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“What did you do?” Alvarez said, eyeing him through her sunglasses.
“I yelled and finished, y’know. Quick as I could. I mean, I thought, Oh, shit, what now? Then I took off down the hill. . . .”
Alvarez wandered around the area behind trunks of the trees, bent down, picked up some dirt and sniffed it as she rubbed it through the tips of her fingers. “Smells like urine.”
He looked scandalized. “I told ya.”
“Okay, so then what?” she asked, straightening and dusting her hands.
“I found Lara. She was all messed up, and this . . . thing. . . was crashing through the forest. I had my phone—we’d used the flashlight app looking for Lara’s cell—but I couldn’t see him and even though I took a picture, it didn’t show.” He dug into the back pocket of his jeans and came up with the phone, showing that the last two pictures were the night-dark forest. As Alvarez slipped her sunglasses onto her head and squinted at the phone, Pescoli peered over her shoulder.
Nothing. Just blurry dark images of . . . who knew what?
“So then I called nine-one-one,” he said. “She was hurt. I didn’t know how bad. The cops and EMTs and even someone from the fire department came. They took her to the hospital in an ambulance, and I followed, to be sure she was okay.” When they didn’t say anything, he added, “And that was it. I’ve been at the hospital since then.”
They asked a few more questions, got no more information, then searched the hillside for any kinds of clues and came up empty, nothing that either confirmed or denied Alex and Lara’s story.
Once they’d returned to the staging area of the set, Pescoli was sweating, her stomach rumbling. Sure enough, Manny Douglas was still hanging out just beyond the periphery of the set, and he wasn’t the only reporter who had arrived. A white television news van emblazoned with the red and blue logo for a local station had pulled up on the far side of the barricade. Nearby, positioned in front of a huge boulder, a trim newswoman with layered auburn hair and a smile of perfect white teeth was holding a microphone and speaking to Barclay Sphinx while a cameraman stood to one side recording the interview.
That was fast.
Unshaven, in a turtleneck, jacket, and jeans, Barclay was saying, “. . . such a scare. Yes. I feel fortunate that Miss Haas is all right.”
“Is she a member of the Big Foot Territory: Montana! cast?” the reporter asked.
“Yes, yes.” Barclay was nodding, stroking his soul patch, his eyes thoughtful behind his glasses. “A good little actress.”
“What part does she play?”
“In the first episode, she’s one of a group of local kids we hired to kind of recreate what happened at the first sighting, but I’m still working through the upcoming scripts, so who knows?” He gave a smile. “I like to use as much local talent as possible.”
His assessment of the situation, while echoing what he’d said at the Big Foot Believers meeting, wasn’t what was actually happening with the series, at least not according to Bianca. She’d been under the impression that the continuing plot line was going to swirl around feuding families from somewhere north of Missoula. Maybe Bianca had gotten it wrong, which Pescoli didn’t believe, or maybe Sphinx had changed his mind again, or even maybe the producer was playing to the audience as these local reporters could stir up some buzz about the series, start the ball rolling, get some statewide, regional, even national coverage.
Time would tell, of course, but time was something she didn’t have much of. Her cell phone jangled. She checked the screen. Sage Zoller. “Pescoli,” she answered, still watching the producer work his audience.
“Thought you’d want to know. Nine-one-one got a call about a break in a guardrail. A road deputy went out to check and reported that it’s broken, right on a curve of the road leading to Horsebrier Ridge, almost at the summit.”
Oh, no. Pescoli’s heart was ice.
“The deputy looked over the edge and thought he saw a car buried in the brush about a hundred feet down or so. We got an emergency crew out there, EMTs, firefighters, and a couple rappelled down the cliff. Turns out to be a Ford Focus, registered to Lindsay Cronin.”
“Anyone inside?” she asked, dreading the answer.
“Yeah. One. Dead. Female. ID says it’s her. Lindsay Cronin.”
Pescoli fought the urge to throw up right here, at Reservoir Point, with a television camera rolling. “Let’s go,” she said to Alvarez, then to Alex, “I’ll need a sample of your DNA ASAP, and I’ll want one from your brother.”
“What? We didn’t do anything!”
She gave him a look that said she didn’t believe him. “I’m going to get one from everyone who knew Destiny Montclaire, any boy she even said hello to. Tell your brother and get down to the station.”
“I’m not gonna do it.”
Pescoli turned on him. She was tired of all the arguments, the hiding behind lawyers, the petulance of it all. Now two girls were dead. Who knew how many more? Her stomach roiled and anger sped through her veins. “Then I’ll go through the system. But that looks pretty bad that you’re refusing, so think it over. You’ve got about twenty minutes. Then, if I haven’t heard that you’ve voluntarily given up a sample, I’ll get a court order and if you don’t comply I’ll throw your ass in jail and I’ll force the issue. Got it?”
“Jesus, all I’ve done is try to help,” he complained.
“Then you can help a little more.” She flashed a cold-as-ice smile. “Just do it, Alex.” And then she and Alvarez were striding back to the car. Thoughts of Lindsay Cronin crowded Pescoli’s brain. An accident? In the middle of the night? After talking to Kywin Bell?
