Expecting to Die

by Lisa Jackson

  Bianca’s eyes began to sheen with unshed tears. “But I want this, Mom. More than anything.”

  Luke was nodding vigorously. “’Course you do, honey. And it doesn’t matter what Mom says, Sphinx understands what I’m talking about, that you are a thousand-percent committed. And if he doesn’t come through . . .” Luke was shaking his head.

  “If he doesn’t come through, what’re you going to do?” Gritting her teeth against the contraction, she forced out, “Look, Luke, I don’t think Barclay Sphinx broke any laws and if you have a problem with the contract Bianca signed, then hire a lawyer!”

  “Not good enough,” he growled. “Bianca’s going to the filming tonight, and that’s that. We’ll see how things shake out.”

  “You need to leave. We’ll deal with this,” she said as she heard the garage door roll open, and the pain increased, intense pressure building. Oh. Jesus. This time, she sucked her breath in through her teeth and grimaced. “Oh, God.”

  “Mom?” Bianca said, her eyes filled with worry.

  “I’m okay.” No, no, I’m definitely not.

  The back door opened.

  Santana and Jeremy walked in.

  Just as her damned water broke.

  * * *

  Kywin Bell was in the wind.

  As if he’d known that Alvarez was onto him, the kid had disappeared, Alvarez thought, as she drove back to the station. She’d tried to call his phone. No answer. She’d contacted his friends and gotten nowhere. The same had been true with his brother, Kip, who’d answered with, “Leave us the hell alone.” Kywin had been fired from his job and the place was closed for the night. None of the road deputies had reported seeing his vehicle.

  He had to be in hiding. As if he’d felt the noose tightening and had gone underground. Well, he wouldn’t stay hidden forever.

  She pulled into the sheriff’s office parking lot and headed inside. Pescoli hadn’t returned her call, which was odd, but the woman did have a family. Alvarez, on the other hand, lived alone, with her pets. O’Keefe stayed over when he was in town or she visited him, but, for the most part, she was married to her job. That . . . and her inability to get over the death of Dan Grayson. The unrequited feelings she’d had for her former boss had put some strain on their relationship. Grayson’s ghost still lingered around these halls, and she was susceptible to it. Especially at night, when the station was quieter and his office was dark.

  And Dylan was no fool. He knew she struggled with emotions she couldn’t or wouldn’t name. Yet, he loved her still. “Idiot!” she admonished herself.

  Their relationship was far from an ideal situation, she thought as she parked and stepped into the warm August night. The air was dry and dusty, but there was the promise of thunderstorms on the horizon, a small current of electricity that she felt in the stiff breeze that scattered leaves and debris across the parking lot.

  Inside, the offices were quiet, a few detectives working, several road deputies collected in the lunchroom before they headed out for the night. Tonight, however, a light emanated from beneath the sheriff’s door, and she paused with her hand on the panels. Maybe she should let Blackwater know of the progress they were making.

  What progress? You know the name of the father of the victim’s unborn child, and he’s missing. Wait until you talk to Kywin Bell and put the screws to him, then discuss it with Pescoli before going to the sheriff with only half-baked theories.

  She was about to step into her office when she spied Zoller heading her way. “Glad I caught you,” Sage said without preamble. “I was about to leave for the night when I got a call from Carlton Jeffe. The guy with the drone.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Seems as if he’s found something with his drone. Possibly another dead body.”

  “Another? Whose?” she asked, a needle of dread piercing her heart. Kywin Bell was missing. No one was claiming to have heard from him.

  “Unknown. Rescuers are on their way.”

  “Where?”

  “Federal land. About a mile south of Reservoir Point.”

  “Anything else we know about it?”

  “Just that it looks like a woman. The drone couldn’t get too close because of the foliage, but a leg and arm were visible. The shoe was a woman’s sandal. And neither appendage moved. Jeffe sent over a file, so I’ve got a visual.”

  “Let’s see it.”

