Page 72 of My Child is Missing

You have a new serial killer in Denton and didn’t even call me????

Josie groaned and looked up from her phone to everyone staring at her. She waved it in the air. “It’s already gone national. Trinity just texted me.”

“Not good, people,” said the Chief.

“If the damn lab would hurry up with our DNA results,” Noah complained. “That would be helpful.”

“I’ll call them,” the Chief said.

Before he could go to his office, the stairwell door swished open again. This time, Hummel strode in, a large brown evidence bag in his hands.

“Well,” said Gretchen. “This must be good because we never see you up here.”

“It better be good,” the Chief said, his voice almost a shout. “We need a damn miracle.”

Hummel gave a half-smile. “You need to pay me more if you want miracles. I’ve got a couple of things for you, though.” He walked up to their desks, which had all been pushed together. A quick glance at Mettner’s empty chair drained some of the color from his face. He moved around it to stand beside Josie and set the bag down. “I finished processing all of the Patchetts’ devices and vehicles. Their devices were clean. The father watches porn on his phone. A couple of those ‘barely legal’ sites with eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds. I called a buddy of mine in the Internet Crimes Against Children task force to ask him about these sites, see if Dave Patchett is looking at child porn charges, but he said they were legal. Disgusting, but legal.”

The Chief made a noise deep in his throat. “Do we need to be looking at Dave Patchett more closely?”

Hummel held up a finger. “Wait till you hear what else I’ve got. In terms of the Patchett vehicles, there wasn’t much to work with. We know Kayleigh’s been in them so finding her DNA isn’t exactly a shocker. We did find plenty of unidentified prints on the plow truck, the minivan, and the sedan, most of which are not in AFIS.”

“Most?” said the Chief. “That means you found something.”

Hummel pushed a hand through his red hair. He looked around at each one of them. “On the hood of the Patchetts’ sedan we found a partial handprint. It belongs to Henry Thomas.”

“What?” Gretchen blurted out.

Hummel took his phone out and punched in his passcode. “I’ll show you the photos but basically, it looks like he was maybe leaning against the hood, and he rested his hand on it.”

Gretchen said, “The Patchetts have denied knowing him. He has denied knowing the Patchetts. We’ve found no connection between him and Kayleigh. How could he have left his handprint on the car?”

Hummel handed his phone to Josie, since she was closest. Sure enough, it showed a developed latent partial handprint on the hood of the Patchetts’ sedan. The fingers stretched toward the windshield, so he had put his hand on the hood while facing the car.

“Kayleigh and Savannah have softball and soccer games in the city park,” Josie said. “Thomas works there.”

Hummel shook his head. “The GPS doesn’t support that. It looks like Dave Patchett uses the sedan to go to work and come home but the records go back six months and it’s never been near the city park.”

Josie said, “What about before that? We don’t know that it’s never been at the park, just not in the last six months.”

The Chief said, “We need to talk to the Patchetts about where Henry Thomas might have encountered that car.”

“What’s the theory here?” asked Noah. “That Thomas was stalking Kayleigh Patchett?”

“We just don’t know yet, Fraley,” the Chief said.

“There’s one more thing you all need to see,” Hummel said.

He took a pair of gloves from his pocket and snapped them on before reaching inside the evidence bag. From it, he pulled a large yellow zippered sweatshirt. He held it up for them to see. It was wrinkled and streaked with dirt.

Gretchen said, “A sweatshirt?”

“The man Savannah Patchett saw when Kayleigh was abducted was wearing yellow,” Josie said. “Blue jeans and a yellow shirt or jacket or something. Hummel, where did you get that?”

“This was balled up and stuffed under the passenger’s seat of Asher Jackson Jenks’s car,” Hummel announced.

“I’m pretty sure lots of people in this city own yellow sweatshirts,” Noah said.

Hummel raised a brow at him. “You think I’d come here with some basic sweatshirt?” he pointed at the lapel. “It had blood on it. Right here. I typed it. It’s the same blood type as Kayleigh Patchett’s. I sent the rest in for DNA to see if it’s really her blood. It’s also got these weird holes in it.” He poked a finger through a quarter-sized hole in the upper arm of the left sleeve, then the right. “But I’m not sure that’s important.”

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