The Alvarez & Pescoli Series

by Lisa Jackson

  She started CPR on the woman ... two breaths, then chest compressions. Come on, come on, Jocelyn. Stay with me, she thought as she counted aloud.

  “One, two, three, four, five—”

  For a second, the woman’s eyes opened, and Kacey nearly gasped as the resemblance to herself was almost uncanny.

  “Doctor!”

  Anita’s voice pierced her brain, and she realized she’d stumbled on the count.

  “That’s fifteen, sixteen, seventeen,” Anita prompted, and Kacey caught up just as the doors to the ICU flew open again, three nurses and two doctors streaming in, the crash cart rolling toward the bed.

  “Get these people out of here!” a strong male voice ordered, and from the corner of her eye Kacey watched as Anita shooed the detectives and Trace O’Halleran through the doors. “I’ll take over now,” the same voice said, and she glanced up to see Dr. Wes Lewis walk quickly to the bed, waiting for her to hit thirty before stepping in as she withdrew her hands and a nurse sidled the crash cart to the patient. Lewis began giving orders to the staff as easily as he had as a quarterback in college. Big, black, and usually affable, he was all business today, but Kacey felt it was too late. She’d sensed it, that recognition that a patient was slipping away. Whether it was conscious or not, there came a point where the body was done.

  “It’s when St. Peter comes a-callin’,” her grandmother, Ada, had whispered into her ear as she, crying miserably, watched as her favorite old horse, lying in the straw of his stall, shuddered his last breath.

  Her grandfather had glanced at his wife, as if to disagree, but the look she’d sent him had silenced whatever he’d wanted to say.

  “St. Peter needs horses?” Kacey, at nine, had asked. Her throat had been so thick, she’d barely been able to get the words out.

  “Course he does,” Grannie had insisted, hugging her so close that the smells of the barn—the acrid odor of urine, the dust in the hay, and the warm, heavy scent of horses—had faded to the background. All Kacey had been able to smell was the sweet scent of the wild roses in her grandmother’s favorite perfume. “Course he does.”

  And now, Kacey thought, as the patient was being treated, the defibrillator standing at the ready, St. Peter seemed to be needing and “callin’ for” Jocelyn Wallis.

  CHAPTER 9

  Dr. Lambert’s expression said it all, Trace thought.

  Her jaw was set, her lips were thin, her eyes somber as she walked down the short hallway to the area where he and the two cops were waiting. It had been only half an hour since they’d been banished from the ICU, but obviously things hadn’t gone well.

  “Jocelyn Wallis didn’t make it,” she informed both of the cops, who had been in and out of the waiting area, talking on cell phones, checking their watches, speaking in low tones, and sipping the weak, free coffee from paper cups. They’d questioned him further about his relationship with the teacher, and he’d told them about the last time they’d gotten together, that Jocelyn had wanted him to spend the night.

  Going over to her place had been a mistake.

  One that he hadn’t made again.

  He’d been taken in by her good looks, quick smile and, if truth be told, a sexual need that hadn’t been fulfilled in a long while. But he hadn’t allowed himself to be seduced more than once, if that counted for anything.

  Chivalrous, he wasn’t. And he’d seen that unspoken accusation in the shorter detective’s, Alvarez’s, eyes as she’d taken notes.

  Now he shoved his hands through his hair as Kacey went on.

  “She was just too compromised, too many internal injuries and head trauma. Dr. Lewis, who was the admitting doctor, will be out in a few minutes. He can answer any questions for you.” She glanced at Trace, then walked quickly toward the elevators.

  “Stick around,” Pescoli advised him, as if she sensed he was about to try and leave. “We’ve got some more questions.”

  “About Jocelyn?” he asked but sensed there was something deeper.

  Pescoli nodded as Alvarez eyed him with more than a grain of suspicion.

  Trace got the message. “You think that this wasn’t an accident?” he asked, feeling a new rising sense of anger. “And you think I know something about it?”

  Pescoli shook her head. “We didn’t say that.”

  “But you implied it.”