  Zoller led the way into the conference room where they’d met earlier and sure enough, Jeffe had uploaded footage from the drone. As Zoller had stated, the forest was dense, but caught on the drone’s camera was a slim, naked leg, and from the toes of the visible foot, a gold sandal dangled. A hand was visible as well, and as Zoller zoomed in, Alvarez saw that the fingernails were tipped with a pearlescent pink color and on her ring finger was a glittering diamond ring.

  “Married,” Sage said. “Or engaged.”

  “Has anyone reported a woman missing?”

  “Don’t know. This just came in.”

  “Let’s find out.” Alvarez was already out the door and in the hallway when Zoller caught up with her.

  Taj Nyak was working the desk, and upon Alvarez’s inquiry about recently filed reports about missing women, she nodded. “We’ve got a couple that came in. Penelope Jarvis, eighty-six. Went missing from Safe Haven Adult Care.”

  “Not so safe,” Zoller said. “They might want to change their name.”

  “Someone younger,” Alvarez said.

  “Got one, just today.” Taj pulled the file up on the computer and spun the screen around so Alvarez could view it. “Marjory Tufts,” she said. “Her husband was in about three this afternoon.” A picture was attached to the file. Alvarez recognized Emmett and Preston Tufts’s stepmother. “He’s worried sick about her, said they had a fight and she took off last night. I guess it happens often enough that he wasn’t worried, thought she’d spend the night with a friend or in a hotel. It’s happened before. But this is the first time she’d taken off, he claims, since she found out she was pregnant. When she didn’t show up, he called around. Her friends, the local hotel where she stayed before, even a couple of hospitals, but no one had seen her. So he left work—he owns a car dealership—and came down here to file a report.”

  Alvarez was nodding, but her eyes were on the photograph attached to the missing persons report. Marjory was young, not yet twenty, with a bright smile, a twinkle in her eye, and a glittery wedding ring that was identical to the one in the image captured by Carlton Jeffe’s drone.

  * * *

  No! No! No! Not now. It couldn’t be happening now.

  The baby had to wait. It had to! She didn’t have time to go into labor now, to birth a child, not while this investigation was ongoing.

  And what if the case goes on for weeks, for months, even years? Do you expect the baby to wait?

  Another hard contraction stole her concentration as Santana drove, pushing the speed limit along the darkened country road. “Hang in there,” he advised as she labored in the passenger seat, the baby definitely on its way. The contractions were coming faster now, the forest and fields speeding by, the sun having set and dusk crawling over the land.

  “This is such bad timing,” she gritted out.

  “The department will function without you,” Santana assured her. “Trust me, the crime rate won’t go up in the next few days just because you’re not able to go in.”

  “Very funny,” she said, though neither laughed and for once Pescoli didn’t argue. She couldn’t. The baby was coming and coming fast. Pains as intense as any she’d ever felt in her life tore through her, with ever decreasing intervals in between.

  In flashes of memory, as she clutched the passenger seat, she remembered her previous deliveries. Both Jeremy and Bianca had arrived quickly, her labor lasting less than six hours, but this one, Santana’s kid, seemed determined to break their records and race headlong into the world.

  Santana floored it on a straightaway.

  “Don’t kil
l us,” she advised, thinking of the deer and rabbits and whatever that came out at twilight, animals that wandered along the road.

  “Before I meet my kid?” he said, slanting a glance in her direction. His grin was an enigmatic and irreverent slash of white. “You hang in there. Concentrate on bringing that baby into the world and leave the driving to me. Deal?”

  “Deal,” she said, her heart swelling. Damn, but she loved this man. And then another contraction hit with the force of an earthquake and all she could think about was getting through the pain.

  She even forgot that life as she’d known it was about to end as he called the hospital and said to the operator who answered: “This is Nate Santana. I’m bringing my wife, Regan Pescoli, to the ER. She’s in labor and the baby’s just about here! We’re preregistered and our Doctor is . . . Peeples . . .” He glanced at Regan.

  “Ramona.”

  “Ramona Peeples. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “Hurry,” she said through gritted teeth and couldn’t believe she had the urge to push. Right here in the Jeep. “It’s . . . it’s coming!”

