Page 40

THIRTY-NINE

A chill ran up Josie’s spine. Goosebumps erupted all over her skin, despite the fact that her extremities were covered.

“That’s more than Lila Jensen ever felt,” Trinity remarked.

That was true. Lila was incapable of feeling remorse. Or any human emotion that might have put the brakes on her boundless cruelty.

Eva folded her hands in her lap. “It just bothers me that even with as much as I’ve been able to learn from Roe, there are so many unanswered questions. It’s enough to drive a person mad. I’d like to know where she came from and her father’s identity. Really, anyone who hurt her should have been held accountable too.”

Men being held accountable for hurting women was challenging in the present day. Josie couldn’t imagine how low-priority it would have been back when Roe was arrested. She wouldn’t have been able to testify against anyone who had harmed her.

Men.

In the recesses of Josie’s mind, a theory took form, pushing its way forward.

“Lila was a girl,” she blurted.

Eva and Trinity stilled, waiting for her to say more.

“What if the other children were boys?” Josie said. “Roe might not have understood what sex was or what it meant but she would have known there were differences in anatomy—particularly if she was abused. She would have seen it with her own eyes. If we’re right about the things that happened to her, then the one thing she knew without a doubt was that men hurt people.”

Trinity sucked in a breath. “You think she let Lila live because she was a girl?”

“By the time the remains were found, the sexes of the babies couldn’t be determined,” said Eva. “Not back then, anyway. It’s possible that you’re correct.”

Josie and Trinity shuddered at the same time.

“To think,” Eva said in disgust. “Her father started a chain reaction with his abhorrent abuse. I’d like to know his name just so I could drag it through the mud!”

“Have you ever tried having her do one of those mail-in DNA tests to try to trace her genealogy?” asked Trinity.

“I’ve wanted to but the superintendent claims I need a court order and since there’s no urgent or pressing legal need for her to take the test, the prison won’t allow it. Plus, there is the challenge of getting Roe to do it. I’d need her permission, which means she’d need to understand what I hoped to accomplish by having her do it. I’ve brought up the idea with her several times and she doesn’t seem to grasp it at all. I thought if I could get her to do an at-home DNA test, I could trace her roots that way.”

Lila carried Roe’s DNA but even if she was still alive, she’d be in prison, subject to the restrictions Eva had mentioned. There would have been no getting a test from her either. Josie wasn’t sure it mattered. Given Roe’s advanced age, her parents were already dead. If any descendants of their distant relatives were alive today, linking Roe to them would depend entirely on whether any of them had also submitted a mail-in DNA test to one of the many genealogy sites. Josie understood Eva’s need to discover Roe’s actual name. She also understood Eva’s curiosity, shared it even, but at this late stage of Roe’s life, finding relatives wouldn’t answer the most burning question they all had, which was how she had come to live in the shack in the mountains.

Eva went on, “About fifteen years ago, a reporter contacted the prison and asked to interview Roe. We met for coffee. She said she’d read about the case while looking through old newspapers and wanted to do a story on Roe. After I talked with Roe, she agreed to put the reporter on her approved visitors list so they could meet.”

“What happened?” asked Josie.

“I don’t know. She went to the prison once. I have no idea what happened during the meeting, but I never heard from her again. Her number was disconnected. Couldn’t find her on the internet either although I suppose I should have looked her up when she first tried to contact Roe.”

The scar on the side of Josie’s face tingled. “What was her name?”

Lila had always used aliases. Josie hadn’t known her real name until she was finally arrested. She didn’t know all of the aliases Lila had ever used but the two she was aware of had the same initials, B.R.

Belinda Rose and Barbara Rhodes.

Maybe those initials were Lila’s calling card, her signature.

“Bea Rowe,” Eva answered.

“Can you spell her last name?” Trinity asked, phone in hand, browser open.

“R-o-w-e.”

Rowe. Roe.

Josie was probably the only person who knew Lila well enough to see the connections, to follow the crumbs she’d left behind. Her heartbeat sped up, then seemed to skip before racing again. Despite the fact that she’d only been subjected to Lila for the first fourteen years of her life, she might be the one person on the planet who understood Lila best. That was as much from her years living with Lila as it was from all the time spent honing her skills as a detective.

An image of Lila sitting on the other side of the thick prison glass flashed through Josie’s mind. Standing up, blowing her hot, moist breath against the glass so she could write Roe Hoyt’s inmate number in the condensation. Josie had wanted to know where she came from.

I’ll tell you what, JoJo. You’re a detective, right? I’ll give you a clue. You figure it out before I die, and I’ll give you those names.

What if it had never been about giving Josie the names of her accomplices? Josie hadn’t believed for a hot second that Lila would disclose them, which was part of the reason she hadn’t followed up. Only a fool would trust Lila Jensen to keep a promise. But what if Lila hadn’t been trying to one-up her in terms of whose childhood was worse?

Lila had known her end was near. Not only was she in prison but she had stage four ovarian cancer. What if there was something Lila had wanted Josie to piece together? She could have simply told her outright but that wasn’t Lila’s style. For decades, Josie had been the bane of her existence, the object of her fathomless hatred. There was no way she’d pass up an opportunity to screw with Josie, no matter what the stakes were. She enjoyed taunting her too much to make things easy. She wanted Josie to work for every piece of information.

What had Lila wanted her to figure out? Most importantly, would it somehow help her find Noah? She had to believe that it would. If his abduction was a result of someone searching for Lila’s trophy case of carnage, there had to be something in Lila’s past that would give them the lead they needed to find him. Even though the box was now missing crucial items, Josie had to believe she could still piece together Lila’s puzzle.

She needed this.

“What media outlet did Bea Rowe say she was with?” Trinity asked.

“Oh,” said Eva. “She said she was freelancing but she had a lot of connections and wouldn’t have any issues getting it published.”

Trinity closed the internet browser on her phone. She locked eyes with Josie for a brief moment and Josie could feel their wispy twin telepathy working. There was no reporter by that name. Until this morning, Eva hadn’t even known about Lila. Josie doubted she’d taken to the internet to find out more information before they arrived.

“Show her the photos,” said Josie.

During the night, Trinity had tracked down the only two photos of Lila Jensen that they’d been able to find. One, Dex had given Josie seven years ago. He’d kept it from when he lived with them. In it, Lila and thirteen-year-old Josie stood side by side outside their trailer. Lila was very young and still strikingly beautiful, slender but shapely, her long, silky black hair cascading over her shoulders. Her thin face showcased piercing blue eyes and high cheekbones. Men had always found it difficult to resist her. The second photo was her mug shot. In it, she was barely recognizable as the same person. Puffy cheeks swallowed her eyes. Weight gain had stretched her skin taut. Her black hair had turned white and brittle. The contrast was stark.

Trinity had created a digital photo that put them side by side, cropping Josie out of the older one. She turned her phone screen toward Eva. “Any chance Bea Rowe looked like this?”

Eva gasped, pointing an arthritic finger at younger Lila. “That’s her, isn’t it? Roe’s daughter. My God, they look…almost exactly the same. Not now, of course, but when I first met Roe. The hair is different but everything else…Wow.” She turned her attention to the mug shot. “This woman—she looks a bit like Bea Rowe except Bea was younger, not so sickly. Do you know her?”

A sad smile stretched across Trinity’s face. “I’m sorry to tell you this, Mrs. Owens. That’s also Roe’s daughter, just several years older.”