Willing to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“We . . . dated.”

“Past tense?” Pescoli asked.

She lifted a shoulder indicating that whatever relationship they might have had was now in limbo.

“And you?” Pescoli asked the boy.

“I, uh, I don’t know him. We just came up here to snowshoe, y’know. My cousin owns this place. He, um, he lives in Miami and no one should be here and . . .”

He rambled on, launching into a story about how they were innocently snowshoeing and how they came across the bodies, then took off and, once they were at their SUV, called 9-1-1. They waited for the deputy, who brought them back to this area and, after calling their parents, asked them to stay until the detectives arrived.

“. . . and that’s all I know,” Jeff said, wrapping up his story.

“The truck doesn’t belong to your cousin?”

“No. He’s in Florida.... Well, I don’t know. He could be up here, but those guys, the dead guys? They aren’t him. Thank God.”

“You know them?”

“No!” Jeff nearly shouted, and Becca was vigorously shaking her head.

“Can we go now?” Becca asked, gnawing at her lower lip. “This place is bad. Gives me the creeps.”

“Of course it does!” Jeff rounded on her. “Because you saw dead guys! Jesus, it’s not the place, Becca, it’s what happened!” He must’ve heard his voice rising because he looked down at his hands. “Sorry. We’re just both weirded out.”

Regan nodded. “I don’t blame you for being weirded out. Anyone would be.”

“We’ve answered questions with like three cops. There’s nothing more to add,” Jeff said, and Becca nodded her agreement.

She’d taken off her stocking cap during the impromptu interview, her dark curls springing around her face as she moved her head, her fingers twined in the pink wool of her hat as if they’d never let go.

After a few questions that led nowhere, Pescoli said, “Okay, thanks.” To the deputy sipping coffee behind the steering wheel, “I’m done. If Alvarez says it’s okay, they can go.”

“About time,” Jeff muttered, and Pescoli could feel Becca’s gaze following her as she made her way back to Alvarez, who was embroiled in a conversation with Carson Ramsby.

“Should she really have talked to the witnesses?” Ramsby hitched his chin toward Pescoli, his face a mask of disapproval.

“It’s okay,” Alvarez said.

He wasn’t convinced. “But—”

“But if there are any problems, I’ll take the heat,” Alvarez said firmly.

“I’m taking off anyway,” Pescoli said, watching as the half-frozen bodies of Troy Boxer and Ronny Stillwell were zippered into body bags.

She’d started back to her car when Blackwater caught up with her, walking with her out of the crime scene.

“I know,” she said. “You want me to get Ivy and bring her down to the station.”

“The morning will work,” he said.

“You’re okay with that?” She glanced at him as they passed by the deputy posted near the entrance to the spur. “I thought you wanted her in tonight.”

“I do. But I have to be practical, right?” He slashed her a smile without any mirth, white teeth showing in the dark. “She may need a lawyer and we have to get our minds around what went down here tonight. Get our facts together.”

“You think she pulled off a double-homicide in San Francisco, took out her mother and stepfather, then came here and what . . . killed some guys who she followed here, or followed her here? She’s seventeen.”

“The Menendez brothers were eighteen and twenty-one.”