Expecting to Die

by Lisa Jackson

  No one in either food services or the children’s ward had any idea who would want to harm her. Everyone was upset that she’d been killed and completely at a loss as to who would do anything so vile. To a person, they claimed no one had seen her since her last shift, which had happened two days before she went missing. Also, no one had known she was pregnant.

  Alvarez and Pescoli ended up with a big fat zero in the information department until they were on their way out, when Pescoli checked with the personnel director and learned Simone was currently working.

  Perfect.

  Here was the chance to speak with Simone without Mary-Beth hovering over her and offering up answers rather than letting her daughter talk. They found Simone in the soiled-linen room, where she was dutifully pushing a full cart of dirty bed linens to an area near closed oversized garage doors, big enough for a truck to pull through. After the bin was in position, she rolled an empty bin under one of the huge chutes that opened from the ceiling.

  She was dressed in scrubs, her hair tied into pigtails, her makeup toned down from the previous Saturday night, an ID card with her picture on a lanyard swinging from her neck. She saw the cops and sighed. “My mom said not to answer any questions.”

  Pescoli was impressed, in spite of herself, at the hard work Simone was doing. “Let me guess, she wants you to have a lawyer present.”

  She lifted a shoulder. “Yeah, but I don’t really care what she says.”

  “We could wait until you go home and talk to you with your mom or dad or a lawyer, if that’s what you want.”

  “Just ask me what you want to ask me.”

  “You and Destiny Montclaire were both volunteers here at the hospital,” Alvarez said. “Were you friends, too?”

  “We got along, but . . .” Simone shrugged, then rolled her eyes when, in a whoosh, a wad of bedding fell from one of the three chutes and landed in an empty bin. “Fun, huh?” she said, eyeing the soiled sheets. “My mom forced me to work here, well, volunteer. I don’t get paid,” she admitted. “Says it’ll look good on my college applications.”

  “Did you hang out with Destiny?”

  “Nah. We didn’t even have shifts that overlapped. I’d see her around sometimes and once . . . no, twice, we ate together. That’s when she was working with the kids, maybe a couple of months ago. Before that, when she worked in the cafeteria, it was crazy busy for her. We never even talked.”

  “Did you know she was pregnant?” Alvarez asked.

  A shake of her head, pigtails swinging. “I don’t think she told anybody, did she?” When they didn’t respond, she added, “Anyway, I never heard about it until after she died. Like I said, we weren’t close.”

  “Who was close to her?” Again, Alvarez.

  “You mean besides Donny? I don’t know. I think Kywin Bell had a thing for her and maybe”—she squished up her nose as if she were really thinking hard—“Emmett Tufts? Or Alex O’Hara? But maybe not. Sometimes those guys would look at her the way guys do when they think a girl is hot, but then they’re all so horny they look at everyone that way. Come on. My shift’s over. I have to lock up.” She headed for the door and they followed after her. Once they’d passed into the hall, she locked the room behind them.

  “What about girlfriends?” Pescoli questioned as they walked toward the elevator. “Who was her bestie?”

  “I don’t even know if she had one. I saw her with Lara a couple of times. And . . . oh, maybe Maddie, because, you know, if the guys were looking at Destiny, then Maddie wanted to make sure they saw her, too.”

  “What about Lindsay Cronin?”

  “I guess.” She frowned. “I heard she was missing. Her mom called earlier.”

  “Have you seen her?”

  “Not since the other night. At the Big Foot thing.”

  “What about texting or talking to her?”

  “Same as everyone else, I guess. She’s on group texts, but no, not since that meeting. We like hung out, yeah, but more in school, y’know. In summer we all kinda do our own thing unless there’s a party or we hang out at the river or whatever.”

  She rang for the elevator and the doors opened. They all entered, and Simone said, “God, I hate this job.” As the doors whispered shut and they started upward, Simone folded her arms across her chest and slumped against a polished wall. “You think it’s really gonna help me get into Harvard or Yale or Stanford or UCLA? Stacking sheets and counting cotton balls? I don’t think the people who are recruiting for college really give a rat’s ass about how neatly I can organize pillowcases.” The elevator car arrived with a ding. An orderly pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair waited until they stepped outside, then rolled his charge inside.

  As they headed toward reception, afternoon light was streaming in from wide windows near the front entrance. Simone yanked the lanyard over her head, stuffed it into a pocket of her scrubs and withdrew a set of keys, then said, “Look I really gotta go. I don’t know anything else.”

  “If you think of something, call us.”

  “Sure.” She didn’t say it with conviction, but she did add, “I think my mom just wants me to be busy this summer, that’s what I think. So that I stay out of trouble.” She headed for the exterior doors.

  Alvarez checked her messages as she and Pescoli followed Simone outside. At the Subaru, she was still scrolling through them. “Guess what?” she finally said, looking up.

  “I couldn’t begin to,” Pescoli muttered as she levered herself into the passenger seat.

  “Zoller texted me. The night Destiny Montclaire disappeared, she called and texted Donny Justison. But he wasn’t the only one. In separate texts, she also contacted Kywin Bell and Lindsay Cronin.”

  CHAPTER 20

  They caught up with Kywin Bell just hopping out of a battered Dodge truck in the driveway of his father’s house. The truck had been jacked up, the wheels oversized, the tailgate missing.

  He saw the two cops approach. A scowl curved across his unshaven jaw. “I talked to you already,” he said, retrieving a beat-up lunch pail from the truck’s interior, then slamming the door shut.

  “We just have a few more questions,” Alvarez said.

  “Well, I’m all outta answers. You already nearly cost me my job, so I’m done.” He started for the house, a single-story post-war bungalow that was in need of more than just paint. The porch sagged, the shingles of the roof were curling and cracked, the gutters rusting.

  “You’re not quite done,” said Pescoli.

  Swatting at a bee, he spun around just before reaching the listing porch, lips compressed, nostrils flaring. “What is it with you cops, huh? Never satisfied. Always nagging. Just cuz my old man did time doesn’t mean I had anything to do with . . . with anything!”

  A scrawny gray cat that had been sunning itself on the porch got up quickly and slunk behind a couple of metal chairs. With a quick look over its shoulder and a swish of its tail, the feline slid off the porch to hide in a clump of dry weeds. Kywin reached for the dilapidated screen door as Alvarez said, “Destiny texted you on the last night she was seen alive.”

  “What?” He dropped his hands and stared at them in shock. Shaking his head, he reached into his jean pocket for a crumpled pack of cigarettes. “I never got no text.” He found a lighter, lit up, then blew smoke out of the side of his mouth in a fast stream.

  “We have records from the cell company,” Alvarez told him. “The text is there.”

  “They’re wrong. I didn’t get a text from her.”

  He was so sure of himself, Pescoli started to wonder a bit as he left his cigarette clamped in the corner of his mouth and dug in another pocket, located his cell phone and checked the screen, pressing buttons deftly before finding what he was looking for. “There,” he said, holding the phone, face out, to the cops.

  Shading the screen with one hand, Pescoli studied the phone. A tiny head shot of Destiny appeared beside a thread of texts, which included another picture, a selfie of her in a pin
k bikini at a swimming hole by the river. Her head was cocked to one side, her eyes dancing mischievously, her grin a little seductive. The attached message read: Swimming @Cougar Springs. Join me after work? She’d ended it with an emoticon of a smiley face wearing sunglasses. There were no more texts.

  Pescoli pointed out, “You could have deleted any message you got from her.”

  “I didn’t! For shit’s sake, I told you, that’s the last message I got from her.”

  Alvarez scrolled up. “She texted you just about every day, sometimes more than once.”

  “Yeah.” He took a long drag from his cig. “Your point is . . . ?”

  “So, didn’t you think it was strange that she just stopped?”

  “She’s a chick. Y’know. They’re all weird. Sometimes all in your grill, then they get pissed or into something or someone else and they, like, disappear.” He reached for his phone. “Give it back. Some of that stuff is private.” Then, not waiting, snatched it out of Alvarez’s fingers. “Should never have let you see it.”

