Page 22 of Husband Missing

“Did you get a geofence warrant?” Josie asked. “His phone was in the house, but?—”

“Yes,” Heather said.

Josie waited for her to elaborate, aching for more information. “Did you get the results yet?”

Heather’s expression was inscrutable as she studied Josie. Under normal circumstances, as the lead detective, it would be at her discretion as to which details to disclose to the victim’s family, but these weren’t normal circumstances. A police officer was missing. Josie wasn’t just his wife, she was his colleague as well. Heather’s supervisor had the ultimate say in what information to share with Noah’s family.

Josie knew this. Rules were rules. “Tell me,” she demanded anyway.

Heather shook her head. “Josie.”

Her palm came down on the table so hard that it stung. The mug jerked, tea sloshing onto the table. Trout jumped up, growling. “Tell me!” she repeated, louder this time.

Heather was unfazed. “I will tell you whatever I’m authorized to tell you as soon as I’m able to do so.”

Trout turned and directed his growls at Heather. Josie didn’t bother to soothe him. A few seconds ticked by, tense andpainfully slow. Finally, Heather sighed. “This should go without saying but we’re doing absolutely everything we can to locate him as soon as possible.”

Josie had no doubt and yet, it was an empty reassurance.

“Work with me, Josie.”

Trout’s wet nose nudged Josie’s hand. Automatically, she stroked the soft hair under his chin. Choking back the emotion that made her want to scream and rage and destroy everything she could get her hands on, she took a deep breath. Tried to do the box breathing she’d learned in therapy. When that didn’t work, she tried the four-seven-eight breathing that she often found helpful. Inhale for four seconds, hold for seven, exhale for eight. She needed to focus. Be the investigator who had cleared their house.

“He went somewhere. Between the time I left and when the house was broken into. I don’t know where but if you check the GPS on his car?—”

“Already on it,” said Heather. “What’s his blood type?”

“A positive.”

Heather wrote it down but didn’t look Josie in the eye. The evidence techs would have been able to type the blood found in the house and in the driveway on-scene very quickly. Josie used the napkin Paula had left next to her mug to sop up the cold tea she’d spilled. “Was it all his?”

Heather shook her head, still scribbling something in her notebook. “You won’t be able to get back onto the premises until tomorrow. They’re still working. When you do, I need you to go through the house carefully to determine if anything else was taken. A couple of the armed robberies we’ve been looking at outside of Denton had similarities. The Wi-Fi knocked out, house a mess, valuables taken. Your department has investigated some that are definitely the same perpetrators.I’ll review those, see if there’s anything that connects to this. Then?—”

“Heather.” Josie was embarrassed by the way her words came out all hoarse and strangled. “Please.”

Heather closed her notebook. She looked down at Trout, who was still standing, watching her warily. Her voice was quiet. “We found two blood types. A positive and O negative. Most of the blood was A positive.”

FIFTEEN

“Honey, are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Shan, she has to inventory the house. See if anything else is missing.”

“But she hasn’t even slept! Christian, this isn’t a good idea. Maybe we can do it instead.”

Josie tuned out her bickering parents, who stood on the sidewalk beside her, and stared at her house. The mid-morning sun crept across the driveway, where Noah’s car and her SUV were still parked. The state police had issued a warrant for the GPS history, but they hadn’t needed to impound the vehicle for that. A strip of crime scene tape still hung across the front door. It didn’t even look like their home anymore. Josie felt strangely adrift. The house was either going to become a sanctuary again or it was going to be the place where her life was shattered beyond repair.

Either way, she had to go inside.

Her brother, Patrick, appeared halfway down the block, jogging toward them with a tote bag over his arm. “I’ve got trash bags and latex gloves and some cleaning supplies. Peroxide for the blood.”

“Patrick!” Shannon chided.

Christian sighed. “It’s fine, Shan. Josie’s seen more blood than most doctors, probably. She can handle it.”

Josie felt him at her side. When he slid an arm around her, she let her head loll on his shoulder. Almost immediately, her eyes began to droop. Her mother was right. She hadn’t slept. How could she? Noah—her Noah—was gone. His blood was all over their house and in their driveway. No one would or could tell her anything.

Since she couldn’t be part of the official investigation, she’d spent the night sitting cross-legged on the bed in Gretchen’s guest room doing the only things she could do on her own. First, she logged into their Spur Mobile account to review Noah’s phone activity for the last two months. There was nothing out of the ordinary. While she couldn’t view the contents of his texts, she was able to see all the numbers he exchanged messages with. No surprises. No numbers she didn’t recognize. Then she looked at their joint credit and debit accounts. There hadn’t been any unusual activity since last she’d checked them. The pending charges from hours ago told her which stores he’d visited while she was at work. She’d passed the information along to Gretchen who said that the state police had already visited the stores and pulled interior and exterior security footage to see if anyone had been following him. Gretchen didn’t know what they’d found.

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