Page 15

FOURTEEN

Heather scribbled furiously in her notebook, recording Josie’s account. Once she finished, she turned to a fresh page. Then she regarded Josie steadily, her expression unreadable. “Was Noah having issues with anyone?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? Maybe a coworker? A neighbor? A friend? Someone he arrested in the past?”

“No one,” Josie said.

“How about you two?” asked Heather. “Any problems? Marital stress?”

In other words, had their marriage deteriorated to the point that Josie had somehow set into motion a scenario that ended with Noah dead? Had she hired someone to get rid of him? Orchestrated things so that his death would look like a random home invasion? “No problems,” Josie answered.

Heather’s pen froze over her notepad. “I saw the house, Josie. It looked like you were painting one of the guest rooms. There were mobiles?—”

“We’re adopting a child,” Josie said quickly. “We’re just waiting for a match.”

Heather leaned back in her chair and tapped her pen against her lower lip. Sympathy shimmered in her amber-colored eyes. Josie tried not to wince. She much preferred Heather to keep things cold and clinical. Josie was barely keeping her own feelings in check. She didn’t have the bandwidth to contend with those of others.

“Congratulations,” Heather said. “The process of getting approved is long and tedious. That must have been stressful.”

“It was, at times, but we handled it.”

Heather turned her attention to her notebook again. “I’ve talked with your chief, but I’ll ask you as well. Are there any old cases Noah might have worked where someone he put away would want to come after him?”

Josie had thought about that for the last few hours but come up empty. “No. None.”

Heather didn’t bother to sugarcoat the next question or to preface it by saying something about her just having to do her job, how these were standard questions she was required to ask. “Is there any chance Noah was having an affair?”

“No,” Josie said with certainty.

“Does he have any drug or gambling problems?”

Josie knew these were the correct questions to ask in this scenario. They were exactly the ones she would have asked and yet, it rankled. But wasn’t it like that for all spouses in her position? You thought you knew your partner. You were so certain. Then one day you came home to an empty, trashed house, blood everywhere, and the person you thought you knew better than yourself was gone.

Could Noah have been having an affair? Could he have a well-hidden gambling problem? Or a drug problem? They didn’t spend every moment together. But wouldn’t she have noticed? Suspected? Or, in some sick twist of irony, would she have been the last to suspect? Had she grown too complacent? Given Noah too much trust?

“Josie?”

Or had there been something deeper going on? Something more personal to Noah? His parents had married as teenagers after an unplanned pregnancy. They’d stayed together and had two more children. Noah was the youngest. His childhood had been ideal. A stable home. Two loving parents. Caring older siblings. Youth sports leagues. Holidays filled with fun traditions. Family vacations. Everything Josie always desperately wished her own childhood had held—would have held if she hadn’t been abducted at three weeks old by a psychopath, not to be reunited with her biological family until the age of thirty. Then after Noah turned eighteen, his father left to start a new family. He’d been counting down to his youngest child’s eighteenth birthday like a man waiting to be released from prison. Noah had been left behind with his devastated mother to pick up the pieces. Everything they thought they knew about their lives felt like a lie.

Trout’s head lifted. A small keening noise came from his little body.

Noah had promised Josie he was nothing like his father and that he would never act like his father, but what if it wasn’t something he’d been able to control? What if he’d grown tired of their life? What if he didn’t want this anymore? Always having to deal with her trauma-informed responses and now the responsibility of adopting a child? What if he had started an affair or developed a drug or gambling problem to avoid facing the fact that he no longer wanted a life with her?

“Josie?”

No. She knew him. He wasn’t a coward. In fact, his wedding vow to her had been that he’d always run toward the danger with her. If he’d been unhappy, he would have talked with her about it. Not turned to drugs or gambling or the arms of another woman only to have it blow up in his face.

Heather touched Josie’s forearm. Trout jumped up, yipping, and swatted his paw at where their skin met. Startled, Heather withdrew her hand. “It’s okay, little buddy,” she said soothingly. Trout gave her a wary look before dropping back down. With a huff, he flopped across Josie’s feet again.

“I’m sorry,” Josie said. “What was the question?”

“Does Noah have a drug or gambling problem?”

“No,” Josie said. “He doesn’t.”

“Do you have any idea who might have broken into your house?”

“No.”

