Born To Die

  “Mr. O’Halleran?”

  He recognized the doctor’s voice before he turned and caught sight of her avoiding iced-over puddles, flakes of snow catching in the wisps of auburn hair that had escaped the hood of her coat.

  “Trace,” he said.

  Already her face was red with the cold. “I just wanted to ask how Eli’s doing.”

  “Better, I think,” he said, leaning on the open door to his truck. “I indulged him with movies and soda last night.”

  She managed a smile. “Just what I prescribed.” She shifted from one booted foot to the other and cocked her head toward the hospital. “I’m . . . I’m sorry about Jocelyn.” She seemed sincere, her green eyes clouded. “That was rough.”

  He felt the muscles in the back of his neck tighten, and he nodded. “Eli’s gonna take it hard.”

  “Will you call the sister you mentioned?”

  “I’ll let the cops find her. Jocelyn and I weren’t even really friends. The only reason I’m involved in this is that someone from the school called me and asked if I knew where she was. I got curious. Since I knew where she kept the extra key, I went to her place. Her car was parked in its regular spot. Her purse was inside the apartment. When I heard about an unidentified woman jogger being injured up at the park on Boxer Bluff, I contacted the police.” He glanced back at the hospital, three floors rising toward the gray heavens, snow covering the grounds and piling on the cars parked in the lot.

  “So, they asked you to ID her.”

  “Yeah.”

  “They were homicide detectives.”

  “I know. I don’t get it,” he admitted. “She was still alive when we got here and I thought it was just an accident.”

  “So did I.” Her eyebrows knitted for the briefest of seconds before she forced a smile again. “Well, tell Eli I said hello.”

  “I will.”

  She was off then, black boots walking quickly across the lot to a spot where a silver Ford Edge was parked. She opened the SUV’s door and turned, waving to him, before sliding inside. Less than a minute later she’d reversed out of the space, then cranked the wheel and driven out of the lot, her taillights twin red dots as she melded into a stream of traffic.

  Trace hadn’t even realized he’d been standing and watching her until her car had disappeared. Then he finally climbed inside and fired up his Chevy.

  Funny how he found Eli’s doctor attractive.

  At that thought, he scowled and reminded himself she was off-limits. Besides, there was something about her that reminded him of Leanna, Eli’s mother, and that was enough to convince him to remain single. His marriage to her had been thankfully brief, and he’d ended up with a son out of the deal, even if the boy wasn’t biologically his.

  Didn’t matter.

  He ground the gears of the old truck, flipped on the wipers, and watched as they shoved an inch of snow off the windshield. Easing the Chevy out of the lot, he glanced back at the hospital and thought of Jocelyn Wallis, his kid’s teacher, a woman with whom he’d made love. Now dead. His jaw slid to one side. Didn’t seem fair. Had she tripped and fallen in a freak accident? Or, he wondered, had she been helped over that short wall with the hope that she would end up in the river?

  Why else would homicide cops show up at the hospital?

  Had someone jostled her, knocked her over the ledge, and then, panicking, taken off? Or had she been intentionally pushed? A random victim? Or a target?

  Snow was really coming down now, big, fat flakes that covered the streets and flocked the surrounding shrubbery. Rather than driving directly back to the ranch as he’d planned, he turned onto the road that wound around the edge of the bluff to the park. The road was steep; the old engine ground as his tires slipped a bit. At the crest, he nosed into a parking spot and climbed out to walk along the jogging path to the area where Jocelyn’s body had been discovered.

  Hands plunged deep into the pockets of his jacket, he stared across the short, crumbling, ice-encrusted wall. Far below, the river rushed by, its angry roar echoing in his ears. Above the swift, icy current a ledge protruded, and Trace saw that the snow upon that rocky shelf had been disturbed, big ruts and divots cut into the blanket, now slowly being recovered by new flakes.

  “What the hell happened?” he whispered, his breath fogging, his words inaudible over the sound of the surging river. He couldn’t help feeling a little stab of undeserved guilt. What if he’d been around to take her call? What if he’d met with her? What if something he’d done, one little seemingly innocuous thing, could have changed the course of history? Could a bit of timing have saved her?

