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“Drugs?”
“None found,” Pescoli said. “I checked with the deputies, who searched the cars. But I smelled marijuana.”
“Probably ditched in the undergrowth.” His eyes scanned the scrub brush and thickets surrounding the parking area, his head shaking slightly. “They all need to be cited.”
“You think that will help?” Pescoli asked.
“It’s against the law.” His lips were flat. “I’m the sheriff.”
“Zero tolerance.”
“You got it. And don’t let any of them drive.” He pointed a finger at her for emphasis. “If they don’t have an adult, I mean a sober adult, to drive them, then we haul them back to the station. At least while we deal with the bigger situation.”
Pescoli’s gut tightened. She knew he was right, but she’d been down that route before, on both sides of the law. Not only had she arrested kids, but her own son had done some time in juvie.
“Maybe if they’re scared enough, they’ll talk,” he said. “What do we know about the victim?”
“Seems like the girl’s been dead a few days. Body bloating, decaying.”
“Not a part of this.” He motioned a finger to include the vehicles and kids still cluttering the area.
“Whatever happened to her occurred before these kids met up tonight.”
“But they might know something.” Blackwater’s brow furrowed as he eyed the crowd. “The girl went to the local high school, right?”
“Yes.”
“Same with most of these kids,” he guessed.
Pescoli couldn’t argue and decided to come clean. “My daughter was here, too. She called it in to nine-one-one on another kid’s phone. She was injured so I sent her to the hospital.”
In the blue and red flashes of light, she saw the muscles in the back of his neck tighten. “Cite her,” he said. “I can’t play favorites.”
“I wasn’t asking you to.”
“Good.”
At that moment, a fresh set of headlights pierced the night as the first television van arrived.
Pescoli inwardly groaned. The press. Already.
“I’ll speak to them,” he said, as the lumbering white vehicle parked on the far side of the police barrier.
I bet you will.
“Make sure we get statements from everyone up here.” He glanced pointedly at Pescoli. “Including anyone who’s already left. I want a list of every person who was here.”
Pescoli ground her back teeth together.
Without another word, he crossed the lot, rounding the rear bumper of a BMW as the passenger door of the van opened, and a reporter Pescoli recognized from the local news stepped out. Petite. Blonde. In a dress and jacket in the middle of the night, like she’d been sitting by the phone waiting for the call.
“He treats us like newbies,” she said as Rhonda Clemmons, a road deputy who had been one of the first on the scene, approached.
“Who? Blackwater?” Clemmons waved away the comment as if it were a bothersome fly. “Just his style.”
“Bullshit. And the TV crew. Oh, yeah, that’s just what we need.”
“At least he’ll deal with them,” Clemmons said. “That way we don’t have to.”