Heather adjusted her reading glasses. “We found Noah’s service pistol in your living room. There was also a bullet lodged in the baseboard of the foyer wall. Same type found in the magazine of his gun. We’ll run ballistics, but we’re fairly certain it came from Noah’s gun since the mag is only missing one round and there’s a spent casing near where his weapon was found.”

Just as Josie had suspected, he’d fired on someone inside their home and missed.

“How many firearms do the two of you have at your residence?” asked Heather.

“We each have a service pistol, and I have a personal one. A Smith and Wesson M&P, nine-millimeter. It should be in my nightstand vault—if it wasn’t taken.”

“The lockbox was there,” Heather said. “If you give us the code to get into it, we’ll make sure your firearm wasn’t taken.”

Josie told her.

“I know the house was a mess and you weren’t in there very long, but did it look like anything was missing?”

“My jewelry. Other than that, I’m not sure. The place was trashed, and I was trying to clear it.”

Heather turned to a blank page in her notebook and pushed it, along with her pen, toward Josie. “Make me a list of what was taken. If you’ve got photos, send those along to me later. Your laptops, televisions, tablets, all that sort of stuff, those were all still there, weren’t they?”

Josie nodded as she quickly jotted down the items she could remember.

“I’ll need access to Noah’s phone. I’ll get a warrant, but?—”

“I’ll sign a consent form.” Josie wrote his passcode at the bottom of her list and pushed the notepad back to Heather. It was the date of their first kiss.

“Did you get a geofence warrant?” Josie asked. “His phone was in the house, but?—”

“Yes,” Heather said.

Josie waited for her to elaborate, aching for more information. “Did you get the results yet?”

Heather’s expression was inscrutable as she studied Josie. Under normal circumstances, as the lead detective, it would be at her discretion as to which details to disclose to the victim’s family, but these weren’t normal circumstances. A police officer was missing. Josie wasn’t just his wife, she was his colleague as well. Heather’s supervisor had the ultimate say in what information to share with Noah’s family.

Josie knew this. Rules were rules. “Tell me,” she demanded anyway.

Heather shook her head. “Josie.”

Her palm came down on the table so hard that it stung. The mug jerked, tea sloshing onto the table. Trout jumped up, growling. “Tell me!” she repeated, louder this time.

Heather was unfazed. “I will tell you whatever I’m authorized to tell you as soon as I’m able to do so.”

Trout turned and directed his growls at Heather. Josie didn’t bother to soothe him. A few seconds ticked by, tense and painfully slow. Finally, Heather sighed. “This should go without saying but we’re doing absolutely everything we can to locate him as soon as possible.”

Josie had no doubt and yet, it was an empty reassurance.

“Work with me, Josie.”

Trout’s wet nose nudged Josie’s hand. Automatically, she stroked the soft hair under his chin. Choking back the emotion that made her want to scream and rage and destroy everything she could get her hands on, she took a deep breath. Tried to do the box breathing she’d learned in therapy. When that didn’t work, she tried the four-seven-eight breathing that she often found helpful. Inhale for four seconds, hold for seven, exhale for eight. She needed to focus. Be the investigator who had cleared their house.

“He went somewhere. Between the time I left and when the house was broken into. I don’t know where but if you check the GPS on his car?—”

“Already on it,” said Heather. “What’s his blood type?”

“A positive.”

Heather wrote it down but didn’t look Josie in the eye. The evidence techs would have been able to type the blood found in the house and in the driveway on-scene very quickly. Josie used the napkin Paula had left next to her mug to sop up the cold tea she’d spilled. “Was it all his?”

Heather shook her head, still scribbling something in her notebook. “You won’t be able to get back onto the premises until tomorrow. They’re still working. When you do, I need you to go through the house carefully to determine if anything else was taken. A couple of the armed robberies we’ve been looking at outside of Denton had similarities. The Wi-Fi knocked out, house a mess, valuables taken. Your department has investigated some that are definitely the same perpetrators. I’ll review those, see if there’s anything that connects to this. Then?—”

“Heather.” Josie was embarrassed by the way her words came out all hoarse and strangled. “Please.”

Heather closed her notebook. She looked down at Trout, who was still standing, watching her warily. Her voice was quiet. “We found two blood types. A positive and O negative. Most of the blood was A positive.”