Expecting to Die

by Lisa Jackson

  Nothing. Just blurry dark images of . . . who knew what?

  “So then I called nine-one-one,” he said. “She was hurt. I didn’t know how bad. The cops and EMTs and even someone from the fire department came. They took her to the hospital in an ambulance, and I followed, to be sure she was okay.” When they didn’t say anything, he added, “And that was it. I’ve been at the hospital since then.”

  They asked a few more questions, got no more information, then searched the hillside for any kinds of clues and came up empty, nothing that either confirmed or denied Alex and Lara’s story.

  Once they’d returned to the staging area of the set, Pescoli was sweating, her stomach rumbling. Sure enough, Manny Douglas was still hanging out just beyond the periphery of the set, and he wasn’t the only reporter who had arrived. A white television news van emblazoned with the red and blue logo for a local station had pulled up on the far side of the barricade. Nearby, positioned in front of a huge boulder, a trim newswoman with layered auburn hair and a smile of perfect white teeth was holding a microphone and speaking to Barclay Sphinx while a cameraman stood to one side recording the interview.

  That was fast.

  Unshaven, in a turtleneck, jacket, and jeans, Barclay was saying, “. . . such a scare. Yes. I feel fortunate that Miss Haas is all right.”

  “Is she a member of the Big Foot Territory: Montana! cast?” the reporter asked.

  “Yes, yes.” Barclay was nodding, stroking his soul patch, his eyes thoughtful behind his glasses. “A good little actress.”

  “What part does she play?”

  “In the first episode, she’s one of a group of local kids we hired to kind of recreate what happened at the first sighting, but I’m still working through the upcoming scripts, so who knows?” He gave a smile. “I like to use as much local talent as possible.”

  His assessment of the situation, while echoing what he’d said at the Big Foot Believers meeting, wasn’t what was actually happening with the series, at least not according to Bianca. She’d been under the impression that the continuing plot line was going to swirl around feuding families from somewhere north of Missoula. Maybe Bianca had gotten it wrong, which Pescoli didn’t believe, or maybe Sphinx had changed his mind again, or even maybe the producer was playing to the audience as these local reporters could stir up some buzz about the series, start the ball rolling, get some statewide, regional, even national coverage.

  Time would tell, of course, but time was something she didn’t have much of. Her cell phone jangled. She checked the screen. Sage Zoller. “Pescoli,” she answered, still watching the producer work his audience.

  “Thought you’d want to know. Nine-one-one got a call about a break in a guardrail. A road deputy went out to check and reported that it’s broken, right on a curve of the road leading to Horsebrier Ridge, almost at the summit.”

  Oh, no. Pescoli’s heart was ice.

  “The deputy looked over the edge and thought he saw a car buried in the brush about a hundred feet down or so. We got an emergency crew out there, EMTs, firefighters, and a couple rappelled down the cliff. Turns out to be a Ford Focus, registered to Lindsay Cronin.”

  “Anyone inside?” she asked, dreading the answer.

  “Yeah. One. Dead. Female. ID says it’s her. Lindsay Cronin.”

  Pescoli fought the urge to throw up right here, at Reservoir Point, with a television camera rolling. “Let’s go,” she said to Alvarez, then to Alex, “I’ll need a sample of your DNA ASAP, and I’ll want one from your brother.”

  “What? We didn’t do anything!”

  She gave him a look that said she didn’t believe him. “I’m going to get one from everyone who knew Destiny Montclaire, any boy she even said hello to. Tell your brother and get down to the station.”

  “I’m not gonna do it.”

  Pescoli turned on him. She was tired of all the arguments, the hiding behind lawyers, the petulance of it all. Now two girls were dead. Who knew how many more? Her stomach roiled and anger sped through her veins. “Then I’ll go through the system. But that looks pretty bad that you’re refusing, so think it over. You’ve got about twenty minutes. Then, if I haven’t heard that you’ve voluntarily given up a sample, I’ll get a court order and if you don’t comply I’ll throw your ass in jail and I’ll force the issue. Got it?”

  “Jesus, all I’ve done is try to help,” he complained.

  “Then you can help a little more.” She flashed a cold-as-ice smile. “Just do it, Alex.” And then she and Alvarez were striding back to the car. Thoughts of Lindsay Cronin crowded Pescoli’s brain. An accident? In the middle of the night? After talking to Kywin Bell?

