Northwest: Deep Freeze Part 29

And similar to the height and weight of Jenna Hughes.

Not that the cases were related. There was no evidence to connect Jenna Hughes with Jane Doe or Sonja Hatch.e.l.l.

Yet.

"I can't find the cool bracelet," Allie grumbled the next day as she picked at her breakfast.

"What cool bracelet?" Jenna was seated at her desk in the den, searching the Internet for security services. She'd called three, none of which could come and replace her alarm system for nearly a month. They were all backed up. Jenna had even inquired about a bodyguard, taking Sheriff Carter's suggestion to heart after her scare last night. Today, she was convinced the idiot riding her tail was Josh Sykes but she couldn't prove it. Nor could she shake the feeling that she was being watched, that the things that kept breaking down on the ranch were more than just time and wear and tear. You're being paranoid, she told herself, but decided paranoid sure beat the h.e.l.l out of unsafe.

"You know the one," Allie wheedled.

Jenna rolled her chair backward, so she could see beyond the last few steps of the staircase and into the kitchen where Allie was spreading peanut b.u.t.ter on an English m.u.f.fin.

"It's got black and white beads and kinda stretches."

"Faux pearls," Ca.s.sie clarified. She'd been in her room, ostensibly still cleaning up her continual mess, and, to her credit, was carrying down a full plastic bag of trash in one hand while balancing three plates and several stacked gla.s.ses in the other.

"I think it's in my jewelry box, the one in the closet." Jenna flipped to another Web site for a security "team."

"No, it isn't. I looked."

"You're sure?"

"Yes!" Allie snapped, obviously angry that her mother didn't believe her. They were all a little tense, trapped in the house for the most part, waiting for the storm to abate. Jenna's nerves were strung taut, and Ca.s.sie was in a bad mood because she was still grounded. Her phone call to her father hadn't helped, the only result being that Robert was quick to blame Jenna, and from what she could tell, his blood pressure was probably skyrocketing with the pressures in L.A. "I don't need this right now," he'd told Jenna when Ca.s.sie, near tears, had handed Allie the phone last night. Later, when she'd gotten on the line, Jenna had pointed out that Ca.s.sie's behavior wasn't about Robert, but he'd managed, as always, to turn the conversation around. She'd hung up feeling more frustrated than ever. Even Allie, usually all smiles and enthusiasm, seemed bored and at loose ends. "I wanted to wear it over to Dani's."

As if Dani Settler would care. The kid was a tomboy's tomboy.

"Let me see if I can find it." Jenna walked up the stairs to her room and searched through her jewelry box. The bracelet was M.I.A., so she checked another, older box that housed costume jewelry she rarely wore. Not there. Where was the danged thing? The last time she'd seen it, she'd used it like a rubber band to pull her hair off her face, but she'd remembered putting it away. Of course, either of the girls could have "borrowed" it, but she'd thought the piece was in the box. Hadn't she seen it there just last week?

Frowning, she searched through the bedrooms, even taking a quick look through the kids' rooms as well as the guest room on the upper floor. She headed upstairs to a loft where Allie sometimes played. Still nothing.

So what? Things were misplaced every day, but she couldn't help the niggle of worry that ate at her. Once again, the missing item was something she'd worn in one of her movies-in this case, as Marnie Sylvane in Summer's End. Maybe that was significant, maybe not. She walked into her bedroom again and did a 360-degree turn, eyeing shelves and window ledges, her bedside tables, anywhere she'd sometimes left her things, but everything was where it should be and there was no bracelet.

She thought about calling her cleaning lady, Estella, but didn't. It wasn't a big deal. So another thing was missing...no-misplaced, not missing. Jenna would find it. Eventually. She sat on the edge of her bed and told herself to relax. She was just too uptight and a headache was building behind her eyes.

She walked into the bathroom, downed three ibuprofen with a gla.s.s of water, and returned to the bedroom. Out of habit, she opened her nightstand drawer and found the usual things she always kept there-change, a flashlight, a small package of Kleenex, and a paperback she'd been reading. Then she looked across her bed to the other bedside table, one she never used, a perfect match to the one on the side of the bed where she slept.

Of course there would be nothing in it, she told herself, but rolled across the bed and slid the drawer open. She peered inside.

Her heart dropped to her feet.

"Jesus," she whispered, her skin crawling.

Inside the drawer was a single envelope.

Addressed to her.

In the same block letters she'd seen before.

Identical to the envelope she'd received in the mail a few days earlier.

