by Lisa Jackson
“What did the two of you do?” Pescoli asked.
“We hung out.” He grew a little belligerent, his dark eyebrows pulling together as if by purse strings.
Pescoli believed he was still trying to work things out in his mind, figure out how much they, the cops, knew, how to make his story believable. “Did you talk?”
He shot her a cold look. “’Course.” Another swallow from his bottle.
“What about?” she pressed.
“Nothin’. Just that she wanted to get back with me.” He shrugged. “She kinda cried because I told her it was over. I was interested in someone else.”
“Who?” Alvarez asked.
“Does it matter?”
“Maybe,” Pescoli said.
“It’s personal,” he said. “And complicated.”
“Okay,” Pescoli agreed.
“It doesn’t matter because this girl, she doesn’t even know. I said it mainly to prove to Des that I was serious about the break-up. Geez.” He took another swig from his bottle. Appeared nervous.
Alvarez asked, “Did Destiny drive over here?”
He hesitated, then shook his head. “I think she walked.”
“And when she left?” Alvarez again.
“She just left. Yeah, on foot. I don’t know where she went.”
“Did you offer to give her a ride?” Pescoli asked. “By the time she left, it would’ve been dark.”
“No. Sorry. I didn’t,” he snapped. “We’d broken up. She didn’t want it, and neither did I.”
“Her folks said she took off across the field, as if she were going to go walking in the woods, up by Reservoir Point, where she was found, where you all partied the other night,” Pescoli said. “If she was coming to visit you, here”—she pointed at the baking concrete at her feet—“it seems odd that she wouldn’t take the road, save herself the hill to climb, cut off what? Half an hour or so.”
“She did what she did,” he said, but his jaw worked and he looked away, rotated the ball in his hands, then grabbed his water bottle and lifted it to his lips.
Alvarez asked, “Did she tell you she was pregnant?”
He choked on the water. “Wh–what? Pregnant? No. What? No! You’re lying!”
“So you didn’t know?” Pescoli asked, pushing.
“I don’t believe it.” His face had turned to chalk.
“Could the baby be yours?” Alvarez asked.
“Baby? Jesus. No . . . I mean, we were careful. She told me she was on the pill, for Christ’s sake.” Panic rose in his eyes and his knee was jumping frantically. “You mean she lied to me?”
Pescoli said, “I mean we’ll need to take a swab of your mouth for a DNA sample.”
“Oh, God. No.” He was wagging his head. “My mom can’t find out about this. She would kill me. I mean it.”
“Come in to the station,” Alvarez suggested. “Or we can send a tech out here.”
“No! Don’t! Shit! Can’t you just do it right now?”
“We prefer for it to happen in the lab.” Alvarez didn’t want any chance for some lawyer to scream about lack of control or any question of the chain of evidence. “By a tech.”
“Oh . . . okay.”
“Today.” Alvarez met his eyes.
“Yeah . . .” He licked his lips as if they were suddenly dry, and his eyes rounded. If he’d known about the pregnancy, he was certainly putting up a pretty good act. “I just can’t believe it,” he said, hanging his head and shaking it slowly, as if he were trying to put things right in his mind and kept failing. “Knocked up? Des?” He clasped his hands over his eyes. “How the hell—?”
Alvarez heard the sound of a motorcycle, engine racing loudly on the street in front of the house.
Donny’s head snapped up. “Look, this”—he moved his hands back and forth to include both of the police officers—“is over. I gotta go.”
Pescoli didn’t budge. “You’d better not be lying to us, Donny, because we will find out and then, if you haven’t been truthful with us, we’ll wonder why and we’ll be back.”
“Come into the station for that swab,” Alvarez reminded.
He nodded and his Adam’s apple bobbed.
The roar got closer, coming from the driveway on the other side of the hedge, only to stop suddenly as the engine was cut.
“Can you just leave now?” Donny pleaded, climbing to his feet.
