Page 36

THIRTY-FIVE

Once they made the exchange, Josie pulled up the internet browser and used the information in the file to try to narrow down the approximate location of Roe’s shack on a map and added a pushpin. Clicking over to terrain, miles and miles of forest filled the screen. “Here,” she said, pointing to a ribbon of road barely visible through the trees. “This is Hoyt Road. If you draw a straight line from the shack to the road, it’s about ten miles.”

Trinity leaned in closer, eyes dancing from the pin to the road before taking in the entirety of the map. “There’s nothing around. No houses. No towns. Nothing. Just that—is that a parking lot?”

“I think so, yeah. The nearest town is…” Josie pinched her fingers together on the screen, zooming out. “Here. Almost twenty miles away. There are other towns but all fifteen to twenty miles from the shack. Trin, this is recent. There are no houses, farms, or residences of any kind for miles. The state game land is protected from development but the land surrounding it isn’t.”

“You’re saying this area is essentially unchanged from the sixties.”

“Yeah. Roe Hoyt wouldn’t have been able to go back and forth from a town or a house or any semblance of civilization on foot. Not easily, anyway. Even if she routinely hiked out to the road, it’s not like she had any way to communicate with people. There wasn’t a way for her to call someone to ask them to meet her. She was living out there. If she had help, it wasn’t reliable. Also, look at these pictures.” Josie set the laptop aside and lined up the photos of Roe’s meager supplies. “What don’t you see?”

Trinity rolled her lips together. Trout stirred on her lap, lifting his head to look at both of them before dropping it back onto Trinity’s leg with a heavy sigh. “No wrappers. No cans. A couple of plastic containers but no store bags of any kind. Nobody was bringing her supplies.”

“Right. If she was getting help, it wasn’t very much.”

“Is that how the first five babies died? The conditions?”

“No. They didn’t die from exposure,” Josie said, paging through more of the file.

Trinity held a hand up. “I don’t want to see the photos again.”

“Me either,” said Josie. It was already seared into her brain. Plucking another report from the pile, she scanned it, confirming that her conclusion was correct. “They had skull fractures.”

“Oh God.”

Trout’s head popped up again. This time, his eyes were wider, more alert, and his ears formed two perfect steeples.

“From a small, unknown blunt object.”

Trinity stroked between Trout’s ears, trying to get him to go back to sleep, but he continued to watch them warily. “That’s…listen, I’m not a newbie journalist. I’ve covered a lot of pretty horrific stuff. Gory, nightmarish crimes. Victims of every age.”

“But the ones involving children are always the hardest,” Josie said softly. “That never changes.”

If it did—at least for Josie—then it was time to turn in her badge.

“Yeah.” Trinity gave Trout a watery smile, followed by a few saccharine words, and he settled back down. “Okay, so we can agree that no matter where Roe Hoyt came from or when her ability to speak became impaired or when her tremor started or how she ended up in that shack, she was very likely there on her own. Given the condition of the supplies she had on hand, she didn’t make it out to civilization often.”

“If at all,” Josie interjected.

“Not sure I buy that. I mean, who got her pregnant? Six times? I get that she couldn’t just stroll out of the forest to go to the nearest grocery store whenever she wanted, but she could have hiked out of there from time to time. It’s possible that she did make the journey from the shack back to civilization—it would just be a hell of a long walk. What if this was one of those cases where a family member was abusing her and when she gave birth, she’d take the children to the shack to…dispose of them?”

“Lila was alive,” Josie said. “For years.”

It still baffled her that Roe had let Lila live. Why? Why her?

“What if…” Trinity shifted her legs under Trout’s weight, stretching them out in front of her and depositing him between them again. “What if the babies didn’t all have the same father? Let’s say this wasn’t a case of her being abused by a family member. Think about it. Whether she was having sex with someone she met in a nearby town or someone who came out to her shack, wouldn’t that guy wonder what happened to the baby?”

“Unless he was there so infrequently that she was able to hide her pregnancies and the remains,” Josie suggested.

“Bullshit,” Trinity argued. “That would involve a lot of luck.”