She swallowed hard. Fought panic. How long had it been there? How had it been delivered? Had the person who had written it been here? In her house? In her bedroom?

A cold sweat broke out between her shoulder blades and it was all she could do not to scream. Fear p.r.i.c.kled her skin.

"You son of a b.i.t.c.h," she muttered under her breath. "You can't do this to me...I won't let you." But inside she was terrified. Quivering.

Carefully, using a tissue, she lifted the white envelope from the drawer and, using her fingernail, slit it open. A single letter fell out. Another poem. Superimposed over another photo, a promo shot for Bystander.

I am every man.

Hungry. Strong. Ready.

I am one man

. Knowing. Watching. Waiting.

I am your man.

Today. Tomorrow. Endlessly.

I will come for you.

CHAPTER 25.

Jenna didn't wait for clearance from the secretary, just barged into Sheriff Shane Carter's office and plopped into his chair. "I need your help," Jenna said, adrenaline pumping through her blood. She had to do something. Now. "And if you can't help me," she added, "then you need to tell me who can and point me in their direction. I received another note."

"What?" he said, dead serious.

"That's right. My personal Wordsworth has struck again." She tried to keep her voice light, but she couldn't hide the fear that had nearly congealed her blood. To think that he'd actually been in her house. Her bedroom. Her flesh crawled as she pulled a plastic bag holding the horrible poem from her purse. She dropped it without ceremony onto Carter's desk. "And last night someone tried to run me off the road, and there are more things missing, movie paraphernalia, from my house. Things keep breaking down and I don't know whether someone's trying to totally freak me out or I'm paranoid or-or..." She stopped suddenly, realizing that she was notching herself up, that she was sounding as scared as she felt. "Oh, G.o.d." She pushed her hair from her eyes and forced herself to take a deep breath.

"You want to slow down and start over?" He was leaning back in his chair, staring at her over tented fingers. His expression was grim, his lips compressed, but for the first time since she'd been introduced to him, she thought she detected a bit of tenderness in his eyes. A tad of compa.s.sion. "Wait a sec." Reaching toward the phone, he pressed an intercom b.u.t.ton on the desk and said, "Jerri, if you don't mind, would you bring Ms. Hughes a cup of coffee or a soda or...?" He lifted bushy eyebrows in her direction, hoping for her to choose, she supposed.

"I don't care. Anything..."

Carter nodded as she wrapped her arms around her middle and tried to make sense of the note. Who would stalk her here-in lazy, little Falls Crossing, though it hadn't been all that lazy in the past few weeks. Had someone followed her from L.A., or had she met her personal nutcase somewhere in this little town and hadn't realized it?

"Decaf, Jerri," Carter said and visibly winced at the reply. "I'll remember it when you're up for review. Oh-and hold all my calls...well, I know, but aren't they all emergencies? Okay, fine, if they call, put through Sparks, Messenger, or anyone from the state crime lab-especially Merline Jacobosky. Anyone else I'll call back...yeah, thanks." Clicking off the intercom, he focused all of his attention on Jenna. Coffee-brown eyes scrutinized her. "Now, Ms. Hughes, let's go through this again. Slowly."

"Okay." She did. Cognizant of the whirlwind of activity going on outside his office, knowing that he was responsible for a county that the governor was hoping the federal government would declare a disaster area, she told him everything she claimed she could remember. He read the note through the plastic and scowled, the lines near the corners of his eyes becoming deep creases.

"...I'd already decided to take your advice," she said as her story wound down. "I've called several security companies, looking for a bodyguard and someone to replace my alarm system. Unfortunately, with the weather and red tape, it'll take some time. But Wes Allen-you know him, I think-" Carter nodded, his jaw shifting to one side, his muscles bunching reflexively. "I work with Wes at the theater and he's agreed to help with the existing system to try and make it functional until I can replace it."

"Good idea."

"You mentioned me getting a bodyguard earlier."

He nodded.

"Do you have anyone who would be interested?" she asked. "You know a lot of people in the area. People who have been in law enforcement and might be looking for a job like this. Otherwise I'm stuck with the Yellow Pages and the Internet." She managed a thin smile. "That's a little like jumping from the frying pan into the fire."

His eyebrows rose and he grinned. "Well, we don't want that. You've got enough trouble with this." He tapped the bag on his desk. "I'll ask around. I've got some friends that might consider the job."

"Good." Though she wasn't certain having a stranger on the premises "protecting" her would make her feel any better.

