Expecting to Die

CHAPTER 5
A
t her desk, Alvarez glanced at her watch. Barely 6
AM
. And she’d been up all
night. From the crime scene, she’d driven to the morgue, then here, to the office.
Her muscles ached, and a slow, steady headache was building at the base of her
skull as her stomach rumbled to remind her that her last meal had been half a
cheese sandwich she’d grabbed the previous afternoon. She’d been up for over
twenty-four hours, and it would be a few more before she could go home and
tumble into bed. A nap, that’s what she needed, then a hot shower, a cup of tea,
and a bowl of fruit, yogurt, and granola. Better yet, a long yoga session to stretch
her tense muscles. As it was, she’d have to settle for the tea.
Maybe.
Stretching her arms over her head and twisting her neck, she eyed her
computer monitor, where pictures of the crime scene were displayed, the screen
cut into four images with different angles of the victim visible.
The girl in the photos was definitely Destiny Rose Montclaire. Not only had
she been reported missing, but distinguishing marks had helped the department
ID her. The victim’s stature, her coloring, her tattoos, and a scar, which was still
visible on her ankle from a surgery she’d endured as a four-year-old, had
matched those described on the missing persons report.
Two deputies had been dispatched to her home in the wee hours.
At 4
AM
, her ashen-faced parents had walked into the viewing room of the
morgue, where, in abject horror and denial, they had identified the unknown
girl’s remains and promptly broken down.
It was the worst part of her job, Alvarez thought now as she reflected on the
scene. She’d been little comfort to the father, whose lip had trembled as he’d
held his wife as she collapsed against him. Alvarez had warned them about the
condition of the body, but, of course, both had insisted on viewing their daughter
despite her disturbing and grotesque appearance. Helene Montclaire, a heavyset
woman with filmy blond hair and drizzling blue eyes, had keened and crumpled
in that tiled room, her knees giving way and buckling as she took a long look at
the corpse that had once been her child.
“No, no, no!” she’d cried, needing to deny what her eyes had confirmed as
she’d clung, fingernails twisting in his T-shirt, to her white-faced husband. He’d
appeared haunted, his eyes shining with unshed tears, his hands shaking despite

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his efforts to stay strong.
“You’ll get whoever did this,” Glenn Montclaire had stated through lips that
had barely moved. It wasn’t a question.
“If it does prove that Destiny was the victim of homicide—”
“What else could it be?” he’d cut in, pained dark eyes cutting into her. “What?
An accident?”
“We’ll know more after the autopsy,” she’d replied, not wanting to go into the
possibility of suicide. “We will do our best. I’ll see to it personally.”
“Make sure your best is good enough.” He had held her gaze as a tear slid
from the corner of his eye and his wife, Helene, buried her face in his shirt. Her
shoulders had been shaking, her muffled sobs echoing against the tile walls and
floor of the sterile room.
“And once you confirm that . . . that this wasn’t an accident, check out Donald
Justison,” he’d added as his wife’s sobs increased, her shoulders shaking in the
cold room with its tile walls.
“Justison?” Alvarez had repeated, making a mental note.
“Yeah. Don Junior, the mayor’s son.”
The mayor being Carolina Justison.
“Donny’s her ex-boyfriend. A pissant loser if there ever was one. And a
stalker! He couldn’t leave her alone after she broke up with him.”
“Is that right?”
“You bet it’s right. He’s been calling her. Harassing her!” His once-ashen face
showed color again.
“Do you know if they’d been together recently?”
“Probably.”
“When was the last time you saw your daughter?”
He’d looked at his wife. “A week ago last Friday. Around eight o’clock. I
already put all this in the report I gave to the missing persons officer.”
“I know. Just refresh my memory.”
“It wasn’t anything unusual. Not at the onset. She’d come back from
volunteering at the hospital. Northern General. She’s worked there for nearly a
year. First in the cafeteria and lately in the children’s ward. You know, played
with the kids, read them stories and such . . . and . . . that was, I don’t know,
maybe around six, I guess, because she said she stopped off and saw a friend
before driving home, so she was later than usual. Her shift is over at five. Then,
after dinner, she went out for a walk. Never came back.”
“With anyone?”
“Alone.” Glenn had shaken his balding head. “Someone called and no, she
didn’t say who, but I heard her phone ring and then she took off, said she’d be