  Alvarez stepped in. “We’re just looking into all the possible scenarios. For all we know, she slipped and fell over the railing. That’s certainly likely. But we’re trying to be thorough.” She offered him a smile that didn’t exactly light up her face, a smile that said without words, “Don’t worry. This is just a formality,” but his innate sense of self-preservation counteracted her forced affability. There was something more going on here; these women were part of the homicide investigation team.

  Trace said, “I’ve got a sick kid and a ranch to look after. I’ve told you just about everything I know about Jocelyn Wallis, but if you have more questions, you can call me.”

  He thought they might try to stop him, but at that time a big black man in a lab coat swept out of the ICU and caught the cops’ attention.

  Good.

  Trace made his way to the bank of elevators and felt a jab of disappointment that Kacey was already gone. Not that it mattered, he told himself as he stepped into the next car, where a male attendant was holding on to the hand-grips of a wheelchair where a woman in a cast was seated. Trace sidestepped the outstretched, casted leg and waited as the doors whispered shut.

  It was weird to think that Jocelyn was dead. He’d seen her less than three months ago, when she’d asked him over and they’d made another stab at it, or at least she had. He hadn’t been interested but had wanted to smooth things over. The evening had ended with her asking him to spend the night. He had been tempted but had known that going to bed with her would be a bad idea. At that point, when he’d said he’d better leave, that getting involved wouldn’t be a good idea, primarily because of Eli, she’d become instantly furious. White hot and pissed as hell.

  The elevator stopped with a jolt, and the doors swept open in the main lobby. Trace waited for the patient in the wheelchair to be pushed out of the car, then headed toward the lobby doors at the front of the hospital.

  Outside, it was snowing again, the wind bitter and harsh, the promise of December heavy on its breath. Turning his collar against the cold, he dashed across the emergency lane to his truck. He was yanking open the door when he caught a glimpse of a gray coat from the corner of his eye.

  “Mr. O’Halleran?”

  He recognized the doctor’s voice before he turned and caught sight of her avoiding iced-over puddles, flakes of snow catching in the wisps of auburn hair that had escaped the hood of her coat.

  “Trace,” he said.

  Already her face was red with the cold. “I just wanted to ask how Eli’s doing.”

  “Better, I think,” he said, leaning on the open door to his truck. “I indulged him with movies and soda last night.”

  She managed a smile. “Just what I prescribed.” She shifted from one booted foot to the other and cocked her head toward the hospital. “I’m . . . I’m sorry about Jocelyn.” She seemed sincere, her green eyes clouded. “That was rough.”

  He felt the muscles in the back of his neck tighten, and he nodded. “Eli’s gonna take it hard.”

  “Will you call the sister you mentioned?”

  “I’ll let the cops find her. Jocelyn and I weren’t even really friends. The only reason I’m involved in this is that someone from the school called me and asked if I knew where she was. I got curious. Since I knew where she kept the extra key, I went to her place. Her car was parked in its regular spot. Her purse was inside the apartment. When I heard about an unidentified woman jogger being injured up at the park on Boxer Bluff, I contacted the police.” He glanced back at the hospital, three floors rising toward the gray heavens, snow covering the grounds and piling on the cars parked in the lot.

&nb
sp; “So, they asked you to ID her.”

  “Yeah.”

  “They were homicide detectives.”

  “I know. I don’t get it,” he admitted. “She was still alive when we got here and I thought it was just an accident.”

  “So did I.” Her eyebrows knitted for the briefest of seconds before she forced a smile again. “Well, tell Eli I said hello.”

  “I will.”

  She was off then, black boots walking quickly across the lot to a spot where a silver Ford Edge was parked. She opened the SUV’s door and turned, waving to him, before sliding inside. Less than a minute later she’d reversed out of the space, then cranked the wheel and driven out of the lot, her taillights twin red dots as she melded into a stream of traffic.

  Trace hadn’t even realized he’d been standing and watching her until her car had disappeared. Then he finally climbed inside and fired up his Chevy.

  Funny how he found Eli’s doctor attractive.

  At that thought, he scowled and reminded himself she was off-limits. Besides, there was something about her that reminded him of Leanna, Eli’s mother, and that was enough to convince him to remain single. His marriage to her had been thankfully brief, and he’d ended up with a son out of the deal, even if the boy wasn’t biologically his.

