Willing to Die by Lisa Jackson

Author:Lisa Jackson [Jackson, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

They caught up with Kywin Bell just hopping out of a battered Dodge truck in the driveway of his father’s house. The truck had been jacked up, the wheels oversized, the tailgate missing.

He saw the two cops approach. A scowl curved across his unshaven jaw. “I talked to you already,” he said, retrieving a beat-up lunch pail from the truck’s interior, then slamming the door shut.

“We just have a few more questions,” Alvarez said.

“Well, I’m all outta answers. You already nearly cost me my job, so I’m done.” He started for the house, a single-story post-war bungalow that was in need of more than just paint. The porch sagged, the shingles of the roof were curling and cracked, the gutters rusting.

“You’re not quite done,” said Pescoli.

Swatting at a bee, he spun around just before reaching the listing porch, lips compressed, nostrils flaring. “What is it with you cops, huh? Never satisfied. Always nagging. Just cuz my old man did time doesn’t mean I had anything to do with . . . with anything!”

A scrawny gray cat that had been sunning itself on the porch got up quickly and slunk behind a couple of metal chairs. With a quick look over its shoulder and a swish of its tail, the feline slid off the porch to hide in a clump of dry weeds. Kywin reached for the dilapidated screen door as Alvarez said, “Destiny texted you on the last night she was seen alive.”

“What?” He dropped his hands and stared at them in shock. Shaking his head, he reached into his jean pocket for a crumpled pack of cigarettes. “I never got no text.” He found a lighter, lit up, then blew smoke out of the side of his mouth in a fast stream.

“We have records from the cell company,” Alvarez told him. “The text is there.”

“They’re wrong. I didn’t get a text from her.”

He was so sure of himself, Pescoli started to wonder a bit as he left his cigarette clamped in the corner of his mouth and dug in another pocket, located his cell phone and checked the screen, pressing buttons deftly before finding what he was looking for. “There,” he said, holding the phone, face out, to the cops.

Shading the screen with one hand, Pescoli studied the phone. A tiny head shot of Destiny appeared beside a thread of texts, which included another picture, a selfie of her in a pink bikini at a swimming hole by the river. Her head was cocked to one side, her eyes dancing mischievously, her grin a little seductive. The attached message read: Swimming @Cougar Springs. Join me after work? She’d ended it with an emoticon of a smiley face wearing sunglasses. There were no more texts.

Pescoli pointed out, “You could have deleted any message you got from her.”

“I didn’t! For shit’s sake, I told you, that’s the last message I got from her.”

Alvarez scrolled up. “She texted you just about every day, sometimes more than once.”

“Yeah.” He took a long drag from his cig.

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