Page 77 of Remember Her Name

Josie thought back to the discrepancy in age between Simon Cook and Isaac Hampton, trying to remember precisely how many years separated them.

Sheila’s fingers twisted in her lap. Her voice was quiet when she next spoke. “Um, before he left, he told me something.”

Josie wondered if Isaac had confessed to the murders. Was that why Sheila had run? Had she really not known? Not had any involvement? Not even suspected?

“What did he tell you?” Noah asked, glancing over Sheila’s head as an ambulance and two police cruisers pulled up nearby.

She looked at Josie. “He said you would come.”

“The police?” Josie asked.

“No. You. Detective Quinn.”

Noah’s brow knit with concern. “Did he say why Detective Quinn would show up?”

“No, and I didn’t ask. I was already—already in such shock. I couldn’t process anything more.”

In spite of the heat still smothering them, Josie felt a chill along the nape of her neck. “What else did he say?”

“It makes no sense but here it is: he said to tell you, ‘Don’t overlook it.’”

Josie exchanged another look with Noah. Don’t overlook what?

Sheila lurched toward Josie and dug her fingers into Josie’s forearm. “Now that I told you everything, you can let me go, right? I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m sorry I ran, but when he told me that you were going to come to the house, I got scared. I thought I knew him, but I didn’t know him at all. How would he know you were going to come looking for him? Unless he’s gotten caught up in something bad? I just lost my daughter and now my husband. My entire life has been a lie. When you came to the house and then you wanted to question me even though he wasn’t there, I just…I panicked. Whatever he’s done, I wasn’t a part of it. You have to believe me. I told you everything. I just want to go back to New York.”

Noah sighed. “I’m afraid you’ll still have to come down to the station to give a statement.”

Don’t overlook it. Josie’s mind spun the loose bits round and round, hoping if it whirled them just so, she’d see what she was missing. Townsend’s illegal records searches. Sheila’s assertions that she never would have married Isaac if she knew his true identity. The gap in age between Simon Cook and his new identity, Isaac Hampton. It was five years, she remembered now. Five years. Then there was the tattoo.

That was it. The tattoo. Josie’s heart did a double tap. Nausea churned in her stomach. It couldn’t be. It didn’t make sense. At the same time, given the little they did know, especially now with Sheila’s confessions, it was the only thing that made sense.

Josie swallowed, tasting the scummy pondwater again. “Mrs. Hampton, what did your husband say his real name was?”

She knew the answer—as insane as it seemed—but she needed to hear Sheila say it out loud.

From behind them, the heavy feet of emergency responders sounded. Noah held up a hand to signal for them to pause. “Mrs. Hampton,” he said. “Your husband’s real name.”

She released Josie’s arm and wiped away another tear. “I—I thought you knew. Roger Bell. My husband’s original name, before he changed it, was Roger Bell.”

FIFTY-NINE

“Let me get this straight.” Turner trailed behind Josie, stepping over debris on the first floor of the abandoned textile mill near Denton East High School. “Isaac Hampton isn’t Simon Cook. He’s Roger Bell. The killer—of the Cook family, that is—and you think he’s also the Polaroid Killer.”

Josie sighed and tugged at the collar of her polo shirt. It was only marginally cooler inside the cavernous building, but she was still sweating. It was almost ninep.m. but the temperature hadn’t let up. So much for the long shower she’d taken after her dip in the pond. “How many times do I have to go over this with you before you understand it?” she asked irritably.

“I don’t know, swee— Quinn. I’m just saying that everything about this case is shady as hell. Hey, do you think this guy shit himself when the ERT came to his house to get elimination prints from him?”

“I don’t know.” Since the ERT was only looking to eliminate which prints belonged to the Hampton couple when they processed the stolen car, they hadn’t run them through AFIS, which would have immediately flagged Isaac Hampton’s prints as belonging to Roger Bell. Instead, Officer Chan, who’d just completed her Level II latent print certification, did the printcomparisons herself. Then she’d taken the prints found in the car that didn’t match the Hamptons’ and run those through AFIS. It wasn’t against protocol not to use AFIS when processing elimination prints. Certainly, neither of the Hamptons had been suspect at that time so there was no reason to enter their prints into AFIS.

But hindsight was a bitch.

They had run Isaac Hampton’s prints through AFIS after the confrontation with Sheila and they matched to Roger Bell.

Turner kicked at a cluster of vines that had snaked in through one of the broken windows and crept across the dirty wooden floor. “He really got lucky that Chan didn’t use AFIS. Pretty risky to put himself in the crosshairs like that by stealing his own damn car, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think it mattered to him.” Josie aimed her flashlight at a pile of garbage. A rat scurried out from under it, racing away from her. “It would have made things more difficult for him to keep killing and playing this sick game he’s dragged us into, but I’m pretty sure his endgame was always for us to find out he was the Polaroid Killer.”

They stopped in front of a tall window. Most of its panes had been smashed out long ago. Outside, halogen lights blazed. Josie could see the ERT processing Isaac Hampton’s car. The one he’d left in this morning after revealing to his wife that he was the man who slaughtered her adopted daughter’s family. The same man a jury acquitted. Once Sheila had been taken back to the stationhouse, Turner had called the infotainment company associated with the Hamptons’ remaining vehicle and gotten them to give up its location—without a warrant. It had taken some time and a lot of needling on his part, but he’d finally succeeded.

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