Expecting to Die

CHAPTER 10
A
lex O’Hara almost stumbled when he caught sight of the cops. “Whoa,” he
said and sent a quick look to Donny, who gave an almost imperceptible shake of
the head.
A warning.
These two, and God only knew how many others, knew more than they were
saying.
“Alex O’Hara,” Alvarez said as the kids started to back up. “Stick around.”
“Didn’t mean to interrupt.” He was still backpedaling.
“You’re not interrupting at all. In fact, you saved us a trip, as we were going
to talk to you next.” She was stretching the truth a bit, but he didn’t know that.
“We met last night,” she reminded him, though she doubted he’d forgotten. “I’m
Detective Alvarez and this is Detective Pescoli.” She motioned to Pescoli, who
was studying the newcomer.
“Yeah. I know.” He nodded. He stopped heading for the gate, folded his arms
over his chest, and waited.
She said, “Since you’re here, we’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“About Destiny Rose Montclaire,” Pescoli added. Even in the shade of the
porch, she felt like she was melting, the edges of her hair around her scalp moist.
“I barely knew her,” Alex said, then glanced at Donny, as if to confirm, but
this time his friend just stared at his clasped hands, which were now hanging at
his knees.
Alvarez said, “But you’d met.”
“Yeah.” One more look at his friend. He got no response. Donny, it seemed,
was lost in his own world. “Look, I only met her a couple of times, I think.” His
gaze swept from one cop to the other. “Wait a minute. Don’t I need a lawyer or
something to talk to you?”
“That’s your choice, if you think you need one.” Alvarez didn’t intend to back
down.
“You mean like if I’m guilty?” His eyebrows shot up over his glasses to make
furrows across his forehead. “Well, I’m not. No way.” He turned to Donny. “You
know that, man. I mean, Destiny, she was cool and all . . . but . . .” His lower lip
protruded a bit and he lifted his shoulders up to his ears. “I just didn’t know
much about her.”

---

“You didn’t know that she was pregnant?” she asked.
He visibly started. “Like as in knocked up?” The skin on his face tightened.
Either he hadn’t known or he hadn’t thought anyone would find out. He turned
his head, and this time the look that passed between the two friends was
unreadable. “How would I know that?”
“When was the last time you saw her?” Pescoli asked.
“I dunno . . . maybe two weeks ago . . . maybe longer. I can’t remember. She
was always hanging around.”
“But you’d only met her twice?” Pescoli pressed. “That’s what you said.”
“I meant, I really didn’t know her. Sure, I saw her. With Donny or . . . or
whoever, but I never spoke to her but a few times. But, yeah, she was around a
lot.”
“So you weren’t with Donny, here, when he met up with her, a week ago last
Friday?”
Alex wagged his head. “Uh-uh.”
“Were you over here playing video games that evening?”
He flicked his gaze at Donny, eyes locking. “Yeah?” It was more of a question
than a statement.
Donny said, “After Teej, Alex, Tophman, and I grabbed some pizza, we
played games, then they all took off. After that, that’s when Destiny called me
and came over here.” It sounded like he was giving Alex the story, so that he
could back Donny up. The kid was just digging himself a deeper grave.
“So you were never at Reservoir Point?” Pescoli pressed. “You and Destiny
didn’t go up there?”
Donny’s jaw worked and he thought about lying again; Pescoli could see it in
the way his eyes shied away from hers. But he said, “Nope. Her folks don’t like
me much so we met here.” He looked pathetically miserable.
“Anyone else here?” Pescoli asked.
“No,” he shot back. “Like I said, we wanted to be alone.”
“What did you talk about?” Alvarez asked, her voice calm.
“Nothing.”
“The baby?” Alvarez prodded.
“No! Jesus. I didn’t . . . I didn’t know about that.” He rubbed his chin. “She
wanted to get back with me. I said no. We argued.”
Pescoli asked, “Did it get physical?”
“No! Fuck. I told you. I didn’t hurt her. Never laid a hand on her!”
“So you talked and fought,” Alvarez said, sending her partner a silent warning
glare to be cool. “What then?”
“She left. Mad.”

---

“How long was she here?” Alvarez clarified.
“About an hour, I guess, maybe a little longer. I dunno.”
“So now it was dark,” Pescoli said. “And you just let her go. By herself.”
“Yes!” Donny was getting angry, color tinging his cheeks and the back of his
neck. “That was the whole point. She wanted to talk to me alone, to, you know,
work things out, but it didn’t happen. That’s it. She was there, we talked, fought
—just words—and then she stormed off. She always did that, just left,
sometimes maybe slammed a door. That’s all I know. What she did afterward, I
don’t know. I never heard from her again.”
“She didn’t call or text?” Alvarez said as she heard the smooth purr of another
engine coming close.
“What part of no don’t you understand?” Donny demanded. “That’s all there
is.”
“Would you mind showing me your cell phone, so I can confirm?” Pescoli
asked.
“What? No.” Panic in his gaze. “I erase everything.”
Another lie. Pescoli said, “We can get them from your cell phone carrier.”
“Is that even legal?” he asked. “Don’t you need like a warrant or something?”
Pescoli said, “We haven’t found Destiny’s phone yet, but when we do, we’ll
be double-checking her records, calls, texts, searches on the Internet.”
He blanched.
“And even if we don’t find it right away, we’ll be checking with her carrier
and getting the records from them.”
He opened his mouth, was about to say something, probably change his story,
when the idling engine stopped. A car door opened and slammed shut.
“Oh, shit,” Donny said just as Mayor Carolina Justison stormed through the
open gate.
“Whose car is blocking the—?” She let the sentence die when she recognized
the two detectives. “Oh.”
Wearing a slim navy skirt and white knit top, a computer bag slung over her
shoulder, she advanced on the group gathered in the shade of the back porch. Her
lips were compressed. Her eyes, behind rimless glasses, snapped angrily. Her
blond hair, cut at an angle to her chin, whipped away from her face as her red
pumps pounded along the cement path past the basketball court.
“I thought I told the sheriff that my son was off limits,” she barked at Pescoli.
“I made it very clear that Donald wasn’t going to talk to the police without an
attorney present!”
“I didn’t say nothin’,” Donny protested as Alex edged away from the group
and toward the gate.

---

“Anything!” she corrected automatically, swinging around to glare at her son.
“You didn’t say ‘anything’ and that’s good. But it’s not the point. We all know
you have nothing to hide. But there is a protocol to follow.” Her gaze sharpened
on Alvarez. “I talked to the sheriff directly, and I spoke to you. I thought we
were all on the same page about this.”
“New information came to light,” Alvarez said, not backing down an inch.
“We just wanted to clarify a few things. Donny and Alex both knew the victim.”
“Donny will speak with you, but only with an attorney present. Is that clear?”
She turned her attention to her son. “I think you should go in, take a shower, get
cleaned up. We’re going out for dinner. With Bernard.”