Footsteps approached, and a second later Alex O’Hara stepped through the open gate to the backyard. In faded jeans and a black T-shirt printed with an image of a Harley-Davidson, Alex was a little leaner than Donny and two or three inches shorter. His dark hair was clipped tightly to his head and he definitely resembled his brother, TJ, but Alex seemed older and, if not wiser, then cagier. At least in Alvarez’s opinion. It was the way he carried himself with a bit of bravado, and the too-quick grin, eyes hidden by reflective shades. But he was here and that was good luck.
CHAPTER 10
Alex O’Hara almost stumbled when he caught sight of the cops. “Whoa,” he said and sent a quick look to Donny, who gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head.
A warning.
These two, and God only knew how many others, knew more than they were saying.
“Alex O’Hara,” Alvarez said as the kids started to back up. “Stick around.”
“Didn’t mean to interrupt.” He was still backpedaling.
“You’re not interrupting at all. In fact, you saved us a trip, as we were going to talk to you next.” She was stretching the truth a bit, but he didn’t know that. “We met last night,” she reminded him, though she doubted he’d forgotten. “I’m Detective Alvarez and this is Detective Pescoli.” She motioned to Pescoli, who was studying the newcomer.
“Yeah. I know.” He nodded. He stopped heading for the gate, folded his arms over his chest, and waited.
She said, “Since you’re here, we’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“About Destiny Rose Montclaire,” Pescoli added. Even in the shade of the porch, she felt like she was melting, the edges of her hair around her scalp moist.
“I barely knew her,” Alex said, then glanced at Donny, as if to confirm, but this time his friend just stared at his clasped hands, which were now hanging at his knees.
Alvarez said, “But you’d met.”
“Yeah.” One more look at his friend. He got no response. Donny, it seemed, was lost in his own world. “Look, I only met her a couple of times, I think.” His gaze swept from one cop to the other. “Wait a minute. Don’t I need a lawyer or something to talk to you?”
“That’s your choice, if you think you need one.” Alvarez didn’t intend to back down.
“You mean like if I’m guilty?” His eyebrows shot up over his glasses to make furrows across his forehead. “Well, I’m not. No way.” He turned to Donny. “You know that, man. I mean, Destiny, she was cool and all . . . but . . .” His lower lip protruded a bit and he lifted his shoulders up to his ears. “I just didn’t know much about her.”
“You didn’t know that she was pregnant?” she asked.
He visibly started. “Like as in knocked up?” The skin on his face tightened. Either he hadn’t known or he hadn’t thought anyone would find out. He turned his head, and this time the look that passed between the two friends was unreadable. “How would I know that?”
“When was the last time you saw her?” Pescoli asked.
“I dunno . . . maybe two weeks ago . . . maybe longer. I can’t remember. She was always hanging around.”
“But you’d only met her twice?” Pescoli pressed. “That’s what you said.”
“I meant, I really didn’t know her. Sure, I saw her. With Donny or . . . or whoever, but I never spoke to her but a few times. But, yeah, she was around a lot.”
“So you weren’t with Donny, here, when he met up with her, a week ago last Friday?”
Alex wagged his head. “Uh-uh.”
“Were you over here playing video game
s that evening?”
He flicked his gaze at Donny, eyes locking. “Yeah?” It was more of a question than a statement.
Donny said, “After Teej, Alex, Tophman, and I grabbed some pizza, we played games, then they all took off. After that, that’s when Destiny called me and came over here.” It sounded like he was giving Alex the story, so that he could back Donny up. The kid was just digging himself a deeper grave.
“So you were never at Reservoir Point?” Pescoli pressed. “You and Destiny didn’t go up there?”
Donny’s jaw worked and he thought about lying again; Pescoli could see it in the way his eyes shied away from hers. But he said, “Nope. Her folks don’t like me much so we met here.” He looked pathetically miserable.
“Anyone else here?” Pescoli asked.
“No,” he shot back. “Like I said, we wanted to be alone.”
“What did you talk about?” Alvarez asked, her voice calm.
“Nothing.”
“The baby?” Alvarez prodded.
“No! Jesus. I didn’t . . . I didn’t know about that.” He rubbed his chin. “She wanted to get back with me. I said no. We argued.”
