Page 18 of The Couple’s Secret (Detective Josie Quinn #23)

Fifteen

Denton PD’s evidence processing site was part of their impound lot.

It was located in a remote area of North Denton that didn’t see much traffic.

Fencing surrounded the premises. In the booth by the entrance gate, an officer was always on duty, ensuring that only authorized personnel entered.

He waved Josie and Gretchen through without a word and they found a parking spot near the squat cinderblock building at the back of the lot.

It always looked inhospitable. No windows.

A single blue door. Even the tiny windows on the garage bay doors were covered with white laminate so no one could peek inside.

Josie and Gretchen made their way through the small, empty front office and into a more spacious room that was used to process and catalog evidence.

Hummel sat at the large stainless-steel table in the center of the room.

At least a dozen old, dirty items were arrayed before him.

His head was bent toward his open laptop, fingers flying across it.

The scowl on his face when he looked up at them made Josie regret their decision not to stop and get him a coffee.

Hummel was almost as much of a control freak as Josie, which meant that he probably hadn’t slept very much since Tobias Lachlan’s car was recovered from the river.

He had a good team but the only person he really trusted to do things right was himself.

Plus, out of the entire ERT, he had the most certifications for in-house evidence processing.

Gretchen must have had the same thought. She pursed her lips for a moment before addressing him. “You look miserable. We can go get you caffeine or food or both, come back, and try this again.”

Hummel pushed his laptop aside and rubbed at the nape of his neck. “Forget it. I don’t have anything here that would make that trip worth it.”

“We’re not expecting much,” Josie admitted. “The car was submerged under water for seven years. I’m surprised anything survived.”

He stood and stretched his arms over his head.

“You’d be surprised what stays intact underwater over long periods of time.

Depends on the body of water, of course.

A buddy of mine once found a woman’s purse at the bottom of a pond.

It was under water for seventeen years. All her stuff was still inside.

Everything. Not in great shape, obviously, but there. ”

“Not much of a current in a pond,” Gretchen said.

“True. I wouldn’t have bet on finding much in Lachlan’s car because it was in the river but since the windows weren’t open all the way, it looks like a lot of what was in there when they went into the water was still there.

” He motioned toward the objects spread across the table.

“This is what I’ve got. Everything is still drying out.

Once it does, I’ll seal it in evidence bags. ”

Josie stepped forward, scanning his findings.

A rusted car jack. A handheld air compressor, crusted with dirt, its hose rotted.

Two men’s dress boots. Remnants of reddish-brown mud clung to them.

Another set of shoes were nearby. Ballet flats, from what Josie could tell.

The soles had peeled away. They looked one minor jostle away from total disintegration.

Faded, threadbare pieces of fabric, stiff from having air-dried, took up almost half the table.

Pieces of the clothing that Tobias and Cora were wearing the night they were killed.

A set of keys. A cell phone. Despite the ERT’s efforts to wash away all traces of the river from each object, they were still streaked with grime.

“Would you look at that.” Gretchen pointed to a wallet that had fared well beneath the water. Hummel had removed Tobias Lachlan’s driver’s license, credit cards, and health insurance card. All of them appeared remarkably unscathed.

“Weird, right? What survives years of submersion and what doesn’t.”

Gretchen put her reading glasses on and leaned over the table, peering closely at each object. “No projectiles?”

“Nope.”

Josie sighed. “What else do you have?”

Hummel walked around the table to a countertop along the wall. “This is the rest. Cora Stevens’ things. No jewelry.”

“Not even her engagement ring?” Josie asked.

Hummel shook his head. “Either she wasn’t wearing it or it somehow slipped through a crevice or out the window.”

“Or the killer took it before rolling the car into the water,” Gretchen suggested. “It should be easy enough to figure out if she was wearing it the night they were killed. What else did you recover?”

Hummel waved a hand over another array of items spread across the countertop. “Her purse was on the passenger’s side floor. Zipped up so everything was still inside.”

It was a medium-sized black purse with one long strap that was now broken.

Its polyester shell was cracked in places.

Just like everything else they’d recovered from the car, a coating of dried mud adhered to it.

Its inner liner had started to disintegrate.

Cora’s ID, insurance card and credit cards were as near pristine as Tobias’s.

Her other possessions still bore the river’s imprint, crusted with dried muck.

