Her cell phone rang as Alvarez locked the door to her Jeep and headed into the office. One glance at the digital readout and she braced herself as her mother’s number appeared on the screen. She thought about not answering, but that would only put off the inevitable.

      “Good morning, Mom.” Carrying her laptop in one hand and feeling the bite of the wind, she hurried toward the brick building.

      “Hi, honey.”

      Despite the phone at her ear, Selena found her mind skipping ahead to her work day. At least it wasn’t snowing, and overnight, the plows had made significant progress on the roads. Maybe the helicopters could fly today, get airborne and survey the surrounding area. Maybe, just maybe, today was the day the case would break wide open.

      Then again…

      “You’re working today, aren’t you?”

      Alvarez didn’t answer.

      “Dios, Selena. It’s not even eight in the morning. On a Sunday. The Sunday before Christmas. You should be in bed or getting ready for mass.”

      “I don’t work by the clock, you know that.” She shouldered her way into the building, nodding to the single clerk from the night shift who was manning the front desk.

      “You work too much.”

      “So you say.”

      “So everyone says. Your brother Estevan, he’s a policeman, decorated, and he says you don’t have to work the hours you do.”

      In Alvarez’s opinion Estevan was lazy, but she wouldn’t say so to her mother. “What’s up, Mom?” she asked as she made her way to her cubicle and flipped the switch on her desk lamp.

      “I was hoping that you’d changed your mind. That you were coming home for Christmas.”

      In her mind’s eye Selena flashed on “home”: the two-storied house four blocks off Highway 99 in Woodburn, Oregon, where she’d grown up with five brothers and two sisters. The three girls had shared one small room under the eaves of the sloped roof. The boys had been spread out, three in the room across the hall, the two eldest in separate rooms in the basement. Her parents had been on the main floor. The house had been noisy and crowded, and for the first fourteen years of her life, a haven.

      And later, hell.

      But at Christmas, the house had been decorated with lights on every eave and gutter, a hand-painted life-sized creche displayed in the front yard, a live tree filling the space in front of the living room window, her aunt Biatriz pounding out carols on the piano while her grandmother and mother cooked traditional Mexican fare along with a turkey dinner. Everything from mashed potatoes and roast beef to steamed tamales.

      “I’m sorry,” Alvarez lied as she sat in her desk chair, “I can’t get away.”

      “It’s Christmas, niña.”

      “I know, Mom, but we’ve got a serial killer on the loose here. I thought it would have made the papers there.”

      “But you must get a day off.”

      “Not this year.”

      “You’re telling me that no one’s going away for the holidays? I don’t believe it.”

      “I just can’t this year. Give my love to everyone,” Alvarez said, refusing to let her mother guilt her into it.

      “You always put up the piñata for the little ones.”

      “Not this year. But Lydia, she’ll do it.” Alvarez did feel a little pang of regret when she thought of her younger sister. Lydia, she would miss, and maybe Eduardo. Maybe. “I’ll call and talk to everyone.”

      “From where? What will you be doing?”

      God only knows. “I’ll be with friends.” Again a lie. She didn’t have any plans for the day. She figured she’d work here, be paid overtime and celebrate at home in her pajamas with a movie and bowl of popcorn. That alone sounded like heaven, even if she had no one to sit beside her.

      “You need your family, Selena,” her mother cautioned.

      “Of course I do. I love you, Mom, but I really have to go.”

      “God be with you, child,” Juanita said, and whispered a quick prayer in Spanish before hanging up.

      “Guilt trip, guilt trip, guilt trip,” Alvarez told herself as she fired up her computer and clicked onto the images of the dead women and the letters left with their bodies. Using a computer program, she aligned the letters one over the other and saved the positions of the stars. What if this guy were trying to tell them something not only from the precise letters, but from the stars, as well?

      Once she’d placed the stars on one screen, she used a computer program to help her identify which constellation, if any, the stars could be a part of. Unfortunately there were dozens of potential constellations.

      “Because we don’t have enough data,” she thought, wincing inside. The more victims, the more clues left behind. Eventually, if the stars were part of an astrological grouping, they would be identified, just like, given enough letters in the message, the police would be able to figure out what the killer was trying to say.

      Given enough time, enough letters and enough dead women.

      “Damn,” she muttered, pushing her chair back from the desk. It was all so sick. For the first time since walking into the nearly deserted room, she heard the sound of music drifting from the speakers. The notes of “Let It Snow” wafted around her and she almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation as she heard Bing Crosby’s voice croon the final words of the song.

      She glanced through the windows to the white parking lot. Yeah, the weather outside was sure as hell frightful, but there wasn’t anything the least bit cozy or warm about being in the office at Christmastime.