Page 44 of Her Dying Secret

Josie tried not to let her disappointment show.

Noah leaned back in his desk chair and folded his arms over his chest. “What do you have?”

“The only set of prints from the envelope found in Mira’s house—with brochure and Post-it—that I got hits on were Mira Summers’s?—”

“To be expected,” said Josie.

“—and April Carlson.”

“What?” said Josie.

Gretchen’s chair creaked again. “April Carlson gave that brochure to Mira?”

Hummel shrugged. “Listen, I just process the evidence. I can’t tell you who did what, but both women’s prints were on those items.”

He’s here. We have to tell.

They had no way to know how old that message was, but Josie was certain that April had delivered it to Mira. But why? How did April know Seth? Or that he had a child? The most obvious answer was that April had encountered them both as a teacher and yet, Heather’s extensive investigation into April’s disappearance hadn’t turned up any connection to Seth Lee—or even Mira Summers. Neither of their names appeared anywhere in Heather’s file. Josie had checked twice.

“Also this.” Hummel took the folder from beneath his arm and put it on Noah’s desk, opening it to reveal several photos which he spread before them. “I took a close look at the tire tracks from the crime scene at Tranquil Trails. I have a buddy at the state lab who is an expert in tire tracks. I asked him to confirm my findings, which he did.” He pointed at the first photo. “The tracks are consistent with a type of tire called an XDA5, distributed by a tire company based in New York. They’re made specifically for box trucks. None of the vehicles registered to the Lees or to Tranquil Trails use this particular tire. However, the tracks are a match to the kind the state police found near April Carlson’s car after she disappeared from Route 80.” Here, he indicated a different set of photos. “I’m not saying they’re the same tires, just that they’re the same kind of tire at both scenes.”

“Which means that there is a possibility that the same guy was at both scenes,” Gretchen said.

“Yes,” Hummel answered. “But lots of box trucks use this kind of tire, so there’s no way to prove that it was the same truck.”

“You were right,” Noah said. “This is good stuff, but it doesn’t point us in a direction and right now we’ve got three people we need to find.”

Hummel sighed. “I told you so.”

“What else do you have?” Josie asked, sensing there was more. Hummel was never one to linger.

He pulled up a photo on his phone and turned it toward them. Josie crowded next to Noah to see it. “That’s one of the clumps of hair we found on April Carlson’s clothes at the scene of the accident,” she explained to Noah.

“It’s not hair,” Hummel said, swinging the phone so Gretchen could see. “The lab doesn’t know what it is, but it’s not hair. Not human or animal.”

“Then it’s some kind of fiber,” Gretchen said.

Hummel shook his head. “Nope. It’s not synthetic.”

“Then what the hell is it?” asked Noah.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Hummel said.

“Send me that photo,” Josie told him.

He took out his phone and texted it to her. “The lab will do more analysis to try and figure out what it is, but that will take a while.”

Staring at the photo on her own phone, Josie said, “If it’s not synthetic and it’s not hair, it has to be from a tree or a plant.”

“That makes sense,” Gretchen said. “But what? Dandelion fluff?”

Josie shook her head. “No. Way too thick for that.”

“It really does look like hair,” Noah said. “Very short, coarse hair. Remember when Dougherty had that Siberian husky and used to brush her out every day? Big clumps of her hair would fall out and end up all over his uniform. Looked just like that only the hair was longer.” He reached up and rested his hand on Josie’s hip. “Our resident amateur botanist doesn’t know what it is?”

She smiled at him. “Out of my area of expertise.”

Gretchen said, “If it’s some kind of plant or something, what’s the quickest way to find out what it is?”

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