Afraid to Die

  “So who put it there?”

  He was still shaking his head. “Dunno.”

  “Joey?”

  “What? I don’t think so. Nah, he wouldn’t.” He looked at her through the fringe of the hair falling over his forehead and she recognized the fear in those eyes that reminded her so much of Emilio. He was pleading with her, and she believed he was scared out of his mind.

  Good.

  So was she.

  Usually she was calm, a levelheaded cop, aside from the one mistake in San Bernardino, but this, dealing with her own flesh and blood, her son, was new and had her second-guessing herself.

  “You have to turn yourself in, you know.”

  “What?” He freaked. His expression turned to panic. “No!”

  “Of course you do, but I’ll be there. With you. And your mother, Aggie; she and your dad will be there, too. She’s worried sick about you.”

  “You don’t even know her.”

  “True. But I know she wants you to do the right thing.”

  “Which is turn myself in? No way!” He wasn’t buying it.

  As a cop, Alvarez believed in the system, trusted that truth and justice would win out, but he, of course, did not.

  “Uh-uh. They’ll put this all on me. No one will believe me!”

  “I believe you, Gabe.”

  “You have to!”

  “No, I don’t.” Stay calm. Don’t lose him.

  Angry now, Gabe looked as if he was about to turn and run, flee out the door and into the cold, dark night.

  “Don’t leave!” she said.

  “Why?” he said, and kept backing toward the front door.

  “Because we have to work this out. That’s the only way.”

  “What’s the only way? Going to jail. No way!” He turned.

  “Gabriel! Stop!”

  “Or what? You’ll shoot?” he yelled over his shoulder.

  “Go ahead. You gave me up before, you may as well shoot me and get it over with! It won’t be that big of a deal to you.”

  “What?” She’d barely met him and this was the way he was going to play her. “No, wait ... We can make this work!” She was chasing him down, desperate for him to stay. “I’ll be by your side. Promise!”

  “Oh, yeah, right! Look, forget it. Just forget it!”

  “I’m serious. You have to turn yourself in! I know the best defense attorneys, and if you’re innocent, we’ll prove it.”

  “If?” he threw back at her, spinning, his angry, dark gaze drilling into hers. “No, thanks, Mom. I’m outta here!”

  “I don’t think so.” She was ready to tackle him if need be, and as tall and lanky and angry as he was, she figured she had the moves; thanks to police training and tae kwon do, she could drop him, force him to stay, even cuff him if she had to.

  She just didn’t want to go there.

  Yet.

  “Gabe, seriously. You need to listen to me.”

  “That’s what I thought. But I was wrong.” He spun and ran toward the door just as it flew open to bang against the wall.

  Gabe jumped, then stopped dead in his tracks.

  Alvarez caught up with him just as Dylan O’Keefe, weapon drawn, filled the doorway.

  Chapter 25

  “Don’t shoot! For the love of God, don’t shoot!” Alvarez ordered. “Stand down!”

  Gabe, upon recognizing O’Keefe, froze. “Why the fuc—Hell, are you following me, man?” he yelled, agitated. “I didn’t do it! Whatever they’re saying I did, I didn’t freakin’ do it! You tell him,” he said, turning to Alvarez.

  “He claims he’s innocent,” she agreed, grateful that he’d been blocked from disappearing into the night. “Didn’t try to rob Judge Ramsey, that was all a mistake, and he didn’t take any of my jewelry when you chased him here.”

  “Or the dog either!” Gabe insisted.

  “So,” Alvarez said calmly, meeting O’Keefe’s gaze, “why don’t we all come inside and talk this out?”

  The boy shot her a look. “I’m done talkin’.”

  “But we need to sort things through.”

  “You just want me to turn myself in. You’re gonna try to talk me into it and I’m not doing it. I know how this works. Uh-huh. Once I’m in jail, I won’t get out. They’ll send me to juvie!”

