Page 36 of Her Dying Secret

Noah handed the pages back to him. “Now that we know the identity of Jane Doe, and Detective Loughlin has sent over a copy of her file on April Carlson’s disappearance, you can familiarize yourself with that and see if you can find any connection to Seth Lee or Mira Summers.”

Turner took the stack of pages back with a long sigh. “Don’t you think I’d be better used in the field? I could go back to Bobbi Ann Thomas’s house. See if Mira’s awake yet and ask her about Seth Lee.”

Noah gave him the look Josie thought of as his ‘take precisely no bullshit’ look which she hardly ever got to see and had to admit was pretty damn sexy. Turner had a way of bringing it out in him. “You can do that, too, after you review the Carlson file. Right now, I think you’d be most useful doing what I tell you to do, Turner. Did you have a chance to check out the GPS from Summers’s car?”

Turner fished out another sheaf of papers and threw them onto Noah’s desk. “No surprises there. Sunday, she left her house and went directly to Tranquil Trails without stopping. She was there for three hours and seventeen minutes and then she got into her car, drove to the produce stand, and stopped there for thirteen minutes.”

Thirteen minutes. That was all it took for Seth Lee to stab two women and leave them bleeding. Then again, Josie knew from personal experience that it only took seconds for an entire life to be shattered by violence. “Then she left the produce stand and got into the accident.”

Turner waggled his brows and grinned. “Not so fast, sweetheart. She stopped along the road. Before the accident. For twenty-two minutes.”

Noah said, “What?”

Josie said, “Where?”

Turner stood up and walked over to the corkboard map, pointing to a red pushpin that hadn’t been there the night before. Pointing to it, he said, “According to the report, my best guess is right here.”

Josie momentarily abandoned the arrest warrant and joined him, studying the map. The pin was about a mile and a half from the accident.

Noah stood beside her. “I don’t see anything anywhere near where she stopped.”

“Because there’s nothing,” Josie said. “Absolutely nothing. Why would she stop?”

“Why would she stop but not call 911?” said Turner.

It was a valid question. Mira had been stabbed. She was bleeding profusely. Had she felt so faint that she pulled over? Had she lost consciousness for twenty-two minutes, then wakened only to get back on the road? That was the only thing that made sense.

Josie said, “Turner, what about the geofence results? Did those come in?”

He rolled his eyes. “What do you think? I’ve been stuck here all morning buried in reports.”

Josie folded her arms over her chest, ignoring his dig. “Just tell us about the results.”

He walked back over to his desk, pulling another document out from under his tiny basketball. He thrust it at her as he came back to the map. She skimmed the results, Noah following along over her shoulder. Turner pointed to the map. “It tagged a bunch of devices in the area between the horse place and the accident. Now look, you know we just get a list of devices with no names attached first. Then we have to try to match those devices to a pattern of movement that’s consistent with the crime. Like if a guy goes into a corner store and robs it and then an eyewitness puts him at the bus stop down the street, and the geofence shows a device leaving the corner store and going to the bus stop, we can ask for the personal identifying information from that device—because it follows a pattern that matches what we know about the perpetrator’s movements.”

Josie smiled at him. “You’re really getting the hang of this procedure thing, aren’t you?”

Turner’s mouth hung open.

With a frustrated sigh, Noah said, “We know how it works, Turner. We need to know if there’s anything we can use to put Seth Lee at the crime scene.”

Turner turned back to the map, stroking his beard. “No.”

“No?” said Josie.

Turner dropped his hand to his side and shrugged. “Hey, I’m just telling you what this shit says, honey. No devices stopped at the produce stand other than Mira Summers’s phone. Listen, you were the one who said this guy is some kind of off-the-grid-survivalist-tech-is-the-devil lunatic. I don’t know why you’re surprised.”

The stairwell door whooshed open, and the Chief stalked in, pulling up short to peer at the three of them, suspicion deepening every line in his craggy face. One bushy eyebrow kinked. “You three getting along, or what?”

Gretchen would have said, “Or what.”

Josie said nothing.

Turner slung one arm across Josie’s shoulders and the other across Noah’s and pulled them into his sides, like they were old friends. “One big happy family, Chief.”

Chief Chitwood didn’t look convinced. Josie stepped out from under Turner’s arm, putting a foot between them.

“Fraley,” the Chief snapped, striding toward his office. “Meet me in my office in five minutes. You’ll brief me on the Summers case and then I need about an hour of your time. The DA wants to have a conference call about that double murder you caught last year. The one over the drug dispute. It’s going to trial soon.”

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