Born To Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

Ten minutes after picking up her latte, with the eastern sky just

starting to lighten, she pulled into the parking lot of the clinic. She told herself to forget trying to find a link.

Holding her still-steaming cup with one hand and grabbing her laptop with the other, she did a juggling routine as she locked her car, then headed inside. Her first patient wasn’t scheduled until eight, and she still had time to check her e-mail and get ready for the day.

But as she was stepping into her office, Heather sprinted down the hallway from the reception area. “Did you hear?” she asked, her eyes round.

“Hear what?”

“That one of our patients died over the weekend!”

“Oh, God, no.” Kacey’s heart nearly missed a beat.

“I never met her, but she came in on Saturday. I was just going to check with the lab about her schedule.”

Kacey froze. “Who?” But she knew. Instantly.

“Elle Alexander. Remember?” she asked, clearly shaken.

Kacey felt as if she’d been hit by a shotgun blast. Elle? The woman had been so full of life. Married, a mother worried more about her children than her own health, even with her nagging cough, she had been so vibrant. “What happened?”

“She slid off the road. Up by the North Fork Bridge and into the river. Coming home from Spokane, where she’d been Christmas shopping, the news said. I saw a report this morning, while I was working out on my stair stepper!” Heather shuddered theatrically. “Can you imagine?”

“No,” Kacey admitted, her heart squeezing. “Were her kids with her?”

“Don’t think so. But there’s a story in the newspaper. I put it on your desk.”

“Thanks.” Shaken, Kacey hurried into her office and sat in her desk chair. She read the article once, then again, all the while remembering Elle’s expressive face and quick smile.

As a physician, she dealt with death regularly. A person lived and died. It was all part of the circle of life. She knew it and accepted it, though she’d never become inured when a person passed from this life to the next. But with a woman so young, in the prime of her life, with two kids ... it just wasn’t right.

And something else bothered her. A vague intuition that skimmed along her body, just under her skin, and caused her a deep unease. Elle, like Shelly Bonaventure before her and Jocelyn Wallis just last week, resembled her.

She thought of the swab she’d taken of the woman’s saliva and the fact that she was checking Elle’s DNA. She was glad she’d done it. Maybe there wasn’t a conspiracy going on, per se, but there was something there ... something strange.

“You can listen to the nine-one-one tape yourself,” Alvarez said as she walked with Pescoli into the lunchroom, which had been totally Joelle-ized from top to bottom. Christmas lights, garlands of fake pine boughs decorated with gold beads, and red ribbons were draped around the room. Silver snowflakes dangled and twisted from the overhead lights like fishing lures on forgotten reels.

“For the love of God, is this even allowed in a public building?” Pescoli groused, noticing the coffeepot had a red bow tied to its plastic handle. “This is just too much.”

Alvarez ripped off the bow and poured a long stream of coffee into a mug she’d pulled down from the shelf. She took a big gulp from her cup, then turned the conversation back to the single-car accident near the North Fork Bridge. “Tom Alexander thinks his wife was run off the road intentionally. Claims he was on the phone with her when her van was hit.”

“Seriously?” Pescoli pulled her favorite cracked cup from the shelf. “So he’s, what? Claiming that he heard her die?”

“Something like that.”

“Dear God. Can you imagine?”

“No.” Alvarez scowled. “So it’s our case. Homicide.”

“Possible homicide. Man oh man.”

Before they could discuss the case any further, the sound of footsteps reached their ears, and Joelle, dressed head to foot in Christmas red, appeared. “Happy Holidays!” she greeted them, her blond hair decorated with matching poinsettias tucked over her ears. She carried three pink boxes into the lunchroom and plunked them down.

Pescoli noticed that the same red flowers displayed in Joelle’s blond locks were also pinned to the tops of her scarlet four-inch heels.

“I hope you all aren’t sick of sweets!” Joelle chirped with a toothy smile.

“Never,” Pescoli assured her.