  “Gabe, just listen,” O’Keefe said. “No one wants you in jail, but we do have to take you into the station so you can explain your side of things. I’ll call your mom, we’ll get an attorney and we’ll go from there.” O’Keefe’s voice was calm. Steady. But he didn’t move from the front entry hall, where he stood between the boy and the base of the stairs as well as the front door. Alvarez, where she was positioned, blocked Gabe’s path to the slider door and patio.

  Trapped, sensing he had no escape, the kid looked at the ground and swore under his breath. “I shouldn’t have come here. All you want to do is get rid of me again!”

  “I said I’m on your side. I meant it.”

  O’Keefe’s lips folded in on themselves and he appeared to be waging some mental battle, probably the same one that raged within her, but there was no way to let him go.

  “I think it would be best if I took Gabe, here, back to Helena.”

  “What, no!” Gabe’s face drained of color.

  “I agree. Let’s take him down to the sheriff ’s department here,” she said, thinking aloud. “I’m sure the Feds are going to want to talk to him.”

  “Feds? What do you mean?” Gabe said, glaring at her.

  “It’s just a formality.”

  “With who? The CIA or FBI, what Feds? Oh, Jesus—”

  O’Keefe said, “A couple of agents with the FBI. It’s no big deal. Both Detective Alvarez and I had to talk to them. Just tell them what you know and that’ll be the end of it.”

  “About what? Tell them what I know about what?” His skin had blanched and he looked as if he’d seen a ghost. “Why are they here?” he asked Alvarez, then his eyes narrowed. “Wait ... I heard about this from some kids on the street. It’s that ice-mummy guy, right?” Gabe’s eyes rounded and he looked as if he might wet himself. “They don’t think I’m that guy! Oh, Christ! I had nothing to do with any of that shit!”

  “I know,” Alvarez said. “Again, a formality.”

  “No! I’m not doing it! I want a lawyer. I want a phone call, don’t I get one?” he demanded, then turned to O’Keefe. “Call my mom. My real mom!”

  Before O’Keefe could reach for his phone, the sound of sirens split the air, louder and louder.

  “Oh, God!” the kid said, turning on Alvarez, hate burning in his gaze. “You turned me in!”

  “So the elusive Gabriel Reeve was waiting for you?” Pescoli asked an hour later as she and Alvarez were seated at a small table in a corner of the task force room. Computers and phones stood ready, and though it was Sunday, the room was filled with tension, officers coming and going, telephones jangling.

  Currently Sage Zoller, a junior detective with the department, and Agent Craig Halden were manning the phones. A map of the area, complete with pins indicating where the bodies were found and where the victims lived and were last seen covered one wall. While on another, biographies and pictures of the victim had been placed, along with a timeline of their whereabouts. Pescoli glanced at the missing Brenda Sutherland’s picture; it was included with a big question mark, indicating that she wasn’t considered a victim yet as her body hadn’t been discovered. Would the question mark be erased? Would Johnna Phillips’s picture be the next one posted? God, she hoped not, but who knew?

  Earlier, Pescoli had been about to leave the station when all hell had broken out, the kid had been run in, Alvarez and O’Keefe showing up with half a dozen cops who escorted Gabriel Reeve to the juvenile detention center as if he were Billy the Kid reincarnated. Not only was the sheriff ’s department involved, but the Helena PD had sent over a detective and the FBI agents were itching to talk to the boy about the missing jewelry from Alvarez’s apartment
and how it all tied in with the latest lunatic freezing women and putting them on public display.

  Pescoli didn’t think the boy knew anything.

  Alvarez was nodding, as if agreeing with herself. “Gabe was sitting on my couch, had a blanket wrapped around him, my cat on his lap.”

  “All very domestic.”

  “All very weirdly domestic,” Alvarez admitted.

  “But at least he’s in custody.”

  “Yeah,” Alvarez said without enthusiasm. Usually, Selena Alvarez was one of the most rock-steady cops Pescoli had ever met. That’s what being a mother could do to a person. Throw in an ex or two and things only got worse.

  “He’s your son?”