  She remembered Lindsay as a preschooler, a shy little girl, but curious. Intelligent . . . and again, like with Lara Haas, that was a long while ago for Pescoli, who recalled Lindsay through her preschool days, and then later, when she and Bianca were in the primary grades of elementary school and on sports teams together—that was, until Bianca turned her attention away from anything remotely athletic.

  And now Lindsay was dead.

  She felt a numbness deep inside, a dark pain for the loss of such a young life, a girl on the brink of becoming a woman, who was not so unlike her own daughter. Maybe it was Pescoli’s pregnancy, hormones going crazy so near the birth, or perhaps she was growing soft as she aged, or more probably because Lindsay’s death, like Destiny’s before her, hit so close to home.

  Pescoli felt sucker-punched. For the love of God, maybe everyone around her was right; maybe she should turn in her damned badge and give up investigating homicides, when one human takes the life of another.

  “What’s going on?” Alvarez asked, snapping Pescoli back to the here and now. “Who called?”

  “Zoller.” She was at the Jeep and was in control again, pushing aside her emotions, trying to think rationally, like a cop. “Looks like we found Lindsay Cronin, in her car, at the bottom of Horsebrier Canyon.”

  “Oh, God.” Alvarez expelled a heavy breath. Seeing Pescoli trying to lever herself behind the wheel, she ordered, “Come with me. I’ll drive. Let’s get on this.” And with that, she headed to her Subaru.

  CHAPTER 26

  “I didn’t do nothin’!” Kywin Bell said for about the fourth time since he’d been sitting across the table in the interview room. Sullen, with dark circles under his eyes, he slouched on the small of his back, long legs extended, muscular arms crossed over his chest, stretching his T-shirt. “I don’t know why you hauled me down here.”

  Alvarez was having none of it.

  “We found Lindsay Cronin’s phone. She texted you to meet her up at Horsebrier Ridge.” She shoved a piece of paper across the small table, which showed the conversation.

  He skimmed down the messages. “This isn’t me.” He looked absolutely confused.

  “It says it is. The number is yours. I double-checked.”

  “But I never got it.” His mouth dropped open and he read over each text on the three pages. “All this is what she sent me, but I swear to God, I never seen this last one before.” Frustrated, he shoved both hands through his hair. “I showed you my goddamned phone. And, no, I didn’t delete any, okay? I never got the fuckin’ message.” He was furious, his jaw working. “I gave you a damned DNA sample. I don’t know what you want from me. I didn’t kill Destiny, and I don’t know nothin’ about Lindsay.”

  “Your phone works, but the two girls who died, who texted you on the night they each died, those messages didn’t get through?” she demanded.

  “Jesus! I never saw this before! Never. I swear to God. And the same with the one from Destiny.”

  He was lying. She could see it in his eyes, smell it in the sweat off his skin. He had a secret and was holding it close, yet he appeared shocked that the police had found the texts, that, perhaps, they’d ever existed.

  “Then why was she texting you?”

  “We were friends. That was it.” His face clouded and he said, “You’re setting me up
, aren’t ya? You goddamned cops are setting me up. You’re harassing me, and trying to find someone to blame. You probably doctored the phones! This is a trick, right?” His eyes narrowed as if he’d latched on to the truth. “My old man told me how to handle you. He says you probably did something electronically to the phone, messed it up with that text from Destiny, that you’ve got somethin’ out for my family. For him. So, I want a lawyer, okay? You get me one. I’m not sayin’ nothing else.”

  “You’re sure that’s what you want to do?”

  “Yep. So, unless you’re going to hold me, or get the lawyer, I’m outta here.” And with that, he walked, more like swaggered, out of the room. Alvarez gritted her teeth. She didn’t like him, but he was right and she hated to admit it. They didn’t have enough to hold him, and there was something about his demeanor that she believed. He seemed so totally baffled by it all. And he had given up his DNA, as had his brother and a couple of other boys. Austin Reece, because of Lawyer-Daddy—who just happened to be dating the mayor, it seemed— refused to have his son give up a sample without a court order.

  God, Bernard Reece was a sanctimonious bastard.