  Didn’t matter.

  He ground the gears of the old truck, flipped on the wipers, and watched as they shoved an inch of snow off the windshield. Easing the Chevy out of the lot, he glanced back at the hospital and thought of Jocelyn Wallis, his kid’s teacher, a woman with whom he’d made love. Now dead. His jaw slid to one side. Didn’t seem fair. Had she tripped and fallen in a freak accident? Or, he wondered, had she been helped over that short wall with the hope that she would end up in the river?

  Why else would homicide cops show up at the hospital?

  Had someone jostled her, knocked her over the ledge, and then, panicking, taken off? Or had she been intentionally pushed? A random victim? Or a target?

  Snow was really coming down now, big, fat flakes that covered the streets and flocked the surrounding shrubbery. Rather than driving directly back to the ranch as he’d planned, he turned onto the road that wound around the edge of the bluff to the park. The road was steep; the old engine ground as his tires slipped a bit. At the crest, he nosed into a parking spot and climbed out to walk along the jogging path to the area where Jocelyn’s body had been discovered.

  Hands plunged deep into the pockets of his jacket, he stared across the short, crumbling, ice-encrusted wall. Far below, the river rushed by, its angry roar echoing in his ears. Above the swift, icy current a ledge protruded, and Trace saw that the snow upon that rocky shelf had been disturbed, big ruts and divots cut into the blanket, now slowly being recovered by new flakes.

  “What the hell happened?” he whispered, his breath fogging, his words inaudible over the sound of the surging river. He couldn’t help feeling a little stab of undeserved guilt. What if he’d been around to take her call? What if he’d met with her? What if something he’d done, one little seemingly innocuous thing, could have changed the course of history? Could a bit of timing have saved her?

  “I’m sorry,” he said aloud but wasn’t even sure he understood why he’d murmured the words. Her death seemed such a waste.

  Preventable?

  Who knew?

  He turned his gaze away from the river, to the park, where spruce, pine, and hemlock showed frigid, frosted needles and the aspens stood with naked branches. Two groups of women in stocking caps and gloves walked briskly by, a man jogged, and a couple, their baby wrapped close to the husband in some kind of sling, strolled past.

  Seemingly serene.

  A winter wonderland.

  Aside from the snow disturbed on the ledge far below, where Jocelyn Wallis had tumbled to her death.

  With no answers about a woman he barely knew, he returned to his vehicle and backed into the street, then guided his truck to the road that wound out of the town to the surrounding farmland. He needed to see about his kid and relieve Ed and Tilly. They did have a ranch of their own to run.

  All the way home, he thought of Jocelyn and Leanna and, now, Acacia Lambert, the doctor who reminded him of two women who had been a part of his life, but the foremost thought on his mind was how he was going to tell his young son that his teacher, Miss Wallis, was gone.

  “I can’t tell you much about Jocelyn except that she was an excellent teacher,” Barbara Killingsworth said from the far side of a wide desk in an office decorated with framed, matted artwork created presumably by the students of Evergreen Elementary. Rudimentary houses drawn in crayon were mounted beside detailed representations of buildings and still lifes brushed in shades of watercolor or etched in pencil.

  Pescoli and Alvarez were seated in the two visitors’ chairs, while the principal, a slim woman with slightly pinched features and pale skin, folded her hands over the desk. She sat as straight as if she had a metal rod up her spine; her blouse was crisply ironed; her brown sweater without a speck of lint or bit of fuzz. Not one strand of highlighted hair dared be out of place.

  The terms neat as a pin and perfectionist and a little OCD flitted through Pescoli’s mind.

  The wall behind Killingsworth’s desk was a bookcase filled with tomes on child psychology, education, and school administration. The top of her desk was neat as a pin, with only a bud vase holding a sprig of holly, a picture of her and some friends in a tropical paradise, a sun-spangled blue ocean glittering behind three women holding up drinks with parasols in the cups, and a thick manila folder marked WALLIS, JOCELYN.

