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Donny was nodding, warming to his story. “That’s right.”
Alvarez asked, “How long did you hang out?”
“Until . . . I dunno, we played video games for a while. Here, and then . . . then they all left and Des called. Then she texted, I think, wanted to come over. So she did.”
“How long did Destiny stay?” Alvarez asked.
“Maybe half an hour? Forty-five minutes?” Again, he bounced the basketball. “Not long.”
“What did the two of you do?” Pescoli asked.
“We hung out.” He grew a little belligerent, his dark eyebrows pulling together as if by purse strings.
Pescoli believed he was still trying to work things out in his mind, figure out how much they, the cops, knew, how to make his story believable. “Did you talk?”
He shot her a cold look. “’Course.” Another swallow from his bottle.
“What about?” she pressed.
“Nothin’. Just that she wanted to get back with me.” He shrugged. “She kinda cried because I told her it was over. I was interested in someone else.”
“Who?” Alvarez asked.
“Does it matter?”
“Maybe,” Pescoli said.
“It’s personal,” he said. “And complicated.”
“Okay,” Pescoli agreed.
“It doesn’t matter because this girl, she doesn’t even know. I said it mainly to prove to Des that I was serious about the break-up. Geez.” He took another swig from his bottle. Appeared nervous.
Alvarez asked, “Did Destiny drive over here?”
He hesitated, then shook his head. “I think she walked.”
“And when she left?” Alvarez again.
“She just left. Yeah, on foot. I don’t know where she went.”
“Did you offer to give her a ride?” Pescoli asked. “By the time she left, it would’ve been dark.”
“No. Sorry. I didn’t,” he snapped. “We’d broken up. She didn’t want it, and neither did I.”
“Her folks said she took off across the field, as if she were going to go walking in the woods, up by Reservoir Point, where she was found, where you all partied the other night,” Pescoli said. “If she was coming to visit you, here”—she pointed at the baking concrete at her feet—“it seems odd that she wouldn’t take the road, save herself the hill to climb, cut off what? Half an hour or so.”
“She did what she did,” he said, but his jaw worked and he looked away, rotated the ball in his hands, then grabbed his water bottle and lifted it to his lips.
Alvarez asked, “Did she tell you she was pregnant?”
He choked on the water. “Wh–what? Pregnant? No. What? No! You’re lying!”
“So you didn’t know?” Pescoli asked, pushing.
“I don’t believe it.” His face had turned to chalk.
“Could the baby be yours?” Alvarez asked.
