Expecting to Die

CHAPTER 20
T
hey caught up with Kywin Bell just hopping out of a battered Dodge truck in
the driveway of his father’s house. The truck had been jacked up, the wheels
oversized, the tailgate missing.
He saw the two cops approach. A scowl curved across his unshaven jaw. “I
talked to you already,” he said, retrieving a beat-up lunch pail from the truck’s
interior, then slamming the door shut.
“We just have a few more questions,” Alvarez said.
“Well, I’m all outta answers. You already nearly cost me my job, so I’m
done.” He started for the house, a single-story post-war bungalow that was in
need of more than just paint. The porch sagged, the shingles of the roof were
curling and cracked, the gutters rusting.
“You’re not quite done,” said Pescoli.
Swatting at a bee, he spun around just before reaching the listing porch, lips
compressed, nostrils flaring. “What is it with you cops, huh? Never satisfied.
Always nagging. Just cuz my old man did time doesn’t mean I had anything to
do with . . . with anything!”
A scrawny gray cat that had been sunning itself on the porch got up quickly
and slunk behind a couple of metal chairs. With a quick look over its shoulder
and a swish of its tail, the feline slid off the porch to hide in a clump of dry
weeds. Kywin reached for the dilapidated screen door as Alvarez said, “Destiny
texted you on the last night she was seen alive.”
“What?” He dropped his hands and stared at them in shock. Shaking his head,
he reached into his jean pocket for a crumpled pack of cigarettes. “I never got no
text.” He found a lighter, lit up, then blew smoke out of the side of his mouth in
a fast stream.
“We have records from the cell company,” Alvarez told him. “The text is
there.”
“They’re wrong. I didn’t get a text from her.”
He was so sure of himself, Pescoli started to wonder a bit as he left his
cigarette clamped in the corner of his mouth and dug in another pocket, located
his cell phone and checked the screen, pressing buttons deftly before finding
what he was looking for. “There,” he said, holding the phone, face out, to the
cops.

---

Shading the screen with one hand, Pescoli studied the phone. A tiny head shot
of Destiny appeared beside a thread of texts, which included another picture, a
selfie of her in a pink bikini at a swimming hole by the river. Her head was
cocked to one side, her eyes dancing mischievously, her grin a little seductive.
The attached message read: Swimming @Cougar Springs. Join me after
work? She’d ended it with an emoticon of a smiley face wearing sunglasses.
There were no more texts.
Pescoli pointed out, “You could have deleted any message you got from her.”
“I didn’t! For shit’s sake, I told you, that’s the last message I got from her.”
Alvarez scrolled up. “She texted you just about every day, sometimes more
than once.”
“Yeah.” He took a long drag from his cig. “Your point is . . . ?”
“So, didn’t you think it was strange that she just stopped?”
“She’s a chick. Y’know. They’re all weird. Sometimes all in your grill, then
they get pissed or into something or someone else and they, like, disappear.” He
reached for his phone. “Give it back. Some of that stuff is private.” Then, not
waiting, snatched it out of Alvarez’s fingers. “Should never have let you see it.”
“It proves nothing, Kywin,” Pescoli said.
“I’m tellin’ ya: I didn’t get any text that night. I didn’t delete any texts. I didn’t
hear from her after she sent me the last one you just seen.” He held up the phone,
shaking it.
“You didn’t respond.”
“No. I was busy. I was at work when she texted, then with the guys later that
night. I already told you this.” He took a final puff on his cigarette, then jabbed it
into a cracked ceramic pot filled with sand and soil, where other dead butts had
collected. “I gotta go.”
Pescoli asked, “Have you talked to Lindsay Cronin?”
“What?” His eyebrows slammed together.
“Lindsay,” she repeated. “Have you seen her?”
“I saw her at the party up at the point. When Bianca found Destiny. You know
we were all there.”
Alvarez asked, “You heard she’s missing?”
“Simone said something about it.” Rubbing the back of his neck, he said, “I
don’t know anything about her being gone.” A pause, then his expression
changed to incredulity. “Jesus, don’t tell me you think I had something to do
with that, too.”
Pescoli said, “We don’t know what happened to her, yet, but she got a
message from Destiny, too. Sent about thirty seconds after she sent one to you.”
Gone was the dismissive attitude. “Did Lindsay get hers?”

