Expecting to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

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?