weather breaks, I’m flying with Chandler and Halden to Spokane today,” he said, mentioning the two FBI agents who had been assigned to the case.

      “The woman the Spokane cops arrested is not our guy,” Alvarez stated flatly.

      A muscle tightened in Grayson’s jaw. “I hope to hell you’re wrong.”

      She glanced to the notes strewn across her desk. “The person who’s been arrested; she doesn’t fit the pattern. I’ll bet she’s got an alibi for all the homicides.”

      “The Feds are checking.”

      “So am I.” Alvarez wasn’t trusting anyone else in dealing with the Star-Crossed Killer. Not even the FBI.

      “In the meantime, find Pescoli.”

      “I will,” she promised, sliding her arm through her shoulder holster and strapping it on. Grayson slapped the top of her cubicle wall and started toward the door, only to be roadblocked by Joelle Fisher, the receptionist and resident busybody for the department. Pushing sixty, she looked a good ten years younger than her age, and was forever dressed in spiky high heels and short, tight dresses with prim little jackets. Her platinum hair was piled as near a 1950s beehive as she dared and never was a single hair out of place.

      It was an odd look, a step out of time, but somehow Joelle pulled it off.

      Now, all in red, she was chattering on about a holiday party as if the horror of the last few months were the last thing on her mind.

      “Cort’s wife has promised to bring in her prizewinning crown jewel cookies. They took second at the church bazaar, you know, and only because Pearl Hennessy decided to enter her gingersnaps, the ones that have a hint of orange. Well, who would beat those, I ask you?”

      Alvarez didn’t stop to find out. The less she knew about the family of Cort Brewster, the undersheriff, the better. Alvarez didn’t really like the man, though she couldn’t put her finger on why. Brewster was a stand-up guy, been with the department for years, married to the same woman for nearly a quarter of a century. A devoted father of four, he was deacon in the local Methodist church and all that, but there was something about him that made her edgy, something that didn’t seem to ring true.

      That’s because you’re always suspicious, have been since your early teens, but you know why, don’t you? Just your little secret that you don’t dare share.

      Ignoring that nasty little voice in her mind, she decided it was okay not to like Brewster. Just recently there had been an incident that reaffirmed Alvarez’s opinion of the undersheriff: Pescoli’s son, Jeremy, was found to be dating Heidi Brewster, Cort’s pistol of a fifteen-year-old daughter. The kids had been busted for underage drinking and the tension inside Brewster had been palpable.

      Merry Christmas.

      All of Joelle’s talk was falling on the sheriff’s deaf ears.

      “Fine, fine, whatever you think,” Grayson muttered as his cell phone blasted and he picked up.

      Alvarez hustled past the Christmas cookie discussion before Joelle could turn her attention her way. Tucking her scarf into her jacket, she headed outside where the wind whistled and the air seemed to crackle. She yanked on her gloves as she passed the flagpole where Old Glory was snapping and shivering in the stiff wind.

      From the corner of her eye she noticed a news van, the last remaining one parked across the street, the driver cradling a cup of coffee that was so hot steam nearly obliterated the window. Most of the other members of the media had taken off, chasing the story in Spokane. Except for this lone newsperson, a die-hard still camped near the sheriff’s department. An orange slash and the call letters of KBTR were scripted across the side of the dirty white van.

      Alvarez avoided the KBTR van like the plague. Her dealings with the media had been few and she preferred it that way. Better to keep her private life just that. Her boots crunched across the snow as she found her Jeep. Scraping an inch of snow and a layer of ice off the windshield, she spied Ivor Hicks’s truck rolling up the street. Great, she thought, watching Hicks as he huddled over the steering wheel of his wheezing truck. A hunter’s cap complete with orange earmuffs was pulled low over his head and his eyes seemed twice their size behind thick glasses.

      Owlish.

      And a nutcase that made Grace Perchant, Pinewood County’s resident ghost whisperer, look sane.

      Ivor parked on the street and slid out, his heavy boots sinking into the snow that had been plowed into a dingy, deep drift near the curb.

      “The sheriff in?” he asked, his glasses starting to fog.

      “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 county-issued 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-hundred-foot 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 theRandPof 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 SCORPIONorWARY OF THE SCORPIONor evenWAR 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.

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