  “I think so ...” She let out a long sigh and shook her head. “He looks like his father.” Pescoli was about to ask about the man who’d fathered Gabriel Reeve, but Alvarez held up a hand. “I don’t want to go there, not right now.” Pescoli didn’t blame her. Right now, Dave and Aggie Reeve, the only parents Gabriel had ever known, were on their way to Grizzly Falls from Helena. They were already trying to work through O’Keefe and making noise about getting their son a lawyer. Yep, it was getting sticky.

  Alvarez, as exhausted as everyone, said, “He thinks I turned him in, though technically it was O’Keefe.”

  “But you think this is your earring?” Pescoli pushed the small bag across the table. Visible through the clear plastic, labeled as evidence, a tiny piece of jewelry glinted under the harsh fluorescent illumination of the task room.

  Snapped back to the present, she studied the stud. “It’s an earring. The size is all wrong for a regular tongue stud and it was obviously just jammed through the victim’s tongue, there was no healing around the wound and the hole itself was too small. Abnormal. I checked with an expert. Anyway, I think this”—she pointed to the silver stud in the bag—“was stolen from my place. But not by Gabe,” she was quick to add. “I think it was missing before the hoop and locket were taken. It’s as if the killer, or his accomplice or someone, broke into my house before.”

  “You mean before the night that Gabriel Reeve broke in?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’re the chances of that?”

  “I know, I know, it’s a stretch.”

  “A damned long one.”

  “I know, but I might be missing a ring, too.”

  “Might be?” Pescoli asked.

  “It’s been gone a while, and I thought I lost it in the move ... Now I’m not so sure.” She was twisting the cup of tea in her hands, a cup from which she hadn’t taken so much as a sip. “But then, I’m not sure about anything anymore.”

  Deep in his cavern, he worked. Diligently. With dedication, ignoring the signs that he was beginning to become sleep deprived. So what? One had to suffer for his art, and so he would keep at it, finding deep reserves of strength when other, lesser men would succumb to the demands of the body.

  Mind over matter, he told himself, working feverishly, already sweating though the temperature in his underground studio was below freezing, of course.

  To calm himself, he listened to one of his favorite carols and hummed along with the strains, the words playing through his head as he worked.

  Silent night, holy night.

  All is calm, all is—

  Bark! Bark! Bark!

  The damned dog was at it again, destroying his concentration as he chiseled the most intricate part of his sculpture. It might have been a mistake stealing the beast, but the opportunity had arisen when he’d been searching for something valuable, something personal from that bitch of a cop when he’d broken into her home. The first time had been easy, nothing had gone wrong, even the dog just watching from his damned crate as he, the intruder, had climbed the stairs to her bedroom, where the smell of her had teased his nostrils, that same faint scent of perfume he’d noticed when she’d ignored him, years before, dismissed him as if he were nothing.

  Nothing!

  She’d find out differently.

  As soon as she got his little present in the mail. He smiled at himself as he’d thought how clever he’d been. A few days earlier, before pouring the water over his current work of art, he’d carefully, lovingly hooked a chain around her neck and let the tiny locket fall delicately between her naked breasts. It had been painstaking to prop up the half-dead woman, posing her just so, then adjust the limited lighting in the best way to show off the jewelry. He’d waited until just the right moment, until she’d rolled her uncomprehending eyes to look at him, and he’d snapped the digital shot.

  It wasn’t as satisfying as the actual sculpting, of course. Oh, no. But it would give the cop something to think about when she picked up her mail at the station, an early Christmas card, sent anonymously.

  Oh, what he would do to see her reaction!

  It would almost be worth it to be at the station about the time the mail was delivered ... He could come up with a plausible excuse, a complaint about a neighbor or the traffic or ...

  No! Don’t indulge yourself! It’s far too dangerous and you have too much important work to do! Stay focused.

  He pulled himself out of that particular fantasy. He would get his chance with the cop; he’d just have to wait for it. Thankfully that lunatic Junior Green hadn’t killed her and destroyed his plan. That’s all it took, one psycho with a gun, and all the best-laid plans were destroyed. But she’d outwitted the sicko, she and that new man she was seeing.

