Page 38 of Remember Her Name

“He’s too careful,” Noah said.

In the upper right of the video, the seconds ticked by. Finally, Stella came into view, wearing the clothes she’d been found in, and carrying a knit purse and the messenger bag Turner had mentioned. She paused a few feet from the man, motioning to her vehicle.

“There’s no audio, unfortunately,” Turner said.

The man spoke. Josie only knew that because she could see his jaw moving. The camera angle didn’t allow for them to see his lips, which was unfortunate since Noah was a very good lip-reader. As he talked, Stella moved closer. The conversation lasted a minute and seventeen seconds and then Stella directed him toward the passenger’s side. They both got into the car, and she drove off.

“That’s odd,” said Noah.

“He didn’t appear to threaten her,” Josie added. A fluttering sensation filled her chest. “But she got into the car willingly, from what it looks like. She might have known him.”

“That’s what I thought,” Turner said. “None of the coworkers or neighbors I spoke with seemed shady. We’ll need to take a deeper dive into Townsend’s life. She hasn’t been enrolled in any classes at the university for about two years, but I could always talk with some of her professors there and see if they remember her having any problems with anyone. Whatever we can get from her phone and laptop might help. Her social media accounts aren’t very active. She doesn’t give out much personal information there.”

Josie took a sip of her coffee. “Rowland’s property is remote. If Stella drove them there and he left her car behind?—”

Turner interrupted her. “Then he either hoofed it out of there or he had help—someone to pick him up. Rowland’s property management company turned over their surveillance footage from the premises but there’s no clear shot of the helipad. You can see figures moving but they’re too far from the camera to be of any use. Already did the geofence warrant for the area surrounding Rowland’s property. The Chief had everyone and their brother over there at first light doing a line search in case he did walk home. Found nothing. We’ve also got a warrant out for the GPS from Stella’s car to see if she stopped anywhere on the way to Rowland’s. That’ll be in any time now.”

Nothing. That’s all this case had to give. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing. Josie tried not to feel defeated and yet, the image of that third polaroid sat front and center in her mind, taunting her. Reminding her another woman was out there somewhere, probably already dead.

“Maybe Hummel will have something for us. There’s still prints and DNA to be pulled from the car, the knife, the polaroid. Stella’s clothes.”

Even as she said it, she had a feeling Hummel would find nothing of use.

Noah said, “Hopefully the DNA profiles from the Cleo Tate homicide will come back sooner rather than later. If there’s a match in CODIS, we can get this guy.”

“Sure, LT,” Turner said, without enthusiasm. “If you say so.”

Josie said, “How about Remy Tate’s phone records?”

“Waiting on those, too.” Turner’s fingers drummed on top of the table. He wouldn’t be there much longer. “Waiting on everything. By the time I see you two again, you’ll be up to your eyeballs in reports.”

Turner was right. By the end of their shift, Josie’s eyes burned with exhaustion, irritated from hours of sifting through thousands of pages. She could barely keep them open. She never thought she’d look forward to seeing Turner, but he was due to relieve them at midnight and she couldn’t wait for him to get there.

She wasn’t even annoyed when he showed up a half hour late, guzzling down one of his disgusting energy drinks, and belching a hello. He took one look at her and grinned. “Wow. You look like you got dragged behind a car for the last eight hours.”

Noah lifted his head from the documents he was reviewing. “Turner. Don’t start.”

Josie sighed and stretched her arms over her head. “And yet, I still look better than you.”

Turner dropped into his chair and started emptying the pockets of his suit jacket. Three more energy drinks, his phone, a charger, and some crumpled pieces of paper. “You find anything good? Actual evidence we can use?”

The update from Hummel hadn’t been encouraging. The DNA profile from the knife used to kill Cleo Tate and from her car hadn’t come back yet. The DNA from Stella Townsend’s crime scene had been sent to the lab, but the results wouldtake time. He had pulled a couple of sets of unknown prints from inside Townsend’s car but nothing from the knife or the polaroid.

In addition to that, the geofence around Rowland’s property had turned up nothing. Josie was certain that the killer had an accomplice, given the remoteness of the murder scenes, unless he’d thought far enough ahead to plant an additional vehicle nearby. If so, he had to have used an older vehicle that didn’t have an infotainment center or GPS in it or, if he had used a newer vehicle, he’d somehow managed to disable the GPS or block it. Doing so would be fairly sophisticated—and illegal—but it wasn’t impossible.

“Nothing we can use yet,” Noah answered.

Josie shuffled the pages from Stella Townsend’s phone records around until she found a series of texts she had flagged earlier. She handed them across the desks to Turner. “When you interviewed Stella Townsend’s coworkers at WYEP, did you talk to a producer named Vicky Platt?”

Turner skimmed over the messages. “Blonde chick—I mean, woman? Yeah. Stella was her PA. She was pretty upset. Didn’t stop her from flirting with me.”

Josie rolled her eyes. “Not every woman you speak with is flirting with you.”

He didn’t look up from the pages in his hand. “Don’t worry, I shut it down.”

“How’d you do that? By being yourself?”

In an amazing display of maturity, or maybe self-restraint, Turner ignored her. “These text messages aren’t cryptic at all.”

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