Expecting to Die

  She closed her eyes for what she thought was less than five minutes, but as her gaze focused on the bedside clock she realized it was now nearly eleven. Great. Every muscle in her body ached from lack of sleep, and she felt as if she could just grab a few more minutes.... She closed her eyes again.

  Get up!

  She’d never been a morning person, but today was worse than ever. She was so tired, and a headache from lack of sleep had started to bang at her temples. At that moment, the baby kicked. Hard. “Okay, okay,” she grumbled. “You don’t have to nag me, too.” The kicking continued and she sighed. So it was going to be that kind of day.

  Terrific.

  With an effort she pushed herself up, waddled to the bathroom, used the toilet, and turned on the shower. She peeled off her nightgown and stepped under the spray as it began to warm, her skin goose-pimpling at the shock. Any remnants of sleep were chased away as the water heated, pulsing jets throbbing over her body, steam rising. That was more like it.

  As she lathered, she thought about the night before, the party, the dead girl, Bianca’s weird story about being chased by a hairy monster.

  Big Foot, my ass.

  Just kids messing with each other.

  Except that a girl is dead. Most likely murdered.

  As the warm water flowed over her, she brushed her teeth in the shower, a trick she’d learned from Santana, rinsed quickly then turned off the faucet and grabbed a towel from its hook. Her headache had lessened, but now she was ravenously hungry. Eyeing the scales across the room as she towel-dried, she frowned, cast a look in the mirror, and decided to forgo the morning routine of depressing herself by checking her current weight.

  In less than ten minutes, she was fully dressed in gawd-awful maternity slacks, a T-shirt, and a light jacket, her hair twisted into a loose, wet ponytail, what little makeup she bothered with, lipstick and a brush of mascara, applied.

  “Ready for the day,” she muttered as she pulled on lightweight boots that were getting tight. Just like everything else.

  Pushing open the door of the master bedroom, she started down the hallway, then heard Bianca’s voice through the nearly closed door of her room. Pescoli rapped softly, then pushed on the door to find her daughter in a pool of pink blankets, cell phone pressed to her ear as she sat, cross-legged on her bed, a purple splint visible over her ankle.

  As in Pescoli and Santana’s bedroom, bright Montana sunlight was piercing through the curtains, illuminating Bianca’s room with its stark white walls, accented by every shade of pink imaginable. The light fixture was a small chandelier, the carpet a silvery gray, curtains, bedding and art bright splotches ranging from bubble-gum pink to almost lavender, nothing Pescoli would have ever chosen.

  Santana and Pescoli had built this cabin in the last year and had decided to allow Bianca to decorate her room to her taste, create her own space. They’d thought it would help her adjust to the fact that her mother had remarried, Bianca now had a stepfather, and yes, on top of all that, she, nearly finished with high school, was soon to become an older sister.

  So far, the plan had worked—even if all the girly touches were the antithesis of everything Pescoli had ever believed in and, unfortunately, an homage to Michelle, Bianca’s ever-irritating high-maintenance stepmother. Pescoli had grown up a tomboy and athlete and had never had any interest in princesses, castles, fingernail polish, or jewelry. Not so her daughter.

  “Yeah . . . I know . . . I’m okay . . . I know! Really scary. Freaked me out . . . umhmm,” Bianca was saying into her cell. She glanced up at her mother, and even from across the room, Pescoli noticed the two tiny stitches that held the skin beneath her chin together. “Yeah, that would be nice. Tell Michelle thanks,” Bianca was saying. “I’m just glad I don’t have to go to school. I look awful. Like something out of The Walking Dead . . . oh, yeah. Seriously freaked me out . . . What? Sure . . . of course. I will . . . Love you, too. Bye, Daddy.” She hit a button, disconnecting the call, then started immediately texting someone.

  “Hey,” Pescoli said. The room smelled faintly of fingernail polish. Clothes were strewn over the floor, desk chair, makeup table, and window seat.

  “Hey.” Bianca didn’t look up, her fingers flying expertly over the phone’s smooth surface.

  “How’re you feeling?”

  “Not great.”

  “How not great?”