  “I’m sorry,” he said aloud but wasn’t even sure he understood why he’d murmured the words. Her death seemed such a waste.

  Preventable?

  Who knew?

  He turned his gaze away from the river, to the park, where spruce, pine, and hemlock showed frigid, frosted needles and the aspens stood with naked branches. Two groups of women in stocking caps and gloves walked briskly by, a man jogged, and a couple, their baby wrapped close to the husband in some kind of sling, strolled past.

  Seemingly serene.

  A winter wonderland.

  Aside from the snow disturbed on the ledge far below, where Jocelyn Wallis had tumbled to her death.

  With no answers about a woman he barely knew, he returned to his vehicle and backed into the street, then guided his truck to the road that wound out of the town to the surrounding farmland. He needed to see about his kid and relieve Ed and Tilly. They did have a ranch of their own to run.

  All the way home, he thought of Jocelyn and Leanna and, now, Acacia Lambert, the doctor who reminded him of two women who had been a part of his life, but the foremost thought on his mind was how he was going to tell his young son that his teacher, Miss Wallis, was gone.

  “I can’t tell you much about Jocelyn except that she was an excellent teacher,” Barbara Killingsworth said from the far side of a wide desk in an office decorated with framed, matted artwork created presumably by the students of Evergreen Elementary. Rudimentary houses drawn in crayon were mounted beside detailed representations of buildings and still lifes brushed in shades of watercolor or etched in pencil.

  Pescoli and Alvarez were seated in the two visitors’ chairs, while the principal, a slim woman with slightly pinched features and pale skin, folded her hands over the desk. She sat as straight as if she had a metal rod up her spine; her blouse was crisply ironed; her brown sweater without a speck of lint or bit of fuzz. Not one strand of highlighted hair dared be out of place.

  The terms neat as a pin and perfectionist and a little OCD flitted through Pescoli’s mind.

  The wall behind Killingsworth’s desk was a bookcase filled with tomes on child psychology, education, and school administration. The top of her desk was neat as a pin, with only a bud vase holding a sprig of holly, a picture of her and some friends in a tropical paradise, a sun-spangled blue ocean glittering behind three women holding up drinks with parasols in the cups, and a thick manila folder marked WALLIS, JOCELYN.

  “I know she was married a couple of times, no children, and her parents live in Twin Falls, Idaho, and, I think, a sister who lives in San Francisco. She visited there last summer.” Principal Killingsworth’s neatly plucked brows drew together to show a small line in her forehead.

  “I believe her sister’s name is ... Jacqueline. I remember because it was a lot like her name. But ... I’m sure she referred to her as a stepsister. Maybe ten years older? I think Jocelyn said her father had been married once before, but I’m not sure of that.” Sadness darkened her eyes, and her hand trembled slightly as she touched the tips of polished nails to her lips. “This is a very difficult day for all of us at Evergreen.”

  “We’re sorry for your loss,” Alvarez said.

  Killingsworth nodded, and her gaze focused a little more tightly on Alvarez. “You said you were detectives. Do you think there was more to her death than an accident?”

&nb
sp; “Just covering all our bases.” Pescoli gave the stock answer, but the principal didn’t look as if her worries were allayed. She set up appointments with Mia Calloway, the school secretary and a friend of Jocelyn Wallis’s, and two other first grade teachers, part of the “team” who worked together, offering to step into the classes as the teachers spoke to the detectives.

  They didn’t learn much more about Jocelyn Wallis, only that she had definitely been married twice, she had no kids, the exes were out of the picture, and other than a little online dating, the only man she’d seen since moving to Grizzly Falls was Trace O’Halleran.

  Eventually, they left Evergreen Elementary, where the bell had just rung for recess and the kids were walking in long, snaking lines toward the covered playground area.

  They slid into Pescoli’s Jeep, and Alvarez said, “Let’s get coffee,” just as her cell phone rang. Answering with one hand, she clicked on her seat belt with the other as Pescoli drove around the teachers’ vehicles and out of the once-plowed lot.

