“Good idea,” Clarissa said sarcastically. “It’s always worked so well before. If Lance ever did to me what you’ve done to Mom, I wouldn’t be satisfied by publicly humiliating him on Jerry Springer or Montel or some other let-all-your-dirty-laundry-hang-out TV show. I’d have to eviscerate him. Maybe with a butter knife.”
“Compassion has never been your strong suit,” her father said dryly.
Clarissa lifted a shoulder. “It’s just how I feel, and since someone stole my gun this week, I guess I’ll have to stick with disemboweling. Would a spoon be better?”
“Stop it,” her father warned.
“I’m just saying I don’t let anyone walk all over me, and neither do you. If Mom would have cheated on you or had a gaggle of bastards, you would never have stood for it.”
“Your mother would never!”
“You’re right. She wouldn’t. She’s at least got a modicum of class.” To Kacey, Clarissa added, “Congratulations. It takes a lot to stir up this particular hornet’s nest, and it looks like you’ve done that and more.” She marched out of the room as fiercely as a mother bear whose cubs had just been threatened.
Gerald gave a last cursory glance at the photographs of the dead women. “Clarissa’s right, you know. I’m afraid you’ve started something you’re going to regret.”
Kacey wasn’t going to let anyone deter her, not when she’d come this far. “I’m not afraid at all.” But that was a lie, and they both knew it.
CHAPTER 29
Gerald Johnson and Clarissa seemed to half forget Kacey was there as they began planning the family meeting. “Excuse me,” Kacey said, sweeping up her coat.
“The boardroom is straight down the north hall. We’re convening now,” Clarissa warned her.
“I’m not leaving,” Kacey said. Yet. “I just need to make a phone call.”
They both gave her a hard look as she left the room. And she thought she was paranoid. Maybe she came by it naturally!
She walked in the direction of the boardroom, tried the doors, realized they were locked, so she punched in the number for the sheriff’s department, which she’d added onto her cell phone list.
“Detective Alvarez, please,” she said when the call was answered by the front desk. “I’m Dr. Lambert, returning an earlier call.”
She was put through immediately, and Detective Alvarez answered, “Alvarez.”
“This is Kacey Lambert. I know you’ve talked to Trace O’Halleran, who found the microphones.”
“Yes. We would like to come and see for ourselves. This afternoon?”
“Late afternoon?” Kacey asked. “I’m at an out-of-town appointment that may take a little more time. But I would really like to have those microphones out.”
“Call us when you’re on your way home.”
“Thank you,” she said, meaning it.
Next, she phoned Trace, who answered as if he’d had his ear to the phone.
“Kacey,” he said, and just the way he said her name flooded her with good feelings.
“Hey, there. I’m meeting the police at my house later today, and they’re going to take out the microphones, I guess. Look at them, anyway. I want them out.”
“Good. Are you at work?”
“I’m not at the clinic. I’m at an appointment,” she said, not wanting to go into the whole thing with him just yet. She didn’t know how she felt about anything to do with the Johnsons. “I told the police I’d call them when I was on my way home.”
“Call me, too.”
“You got it.”
“Kacey . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful,” he said, clearly reading more between the lines than she’d thought she’d revealed.
“I’ll see you this evening,” she said, then put back her phone in its slot inside her purse and watched with a certain amount of trepidation as Gerald and Clarissa came out of his office and strode down the hall toward her.
“Go check on your kids,” Alvarez told Pescoli. “There’s nothing happening here till we meet at Dr. Lambert’s.”
“I’m going home to shoo Chris out of the house, if he’s there, but I’ll be right back.”
Alvarez waved her off. They were in a waiting game. Waiting for the lab results. Waiting for someone to call back. Waiting, waiting, waiting.
She sat down at her desk, and her gaze flew over the notes she’d made, bits and pieces of information burned on her brain that needed some kind of connection. The missing link that would make sense of it all. Flipping through the pages of thoughts, ideas, and doodles, and then the files filled with reports, she decided there was nothing to do but what she’d already done: make phone calls. Push. Hope somebody somewhere was willing to exchange information.
She saw the number for Elle Alexander’s parents in Boise. She’d called it twice already and left messages, but no one had phoned back. They were grieving. She understood. Maybe they felt the authorities speaking with Elle’s husband, Tom, should have sufficed. Lots of people abhorred police intruding in their affairs, even when it was a necessary evil.
Placing the call, she readied herself for what she was going to say. After a number of rings, she knew she was facing voice mail again; then there was a click, and a woman’s voice said cautiously, “Hello?”
“Mrs. Morris?” Alvarez said, glancing down at her notes. Elle’s parents were Brenda and Keane Morris, both retired. He was a pilot, and she was a grade school teacher.
“I can tell you’re calling from Montana. Caller ID says you’re with the Pinewood County Sheriff’s Department. You’ve called before. This is about Elle, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am. We are investigating your daughter’s death.”
“You don’t think it was just a terrible accident?” Her voice grew very small.
“We don’t know. We just want to be sure.”
She started crying softly, and Alvarez’s heart went out to her. This was the hardest part of the job.
“Can I ask you a few questions?”
“Go ahead,” she said, inhaling shakily.
“We interviewed your son-in-law, Tom Alexander. Elle was on the phone to him when the accident occurred.”
“Tom loves Elle. He’s heartbroken. We all are.”
“Tom said your daughter thought another vehicle was driving dangerously. Did he tell you that?” Alvarez asked.
“He said Elle thought the driver was trying to kill her. I don’t know. Sometimes, when you’re driving, you kind of think those things, you know?”
“Yes.”
“He rear-ended her. Tom said she said that. And his lights were really bright. But then, Tom said she must have dropped the phone.... He called nine-one-one. She told him to.”
“Did your daughter have any enemies that you might know of?”
“Oh, no. Not Elle. Everyone loved Elle. Her best friend from high school, Jayne Drummond, still lives around here, and she stopped by and we talked about how much everyone loved her.” Elle’s mother’s voice was growing thick with tears again. “You can talk to her, if you’d like.”
“You have a son, too.”
“Bruce. He’s married. Lives in Florida. I can give you his number, too.”
“Thank you.”
Alvarez wrote down the phone numbers for Jayne Drummond and Bruce Morris as Brenda read them to her. The next questions she wanted to ask were going to sound strange, and she wasn’t quite sure how to approach her with them. “Mrs. Morris, we’re investigating a death in Grizzly Falls of another young woman. She either fell or was pushed over a railing.”
“I’m very sorry for her family,” Brenda said sincerely.
“We would like to help them get closure, as well,” Alvarez said, pushing on. “The woman, Jocelyn Wallis, bore a remarkable resemblance to your daughter. Enough that someone asked if they were related.” A little white lie, but close enough to the truth that Alvarez felt no compunction in using it. “Although I suspect this is just the kind of odd coi
ncidence that crops up from time to time, I wanted to ask about the possibility that they were related somehow. Maybe knew each other?”
It was a total stretch, and Alvarez could hear the embarrassed tone of her own voice. Still, those pictures Trace O’Halleran had discussed with them had offered up more questions than answers. If she could connect any two of the look-alikes, maybe the rest would follow.
“No . . .”
“Elle was born in Boise?”
“Yes.”
“Does she have any connection to Helena?”
A sharp intake of breath. “No . . .”
Alvarez’s pulse jumped. Something here. “I’m sorry, but it sounds like you are thinking of something?”
“It’s not ... I don’t . . . I don’t understand how it could.”
“Could you tell me what you mean?”
“Oh, dear. My husband ... oh, dear.” She sighed. “We learned that my husband could not father any children of his own, so we went to a clinic in Helena. It’s no longer there. But it was then, and we went there ... to find a donor.”
“A sperm donor,” Alvarez clarified carefully.