  “Hold on!” Horn blasting, Santana slowed for a red light and apparently saw no traffic, as he twisted on the steering wheel and the Jeep careened on to the main street leading to the hospital.

  Oh. Dear. God.

  “I . . . I can’t. It’s . . .” She let out a wrenching groan as pain ripped through her body. The fingers of her right hand dug into the armrest, while her left gripped the console. “Oh, oh . . .” Northern General came into view. “It’s . . . he’s . . . she’s . . . almost . . . almost . . . here!” She was fighting the urge to push and failing.

  Speeding around a final corner, Santana roared onto the access road, then hit the brakes and slid to a stop in front of the double glass doors of the emergency room. He cut the engine and was out of the Jeep in an instant, rounding the vehicle as Pescoli, deep into a contraction, bit back a scream and clawed at her seat belt, releasing the buckle.

  When Santana opened the passenger door, she nearly tumbled out just as two attendants with a gurney arrived and somehow hoisted her onto the stretcher and began wheeling her inside. “Hold on,” one of the attendants said, and to Santana: “We’re taking her straight to a birthing room. You can do the paperwork later.”

  They hustled her through the emergency room doors, the lights of the interior of the hospital bright, the walls seeming to gleam, and into an elevator.

  The rest of the delivery came fast. They barely got her into the bed and removed her clothes before she could hold back no longer and began to push in earnest. She didn’t care that the doctor hadn’t arrived or that the staff was scrambling around, not prepared. This baby was being born!

  “Okay, Mama,” one of the nurses said. “Baby has crowned. Now—”

  Regan didn’t hear the rest, didn’t know if Santana was in the room or what had happened to her other children, who were supposed to have followed them to the hospital. All she knew was that she had to push this thing out of her, and in a rush, she did.

  A nurse caught the baby, she heard a squall and Regan fell back on the raised portion of the bed. She was vaguely aware of a large, warm hand on her head, then Santana’s voice in her ear. “Good job, Mama,” he whispered as the baby was placed on her abdomen. “We have a son.”

  Tears filled her eyes as she held the boy, and raw emotion, as deep as the craters in the sea, filled her. “Oh, sweetie,” she whispered, all of the worries of her job, her family, the world and universe vanishing with the little gurgling sounds of this tiny, minutes-old infant. “Welcome to our crazy life,” she whispered.

  Smiling despite the glisten in his eyes, Santana touched his son for the first time, his hand seeming huge as it caressed the back of the dark-haired baby. “Hey, there,” he said softly as he looked for the first time at the tiny face of Tucker Grayson Santana.

  CHAPTER 30

  Richtor Tufts was genuinely upset. He couldn’t sit for five seconds without jumping to his feet and pacing in front of the small table separating him from Alvarez in the interview room at the station.

  “I just don’t understand,” he said in a devastated voice for what had to be the fifth or sixth time. “Who would do this? Why?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” she said. “Please, Mr. Tufts, take a seat.”

  “Oh, right. Right.”

  At the morgue, he’d ID’d his wife’s body, the petite, young woman who had the same dark bruising on her neck as had been evident on Destiny Rose Montclaire.

  Alvarez had arrived at the crime scene and seen Marjory’s body, tossed carelessly in the brush. Mrs. Tufts had been dressed as if intending to go out, in a short white mini dress, gold bracelet and necklace that matched her expensive shoes. As yet, the ME could give no precise time of death, but it was thought to have occurred sometime the night before. From the condition of her body, the bruises and contusions, Alvarez believed there had been a struggle, the scattering of leaves and pine needles, disturbance of dirt and branches, indicating some kind of fight had occurred. As far as she knew, the only evidence found at the scene was a large footprint discovered about ten feet from the body. A cigarette butt had been found as well and that, too, was being processed, in the hope that there would be DNA found.

  The only good news about this killer was that he was careless, a person who didn’t watch crime or cop shows, or know about trace evidence.

  Finally, a break.

  Alvarez had noticed the similarity of bruising on Marjory’s body, so close to that of Destiny Rose Montclaire’s, but hadn’t mentioned it to Richtor, as she’d wanted to witness his reaction. That had been swift. His face had contorted in disbelief, his knees nearly buckling as he’d viewed his wife’s corpse. He’d broken into tears and had eagerly agreed to meet Alvarez at the sheriff’s department and go over their last conversation, a heated argument that had occurred the night before.