A lipstick, compact, mascara, hairbrush, a change purse, a pen, a keychain that said “#1 Mom” with four keys on it and a cell phone.

All pretty standard things one would expect to find in a woman’s purse.

Except one thing.

Josie pointed to it. “Is that a skeleton key?”

Hummel sighed. “Yeah, looks like it. I can’t figure out what else it would be.”

It was small, not much bigger than a soda bottle cap, and made of some sort of metal.

The head appeared to be circular, but it was badly corroded, obscuring any details or design that might have hinted at what it was meant to unlock.

Josie guessed there were probably thousands, if not more, of those sorts of keys in the world.

“I assume you’ve got a lecture on skeleton keys prepared for us,” Gretchen said, barely suppressing a smirk.

Hummel narrowed his eyes, glaring at her. “I have a lecture on Google and how you guys can use it, too.”

Gretchen said nothing. Silently, Josie counted off the seconds. When she got to thirty-seven, Hummel shook his head. Blowing out a breath, he said, “It’s not a lecture. More like a bullet point list.”

“Let’s hear it.” Gretchen was full-on grinning now, satisfaction written all over her face.

“Fine,” he huffed, evidently put out by his own thoroughness. “Skeleton keys have been around since ancient Rome, believe it or not. They were originally used on doors, chests, trunks, stuff like that. In the Middle Ages they were used to open a variety of different locks.”

“Kind of like a master key?” asked Josie.

Hummel nodded. “More or less, yeah. There’s a hell of a lot more to their history, but you get the gist. By today’s standards, the locks they opened were pretty low-quality.

Skeleton keys are still used today, mostly on antique locks, from what I gathered.

Also, replica skeleton keys are a thing now. For decorative purposes.”

Gretchen leaned over the table to get a closer look. “Isn’t it a bit small to be a skeleton key?”

Despite how tiny it was, it had the hallmark features of one with its straight blade and rectangular tip.

“They come in all different sizes.”

“Any way to tell whether it’s from some kind of antique or if it’s more recent?” asked Josie.

Hummel shrugged. “Not sure. I tried doing a reverse image search on the internet, but this thing is too corroded for that. I’m reluctant to try to remove some of the corrosion in case it just disintegrates.

That’s above my pay grade. I’m going to send it to the state police lab to see if they can figure out what kind of metal it’s made of and whether it can be cleaned up. ”

Josie said, “The real question is why this was in Cora’s purse and how important is it?”

“It’s important until we know it’s not,” Gretchen sighed. “Which means we’ll need to find out if she owned anything that required a skeleton key to unlock it. We know the kids kept Tobias’s recliner, but we don’t know what Riley kept of her mother’s things—aside from her sweater.”

Josie wondered if Zane Lachlan still lived in Tobias and Cora’s old home.

No one would have been able to sell it while they were missing because legally, the couple had been considered alive for the past seven years.

The torturous state of limbo their children had lived in all this time wasn’t merely emotional.

There were practical and physical considerations.

The couple had left behind a house, vehicles, half of a business, bank accounts, credit card accounts, retirement funds.

All adult things that their children would have been restricted from using or benefiting from.

The only thing they would have had control over were their parents’ personal possessions, which included anything inside the house.

If Cora had had a trunk or some small piece of furniture that could only be unlocked with the skeleton key, Josie was certain that Riley would have broken into it at some point.

Lots of parents kept items they didn’t want their kids to see or touch under lock and key.

Josie and Noah had lockboxes for their service weapons.

They’d always had them but after Wren moved in, they upgraded to newer ones that required a passcode as well as a key.

Despite the redundancy, they’d started carrying the keys with them rather than leaving them hidden in the bedroom.

After realizing that Wren had gone through her nightstand, Josie felt validated in taking the extra precautions.

The girl hadn’t been looking for a gun, but she had invaded Josie’s privacy.

If they hadn’t taken such great pains to secure their weapons, Wren might have come across the key, might have figured out what it was for.

Maybe she wouldn’t have ever tried to access the gun, but she would have known that she could.

Josie trusted no one but herself and Noah with their firearms. Securing them was a safety issue.

She believed Riley when she said Cora hadn’t owned a gun.

Looking at the small, corroded skeleton key, she was certain that whatever Cora had been trying to keep private had less to do with safety and more to do with keeping secrets.

The question was: what secrets?