---

“We don’t know,” Alvarez said.
“Well, I didn’t. I’ve told you over and over. I don’t know anything about what
happened to Des.”
Pescoli pushed him. “What about Lindsay?”
“Are you deaf? Or just stupid? I had nothing to do with whatever happened to
either one of them. I don’t even like Lindsay. For Christ’s sake, I’m done talkin’
with you. Done. So get off my property and don’t come back without a warrant!”
He grabbed the handle of the rusted screen door, yanked it hard enough that
Pescoli thought it might come off its hinges, then stomped inside, the door
banging behind him.
They were about to leave when a Chevy Suburban rolled into the driveway to
park behind Kywin’s truck.
Uh-oh. Pescoli braced herself as Franklin Bell, nearly three hundred pounds of
him, cut the engine and stepped into the yard. A trucker’s cap shaded eyes
already covered by mirrored aviator glasses, his jeans were dusty, his black T-
shirt gray with Sheetrock dust. Franklin was a surly man who drank too much,
and when he did, more often than not, he let his fists do his talking, and they
never said anything good. His ex-wife, Wilda, could tell that story.
“What the hell are you doin’ here?” he said, his lips curling into a snarl.
“Franklin,” Pescoli greeted him flatly. “We needed to talk to your son about
the disappearance of Lindsay Cronin.”
“I thought her name was Destiny. And they found her.” One sausage-like
finger poked in Pescoli’s direction. “Your kid found her.”
“That’s right. Destiny Montclaire was the victim of homicide and now
Lindsay Cronin’s gone missing.”
“Damn.” His lips folded in on themselves. “You think one of my boys had
somethin’ to do with it? That why you’re here?” His gaze sliced from Kywin’s
truck to the house. “Just because I’ve had my trouble with you all don’t mean
my kids are . . .” He stared down at Pescoli. “Don’t put this on my boys. You can
pick on me all you want, but you leave Kywin and Kip alone.”
A kick of adrenaline charged through Pescoli’s blood. Franklin Bell was
violent and unpredictable, but she said calmly, “Kywin got a text from the girl
who was killed, Destiny Montclaire, on the night she died, then he lied about it.
Still is lying. And now another girl he knows is missing.”
“We’re following up,” Alvarez said.
“Lots of kids knew them girls.” A muscle in his heavy jaw bulged, and within
the tangle of his beard his mouth became a firm, hard line. “Don’t you make this
a witch hunt, y’hear? Don’t you go blamin’ Kywin for somethin’ he didn’t do.
Now, get the hell off my property.”

---

He stomped into the house much like Kywin had minutes before, slamming
the door behind him. Pescoli and Alvarez headed to the Subaru.
“Kywin Bell is lying,” Alvarez said.
“He and everyone else associated with this case.” Pescoli glared at the little
house where Franklin and his two sons lived. “Teenagers: they all lie. And
Kywin knows he’s in trouble. We’ve got proof.”
“All we’ve got is that she texted him and he lied about getting the text.
Nothing more.”
“Yet,” she said as Alvarez started the engine and they rolled away from the
house, “it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Those kids know more than they’re telling,
or at least some of them do. We just have to dig deeper.”
By the time Pescoli got home, it was after nine. The dogs greeted her and she
found Santana, freshly showered, long-neck bottle of beer in hand, stretched out
on the couch in the family room. He was watching TV—some old Clint
Eastwood movie that she should know the name of, but couldn’t remember. God,
the beer looked inviting.
He clicked off the television and met her in the kitchen, where she was
opening the refrigerator and staring glumly at the interior. “I could make you a
double margarita,” he said and kissed her above her ear. She slid him a glance.
He clarified, “A virgin.”
“Always so thoughtful.”
His grin was sexy. “I try.”
“Try harder.” Snagging a bottle of Perrier from the top shelf, she let the door
close. “Bianca home? Or is she out being a movie star?”
“Make that ‘reality TV star.’ It’s a few steps down from being an A-lister on
the red carpet, I think.” He took a swallow from his bottle. “But she’s up in her
room. Jeremy is out.”
“With who?”
“He doesn’t tell me and I don’t ask. He’s old enough to come and go as he
pleases.”
“Fine stepfather you turned out to be.” She kicked off her shoes and ignored
the fact that her feet were swollen. Yeah, being pregnant was just a barrel of
laughs. “And don’t tell me you try, okay?” She was joking, but it fell flat.
“You okay?” He was serious now, eyes assessing her.
“When am I ever ‘okay’?”
“Point taken.”
Leaning against the counter near the sink, she opened her bottle and took a
drink. “Another girl’s missing.” She then went on to tell him about her day and
the interview with Kywin Bell. She closed her eyes, rotating her neck, hoping to

