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“You know this kid, right?” Alvarez said. She paused on the bottom step to glance back at Pescoli, who was easing her way down the final stairs.
“Yeah, since preschool.”
“And?”
“He was always a bully. One of two of Frank Bell’s sons. Bell has been in and out of jail himself. Domestic violence. Of the two boys, Kywin, the younger, is probably more law abiding, but that isn’t setting the bar all that high.”
The stairwell opened to an expansive area that was complete with loading dock. All of the barn doors had been thrown wide, and a forklift was parked in one corner. Pallet after pallet of grain was stacked against each other: wheat, oats, barley, and corn. Inside an adjacent area, bales of straw, hay, and alfalfa were kept dry.
A small forklift carrying a single pallet piled with bags of some kind of grain slowly rounded the corner. Kywin Bell, wearing a hard hat, was at the controls and concentrating as he pulled into the covered area and carefully lowered the pallet into place, then backed up.
Alvarez flagged him down and he stopped, leaving the forklift to idle. Alvarez had to shout over the rumble of the engine, and Kywin, appearing to want to flee, glared at her. She identified herself, as did Pescoli. “We need to talk to you.”
“I’m working,” he called loudly.
“Only take a few minutes,” Alvarez yelled back.
He scowled. “Give me a sec.” He backed the forklift to a spot near the larger one, cut the engine, and hopped onto the dusty concrete. “This has to do with Destiny.” It was a statement rather than a question, but Alvarez answered anyway. “Yes.”
He tossed his hard hat onto the seat of the forklift and glanced around. Spy
ing a string bean of a man sweeping near an open bin of corn, he yelled, “Hey, Zach. I’m taking five.”
“Already?” The tall guy stopped pushing his broom and squinted.
“Won’t be long.” Bell glanced at Alvarez and said more softly, “Right?”
“Shouldn’t,” she agreed.
“Good. This way.”
Pescoli had expected him to lead them inside, into some kind of break room. Instead, he strode outside, where the sun was already climbing high, beating down through the scanty clouds. He rounded a corner of the building, to the side road that connected this lower part of the business to the parking lot above. The road was chewed-up asphalt, cracked and dusty. A retaining wall ran along its length, up the steep slope. Here, at the bottom, Kywin hoisted himself easily onto a half wall and reached into his T-shirt pocket, withdrawing a pack of Camel cigarettes and a lighter. He lit up and blew smoke toward the sky. “What do you want to know?”
“How involved were you with Destiny Rose Montclaire?”
“Shit.” Another drag, then he turned his hands, palms up, the tip of his cigarette clenched between two fingers as it smoldered upside down. “We were friends, okay?”
“Good friends?”
“I already told this to some cop that night. Last Saturday. At Reservoir Point.”
“Detective Zoller.”
“That’s the one. Little. Like Destiny.” He studied the smoke trailing from his Camel.
Alvarez nodded, her black hair glistening in the morning light. “I’ve seen Detective Zoller’s notes.”
“Then you know I had nothing to do with what happened to Destiny.” He was sweating, hat ring visible in his short-cropped hair. “I liked her. I wouldn’t hurt her.” He paused thoughtfully. “Never.”
Was he lying? Pescoli couldn’t tell. She stepped closer, noticed that he was swinging his legs, his heavy work boots as dusty as everything else. And huge. “Some people claim you were her protector, that you stepped in when she and Donald Justison got into it.”
“I didn’t like him knocking her around. Donny’s a mean drunk and she is . . . she was just a bit of a thing. Didn’t seem right. Even though she never seemed afraid of him, didn’t mind going at him, y’know? Setting him off.” He squinted in the harshness of the morning light, took a final pull on his Camel, and tossed it into the dirt.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“I told you all. I can’t really remember. A day or two before she went missing, I guess. A bunch of us were at the diner and she came in.”
“What diner?” Alvarez asked.
