Expecting to Die

Bruce. The “B” in A&B Painting and Supplies.

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“Okay. Let’s start with the last time you saw Destiny Montclaire.”
“I barely knew her!”
“That’s established.” Pescoli waited, her expression hard.
He finally exhaled heavily. “I dunno. Maybe . . . maybe that night at the
Midway? Lots of kids were there.”
“A week ago Friday,” she said.
“Yeah . . .” From there, Pescoli asked him the same questions she’d asked
Kywin and his answers were nearly identical to his brother’s, as if they’d
rehearsed their story. He didn’t know who would want to hurt Destiny, who had
slept with her and could be the father of her unborn child or anything much
about her. “She got around,” he admitted finally. “Lots of guys, you know . . .”
“Had sex with her.”
“Yeah. As I said, I didn’t know her. All of the guys in my brother’s group did.
They’re the ones who bragged about bagging her.”
“Give me a few names.”
“Ask Kywin. He’s the one who knew her, and that’s his crowd.”
“How about him? Did he sleep with her?” Alvarez asked.
“Probably. Hey, I really don’t know. Look, I’m only hanging out with all of
’em cuz it’s summer. I’m a sophomore at UNLV. This job, here, at A&B, I got it
when I was in high school and Arlene lets me fill in during the summer. They’re
busy, y’know, with the good weather. That’s all I know.”
“Where were you last weekend? Your brother was up at Reservoir Point,”
Pescoli said. Bell was a huge man, physically capable of snapping a small
woman’s neck, and surely able, should he don an ape/ Sasquatch suit, of scaring
the bejeezus out of anyone who came across him on a shadowy evening or a
dark night. Including her daughter.
“Man, you really don’t give up. I worked here, late, then hung out with
friends.”
“Who?”
“I dunno. Let’s see. My bro, of course.”
“Sure.”
“And Tophman and the rest. We ended up at Austin Reece’s place. His dad has
it all set up. Awesome man cave with a huge TV, bar, pool table. Couches and
recliners everywhere and then, outside, off the deck, a kick-ass pool.” He gave
Pescoli a cold stare. “I didn’t leave in the middle of the night and go to Reservoir
Point.”
“What time did you go home?”
“The next morning. Left around six, came home, showered, then went to work
again. Had to be there by seven.” He sent them both a belligerent, defiant look

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this time. “Check with the other guys if you don’t believe me.”
“We will,” Pescoli assured him.
Alvarez added, “And come down to the station. We’ll need your DNA.”
“Shit, I told you I didn’t even know her.”
“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Alvarez said.
“You damned cops. Always tryin’ to bust my balls.”
“Just do it,” Pescoli advised and after a few more questions, they left.
“Prince of a guy,” Alvarez said on the way out.
“You should meet his father.”
Once inside the sweltering car, Alvarez pulled out of the long, squat building’s
parking lot and rolled down the window. “They’re all going to alibi each other
for both weekends,” she said.
“Let ’em. I still want to talk to Austin Reece in person, at his place.”
“He’s lawyered up. His father, being an attorney, refused to let him talk to us
without legal counsel present.”
“Well, let’s drop in and find out. I’d love to see this awesome ‘man cave.’
Gee, if Santana wanted one of those things when we’d been building the house, I
think I would have shot him.”
Alvarez snorted as the baby gave a sudden, big kick. Pescoli sucked in a
breath, then tried to call Bianca, but her daughter didn’t pick up. Nor did she
respond to a text. Pescoli frowned, but told herself not to borrow trouble. Maybe
Bianca was sleeping or taking one of her marathon showers, though she wasn’t
supposed to get the cast wet.
“Problems?” Alvarez asked.
“Don’t know. Probably not.” She called the station and told Zoller to let her
know when either of the Bell boys came in and offered up DNA samples.
Clicking off, she asked, “Who do you think the father of Destiny’s baby is?” as
she stuffed her phone into a pocket.
“Maybe whoever she met after she left Donny. So far, Donny seems to be the
last person to see her. And he admits they fought. Maybe she told him about the
baby, and he had no way of knowing that it wasn’t his, right? She might not have
known. So they get into it. He sees red, strangles and shakes her so hard he snaps
her neck and kills her.”
Pescoli turned the scenario over in her mind. It was possible. “Or he was in a
black rage that she was seeing someone else.”
“Or, it was someone else, the real baby daddy. Someone who was jealous or
had another bone to pick with her. Something that didn’t have anything to do
with the fact that she was pregnant.” She paused. “Or, it could have been
completely random.”

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It didn’t seem that the attack was the result of the girl being in the wrong place
at the wrong time. “Doesn’t feel that way,” Pescoli said, squinting through the
windshield. “It feels like it was done by someone she knows.”
“Someone strong as . . .”
Big Foot? “Don’t say it,” Pescoli warned.
“. . . an ox.”
“I have to think the baby was the reason. We don’t have any other motive for
someone to kill her.”
“No obvious motive,” Alvarez agreed as she wheeled into the parking lot of
Northern General Hospital. “But then maybe we’re being blinded by the
obvious. Maybe there’s something else. Another reason someone wanted her
dead.”
Pescoli’s cell phone rang, and she answered, even though she didn’t recognize
the number of the incoming call. “Detective Pescoli.”
“Regan?” a frantic woman’s voice asked. “This is Darlie Cronin. Remember
me?” Without waiting for a reply, she ran on, the words tumbling faster and
faster, one after the other. “I’m Lindsay’s mother, Lindsay Cronin, a friend of
Bianca’s, and I work at the preschool and . . . I don’t know what to do. She’s
missing. She was in her room last night when we went to bed, Roy and me, and
then, and then, she didn’t get up this morning, which sometimes happens. I
mean, I didn’t even check on her until around eleven or eleven-thirty, I think . . .
what?”
She turned away from the phone for a second and had another muffled
conversation before she said rapidly, “Roy says it was really almost noon and,
and . . . I can’t find her. Her car is gone. She’s not answering her phone and I’m .
. . I don’t know what to do.” She paused, gathered in a breath, then said a little
more slowly. “After calling around, even the hospitals, I went to the station and
filled out a missing persons report and the woman officer there was very nice but
. . . but I don’t think it’s enough. I’m . . . we, Roy and I . . . oh, God, what if
something’s happened to her? To my baby?”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Pescoli said, remembering the woman as
being smart and kind, even-tempered, her only fault being that she was a little
over-indulgent with her kids, an older boy and Lindsay. Darlie had always turned
a blind eye to her daughter’s faults, but then, that wasn’t so unusual. “Why don’t
you start over?”
“Okay, okay.”
Alvarez kept driving and Pescoli put the phone on speaker, so they both could
hear.
Her voice quivering, Darlie filled in the blanks: Lindsay was missing, had

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been since last night. Though Lindsay had left in her car, in Darlie’s opinion, her
daughter had either been abducted or something horrible had happened to her.
“The worrisome thing is she didn’t take any clothes, and her iPad and makeup
and everything is all still here. So if she left of her own accord, she planned to
come back, but she’s not answering her phone and . . . and the window was
open. Someone could have come in, taken her at gun or knifepoint, or . .. oh, my
God,” she crumbled then, breaking into sobs.
Pescoli asked briskly, “What’s your address?”
Darlie rattled it off.
“Okay, stay put,” Pescoli said, dread seeping into her heart. “We’re on our
way.”

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