Expecting to Die

holding up.
She wrote back: Ok. Still at the scene. Keep me posted. Home ASAP.
She didn’t mention that Bianca would be cited. After all, she had to leave
some of the fun stuff for later, right? Once the whole family was back home and
the trauma of the hospital was behind her, then Pescoli could lower the hammer.
Oh, joy.
She clicked off and caught sight of Alvarez climbing out of her Subaru.
“Sorry I’m late,” Alvarez said. “Out of town.”
“I thought you were on vacation.”
Alvarez had been spending time with her biological son, Gabe, a teenager who
lived with his adoptive parents.
“Got back a few hours ago,” she said. “The trip got cut short.”
“Why?”
“Addie,” she replied, mentioning Gabe’s adoptive mother. “I don’t want to
talk about it.”
“Okay.”
Alvarez’s dark hair was slicked back into a ponytail. Like Pescoli, she hadn’t
bothered with makeup, but somehow looked fresher, ready to go. “Let’s see what
we’ve got.”
“The victim is up that trail.”

---

They headed out, Pescoli struggling to keep up with Alvarez, who was
walking briskly, the beam of her flashlight bobbing along the trail ahead.
“Bianca was here?” she said. “Part of the party?”
“Yeah,” Pescoli admitted, still wondering about that. “She found the body,
called it in, so the road deputies in the area got here before the kids had a chance
to scatter.” There was a lot more to it than that, of course, but she’d fill in
Alvarez later.
“Good.”
Selena Alvarez had been Pescoli’s partner for years, and they got along. It had
been a little rocky at first, as their backgrounds, educations, and viewpoints on
life, as well as how they handled their jobs, were at odds, but they’d sorted most
of that crap out. Alvarez came from a large family in Oregon somewhere, had
gone to school, excelled, and worked by the book, a scientist who valued
evidence far more than any gut instinct. Pescoli, on the other hand, was known
to fly by the seat of her pants and relied on her own perceptions.
Even so, Pescoli had grudgingly come to respect the younger woman’s skills.
Straightforward, usually calm, Alvarez was relentless when it came to
collecting evidence, checking and rechecking facts, and working a case by the
book. Hers was never a forty- or even sixty-hour work week. Alvarez was a
student of all things in life and she could think outside the box. She was also far
more adept at today’s technology, was an Internet/social media whiz, and kept
abreast of the most recent theories in psychology. However, she never wanted to
bend the rules, which, in Pescoli’s mind, were meant to be pushed to the
breaking point if need be. And, she found, “need be” turned out to be pretty
often.
While Alvarez was calm under pressure, a cool head, Pescoli’s emotions often
got the better of her.
“What’ve we got?” Alvarez asked as they walked along the dusty trail that
wound along the creek.
Breathing hard, Pescoli filled her in on as much as she knew, which was, at
that point, mostly what she’d learned from Bianca.
By the time they reached the spot where the victim lay in the shallows of the
creek, Pescoli was sweating. Lights had been set up so they could view the
scene, and insects were hovering above the stream, where a girl’s body was
tangled in roots and stones. She was rapidly decomposing, her face disfigured
and, in Pescoli’s estimation, unrecognizable. Techs were already combing the
area around the creek while the EMTs, after confirming what was obvious, that
she was deceased, were waiting for someone from the coroner’s office to arrive.
Pescoli’s stomach turned at the sight. Still, she crouched near the creek bed,

