Expecting to Die

CHAPTER 31
A
lvarez stared at the sleeping baby and her heart melted. He was, as Pescoli had
said, perfect. Lying on his mother’s chest, his tiny lips moving slightly as he
breathed, Tucker Grayson appeared at peace with the world. She felt a bit of an
intruder in the hospital room with Santana and Regan, but she ignored it and
gave in to her fascination with the dozing infant.
“You named him after Dan,” she said, and Pescoli nodded.
“We had names picked out for a boy and a girl. Tucker Grayson for this little
guy here,” she said, stroking the baby’s fine hair with a finger, “and Sophia
Danielle if he’d been a girl.” She glanced at her husband. Santana was sitting in
the recliner positioned not far from the hospital bed, in a spot where he could
watch and study his newborn son. “I suggested the idea, Santana came up with
the names.” Regan smiled, looked exhausted but, in Alvarez’s opinion, never
better. Strange as it sounded, there was a glow to her, despite the circles under
her eyes and the scratches visible on her cheek. She’d explained about them,
about the attack by Wilda Wyze at Wild Wills hours earlier, about Terri Tufts’s
remark about her pregnancy, that it was a good thing Pescoli’s husband wasn’t
“shooting blanks.” Probably, they thought, in reference to Terri’s own ex. Pescoli
had heard about the discovery of Marjory’s body from Santana, who had seen it
online less than an hour earlier, and she had agreed getting DNA on Marjory’s
fetus was essential.
Though Pescoli had shown some interest in the ongoing cases, it was only
peripheral. For now, she was far more wrapped up in this new baby than
anything. Alvarez understood, would feel the same if the situations were
reversed, but wondered if she’d just lost her partner to this little black-haired
human.
“You have to get these guys,” Pescoli had said, and Alvarez had agreed. Now,
she smiled at the small family but felt a pang on her heartstrings. She’d had a
child in her youth, but instead of holding him close and planning a future with
him, had given him up for adoption as the circumstances of his conception had
been violent. There was no comparison to the making of this little bundle.
Though Alvarez had reconnected with her biological son through Dylan, she’d
never had this experience, this anticipation and complete and utter joy at the
birth. For that, she felt sad, cheated, and yes, even a little guilty. Her son had

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deserved better and though he was with loving adoptive parents, in some small
ways, she’d always felt she’d let him down—or herself down.
Her cell phone indicated a text had come in. From Zoller. Two of the people
she wanted to interview had been brought to the station. Good. “Gotta run,” she
said. “Looks like Kip Bell and Preston Tufts are waiting to answer a few
questions.”
“Right.” Pescoli snorted a disbelieving laugh. “Keep me posted.”
“I will. Tomorrow.” Alvarez slid a final look at the baby, then said, “Get some
rest. My guess is that this guy”—she pointed to the infant—“isn’t going to stay
this way for long. You’ll be busy.”
Regan smiled. “Yeah.” She touched her child’s forehead. “But I’ll still want to
know.”
“You got it,” Alvarez said and held up a hand as a silent good-bye to Santana
before walking into the hallway and through the main lobby.
Her mind was turning with questions for the two men who were being brought
into the station, the first being: Where’s your brother? To each of them. Why had
the two older boys been found, but not Emmett Tufts or Kywin Bell, the two she
really wanted to grill? If the deputies had gone to the shoot for Big Foot
Territory: Montana! to round up the potential suspects, as Blackwater promised,
why hadn’t they come back with the younger brothers?
“Emmett Tufts and Kywin Bell weren’t at the location,” Watershed explained
when she returned to the station. He and Kayan Rule were standing near the
doorway to the lunchroom. They were the deputies who’d been charged with the
task of finding the “witnesses,” as Alvarez was calling them, even though, deep
in her heart, she thought them likely suspects. For now, she’d not label them as
such—they were just “persons of interest.”
Hooking a thumb toward the hall leading to the interview rooms, Watershed
said, “We found each of these yahoos at home. The Bell kid tried to convince us
he wasn’t smoking dope while he was listening to music, plugged into his
earphones. Preston Tufts had just gotten out of his car at his father’s house after
making a run for pizza. So they weren’t at the filming.”
“They know about Marjory Tufts, right?”
“Yeah.” Both nodded.
“They’d heard, one way or another,” Rule said. “But the others—their
brothers are definitely MIA. We’d gone up to Reservoir Point looking for all of
them, but they weren’t there. We asked about them all, talked to the woman in
charge of the shoot, Melanie Kline. She was none too happy that we were there,
looking for kids who, she insisted, weren’t scheduled for filming tonight.”
“You accepted that?”

