Page 60 of Remember Her Name

He nodded, the movement jerky.

Gretchen mouthed,Grandmother’s on the way.

Josie was glad. She didn’t want to leave him alone. “We’re going to stop now.”

His eyes sprang open, searching for her as if he was afraid she’d already left. “Please,” he said. “I want to—to finish telling you. If I do, it will help you catch him, right? Then he’ll go to prison for what he did to my mom?”

“It will help,” Josie agreed. “We’re going to do everything we can to catch him and work with prosecutors so they can do their part.”

It was the best she could do. There were no guarantees in her line of work. Killers eluded police. Investigations fell apart. Evidence sometimes wasn’t plentiful or convincing enough to build an airtight case. Juries acquitted, sometimes in the face of mountains of evidence that the defendants had committed the crimes for which they were on trial. There were technicalities and any number of missteps that could occur and lead to a murderer going free. Right now, Jared Rowe didn’t need to know any of that.

“I went inside the church. That’s when I—I saw her. In the middle aisle. She was—she was already dead. I mean, I think. She had to be. There was so much blood. I got out my phone to call 911 and I started to run toward her, but then I don’t know. He was there, just like this dark figure, almost like a shadow, and he was on me, stabbing and stabbing. For a second, I thought I was hallucinating him, like he was some kind of demon or something. I got my hands up. It went so fast. One second I was walking in and seeing my mom and the next second there was this huge knife straight through my whole hand! I think I passed out. The next thing I knew, I was on the floor and something heavy landed on my back. I couldn’t breathe.”

“You were under the pulpit,” Josie told him. “It was tipped onto its side. It probably knocked the wind out of you when it landed.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s how it felt except I didn’t even think of that at the time. I just thought I was going to die. Right then. It felt like forever until I could breathe again. He was walking around. I saw his boots but that was it. I couldn’t move. I tried to talk but it was hard. I begged him to let me go. He never said a word. He just…left.”

Gretchen jumped in. “Did you ever hear or sense anyone else there with him?”

“No. I mean, it was dark and I didn’t have a chance to look around or anything but I don’t remember anyone but him.”

“One last question,” Josie said. “This may seem strange but, Jared, was or is anyone in your family in law enforcement? Retired police officer or assistant district attorney?”

His brow furrowed. “I, um, my grandfather was a cop. He retired when I was in preschool, I think. He lives in the nursing home up on that big hill. Rockview or something?”

Josie’s grandmother had lived there in her last years. “I know it. What’s his name?”

“Hugh Weaver.”

FORTY-FIVE

“Hugh Weaver was a drunk.” Noah shaded his eyes, watching as the ERT loaded a second car onto the police department’s flatbed tow truck. “He didn’t retire. He was asked to resign.”

Josie took a step backward, into the shade of the only tree on Schock’s Auto Repair’s back lot. Under it was a stone wall where Gretchen and Turner sat with three feet between them, sweaty and haggard. Turner had taken off his jacket and tossed it onto the wall beside him. It was nearing dinnertime and the ERT still had one more car to impound. Josie needed coffee, food, and more sleep. She wasn’t the only one. The day’s developments had them all on edge.

Turner fanned his face as the flatbed belched exhaust in their direction. “Hey, Palmer. You ever meet this Weaver guy?”

She didn’t glance his way. “Before my time.”

“Quinn?”

Josie hefted herself onto the wall beside Gretchen. Overhead, a blue jay swooped from branch to branch, shrieking. “I met him a few times. He was one of the crime scene techs. Noah’s right. Every time I ever saw him, he reeked of alcohol.”

Gretchen tilted her chin, watching the angry bird. “Was he active at the same time as Kellan Neal and James Lampson?”

“Yes,” said Josie.

“But he wasn’t part of the whole human trafficking thing?” Turner rifled inside his jacket pockets for his phone and began scrolling. “That’s why he’s in a nursing home and not in prison?”

Noah waved at the tow truck driver as he pulled away. “The only thing Hugh Weaver cared about was his next drink. If he was aware of the trafficking ring, no one could prove it. He wasn’t implicated.”

Josie mentally worked through the names of the men whose progeny had been killed as well as the years they were active working for the city. Kellan Neal, James Lampson, and now, Hugh Weaver. They overlapped by several years. They’d probably been involved in several cases together—Lampson as a detective, Weaver as one of the crime scene techs and Neal preparing them both to testify in court. Why these three? Lampson was corrupt. Weaver was incompetent and unprofessional, but Neal was beyond reproach, which meant these murders weren’t about punishing bad actors.

What the hell was it about?

Noah stepped under the tree with them, using his forearm to wipe the sweat from his brow. “Gretchen, where did you get with those records searches?”

“The request I made to the DA’s office for cases that involved both Neal and Lampson that were overturned after Lampson went to prison is still pending. In terms of stabbing cases that were not overturned involving both Lampson and Neal, I made a list. I emailed it to you guys this morning before Quinn called about Harper’s Peak.”

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