Expecting to Die

CHAPTER 26
“I
didn’t do nothin’!” Kywin Bell said for about the fourth time since he’d been
sitting across the table in the interview room. Sullen, with dark circles under his
eyes, he slouched on the small of his back, long legs extended, muscular arms
crossed over his chest, stretching his T-shirt. “I don’t know why you hauled me
down here.”
Alvarez was having none of it.
“We found Lindsay Cronin’s phone. She texted you to meet her up at
Horsebrier Ridge.” She shoved a piece of paper across the small table, which
showed the conversation.
He skimmed down the messages. “This isn’t me.” He looked absolutely
confused.
“It says it is. The number is yours. I double-checked.”
“But I never got it.” His mouth dropped open and he read over each text on
the three pages. “All this is what she sent me, but I swear to God, I never seen
this last one before.” Frustrated, he shoved both hands through his hair. “I
showed you my goddamned phone. And, no, I didn’t delete any, okay? I never
got the fuckin’ message.” He was furious, his jaw working. “I gave you a
damned DNA sample. I don’t know what you want from me. I didn’t kill
Destiny, and I don’t know nothin’ about Lindsay.”
“Your phone works, but the two girls who died, who texted you on the night
they each died, those messages didn’t get through?” she demanded.
“Jesus! I never saw this before! Never. I swear to God. And the same with the
one from Destiny.”
He was lying. She could see it in his eyes, smell it in the sweat off his skin. He
had a secret and was holding it close, yet he appeared shocked that the police
had found the texts, that, perhaps, they’d ever existed.
“Then why was she texting you?”
“We were friends. That was it.” His face clouded and he said, “You’re setting
me up, aren’t ya? You goddamned cops are setting me up. You’re harassing me,
and trying to find someone to blame. You probably doctored the phones! This is
a trick, right?” His eyes narrowed as if he’d latched on to the truth. “My old man
told me how to handle you. He says you probably did something electronically
to the phone, messed it up with that text from Destiny, that you’ve got somethin’

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out for my family. For him. So, I want a lawyer, okay? You get me one. I’m not
sayin’ nothing else.”
“You’re sure that’s what you want to do?”
“Yep. So, unless you’re going to hold me, or get the lawyer, I’m outta here.”
And with that, he walked, more like swaggered, out of the room. Alvarez gritted
her teeth. She didn’t like him, but he was right and she hated to admit it. They
didn’t have enough to hold him, and there was something about his demeanor
that she believed. He seemed so totally baffled by it all. And he had given up his
DNA, as had his brother and a couple of other boys. Austin Reece, because of
Lawyer-Daddy—who just happened to be dating the mayor, it seemed— refused
to have his son give up a sample without a court order.
God, Bernard Reece was a sanctimonious bastard.
She left the room a little defeated, a little angry.
She’d hoped to shake a little more information out of Kywin Bell by bringing
him down to the small, windowless room with the two-way observation mirror.
He’d known he was being observed, had seen the cameras, and had never once
slid away from his story that he was innocent, that he’d never gotten a text from
Lindsay on the night she’d gone missing, and he’d actually seemed a bit
emotional at the knowledge she was dead.
As Alvarez made her way to her office, avoiding a couple of uniformed
deputies walking the opposite direction, she was oblivious to the sounds of the
office, the murmur of conversation punctuated with laughter, the continual ring
of desk phones or personalized ring tones of cell phones, the constant tread of
footsteps, or clunk of printers and fax machines, the rattle of coffee cups and
constant hum of the air-conditioning system. All were lost to her as she thought
about the case.
Kywin had seemed genuinely startled when she’d given him the news about
Lindsay Cronin. “No way!” he’d said, shaking his head, the edges of his mouth
pulled into a frown as she’d sat him in the plastic chair he’d occupied during the
interview. “You’re just tryin’ to mess with me.” Unfortunately, that hadn’t been
true. She’d been on the ridge when the body had been removed from the
wreckage. The little car had been mangled, crumpled metal and plastic as the
Focus had apparently nose-dived over the railing.
Firemen had scaled the cliff with ropes, then, once in the chasm, had worked
to get to the driver, who, pinned in her seat, was hanging upside down, seat belt
still in place, her body as broken and twisted as the car.
Alvarez had looked into the body bag and felt her insides go cold. Questions
that had haunted her about the victim for the past few days now pounded through
her brain:

