Lisa Jackson - Born To Die

He smiled.

Maybe he should become her “patient.”

Soon. He smiled to himself and felt his cock tweak just a bit. Very, very soon.

“So she has some vague, slight resemblance to the other women. So what?” Pescoli said two hours later, when she and Alvarez had reconnected and were driving to the department’s garage. Today, it seemed, her partner was really grasping at straws. Her latest: Elle Alexander looked like Shelly Bonaventure and Jocelyn Wallis. That was just a leap of faith Pescoli wasn’t about to take.

But she did have to agree with Alvarez that the 9-1-1 tape of Tom Alexander’s frantic call to the emergency line sounded authentic, that he was out of his mind with fear, which was only reinforced when he showed up at the department earlier this morning. Upset, he’d stormed into the sheriff’s department and demanded an investigation into his wife’s death. But his anger had slipped as he’d talked to Pescoli.

Handsome and trim, he’d been the epitome of the grief-stricken husband who was still in shock.

“She was a good driver and was used to inclement weather. I’m telling you, she could navigate the worst roads in snow! And I heard it all! I was on the phone when he hit her. She was scared out of her mind and must’ve dropped the phone, because she wasn’t answering, and I heard the sound of metal on metal. Oh, God it was… deafening. And then she was yelling and screaming, calling my name over and over, but she couldn’t hear me!” At that point he dissolved onto one of the side chairs, burying his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. “Then there was the screams and the rush of. . water, I guess, and then… and then… nothing. The phone went dead. For the love of God, what am I going to do? Elle. . oh, Jesus, Elle.”

Pescoli hadn’t been able to offer platitudes. She hadn’t told him, “It’ll be all right,” or “I know it’s tough, but you’ll get through this.” Not when she’d been where he was on the night that her first husband, Joe, had been shot.

It didn’t matter that it was in the line of duty.

She didn’t care that he was deemed a damned “hero.”

All she knew was that he was dead, leaving her with a young son and a hole in her heart big enough that an army tank could have driven through it. She would never be able to talk to him again or hear his laugh or watch him haul Jeremy around on his broad shoulders, or make love to him long into the night. It had been over in an instant. Those first years after Joe’s death had been hard. So hard that she’d mistaken lust for love and married Luke Pescoli, “Lucky,” who had proved to be anything but.

So she didn’t offer up bromides. Instead she said, “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Alexander,” and slid the Kleenex box across her desk to him.

Somehow she’d managed to take his statement, and now she and Alvarez were heading to the department’s garage. Alvarez was explaining that Detective Jonas Hayes of the LAPD wasn’t convinced that Shelly Bonaventure committed suicide, though most of the evidence pointed that way.

“There were just some things that didn’t add up to his satisfaction,” she said as she pulled into the lot designated for official vehicles. She found a parking spot near one of the large metallic garage doors and switched off the engine.

“Just like the Jocelyn Wallis case,” Pescoli guessed, still reluctant to accept any loose connection between two cases that were over a thousand miles apart.

So the two women resembled each other. So they’d both been born in Helena, at the same hospital. Their deaths weren’t even the same, except, of course, they’d both been poisoned. But Shelly Bonaventure’s death was from an apparent overdose, and Jocelyn Wallis had fallen over the cliff, which broke her back and crushed her internal organs, the reason she was no longer walking this earth. Neither was from the poisoning itself.

“I asked Detective Hayes to send me a DNA analysis on Shelly Bonaventure,” Alvarez said.

“To compare to Jocelyn Wallis? Are you serious?”

“And Elle Alexander.”

“Her death was entirely different,” Pescoli reminded.

“I know. Could be our guy’s getting desperate.”

“Sounds like a wild-goose chase to me. And it’ll take time. You think that’s necessary?”

“Don’t know,” Alvarez admitted. “Could be that it’s a dead end. But at least we’ll know if these women have any genetic link.” She opened the door to her Jeep and pocketed the keys. “I’m just ruling out all the possibilities.”

“I think it’s premature.”

“Duly noted. Meanwhile, women are dying.”

“Okay, okay. Point taken,” Pescoli said and tried not to snap. Alvarez was, if nothing else, thorough, a good cop who relied on science and evidence and rarely on her gut instinct. This time it seemed she was trusting a little of each. Not a bad thing.

They walked inside the garage together and found the mechanics and forensic car team working on the minivan. Spread around the dented body of the Dodge was a mess of wet toys, clothes, and wrapping paper that had faded and started to disintegrate. Soggy, crumpled shopping bags had split, only those that were plastic having survived a trip into the icy river.

The back bumper looked as if it had been rammed, and the automotive forensic examiners were all over the vehicle, looking for any evidence they could find. Elle Alexander’s cell phone and purse were located, and the dripping receipts in her wallet indicated she’d been shopping only hours before her vehicle was pulled from the icy river.

“Something hit the back end of the van with a lot of force,” Bart, one of the examiners, said. A thin, wiry man with a bald pate and glasses that looked too big for his face, he was wiping his hands with a towel and staring at the wreck of a minivan. “Looks like another vehicle. There’s no evidence that she hit something, like a deer or elk or anything, before the van plunged into the river. She might have swerved, but something hit her from behind. Something big and going fast, from the looks of the dents.”

“The husband said the van was in pristine shape. They bought it less than six months ago.”

Bart was nodding as if everything Pescoli said confirmed his findings. “Ahh, well, someone changed that, now, didn’t they?”

“Yeah,” Alvarez said on a sigh. “I guess we’d better find out who.”

Bart smiled thinly. “Glad that’s your job, not mine.”

Tuesday passed uneventfully, and on Wednesday, her day off from working at the clinic, Kacey spent time playing with Bonzi, paying bills, and picking up the house.

After some debate, she called Trace O’Halleran and got his answering machine, so she left a message asking about Eli and leaving her cell phone number.

It hadn’t really been a ruse; she was concerned about the boy, more about his flu symptoms than his arm. But she couldn’t lie to herself. Of course she’d hoped to talk to Trace. She hadn’t been able to get him off her mind.

In the late morning she decided to be proactive on the mystery of the lookalikes and made a quick trip to Fit Forever Gym in search of a trainer named Gloria. She talked to a cute girl of around eighteen behind the reception area and made up a story about thinking of joining the club. The receptionist, in white-blond pigtails, had the enthusiasm of youth and, Kacey guessed, the promise of a commission, as she quickly explained the benefits of becoming a Fit Forever member. When Kacey didn’t immediately sign on the dotted line, she lost a bit of fire and just slid some brochures across the long counter, turning to a more promising customer, the next guy in line.

Quickly, Kacey went through the pamphlets. Sure enough, one of the trainers was Gloria Sanders-O’Malley, the woman Elle had said resembled her. Kacey walked down a hallway, as if she were already a member; she didn’t want someone showing her around. At a large glass window that looked into a workout room, she saw the woman who had to be Gloria Sanders-O’Malley. It was just damned eerie as she watched the woman lead a spinning class. None of the members of the class looked a thing like her, thank you, God, but Gloria did have the same bone structure in her face as Kacey. Her hair was short, spiky, and a rich red-brown; her body toned to that of a true athlete.