“Yes. Yes. Both of my children were fathered by the same donor.”
“Elle and Bruce.”
“We never told anyone. Bruce still doesn’t know, and Elle didn’t know. I know I should tell my son, but it never seemed like the right time and now Elle’s gone. . . .”
“This clinic. What was it called?”
“I don’t know. We always referred to it as the clinic. I can’t see that this matters.”
“It probably doesn’t. I just want to be sure. Can you tell me anything more about it?”
She exhaled and then inhaled and exhaled once more before saying, “This is ... I don’t know. Information you don’t need, I suppose, but all I know is the donor’s number, seven-twenty-seven. My husband and I always remembered because he was a pilot and that was the type of jet he flew when he worked for the airlines. We always thought it was lucky.”
“How did you pick the donor?”
“He was a medical student with dark hair and blue eyes. He was the same height as Keane, and he was athletic. We wanted our children to resemble us both.” Her tone said: “Is that so much to ask?”
“I understand.”
“This other woman ... the one who fell?”
Alvarez didn’t want to start answering questions since she didn’t know where they would lead. Needing to cut her off quickly, she said, “I don’t have all the background on Miss Wallis, but I know she was a teacher in Grizzly Falls and very well liked.”
“Like Elle.” She sighed. “I was a teacher, too. It’s all so hard, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am. It is.” Alvarez meant it, and the older woman heard her unspoken sympathy.
“If Elle was killed . . . if that’s true, you’ll find them and let me know?”
“Yes. I will,” Alvarez promised.
“Thank you,” she said.
Alvarez sat perfectly still for several moments after Brenda Morris hung up.
A sperm donor.
Could it be?
Were these women truly related? It was the theory that had been circling around that no one wanted to really believe. Could Elle Alexander and Shelly Bonaventure and Jocelyn Wallis and Leanna O’Halleran and maybe Kacey Lambert, and God knew how many others, actually be related ? Have the same father? That was the connection?
As fast as she could, she grabbed up her cell phone and punched the button for Pescoli, who answered on the fifth ring, sounding pissed.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve got something.”
“Uh-huh.”
“No, I’ve really got something,” Alvarez told her. “Can you get back to the station?”
“I have a lot of screaming left to do here,” she said abruptly. “A lot of screaming,” she yelled loudly to someone or someones on her end.
“Make it quick screaming,” Alvarez told her, then clicked off, her mind already spinning ahead.
Could all these women—these victims—have been conceived at the same fertility clinic? Could their mothers have all used the same sperm donor? Donor 727?
But what did that mean? Even if it was true, what did that mean? Why were they dying? Why were they being killed?
If...
If they were being killed.
But that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? There’s something here. You know there’s something here. Whether Pescoli believes you or not.
She grabbed up her phone and called the lab, annoyed when she was given the runaround. Hanging up with them, she called Ashley Tang direct and said, “I need some DNA results yesterday. Isn’t there someone at the lab you can lean on?”
The forensic investigator answered, “They’re getting to it. You know how it is.”
“I don’t care how it is! I need answers.”
“Well, I’ve got one for you. Not DNA, but an explanation of sorts.”
“Hit me.”
“The poison found in Jocelyn Wallis’s system? We believe it was administered in the coffee grounds.”
“Put there on purpose? It wasn’t something picked up by mistake, somehow.”
“Most likely it was deliberate.”
“Was it meant to kill her?”
“Doesn’t look like it. The dosage was too small at this point, but then, there might be a lot more left in the coffee. We haven’t tested it yet.”
Alvarez jumped ahead to Kacey Lambert. The microphones. Maybe Jocelyn had been bugged, too? But the killer removed them before her place was examined?
“I’m going to check some other coffee, too,” Alvarez said. “Thanks. I’ll get it to you.”
This time when she hung up, she could feel her pulse racing and her breathing was rapid. Was Dr. Lambert in a killer’s sights?
It sure felt that way.
