Willing to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“I’m so sorry, Ivy,” Pescoli said, meaning it. Whatever else was going on, the girl had just lost her mother.

Ivy nodded. “I’m just . . . I’m just so tired.”

That much Pescoli believed. “You can stay in the guest room, here, while we sort everything out. I’ll call the San Francisco detectives who are working on the case.”

“Can’t it wait?” she asked, her eyes beseeching.

“I don’t think so, but we’ll figure it out. Now, come on . . . you can camp out in the guest room. At least for now.”

Ivy didn’t argue and Pescoli led her upstairs, showed her the guest room, which was across the hall from the nursery and next to a bathroom that she’d have to share with Bianca. She left her niece with a clean T-shirt to sleep in and a towel, then pointed to the closet where the extra shampoo, toothbrushes, and soap were kept.

Closing the door, lost in thought, Pescoli nearly ran into Bianca, who was heading for the bathroom. “Occupied,” she said.

“By who?” she asked, squinting at the closed bathroom door as the sound of the shower running permeated through the thick panels. “Is Jeremy’s shower not working?”

“Ivy showed up a couple of hours ago,” Pescoli said.

“No shi—Really?” Bianca blinked and yawned in the hallway. She raised one hand into the air and stretched. “How’d she get here?”

“Long story. She got here around five this morning.”

“Five. Ugh. I just got up to use the bathroom.”

“Use ours.”

“Is she okay?” Bianca asked as they walked through Pescoli’s bedroom where the bed was as they’d left it, covers flung back, over an hour earlier.

“Would you be?”

“’Course not.” Another yawn. “Can we talk about this later? Oh God, the boss is awake.”

Pescoli, too, could hear her baby making noise over the sound of the shower running. “I’ll fill you in after school.”

“I’m just gonna sleep a little more.”

“Don’t think you have time, but you figure it out.”

“Geez, Mom, it’s still dark.” She closed the door to the master bath as Pescoli made her way to the baby’s room.

Tucker was wide awake, his eyes bright, cooing to himself in his crib. At the sight of her, his little arms and feet started moving frantically. “Hey, there, Buddy,” she said, picking him up and kissing the top of his head. She carried Tucker to the window and pressed the tip of a finger to the glass. “Look out there.”

Outside, all three dogs at his heels, Santana was trudging through knee-deep snow, blazing a trail to the stable. Cisco, the smallest, was nearly buried in the drifts; Sturgis, the black lab, plunged steadfastly at Santana’s side, while Nikita ran hither and yon, the furry husky bounding through the untouched snow and sending it spraying as he landed, only to leap up again. “There’s Daddy,” Pescoli told her son. “He’s gonna feed the horses.”

As Santana and dogs disappeared into the stable, Pescoli saw the ghostly reflection of herself holding the baby, backlit by the night-light, an almost eerie image of mother and child. As she turned, the baby in the reflection vanished from her arms, a trick of light.

But a chill skittered up Pescoli’s spine and she glanced across the lake. Placid and snow covered, the trees on the far bank, fir boughs, bending with the weight of their icy white mantle. Cold. Clear. The rising sun just beginning to turn the black of night into a deep, shadowy gray.

Goose bumps rose on her arms and she tightened her grip on her child. “It’s gonna be all right,” she whispered, though she didn’t know why. She heard Bianca return to her room and close her door just as the shower turned off in the hall bath.

Thinking about the day ahead, she decided to let her niece sleep for a while and call her sisters to let them know Ivy was safe. Pescoli would also phone Paterno in San Francisco, and once Ivy was awake, have her text or call her father.

Then she’d get down to the nitty-gritty.

Because the girl was lying. Not about all of her story—some of it rang true—but in Pescoli’s opinion, Ivy knew more than she was telling. About what, Pescoli could only guess. But it was time to come clean. She was obviously scared, no doubt about it. And affected deeply by her mother’s murder, but still, Ivy was leaving something out.

Something important.

And probably something incriminating, but for what, Pescoli couldn’t imagine. It didn’t seem likely that Ivy had pulled the trigger, and that part could be figured out probably by a GSR test on her clothes. Unless she’d changed. Even now she could be washing away evidence in Pescoli’s very own shower, but still, it seemed really unlikely that Ivy had killed her own parents.