---

shined the beam of her flashlight over the body.
The girl looked under twenty. Maybe around Bianca’s age and the age of most
of the kids who were up here tonight. Had her death been an accident? Had she
tripped and fallen here? Sustained head trauma? Had she been all alone in the
forest or with someone? Had that someone killed her? Or harmed her and left her
here to die? Could she have come out here to be alone in nature to take her own
young life? If so, why?
Every aspect about it was disturbing.
Straightening with effort, she squinted into the shadowy undergrowth rising
with the walls of this canyon. Yes, this part of the wilderness was somewhat
remote and certainly not a tourist attraction, but in summer there were outdoor
enthusiasts who hiked or mountain-biked, fished or picnicked, birdwatched,
picked huckleberries, or generally communed with nature. So not as remote as it
might seem.
“Detective. Please?” one of the crime scene techs said as she aimed her
flashlight’s beam over the tufts of dry grass not far from Pescoli’s shoes. “Do
you mind?” The tech was a thin woman with angular features, a pinched mouth,
and thick, oversized glasses.
Pescoli backed up and took a broader look at the area. The path that was being
examined cut down from the surrounding cliff to angle along the shores of what,
during the spring thaw, was a sizeable, fast-moving stream. Now, in August, the
water was shallow and sluggish, the pool in which the body lay the deepest part
of the creek.
Alvarez, who’d been okayed by the same tech, was crouching over the body,
carefully studying the victim’s face and hairline before using the illumination
cast by her own flashlight to explore the shallows. Water riffled over shiny
stones as it flowed slowly over the girl’s face, distorting the macabre features
even more. From there, the creek moved around her torso to run past her legs
and bare feet. The skirt of her short dress billowed around her thighs.
Pescoli had seen enough.
Another tech, Lex Farnsby, was searching the hillside, and Pescoli followed
him along the steep trail, the dusty path—she was certain, from Bianca’s
description—on which her daughter had recently fled. “Footprints?” she asked,
breathing hard, beads of sweat collecting near her hairline.
“Mmm. A few, hard to tell exactly how fresh,” he said as he kept at his job,
sweeping the beam of his flashlight over the dust. The climb was taxing but
slow, and Pescoli stopped several times, looking over the canyon, trying to
imagine if the victim had come down this path. Had she been followed? Chased
like Bianca? Seen “a monster”? Had someone caught up with her, attacked her,

---

and either killed her or injured her and left her for dead? If so, had she known
him? Had her attacker been a male? Or had she died in some freak accident?
“Holy . . .” Farnsby said from about ten feet above Pescoli on the trail. A
short, compact man with a receding hairline and a perpetual scowl, he was
studying the ground intently. “What the hell is this?”
“What?” Breathing hard, Pescoli followed him to a narrow space between two
boulders that loomed over her. He’d angled his flashlight to run its beam on the
ground between the huge stones to a spot in the trail where several footprints,
with what appeared to be the tread of a running shoe, had left an imprint. Next to
them was another massive print, clearly defined and shoeless, as if it had been
made by an immense man.
Pescoli froze. Studied the print. “Big guy?”
“Bigger than anyone I’ve ever seen.” He crouched next to the impression, then
placed a folding scale next to the print and snapped a photo. The flash further
illuminated the footprint.
It was pretty damned big.
Using a slim tape measure, he took measurements of the length and width of
the print. “Wow,” he whispered, rocking back on his heels and frowning, his
features visible in the light from Pescoli’s flashlight. “Don’t move,” he ordered
and swung his beam around the area in an obvious attempt to find another print.
“What the hell made that?”
Though he was probably talking to himself, she ventured a guess. “Grizzly
bear?”
“You see any claws?” he snapped, as if she were an idiot.
“A mountain man?”
“With size-twenty or more shoes?”
“Basketball player?”
Farnsby glanced up at her. He didn’t bother to hide his contempt. “I don’t
think Shaq or Yao Ming has been to Grizzly Falls lately.”
“So what’re you saying?”
“I don’t know.”
But she thought he had an idea, one she wouldn’t like. She saw the spark in
his eyes, the bit of wonder in his features in the half-light from their flashlights.
“Don’t say it, Farnsby,” she said, guessing what he was thinking. “Don’t even go
there.”
His gaze locked with hers. “Gotta be.”
“Sasquatch?” She shook her head. “Don’t tell me you’re a Big Foot guy.”
“Well, this here”—he pointed at the print with one finger—“came from a
helluva big foot. Okay? I’m not saying it was made by a Sasquatch—”

---

“Big Foot’s a myth. That’s it. Nothing more.” But just as the words were
rolling over her tongue, she, for a second, remembered what Bianca had said: