Page 7 of The Couple’s Secret (Detective Josie Quinn #23)

Five

Josie’s eyes were drawn to the ripple in the middle of the river, marking the location of the Lachlan vehicle.

A prickling sensation spread over her scalp.

She tugged her fingers through her matted hair but it was no use.

There wasn’t any physical cause for the uncomfortable feeling.

She’d been on the job a long time and had worked enough cases to know when something big and ugly was on the horizon.

“We’ll need Hummel and his team,” she said.

Officer Hummel was the head of Denton’s Evidence Response Team. They were a big enough department with a big enough budget to support their own evidence techs and some basic forensic equipment. Anything they couldn’t handle went to the state police crime lab.

Dougherty blinked. “For an underwater…crime scene?”

Josie had no idea how a situation like this would or could be handled.

If the car had been under there for seven years, that was seven years of seasons changing, rising and falling water levels, growth and decomposition of marine life and underwater vegetation, and shifting accumulation of chemical substances.

The car alone would likely be a nightmare to remove and process.

The odds of finding anything in the riverbed around it were slim to none but, as always, they only got one chance to properly process a scene.

“Just call him,” Josie said.

“If we have to call in resources from elsewhere, we will,” Gretchen added.

Dougherty nodded.

Josie used the blanket to pat her clothes dry.

Well, as dry as she could get them. Normally, she had a set of backup clothes in her vehicle for situations like this one, but she’d changed into those two days ago after she’d had to interview a witness living in a flea-infested apartment.

Those had been double-bagged and deposited into the garbage.

“See if you can get rid of any press that showed up. Erect a perimeter from the boat ramp all the way down to here.”

He looked over his shoulder, in the direction of the boat ramp.

It couldn’t be seen from where they stood but they had to consider the possibility that the car had gone into the water from there.

With the windows cracked, the air inside the tires would have given it buoyancy for a short time.

From the ramp, it could have floated, slowly sinking, until it reached its final resting place.

“Yes,” Josie said. “The boat ramp, and Dougherty, whatever happens, do not let this get out. We still don’t know what we’re dealing with here.”

Gretchen said, “Once the car is removed, we’ll need to match the VIN to the license plate.”

“Right,” said Dougherty, scratching at his forehead again.

Josie strongly doubted that someone had swapped license plates and affixed Tobias Lachlan’s to some other vehicle before it ended up in the river, but they had to be sure.

The moment he walked off, both of them took out their phones.

It would be a half hour or more until Hummel arrived, and Josie was certain that the job at hand far exceeded the capabilities of his team.

Rounding up the necessary people and equipment to remove and process the car would take even longer.

They had nothing but time.

“Brighton Springs,” Gretchen murmured as she scrolled. “Isn’t that where Chief Chitwood is from?”

“Yep.”

The Chief hadn’t worked in that area in decades, but his father, Harlan Chitwood, had been a decorated and celebrated detective on the Brighton Springs police force for almost fifty years before his retirement.

He’d also been one of the dirtiest police officers that Josie had ever known.

His time with Brighton Springs PD was up long before Tobias Lachlan and Cora Stevens disappeared, but the corruption lingered.

“That’s how far from here?” Gretchen asked. “Two hours?”

“Three,” Josie answered as a photo of the couple came up on her search.

At a glance, they appeared to be in their early to mid-forties.

Perhaps Cora was younger. The photo showed them at a concert of some kind.

Evening had been setting in. Bright lights in the background illuminated a raised stage.

All around them people were packed together, faces turned up toward a musician—leather pants and a mic stand the only thing visible from the angle of the photo.

Bright orange bracelets circled Tobias and Cora’s wrists.

Each of them raised a red solo cup in a toast. Wide smiles split their flushed faces.

Tobias’s hair had receded from his forehead, leaving a dark fuzz around his crown and over his ears.

He had a friendly, open smile and the bulky build of someone whose athleticism had waned with age.

Cora was tucked under his arm. She was short and curvy with strawberry-blonde hair that barely brushed her shoulders.

Her brown eyes were bright and sparkling.

Gretchen peered down at her own phone, obviously perusing one of the thousands of articles about the couple that had popped up online in the past seven years.

She read off the pertinent facts. “They lived in Brighton Springs. Went out to dinner. Left in Tobias’s car.

Somewhere between the restaurant and their home—a twenty-minute drive—they vanished into thin air.

Their car was never even found—now we know why. ”

How had they ended up in Denton?

“Any chance Trinity did a show on this couple?” asked Gretchen. “Seems like a case she would take on.”

Josie’s twin sister had her own television show called Unsolved Crimes with Trinity Payne. Every week she took on a cold case, laying out the facts, offering theories, and asking viewers for help bringing new information to light.

“It’s possible,” Josie said. “But I don’t want to call her just yet. I’m not tipping my hand unless I have to. She’s brutal when she smells a story, especially if it’s a follow-up to something she’s already investigated, even though she knows I can’t tell her any details.”

“Fair.”

Josie skimmed article after article, clicking through photo after photo of the couple.

The Lachlan/Stevens case had been the subject of intense public scrutiny, locally and nationally.

People were intrigued. They couldn’t get enough.

Clicking on a couple of true-crime forums, Josie saw seemingly endless threads about it.

It had become an obsession for Brighton Springs residents and cold case buffs nationwide.

At the time of the disappearance, several national media outlets ran stories about the couple.

Even Dateline did an episode about them.

Josie wondered what it was that had sparked such widespread fascination.

Was it the fact that the couple looked so normal?

Like they could be any couple in any city enjoying a dinner out before vanishing into thin air.

By all accounts, they were a fairly average middle-class couple.

Tobias Lachlan had been co-owner of a junk removal company and Cora Stevens had been a waitress.

