Left To Die by Lisa Jackson

She was pale and wan-looking, dark smudges beneath her large eyes indicating she hadn’t gotten enough sleep.
    Which wasn’t a surprise.
    Though Pescoli’s private life wasn’t any of Alvarez’s business, she couldn’t help but be a little ticked off. Nine times out of ten she had to cover for her partner, either because she’d had a long night waiting up for one of her kids, a battle royale with her ex or a late night at a bar with one of her many loser boyfriends.
    Despite it all, Pescoli was a brilliant detective. And that’s all that mattered. She had a knack for pegging a person on first meeting, for cutting through the usual BS and finding the truth. It bugged the hell out of Alvarez that all of her education and degrees didn’t seem to stack up to her partner’s gut instincts.
    It was a slap in the face, but Alvarez would get over it.
    Alvarez looked back at Watershed as Pescoli signed in to the crime scene with one of the deputies, her eyes already taking in the single-car accident as she scribbled her name on the sheet. “Same damned thing,” she said, heading toward Alvarez. “Same bloody damned thing.”
    She smelled of cigarette smoke and looked like hell, but then, no one was their best at this hour of the morning, bundled in outdoor gear.
    “So what’ve we got?”
    “Nothing new. Take a look.” Alvarez walked her partner through the trod-on snow to the car.
    “Wendy Ito’s?”
    “Nope. Washington plates, but this is an older-model Subaru Outback. Ito drove a newer Toyota with vanity plates.”
    “A Prius. I remember.” Pescoli’s jaw tightened as she bent down to peer into the twisted wreckage. “So we’ve got another one.”
    “Looks like.”
    “Hell.” She sighed as she straightened, her eyes, usually a gold color, darkening. “Driver’s door jimmied open? Tire shot? No ID, no personal effects like a wallet or purse?”
    Alvarez nodded, snowflakes drifting from the steely heavens. “Same as before.”
    “But no body found?”
    “Not yet.”
    Alvarez walked Pescoli around what was left of the silver Subaru and gave Pescoli a rundown of what they’d found. She had to shout, as the wind began to shriek down the canyon again, tearing through the trees, rattling bare branches and blowing tiny sharp flakes of snow against Alvarez’s skin.
    “Just like the others,” Pescoli observed, her full lips pulled into a frustrated scowl. “What the hell is the bastard up to?”
    A moot question.
    Pescoli squinted upward, toward the ridge, suspecting that this car, like the others, had been forced off the road, then plunged and careened down the canyon wall to land at the bottom of the canyon floor, in this frozen creek bed.
    Alvarez followed her gaze and knew what her partner was thinking. It was a wonder anyone survived the crash.
    But then, they weren’t certain anyone had. Just that the driver had been removed. Damn.
    “We know when this happened?” Pescoli asked.
    Alvarez tugged her gloves on tighter. “It could’ve been as early as yesterday afternoon, judging by the snowfall.”
    “Then the victim’s probably still alive.” Pescoli glanced around the bleak ravine with sheer walls of ice and rock. “The son of a bitch tends to them, nurses them like some damned Florence Nightingale, then ties ’em to a tree and leaves ’em to freeze to death. Sick bastard.”
    Amen to that.
    “Who found the car and called it in?” Pescoli asked.
    Beneath the brim of his wool hat, Pete Watershed winced.
    Pescoli wasn’t about to be coddled. “Tell me.”
    “Grace Perchant. Walking her dog.”
    “Walking her dog? When it’s ten degrees below freezing? Down here? Why the hell was she doing that?”
    “Why does Grace do anything?” Watershed asked with a lift of one shoulder.
    Good question. Grace Perchant was another one of the town’s oddities. Alvarez reminded her partner, “Grace claims to see ghosts, too, and talk with the friggin’ dead, for crying out loud. And that dog of