  “I dunno. I kinda hurt all over. My arm and shoulder and leg, but this”—she pointed to her chin—“it’s sooo awful. I mean, I might have to have plastic surgery.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “You don’t know. Mom, I can’t have a scar, not on my face!” Bianca was nothing if not a drama queen.

  “Let’s not go off the deep end, okay. Wait until it heals. It could add character to your face. You know, like Harrison Ford.”

  “He’s a man, Mom. An old man.”

  “That ‘old man’ is still a bona fide heartthrob, let me tell you.”

  Bianca rolled her eyes. “It’s going to take forever to look okay, if it ever does!” She was texting again.

  “How’s the ankle?”

  “It hurts! Bad!” But Bianca hadn’t really mentioned it until her mother brought up the subject. A good sign.

  “Take care of it, okay? I have to go to work.”

  “You know, Mom, I’m pretty sure that girl was Destiny.” Her lips folded over themselves as she tossed the idea through her brain. “I mean, I can’t be a hundred percent, but I thought about it last night—I couldn’t stop thinking about it—and I saw her face, the way it was in the water all, you know, rotting, the flesh falling apart.”

  She shuddered, finally dropping the phone into her lap as she met Pescoli’s eyes. “And I think it must be her . . .”

  Pescoli navigated her way over a river of strewn clothes to take a seat on the end of the bed. “You’re right. About the girl being Destiny, I mean. Alvarez texted me earlier this morning. The ID was confirmed by her parents.”

  Bianca blanched. It was one thing to conjecture, another to learn the truth and have reality hit. “Oh, God.” She blinked, then bit her lip. “So . . . what happened to her? Was it—? Did someone kill her?”

  “Don’t know yet. That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  Absently rubbing one forearm with her fingers, she asked, “Do you . . . do you think it was one of the kids, the ones that were there?”

  “Have no idea. But we do know that whatever happened to her didn’t occur last night. Time of death’s all wrong. It was sometime before, but we haven’t really pinned it down yet. Long before your party got started anyway. Whose idea was it to meet up at Reservoir Point?”

  She lifted a shoulder. Eyed her phone as a soft ding alerted her to the fact that another text was arriving. “One of the boys. I don’t know. Probably Austin. He’s kind of in charge.”

  The ring leader. “What about the Bell kid?”

  “Kywin?” She shook her head as her phone dinged again and she glanced at the screen. “He does what the others want. Goes along, you know. Never has an original thought.”

  “TJ?”

  “Oh, geez. I don’t know, Mom,” she snapped, then a little more contritely. “What . . . what if she wasn’t killed by a human?”

  “We’re not certain her death is a homicide.”

  Bianca sent her a look that said, Yeah, right. “But what if it was something else that murdered her?”

  The monster again. They were back to that. “Like?”

  “You know, whatever it was that chased me.”

  “We still haven’t figured out who that was.”

  “Not ‘who,’ Mom, but ‘what’?”

  “Okay.”

  Anger flashed in her wide eyes. “You don’t believe me. You never believe me!”

  “I do believe you. I know you saw something and it chased you down to the creek and scared the hell out of you. Of course. But, I don’t know what it was or why. That’s all I’m saying.” Bianca
looked about to explode again, and Pescoli said, “I’m just thankful you’re okay.” To prove it, she hugged her daughter, and for once Bianca didn’t tense up at the gesture.

  “Just scarred for life,” she grumbled as Pescoli released her. A finger with a now-broken nail tenderly touched her chin. “Jeremy came by my room a while ago. You were still sleeping, and . . . well, so was I, but he came in anyway and woke me up, said he heard about what happened up at the reservoir.”

  “How?” Pescoli asked, as neither she nor Santana had woken him last night.

  “On his iPad, I guess.”

  “It’s out there? On social media?”

  Of course.

  Bianca stared at her mother as if she’d grown up during the time of Conestoga wagons. “Geez, Mom. What d’ya think?”

  Kids. Cell phones. Instant messaging. Texting. Tweets. Her heart sank. These days, information passed in a nanosecond. One text, tweet, or post and the info, bad or good, was sent into cyberspace, passed along exponentially at the speed of light. Not good. Not good at all.

  “Jeremy believes me. About Big Foot. He told me a lot of people around here believe in it. There’s even a group that meets and discusses Sasquatch in the old lodge building, the one that originally housed the Sons of Grizzly Falls, I think.”

