Page 38 of The Couple’s Secret (Detective Josie Quinn #23)

Thirty-Four

Josie left Zane in the back of the ambulance.

His eyelids were drooping, his limbs going loose with exhaustion.

She watched as the rise and fall of his chest slowed into an even rhythm.

The day he’d found out about Tobias and Cora being murdered, he had shown up at the Denton location of At Your Disposal in tears.

As far as Josie could tell, he hadn’t cried since finding out about Riley.

She had no doubt that, very soon, the stress and trauma of the day would hit him like a freight train.

In the few interactions she’d had with Zane Lachlan over the past week, she was struck by his vulnerability and his almost childlike sweetness.

Losing the woman he’d been secretly in love with for nearly ten years immediately after burying his father was a level of devastation she wasn’t sure he could handle.

Turning away from the ambulance, she found Hollis standing patiently near one of the other patrol cars.

He ambled over. “I’ll keep an eye on the boys. I promise.”

Brennan had already taken a statement from him at his home, but Josie asked anyway. “When you saw Riley this morning, was she alone?”

Hollis nodded. Tears welled in his eyes.

It would be easy enough for them to trace Riley’s steps from this morning using the GPS in her vehicle.

They could verify the timeline that Hollis had given.

Josie knew there were reporters camped outside the home Riley and Jackson had shared.

One or more of them should be able to confirm that she’d been alone when she went to get Captain Whiskers’ medication and toys.

“How did she seem?” Josie asked.

Clearing his throat, he glanced toward the back of the ambulance where Zane rested. “I don’t think she was drunk, if that’s what you’re asking. Well, I mean maybe she was a little. I don’t know.”

“How was she acting?”

“It wasn’t so much how she was acting,” Hollis said, “more like the way she looked. Pale. A little shaky. Maybe she was hungover? Or all the strain of the last week just made her sick? She just didn’t look well. I told her to eat something and go to bed. Get some rest.”

“What did she say to that?”

Hollis twisted the rag in his hands. “She said she would and that was it. I left.”

“Did you speak about anything else?”

“No.” The word was strangled. He lifted the rag to his face again, covering both his eyes with it. Sobs shook his large frame.

Josie gave him a few minutes to compose himself. “I’m sorry, Hollis. I just have a few more questions. Did you see Zane and Jackson this morning?”

“No. I figured they were still in bed. Both their cars were in the driveway. I didn’t talk to either of them until Zane called me. You were there.”

She thanked him and left him with instructions to stay in Denton and make sure Zane and Jackson didn’t pummel one another.

As she turned to head back toward the boat ramp, she spotted Gretchen across the road.

Josie gave a faint shake of her head, signaling to Gretchen that they could cut Jackson loose since Zane wasn’t going to press charges.

Moments later, Jackson unfolded himself from the police car.

Officer Conlen cut the zip ties. He rubbed at his thick wrists as he strode toward Hollis and Zane.

His eyes were dark with pain and fury. Josie stiffened, half expecting him to hop into the ambulance and attack his younger brother again, but he stopped in front of Hollis instead.

The two men spoke for a moment, voices too low for anyone to overhear.

Then Jackson let himself be enveloped into the older man’s arms and, like a dam breaking, he began to cry.

His large body trembled. Irritation flared in Josie’s gut as she saw a half-dozen cameras swing in his direction.

Luckily, one of the paramedics noticed and herded Hollis and Jackson into the ambulance with Zane.

Josie turned away. Right now, her only concern was Riley Stevens.

Gretchen joined her and they walked toward the crime scene tape that cordoned off the boat ramp. The ERT had set up a makeshift equipment station.

“What’s Jackson’s story?” Josie asked as she fished out a Tyvek suit.

Dr. Feist was already in full crime scene garb, waiting patiently next to Dougherty with her equipment bag.

“He woke up sometime after nine. From what he could tell, Riley hadn’t come to bed.

She wasn’t anywhere in the house. Her car was gone.

He tried calling her, but she’d left her phone on the kitchen table.

After waiting an hour, he knocked on Zane’s door and woke him up to see if he knew where she went.

Zane said he hadn’t seen her since the night before when they were watching TV on the couch.

Jackson went looking for her. Their house, the coffee shop she likes, the liquor store. ”

“Shit,” Josie murmured.

“Yeah. After a couple of hours, he called Zane back who then called Hollis.”

Josie tucked her black hair into a skull cap. “Did Jackson let you look at his phone?”

“Yeah. No arguments there.” Gretchen put booties on over her shoes. “Nothing unusual.”

“Did you ask him if Riley had any medical conditions?”

“None. What’d you get from Zane and Hollis?”

Josie filled her in as they zipped up their Tyvek suits and snapped on gloves.

Dougherty logged their names onto the list of people who had entered the crime scene, and they slipped under the tape.

The boat ramp was in poor condition. Its wide concrete slabs were cracked in several places.

Weeds sprang from the fissures, reaching for the sky.

Several potholes had formed. Trash collected inside them.

Beer cans, food wrappers and cigarette butts.

