Expecting to Die

CHAPTER 12
A
s Alvarez set a small recorder and her phone on the table, then pulled a
notepad and a pen from her bag, Pescoli crossed her arms over her chest, making
her blouse bunch, and her belly seemed to protrude even farther. She dropped
her arms to her sides and smoothed her maternity shirt.
This wasn’t her first time defending her children or watching them be grilled
by another detective. In high school, Jeremy had walked a thin line with the law,
which made his current interest in law enforcement as a career all the more
ironic. Pescoli had tried to talk him out of it to no avail. Even when she brought
up his father, her first husband, Joe Strand, who had been killed in the line of
duty. The thought that Jeremy, who looked so much like Joe, was following in
his father’s footsteps chilled her to the bone. She was a cop herself, knew the
pitfalls and the dangers. Currently Jeremy was enrolled at the local community
college while volunteering at the sheriff’s department. If he didn’t change his
mind in the next couple of years, he’d become an officer of the law, like both his
father and mother.
What goes around, comes around.
“I know you’ve been through all of this before,” Alvarez was saying to
Bianca, “but let’s go over it again. Start with how you ended up at Reservoir
Point and how you found the body.”
Bianca took a deep breath, then launched once more into the tale: how she’d
made plans with Maddie, been ditched in the guys’ game of hide-and-seek, been
chased by an incredibly huge beast from the top of the ridge down to the creek,
where she’d literally stumbled on the dead body of Destiny Rose Montclaire.
She wrapped up with, “Of course I didn’t know who she was then, just that she
was dead and rotting. . . .” Her voice lowered. “It was awful,” she admitted on a
shudder, then told Alvarez about running into Rod Devlin, their argument, how
she’d snatched the phone from him to call 911 and then had run back to the main
area, where kids had been madly scrambling around, trying to take off as the
cops arrived. “You know the rest,” she said, rubbing her arms as if suddenly cold
when the temperature in the house was over seventy-five degrees and Pescoli
was still sweating. But then maybe the perspiration was, at least in part, due to
her case of nerves. She listened as Alvarez asked her daughter the same
questions she had earlier: How do you know Destiny Montclaire? Who were the

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kids at the party? Who was connected to Destiny? Did she have any enemies?
Finally, Alvarez asked, “Did you know that Destiny was pregnant?”
Bianca’s jaw dropped. “Pregnant?” she repeated. “No. I mean, I hadn’t heard
that.” She glanced up at her mother. “Really?”
Pescoli nodded.
“So there was no talk about it?”
“None!” Bianca said. “Well, at least I hadn’t heard anything. I wasn’t friends
with Destiny, but she dated Donny Justison and even though he’s a year older, he
runs around with my crowd, so . . . I think I would have heard something.”
“Did she date anyone else?”
“I don’t know,” Bianca said, shocked. “That’s kinda sad.”
“All of it is,” her mother agreed.
“So you didn’t hear any rumors from any of your friends, or from people who
knew her?” Alvarez asked.
“No.” She shook her head, and after a few more questions about Destiny,
Pescoli’s partner seemed satisfied. Only then did she ask about Bianca’s
reference to being chased down the mountainside by a hairy monster.
“You don’t know who was behind you?” she asked.
“No. It . . . didn’t seem human.”
“Not one of the other kids?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know. It was huge and hairy, and I know it sounds
crazy, but I didn’t think it was a person.”
“An animal?”
“Or . . . maybe a Big Foot?” she said tentatively.
Pescoli forced herself not to make a disbelieving snort.
Alvarez didn’t so much as react, but Luke did. He crushed his beer can and
was on his feet, heading to the table. “That’s one of the reasons I’m here,” he
announced.
Perfect.
“Carlton Jeffe, you know him,” he said to Regan animatedly. She reluctantly
nodded. Jeffe had worked at a sporting goods store in town for the last decade or
so. A Montana mountain man, his family had farmed outside of Grizzly Falls for
over a century. While his brothers ran the wheat farm, Carlton had worked his
way up to become manager of the hunting and fishing area of the store and was
an expert on firearms, ammo, bows, and any other kind of weaponry a hunter
would want. He was also in charge of the Big Foot Believers, a local group here
in town that met once a week to play poker, discuss Sasquatch sightings, and
shoot the bull. “The BFBs put together a group every year to go hunting for one,
y’know—”

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“And every year have returned empty-handed,” Pescoli cut in.
“Well, maybe that’ll change now. Because of Bianca.”
Pescoli didn’t like the sound of this.
Lucky went on, “Carlton called me. The BFBs want Bianca to come to the
next meeting and tell her story, what happened to her.”
“You have to be kidding,” Pescoli said.
“He called me, too,” Bianca said.
“Oh, for the love of—no way. No effin’ way.” She looked from father to
daughter and back again. “This is where I put my big parental foot down. Bianca
is not talking to those nut jobs.”
“They’re not all crazies,” Luke said. “I know there are some like Ivor Hicks
and Frank Nesmith who have a few screws loose, but most of the members are
okay.”
“They are not okay if they believe in Big Foot and want Bianca to come and,
what? Talk to them about being chased and terrorized by a mythical creature that
anyone with a brain knows doesn’t exist?”
Luke bristled. “I think that’s for Bianca to decide.”
“I wasn’t going to but . . .” Bianca lifted a shoulder. “Maybe it wouldn’t be
such a bad idea.”
“No. Forget it. You’re laid up.” To Luke: “She’s a minor. Remember? Isn’t
that why you said you were here in the first place?”
“She can speak for herself,” he said, then regarded his daughter with a
coaxing smile. “Bianca, what do you say? You know that Sphinx is going to be
there, right?”
“Sphinx?” Regan repeated.
“As in Barclay Sphinx, the TV producer.” Lucky gave her a pitying look, as if
he could not believe how out of it she was. “Tell me you’ve heard of him.”
In her peripheral vision, she saw Alvarez give a barely perceptible shake of
her head. But Bianca was listening raptly, and Pescoli finally understood her
daughter’s reasons for entertaining the idea of speaking to the group. Bianca had
always had an interest in acting.
“Sorry,” Pescoli said tightly. “What has he done?”
“Most recently, reality shows. His most popular one is Big Foot Territory:
Oregon!, filmed in the Cascade Mountains. He’s from Seattle, I think, but he’s
got ties to Hollywood.” Luke was earnest. “Michelle is all over this—she’s a
major fan.”
“Of the Big Foot series? Seriously? Doesn’t sound like her kind of thing.”
Luke ignored that. “Sphinx has done other things as well. Auction stuff, I
think, and a reality show looking into the daily lives of celebrities once they lose

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some of their star-power, how they try to reinvent themselves. Tarnished Stars: