Page 18 of Her Dying Secret

Rebecca glanced back toward the house. “Sure, why not? Let’s go to the house first. Jon should have that list for you by now.”

TWELVE

He’s sleeping now. We’re still here. All alone. Of all the places we’ve been, I hate this one the most. I don’t know time, but it feels like the forever-est place we’ve ever stayed. I sneak away from him and find my backpack. It’s the one thing that is mine and only mine. I have all kinds of things in it. I’m not supposed to take things from other people in case the bad people put a camera in them or a microphone or something, but at the very bottom of the bag I hid some things that I got when I was in the normal world. A doll. A teddy bear. A Lego set of women who went into space.

I wish I could go to space. There wouldn’t be any bad people and I would be far, far away from him and from being lonely and being careful all the time and hungry.

I don’t get any of my secret things out. Instead, I find my big box of crayons and the coloring book that he gave me. It was one of the best special treats he ever bought me. I’ve colored all the pictures already and now I’m filling in all the places where there is no color, drawing my favorite things. My red crayon is just a small thing now. Even the wrapper is gone. Today I don’t want to use it anymore because it reminds me of the blood.

Whose blood?

The whisper is back.

THIRTEEN

“Did you see the cats hanging around the stable?” asked Gretchen as they took a slow walk around the parking lot. The pickup truck that was parked there when they arrived had gone, leaving only the sedan, which they’d looked beneath using a flashlight.

“Yeah.” Josie kept her eyes on her side of the lot. “But their fur colors don’t match what we found on Jane Doe’s body.”

There was no way that someone had stabbed two women without leaving some kind of blood evidence behind. If the altercation happened in the Tranquil Trails lot, Josie would expect to find something.

Gretchen didn’t take her eyes from her portion of the lot. “Doesn’t mean there aren’t more cats. Those are just the ones we saw.”

Without a warrant, Josie and Gretchen had only been able to look around the portions of the Lees’ premises that they’d been given permission to view. Although the house was unremarkable, together, Josie and Gretchen had only seen the first floor. Josie had been able to sneak upstairs, feigning the need to use the restroom, to do a plain-view search of the second floor. Only one of the doors had been closed, but Josie hadn’t heard anything from behind it. She still wasn’t convinced they didn’t have some sort of torture chamber that held a child in their basement. But if they wanted a look, they’d need a warrant, and to get a warrant, they’d need to prove that the crime happened on the property.

Which was why they were now searching for evidence that the stabbings happened in the parking lot. That was still within plain-view parameters.

Once they reached the end of the lot, they turned again, going back over ground they’d already covered twice. “We should get a geofence warrant,” Josie said. “To extend from the accident site to here, since this is Mira Summers’s last known whereabouts prior to the accident. If the attack happened within those parameters and the killer left with a child in his custody, we might be able to locate him that way.”

A geofence was a virtual perimeter around a specific geographic area that enabled police to track which smart devices like cell phones were inside that area during a certain time period. Law enforcement had first started using geofence warrants in 2016. There were people who felt they were a massive invasion of privacy and in fact, in response to them, Google had recently changed the way it treated users’ location history, which would now make it more difficult for law enforcement to effectively use geofence warrants, but it was worth a try. Presently the practice was still legal in Pennsylvania.

“Good idea,” Gretchen agreed.

They took another pass through the parking lot. At this point, Josie wasn’t sure why they were still looking. Although a great deal of blood had been found in Mira Summers’s car, Josie would still have expected to find a significant amount wherever the actual stabbing had occurred. If it happened in this lot, it should have been immediately obvious.

A man appeared from behind the house, headed toward them. As he got closer, Josie could see he was likely in his late twenties or early thirties. A drawstring bag swung from one of his thick hands. He was short and stocky with a mop of blond curls tumbling into his eyes. Like Mira’s had been, his black riding boots were covered in mud. Thick thighs strained against his jeans. Red print across a black T-shirt proclaimed: I Ride Horses Because Punching People is Frowned Upon.

A fob appeared in his free hand as he approached the sedan. Squinting against the sun, he took in their Denton PD polo shirts and the guns at their waists. “You with the police? What’s going on? I don’t have no parking tickets due.”

Josie and Gretchen walked over and presented their credentials. Josie said, “One of the other Tranquil Trails clients, Mira Summers, was involved in an incident today. We’re trying to piece together her movements starting from this morning.”

Gretchen added, “We know she was here until about eleven, eleven thirty. Do you remember seeing her?”

“Mira?” he said. “Sure. She’s here every Sunday.”

Gretchen’s notebook was in her hand. “What’s your name, sir?”

He clicked the key fob to unlock his doors but made no move to get inside the car. “Todd Stapleton.”

“Are you in the therapeutic program?” asked Gretchen.

Todd tossed his bag onto the roof of the car. It landed with a clunk. Josie could see the outline of his riding helmet. “Nah,” he said. “Not me. I just like to ride.”

“Really?” Gretchen said, eyeing his shirt.

He leaned a hip against the driver’s side door and smirked at Gretchen as he folded his powerful arms across his chest. “Really.”

Josie said, “Do you know Mira Summers?”

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