Born to Die - Lisa Jackson [102]
“Just like the Jocelyn Wallis case,” Pescoli guessed, still reluctant to accept any loose connection between two cases that were over a thousand miles apart.
So the two women resembled each other. So they’d both been born in Helena, at the same hospital. Their deaths weren’t even the same, except, of course, they’d both been poisoned. But Shelly Bonaventure’s death was from an apparent overdose, and Jocelyn Wallis had fallen over the cliff, which broke her back and crushed her internal organs, the reason she was no longer walking this earth. Neither was from the poisoning itself.
“I asked Detective Hayes to send me a DNA analysis on Shelly Bonaventure,” Alvarez said.
“To compare to Jocelyn Wallis? Are you serious?”
“And Elle Alexander.”
“Her death was entirely different,” Pescoli reminded.
“I know. Could be our guy’s getting desperate.”
“Sounds like a wild-goose chase to me. And it’ll take time. You think that’s necessary?”
“Don’t know,” Alvarez admitted. “Could be that it’s a dead end. But at least we’ll know if these women have any genetic link.” She opened the door to her Jeep and pocketed the keys. “I’m just ruling out all the possibilities.”
“I think it’s premature.”
“Duly noted. Meanwhile, women are dying.”
“Okay, okay. Point taken,” Pescoli said and tried not to snap. Alvarez was, if nothing else, thorough, a good cop who relied on science and evidence and rarely on her gut instinct. This time it seemed she was trusting a little of each. Not a bad thing.
They walked inside the garage together and found the mechanics and forensic car team working on the minivan. Spread around the dented body of the Dodge was a mess of wet toys, clothes, and wrapping paper that had faded and started to disintegrate. Soggy, crumpled shopping bags had split, only those that were plastic having survived a trip into the icy river.
The back bumper looked as if it had been rammed, and the automotive forensic examiners were all over the vehicle, looking for any evidence they could find. Elle Alexander’s cell phone and purse were located, and the dripping receipts in her wallet indicated she’d been shopping only hours before her vehicle was pulled from the icy river.
“Something hit the back end of the van with a lot of force,” Bart, one of the examiners, said. A thin, wiry man with a bald pate and glasses that looked too big for his face, he was wiping his hands with a towel and staring at the wreck of a minivan. “Looks like another vehicle. There’s no evidence that she hit something, like a deer or elk or anything, before the van plunged into the river. She might have swerved, but something hit her from behind. Something big and going fast, from the looks of the dents.”
“The husband said the van was in pristine shape. They bought it less than six months ago.”
Bart was nodding as if everything Pescoli said confirmed his findings. “Ahh, well, someone changed that, now, didn’t they?”
“Yeah,” Alvarez said on a sigh. “I guess we’d better find out who.”
Bart smiled thinly. “Glad that’s your job, not mine.”
Tuesday passed uneventfully, and on Wednesday, her day off from working at the clinic, Kacey spent time playing with Bonzi, paying bills, and picking up the house.
After some debate, she called Trace O’Halleran and got his answering machine, so she left a message asking about Eli and leaving her cell phone number.
It hadn’t really been a ruse; she was concerned about the boy, more about his flu symptoms than his arm. But she couldn’t lie to herself. Of course she’d hoped to talk to Trace. She hadn’t been able to get him off her mind.
In the late morning she decided to be proactive on the mystery of the look-alikes and made a quick trip to Fit Forever Gym in search of a trainer named Gloria. She talked to a cute girl of around eighteen behind the reception area and made up a story about thinking of joining the club. The receptionist, in white-blond pigtails,