Trees and bushes crowded the edges of the area.

A fishing bob had caught in one of the branches, the red and white standing out against the greenery.

Riley’s red Subaru was pointed toward the river where the concrete dipped, forming a ramp from which boats could be launched.

With the drought, the water had receded too far for anyone to use it, leaving only dried stones and cracked patches of mud.

There, between the car and the place where the ground sloped, was Riley.

She was sprawled on her back, eyes closed, lips parted.

Blowflies crawled and flitted across her exposed skin, seeking entrance to her mouth, nostrils, ears, trying to access her eyes, looking for warm, moist places to lay their eggs.

They were always the first insects to arrive postmortem, usually minutes after death.

More buzzed in the air and darted over her clothes.

There was no evidence that her body had been disturbed by animals and no scavenger birds hovered nearby, which confirmed she hadn’t been dead very long at all when she was found.

Long locks of her hair fell in disheveled piles around her head, the sun-kissed strawberry-blonde matching her mother’s oversized yellow sweater in a way Josie hadn’t noticed before.

Her legs were straight, her arms at her sides, palms angled slightly upward.

Likely the result of Dougherty having turned her over.

Two bees buzzed lazily above a vodka bottle on its side a few feet from her body.

It was big. Able to hold around twenty-five ounces if Josie had to guess.

A small amount of clear liquid pooled inside, winking in the sunlight.

There was a faint smell of alcohol, mingling with the first wisps of impending decay.

Josie stared at the bottle. Her chest felt tight.

Mentally, she spun the gossamer around her heart into a more durable fabric, tightening, layering, weaving, keeping her emotions in check.

She knew exactly what it was like to drown her pain in alcohol before ten in the morning.

To need to do it. To have no other outlet for it, no way to contain it.

No way to keep it from scratching the husk of your soul until it was raw and excoriated.

Riley had been seeking numbness as a respite.

Somewhere deep in the recesses of Josie’s mental vault, that too-full thermos full of hot emotion jolted in recognition.

Anya let out a long sigh before sliding her camera out of her messenger bag. Josie and Gretchen waited while she photographed the scene and Riley’s body. Once that task was complete, she knelt on the ground, batting at the persistent flies.

“She’s in full rigor,” Anya said, almost to herself.

Rigor mortis set in two to six hours after death. This also fit in with the timeline of Riley’s death.

Josie and Gretchen knelt across from Anya, watching as her gloved hands worked nimbly over Riley’s clothes, pushing her collar down, rolling up the cuffs of her sleeves, spreading the lapels of the sweater, folding up the hem of the T-shirt under it to check for any injuries or evidence not immediately visible.

Today’s shirt was hot pink with black lettering that said: I’m Like 104% Tired.

Anya lifted the waistband of her leggings. There were no marks along her abdomen.

Anya got on her hands and knees, lowering her face until it was inches from concrete as she tried to get a closer look at Riley’s hand.

The blowflies scuttled away, taking flight, before diving back toward another area of exposed flesh.

Their greenish-blue backs gleamed in the sunlight as more and more attacked Riley’s face.

“Hmmm,” Anya murmured, sitting back on her haunches and grabbing her camera.

Josie stood and rounded the body. Once Anya finished taking additional photos, she pointed to Riley’s palm. It was angled toward her thigh. Kneeling, Josie, too, had to contort her body to get a look at what had caught Anya’s attention.

“I don’t see anything.”

Anya’s index finger slid between Josie’s face and Riley’s palm, pointing to a small series of tiny punctures. Four of them, evenly spaced to form the four corners of a square in the fleshy skin below her index finger.

Josie huffed out a breath to discourage the blowfly that landed dangerously close to her nostrils. “What is it?”

“Some sort of patterned injury, I’d imagine,” Anya said. “Though I’m not sure what from.”

A patterned injury was one that reproduced a mirror image or features of the object that caused the injury. Sometimes they were easy to identify—like a belt buckle—and other times, like now, it wasn’t clear.

“Nothing on the other hand besides rings,” Gretchen reported before joining them. Josie shuffled aside to give her room to examine Riley’s palm.

“It’s too symmetrical to be from pebbles or gravel. It looks like she was clutching something in her hand hard enough to break the skin,” Anya added.

“Something small,” Gretchen said.

Anya continued her examination, moving down to Riley’s pantlegs and finally, the tops of her socks, finding nothing. Her sneakers were snug on her feet, laces tied tightly.

Josie and Gretchen helped Anya turn Riley over so she could repeat the process—peeking under sleeves, hems, and waistbands. Nothing.

Finally, Anya hauled herself to her feet and used her forearm to wipe sweat from her brow, batting away more flies. “No visible injuries other than those punctures on her palm. Nothing to suggest foul play. Not at this point. She’s twenty-three?”

“Yeah,” Josie answered. “No medical issues.”

Anya’s gaze was locked on Riley’s face. “I’ll have to perform an autopsy. Sometimes young people have undiagnosed cardiac conditions. There are no signs until…well, until there are and then it’s too late.”