“Not if he only came out once a year. A lot of hunters only take one annual hunting trip to a specific area. Let’s say this guy was a hunter. Every year he hunts for…let’s say deer—antlered and unantlered, regular firearms—which is generally open near the end of November or beginning of December. He treks out to Roe’s shack. They have sex and then he leaves. She gets pregnant.”

“Huh,” Trinity said. “If she delivered full-term, she’d still have three months before he showed up again. So it’s possible that he never knew—if she was somehow able to hide the evidence of decomposition. But wait, what about Lila? We don’t know the birth order of Roe’s children. Lila could have been the baby number three or four. The father would have known about her.”

“Maybe Roe was able to hide her,” Josie suggested. How, was anyone’s guess.

“Why keep Lila?” Trinity asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What if she killed them because she thought he would get angry or something if he came back and found a baby.” Trinity paused. “Hmmm, that still doesn’t explain Lila.”

Josie didn’t think anything in the universe would ever explain Lila’s existence. Still, one thought had burrowed its way into her brain while they talked. “Maybe she let Lila live based on who fathered her.”

Trinity’s top lip curled in disgust. “If we’re still considering hunters as potential fathers, that actually makes a lot of sense.”

“We’re also assuming any sexual encounters Roe Hoyt had were consensual,” Josie said. “Even before her brain injury, they may not have been. That could have been a factor in what she did.”

“If that’s true, does that mean she consented to sex with Lila’s father? That’s why she got to live?” Trinity shuddered and rubbed her arms even though it wasn’t cold in the room. “All of this is so deeply disturbing. Not to excuse anything that Roe Hoyt did—at all—but there is not one damn thing in any of these reports that even raises the question of who the father or fathers were!”

“If I caught a case like this today,” Josie said, “we’d have the tools to find the father—or fathers—even if the mother wasn’t able to communicate their identity, but back then? It’s not an excuse but without witnesses or an ID from Roe Hoyt or someone coming forward to admit to paternity, that line of inquiry was dead in the water.”

Trinity huffed. “Well, after she was arrested for five murders, I’m sure there was no way anyone was going to admit paternity! This reminds me of something my grandmother used to say—shit—I mean, our grandmother.”

Josie smiled weakly. She’d been reunited with her birth family at the age of thirty. By that time, all of her biological grandparents had passed away. She’d never known any of them. “It’s fine. You can say your grandmother. That’s what she was. On Mom or Dad’s side?”

“Mom’s. When I was a teenager, she used to say, ‘A man can always pull up his pants and walk away.’ I used to think that was her way of telling me not to have sex, but it fits pretty well in this scenario, too. Probably in a lot of different situations.”

Josie laughed despite the gravity of their current situation and the heavy things they were talking about. “That’s a good one.”

“Mom used to say it, too. Seriously, they were trying hard to keep me away from boys. Not that they were lining up back then or anything.”

They lapsed into silence. One day, Josie would have to find out what other pearls of wisdom Shannon had frequently shared with her brother and sister. It was just another thing she’d missed out on because of Lila.

Trinity knew it. She squeezed Josie’s knee. “I’m sorry.”

“Lila had a saying. Not a half bad one, believe it or not.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“She used to say, ‘You can’t always be all roses and sweetness, that don’t get shit done.’”

Trinity pursed her lips momentarily. “That’s…”

Josie tried to smile again but she wasn’t sure if she did. Her eyeballs felt like they were made of sandpaper. A buzzy feeling settled in her bones. It was like she’d been awake for a week. Her body was shutting down under the stress of the last thirty hours. The effort it took just to regulate her emotions—poorly—had sapped her strength.

Thirty hours.

Where was Noah?

She shook off the questions before they had a chance to crowd in. She was too tired to fight off the storm of emotions they would bring. Blinking, she worked hard to focus on Trinity again. “It’s okay. You can say it.”

“No. I can’t.” She started gathering up the reports and photos and tucking them back inside the file. “I think you should go see her.”

“What?”