  “It proves nothing, Kywin,” Pescoli said.

  “I’m tellin’ ya: I didn’t get any text that night. I didn’t delete any texts. I didn’t hear from her after she sent me the last one you just seen.” He held up the phone, shaking it.

  “You didn’t respond.”

  “No. I was busy. I was at work when she texted, then with the guys later that night. I already told you this.” He took a final puff on his cigarette, then jabbed it into a cracked ceramic pot filled with sand and soil, where other dead butts had collected. “I gotta go.”

  Pescoli asked, “Have you talked to Lindsay Cronin?”

  “What?” His eyebrows slammed together.

  “Lindsay,” she repeated. “Have you seen her?”

  “I saw her at the party up at the point. When Bianca found Destiny. You know we were all there.”

  Alvarez asked, “You heard she’s missing?”

  “Simone said something about it.” Rubbing the back of his neck, he said, “I don’t know anything about her being gone.” A pause, then his expression changed to incredulity. “Jesus, don’t tell me you think I had something to do with that, too.”

  Pescoli said, “We don’t know what happened to her, yet, but she got a message from Destiny, too. Sent about thirty seconds after she sent one to you.”

  Gone was the dismissive attitude. “Did Lindsay get hers?”

  “We don’t know,” Alvarez said.

  “Well, I didn’t. I’ve told you over and over. I don’t know anything about what happened to Des.”

  Pescoli pushed him. “What about Lindsay?”

  “Are you deaf? Or just stupid? I had nothing to do with whatever happened to either one of them. I don’t even like Lindsay. For Christ’s sake, I’m done talkin’ with you. Done. So get off my property and don’t come back without a warrant!”

  He grabbed the handle of the rusted screen door, yanked it hard enough that Pescoli thought it might come off its hinges, then stomped inside, the door banging behind him.

  They were about to leave when a Chevy Suburban rolled into the driveway to park behind Kywin’s truck.

  Uh-oh. Pescoli braced herself as Franklin Bell, nearly three hundred pounds of him, cut the engine and stepped into the yard. A trucker’s cap shaded eyes already covered by mirrored aviator glasses, his jeans were dusty, his black T-shirt gray with Sheetrock dust. Franklin was a surly man who drank too much, and when he did, more often than not, he let his fists do his talking, and they never said anything good. His ex-wife, Wilda, could tell that story.

  “What the hell are you doin’ here?” he said, his lips curling into a snarl.

  “Franklin,” Pescoli greeted him flatly. “We needed to talk to your son about the disappearance of Lindsay Cronin.”

  “I thought her name was Destiny. And they found her.” One sausage-like finger poked in Pescoli’s direction. “Your kid found her.”

  “That’s right. Destiny Montclaire was the victim of homicide and now Lindsay Cronin’s gone missing.”

  “Damn.” His lips folded in on themselves. “You think one of my boys had somethin’ to do with it? That why you’re here?” His gaze sliced from Kywin’s truck to the house. “Just because I’ve had my trouble with you all don’t mean my kids are . . .” He stared down at Pescoli. “Don’t put this on my boys. You can pick on me all you want, but you leave Kywin and Kip alone.”

  A kick of adrenaline charged through Pescoli’s blood. Franklin Bell was violent and unpredictable, but she said calmly, “Kywin got a text from the girl who was killed, Destiny Montclaire, on the night she died, then he lied about it. Still is lying. And now another girl he knows is missing.”

  “We’re following up,” Alvarez said.

  “Lots of kids knew them girls.” A muscle in his heavy jaw bulged, and within the tangle of his beard his mouth became a firm, hard line. “Don’t you make this a witch hunt, y’hear? Don’t you go blamin’ Kywin for somethin’ he didn’t do. Now, get the hell off my property.”

  He stomped into the house much like Kywin had minutes before, slamming the door behind him. Pescoli and Alvarez headed to the Subaru.

  “Kywin Bell is lying,” Alvarez said.

  “He and everyone else associated with this case.” Pescoli glared at the little house where Franklin and his two sons lived. “Teenagers: they all lie. And Kywin knows he’s in trouble. We’ve got proof.”