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“Nope.” Rule had shaken his head. “We double-checked with the producer,
Barclay Sphinx, and he confirmed that due to some last-minute changes in the
script, those two kids and a couple of others weren’t on the roster to show up
tonight. He even showed us the casting list. All true.”
“So find them,” she said, irritated, then went to the lunchroom, grabbed a cup
of coffee from the quarter-full pot warming on a hot plate. She drank a couple of
swallows of the bitter, overcooked brew, then mentally steeled herself for the
upcoming interviews. She couldn’t wait to hear what the older Bell and Tufts
kids had to say for themselves, for their brothers. Pausing to check that the
audio/video equipment was working and that Blackwater and Zoller were in the
viewing area to watch the interviews, she took a look at the “persons of interest”
before heading into the rooms.
Through the two-way glass she saw Kip Bell. His face was grizzled from lack
of a razor. He sat in his chair, looking around, glaring at the camera he spotted
mounted on the wall. His arms were crossed over his massive chest and he
glowered, throwing off the vibes that he’d like to tear the next person he saw
limb from limb.
In the room next door, viewed through a separate windowed mirror, Preston
Tufts was on the move. Nervous. Up on his feet. Back in his chair, knee
bouncing uncontrollably as he waited. Chewing on a fingernail. Then standing
and pacing again. Ready to crack.
Both of them looked guilty as sin.
And Alvarez, loaded for bear, was hell-bent on finding out why.
“Let’s have some fun,” she said to Blackwater and Zoller when she left the
viewing room and her cell phone beeped with a message from Pete Watershed.
He’d heard from another road deputy that Marjory Tufts’s dusty rose classic T-
Bird had just been located on an abandoned mining road about a mile from the
area where the body had been discovered. And it was no longer in pristine shape.
Zoller forwarded a picture of the car, vanity license plate MADGE visible, to
Alvarez. The bumper was crumpled, huge gouges visible in the pink paint, a
large dent over the front driver’s side tire.
Alvarez didn’t bother with a text, but after giving Zoller and Blackwater the
word that these interviews might have to be delayed, Kip and Preston kept “on
ice,” she rang up Zoller instead. “Tell me where the car is,” she said.
“Better yet, I’ll show you. I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”
“I’ll drive,” Alvarez said.
The crime scene unit was already at the site, flashlights lighting the forest, a
larger light focused on Marjory Tufts’s once-beautiful car. The T-Bird was
destroyed, its body crumpled in spots, the paint gashed, one white wall blown.

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Obviously, whoever had driven it along an unused mining road and down this
near-forgotten spur had bounced the classic vehicle across a creek, over
boulders, and through a too-narrow passage that had allowed berry vines and
branches to scrape and gouge its once-sleek sides.
Alvarez had parked at the end of the spur. She and Zoller had hiked up the
overgrown road. Undergrowth nearly covered the twin ruts of gravel that had
been laid half a century earlier and now had eroded into the forest floor.
Two deputies were guarding the area, the crime tech already going over the
car that was half in, half out of a dry creek bed, driven as far into the woods as
possible, then abandoned.
No one was inside but a tech. Lex Farnsby was carefully combing the interior,
which held nothing but a designer overnight bag filled with a woman’s change of
clothes and toiletries. Marjory’s things for her night away from her husband.
“Nothing unusual inside,” Farnsby said, “but the driver’s seat is set back to
allow a lot of leg room.”
“A man,” Alvarez said.
“Or very tall woman.”