Expecting to Die

Perfect.
Here was the chance to speak with Simone without Mary-Beth hovering over
her and offering up answers rather than letting her daughter talk. They found
Simone in the soiled-linen room, where she was dutifully pushing a full cart of
dirty bed linens to an area near closed oversized garage doors, big enough for a
truck to pull through. After the bin was in position, she rolled an empty bin
under one of the huge chutes that opened from the ceiling.
She was dressed in scrubs, her hair tied into pigtails, her makeup toned down
from the previous Saturday night, an ID card with her picture on a lanyard
swinging from her neck. She saw the cops and sighed. “My mom said not to
answer any questions.”
Pescoli was impressed, in spite of herself, at the hard work Simone was doing.

---

“Let me guess, she wants you to have a lawyer present.”
She lifted a shoulder. “Yeah, but I don’t really care what she says.”
“We could wait until you go home and talk to you with your mom or dad or a
lawyer, if that’s what you want.”
“Just ask me what you want to ask me.”
“You and Destiny Montclaire were both volunteers here at the hospital,”
Alvarez said. “Were you friends, too?”
“We got along, but . . .” Simone shrugged, then rolled her eyes when, in a
whoosh, a wad of bedding fell from one of the three chutes and landed in an
empty bin. “Fun, huh?” she said, eyeing the soiled sheets. “My mom forced me
to work here, well, volunteer. I don’t get paid,” she admitted. “Says it’ll look
good on my college applications.”
“Did you hang out with Destiny?”
“Nah. We didn’t even have shifts that overlapped. I’d see her around
sometimes and once . . . no, twice, we ate together. That’s when she was working
with the kids, maybe a couple of months ago. Before that, when she worked in
the cafeteria, it was crazy busy for her. We never even talked.”
“Did you know she was pregnant?” Alvarez asked.
A shake of her head, pigtails swinging. “I don’t think she told anybody, did
she?” When they didn’t respond, she added, “Anyway, I never heard about it
until after she died. Like I said, we weren’t close.”
“Who was close to her?” Again, Alvarez.
“You mean besides Donny? I don’t know. I think Kywin Bell had a thing for
her and maybe”—she squished up her nose as if she were really thinking hard
—“Emmett Tufts? Or Alex O’Hara? But maybe not. Sometimes those guys
would look at her the way guys do when they think a girl is hot, but then they’re
all so horny they look at everyone that way. Come on. My shift’s over. I have to
lock up.” She headed for the door and they followed after her. Once they’d
passed into the hall, she locked the room behind them.
“What about girlfriends?” Pescoli questioned as they walked toward the
elevator. “Who was her bestie?”
“I don’t even know if she had one. I saw her with Lara a couple of times. And
. . . oh, maybe Maddie, because, you know, if the guys were looking at Destiny,
then Maddie wanted to make sure they saw her, too.”
“What about Lindsay Cronin?”
“I guess.” She frowned. “I heard she was missing. Her mom called earlier.”
“Have you seen her?”
“Not since the other night. At the Big Foot thing.”
“What about texting or talking to her?”

---

“Same as everyone else, I guess. She’s on group texts, but no, not since that
meeting. We like hung out, yeah, but more in school, y’know. In summer we all
kinda do our own thing unless there’s a party or we hang out at the river or
whatever.”
She rang for the elevator and the doors opened. They all entered, and Simone
said, “God, I hate this job.” As the doors whispered shut and they started
upward, Simone folded her arms across her chest and slumped against a polished
wall. “You think it’s really gonna help me get into Harvard or Yale or Stanford
or UCLA? Stacking sheets and counting cotton balls? I don’t think the people
who are recruiting for college really give a rat’s ass about how neatly I can
organize pillowcases.” The elevator car arrived with a ding. An orderly pushing
an elderly woman in a wheelchair waited until they stepped outside, then rolled
his charge inside.
As they headed toward reception, afternoon light was streaming in from wide
windows near the front entrance. Simone yanked the lanyard over her head,
stuffed it into a pocket of her scrubs and withdrew a set of keys, then said, “Look
I really gotta go. I don’t know anything else.”
“If you think of something, call us.”
“Sure.” She didn’t say it with conviction, but she did add, “I think my mom
just wants me to be busy this summer, that’s what I think. So that I stay out of
trouble.” She headed for the exterior doors.
Alvarez checked her messages as she and Pescoli followed Simone outside. At
the Subaru, she was still scrolling through them. “Guess what?” she finally said,
looking up.
“I couldn’t begin to,” Pescoli muttered as she levered herself into the
passenger seat.
“Zoller texted me. The night Destiny Montclaire disappeared, she called and
texted Donny Justison. But he wasn’t the only one. In separate texts, she also
contacted Kywin Bell and Lindsay Cronin.”

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