Afraid to Die by Lisa Jackson Page A

ex.”
    â€œI can’t help thinking this is a lot like Lissa Parsons.”
    â€œDon’t even go there,” Pescoli warned, but Alvarez could tell from her tone of voice and the worry in the lines of her forehead that she’d already come to the same conclusion that the two missing women were somehow linked.
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    The next day, things definitely started out on the wrong foot. For some reason Alvarez’s alarm didn’t go off, probably because she’d slapped the clock silly the day before, and she realized, belatedly, after letting Roscoe out the door, that she’d missed her session with her martial arts instructor. He hadn’t called but left a text and she responded, apologizing and feeling out of sorts.
    What was wrong with her?
    She never was late. Never missed an appointment. Never bought anyone else’s excuses about being flaky. Sure she’d had a bad night’s sleep with Jane Doe up half the night and thoughts of the missing women running in circles through her brain, but still, she shouldn’t be so off-kilter. “Pull it together,” she told herself, feeling a headache coming on as she stepped into the shower. Cold needles of water pounded her bare skin for just an instant before she jumped out of the tiled enclosure. Wrapping a towel quickly around her shivering body with one hand, she checked the temperature of the shower spray with the other, wiggled the handle and discovered not a drop of hot water anywhere.
    â€œGreat,” she muttered, wondering what else could go wrong. The answer, of course, was plenty. And it did. She threw on her clothes and realized the puppy wasn’t tagging after her. Nor did she hear him. With the dread that comes only with the experience of being a mother or pet owner, she hurried downstairs and found Roscoe, pillow in his mouth, stuffing flying through the air like snow in a snow globe. “Stop! Drop it!” she ordered and he, thinking it was a game, ran around the coffee table and bounded through the kitchen. “I don’t have time for this,” she warned, nearly catching him only to have him streak by, tail between his legs, ears flopping. “You are in so much trouble!”
    When she finally cornered him in the powder room, she was breathing hard and her temper had cooled a bit. “Oh, come on.” She didn’t have time to clean up the feathers and stuffing littering her living area, but she put him in his pen, grabbed her purse, wallet, sidearm and badge and left him standing behind the wire mesh managing to look as miserable as any dog on earth. “You’ll be fine,” she said, feeling ridiculously guilty before locking the door behind her and heading for the garage.
    Though it wasn’t yet eight in the morning, she called the maintenance man for the building and asked him to check on her water heater. He was a lazy twenty-six-year-old who preferred spending nights as the bass player for his band rather than his days fixing up the property, but he was cheap and, if given enough time, was handy enough. He’d done some side jobs for Alvarez in the past and she was certain he could determine what the hell was wrong with her hot water tank. She only hoped she wouldn’t have to replace the damned thing.
    At the office, she found a cup of blistering-hot coffee and tried to shake herself out of her bad mood by munching on a reindeer cupcake, eating first the sugar-coated antlers and then its whole damned head. It didn’t help.
    Twenty minutes later, she was just answering some e-mail when Pescoli dropped by her desk. “Want some bad news?” she asked.
    Alvarez glanced up. “You mean some more bad news?” she asked. “It hasn’t exactly been a stellar morning and so, the answer is no.”
    â€œYeah, well, I think you’d better hear this. Your buddy J. R. has just been released from prison. A technicality and his lawyer screamed loudly