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Why had she left in the middle of the night?
Where had she been going?
It appeared she’d thought she was meeting Kywin, but where?
What had happened?
Was the crash really the result of a single car accident?
What had made her lose control of the car?
Had she swerved to miss an oncoming vehicle? Or an animal?
Had she been forced off the road?
Had anyone been in the car at any time during her drive?
Did anyone else know where she was going?
And on and on. It all seemed so useless.
She’d driven Pescoli back to the reservoir to pick up her car. It was nearly
noon, and the place was a beehive of activity. The crew was setting up for the
coming night’s shoot, and the word about another attack by Big Foot had been
circulated to the press. There were two news vans, one from Missoula, another
from Spokane.
“Looks like Grizzly Falls could be trending,” Pescoli had observed, then said,
“Oh, for the love of God, Lucky’s here. What the hell?” She let out a long, slow
breath as she eyed her ex, who was sipping water from a bottle and chatting up
some of the grips. “He’s just so into this thing, like because Bianca is involved in
the whole reality thing, and now Michelle, too, he’s somehow stumbled on a pot
of gold.”
“She’s here, too,” Alvarez said, spying Luke’s current wife approaching him.
“Uh-oh.”
“What?” Pescoli’s eyebrows drew together as Michelle, in shorts, a tight T-
shirt, and strappy, high-heeled sandals, strode to Luke and said something
sharply to him. His lips thinned and he snapped back.
Alvarez couldn’t hear the words being tossed at each of them, but they were
both angry, and pointedly so. Michelle had jabbed her finger at Luke’s chest. He
caught her wrist, pulled her around the trailer that had been parked on the
property, and disappeared from sight.
“Trouble in paradise?” Pescoli shook her head. “Maybe that pot of gold isn’t
so gilded after all. They’ve been married for years, and I’ve never once seen
them get into it, which says a lot about Michelle. Luke and I? We fought like
cats and dogs from the get-go. Huh.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to go.
I’ll meet you back at the station.”
A reporter had recognized her as she stepped out of Alvarez’s Subaru.
“Detective Pescoli? Can I have a word? Your daughter, she’s in the show, right?
And she was rumored to have been attacked by a Big Foot.”

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Alvarez saw her partner’s back stiffen as she said a few quick words to the
bird-like blonde and nearly dove into her Jeep this time. Hitting the gas, she
reversed to a wide spot in the road and quickly turned around, leaving the
reporter to watch the dust pluming behind her. Before she was seen, Alvarez
took off as well. She didn’t have the personal connection for an intriguing story
about the filming that her partner did, but she was a detective investigating the
case, still trying to connect the dots between the two girls’ deaths, and she’d
been in a rush to interview Kywin Bell, the most likely of suspects, anyway.
Though Kywin had shut her down, there was still a long list of others who
knew more than they were saying.
* * *
“My advice,” Dr. Peeples said as Regan sat on the end of the examination
table in the clinic, “is that you consider starting your maternity leave soon.
You’re partially effaced, about thirty percent, and that baby’s coming.” Ramona
Peeples, a slender African-American woman, had been Regan’s OB-GYN for the
past ten years. Her offices were attached to Northern General Hospital and now,
standing in a white lab coat worn over slacks and a magenta blouse, she was
staring hard at her patient.
“I know,” Pescoli agreed, anxious to get out of the small examination room.
Pictures of babies hung on the beige walls, and other than the padded table on
which she was now seated, there was only a rolling cart and cupboards, a counter
with a glistening sink.
“Before you start coming up with excuses, all very valid, I’m certain, think
about your health and the baby’s,” Peeples advised. “I know all about the cases
you’re investigating, so I understand that your job is very high stress. Hence the
elevation in your blood pressure.”
“Slight elevation,” Pescoli said. “Your own words, ‘slight elevation.’”
“But worth noting. Especially given your age.”
“My age? Geez, it’s not like I’m ancient. I’m not even forty.”
“But soon,” the doctor said, eyeing her chart. “In less than a year. And watch
your salt intake.” She held a clipboard over her chest. “It’s just a little while
longer, and I don’t like to take any chances.”
“Okay, me neither.”
The doctor gave her a small smile. “Consider hanging up your holster,
Detective, just for a little while. Some of the world’s problems might wait, even
if you’re not on the job. I’ll see you next week.”
With that, she was out the door and Pescoli reached for her clothes. The

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world’s problems might wait, but she wasn’t so certain about her investigations,
here in Grizzly Falls. And she was tired of people acting like she had one foot in
the grave just because she was pregnant. With all the tests she’d gone through
due to her age making her condition a “high risk” pregnancy, she’d been told that
the baby was healthy, was gaining weight, and should be here right on time.
“Don’t rush things,” she said, touching her protruding belly, “but your father
and I can’t wait to meet you.” She smiled, then added, “I really can’t say the
same for your brother and sister, though, but I’m betting they’ll come around.”
She caught sight of herself in the mirror, a hugely pregnant person talking to
herself. That probably wasn’t so strange, but not exactly the image she wanted to
portray as she ignored everyone’s advice that she start taking her maternity
leave. “We’d better keep these little chats to ourselves,” she advised her unborn
child as she began to dress. “Otherwise people might think I’m nuts and you’ll
end up being born in an asylum. Not the way you want to come into the world.”
Dressed, she headed into the hallway, where she spied other pregnant women
being helped by people in the clinic. Every woman with a baby bump seemed to
be at least ten years younger than she, some more like twenty, though she
reasoned she was just being super sensitive after getting the word from her
doctor. But she was fine. That’s all that mattered.
Outside, she slipped on a pair of sunglasses. The blasting sun was heating the
asphalt of the parking lot that stretched from the clinics to the doors of Northern
General, where, in a few weeks, she’d deliver the baby. On her way to her Jeep,
Pescoli noticed a news van taking up two spaces near the main doors. The same
reporter whom she’d seen earlier at Reservoir Point was interviewing Barclay
Sphinx, who was standing front and center, his back to the building, a handful of
onlookers gathered under the overhang of the main doors, watching.