Page 25 of Husband Missing

“This isn’t a story.” Josie’s voice came very close to cracking. Control. She had to stay in control.

Trinity surged upright onto her feet and closed the distance between them, clamping her hands over Josie’s upper arms. “No, it’s not a story. I’m not doing it because I’m a journalist. I’mgetting awaywith it because I’m a journalist. People will answer my questions. Most people, anyway. I’ve built up a lot of goodwill in Denton and a lot of places in this whole country. People trust me. They’re comfortable with me, which means they’ll talk. You’re going to be shut out of this investigation. You’re too close. Hell, your department isn’t even handling it. But I know you. After the people you love, the most important thing in your life is your work. It’s the thing that makes all the bad shit bearable. I’ve seen you bury yourself in it a hundred times when you were at your lowest points. You don’t have that right now and clearly, you’re not going to do one damn thing your therapist taught you, so I’m doing this for you.”

There was a hairline fracture in Josie’s mental shield. “Trin,” she choked. “I probably shouldn’t be involved in?—”

Trinity lowered her arms. “Involved in what? Putting all your stuff back while you listen to me talk? You’re not doing anything but what Detective Loughlin asked you to do—see if anything besides the jewelry is missing. Now go to the other side of the bed and start cleaning up.”

Clutching Noah’s shirt against her stomach, Josie walked around to her side of the bed. Reverently, she placed the shirt on top of her dresser and started picking up its overturned drawers.

Trinity said, “The neighbor across the street, two doors down, saw a young man—maybe mid-twenties—walking down the street a few times around seven thirty. Not someone he’s seen on this street before. The reason he noticed the man was because he kept walking back and forth, up the block and then down. Then up again.”

Josie slid each dresser drawer home, relieved none of them were damaged beyond repair. “Description?”

“White, brown hoodie, jeans, maybe five-foot eight or nine. Average size. Nothing more than that. The neighbor never saw him approach the house, only walking along the street several times. Another neighbor captured him walking past his house on his home security camera. He turned the footage over to police last night.”

Josie froze. “Did you see it?”

Trinity rolled her eyes and picked her way over to where Josie stood. “What do you think?”

SEVENTEEN

Seconds later, Trinity turned her phone toward Josie and pressed play on a video she had gotten from a man who lived across the street, about five houses away. The timestamp was seven thirty-twop.m. Her heart sank as she watched. With his hoodie up and his head angled toward the other side of the street, there was no way to get a clear picture of him. There were four other videos of him walking back and forth between seven thirty-two and seven forty-nine but none of them provided a view of his face.

Trinity must have sensed her disappointment. “I’m sorry, Josie.”

“Don’t be. This is—it’s amazing that you did this for me, for Noah.”

Trinity tucked her phone into her pocket and went back to Noah’s side of the bed to sort through more of the mess. “Unfortunately, none of the other neighbors’ security cameras caught him. Too far from the street. Anyway, the guy might just be a random person, but it seems kind of suspicious to me.”

A barrage of questions waited just behind Josie’s lips, but Trinity kept going. “Another neighbor, who lives at the end of the block, said she drove past your house around nine, ninethirty and saw a big, black SUV parked across the driveway. She thought it was one of your colleagues’ or something. No idea if it was old or new. She didn’t see anyone in it or even near it, no memory of the letters or numbers on the license plate, but she remembered it because it had mud crusted all over the tires and wheel wells.”

“She saw that at nine thirty at night?” Josie asked. While her body picked up the clothes at her feet, folded them, and put them back into the dresser, her professional mind whirred to life. Sweet, purposeful relief. This was where she was at her steadiest, her sturdiest. No chaotic emotions sneaking up on her, trying to crack her open.

Trinity found the comforter on the floor and shook it out. “Only because of her headlights. A different neighbor came home from work around ten and he didn’t see any vehicles in your driveway except Noah’s.”

Which meant they’d taken Noah sometime between nine thirty and ten.

“Shit. Heather wouldn’t tell me if they’d gotten the results of the geofence or not. If that guy you showed me had a cell phone or the SUV had a working infotainment center in it, if any of the people in it had cell phones, they might be able to find them that way.”

Noah had been missing approximately thirteen hours. Shouldn’t Heather’s team have something by now?

Trinity folded the comforter and put it at the foot of the bed. “These guys were smart enough to jam your Wi-Fi—only yours—would they be dumb enough to show up in a geofence?”

It was a good point. Trinity knew what a geofence was not just from her years of crime reporting but because she spent a lot of time with Josie, Noah, and Drake who were all in law enforcement. The average person might not know what a geofence was but anyone with half a brain would realizethat their smart devices were trackable. Come to think of it, Turner’s geofence warrants on the armed robberies had turned up nothing.

“You’re right,” said Josie. “The SUV that woman saw in our driveway—did it have a lot of mud on it?”

“Enough for her to notice.”

If the SUV was that dirty, it might have left remnants of the dried mud in the driveway. Josie had pulled right past it, maybe even over it. So had probably a dozen police vehicles. It was a long shot but if any samples could be retrieved, their analysis might tell them something about where the truck had been and possibly, where it had gone.

Another thought occurred to her. The Denton PD also had LPRs, or license plate readers, which scanned the license plates of all moving and parked vehicles nearby and flagged any that had been stolen, had expired tags, or had warrants out on them. The department had installed LPRs on three cruisers. If any of them had been stationed or driving nearby at the time, they might have caught the plate number of the SUV, as well as its owner.

“Did any of the neighbors have video of the SUV?” asked Josie.

“None that I talked to,” Trinity said.

Even if no one on their street had caught the SUV on camera, all residential and commercial surveillance cameras within several blocks could be checked to see if any of them had. Denton’s responding officers or Heather’s team might have been able to follow its path via security footage.

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