Page 57 of Her Dying Secret

No wonder Mira had begged April, “please don’t.” She must have known that Seth would pull Rosie out of school immediately at the slightest hint that DHS might get involved.

Josie said, “Would the school have a record of it if April made a complaint to DHS?”

Gretchen shook her head. “I don’t think so. We dealt with this stuff a lot when I was with Philly PD. Schools don’t keep records of any reports made by faculty to DHS. Teachers aren’t even required to tell their superiors if they’ve contacted DHS. Those reports are anonymous unless the teacher chooses to give their information. A few times I caught cases where I wish the teachers had given their names because when cases went to trial, we could have used their testimony, but most of the time teachers don’t go on record for fear of retaliation from angry parents or other family members.”

“If Seth found out that a complaint had been made to DHS against him and Mira, he would have immediately blamed April, don’t you think?”

Gretchen said, “That’s what I’m thinking, but more importantly, he would have taken Rosie and left.”

Josie tipped her head back against the headrest. The overpowering exhaustion of the case was back, making her limbs feel heavy. “Rosie stopped attending Hillcrest Elementary right before Mira moved from here to Denton. Mira wasn’t following her man, she was looking for her daughter.”

FORTY-ONE

“You’re telling me these two broads are sisters?” Turner used his feet to push his chair back from his desk before launching his tiny basketball toward the tiny net. It missed, as usual.

“No one says ‘broad’ anymore, jackass,” Gretchen complained, shooting him a look of disgust.

Josie leaned her hip against her own desk and watched the morning news play out on WYEP. Almost the entire half hour was now devoted to the scandalous Carlson–Summers–Lee case. It was press gold, always delivering more. Now little Rosie Summers’s six-year-old school photo joined the carousel of faces connected to the case. Josie had called Amber late the previous evening while Gretchen drove them back to Denton to make sure they could get Rosie’s face on the eleven o’clock news. Rosie was still the top story this morning. As soon as they’d arrived back at the station the night before, Gretchen had contacted the state police to make sure an Amber Alert went out right away.

Josie had gotten little sleep, spending most of the night studying Rosie’s map and trying to make sense of it. She still couldn’t figure it out. Noah had tried to help, without success. When Josie arrived at work in the morning, Gretchen stood in front of the corkboard, also attempting to pinpoint the location before giving up. Turner had taken one glance at it after hearing Josie’s theory that it was a map and dismissed it. “That’s a shitty-ass map,” he had told her. “Work some real leads.”

Real leads. Now Josie lifted her latte to her lips and watched him toss his ball again. This time, it missed and bounced onto the floor. “Don’t be so sensitive, Parker.”

“It’s Palmer,” Josie said flatly. She was in less pain today, still with the aid of ibuprofen, and her voice was a little stronger.

Turner disappeared beneath his desk in search of the ball.

Gretchen shook her head and waved her hand at Josie, as if to say it’s not even worth correcting him anymore. Josie shrugged in response. Keeping her voice low enough for Gretchen’s ears only, she said, “At least Parker is close. All I get is ‘honey’ and ‘sweetheart.’”

There was a bang and then a muffled “ouch”.

“Serves you right,” Gretchen groused.

“I heard that. Also, stay on topic, would you? Carlson and Summers are half-sisters and Summers has a secret kid with this lunatic?”

Gretchen said, “Seth Lee has a legitimate mental illness, but yeah. We got a copy of Rosie’s birth certificate this morning confirming that he’s her father.”

Turner’s voice still sounded like it was coming from far away. “Dude is still looney toons, Parker. I mean, a secret kid! What in the hell was this Summers chick thinking? Her mom didn’t know about this kid? There’s not one goddamn thing in her house about this kid. Nothing on her phone. Her email. Her socials. Where the hell has this kid been all this time? Camping in the woods with Murder Dad?”

Josie walked around to where she could see the soles of his loafers and his ass sticking out. “Can we have this conversation with your face and not with your ass?”

Gretchen said, “There’s no difference. Just answer him.”

“I heard that, Parker.”

Josie shook her head. “Mira was in an abusive relationship with Seth. She told her mother she was in love. For years, she did whatever Seth told her to do. I am sure I don’t need to tell you how difficult it is for women to leave their abusers, no matter how dangerous the situation becomes.”

Turner’s body shifted but still, the only parts of him visible were his feet and ass. His tone, however, turned serious, his words quieter. There wasn’t even any vitality to his “sweetheart” when he said, “No, sweetheart, you don’t have to tell me. I watched my mom go through it with my dad.”

“Huh,” Gretchen said. “He might be human, after all.”

“Heard that, Parker. Keep going, sweetheart. I wanna hear this theory of yours.”

Josie took another sip of her latte. WYEP now had photos of Seth, Mira, and Rosie laid out like a family tree. Only April’s picture floated to the side, disconnected. The chyron read: Missing Child at Center of Apparent Custody Dispute that Ended in Murder. It was a little wordy. Also, Josie wasn’t sure it was a custody dispute. She wasn’t sure what it was—yet. “By the time Mira had Rosie, I think she was so deep into the relationship, and the dynamic between her and Seth was so firmly cemented, that it was just more of the same except now with a child.”

Gretchen said, “We don’t think Mira ever physically had custody of Rosie. We think that Seth was too paranoid to leave Rosie with Mira. He had to have control of her. In his mind, he was protecting her. He believed that some type of ‘authorities’ were going to take her away from him. The one consistent thing that we’ve heard from just about every person we talked to about Seth was that he tends to disappear for long periods of time. That’s probably what he did with Rosie. Every time his delusions got the best of him, he’d take Rosie and leave. He probably kept Mira in constant fear that she’d never see her daughter again.”

“I doubt that Mira even knew where he went when he left,” Josie said. “She just had to wait for him to return—and hope that he would. Rebecca said there was never a way to reach Seth. They just had to wait for him to show up. Mira was probably so afraid that she’d never see Rosie again or that he would hurt her that she didn’t want to take the chance of suing him for custody and opening that can of worms.”

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