Born To Die Read Online Free PDF Page B

that’s the best you can do . . . okay ... Tomorrow’s fine.” She hung up, fuming. “What do you bet that tomorrow comes and I still don’t know what was in Donna McKinley’s bloodstream?” she said, leaned back in her desk chair, and scowled at her computer monitor, where the picture of the woman in question was visible. “I’d just like to get this off my desk, y’know.”
    Pescoli did know. They both wanted to be assured that Donna McKinley’s death was a stupid accident, that she’d fallen asleep at the wheel and run off the road. That her death was not the result of something nefarious by her excon of a boyfriend, Barclay Simms, who just happened to take out a hundred-thousand-dollar life insurance policy on Donna three weeks earlier. This while he was collecting unemployment.
    Alvarez sighed loudly. “Sorry.”
    â€œNo problem. Just letting you know that I’m outta here. Gotta track down my kid.”
    â€œShe skip school?”
    â€œLooks like,” Pescoli said with a shake of her head. Until a year ago, Bianca had been an A student, always on the honor roll, proud of being “the good one,” as she’d referred to herself often enough, until her grades had started slipping the year before, in junior high. She’d promised to work harder again in high school, “when it really counted.” So far, she wasn’t keeping to her word.
    â€œI’ve got things covered here,” Alvarez said, which was true enough. A serious workaholic, she rarely clocked in during normal work hours. Alvarez was single and dedicated, and it appeared to Pescoli as if the younger woman had no social life whatsoever, which was a shame. But today she didn’t have time to think about it.
    â€œI owe ya one.”
    Alvarez snorted. “I’ll remember that.”
    Along with about a hundred other times, Pescoli thought as she found her jacket, scarf, and hat, then hurried out the back and past the lunchroom, where Joelle Fischer was opening boxes filled with all kinds of holiday decorations. Silver stars, glittering tinsel, fake candy canes, and strings of lights, even a slightly salacious-looking Santa, which had, year after year, given Pescoli a case of the creeps, were being placed on empty tabletops as Joelle plotted where to put up her “little bit of Christmas” around the department. Why Sheriff Dan Grayson put up with her nonsense, Pescoli had no idea. But Joelle, forever bubbly with her short blond hair, oversized earrings, and three-inch heels, never seemed to notice that the rest of the department didn’t get into the spirit of the holidays with the same fervor and sense of enthusiasm as she did.
    â€œRegan! Hey!” Joelle called, clipping after her to stand in the doorway to the hall. She was already wearing a Rudolph broach with a blinking red nose. “You know we’re having the drawing for the Secret Santa on Monday morning?”
    â€œAnd you know that it’s not Christmas for nearly six weeks.”
    â€œIt sneaks up on you,” she said solemnly. “Next Thursday is Thanksgiving, and why not celebrate the season for as long as possible?”
    â€œCount me out for Christmas in July.”
    â€œDon’t be such a crank!” She pretended to frown, but the edges of her Kewpie-doll lips twitched. “You’ll be here at eight, then? Monday?”
    â€œWith frickin’ bells on,” Pescoli muttered. She couldn’t really get into the spirit when she didn’t know where her daughter was.
    â€œMake sure they’re jingle bells!” Joelle tittered at her own joke and gratefully returned to the lunchroom and her decorating.
    Insane, Pescoli thought as she pushed open the doors and strode along a path that intersected the brittle grass. If the clumps of snow didn’t remind her that it was already winter in western Montana, the icy wind that rattled the chain on