  “Yeah, I know.” There were nutcases who were a part of the group. Ivor Hicks, a man who believed he’d been abducted by lizard-like aliens for testing purposes, was one. Fred Nesmith, an anti-government nut, another. For that matter Lex Farnsby was probably a charter member.

  “Alex O’Hara. He’s a part of it.”

  “What about TJ?”

  “He’s never said. Probably. But some of Jeremy’s friends are members and he says they put together these elaborate searches every year and go looking for them. Families of ’em or loners.”

  “Have they found any?”

  “I don’t know . . . maybe . . . well, maybe not. It would be really big news, if they had.”

  Regan had made her point and wasn’t going to press it. Besides, she was already running late. Really late.

  Cisco, toenails clicking on the hardwood of the hallway, appeared in the open doorway. The mottled little terrier peered inside, then, tail wagging wildly, ran into the room and launched himself onto Bianca’s bed, where he wriggled up to her and washed her face with his tongue.

  “Enough,” she cried, but the little scrap of a dog had managed to bring a smile to her lips. “Geez, Cisco, give it a rest!” But she petted Cisco, not stopping as he nestled up against her.

  Pescoli pushed herself to her feet. “Okay, gotta run. Please, don’t discuss anything about this or post about it or tweet or whatever. Okay? Until we’ve sorted out what happened to Destiny.”

  “I think it’s too late.”

  “Well, try.” Bianca was right, of course. For all Pescoli knew, the story on Big Foot and the dead girl could already be trending. Closing the barn door now would do little good.

  Another text came in.

  Bianca was already on it.

  “Who’s texting you?”

  “Lots of people.”

  In her mind’s eye, Pescoli saw dozens of groups of kids, all with phones, all writing as rapidly as Bianca, misinformation and facts all twisted into multiple threads of conversation. That was how information was spread these days, instantaneously with the touch of a keypad, exponentially, with one phone linked to dozens and then again so that the conversations moved through the community like an insidious epidemic.

  “Look, you can’t text or talk about the case. It could be compromised.”

  Bianca looked up then, her eyes holding Pescoli’s. She didn’t say it, but the words too late silently passed between them. “Please, Bianca.”

  She dropped her phone onto the bed and stared at it as another soft ding alerted her to a new text coming in.

  Great.

  “Look, I gotta go. There’s stuff for breakfast or lunch in the fridge, yogurt and cheese, bread and I think some tuna. Eggs if you want to make them. And some cocoa mix if your brother didn’t wipe me out.”

  Ignoring her cell, Bianca arched a brow and met her mother’s gaze. “What’re the chances of that?”

  “Not good.”

  “Zero.”

  “Probably. Call me if you need anything, okay? And oh, someone from the department will be wanting to talk to you. You know, for your ‘official’ statement.”

  “I already talked to you,” Bianca protested.

  Pescoli nodded. “I don’t really count this time.”

  “Because I’m your kid.”

  “You got it.”

  “Fine. Doesn’t matter. I’ll tell whoever the same thing.”

  “I know. But if you want me around . . . ?”

  “I can handle it, Mom,” Bianca said as Regan made her way to the door. Bianca had scooped up her phone again, her thumbs working fluidly over its surface, her head somewhere else.

  Pescoli called over her shoulder. “I’ll check in with you later,” and picked her way down the steps, careful to avoid Bianca’s pink Nikes and two dog toys. “Bye!” she yelled to utter silence.

  Bianca hadn’t heard or had decided not to reply.

  No big surprise there.

  CHAPTER 7

  Pescoli’s mood hadn’t improved by the time she arrived at the station. She was hot and tired, and the cup of decaf coffee she’d bought at a drive-through kiosk wasn’t doing the job. Today she needed high-octane rocket fuel, which this cup of Mellow Morning was not.

  Carrying the paper cup, she walked into the office, where the air-conditioning unit was struggling to keep up with the stifling August heat. The department was teeming with officers, some in uniform, others in street clothes. Conversation buzzed, cell phones beeped, fax and copy machines chugged, and footsteps shuffled down the polished hallways.