  “All we’ve got is that she texted him and he lied about getting the text. Nothing more.”

  “Yet,” she said as Alvarez started the engine and they rolled away from the house, “it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Those kids know more than they’re telling, or at least some of them do. We just have to dig deeper.”

  By the time Pescoli got home, it was after nine. The dogs greeted her and she found Santana, freshly showered, long-neck bottle of beer in hand, stretched out on the couch in the family room. He was watching TV—some old Clint Eastwood movie that she should know the name of, but couldn’t remember. God, the beer looked inviting.

  He clicked off the television and met her in the kitchen, where she was opening the refrigerator and staring glumly at the interior. “I could make you a double margarita,” he said and kissed her above her ear. She slid him a glance. He clarified, “A virgin.”

  “Always so thoughtful.”

  His grin was sexy. “I try.”

  “Try harder.” Snagging a bottle of Perrier from the top shelf, she let the door close. “Bianca home? Or is she out being a movie star?”

  “Make that ‘reality TV star.’ It’s a few steps down from being an A-lister on the red carpet, I think.” He took a swallow from his bottle. “But she’s up in her room. Jeremy is out.”

  “With who?”

  “He doesn’t tell me and I don’t ask. He’s old enough to come and go as he pleases.”

  “Fine stepfather you turned out to be.” She kicked off her shoes and ignored the fact that her feet were swollen. Yeah, being pregnant was just a barrel of laughs. “And don’t tell me you try, okay?” She was joking, but it fell flat.

  “You okay?” He was serious now, eyes assessing her.

  “When am I ever ‘okay’?”

  “Point taken.”

  Leaning against the counter near the sink, she opened her bottle and took a drink. “Another girl’s missing.” She then went on to tell him about her day and the interview with Kywin Bell. She closed her eyes, rotating her neck, hoping to release the tension she’d felt ever since learning Lindsay Cronin was missing. “I can’t help but think her disappearance is linked to Destiny Montclaire’s. God, I hope we find her alive.”

  “But you’re not betting on it.”

  “No. Her phone’s gone dark. Turned off. Can’t be GPS tracked because it’s off. No one can reach her, and we haven’t found her car. No one’s seen her. We double-checked with friends, family, and the local hospitals, which the parents had already done . . . and . . . nothing. We’ve
caught a couple of kids lying.... They know something but are hell-bent on keeping it on the down low. Oh, hell. I think I’d better go talk to Bianca.”

  “You think she knows something?”

  “No, but the truth is, I don’t know.”

  She headed up the stairs and found Bianca, leg propped on a pillow, watching reruns of Big Foot Territory: Oregon! on her iPad while simultaneously texting her friends. A frozen bag of peas lay atop her ankle.

  “You heard about Lindsay?” her mother asked.

  Bianca moved higher on the pillows as her mother sat on the edge of the bed. “Everyone’s talking about it. My phone’s blowing up.”

  “Anyone know anything?”

  “No.” Bianca paused the action on the screen of her device, where two men with long hair and rifles were stealthily walking through a mountain wilderness. “Everyone’s asking about her, but no one has any information. They’re all saying that her parents think she snuck out, took her car, and didn’t come back.”

  Pescoli nodded. “That’s about the gist of it. Any ideas? Would she go off to meet a boyfriend?”

  Bianca lifted her shoulders. “She really didn’t have a boyfriend, was, you know, just part of the group.”

  “She didn’t date?”

  “She hooked up with Austin a couple of times, I think, but that was a while back. It never became anything. I think she likes him because he’s rich and his dad helped him get into some big Ivy League college.” She glanced back at the screen to the frozen image. “She really wants to go away to a four-year school, like her brother did. But he got some kind of athletic scholarship and her folks told her they really can’t afford for both of them to go away to school or something. They want her to live at home for a while until Malcolm graduates, and she thinks that’s crap.”

  “But she gets along with her folks.”

  “Yeah, oh, yeah, I think so.”

  Two more texts had chimed in during their conversation and Bianca glanced at her phone.