Page 54 of Remember Her Name

Anger flared hot in his chest. He flexed his fists. “Don’t lie to me, bitch.”

Eyes wide, she reminded him of a deer caught in headlights. Except when he took a step toward her, she turned and ran.

FORTY

Denton Memorial Hospital’s emergency department was bustling despite the fact that it was early afternoon, though Fridays tended to be very busy. Josie waited near the nurses’ station, a rapidly cooling coffee in her hand. She couldn’t bring herself to drink it. Everything tasted like death and decomposition. She could still smell it on her clothes and in her hair. Closed-in homicide scenes tended to do that. For the third time in less than ten minutes, a patient walked past her, nostrils flaring, face crumpling in disgust. She was definitely going to have to throw this entire outfit away.

Gretchen appeared from a long hall that led to the emergency department’s main entrance. Everyone she passed gave her a wide berth. Every single person who’d been inside the church carried the odor of death with them like a cloud. No one had time to go home and shower. Not yet. There was too much to be done. Too many leads to run down, and now they had a potential witness.

Gretchen stopped in front of Josie. “Anything?”

Everything had been a blur once they’d realized the boy was still alive. Josie had left the rest of the team at the scene to accompany the victim in the ambulance. “He didn’t speak onthe ride over here. They’re working on him now. Running some tests. Dr. Nashat should be out soon. Officer Chan is collecting his clothes, shoes, and any items on his person for processing. The good news is that he had his wallet on him. I checked for it on the way over. His name is Jared Rowe, seventeen. Denton resident. His house is about twenty minutes from here. I texted the address to Noah.”

An officer would be dispatched to Jared’s residence. They knew his mother was the victim in the church but if his father also lived in the household, they’d need to contact him right away. With the address, they could also find out his mother’s name and begin investigating her last known whereabouts.

“Was he at least conscious?”

“Barely.” Josie pictured the boy’s pale face, his drooping eyelids. She could still hear his incoherent moans. “Sawyer thinks he was in shock. Most of the stab wounds are on his forearms. The hand that was trapped under the pulpit has a pretty large wound straight through. Nothing on his body, but Sawyer was certain he’s got some broken ribs. He may have internal injuries.”

A man with his arm in a sling walked toward them, slowing as he passed, sniffing the air with a pinched expression. “It’s us,” Gretchen told him. When he opened his mouth to speak, she added, “You really don’t want to know.”

Josie watched him until he turned a corner into the waiting room. “What about the polaroid?”

There had been no chance for her to get a closer look at it. They’d left it exactly where they found it. Gretchen slid on her reading glasses and took out her phone. “Hang on. Hummel sent me a picture of it.”

The ERT would be processing the church now. Dr. Feist was likely en route. It would be hours before they learned any detailsabout the body or the scene that could help them further their investigation.

Gretchen handed Josie her phone. Just like the previous polaroids, this one was slightly blurred but appeared to be nothing but the tops of trees as far as the eye could see. The top of the photo was distorted but from what Josie could tell, it was just blue sky. From the angle, the camera had been almost level with the treetops when the photo was taken. “This wasn’t taken above some valley,” Josie said.

“Right,” said Gretchen. “It’s like he climbed to the top of a tree and took it.”

“Great,” Josie sighed, giving the phone back. “Now we just have to search every place in the city where there are trees.”

Gretchen texted the photo to Josie before pocketing her phone. “Every place in the city where there are trees that we worked a case.”

Josie laughed. “That could be anywhere. It’s literally every case. Sure, it would have been a significant case. That’s his pattern, but this?”

She let the question hang in the air, wondering if the killer really wanted them to find the next victim. Every new piece he shifted in his sick game only made it harder for police to know where to go next. If he stumped them, did that mean he won? Or would he give them a free turn, and leave them a new victim in a more obvious place with a new polaroid that was easier to figure out?

Their cell phones chirped at the same time, interrupting Josie’s thoughts. She got to hers first, reading off the texts from Noah before Gretchen had a chance to put her glasses back on. “They found the footage from the parking lot. Around midnight last night, a man drove up with a woman in the passenger’s seat. Dragged her out by her upper arm and marched her away, out of camera range.”

“Last night.” Gretchen looked over her reading glasses at Josie. “He left the polaroid with Stella Townsend on Monday. Five days ago. We found it two days ago.”

Josie’s heart thudded painfully in her chest. “He waited. Shit.”

Gretchen didn’t say it out loud but Josie knew they were both thinking it. If they’d found Stella Townsend and the polaroid sooner, and been able to identify the location in the photo more quickly, they could have put surveillance on the church. They could have caught the killer and prevented the murder of Jared Rowe’s mother.

Josie’s chest felt tight. Had he done it on purpose? Given them time? Or had he simply not been able to pull off the abduction until last night?

“Josie.” Gretchen’s tone held both solace and a gentle warning. “Don’t get too far down that rabbit hole. Chances are he might have figured out we were waiting for him and changed the location.”

Josie paced, pinching the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. Her other hand squeezed her phone so hard, her knuckles blanched. “That kid lost his mother because we couldn’t figure out where the picture had been taken.”

Gretchen stepped in front of Josie. “No. That kid lost his mother because some depraved piece of shit murdered her. You know that. It’s what you tell family members who think they could have done something to change the outcome of their tragedies.”

Josie dropped into the box breathing she’d learned in therapy, trying to calm her body. “Killers kill,” she murmured.

“Yes,” Gretchen said. “Killers kill, and we put them away. The best—and only—thing we can do right now is focus.”

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