He had two sons and she had a daughter. They were two single parents getting a second chance at love.

A couple trying to blend their families and start a new life together.

A lot of people would be able to relate to their situation.

A lot of people would see themselves reflected back when they saw photos of Tobias and Cora.

As Trinity would say, the couple was television gold.

Maybe the obsession was just due to them seemingly vanishing into thin air. After all, it wasn’t often that an entire car went missing along with its occupants, especially with so many developments in technology.

Gretchen looked up from her phone and waved, getting the attention of Hummel as he stepped out of the trees. “Why doesn’t this seem like a tragic accident?”

Cars accidentally went into waterways all the time.

Rivers, lakes, ponds, creeks, the ocean.

There were nonprofit organizations that traveled the country in attempts to locate people who’d been missing for years.

Decades, even. People who’d gone missing along with their vehicles.

An astonishing number of them were located still in their cars, not far from where they were last seen.

Last year, a New Jersey man who’d gone missing forty-two years ago had been recovered inside a sedan that had been submerged in a local creek. Near where he was last seen.

“Because everything we know about these types of cases tells us that if they were going to be found in a waterway, it should be in Brighton Springs,” said Josie. “Denton’s not even close to the last place they were seen.”

“If they’d had some strong connections here, Brighton Springs PD would have shown up poking around,” Gretchen said. “You remember anyone from there calling to say they’d be questioning people? Searching for the couple in our jurisdiction?”

“Nope.”

“Me either.”

Given the thousands of online articles on the couple’s disappearance, the press would have been stalking Brighton Springs PD investigators. Had there been some sort of search here in Denton, their local news station would have been all over it.

“If Brighton Springs PD thought they were here, there would have been public pleas for information circulated in Denton,” Josie said.

Gretchen didn’t say what they were both thinking. The odds of foul play in this situation were high. That was assuming they found the remains of Tobias Lachlan and Cora Stevens in the car and that there was enough evidence to suggest that their deaths weren’t accidental.

“We’ll need to request a copy of the case file from Brighton Springs PD,” Gretchen said.

“We are not equipped for this,” Hummel blurted as he reached them. It was odd seeing him in regular work clothes and not a white Tyvek suit.

“I figured,” said Josie. “I was hoping you’d know where to start, who we need to call.”

Hummel ran a hand through his hair and glanced out toward the water, eyes catching on the ripple. “We need divers and a heavy-duty rotator truck, neither of which we have.”

Gretchen tucked her phone into her back pocket. “What’s a rotator truck?”

Josie patted her hair, now stiffening as it dried.

“It’s kind of like the mother of all tow trucks.

They’ve got rotating booms—like giant cranes—that can spin 360 degrees.

Outriggers to stabilize the trucks themselves so they don’t tip.

Hydraulic systems. They can usually handle lifting tens of thousands of pounds. ”

“You know this how?” asked Gretchen.

Josie shrugged. “Whenever there’s some big pile-up on the interstate with overturned semis or buses and cars in ditches, rotators are used to get things cleaned up.”

“The state police don’t have their own tow trucks,” said Gretchen. “They contract with outside towing companies.”

“Yeah,” said Hummel. “But a single rotator costs over a million dollars. Not something your average towing company has on hand. It might take me a while to find a company that has one and can get it here in a reasonable amount of time.”

Josie sighed. “That car’s been under there for seven years—a few more hours isn’t going to make a difference. Find one and I’ll contact the state police about getting divers out here to help, as well.”

While Denton had its own marine unit, its primary purpose was swiftwater rescues. Only one of the members had diving qualifications.

“What are we looking at in terms of processing the vehicle?” asked Gretchen.

Hummel looked out at the water again. “It’s probably pointless, but I’d set up some grids around the car where it’s currently sitting. Fifty feet in each direction. The divers can use metal detectors to see if there’s anything around it.”

“Like a gun?” Josie said.

“Yeah. Anything, really. Like I said, the odds of finding something important in the area around the car are pretty non-existent given how long it’s been and especially if the windows are closed.”

“The passenger’s side front window is cracked a few inches,” Josie said. “Not sure about the others.”

“Okay. Well, even so, seven years in a river? I doubt we’ll find anything outside of it but it’s best to search anyway.

Once those grids have been searched, the marine unit can work with the towing company to get the car out of the water and onto the bank somewhere. That’s when the real hard work begins.”

“What do you mean?” Gretchen said.

Hummel tugged at the hair on the back of his head. “A car under water for that long? One window, possibly more, partially open? It’s going to be filled with crud from the floor probably up to the dash. At least to the seat cushions. Silt, debris, biofilm, algae, all kinds of delightful shit.”

“That sounds like it will be a bitch to process,” said Josie.

“I did a couple of these before I started working here,” Hummel explained.

“The first issue is that in the water, all that stuff is light, almost like dust. As soon as you bring the car up onto dry land, it will start to harden. If you don’t process the car fast enough, it will turn into a block of cement and that makes preserving anything that’s still inside a hell of a lot more difficult. ”

“You won’t have time to transfer the car to the impound lot,” said Gretchen. “Is that what you’re telling us?”

“It’s a risk,” Hummel replied. “It’s certainly possible to get it to the impound lot before it hardens but there’s no guarantee.

The best thing to do would be to process it right here.

Cover the vehicle with tents to keep it out of view of the press or any nosy civilians who might try to get a look.

We get a bunch of tarps, lay them out on the ground, and then we empty the car out bucket by bucket.

Filter the mud through screens so that any objects or remains are separated out. ”

Josie scanned the area again. The sun was sliding lower toward the horizon.

The job ahead would take hours. Into the morning and the next day.

“Then we’ll do it here,” she told him. “Gather whatever we need now so it’s ready for when the vehicle comes out of the water.

Better get some lights, too. It’s getting dark. ”