“Pescoli. Get back here!” she said aloud.
“You always overreact,” Jeremy declared, glaring at her from the couch. He held up his phone. “It’s just a picture. There’s nothing wrong with it!”
“If Heidi’s dad saw it, I don’t think he’d agree,” Pescoli responded.
“You showed it to him!”
“How could I show it to him? It’s on your phone. But he knows about it. Pay attention here. Sending pictures like that over the Internet is not a good idea.”
“There’s nothing illegal about it. Nothing!”
“You’re putting words in my mouth. I said it’s not a good idea. Period.”
“It’s just on my phone. Mine. Which you looked at without asking. That’s an invasion of privacy!”
“Invasion of privacy?” Pescoli swept an arm to angrily encompass the mess surrounding her, the detritus from Jeremy’s video gaming: empty soda cups, a plate with the remnants of his cheese sandwich, or maybe Bianca’s—that had yet to be determined—several pairs of his shoes scattered haphazardly over the floor. “Everything you do is an invasion of privacy these days.”
“Fine. I’ll leave.” He stomped across the living room and headed down to his bedroom.
“Praise God. He listens.”
“Mom . . . ?” Bianca’s voice warbled from down the hall. Pescoli walked briskly down the hall and peeked into her daughter’s room, where Bianca lay on the bed, big eyes wide and a little teary. “Why can’t Chris come over?”
“When I’m here. He can come over when I’m here.”
“I want him here now. He brings me water.”
“I’ll get you a glass of water. Did you eat any of your cheese sandwich?”
“What cheese sandwich?”
“Jeremy!” Pescoli yelled, stomping out of Bianca’s room and turning to the stairs that led down to his bedroom.
“I asked her! She said she didn’t want it!” he yelled back up at her.
Pescoli returned to Bianca’s room. She looked at her daughter, buried in the blankets on her bed. “Is there something that sounds good?” she ask
ed her.
“Soup.”
“Campbell’s okay?”
“Chicken noodle.”
As she headed toward the kitchen to whip up this culinary delight, she heard softly, “Thanks, Mom,” and she exhaled a long breath and almost smiled, remembering why she’d had children in the first place.
Thirty minutes later she was back at the station, and Alvarez was just hanging up the phone as she entered the squad room. “What have you got?” Pescoli asked, and her partner told her about the sperm donor theory from top to bottom.
When she finished, Alvarez said, “Well?” and Pescoli nodded, processing.
“Wow,” she said. “What does it mean?”
“I’m working that out. But that’s the connection. The common denominator.”
“If—”
“Pescoli.” Cort Brewster’s voice barked her name as if it tasted bad.
“Brewster,” she responded neutrally, turning her eye his way.
“Come into my office.” Then, as an afterthought, “Please.”
“Well, shit,” she muttered under her breath as she followed after the undersheriff.
Brewster didn’t bother to sit at his desk. He stood behind it and Pescoli did likewise, preferring to stand herself.
“I talked to Heidi. She says there are no pictures.”
“Ahh . . .”
“I think she might not be telling the truth,” he admitted. Pescoli lifted her brows. This was a surprise. “It’s no secret I don’t like your son seeing my daughter. He’s a dog in heat, and if I could, I’d bust his ass.”
“You tried that once before,” Pescoli reminded.
“I don’t need an unemployed loser hanging around, and neither does Heidi. He’s a bad influence on her. You and I don’t always see eye to eye, but we have to work together. I’m doing my best to keep things professional. I expect the same from you.” He paused, and when Pescoli didn’t respond, he added, “That’s all.”
She turned on her heel and marched out of the room, annoyed, frustrated, and a little overwhelmed. Not that she’d let Cort Brewster see that. Bastard.
She suddenly ached for Joe. Man, it would be good if he were around. Theirs hadn’t been a perfect marriage; she could admit it had already been fraying when he was killed in the line of duty. But, oh, she could use his level head now in dealing with their son.