Page 18 of My Child is Missing

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Henry said, showing the first signs of strain. A light sheen of sweat broke out across his forehead.

“Like I said, some facts entered into a computer don’t always tell the full story,” Josie said. “What am I missing, Henry? Because the way I see it, you spent five years in prison for unlawful restraint of a young woman. Today, a girl not much younger than her was abducted. We know she was at your home because our dog followed her scent there.”

His voice rose an octave. “I didn’t kidnap anyone. That nineteen-year-old? She was my buddy’s girlfriend. He owed me money. I went to his house to get it. She was there. I made her go into the basement to keep her out of my way. I didn’t hurt her. The DA couldn’t get me on the robbery charge so he used the unlawful restraint charge and that little bi—” He stopped himself, taking a deep breath. “That woman threw me under the bus out of loyalty to her boyfriend. It was a personal problem with a friend of mine. That’s all.”

Josie nodded along as he spoke. “Fair enough.”

Henry shifted in the chair as if he was trying to find a more comfortable position, folding and unfolding his arms and drawing his feet in, knees pressed together.

Josie added, “But still, it’s not a stretch to think that you are capable of abducting a teenage girl. You’re out of prison less than two years. Alone on the top of that mountain. A guy like you? I’m sure you’ve got needs. It must be hard to meet women with that conviction in your past. Maybe you got frustrated, thought it might be easier to take what you wanted. Saw an opportunity, went for it. It’s been known to happen.”

“Are you crazy?” he said. “Trying some cop mind-fuck on me? I don’t need to ‘take’ anything from anyone and I’m not touching jailbait. You think I want to go back inside?”

“I think there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“We can sit here all night and all day tomorrow and I’m still going to tell you the same thing. The truth. I do not know that girl. I’ve never seen her before. I didn’t do anything to her,” he shot back.

Josie waited a couple of seconds, staring directly into his eyes. Then she leaned forward, entering his personal space. “My team is processing your home as we speak. They’ve impounded your vehicles.” At this, his skin went pale. Josie continued, “They’re combing over every inch of your property and your cars. What are they going to find, Henry?”

He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “No-nothing,” he stammered, his facade of cool disinterest fully gone now.

Josie reshaped her features into a semblance of concern. “You must know how this works already, Henry. Don’t make it worse for yourself. Tell me what they’re going to find. If you say they’ll find nothing and later I find out that there was something, you’ll be in even bigger trouble.”

He pulled his feet in and pressed his knees together. His face hardened. “I want to leave now.”

She couldn’t hold him, not any longer than it would take for her team to execute the warrant and that would only be a few hours. “I can have a patrol officer take you home. You won’t be able to enter until my team is finished. I just want to give you one more chance to get things out in the open, Henry, to get ahead of this. Where is Kayleigh Patchett?”

He crossed his arms tightly over his chest again. “I already told you. I don’t know.”

TWELVE

Killing takes practice. Once I’ve done it a couple of times, I realize that it’s not the killing that brings me joy. What satisfies me is the swell of fear that keeps driving kids into the woods to find me. It’s the kind of fear you get in a haunted house or on a roller coaster. You know that once it’s over you’ll be safe. They come into my domain with a false sense of security, a sort of thrill in their pursuit of me, someone that they’ve deemed fictional. If they knew the truth, they’d never go into the woods again.

Some of them I’ve watched and let go. The watching was enough. Knowing how much power I had over them was enough to sate me.

But a legend doesn’t remain a legend by letting their prey escape, unscathed.

THIRTEEN

Josie’s eyes burned. Her legs ached. The rank scent of stale sweat reached her nostrils every time she lifted her arms. The café down the street where they usually got their coffee wasn’t open yet, so she’d brewed coffee in the first-floor breakroom and carried it up to her desk in the second-floor great room. She sipped it as she settled into her chair. The bitterness made her eyes water. It was just about foura.m. Sunday morning by the time Noah, Gretchen, Chief Chitwood, and their press liaison, Amber Watts, tromped through the door. Silently they filed in, Noah, Gretchen, and Amber taking their places at their desks. The Chief stood in the middle of the room, arms folded over his thin chest, watching them. As haggard as Josie felt, the rest of them looked much worse. Even Amber, who’d been asked by the Chief to come in the night before when the Amber Alert went out. Then again, she’d looked perpetually exhausted since Mettner died. Josie suspected she wasn’t sleeping much anymore either.

Josie looked at Noah and Gretchen, eyes carefully avoiding Mettner’s desk. It was just as it had been when he’d died. None of them had had the heart to touch a thing on it—except for the reports and official documents they needed. The Chief had told Amber that she could take his personal effects from it when she was ready, but she hadn’t touched the desk either. None of them talked about Mettner’s desk. Most of the time, they all avoided even looking at it. Except that when Josie was the only one there, she did, remembering the way he used to sit, the way he’d swipe and scroll on his phone, sending everything he’d recorded on his notes app in the field to his work email so that he could then transfer it to his reports. The way he used to tidy up his desk at the end of every shift, putting his pens back into their holder, and making sure the edges of all his stacked files lined up just so. He’d throw out any paper coffee cups or takeout containers and then he’d pull his small wastebasket from under his desk and set it in plain view so that the cleaning staff didn’t have to go searching for it. Then, after he started seeing Amber, he’d walk over to her desk—if she wasn’t there—and scribble a note on the top sheet of her Post-it pad. Josie had never read the notes, but she’d always noticed the way Amber smiled when she came in the next day and read them.

A burning flared in Josie’s stomach. Shutting down thoughts of Mett, she turned her focus back to her colleagues. “Where are we?”

Gretchen sighed. “Let’s start with the standard stuff. Canvass of the Patchetts’ neighbors turned up nothing. The nearby sex offenders our patrol units checked in with didn’t raise any red flags. There were only three and they all had alibis for the day. A property record search didn’t turn up anyone in the area that we didn’t already talk with—including Henry Thomas. He’s the only one up on that mountain.”

Josie said, “Tell me you found something in Thomas’s cabin.”

Noah brushed some dirt from his polo shirt. “The ERT took a number of DNA samples from what Hummel thinks were sweat and saliva but those things take a long time to process. It doesn’t help us right now.”

“What about hair?” Josie said.

“Hummel found several long, dark hairs. Some in the living room, some in the bathroom. They could belong to Kayleigh but of course we’ve got to have them analyzed at the lab,” said Noah.

Before Josie could speak, Gretchen said, “I already took a sample of Kayleigh’s hair from her hairbrush and buccal swabs from both parents so we can get a familial DNA match if the hairs in Thomas’s cabin belong to Kayleigh. Noah called me as soon as Hummel found the first hair.”

“Did any of the hairs in the cabin have roots?” asked Josie. Without the root, the lab would not be able to get sufficient DNA from a strand of hair in order to test it. In 2019, a scientist in California had made huge advances in extracting DNA from rootless hair, but the technique wasn’t widely used enough in law enforcement to be of any help to Denton PD in this case.

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