  Half a mile closer to the town, Pescoli found one of those coffee-shack buildings that seemed to be sprouting up on every street corner. Alvarez finished talking to the manager of her apartment building about a number of outdoor lights that weren’t working as Pescoli pulled into the open lane of the drive-thru and rolled down her window just a crack. She waited for the barista to finish taking the order from a car on the other side of the building. Silver tinsel had been strung around the window; snowflakes stenciled onto the glass. A big red sign with a winking Santa offered coffee gift cards at a discount.

  The window slid open, and the barista, a girl of about eighteen who was wearing braids and a pilgrim bonnet, called out, “What can I get for you? We’ve got pumpkin lattes, a dollar off, just this week.” She offered a wide, toothy smile.

  “Just a coffee, black,” Pescoli said.

  “Skinny latte, no foam,” Alvarez said, angling her face so that she could meet the barista’s gaze. “Plain.”

  “But the pumpkin is on sale.”

  “Plain,” Alvarez repeated and dug into her wallet for a five-dollar bill.

  The barista looked disappointed, as if she got brownie points for selling the special of the week. Pescoli rolled up her window as the espresso machine started whistling shrilly.

  Digging into the Jeep’s console, Pescoli pulled out enough quarters to pay for her drink. “So tell me,” she said, turning to her partner before Alvarez could make another call. “Why are you so hell-bent to prove that Jocelyn Wallis was murdered?”

  Alvarez readjusted the small hoop in her left ear. “Just a feeling I have. Something’s off about it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Worth checking out.”

  A red Dodge Dart, circa somewhere in the mid-seventies, rolled in behind her Jeep just as there was a sharp tap on the driver’s window. The pilgrim barista was holding two paper cups with plastic lids.

  Pescoli rolled down the window, collected the two cups and, after snagging Alvarez’s fiver, paid for the drinks and left a bit of a tip.

  “Wow, that’s hot,” Alvarez whispered after taking an experimental sip.

  “Just what you need on this cold day.”

  Alvarez settled deeper into the seat as she cradled her cup. “What I need are answers. Lots of answers.”

  “About life’s most important questions.”

  One side of her mouth lifted. “I’d be satisfied for the answer to why Jocelyn Wallis, a young woman, experienced jogger, and, from all reports, athletically fit and sane, ended up on a ledge jutting over a river.” Her eyes narrowed as Pescoli braked for a red light. “Seems as if she might just have been helped over that rail.”

  “Maybe.”

  Alvarez was nodding as she lifted the lid from her latte and blew across the hot surface.

  “And maybe not.”

  She took a long sip. “I guess we’ll find out. Maybe the answer’s at her place.”

  “We should be so lucky,” Pescoli said but was already driving to Jocelyn Wallis’s apartment complex.

  They found the key where O’Halleran said it would be, unlocked the door, and stepped into the one-bedroom unit the schoolteacher had called home.

  To Pescoli, nothing in the dead woman’s apartment seemed out of place. Jocelyn Wallis had no home phone, but Alvarez found her cell on a table near her recliner; her house key and car key had been left in a dish on a table in the foyer, by the front door. They discovered her purse on the counter and schoolbag on the seat of one of two bar stools, near a small desk where her laptop was plugged into the wall. Over-the-counter flu medication and a few tissues in the trash near her bed indicated she hadn’t been feeling well, yet she’d still gone out jogging. That was a little odd, but then the flu felt like it had settled in for winter, and sometimes serious joggers and exercise enthusiasts got tired of waiting to get completely well.

  Her ten-year-old Jetta was parked in its spot in the long carport that housed the vehicles for this building, one of four in the complex. But an animal was missing—a cat, if the tins of food in the pantry didn’t lie. Pet bowls half filled with water and food were on the floor, and a litter box had been tucked near the toilet in the bathroom. It was clean, no evidence of the feline.

  “Where’s the cat?” Pescoli asked.

  “Apparently missing,” Alvarez answered, looking around. “Nothing here indicates anyone broke in or that there was a struggle of any kind. It looks like Jocelyn just decided to get some exercise. If someone jumped her, it wasn’t here. Probably on the trail.”

