Page 36 of The Couple’s Secret (Detective Josie Quinn #23)

Thirty-Two

A hollow feeling settled in Josie’s gut as they drove to the remote area where Tobias’s sedan had been found.

Somewhere between finding the car in its watery grave and their visit to Brighton Springs, her professional shield had worn thin.

As the streets flashed past, bringing them closer to what she genuinely hoped was not another tragedy, that mental armor felt as if it were made of gossamer.

Riley. A fragile young woman, still a teenage girl in so many ways, stunted by her mother’s disappearance.

A girl who’d only had one dependable parent all of her life, who’d been left at the mercy of others, veritable strangers, when her mother vanished.

She’d been lucky that Tobias’s sons and his best friend were kind, caring men.

They’d had no obligation to her at all. Even so, their love hadn’t made up for the loss of her anchor, her North Star.

Her mother.

“Shit,” Josie muttered.

“You okay?” Gretchen angled her cell phone away from her mouth.

She was now on the phone with Officer Brennan, giving instructions.

They’d decided to bypass Hollis’s home for now.

If Riley was by the river, they wanted to get to her as soon as possible.

In the meantime, Brennan could get statements from the men in her life.

“I’m fine,” Josie lied.

The realization had hit her while they drove.

She’d been equating Riley with Wren for the past week.

All things led back to Wren now. Josie had never been in this position before.

Having to separate the existence of a child she was responsible for in every way from the things she saw on the job.

Sure, she’d been a huge part of Harris’s life for almost a decade but ultimately, she wasn’t his mother or his guardian.

It wasn’t her job to make decisions on his behalf and then watch him suffer the consequences should they be catastrophic.

This was never a mental partition she’d needed to construct before. Faced with Wren’s palpable grief each day, it was so much easier for Riley Stevens to climb past her defenses, to cause her to ache in ways she didn’t know were possible.

She swore again, louder this time. Everything in her brain was messy and chaotic.

Weird feelings were quaking and bubbling inside her, water about to boil over.

She absolutely could not let that happen.

Not now. Not ever, if she could help it.

Dropping into her 4-7-8 breathing, she visualized turning off the mental burner currently wreaking emotional havoc on her system.

Pouring the sizzling water into a titanium thermos.

It went right into her mental vault, deep in its recesses, on a shelf somewhere, obscured by a bunch of other artifacts that she didn’t have time to examine.

Things that had no place in her field of work.

She had a job to do. Nothing was going to stand in the way of it.

“There’s a unit closer than we are,” Gretchen said. “They can be at the riverbank in two minutes.”

Josie glanced at the name of the crossroads at the next intersection they drove through. They were still a good twenty minutes away. “Great.”

Ten minutes later, the call came over the radio. Riley Stevens had been found at the boat ramp. Unresponsive. An ambulance was dispatched. An ache bloomed in Josie’s chest.

The rest of the drive passed in thick silence.

Josie doubled the speed limit. By the time they flew past the remnants of the old state mental hospital and turned onto the road running parallel to the river, there were two patrol cars and an ambulance, which was slanted across the entrance to the boat ramp.

No reporters, although Josie was certain some would arrive within the hour.

Officer Dougherty stood near the entrance to the boat ramp, ensuring that no one crossed the threshold. He shook his head as they approached. Josie’s heart sank.

“She’s gone,” he said. “When I got here, she was already showing signs of livor mortis.”

“The ambulance is for transporting her to the morgue then,” Gretchen said.

“Yeah. I secured the scene and called Hummel and Dr. Feist. They’ll be here as soon as possible.”

Josie stepped to the side, peering through a gap between Dougherty’s tall frame and the ambulance where a sliver of the boat ramp was visible. The back of a red Subaru Crosstrek obscured the river beyond.

“Where is she?”

“On the ground near the front of the vehicle. From what I can tell, she parked and got out to look at the water. I’m not sure if she was sitting on the hood and slid off or if she just collapsed where she was standing.”

“Signs of a struggle?” Gretchen asked. “Trauma?”

Dougherty shook his head. “None that I could see. There’s a bottle of vodka next to her. Not much left in it. I found her on her stomach, turned her over so I could get a pulse, maybe do CPR, but like I said, she was already showing lividity.”

Lividity, which was a sign of livor mortis, occurred when the heart stopped pumping blood.

Gravity pulled all the blood in the body to the lowest point, causing the skin to be discolored a deep reddish-purple.

Once lividity became fixed, the discoloration was permanent.

However, assuming that Hollis, Zane and Jackson had all told the truth, that meant that Riley had left Hollis’s home sometime between seven and ninea.m. If she had come right here, she would have arrived within twenty to twenty-five minutes.

They’d be able to retrace her steps via the GPS in her vehicle’s infotainment center.