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back in an hour or so. We didn’t think anything of it. It was still light, probably
seven, seven-thirty. She did it all the time. Loved being outside in the
summertime. Ever since she was a kid.” His voice had cracked. “Oh, Jesus . . .”
“Had she done this before?”
Destiny’s mother had given off a soft mewling sound.
“A couple of times. That’s why we didn’t report it until . . . until well into the
next day, after we’d checked with some of her friends. No one had seen her or
talked to her or texted or nothin’.”
“Did you talk to Donny?”
“He wouldn’t answer the phone,” Glenn had said bitterly. “So we filed a
report.”
“My baby, my baby, my baby,” Helene had whispered brokenly, and her
husband had held her for several minutes, whispering into her hair to comfort her
when he, himself, was blinking back tears.
“We’re going home now,” he’d said, shepherding his wife out of the viewing
room. “Come on, Helene,” he’d whispered. “It’ll be all right.” Then he’d thrown
Alvarez a final dark look that said what they both knew: It would never be all
right. Not ever.
Alvarez had barely been able to control her own emotions, which was
unusual. She prided herself on staying calm and keeping her expression
unreadable. She’d trained herself, practiced remaining emotionless for years,
ever since high school, when she’d had to rein in her feelings, her anger and
shame and hatred after her girlhood had been stripped from her.
She could usually pull it off—the heartless ice-princess image—but grieving
parents got to her. Always had. Her heart had bled for the Montclaires.
Now, despite her lack of sleep and the fact that her eyelids felt like sandpaper
scraping against her eyes, she was bound and determined to do whatever it took
to find out what had happened to Destiny Rose.
Officially, the jury was still out on whether Destiny had met with foul play or
suffered a fatal accident.
But Alvarez was betting on option one.
Nonetheless, she’d withhold judgment until all the facts were in. Cause of
death determined. Alvarez had requested a rush on the autopsy.
She pushed her desk chair back and made her way past Blackwater’s office on
her route to the lunchroom. The acting sheriff hadn’t yet arrived, but then few
had at this early hour. She hesitated for a second at the closed door, one that had
always been left ajar when Dan Grayson was sheriff. Her heart twisting, she
remembered how she’d looked up to Grayson, even fancied herself in love with
him at one time, how comforting it had been to see him at his desk, his Stetson

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hung on a peg, Sturgis, his black lab, curled on the dog bed near his desk.
Grayson had had an easy smile and there had been kindness and intelligence
lurking in the depths of his firm, uncompromising stare.
She still missed him.
And though she was now deeply involved with Dylan O’Keefe and was
considering marriage to the private investigator, she would never forget Dan
Grayson. She couldn’t. He still came to her in her dreams, even once when she
was locked in O’Keefe’s embrace. A bit of guilt ran through her at the thought,
but Grayson had been her mentor and so much more. There had never been a
physical relationship between them, but there had been a connection, an
unspoken meeting of the minds or souls or whatever you wanted to call it.
Though rationally she couldn’t explain it, she felt that link still existed.
Which was ridiculous, of course.
And against everything she held true.
She’d always been a realist, trusted the facts, relied on science. Anything
considered remotely paranormal was dismissed as just plain bunk. Reaching out
to the dead or communing with spirits in a twilight world of afterlife was folly.
Dreams were just dreams, misfires of neurons in her subconscious. Nothing
more.
For a nanosecond, she considered Grace Perchant, a loner of a woman who
lived outside of town with two hybrid dogs, each part wolf, and believed she
communed with the dead and was a conduit from this world to the next, could
even see the future.
Alvarez hadn’t bought any of it, though the ghostly woman with white-blond
hair and pale eyes had made some predictions that had come eerily close to the
truth and it had put this niggling, persistent doubt in her brain.
Was it possible that she, Selena Alvarez, could somehow communicate with
Grayson?
No. Not a chance. She knew better. Dan Grayson did not “visit” her in her
dreams. It was just her subconscious working its way through her grief and guilt.
Nothing more.
Yet, as she stood outside his old office, she placed her hand, fingers splayed,
on the solid wood frame, and whispered, “I miss you.” Then, squaring her
shoulders, she forced herself to shake off her case of nostalgia and continued
down the hall toward the lunchroom. Time to bury her ancient fantasies. She was
now with the man who was certainly the love of her life, and the dreams she was
having of Grayson were all because of her own guilt that she’d survived when an
assassin had taken him down. It was still so unbelievable that no one in the
department, including herself, had been able to protect the man who had helmed

