Expecting to Die

CHAPTER 4
B
lackwater arrived at the scene.
“Bad news travels fast,” Pescoli said under her breath as she watched the
acting sheriff’s Tahoe roar along the access road, headlights cutting through the
darkness, dust rising in a plume behind the rear wheels. She just didn’t like the
guy. Laid-back wasn’t in his vocabulary, and he was very big on agendas,
meetings, and finding ways to “pump up” enthusiasm in everyone on the force.
Pescoli didn’t need it. He also seemed to preen for the cameras, but Alvarez had
told her she was overreacting, that Blackwater was just trying to use the press to
the department’s advantage to solve cases.
Well, maybe.
But she still didn’t trust him.
He parked his SUV near a couple of cruisers, crossed under the crime-scene
tape, and strode up to Pescoli. Just under six feet, with a compact, athletic body,
short black hair, and intense hawkish eyes, he appeared as if he were still an
active member of the Marine Corps, though he was dressed down for him in
pressed jeans and an open-throated polo shirt, his usually clean-shaven jaw
showing night stubble.
“What’ve we got?” he asked.
“Dead female. Possibly a girl reported missing since sometime last week,
Friday, I think,” Pescoli said and gave him the rundown. As she spoke, he didn’t
interrupt, but his eyes scanned the area. She figured he didn’t miss much.
“You interviewed everyone?”
“Almost done,” Pescoli said. She was still sweating, even in the coolest wee
hours of the morning. “A couple of deputies are wrapping things up. Then we’re
sending the kids home with their parents.”
“Any caught with alcohol?”
“Not in their hands. A couple of coolers, though,” Pescoli said.
“Drugs?”
“None found,” Pescoli said. “I checked with the deputies, who searched the
cars. But I smelled marijuana.”
“Probably ditched in the undergrowth.” His eyes scanned the scrub brush and
thickets surrounding the parking area, his head shaking slightly. “They all need
to be cited.”

---

“You think that will help?” Pescoli asked.
“It’s against the law.” His lips were flat. “I’m the sheriff.”
“Zero tolerance.”
“You got it. And don’t let any of them drive.” He pointed a finger at her for
emphasis. “If they don’t have an adult, I mean a sober adult, to drive them, then
we haul them back to the station. At least while we deal with the bigger
situation.”
Pescoli’s gut tightened. She knew he was right, but she’d been down that route
before, on both sides of the law. Not only had she arrested kids, but her own son
had done some time in juvie.
“Maybe if they’re scared enough, they’ll talk,” he said. “What do we know
about the victim?”
“Seems like the girl’s been dead a few days. Body bloating, decaying.”
“Not a part of this.” He motioned a finger to include the vehicles and kids still
cluttering the area.
“Whatever happened to her occurred before these kids met up tonight.”
“But they might know something.” Blackwater’s brow furrowed as he eyed
the crowd. “The girl went to the local high school, right?”
“Yes.”
“Same with most of these kids,” he guessed.
Pescoli couldn’t argue and decided to come clean. “My daughter was here,
too. She called it in to nine-one-one on another kid’s phone. She was injured so I
sent her to the hospital.”
In the blue and red flashes of light, she saw the muscles in the back of his
neck tighten. “Cite her,” he said. “I can’t play favorites.”
“I wasn’t asking you to.”
“Good.”
At that moment, a fresh set of headlights pierced the night as the first
television van arrived.
Pescoli inwardly groaned. The press. Already.
“I’ll speak to them,” he said, as the lumbering white vehicle parked on the far
side of the police barrier.
I bet you will.
“Make sure we get statements from everyone up here.” He glanced pointedly
at Pescoli. “Including anyone who’s already left. I want a list of every person
who was here.”
Pescoli ground her back teeth together.
Without another word, he crossed the lot, rounding the rear bumper of a BMW
as the passenger door of the van opened, and a reporter Pescoli recognized from

---

the local news stepped out. Petite. Blonde. In a dress and jacket in the middle of
the night, like she’d been sitting by the phone waiting for the call.
“He treats us like newbies,” she said as Rhonda Clemmons, a road deputy
who had been one of the first on the scene, approached.
“Who? Blackwater?” Clemmons waved away the comment as if it were a
bothersome fly. “Just his style.”
“Bullshit. And the TV crew. Oh, yeah, that’s just what we need.”
“At least he’ll deal with them,” Clemmons said. “That way we don’t have to.”
“Tonight.”
“One day at a time. And maybe they’ll help us.”
“Yeah, yeah.” But Pescoli couldn’t really argue. The press had come to the
department’s aid in finding suspects in the past. Didn’t mean some of the
members, including that worm Manny Douglas of the Mountain Reporter, didn’t
bug the crap out of her. It wasn’t so much what Manny wrote, but how he
handled himself, as if he were somehow more virtuous than the cops in the
department, as if the Pinewood County Sheriff’s Department might be dirty.
Scumbag. But so far, he hadn’t appeared. As Clemmons headed to her vehicle,
Pescoli dug into her pocket for her cell phone to call Santana and saw that he’d
left a text: At the ER. Waiting. Not seen yet. Bianca in some pain, but