Page 85 of Husband Missing

“It doesn’t really matter whether she talks or not,” Drake added. “Now that her identity is known, Denton PD or Heather Loughlin’s team will be able to track this guy down through phone and social media records. It’ll solve the Phelan murder, all those armed robberies, and we’ll find Noah.”

“I hope so.”

Everything fit together so perfectly. All the pieces fell into place. Why did every fiber of Josie’s being resist this narrative? Was it just her fear that Noah wouldn’t be found alive? Or was it easier for her to pick apart the tidy package than to think about her husband and what was going to happen to her life if she didn’t get him back?

Those messy feelings strained against the limits of her emotional armor.

“There are loose ends,” said Josie quickly, forcing herself to focus on anything besides the ever-widening cracks in that shield.

Drake swatted at a bug hovering near his head. “There always are.”

“But this is different. The Lila thing. Erica’s boyfriend was one of Lila’s victims. What are the odds that her daughter just happened to end up with one of her victims? Well, the son of one of her victims.”

Drake held out a hand to Josie and she took it, letting him pull her upright. He said, “Erica’s boyfriend was in trouble. That’s why he was searching for Lila’s trophy box. If Lila targeted his father after she finished ruining Alec Slater’s life, it’s possible that he tracked down Erica the same way you and Trinity did—using the article. Or maybe Lila told him how she screwed Alec over. She loved to taunt people, especially kids, from what you’ve said. Maybe he didn’t even know about Erica, or that she was Lila’s daughter, he was trying to get to Alec because he thought he had something to offer. Meeting Erica was incidental. Or he did know about Erica and thought she had the box?”

Josie thought about the brown lock of hair tied with blue ribbon. Was that Erica’s hair? She’d always assumed it was either hers or that of some other unlucky child Lila had victimized.

“Both of those explanations make sense, I guess,” she said. “If this kid was that desperate, he might have thought he could get something out of Alec, just like Lila had. Embezzlement is a white-collar crime, and Alec never went to prison. This kid wouldn’t have known from the article that he’d lost everything. Or, if Lila told him about Erica, then it stood to reason she would be in possession of the box. He clearly knew about it and its contents.”

They lapsed into silence. Moths batted against the park lights, making soft little taps. Fear and frustration oozed from the cracks in Josie’s mental shell. The quiet was dangerous now. It let in too many thoughts, too many feelings. She forced her attention back to the loose ends.

“Why was Gina Phelan outside the construction site?” It wasn’t a question she expected Drake to answer, and he didn’t. She continued, “Maybe she was looking for weaknesses in the perimeter or places they could install more cameras or lights, but she didn’t bring her clipboard.”

“Maybe she was walking to a nearby corner store for a snack,” Drake suggested.

It was plausible but Josie still didn’t buy it. She closed her eyes and replayed the day of Gina’s murder, from her arrival on the scene to when she left. Something about Gina’s actions that day had never sat right with her.

“She moved her car,” Josie said. “Drove it off the site to get lunch and parked it back inside near the trailer and then about forty minutes before the stabbing, she took it back out and parked it a few blocks away. Why?”

Drake remained silent, letting her work it out for herself.

“Even if she didn’t want her car inside the site for some reason, she could have just parked it on the street that runs behind it where all the other employees do. Not blocks away.”

“Maybe she was outside the site because she was walking to her car,” he said.

“She left her purse in the trailer. Her ID.”

“You said she had her fob. Maybe she was just retrieving something from her car.”

Josie thought about Gretchen’s interview with Erica and the way she’d used “us” and “we” when she spoke about her and Gina being attacked. Before that, she’d said that she hadn’t met Gina prior to the day of the stabbing. Josie believed she wastelling the truth but the “us” and “we” made it sound like they were a unit. Like they’d been walking down the street together. Maybe Josie was reading too much into it, but a voice in the back of her mind whispered that she wasn’t.

“I think that Gina and Erica met before the stabbing,” she said. “I don’t know how or where or in what capacity, but I think they had already talked to one another. They were going somewhere together.”

FIFTY-SIX

Drake leaned back, stretching an arm across the top of the bench. “Maybe Gina saw Erica while she was out for lunch, realized Erica was being abused, and decided to come back and help her get away from this guy. Get her into the car and drive her somewhere.”

“Maybe,” Josie said. “It probably would have been safer to bring Erica inside the site—at least until she figured out her next steps—instead of coming up with some elaborate plan to rescue her.”

“If Erica was as scared as you say, she probably wouldn’t have gone to the site with Gina.”

Drake managed to find a place for every piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit. But there were two things that still bothered Josie. An hour before she was stabbed shielding Erica with her body, Gina made two calls to her DA friend in Montgomery County. Not one but two. It was doubtful that any criminal charges would be brought against the company or the Phelans themselves in connection with the quarterback who had died at the build. Even if Gina was concerned about that, discussing it with her prosecutor friend would not have been urgent. Certainly not pressing enough to make two calls in a short span of time.

Drake took his phone from his running armband and checked it. “We should get back.”

The second thing that nagged at Josie was the obviously long-standing tension among the Phelans that revolved around some kind of sibling rivalry between Gina and Mace. It was clear that Tilly and Clint Phelan found their son lacking compared to their daughter. What had Clint said to Mace in the trailer when they were being questioned by Josie and Turner?

If she wasn’t always cleaning up your messes.

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