  “It was a stupid thing,” he said now in the interview room, going over the story again. “Madge had wanted to go out with friends—Madge is what I call her—and I’d argued with her. This was an on-going thing with her. She’s pregnant, and her crowd—well, they’re young, so they all like to party until the wee hours. Some of them, including my sons, are involved in filming that new reality show, Big Foot Sightings in Montana, or something like that.”

  “Big Foot Territory: Montana!”

  “That’s it. She didn’t say as much, not right off the bat, but Madge, she wanted to be a part of it, and was jealous . . . No, no, that’s the wrong word. Not exactly jealous, but envious, maybe, of all the kids who were involved. She would have loved to be a part of that, even knew of that producer guy, Spinks?”

  “Sphinx. Barclay Sphinx.”

  “She was a big fan of a couple of his reality shows, the one about the Hollywood has-beens, Tarnished Stars, and she was excited about the new ones, this one about the Big Foot sightings and that one in Oregon about ghosts.... She was all over those and when I told her it was stupid, that she was married, going to be a mother, and she should forget all that nonsense, she blew up, said I didn’t ‘understand.’ And that’s the truth. I didn’t. She has, had, a good life and some slick producer wasn’t going to change that.”

  Alvarez was taking notes, watching Richtor’s expressions, even though the interview was being recorded on video and audio from a camera mounted high on the cinder-block wall. Others, including Sheriff Blackwater, were observing as well, standing on the other side of the two-way mirror mounted on the wall.

  “So what about enemies? Anyone you know might want to harm her?”

  “No. Madge is so sweet.” He must’ve caught the skepticism on Alvarez’s face because he lifted his hands, palms out. “We had fights. She was a passionate woman. But I can’t imagine anyone would want to hurt her. Usually she was the nicest girl you’d want to meet.”

  “How did your ex-wife feel about her?” Alvarez already knew that Marjory had be
en the wedge between Richtor and his first wife.

  “Oh, Terri.” He pulled a face. “They didn’t get along. Of course. I mean, that was my fault. I fell in love with Madge before I was divorced. The marriage was dead, mind you—Terri and I hadn’t . . . been intimate in years. We’d shared the same bed, but we may as well have been time zones apart. I think we just stayed together because it’s what we were used to and we had the boys . . . so . . .”

  “But you met Marjory.”

  “Yes.” He smiled, remembering.

  “How?”

  “Well.” He seemed a bit embarrassed. “You know she’s a lot younger than me and . . . well . . .” He was slowly shaking his head, bouncing it a bit, as he tried to find the right words, finally settling on, “She was actually dating my youngest boy, Emmett, at the time it all began.”

  “The youngest?”

  “I know. I’m not proud of that, of course, but hell, there was just such a connection, you know? And Madge felt it, too. She actually came on to me and I . . . I gave in. She’s the most . . . incredible creature I’ve ever met.” His throat tightened and he squeezed his eyes shut. “I just can’t believe she’s gone.”

  “What about Emmett?”

  “What about him?”

  “How did he feel?”

  “Oh, well.” Another embarrassed grimace . . . or was it something else? Was there a little pride attached to it—the old man besting his son? “He was upset, of course. Fancied himself in love with her, I think. I mean, come on. Who falls in love at that age?”

  “Marjory did. That’s what you’re saying.”

  “Yes, but she’s a woman and mature for her age. Not like boys. They take forever to grow up. I know. I was one.” Beneath the fluorescent lights, he looked every one of his years as he leaned back in his chair.

  “Did Emmett get over it?”

  “Sure. Both boys did. Preston, he didn’t like it much, either, but hell, what’re ya gonna do when your old man’s in love?” He cleared his throat. “Terri and I got divorced quickly and she was angry. No woman wants to lose her husband to a younger, more beautiful woman. Of course she was upset. But I was fair in the divorce, not . . . overly generous, maybe, but more than fair.”