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SIXTY-NINE

Laughter burst from Josie’s lips and the weight of the past three days lifted. The paramedics chuckled, too. Even the Chief cracked a smile.

Then Josie was shooed aside as Noah was loaded into the back of the ambulance. “You can ride with him but just give us a minute.”

She took a step back while they performed their checks and readied Noah for the journey. The fear and anxiety that had consumed her until this moment drained away. It felt like coming back to herself. Everything was quiet inside her brain. Taking a deep breath, she turned back toward the scene in time to see Heather guiding Erica out of the shed.

This was not the plucky woman who had lied to Gretchen in the Denton PD interrogation room with forced confidence. The woman trudging toward her was bedraggled. Her blonde hair was matted, much of it stained varying shades of reddish-brown. Dried blood streaked her pale skin. A bruise darkened one of her temples. Her rumpled, dirty tank top fully exposed the bruises on her throat and wrists. Blood-covered sweatpants sagged on her thin hips. Her gait was wonky, one foot in only a sock while the other wore a sneaker.

Her eyes found Josie and flickered with the same recognition they had the day Gretchen had taken her into custody. They were more haunted now, sorrowful, making it hard to find a resemblance to Lila. It was there though, in the high cheekbones, the fullness of her lips and the black roots peeking from her scalp.

They didn’t speak as Heather walked her past. It wasn’t the time for that. Josie backed up to give them room. Her heel came down on something. It rolled under her boot, sending her off-balance. Flailing her arms, she shifted her weight to her other foot, avoiding an embarrassing tumble. The shaft of an arrow rolled along the asphalt of the driveway. Its green fletching was shredded and its broadhead had either broken off or never been attached.

It was outside the crime scene tape, but Josie didn’t dare touch it. Had Gina practiced here? The lodge was in Mace’s name though it had been transferred to him from their father, Clint.

Where the driveway met the thin grass of the yard, a trail of related items led to a plywood table. A single glove sat in its center. A traditional bow teetered on the edge, its smooth, light maple finish in stark contrast to the rough surface of the table. Beyond that was a large square target and three additional small, foam targets in the shape of rabbits.

Rabbits.

Josie’s heart did a double-tap. She stepped right up to the crime scene tape again, letting it graze her chest. Craning her neck, she studied the items scattered along the patchy grass. Searching, searching. Question and answer.

Josie’s knowledge of archery was based almost entirely on things she’d learned from coworkers who were lifelong hunters. There were two types of bows. One was the traditional bow which was just what it sounded like—the kind humans had been using for thousands of years. She knew those came in two different shapes. The longbow formed a D, its limbs curving toward the archer, whereas the limbs of the recurve bow curled toward the target. Josie had always thought of the recurve as the longbow in a fancier font.

Behind her, one of the paramedics spoke. “UPMC Williamsport will take him. They’re a level-two trauma center.”

The second type of bow was the compound bow which was so elaborate that Josie had never been able to make sense of its complex network of cables, rods, cams, sights, and wheels. She only knew that it was more powerful, more accurate and easier to shoot. In the profile that WYEP had run about Gina, she’d been pictured using both a traditional and a compound bow.

“Quinn?” Chief Chitwood drew up beside her. “Something wrong?”

Josie shook her head. The ambulance was going to leave soon. She kept cataloging the fallen archery items. Shiny silver broadheads. Edged, penetrating. They were ideal for hunting large game like deer and elk, sometimes even bear.

“I can see you working on something,” the Chief said.

Two kinds of bows. Broadheads. Large game. Rabbits.

Question and answer.

It was right there. A hair’s breadth away. Mettner would know this.

“Rabbits are small game,” she muttered, crouching and scanning the ground. “Two different kinds of bows. Two…”

“We’ll get you checked out at the hospital, too,” said the Chief.

“There!” she said, more loudly than she expected. As she pointed to the handful of small, black, metal cylinders no more than an inch long, their circumference no wider than a pencil, flared and concave at one end, the pieces clicked into place.

Just as there were two types of bows, there were two types of arrowheads. The broadhead was pointy and sharp. The blunt-tipped arrowhead was non-pointed, sometimes rounded, sometimes flat or even concave. It was made from rubber, plastic, and even steel and used to hunt small game. Rabbits, squirrels, grouse, pheasants.

“Are you going to tell me what’s happening right now?” asked the Chief.

The items in the baggie in Lila’s box and the charm on Erica’s necklace were blunt-tipped arrowheads.

“We’re just about ready here,” called one of the paramedics.

Josie took out her phone and snapped a few pictures of the ones in the grass before hurrying toward the ambulance. She settled in on the bench next to Noah and covered his hand with one of her own. He was asleep, his chest rising and falling evenly.

Chief Chitwood stood just outside the back, one bushy eyebrow kinked. “Glad we had this talk, Quinn. I’ll see you two at the hospital.”