"There's a studio apartment off the garage or an old bunkhouse that I use for storage right now."

He made a note and said, "In the meantime, I'd like to check out your house and anyone who has access to it." He thumbed through a stack of files on his desk, pulled out one with her name written on it, then flipped it open. Spying the page he was looking for, he twirled the file on his desk so she could read it. "This is a list of the people who have had access to your house in the last sixty days, or so you claimed the last time you were in. Any changes? Additions?"

She picked up the file and mentally ticked off each of the names. Friends, family, workmen, delivery people, even a couple who had come door-to-door, selling religion. "This looks pretty complete," she said.

"When do you think this note was delivered?"

"I don't know. I never look in that drawer. It could have been yesterday, or three months ago...maybe longer."

"Your house cleaner, does she...look in the drawer?"

"I doubt it-just dusts on top."

"What about the kids? Sometimes they nose around where they shouldn't."

"I asked the girls before I left. Neither one of them had opened it."

"Are they alone now?"

"No. I won't do that anymore, even though my oldest is sixteen..." Her voice trailed off and her gaze clashed with Carter's. He knew about Ca.s.sie already; he'd dragged her home the last time she'd snuck out. "Well, you've met Ca.s.sie. She thinks I'm treating her like a baby, but that's too bad."

"Isn't that the mantra of most sixteen-year-olds?"

"Unfortunately."

He read the note again. "Our poet repeats himself."

"Limited vocabulary," she cracked, but the joke fell flat.

"I'll have the lab check this out," he said. "I'll send a deputy right now with a fingerprint kit, and I'll be out later. We'll talk to your neighbors and anyone who's been at your place recently, see if anyone saw anything suspicious."

"Wouldn't they have said something already?"

"It could be they didn't recognize it as suspicious. I'll try to jog some memories." His smile was hard, barely twitching the lips beneath his moustache. "As I said, I'll stop by and hopefully have a couple of names of potential bodyguards." He leaned back in the chair.

"Thanks," she said, and feeling only slightly better, left the sheriff's office and headed for the sporting goods store. She didn't believe in guns, hated the thought of having a loaded one in the house, but now that her family was threatened, she decided she needed protection. She'd considered getting shotgun sh.e.l.ls earlier and had been too busy. Now was the time.

You've never shot anything other than paper targets in your life.

"Yeah, well, there's a first time for everything," she muttered as she walked down the steps of the courthouse and tightened her wool scarf around her neck.

Carter watched her leave. She was scared and he didn't blame her. She disappeared down the stairs and he stood and stretched, walking to the window and staring outside through the frosty panes to the parking lot below. Blazers, an Explorer, a truck, and two Crown Victorias were in the lot along with a few pedestrians, heads bent against the wind as they walked past. Across the street, at Danby's, there was yet another sale, the advertising for this one including Santa painted on the storefront windows.

Small Town, U.S.A., he thought.

Small Town, U.S.A., with one missing woman and another woman found dead. Carter didn't like it. He didn't like it at all.

Lieutenant Sparks had called earlier. The dental records for Mavis Gette were hard to match because of the filed teeth, so now they were waiting for DNA. That would take some time, but Gette's cousin had confirmed that Mavis had once broken her collarbone-the clavicle that they'd found near the body had, according to the Medical Examiner, once been fractured. In Carter's estimation, Jane Doe was Mavis Gette. The FBI agreed, according to Sparks, as he was dealing with the local field agents. So why had her teeth been filed down? Why the alginate in her hair? Was this guy some kind of weird, psychotic dentist? How did a woman who was last heard from in Medford end up at Catwalk Point?

He moved his head around, releasing the tension in the back of his neck and, from his vantage point, saw Jenna Hughes hurry across the parking lot. Her boots slid a bit and she had to catch herself on the fender of one of the Crown Vics.

It was funny how he felt about her. He'd a.s.sumed she was a Hollywood princess, pampered, used to the good life. But he'd been wrong. At least here, in Falls Crossing, she wasn't a star-no, far from it. Here she was a single mother who was scared out of her wits. Mentally he considered all the ex-cops he knew who might be willing to come to her aid and hire on as a bodyguard. He rejected them all, and then gave himself a swift mental kick as he realized the reason. An unlikely spurt of envy that sped through his blood.

He didn't like the idea of one of the people he knew looking after her.

However, the thought of her being unprotected was worse.

He couldn't accept the job.

He had more than he could handle as it was.