Page 65 of Remember Her Name

She held his gaze. “He was the crime scene tech that day. He was supposed to have help, but the other guys were late. He started anyway.”

“He was drunk,” Noah filled in.

“Yes,” said Josie. “I thought he was. Peluso thought so, too.”

Gretchen arched a brow. “Is that why he missed the knife? Because he was inebriated?”

“That’s not the only reason.” Josie pushed the rest of the story out before she lost her nerve. How Lampson had arrived on-scene and immediately zeroed in on a group of teenage girls. How he’d cornered one of them. How she’d looked like a defenseless rabbit staring into the gaping jaw of an apex predator. “She was Miranda O’Malley’s best friend. Lived nearby. Lampson maintained that was the only reason heneeded to talk to her so badly. I found out later that he wanted her to get into the back of his car and wait for him so he could take her to the stationhouse to get her statement. She didn’t want to get in.”

“Knowing Frisk,” said Noah, voice filled with disgust, “he would have made a stop on the way there.”

Josie said, “I couldn’t just stand by.”

The rage that had filled her entire body that day was imprinted on her. Unimaginable carnage had waited inside the house, and Lampson couldn’t care less. He was too busy doing what he always did. What he was never held accountable for—harassing teenage girls.

“Oh shit,” Turner said, “You left your post, didn’t you?”

Josie looked up at him. “I got another officer, Dusty Branson, to come up on the porch to take my place.”

“So what was the problem?” Turner asked.

“I was a hothead back then.”

It had taken her years to be able to control her anger.

Noah knew her better than anyone. “You went after Lampson.”

FORTY-NINE

Josie sighed. She wanted to look anywhere but at her colleagues, but the one thing she would not do was try to escape accountability for her screw-ups. Raising her chin, she said, “Yeah. I ran down to the sidewalk. I pushed him. Hard. He fell. It wasn’t pretty. I said a whole bunch of things I shouldn’t have said.”

“Bet it felt good, though,” said Gretchen as her index finger kept hammering her computer mouse.

It had. Until the consequences of her actions came back to bite her in the ass.

“It was quite the commotion. Weaver came to the door, pushed Dusty right out of the way and came outside. Peluso left the back and came around to separate us. Bud Ernst was supposed to be covering the back for Peluso but then he came around, too. When additional units showed up, we were all out front, shouting at one another. Dusty left the front door when things got heated between Peluso and Lampson.”

“Both entrances were unattended,” Noah said. “Anyone could have gotten in and messed with things.”

This part Josie remembered more vividly than the rest because of all the blowback when it came time for Kellan Neal toput Roger Bell on trial. “That’s exactly what the defense attorney argued in his motion to suppress evidence. When Hugh Weaver went back in, the knife wasn’t there. He didn’t even realize that it was gone. No one did. He took the rest of his photos. The other members of the ERT showed up to help but they didn’t find the knife either. Later, Lampson went back and found it under a radiator. No one ever did figure out what happened, but the theory was that Weaver kicked it when he rushed outside to see what the commotion was about.”

“Are you serious, Quinn?” Turner reached into his pocket and took his phone out but this time, he didn’t scroll, just held it in his hand. “That can’t be real shit. That is beyond incompetence. It’s—I’m not sure I even believe you.”

Josie hooked a thumb over her shoulder toward the computer screen. “It’s all in there. Ernst was fired. Weaver was suspended for months. He was fired for something else several years later, although I’m pretty sure once the dust settled, he found work elsewhere.”

“Still don’t believe this horseshit,” Turner said. “Although if you’re right that these murders are about the Cook family, the polaroids make a hell of a lot of sense. But man, how the hell did anyone get away with that shit? It’s not just incompetence. It’s dereliction of duty. Negligence.”

Noah crossed his arms over his chest, body turning slightly to face Turner. “I’m not saying this in anyone’s defense, but we’re talking fifteen years ago. The department was corrupt from top to bottom. How do you think that sex-trafficking ring survived and thrived for so long?”

Josie said, “The Chief back then, before Wayland Harris took the job, protected all of the officers involved. Peluso and I didn’t get fired because we made sure someone took over our posts before we left them. Branson should have been fired but, like Lampson, he was under the protection of the network of menwho needed to keep their crimes under wraps. Plus, the girl—Miranda O’Malley’s best friend—refused to file a complaint against him. Wouldn’t give us a statement. I don’t think her name is even in the file. Even if she had tried to report him, like I said, he was protected.”

“After Josie busted that sex-trafficking ring, there were only a handful of us left,” Noah said. “When she became interim chief, it took months for her to fill all the vacancies.”

Gretchen raised a hand. “I took one of them. It was a bit of a shitshow when I got here, with the rebuild.”

Turner’s thumb brushed the side of his phone, like he was itching to press the start button, log in, and start scrolling. “Kellan Neal must have been apoplectic.”

“He was,” Josie said. “When he realized just how badly things had been screwed up. He did his best to salvage the case.” Turning back to her computer, she read through more documents, trying to recall exactly what had happened after the debacle with the knife. She hadn’t followed the rest of the case that closely. She was too busy trying to obliterate her memories of the scene and her screw-up with Wild Turkey.

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