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this office with such a fair and even hand.
In the break room, which smelled faintly of coffee and some pine-scented
cleaner, she glanced through dust-streaked windows mounted high overhead.
The sun was rising, thin shafts of light oozing through the dirty panes as the sky
started to lighten, dusty lavender turning to a hazy blue. She eyed the half-empty
pot that had been warming for hours over a hot plate, but decided today was not
the time to start a coffee habit. Instead, she heated water in the microwave while
scrounging through the basket of tea bags and settling on the last packet of chai
green.
Dunking the bag in her cup, she returned to her office. At her desk, she rotated
her neck, stretched her arms over her head, and tried to release some of the
tension from her muscles. Then she sipped from the hot brew and once again
looked over the information that had been gathered from the crime scene, the
pictures and video now on her computer. She’d already read all of the statements
from the kids they’d found at the reservoir. She skimmed them again, hoping
she’d missed something important the first time through, but they didn’t hold
much information. Everyone interviewed said he or she had come to the area to
“hang out” or “party” or “play a game.” Each had been reluctant to name their
peers and had denied any use of alcohol or drugs. Most importantly, they’d
sworn they didn’t know about the victim, who, it seemed, had been in the creek
for over a week. Unless the body had been moved, but so far there was no
indication that it had been.
Alvarez frowned. She hated that the kids were holding back, but she had to
agree that the victim had been dead long before the party with its bizarre game
of hide-and-seek had begun. That, of course, didn’t mean any of the kids didn’t
know more about the girl or who might have been with her at Reservoir Point.
The teenagers and their code of silence irked her, but she understood it. While
in high school, she’d kept secrets that should have seen the light of day, secrets
that could have changed her life and the lives of her own set of friends, her own
family.
Her lips flattened as she considered that old black cloud of her own past, then
steadfastly pushed it aside. For now, she had to concentrate on the job at hand.
She thought of the kids gathered up at the Point last night, Bianca Pescoli
included.
“Teenagers,” she muttered.
Boot heels rang down the hallway, and from the sound of the purposeful
stride, she guessed the acting sheriff had arrived.
Though she missed Dan Grayson’s easy manner and quick smile, she didn’t
really mind Cooper Blackwater as a boss. If she took her feelings for Grayson

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out of the equation, she knew that Cooper Blackwater was a good cop, thorough
and determined. His attitude meshed well with hers: all business. He was very
“gung-ho,” as Pescoli said, and his style was crisp, almost military, but it worked
for him. Though he was more inclined to use the media to his advantage, get his
face on camera while the department was working a case, he didn’t seem overly
conceited or self-aggrandizing, not to Alvarez anyway. His cocky attitude was
different from his self-deprecating predecessor, but still effective. Detractors had
faulted Grayson for being “too laid-back” or “not hands-on enough” or “too
folksy, everyone’s best friend.” For Blackwater it was just the opposite, “too
cold” or “too ready for a photo op” or “more interested in power and climbing
his way to the top than in helping the people of Pinewood County.”
It seemed here, in Grizzly Falls, you were definitely damned if you did and
damned if you didn’t.
“How’s it going?” Blackwater asked as he paused in the open doorway to her
office. His black hair was military-clipped, his jaw freshly shaven, his dark eyes
interested and piercing. His coloring and bladed features probably harked back
to a Native American ancestor, presumably the same one who had handed down
his surname. “I saw our victim is definitely the Montclaire girl,” he said, his eyes
showing a little bit of empathy. “Anything new on what happened? Don’t
suppose the autopsy’s been done yet? Probably not started.”
“I put a rush on it.”
As if her request weren’t good enough, he said, “I’ll make a call.”
“Good.” She wouldn’t let herself be irritated that he pulled rank, using his
influence as sheriff. Whatever worked. “’Til we get the results, we’re not sure
what we’re dealing with.”
“Which is?”
She gave him a quick, brief update on what they’d discovered, most of which
he probably already knew. She finished with, “I’ve got a list of family, friends,
and acquaintances that I’ve added to current and ex-boyfriends. We’re checking
phone records and trying to confirm who was the last person to see her and when
that was, double-checking it with the missing persons report and cross-
referencing any names to those kids who were up there last night, but that, so far,
seems to be just a coincidence.”
“No such thing.”
“Maybe.”
“What’s with Pescoli’s kid being up there?”
“Part of the group. All friends, or at least they all knew each other, ran with
the same crowd.”
“And the Montclaire girl?”

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“No. At least she wasn’t tight with any of them. Most of the kids said they
knew her or had seen her in school, but no one admitted to being her friend.”
He leaned against the doorframe and rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “I hear
Pescoli’s kid thought she saw a monster or Big Foot or something.” Dark eyes
pierced hers. Questioning.
“She doesn’t know what she saw. But something was chasing her.” Alvarez
felt her muscles tense a bit. She was ready to defend Bianca, if necessary.
But Blackwater’s attention had turned to her computer monitor, where the
picture of Destiny Rose Montclaire’s body was visible. “You think she was
murdered?” he asked, nodding to the screen’s disturbing image.
“It’s definitely a possibility. Trying to figure it out.”
His eyes narrowed. “I’m betting homicide, but don’t quote me on that.” He
flashed a rare smile. “I’m not a betting man.” With a couple of slaps to her
doorframe, he said, “Keep me in the loop,” then charged down the hallway
toward his office.
“Will do,” she said, though it was to herself. And she wasn’t going to take his
bet. She, too, believed that someone had killed Destiny Rose Montclaire. She
didn’t have the proof yet, but she’d lay odds that when she received the autopsy
report, she’d find that the victim had been murdered.
She turned her attention back to the names of friends, neighbors, family, and
anyone considered an enemy or adversary. The ex-boyfriend whom Glenn
Montclaire had mentioned, Donald Justison Junior, was at the top of her list.
She’d done a preliminary check on him and found out that Justison, barely
nineteen, had already had a couple of run-ins with the law, little brushes that
hadn’t come to much, but she wondered if Mommy Mayor had stepped in for
him, cleaned things up.