Pescoli asked, “Did it get physical?”
“No! Fuck. I told you. I didn’t hurt her. Never laid a hand on her!”
“So you talked and fought,” Alvarez said, sending her partner a silent warning glare to be cool. “What then?”
“She left. Mad.”
“How long was she here?” Alvarez clarified.
“About an hour, I guess, maybe a little longer. I dunno.”
“So now it was dark,” Pescoli said. “And you just let her go. By herself.”
“Yes!” Donny was getting angry, color tinging his cheeks and the back of his neck. “That was the whole point. She wanted to talk to me alone, to, you know, work things out, but it didn’t happen. That’s it. She was there, we talked, fought—just words—and then she stormed off. She always did that, just left, sometimes maybe slammed a door. That’s all I know. What she did afterward, I don’t know. I never heard from her again.”
“She didn’t call or text?” Alvarez said as she heard the smooth purr of another engine coming close.
“What part of no don’t you understand?” Donny demanded. “That’s all there is.”
“Would you mind showing me your cell phone, so I can confirm?” Pescoli asked.
“What? No.” Panic in his gaze. “I erase everything.”
Another lie. Pescoli said, “We can get them from your cell phone carrier.”
“Is that even legal?” he asked. “Don’t you need like a warrant or something?”
Pescoli said, “We haven’t found Destiny’s phone yet, but when we do, we’ll be double-checking her records, calls, texts, searches on the Internet.”
He blanched.
“And even if we don’t find it right away, we’ll be checking with her carrier and getting the records from them.”
He opened his mouth, was about to say something, probably change his story, when the idling engine stopped. A car door opened and slammed shut.
“Oh, shit,” Donny said just as Mayor Carolina Justison stormed through the open gate.
“Whose car is blocking the—?” She let the sentence die when she recognized the two detectives. “Oh.”
Wearing a slim navy skirt and white knit top, a computer bag slung over her shoulder, she advanced on the group gathered in the shade of the back porch. Her lips were compressed. Her eyes, behind rimless glasses, snapped angrily. Her blond hair, cut at an angle to her chin, whipped away from her face as her red pumps pounded along the cement path past the basketball court.
“I thought I told the sheriff that my son was off limits,” she barked at Pescoli. “I made it very clear that Donald wasn’t going to talk to the police without an attorney present!”
“I didn’t say nothin’,” Donny protested as Alex edged away from the group and toward the gate.
“Anything!” she corrected automatically, swinging around to glare at her son. “You didn’t say ‘anything’ and that’s good. But it’s not the point. We all know you have nothing to hide. But there is a protocol to follow.” Her gaze sharpened on Alvarez. “I talked to the sheriff directly, and I spoke to you. I thought we were all on the same page about this.”
“New information came to light,” Alvarez said, not backing down an inch. “We just wanted to clarify a few things. Donny and Alex both knew the victim.”
“Donny will speak with you, but only with an attorney present. Is that clear?” She turned her attention to her son. “I think you should go in, take a shower, get cleaned up. We’re going out for dinner. With Bernard.”
As in Bernard Reece? Senior partner of a local law firm? Father of Austin Reece who seemed to be the ringleader of the group? Alvarez made a note.
Donny’s expression turned put-upon, as if his mother were really stepping into his private space and time. “I can talk to them. I’ve got nothing to hide . . .” At his mother’s sharp glare, he clammed up and scooped his things from the table, but not before Carolina’s sharp eyes noticed the pack of Winstons.
“Donald,” she said tightly. “Really?” She plucked the pack from his big paw. “We talked about this.”
“You smoke!”
Her cheeks tinged pink. “It’s not a habit.” She slid her eyes toward Alvarez to see if she noticed. “And it’s different. You’re an athlete.”
Donny, red-faced, didn’t argue and hurried off, making his way toward a large sliding door flanked by a wall of windows. As he yanked it open, Alvarez caught a glimpse of a large kitchen that appeared to be recently remodeled, and opened to an adjacent family room where leather furniture was clustered around a fireplace, an oversized flat-screen mounted over the mantel.
