Born to Die - Lisa Jackson [164]
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.