Page 33 of Her Dying Secret

Josie said, “Did you talk to anyone at the school here where April taught?”

“Of course. She hadn’t been there that long, so there wasn’t much to find out. Talking to the teachers she had the most contact with, it was clear that she missed her family terribly. After the harassment reached the point that she could no longer hide it from them, her principal asked why she didn’t just go back to Bucks County, and all she would say was that she couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t?” Noah echoed.

What would make April Carlson believe that she couldn’t return to her family and the place she had called home her entire life? The fluttering in Josie’s belly intensified.

Noah eyed a jogger passing on the street. The man never even glanced at them. “Did Mira Summers’s name ever come up during your investigation?”

“Not that I recall,” Heather said. “But again, I can double-check and you can triple-check when you get the file.”

“When we met last year,” Josie said. “You were showing April’s photo at truck stops. Why?”

“She was last seen at a truck stop between Hillcrest and here. She parked her vehicle in the lot. Went inside the stop and bought a soda and a chocolate bar, waited outside the entrance for ten minutes, just looking around, and then she walked back to her car. She used her phone to take one call from a burner phone. We never could track anyone down using the number. After that call, she drove twenty-three miles west on Route 80.”

Josie’s stomach turned at the thought that the chocolate bar would be one of the few things April ate for the next year of her life. “Not a lot of cameras on 80.”

Heather sighed and reached back, smoothing her ponytail. “Exactly. She pulled onto a wide part of the shoulder. Then poof! she’s gone. Left her car, phone, purse. Everything. The burner phone only turned on long enough to make that call and it didn’t show up in the geofence. It bounced off a tower a few miles from where April pulled over, but it wasn’t on long enough for us to pinpoint it in any location where we might catch the user on camera. Dead end. The only other thing we found where her car was left was a set of tire tracks that belonged to a commercial vehicle. A truck, probably, but not a semi.”

Josie glanced over at Noah. He was thinking the same thing. “Maybe a box truck,” he suggested.

Heather shrugged. “Sure, but good luck finding it.”

They could at least try to match the photos and casts the state police had taken near April’s car to the ones found at Tranquil Trails.

Josie’s phone rang. “It’s Hummel.”

Heather descended the porch steps. “On that note, I’ll leave you to it. As soon as I get back to my office, I’ll send over the Carlson file.”

Josie swiped answer and put him on speaker so Noah could hear. “Tell me you have something.”

Hummel laughed. “Oh, I’ve got a bunch of somethings. One of them’s pretty big, too.”

Noah said, “We love it when you talk dirty to us, Hummel. Where are you?”

More laughter. “I’m at the impound lot.”

“We’ll be right over.”

TWENTY-FOUR

The Denton police impound lot was in an area of North Denton only slightly more populated than Prout Road. It was surrounded by a tall chain-link fence. A small booth at its entrance was occupied by an officer who let Josie and Noah through to the parking lot. They rolled past two rows of cars that had been impounded for various reasons until they came to the rear of the lot. The ERT’s unofficial headquarters was located in a squat cinderblock building with a single navy-blue door. Attached to the building was a garage with two bays, their windows covered with white laminate for the sake of privacy. Josie and Noah went through the blue door, then through the small office at the front, and into a larger room of white cinderblock. Aluminum shelving lined one wall, filled with supplies for processing evidence. Hummel sat at a large stainless-steel table in the center of the room, typing on a laptop.

He greeted them with a smile and gestured for them to sit at the table. Once Josie and Noah were seated across from him, he spun the laptop around, revealing a fingerprint report. “Your suspect is Seth Lee.”

Excitement sent a surge of energy through Josie’s veins.

Noah pulled the computer closer, reading the report. “I can’t remember the last time it was this easy.”

Josie’s shoulder bumped his as she leaned in to view the findings. “Oh, it’s not easy. We still have to find him.”

Hummel turned the laptop back toward him. “Dr. Feist told you about the awl?”

“Yes,” said Josie.

“Never saw that before. First time for everything, I guess,” he muttered as his fingers swiped over the touchpad. “This thing was a bitch to process. I had to collect the prints before I swabbed for DNA. Got a bunch of them by fuming it. Since the wood was varnished, non-porous.”

He angled the screen so they could all see it. The awl appeared, its wooden handle covered in white fingerprints. Fuming involved placing the item into an airtight cyanoacrylate fuming chamber. Once locked inside, the item was exposed to what were essentially superglue vapors, which reacted to the traces of fatty and amino acids, sweat, and proteins in the prints. The chemical reaction caused the sticky white substance to appear along the ridges of the prints.

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