Trinity didn’t look at her. “Roe Hoyt. You should go see her. She’s very old. I don’t know how much longer she’ll be around. I think one day you’ll regret it if you don’t. You can find out if she had any contact with Lila while they were incarcerated together. See if Lila told her anything important—anything that might lead to someone who might know where to find that Dylan kid or how to track him down. There have been lots of medical advances since the late sixties. It’s possible she’s had therapy for her aphasia by now. The tremor, too. Maybe she can communicate somehow. I know it’s not a strong lead in terms of finding Noah, but I think you should go see her.”

Josie opened her mouth to say that Heather or someone from her team would do that but thought better of it. This was personal, and not just because of Noah. Besides, what if Lila had told Roe something that only Josie could decipher?

“Wait,” Trinity said. “I forgot. There’s a three-day waiting period for visiting inmates in Pennsylvania and that’s if you’re already on the approved list. I could probably get access if I try to do it as a journalist, but it will take longer than three days.”

“I can get in tomorrow,” Josie said.

“Really?”

It would be cheating, technically, and if her Chief or Heather Loughlin found out, she’d be in deep shit. But she’d throw her career away in a heartbeat if there was even a chance that Roe Hoyt knew something that could get them closer to finding Noah. “I can get in because I’m law enforcement.”

“Even if you’re not working a specific case?”

Josie grimaced. “That’s tricky. As long as no one asks for specifics, I can get in. It’s kind of an informal process, especially since I’ve been there so many times for various investigations. Basically, all I have to do is call the prison to let them know which inmate I want to speak with and tell them what time I’m coming. I’m assuming Roe doesn’t have an attorney anymore so that won’t be a sticking point.”

“No paperwork?”

“I haven’t been asked for documents in years. I’ll call the superintendent in the morning.”

Trinity’s look of incredulity turned into a grin. “Perfect.”

Josie waved toward the reports and photos spread out before them. “Is there anything there we didn’t go over?”

Trinity took her time organizing the contents. Then she pulled out a few more documents. “The appeal her attorney filed which was denied, of course. Records from her admission to SCI Muncy. Oh, and this…this is interesting. It’s an approved visitor list. One from just after she was incarcerated in 1968 which lists her lawyer. No one else. But this one…” she thrust the page triumphantly in Josie’s face, “is an updated list from 1970.”

The words on the page swam. A few hard blinks later, Josie was able to read them. “Who’s Eva Owens?”

“I don’t know but I’m sure as hell going to find out.”

Josie didn’t have the energy to change her clothes or brush her teeth or stand up even though Shannon had gone back to her house and packed a bag full of clothes and toiletries for her. But she wanted to stay awake. What if there was news?

Trinity put the reassembled file on her nightstand and pointed at Josie. “You sleep.”

“I won’t be able to sleep,” said Josie. “I shouldn’t.”

“You will and you should,” Trinity assured her. The laptop was back in her lap. The sound of her fingers clacking against the keys filled the room. “Because you’ll know that I’m working on leads the whole time from this file. Not one minute will be wasted. When you wake up, we’ll be ready to go!”

Josie laid down and turned onto her stomach. Trout rolled over until his back was pressed into her hip. She reached under her pillow for Noah’s shirt and brought it to her face, inhaling. Her eyes drifted closed. I’m coming for you , she told him silently. Nothing will stop me.

“You can say it, Trin,” she mumbled as sleep pushed at the edges of her consciousness.

The typing stopped. Josie’s body jostled as her sister moved—on or off the bed, she couldn’t tell. Her eyelids were too heavy to open. A blanket settled over her. Trinity’s fingers were featherlight as she tucked it around Josie’s shoulders. With a sigh, she said, “Fine. Lila’s saying is kind of badass. All this time, I thought there wasn’t a single thing that vile bitch said or did in her life that could be considered remotely positive—besides dying—but I like that saying. Ugh. It feels so wrong to admit that.”

“It’s fine,” Josie said. Sleep was dragging her under fast. “We’ll make it ours. Steal it from Lila the way she stole everything from us.”

Because the days of Lila Jensen taking things from Josie, even from beyond the grave, were over.