  Oh, yeah, he’d met that one, checked him out.

  Dylan O’Keefe better not get in the way.

  Not after all this work.

  Again the dog began to howl and the killer swore under his breath. He’d nabbed the mutt during his last mission, to confuse Alvarez, but then that kid had shown up, running into the house, and he’d been forced to flee out an upstairs window, the boy following not far behind him.

  It had been a disaster, but, of course, he’d managed to escape. And now he had the dog, a scruffy shepherd of some sort, not clean lines. He glanced at the beast and it had the naiveté to wag its damned tail at him.

  Half grown, the animal seemed brainless ... but would serve his purpose.

  Ignoring the dog, he went back to work. Humming again, trying to find that peace of mind that came with sculpting. Sweating, willing his hands to be steady, for this, his most incredible piece of art yet, he softly tapped his chisel, right over the nose.

  The dog whined.

  “Hush!” he said under his breath, working carefully ... gently shaving the ice away, making the sculpture perfect. Just one more tweak and—

  Bark!

  The damned mutt let out an anxious cry, and he hit the chisel a little too hard.

  Craaack! The ice began to split, one fine line splintering into a dozen and filtering all over her face and neck.

  “No! No!” In horror, he watched his work destroyed. Days of labor, weeks and months of planning, all ruined as the cracks, like an irregular spiderweb, marred the beauty of his creation.

  His fingers tightened over his chisel and he glared at the mutt. “Shut up, you stupid mongrel!” he snarled, wanting to strangle the beast. The animal was more irritating than his Bible-thumping wife! “Just shut the hell up!”

  Now, he would have to start over. Melt down the remaining ice and begin again, with fresh water, sluicing and freezing before the actual sculpting could begin again.

  All because of the damned dog.

  Closing his eyes, he slowly counted to ten and reminded himself that he could do this, the animal was just one more distraction. He could deal with it, even if he’d thought at one time that one of his favorite Christmas carols should have been renamed to “Bark! The Herald Angels Sing.”

  With effort, he calmed himself once more.

  “Silent Night” was playing again ... and as he stared down at the woman beneath the fractured ice, seeing her dead eyes looking up at him, he began to hum again, the lyrics rolling through his brain.

  Sleep in heavenly pe
ace ...

  Chapter 26

  They made love that night.

  Desperately, as if they knew they might not get a chance again. Alvarez had been already home, in her pajamas, when she’d heard the knock on the door and O’Keefe had been on her doorstep, looking as bone weary as she’d felt. She’d nearly broken down at the sight of him, and when he’d held his arms open, she’d flung herself into them, seeking solace and comfort for her battered heart.

  She’d known of her son all of her life, of course, but tucked away in that locked corner of her mind, she’d kept the loneliness and despair at bay. Balmed by the fact that she’d “done the right thing,” that “he was better off with a stable family who loved him,” she’d gone about her life without looking too closely at her own feelings, just bottled them up and turned her attention first to school and then to her work.

  Until now.

  Until she’d met the boy and found out that he wasn’t all right; that he was in trouble.

  There was no need for explanations, no time for more conversation; she’d locked the door behind O’Keefe and walked up the stairs holding his hand, him one step behind her, even giving her rump a playful pat. When they’d reached the bedroom, they’d stripped each other of clothing and fallen into bed. There, Alvarez had taken out all of her frustration and pain, throwing herself into the lovemaking, closing her mind to what might have been and losing herself in the feel, smell and touch of this man.

  Did she love him?

  Who knew?

  That thought had flitted through her mind as his mouth found hers, then trailed a hot path down the column of her throat, but all she really knew was that, with O’Keefe, she felt safe.

  From the outside world.

  From the inside demons.

  She’d fallen asleep nestled in his arms and had awoken with a start and a crook in her neck. As her nightmare had receded and she was brought back to reality, she realized a night of lovemaking hadn’t changed the world. No, the earth was still spinning as it had been when she’d fallen asleep and the evil that had pervaded this part of Montana hadn’t disappeared in the night. In fact, it had followed her into the night.