The paramedic tending to Noah shut the doors and they were off. Josie kept her focus on her husband’s mangled face, ready to reassure him if he woke while her mind kept spinning.

Why would Lila keep blunt-tipped arrows in her morbid box of mementos? To Josie’s knowledge, she’d never picked up a bow, which meant they hadn’t belonged to her. She’d taken them from someone. The Phelans? Why had she given one to Erica, though, without ever explaining its significance?

Blunt-tipped arrows weren’t unique. There were probably tens of thousands of the very same kind circulating all over the country. But it would be foolish to discount the Phelans. Lila had led her to them.

Everything was about Lila.

She’d wanted Josie to see something.

A memory flashed across Josie’s mind. Visiting Lila in prison the day she’d traced Roe Hoyt’s inmate number into the condensation left by her breath.

“Oh, you want to play that game? Who had the worse childhood? You don’t want to know what happened to me.”

Josie leaned forward. “You’re wrong. I do want to know. Your foster care file was destroyed. There is nothing left. I don’t even know where you came from.”

Lila considered this for a moment. Then her hand tightened around the receiver. “I’ll tell you what, JoJo. You’re a detective, right? Big-time chief of police and all that. I’ll give you a clue. You figure it out before I die, and I’ll give you those names.”

Lila had wanted Josie to see Roe Hoyt, her mother.

The items in her box had led Josie to Erica Slater, her daughter.

That only left one other player. Her father.

Clint Phelan was the right age, a lifelong hunter, and an accomplished archer. He’d mentored Gina and she’d gone on to win state championships. Josie didn’t know if he’d ever had a hunting cabin or been part of a camp in Bradford County but that wouldn’t be difficult to check.

How had Lila known? Had she done a mail-in DNA test? Or did she remember him from her time with Roe? She wouldn’t have known his name—she didn’t even have language skills when she was found. But the Phelans often appeared on local television. Would she have recognized his face? Maybe not, but she might have remembered the brass belt buckle he always wore.

Noah stirred, groaning. His good eye opened. “Josie?”

She stood up and leaned over so he could see her. “I’m right here. We’re almost to the hospital. I’m not going anywhere.”

His arms and legs were strapped down. There was no way for him to reach for her, but she felt his fingers twitch under her palm and she squeezed them.

When he drifted off again, she resumed her seat but kept her hand on top of his. She never wanted to break contact with him again.

“Forty minutes out,” shouted the driver.

Josie’s brain went back to work. Lila must have made contact with Clint Phelan at some point. Obviously, he hadn’t welcomed her with open arms. Why would he? She was living, breathing proof of his greatest sin. Forcing himself on a troubled young woman who wanted so badly to be free from her father’s abuse that she chose to live alone in the woods, stealing from campers and hunters to clothe herself and trapping small game to eat.

Small game.

Another flicker in the recesses of her brain. She let it lie.

Even if Clint Phelan had wanted to acknowledge Lila—even if he believed his encounters with Roe Hoyt had been consensual—admitting his paternity would tie him to one of the state’s most disturbing criminal cases. It wouldn’t have been a good look for the public face of one of the biggest construction and development companies in Pennsylvania. He would be the man whose mistress turned out to be a violent, feral woman who killed her own children. Five of them.

It was more likely that Lila had tried to blackmail him. That was her specialty, after all. Maybe she had succeeded, but why take blunt-tipped arrowheads for a souvenir?

Five of them.

No. Six. Lila was the sixth.

Clint was an accomplished hunter and archer. Blunt-tipped arrows were used to hunt small game. Squirrels, rabbits, grouse, pheasants. A sharper broadhead would obliterate a creature that tiny and delicate. Blunt-tipped arrowheads did just enough damage to kill.

Her stomach lurched. She hadn’t eaten in hours but bile threatened to come back up.

Five tiny skulls, their round white surfaces fractured like cracked eggs.

“They had skull fractures. From a small, unknown blunt object.”

“Oh God.”

The paramedic looked up from the clipboard he was scribbling on. “You okay, miss?”

Josie forced her nausea down. “Fine,” she replied with a stiff smile.

Roe’s arms returned to the cradling position, rocking and rocking. This time, she looked from the invisible infant to the clock high on the wall to their right.

It hadn’t been about time at all. She’d been trying to indicate something in the distance, maybe someone in an elevated position, on the top of a hill. The clock just happened to be there.

Slowly, she brought her hands up, angled toward the clock. Then she arced them down toward where the crook of her left elbow had been. “Roe,” she said. “Roe.”

Roe.

Arrow.

It wasn’t a random sound. It wasn’t meant to be her name. She’d been trying to tell everyone. For over sixty years, she’d been trying to tell everyone that an arrow had killed her children.