  As she passed Blackwater’s office, she noted his door was ajar. His voice drifted through the crack as he assured someone “it would be taken care of.” No one was in his office, but Blackwater was holding a cell phone to his ear as he stared out the window. “Yeah, I know. No worries. Everything’s under control.” A small laugh. “Yes, you can quote me on that.”

  Yeah, right. Everything was just peachy-keen, wasn’t it? A dead girl found at an underage party with drugs and alcohol and some huge, hairy creature scaring the bejeezus out of kids on top of the usual cases of domestic violence, assault, robbery, and a handful of other miscellaneous crimes in the county. Sure. No worries.

  As she continued to her office, hugging the wall as a detective with a suspect in chains clanked past in the opposite direction, Pescoli reminded herself not to be irritated that Blackwater was sitting at Dan Grayson’s desk. It wasn’t as if Grayson were ever coming back. Like it or not, she’d better get used to Cooper Blackwater because she figured he was here to stay.

  If he was actually elected sheriff.

  So far, no one was opposing him.

  “Detective!” Joelle Fisher’s high-pitched voice was punctuated by the click of her ever-present high heels. Hurrying in Pescoli’s direction, Joelle waved a manicured hand. As the receptionist for the Pinewood County Police Department, Joelle always dressed as if she were attending a ladies’ luncheon, circa 1955. Today she wore what Pescoli’s mother would have classified as “an ensemble” in pale yellow. Knit suit, white blouse, yellow heels. The shoes actually had a bit of a platform, a surprising nod to the 2000s, or maybe the 1970s.

  Joelle’s hair was short and blond, a shade of platinum closing in on silver, her lips glistening with freshly applied pink gloss.

  “Do you have a minute?” Joelle asked as they met at the door of Pescoli’s office. Then, quickly, as if anticipating Pescoli’s negative response, she added, “Look, I know you’re busy, but this will just take a sec.” Without an invitation, she followed the detective inside.

  There was just no fighting Joelle when she was on a mission, which, it seemed, she was today.


  Pescoli placed her unfinished coffee onto a desk that needed some serious organizing. “What’s up?” She tried and failed to keep the impatience out of her voice. It wasn’t Joelle’s fault Pescoli had been up all night, or that her daughter was embroiled in what in all probability was a homicide.

  “It’s about the baby shower.”

  Oh. Pescoli inwardly groaned. “I thought I already said I didn’t want one.”

  “I know, but it’s been years since you had a child.” Joelle stood on the visitor’s side of the desk, as if pleading her case before a judge. She loved anything to do with holidays, birthdays, or special occasions and intended to celebrate each and every one. From New Year’s Day until the next New Year’s Eve of the same year, there were multiple events that gave Joelle cause to bake, craft and decorate. A month didn’t have a chance of slipping by without some celebration. The walls of the lunchroom and hallways were usually covered in snowflakes, or sunflowers, or four-leaf clovers or reindeer, depending on the season. Small flags were strewn upon desks on the Fourth of July and Veterans Day, eggs and bunnies appeared at Easter, and even leaves decorated the lunchroom tables on Arbor Day. A birthday was never missed, so a new infant’s imminent arrival was certainly reason enough to start knitting and baking and planning a baby shower.

  Joelle’s smile was almost as bright as the diamonds winking in her earlobes. “I thought that anything you did manage to hang on to from your earlier pregnancies is probably terribly out of date, or unsafe. I mean it’s been years.”

  “Decades,” Pescoli corrected. With more effort than usual, she slid into her chair and noticed that it wasn’t as comfortable as it had been before she’d gained thirty-plus pounds.

  “Yes, well. Exactly. I mean, do you even have a layette or a breast pump or a baby monitor that actually has a camera in it?”

  “No . . .”

  “The advances in technology these days makes things so much easier, and . . . and . . . well, there have been dozens of recalls on cribs and car seats and infant carriers, so you’re best with something brand new.”

  “I think we’ve got everything covered,” Pescoli lied. The thought of a roomful of women, or maybe men and women, all giggling over cute little onesies printed with sayings like LOOK OUT, LADIES, or DADDY’S LITTLE PRINCESS, or BORN TO BE ADORABLE was more than she could stand right now. To be feted by Joelle—Pescoli couldn’t imagine.