  “I know she was married a couple of times, no children, and her parents live in Twin Falls, Idaho, and, I think, a sister who lives in San Francisco. She visited there last summer.” Principal Killingsworth’s neatly plucked brows drew together to show a small line in her forehead.

  “I believe her sister’s name is ... Jacqueline. I remember because it was a lot like her name. But ... I’m sure she referred to her as a stepsister. Maybe ten years older? I think Jocelyn said her father had been married once before, but I’m not sure of that.” Sadness darkened her eyes, and her hand trembled slightly as she touched the tips of polished nails to her lips. “This is a very difficult day for all of us at Evergreen.”

  “We’re sorry for your loss,” Alvarez said.

  Killingsworth nodded, and her gaze focused a little more tightly on Alvarez. “You said you were detectives. Do you think there was more to her death than an accident?”

  “Just covering all our bases.” Pescoli gave the stock answer, but the principal didn’t look as if her worries were allayed. She set up appointments with Mia Calloway, the school secretary and a friend of Jocelyn Wallis’s, and two other first grade teachers, part of the “team” who worked together, offering to step into the classes as the teachers spoke to the detectives.

  They didn’t learn much more about Jocelyn Wallis, only that she had definitely been married twice, she had no kids, the exes were out of the picture, and other than a little online dating, the only man she’d seen since moving to Grizzly Falls was Trace O’Halleran.

  Eventually, they left Evergreen Elementary, where the bell had just rung for recess and the kids were walking in long, snaking lines toward the covered playground area.

  They slid into Pescoli’s Jeep, and Alvarez said, “Let’s get coffee,” just as her cell phone rang. Answering with one hand, she clicked on her seat belt with the other as Pescoli drove around the teachers’ vehicles and out of the once-plowed lot.

  Half a mile closer to the town, Pescoli found one of those coffee-shack buildings that seemed to be sprouting up on every street corner. Alvarez finished talking to the manager of her apartment building about a number of outdoor lights that weren’t working as Pescoli pulled into the open lane of the drive-thru and rolled down her window just a crack. She waited for the barista to finish taking the order from a car on the other side of the building. Silver tinsel had been strung aroun
d the window; snowflakes stenciled onto the glass. A big red sign with a winking Santa offered coffee gift cards at a discount.

  The window slid open, and the barista, a girl of about eighteen who was wearing braids and a pilgrim bonnet, called out, “What can I get for you? We’ve got pumpkin lattes, a dollar off, just this week.” She offered a wide, toothy smile.

  “Just a coffee, black,” Pescoli said.

  “Skinny latte, no foam,” Alvarez said, angling her face so that she could meet the barista’s gaze. “Plain.”

  “But the pumpkin is on sale.”

  “Plain,” Alvarez repeated and dug into her wallet for a five-dollar bill.

  The barista looked disappointed, as if she got brownie points for selling the special of the week. Pescoli rolled up her window as the espresso machine started whistling shrilly.

  Digging into the Jeep’s console, Pescoli pulled out enough quarters to pay for her drink. “So tell me,” she said, turning to her partner before Alvarez could make another call. “Why are you so hell-bent to prove that Jocelyn Wallis was murdered?”

  Alvarez readjusted the small hoop in her left ear. “Just a feeling I have. Something’s off about it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Worth checking out.”

  A red Dodge Dart, circa somewhere in the mid-seventies, rolled in behind her Jeep just as there was a sharp tap on the driver’s window. The pilgrim barista was holding two paper cups with plastic lids.

  Pescoli rolled down the window, collected the two cups and, after snagging Alvarez’s fiver, paid for the drinks and left a bit of a tip.

  “Wow, that’s hot,” Alvarez whispered after taking an experimental sip.

  “Just what you need on this cold day.”

  Alvarez settled deeper into the seat as she cradled her cup. “What I need are answers. Lots of answers.”

  “About life’s most important questions.”

  One side of her mouth lifted. “I’d be satisfied for the answer to why Jocelyn Wallis, a young woman, experienced jogger, and, from all reports, athletically fit and sane, ended up on a ledge jutting over a river.” Her eyes narrowed as Pescoli braked for a red light. “Seems as if she might just have been helped over that rail.”