Page 55 of Husband Missing

That meant he’d found something else and was willing to share it.

Her thumbs typed the words “thank you,” even though she really didn’t want to give Turner another reason to gloat, but before she could hit send, a new message from him popped up.

Happy?

She erased the “thank you” and replied,No.

Shocking. Don’t you have something to do besides harass me?

Josie smiled, which felt weird and unsettling. Turner was helping her while still being every bit the asshole she’d come to know and detest. In fact, his infuriating douchebaggery was the only thing in her life that was the same as it had been before Noah was abducted. In a strange and twisted way, it was comforting. This one last vestige of normalcy made it easier for her to hold onto the conviction that Noah’s absence was only a temporary crisis. Soon, she’d get him back. She’d put their lives back together.

She texted,Piss offalong with a smiley face.

Then she put her phone away. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Owens. You were saying you wanted to bring attention to Roe Hoyt’s case?”

Eva’s smile was strained. The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes deepened. “I want to bring attention to Roe’s case because I’ve always felt that there was so much more to it that got brushed aside in the rush to put her away.”

“What do you mean?” asked Josie. “Are you suggesting that she didn’t kill those infants?”

Sadness pooled in Eva’s eyes. “Oh no. She did it. From what your sister told me this morning, you know quite a bit about the case.”

“Only up to the trial,” Josie explained.

“Then you know that when she was found, she had an old head injury. That’s what caused her aphasia and the tremors in her right hand.”

“Have any of the doctors she’s seen over the years looked more closely at her head injury?” Trinity asked. “Beyond X-rays?”

“Yes,” said Eva. “I saw to it that she had both an MRI and a CT scan when those became available. Those confirmed an injury to her frontal lobe that had caused the tremors and also affected her brain’s language centers. Unfortunately, with an injury that causes aphasia, the first year afterward is the mostcritical in terms of getting treatment. Because of neuroplasticity. That initial time period is when you have the greatest chance of making some kind of recovery. Roe never had that. We don’t even know when it occurred. I was only nineteen when I started volunteering at the prison. She was, hands down, the most troublesome and volatile inmate. At first, all volunteers were told we couldn’t get near her, for our own safety. But I…”

Her eyes grew glassy as she drifted off. She turned her head toward the fountain. Josie had the sense that she was no longer in the room with them at all. After a long silence, she blinked, shifted in her chair, and returned her focus to them. “Volunteers were restricted to the program area but from the windows, I kept seeing Roe all alone outside during her recreation time, always curled up on the ground. She was unkempt. Any time a guard came to collect her she’d snarl at them, but in her quiet moments, I could tell she was bewildered. Afraid. I knew what she had done but the more I observed her, the more I wondered about what exactly was going on in her head.”

“You were curious,” Josie said.

“Yes.” Eva blew out a long breath, as if it had taken a lot to admit that. “I just wanted to understand where she came from, why she was the way she was, and what would drive her to commit such horrific crimes. She had no family, no friends. As a volunteer, one of my responsibilities was to advocate for inmates who had no one to help them. I wanted to do that for Roe. It gave me a way in, a way to learn more about her.”

“The prison let you?” asked Trinity. “Let you get close to her?”

Eva laughed. “Oh no. Not at first. It took a very long time before they’d let me into a visitor’s room with her. For months, we were on opposite sides of a glass partition, but it was impossible to communicate with her. I don’t believe she ever learned to read before she was incarcerated. With the areas ofher brain that are compromised, she hasn’t been able to learn, so writing isn’t a possibility at all. They did allow her to draw—crayons only because she would stab with pens or pencils—but I never understood her pictures. The tremor made it difficult to figure out what she was trying to get across. Stick figures, I recognized. Always two.”

“One small and one large?” asked Josie.

Eva’s eyes widened in surprise. “Yes. How did you know?”

“There was a drawing in the file I have. They were standing next to one another.”

“That’s right, although sometimes the small one was on its side.”

“Did she ever draw anything besides the figures?”

“She drew shapes around them, all sizes, above or next to them. At least, I thought that’s what they were. Some were hard to identify but from what I could tell, she tried to draw squares, rectangles, and triangles. Her hand would twitch so badly, she often couldn’t draw straight lines, so I was left guessing as to what each thing represented. I would say, ‘is that the shack where you lived?’ ‘Is that a tree? A rock?’ and of course all she could say was, ‘Roe,’ so she’d point and repeat her name over and over. Then she would cry when I couldn’t understand what she was telling me. We gave up on that after a while.”

“That’s so sad,” Trinity said.

“It is,” Eva agreed. “Anyway, I finally convinced the prison to let me meet with her in a regular room. They reluctantly allowed it only because Roe had never been agitated with me. But then…” she pointed to a thin silver scar that went from her left nostril to the top of her upper lip, “she got me good.”

Trinity’s eyes widened. “You went back?”

Eva shrugged. “I probably had some kind of hero complex but I’m also stubborn. The bigger the challenge, the more I wantto tackle it. The best way to get me to do anything is to tell me I can’t do it.”

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