  She left the room a little defeated, a little angry.

  She’d hoped to shake a little more information out of Kywin Bell by bringing him down to the small, windowless room with the two-way observation mirror. He’d known he was being observed, had seen the cameras, and had never once slid away from his story that he was innocent, that he’d never gotten a text from Lindsay on the night she’d gone missing, and he’d actually seemed a bit emotional at the knowledge she was dead.

  As Alvarez made her way to her office, avoiding a couple of uniformed deputies walking the opposite direction, she was oblivious to the sounds of the office, the murmur of conversation punctuated with laughter, the continual ring of desk phones or personalized ring tones of cell phones, the constant tread of footsteps, or clunk of printers and fax machines, the rattle of coffee cups and constant hum of the air-conditioning system. All were lost to her as she thought about the case.

  Kywin had seemed genuinely startled when she’d given him the news about Lindsay Cronin. “No way!” he’d said, shaking his head, the edges of his mouth pulled into a frown as she’d sat him in the plastic chair he’d occupied during the interview. “You’re just tryin’ to mess with me.” Unfortunately, that hadn’t been true. She’d been on the ridge when the body had been removed from the wreckage. The little car had been mangled, crumpled metal and plastic as the Focus had apparently nose-dived over the railing.

  Firemen had scaled the cliff with ropes, then, once in the chasm, had worked to get to the driver, who, pinned in her seat, was hanging upside down, seat belt still in place, her body as broken and twisted as the car.

  Alvarez had looked into the body bag and felt her insides go cold. Questions that had haunted her about the victim for the past few days now pounded through her brain:

  Why had she left in the middle of the night?

  Where had she been going?

  It appeared she’d thought she was meeting Kywin, but where?

  What had happened?

  Was the crash really the result of a single car accident?

  What had made her lose control of the car?

  Had she swerved to miss an oncoming vehicle? Or an animal?

  Had she been forced off the road?

  Had anyone been in the car at any time during her drive?

  Did anyone else know where she was going?

  And on and on. It all seemed so useless.

  She’d driven Pescoli back to the reservoir to pick up her car. It was nearly noon, and the place was a beehive of activity. The crew was setting up for the coming night’s shoot, and the word about another attack by Big Foot had been circulated to the press. There were two news vans, one from Missoula, another from Spokane.

  “Looks like Grizzly Falls could be trending,” Pescoli had observed, then said, “Oh, for the love of God, Lucky’s here. What the hell?” She let out a long, slow breath as she eyed her ex, who was sipping water from a bottle and chatting up some of the grips. “He’s just so into this thing, like because Bianca is involved in the whole reality thing, and now Michelle, too, he’s somehow stumbled on a pot of gold.”

  “She’s here, too,” Alvarez said, spying Luke’s current wife approaching him. “Uh-oh.”

  “What?” Pescoli’s eyebrows drew together as Michelle, in shorts, a tight T-shirt, and strappy, high-heeled sandals, strode to Luke and said something sharply to him. His lips thinned and he snapped back.

  Alvarez couldn’t hear the words being tossed at each of them, but they were both angry, and pointedly so. Michelle had jabbed her finger at Luke’s chest. He caught her wrist, pulled her around the trailer that had been parked on the property, and disappeared from sight.

  “Trouble in paradise?” Pescoli shook her head. “Maybe that pot of gold isn’t so gilded after all. They’ve been married for years, and I’ve never once seen them get into it, which says a lot about Michelle. Luke and I? We fought like cats and dogs from the get-go. Huh.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to go. I’ll meet you back at the station.”

  A reporter had recognized her as she stepped out of Alvarez’s Subaru. “Detective Pescoli? Can I have a word? Your daughter, she’s in the show, right? And she was rumored to have been attacked by a Big Foot.”

  Alvarez saw her partner’s back stiffen as she said a few quick words to the bird-like blonde and nearly dove into her Jeep this time. Hitting the gas, she reversed to a wide spot in the road and quickly turned around, leaving the reporter to watch the dust pluming behind her. Before she was seen, Alvarez took off as well. She didn’t have the personal connection for an intriguing story about the filming that her partner did, but she was a detective investigating the case, still trying to connect the dots between the two girls’ deaths, and she’d been in a rush to interview Kywin Bell, the most likely of suspects, anyway.

