Wild Wills, sporting an 1880's western/wilderness theme was decorated with rough plank walls, hanging wagon wheel chandeliers and the mounted heads of moose, deer, elk, big-horned sheep and antelope, all with glassy fixed eyes staring down at the patrons. A stuffed Grizzly bear, his mouth open in a bared-tooth growl, greeted the customers as it stood on hind legs near the front door. He’d been dubbed “Grizz” by the townspeople and the owners had always decorated him with the seasons. The huge, shaggy bear been known to wear a red, white and blue top hat reminiscent of Uncle Sam on the Fourth of July, a small flag wedged between his sharp claws, and last Halloween, he’d been outfitted in one of those freaky masks from the Scream movies which had somehow been pinned over his face and gaping snout. His props had been a chain saw and witches caldron . . . kind of mixed signals, but hey, it had been Halloween.
Personally, Alvarez had always found it weird and disturbing, but she’d kept her opinions to herself and today, as she shoved open the glass doors, she found Grizz decorated to the max, glittery angel wings appearing out of his back, matching halo propped over his head, a necklace of colored lights strung around his furry neck.
All the while his glittery glass eyes glowered in rage and his lips pulled back to expose his wide mouth and sharp teeth, despite the open book of Christmas carols tucked into his outstretched paws.
Like, oh, yeah, he was trilling away on Silent Night, the page to which the book had been opened. Well, all wasn’t calm tonight, nor was it bright, she thought as she walked through the foyer to the main dining hall where the decor only got worse.
As she walked to the back of the large room, she passed tables and booths filled with patrons and guarded by hundred-year-old dead animals staring down at her, all their antlers dressed in winking lights or draped in tinsel.
It was damned freaky.
Welcome to Grizzly Falls, she thought, struggling out of her jacket and realizing that some of the customers were staring at her, unasked questions in their eyes of the cop who was trying and failing to find a maniac.
Ignoring the garish display on the walls and the customers who turned back into their meals, she settled into a booth near the back. She sat facing the door, a cop habit she couldn’t shake. She just couldn’t stand it if she couldn’t see who was entering or leaving a restaurant.
Sandi, the owner/waitress came by. In her hands were two steaming coffee pots. “You want coffee? Or somethin’ stronger? The drink special tonight is what we call a Wild Christmas”
“I hate to ask.” The last drink special had been known as a Wild Will Hiccup and had been a god-awful blend of whiskeys.
“It’s really great,” Sandi insisted enthusiastically. “Eggnog, cream de cacao, a splash of cola and a shot of Wild Turkey.” One of Sandi’s eyebrows lifted over the rims of her jeweled glasses. “You can have another kind of whiskey, if you want. We use the Wild Turkey because of the name.”
“I think I’ll stick with decaf,” Alvarez said, turning up one of the cups on her table and watching the warm stream of dark liquid flow.
“Any luck getting’ that psycho?” Sandi asked. She was a tall woman, with a long, gaunt face and eyes darkened with heavy liner and, today, probably in a nod to the season, glittery green eye shadow. She had once been married to William Aldridge for whom the establishment had been named, but Will and she had divorced, or so rumor had it. Will had ended up with his favorite pickup, the RV, a hunting cabin and a twenty-year younger-than-Sandi girlfriend, and Sandi had become full owner of Wild Wills, expanding the bland fare to include exotic dishes created from locally trout and venison. She lived in an apartment upstairs and was at the restaurant 24-7, or so it seemed. Sandi also hadn’t been able to hide her satisfaction when she’d heard Will’s younger girlfriend had “dumped his sorry ass.” She’d confided this little morsel of information to anyone who had sat in the faux-leather booths and café chairs in the past two years.
“We’re working on it.”
“Well, speed it up, will ya? It’s got everybody in town nervous as hell. No one’s talkin’ about this blasted weather, uh-uh. Nope. It’s all about the Bitterroot Killer, that’s what Manny over at the Reporter calls him.”
Alvarez had seen the article written by Manny Douglas of the Mountain Reporter, Grizzly Falls’ answer to the L.A. Times.
“We’ll get him,” she said.
“I have faith.” But it was a lie. Alvarez saw the nervousness in the edge of Sandi’s glossy-red lips as she slid a menu across the table. “The special is a buffalo steak with a wild huckleberry reduction and red potatoes or rice pilaf. It comes with a house salad of spinach, green apples and hazelnuts or a cup of cream of broccoli soup.”
A man at a nearby table, held up his empty drink glass and Sandi scurried off toward the bar in search of another Wild Christmas or something about as palatable.
She glanced around the room where normal citizens, some with shopping bags, were clustered around tables or stuffed into booths and she heard bits of conversation over the soft music, country western ballads whispering through the speakers that battled with the loud thrum of the furnace and hiss of the fryer whenever the doors to the kitchen opened. As upscale as Sandi wanted to make the place, most of the patrons ordered steaks, burgers and fresh-cut fries or onion rings.
“ . . . what kind of a monster would do it? My Goodness. this was such a nice town . . .” a woman wearing a gray wig and large gold cross around her neck said to the man seated opposite her. Their meal was finished, they were lingering over two cups of coffee and a split coconut case dessert.
“ . . . if ya ask me, we should get ourselves a posse goin’, search the hills ourselves.” The man waiting for his new drink was already a little flushed and full of old west bluster. “We all got guns around here. Maybe it’s time to take justice into our own hands . . . Damned police . . . Aaah, thank ya, dear,” he said to Sandi as she deposited the fresh glass onto the table in front of him. He picked up his glass and nodded. “These are real good. Real good.”
“I heard they were tortured and tied to trees with some kind of weird Satanic symbol cut into the bark.” Another woman at a table not far form Alvarez’s and wearing a hand-quilted jacket and dour expression was leaning over the remains of her buffalo steak special and stage-whispering to her friend.
“Who would think, here, in Grizzly Falls?” her companion replied with the kind of relish that meant she was savoring every tidbit of gossip cast her way.
Alvarez turned her attention away.
Who indeed?
For years, she’d hoped to be part of an investigation of a major case, one that would get her juices flowing, one that would offer some recognition, one that might even garner national attention.
But not this one.
But not this one, she thought now. Not a case where women were held, probably tortured, then, when the sicko was finished playing with them, left naked in the woods.
She ordered trout almondine with risotto and the spinach salad, and though she tried, she couldn’t take her mind of the case and the victims. Theresa Charleton been left around the twentieth of September, near the cusp of the astrological signs, just as Chandler had pointed out. Nina Salvatore a month later, then Wendy Ito and now Jillian Rivers.
Was the killer a Zodiac copy cat?
Or something else? She glanced around the room and noted the normal-looking people out for dinner or drinks. Grizzly Falls had its share of nut-cases, but now, did they have a twisted killer?
He had to know the area. He had to know his victims. He had to keep them somewhere close by. In a lair of sorts. A cabin, a cave, a basement, a barn, a shed, a damned attic but hidden away.
And right under your damned nose.