---

release the tension she’d felt ever since learning Lindsay Cronin was missing. “I
can’t help but think her disappearance is linked to Destiny Montclaire’s. God, I
hope we find her alive.”
“But you’re not betting on it.”
“No. Her phone’s gone dark. Turned off. Can’t be GPS tracked because it’s
off. No one can reach her, and we haven’t found her car. No one’s seen her. We
double-checked with friends, family, and the local hospitals, which the parents
had already done . . . and . . . nothing. We’ve caught a couple of kids lying....
They know something but are hell-bent on keeping it on the down low. Oh, hell.
I think I’d better go talk to Bianca.”
“You think she knows something?”
“No, but the truth is, I don’t know.”
She headed up the stairs and found Bianca, leg propped on a pillow, watching
reruns of Big Foot Territory: Oregon! on her iPad while simultaneously texting
her friends. A frozen bag of peas lay atop her ankle.
“You heard about Lindsay?” her mother asked.
Bianca moved higher on the pillows as her mother sat on the edge of the bed.
“Everyone’s talking about it. My phone’s blowing up.”
“Anyone know anything?”
“No.” Bianca paused the action on the screen of her device, where two men
with long hair and rifles were stealthily walking through a mountain wilderness.
“Everyone’s asking about her, but no one has any information. They’re all saying
that her parents think she snuck out, took her car, and didn’t come back.”
Pescoli nodded. “That’s about the gist of it. Any ideas? Would she go off to
meet a boyfriend?”
Bianca lifted her shoulders. “She really didn’t have a boyfriend, was, you
know, just part of the group.”
“She didn’t date?”
“She hooked up with Austin a couple of times, I think, but that was a while
back. It never became anything. I think she likes him because he’s rich and his
dad helped him get into some big Ivy League college.” She glanced back at the
screen to the frozen image. “She really wants to go away to a four-year school,
like her brother did. But he got some kind of athletic scholarship and her folks
told her they really can’t afford for both of them to go away to school or
something. They want her to live at home for a while until Malcolm graduates,
and she thinks that’s crap.”
“But she gets along with her folks.”
“Yeah, oh, yeah, I think so.”
Two more texts had chimed in during their conversation and Bianca glanced at

---

her phone.
“If you hear anything, let me know, okay?”
Bianca nodded, glanced at the phone. She chewed on her lip and looked tense.
“You okay?” Pescoli asked, sensing more.
“Sure.” No enthusiasm.
She prodded. “So how’s the ankle?”
“It still hurts.”
Pescoli started to get up but paused. “Are you sure about this—?” She
motioned to the tablet and the frozen footage of the television show.
“Yeah, Mom, I’m sure,” Bianca snapped, suddenly defensive. “I know you
don’t like it, think it’s a ‘crock’ and a ‘fake’ and whatever else, but I think it’s
interesting and fun and might be, like Michelle says, a start of my acting career.”
She jutted out her chin, her eyes focused on her mother’s face, almost daring her
to engage in a fight.
“I think it’s a mistake.”
“I know.”
Pescoli wanted to go off the rails on the show, Barclay Sphinx, the whole
preposterousness of the situation. She was tired of pretending she understood.
“There is no Big Foot.”
“Doesn’t matter, does it?” Bianca countered as she hit the button on her iPad
to start the program going again. “Because there is going to be a TV show about
it.”
“And that’s what matters?”
“Exactly.”
There was no use arguing. Her daughter was as stubborn as she was, and when
Bianca set her mind, there was no changing it. So arguments about integrity or
what was “real” in reality TV were going to fall on deaf ears. “Just let me know
if you hear anything about Destiny or Lindsay, okay?”
But Bianca had already tuned in to the apparently fascinating story line of Big