Lividity could begin anywhere between twenty minutes to four hours postmortem.

The time at which it became fixed, or permanent, was much later and spanned a much wider range, but they already knew that Riley had died before twelve thirty, which was roughly the time that the first Denton PD units showed up.

Since Dougherty had rolled her over, the discoloration would now be on the back of her body.

“It’s like she just laid down and passed,” Dougherty added.

Hummel’s team would provide more insight, as would Dr. Feist. Without knowing Riley’s cause of death—even if all signs indicated she’d had some sort of medical event—they had to operate under the assumption that there was foul play.

In the event that her death was ruled a homicide after the autopsy, they had to preserve any and all evidence that might be present.

Police only got one opportunity to process a crime scene properly.

The fact that Dougherty had moved Riley’s body was a disadvantage but not a problem.

He’d been right to evaluate whether she needed medical aid or not.

A news van barreled down the road, followed by another and another. Reporters poured out of the vehicles, camera crews in tow. Josie’s stomach dropped. Patrol officers moved in, waving them back and quickly setting a perimeter.

“So it begins,” Officer Dougherty muttered.

Another tragedy. A legacy of death and heartache.

“We need to tell Jackson,” Josie said. “He’s Riley’s next of kin.”

Gretchen put her reading glasses on and took out her phone, thumbs tapping out a message. “Brennan’s with them now. He’ll handle it.”

More Denton PD vehicles appeared. The ERT arrived, Hummel and his second-in-command, Officer Jenny Chan, lugging their equipment toward the cordoned-off crime scene.

It would be hours before Josie and Gretchen could get onto the boat ramp to see the scene for themselves.

Dr. Feist followed, setting up her equipment and waiting on the sidelines with them until they had permission to enter.

An hour later, Josie and Gretchen were still waiting for Hummel’s team to finish their work when shouting erupted from behind the press vehicles.

Josie turned her head to see Jackson muscle his way past the crowd of them and toward the patrol officers.

He charged down the road, stark fury blanketing his features.

Zane jogged behind him, followed by Hollis, moving much more slowly.

His body shook and tears rolled down his ruddy cheeks.

It was the most emotion Josie had seen him show.

“Jacks, Zane, wait!” he called feebly.

Officer Conlen stepped in front of Jackson. “You can’t go beyond this point.”

The distance between the entrance to the boat ramp, where Josie and Gretchen loitered, and the cruisers parked sideways to keep the public at bay was nearly a quarter mile. They walked toward the burgeoning confrontation, watching with rapt attention.

“Where is my wife?” Jackson yelled. His eyes were wild. “I want to see my wife.”

“Sir, I’m going to need you to go back to your vehicle.”

Jackson didn’t look at Conlen. His gaze was focused beyond the officer, to the crime scene tape that had been erected across the entrance to the boat ramp. “What happened to her? Where is she?”

“As soon as we’re able to give you information, we’ll do that but for now, I need you to go back to your vehicle.”

“I can’t just go back to my vehicle!” he roared. “I need to know what happened to my wife!”

Zane put a hand on Jackson’s shoulder. “Hey, man, you need to back down. The last thing any of us needs is you in a jail cell.”

Jackson spun around, giving his brother a withering glare. “Stay out of this.”

“Stay out of this?” Zane said incredulously. “Stay out of this? Have you lost your damn mind? This is Riley we’re talking about.”

Jackson lunged, fisting the collar of his brother’s T-shirt and shaking him like a rag doll, until his feet lifted off the ground. “This is your fault! Your fucking fault!”

“Sir,” Conlen snapped. “Let go of him and return to your vehicle or you will be removed.”

Zane’s eyes narrowed. He brought his hands up, wrapping them around Jackson’s thick wrists. “How is this my fault? You were supposed to protect her!”

“I was protecting her!” Jackson thundered. “You’re here for two days and now she’s gone! Gone! Drinking like…she has a problem, and you just feed it and feed it and she never knows when to stop when you’re around.”

Zane pushed against Jackson with a surprising amount of strength given their size difference. “Screw you! Like you ever stopped her from drinking. You said you’d protect her. You promised. This is on you. Get the fuck off me!”

Conlen gripped Jackson’s shoulder and gave clipped instructions that went unheeded. Jackson let go of Zane’s shirt, pulled back, and delivered a punishing blow to Zane’s face. Josie sprinted forward before the younger brother had a chance to process it, joining Conlen, dragging Jackson away.

Zane didn’t bother to clutch his nose, despite the blood flowing liberally down his face, his chin, his shirt. Instead, he glowered at Jackson, watching as Josie and Conlen took his still-flailing body to the ground. “You didn’t deserve her,” he told his brother. “You never deserved her.”