Page 71 of My Child is Missing

His breath was hot in her ear. “You sure?”

She put her hand inside his boxer shorts. “Yes, it will help me sleep. I need sleep. My focus has been off. I feel like I’m in a fog. I need to be sharper. We’ve got a killer to catch.”

His mouth moved back to her throat, planting small kisses along her collarbones. “I love it when you talk sexy.”

Josie laughed but rolled onto her back to give his mouth better access to her skin. “That’s enough talking, Lieutenant.”

FORTY-FOUR

The next day, Friday, passed uneventfully with the team waiting on any news from the state police lab, dodging the press, and following up on useless tips that came in through the tip line. Josie’s mind kept circling the hidden thought in her mind, waiting for it to show itself. Mentally, she reviewed everything she knew about each case, even the ones outside her jurisdiction, hoping something would jar her brain into revealing the slippery thought. No such luck.

By Saturday morning, Josie felt like she was repeating the same day as she and Noah returned to the stationhouse for the morning briefing. They sat at their desks while Gretchen moved around handing out fresh coffees. The Chief was at the corkboard, mumbling under his breath. Josie took a sip from her cup, delighted to find it was her new favorite, a flat blonde latte. Exhaustion still weighed on her, but her mind felt sharper, more focused, than it had in days. Whether that was from two nights spent with Noah or the few hours of deep sleep she’d gotten after each time they made love, it was difficult to say.

The Chief tapped his index finger against one of the new pushpins. The map had been expanded to include the Stacks, the area where Felicia Evans’s body was found just a few miles away, and Romig’s. “Whether this killer is Henry Thomas or Asher Jackson Jenks, you know what we’re missing?”

“A lot,” said Gretchen, settling into her seat.

“The snare trap,” said Josie. “In the Felicia Evans case.”

“Exactly,” The Chief said. “He’s got to be keeping it somewhere, but we searched both their homes and their vehicles and we’ve got nothing.”

Noah said, “Are we absolutely sure that none of the traps in Thomas’s cabin marked as his dad’s were snares?”

“They were all footholds,” Gretchen said. She gave a shudder. “Coiled spring. Barbaric.”

The foothold traps were made of metal jaws that snapped onto an animal’s foot when tripped, much in the way mousetraps worked against mice. They were considered inhumane by a number of anti-fur groups. Often, animals would chew their own leg off rather than stay trapped. Some states had banned them although they were still legal in Pennsylvania.

The Chief sighed. “What this killer is doing to these kids is barbaric.”

The stairwell door swished open, and Amber sailed in. Although she looked beautiful, as always, with a long, flowing maxi dress that complemented the auburn locks cascading down her back, Josie noticed the deep hollows beneath her eyes. She tossed her purse and tablet onto her desk and walked over to the television hanging on the wall. The remote was in a tray under it. She snatched it up, pointed it at the screen like a weapon, and clicked the power button. WYEP was in the middle of a breaking news alert. Dallas Jones stood in front of a state police barracks in Lenore County. The chyron beneath him read:Serial Killer “The Woodsman” On the Loose.

A collective groan went up in the room.

Josie took out her phone and sent Heather Loughlin a text.

Turn on the news.

Amber turned to them. “This is going to go national in a hot second. It doesn’t matter now if the Woodsman is just some story or that the killer you’re looking for is ‘just a man.’ In the eyes of the country, he’s the same and he’s a serial killer targeting children. Right now, his hunting ground is Denton. You need to be ready for the onslaught of press.”

Josie’s phone buzzed. Heather responded:

I wasn’t the one who leaked this.

Gretchen pointed at the television. “How much does he know?”

Amber’s voice went up an octave. “Enough! He knows enough to make your investigation extremely difficult from this point forward.”

Noah said, “I think Gretchen is wondering whether or not Dallas Jones knows about the trapping aspect of this case. That this killer is using snares and potentially deadfall traps to capture these kids before he kills them.”

“Yeah,” said the Chief. “It would be great if we could keep that close to our vests. We don’t need people or the press conducting their own investigations based on that information.”

Amber looked back at the screen which was now a montage of scenes from the search for Kayleigh Patchett with the reporter talking over it. The volume was too low for Josie to make anything out. “I watched this once before I got here,” said Amber. “He hasn’t said anything about the trapping. He’s mostly concerned with the stories going around schools and how these kids are doing some kind of ‘challenge.’”

Josie texted Heather back.

Plug the leak if you can. We’d like to keep the traps out of the press.

She was about to put her phone away when it buzzed again. This time, it was a text from her twin sister, Trinity Payne, a nationally renowned journalist who lived and worked in New York City. She had her own show,Unsolved Crimes with Trinity Payne.The text read:

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