  Though Kywin had shut her down, there was still a long list of others who knew more than they were saying.

  * * *

  “My advice,” Dr. Peeples said as Regan sat on the end of the examination table in the clinic, “is that you consider starting your maternity leave soon. You’re partially effaced, about thirty percent, and that baby’s coming.” Ramona Peeples, a slender African-American woman, had been Regan’s OB-GYN for the past ten years. Her offices were attached to Northern General Hospital and now, standing in a white lab coat worn over slacks and a magenta blouse, she was staring hard at her patient.

  “I know,” Pescoli agreed, anxious to get out of the small examination room. Pictures of babies hung on the beige walls, and other than the padded table on which she was now seated, there was only a rolling cart and cupboards, a counter with a glistening sink.

  “Before you start coming up with excuses, all very valid, I’m certain, think about your health and the baby’s,” Peeples advised. “I know all about the cases you’re investigating, so I understand that your job is very high stress. Hence the elevation in your blood pressure.”

  “Slight elevation,” Pescoli said. “Your own words, ‘slight elevation.’”

  “But worth noting. Especially given your age.”

  “My age? Geez, it’s not like I’m ancient. I’m not even forty.”

  “But soon,” the doctor said, eyeing her chart. “In less than a year. And watch your salt intake.” She held a clipboard over her chest. “It’s just a little while longer, and I don’t like to take any chances.”

  “Okay, me neither.”

  The doctor gave her a small smile. “Consider hanging up your holster, Detective, just for a little while. Some of the world’s problems might wait, even if you’re not on the job. I’ll see you next week.”

  With that, she was out the door and Pescoli reached for her clothes. The world’s problems might wait, but she wasn’t so certain about her investigations, here in Grizzly Falls. And she was tired of people acting like s
he had one foot in the grave just because she was pregnant. With all the tests she’d gone through due to her age making her condition a “high risk” pregnancy, she’d been told that the baby was healthy, was gaining weight, and should be here right on time.

  “Don’t rush things,” she said, touching her protruding belly, “but your father and I can’t wait to meet you.” She smiled, then added, “I really can’t say the same for your brother and sister, though, but I’m betting they’ll come around.” She caught sight of herself in the mirror, a hugely pregnant person talking to herself. That probably wasn’t so strange, but not exactly the image she wanted to portray as she ignored everyone’s advice that she start taking her maternity leave. “We’d better keep these little chats to ourselves,” she advised her unborn child as she began to dress. “Otherwise people might think I’m nuts and you’ll end up being born in an asylum. Not the way you want to come into the world.”

  Dressed, she headed into the hallway, where she spied other pregnant women being helped by people in the clinic. Every woman with a baby bump seemed to be at least ten years younger than she, some more like twenty, though she reasoned she was just being super sensitive after getting the word from her doctor. But she was fine. That’s all that mattered.

  Outside, she slipped on a pair of sunglasses. The blasting sun was heating the asphalt of the parking lot that stretched from the clinics to the doors of Northern General, where, in a few weeks, she’d deliver the baby. On her way to her Jeep, Pescoli noticed a news van taking up two spaces near the main doors. The same reporter whom she’d seen earlier at Reservoir Point was interviewing Barclay Sphinx, who was standing front and center, his back to the building, a handful of onlookers gathered under the overhang of the main doors, watching.

  What the hell is that all about?

  The crowd parted a little as Lara Haas, seated in a wheelchair, was pushed outside by an orderly. Sphinx motioned to a small woman, who produced a huge bouquet of flowers and balloons, which she gave to him and he, in turn, bestowed upon Lara. She was still wearing the splint, but managed to gather up the posies and, squinting a little, her smile as bright as the damned Montana sun, spoke both to the producer and the reporter. No longer was she without makeup. In the intervening hours since this morning, when Pescoli and Alvarez had interviewed her, Lara Haas had found her blush, lip gloss, mascara, and foundation, at the very least. And she’d worked on her hair, which, shining and shimmering with blond streaks, curled softly around her neck and shoulders. Gone was the hospital gown, replaced by white shorts and a pink T-shirt with a deep V neckline that offered a view of her cleavage. It also showed off the ring of bruises at her neck.