  Pescoli followed Alvarez’s gaze. The apartment appeared to be just as someone going out for a jog would leave it.

  Still, Alvarez wasn’t satisfied that Jocelyn Wallis had just taken a fateful misstep that had ultimately ended her life. “It just doesn’t feel right,” she said again as they stood in the living room, where the scent of some plug-in air freshener was nearly overpowering.

  “Since when did you start paying attention to feelings and hunches?” Pescoli asked. In all their years as partners, Pescoli had known Alvarez to be single-minded and scientific, one who never relied on anything other than cold, hard facts.

  “Since Jocelyn Wallis’s death doesn’t add up,” her partner said. Alvarez was already gathering the dead woman’s laptop, cell phone, and bills from the desk. “Let’s just take a little time and check it out. Don’t you think it might be interesting to find out just who would benefit if she died?”

  “Actually, that might be real interesting.”

  “Good,” Alvarez said. “Let’s do it.”

  CHAPTER 10

  For Pescoli, Thanksgiving was the usual nightmare. This year the kids were supposed to spend the day with Luke and his Barbie doll of a wife, Michelle. Not quite thirty, the woman wore her long blond hair straight so that it brushed the middle of her back, and she preferred clothes that accentuated her hourglass figure. Michelle was as “girlie” as they came and pretended to be much more naive than humanly possible. Pescoli figured beneath the pale lips, thick black mascara, and perpetually surprised, sexy expression was a smart woman who for some unknown reason had set her sights on Lucky, who was handsome and, if not strongly educated, smart enough, just lacking in any kind of ambition. He drove his truck when he wanted to, and when he didn’t and the weather allowed, he either fished or golfed. Otherwise he planted himself in front of his big screen.

  “Made for each other,” she said beneath her breath as her children dragged themselves out of their rooms. Pescoli had insisted they spend the holiday with their father, even though Bianca feigned sickness again and Jeremy grouched that Luke wasn’t his “real” dad.

  “Too bad,” had been her unsympathetic response.

  For the sake of the children and because she’d nearly died last year, Pescoli and Luke had made a stab at burying the hatchet. Their divorce had been less than amicable, and now, in retrospect Pescoli realized their animosity had been a mistake. However, old habits died hard,
especially with all their past history. Trying to be civil was difficult, and trying to become friends had proved impossible, considering the circumstances. However, Pescoli was a firm believer in the old grin-and-bear-it motto, the reason being that she also trusted in the what-goes-around-comes-around adage. Luke Pescoli was handsome, charming, and a smooth talker. He was also a womanizer, gambler, and was pretty damned convinced that he was the center of the universe.

  Michelle had gotten herself no prize.

  She pushed open the door of her daughter’s room just as Bianca, miffed, swept into the hallway. “You’re doing this ’cuz you’re mad at me,” Bianca accused, her lower lip protruding, her eyes dark with accusation.

  “I’m doing it because I have an agreement with your father.”

  “No one asked me,” Bianca said as she stomped into the living room.

  “With that attitude, you’re just lucky you still have a door.”

  Jeremy, just coming up the stairs from his basement room, said, “Nobody asked me, either.”

  “So you two can bond over the injustice all the way over to your dad’s. Oh, wait, I said I’d contribute to the festivities.” She reached into the pantry, found an old can of cranberry sauce, the kind Luke detested. She slapped the can into Jeremy’s outstretched hand and imagined the congealed sauce slithering onto a serving plate, still showing the ribs of the can. “Here it is.”

  Jeremy caught her gaze. “You’re wicked, Mom.”

  “Just doing what I said I would.”

  Jeremy tucked the can into his backpack.

  “We could just stay here,” Bianca complained, though she was looking at the screen of her phone, reading a text.

  “No. I’ve gotta work. This way I’ll get the time off at Christmas so I can torture you both then.”

  “Funny,” Bianca said, then, moping, put on her down jacket and wool hat, smashing down her curly hair, the tie strings dangling past her pointed chin. “But four days . . .” She was really whining now. “I’ll die.”