From the corner of her eye, Alvarez saw Alex O’Hara easing toward the hedge.
Mayor Justison noticed also. “Good-bye, Alex,” she said in a singsong voice. As he disappeared through the hedge, she tucked the pack of cigarettes into the side pocket of her computer case, then made sure that Donny had shut the family room door. “Kids,” she whispered, as if the three women remaining were in a tight-knit little coffee klatch that understood the foibles of teenagers. She seemed less tense and, with another glance at the family room, Carolina scrounged in her bag and withdrew a cigarette and Donny’s lighter. With her back to the house, she lit up. “Since my little secret’s out, right?” Exhaling a lungful of smoke, she flashed a smile as a motorcycle’s engine came to life, wheels chirping. Presumably, Alex O’Hara had made good his escape.
Carolina said, “I rarely buy a pack, but today, I think I owe myself a wee little shot of nicotine.”
The motorcycle was now racing away, engine whining to a higher pitch as Alex O’Hara put the bike through its paces.
“Did you know that the victim was pregnant?” Pescoli asked.
Carolina was about to take another drag but stopped, the cigarette halfway to her lips.
“Two months along,” Pescoli added.
“Oh, dear God. Oh, no.” She was visibly shocked.
Alvarez said, “Preliminary autopsy’s in. Looks like her neck was snapped. She actually died of asphyxiation. She was strangled. But whoever choked her was strong enough to break her neck.”
“I thought she drowned.”
“No water in her lungs,” Alvarez said. “Someone killed her and tossed her into the creek.”
Carolina’s knees looked about to give way and she placed a hand on the top of a table to steady herself. “Oh Lord.” She took a seat as well as another hit from her cigarette. “Oh, dear Lord.” Then it hit her. “But you don’t think . . . that Donald Junior . . . that he was involved?”
Alvarez said, “He admitted to meeting her that night, here. Claims they talked things out. No one else was here. They fought. She stormed out, that was the last he saw of her. He never went to Reservoir Point that night, or so he says, but it seems he may well be the last person to ha
ve seen her alive.”
“Aside from the killer,” she said weakly.
Pescoli said, without inflection, “We’re asking for a DNA sample. And need to see his cell phone records.”
“Now, wait a minute. You can’t possibly think that Donald Junior had anything to do with what happened to that poor girl.”
Pescoli said, “He agreed to come to the station and give a DNA sample.”
“No,” she stated firmly.
“We’re just trying to get to the truth,” Alvarez assured her. “Eliminate suspects.”
“Oh, for the love of . . .” Carolina rubbed her forehead with the fingers of her free hand, then steadily climbed to her feet. “My son is innocent of any wrongdoing. I can’t speak about paternity of the baby. That I don’t know, but I assure you Donald Junior would have stood by his child, if—and it’s a big if—he was the father. From what I understand Destiny was . . . loose with her favors.”
“Her ‘favors’?” Alvarez repeated.
“As in sexual favors. You know what I mean. The way I understand it, she kind of got around. I think it was one of the reasons Donny broke up with her.”
“Then a DNA test will straighten all that out,” Pescoli pointed out. “And the text and phone information on his cell will help clear him as well.”
For a second, Carolina studied the lit end of her filter tip, then took another long drag and, in the stream of smoke that ensued, said, “I think we’re done here, detectives.” Though she’d calmed considerably, there was still an edge to her voice. “We all know that Donny is innocent except for being a slave to his raging teenage hormones, as we all once were. That girl Destiny, poor thing, just wouldn’t leave him alone. She was obsessed. Donny tried to let her down easy, but, of course, that just didn’t work.” She sighed heavily, took a final pull on the Winston, then let it drop to the concrete, where she crushed out the burning butt with the toe of one pump. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m sure you can find your way out.”
With that, she plucked the remains of her cigarette from the patio and dropped it into a trash can tucked behind a fence near the hedge, then, back ramrod straight, clipped her way into the house.