Chapter 24

“And they let him?” I ask.

She nods. “They walked with him, so it’s not like he was trying to get a free peek at whatever was playing. They searched each one to make sure she wasn’t there. Frank checked the men’s bathroom, and the female manager checked the female bathrooms. He called me at about eight-thirty to say he hadn’t found her. By then, her phone stopped tracking.”

“Does Josey have a boyfriend?” Drake asks. “Was she seeing someone?”

“Yeah, he…” She brings her phone down again and swipes at the screen. Scrolling through her photo albums, she finds an image and shows us: young, beautiful, smiling Josephine posing with one arm wrapped around a dude, while the other hand extends forward, kinda how people announce an engagement. “Caleb,” she murmurs. “Caleb Driver. They’ve been dating since they were in seventh and eighth grade.” She chokes out a snotty laugh. “He’s a year older than she is, but he’s also the sweetest thing ever.”

“He’s military?” I ask, since the dude literally wears Army fatigues in the picture.

“ROTC.” She wipes her nose, lowering the phone again and cradling it on her thigh. “They weren’t engaged or anything. They’re both still so young, but they love each other very much and made a commitment to their future. But… for later.”

“So, this is like a promise ring?” Drake gently taps her phone. “A commitment, but without rushing.”

“Exactly. She’s eighteen, which is the same age I was when I had her.” Her voice breaks with a pained crackle. “Soyoung. It’s always just been the two of us, detectives, and this has always been a happy home, but she saw how hard I worked, and she didn’t like seeing me stressed, so she knew better than to make the same choices I did at such a young age. College first.” She sniffles. “Adulthood. Living and traveling and enjoying life.Thenshe could marry that boy.”

Drake’s pen scratches across the surface of his notebook.Caleb Driver. ROTC. Copeland U. 6 year relationship.

“Where is Josey’s father? When did you and Josey become just you and Josey?”

“Since day one.” She ignores the cup of tea on the side table, but she picks up the box of tissues beside it and fists a handful. “I was pregnant at seventeen. He was twenty-two.” She exhales a snotty scoff. “I felt special, because he was older and so handsome. He said how mature I was. How beautiful. Smart. Wonderful.” She shakes her head and exhales a shaky groan. “At seventeen, I was too young to understand what that was. But as a grown woman, a mom? I’d wring the neck of any twenty-two-year-old who tried that crap on my teenage daughter. Even Caleb…” She tears her tissue into thin strips. “Different grades, but he’s technically only three months older than she is. Jose’s father ran the instant I peed on a stick and realized my life would never be the same.”

“Have you seen him since?” I question. “Heard from him?”

“He came around when she was four years old, promised the world, claimed he wanted to be an involved dad. I was twenty-one, still so young and naïve, so I agreed to let him see her. He swore he wanted to work up to a fifty-fifty split custody schedule, but first, we’d try a few hours every other Saturday so she could get comfortable around him. He was astranger to her.” She pauses. Swallows. Whimpers. “The first visit went well. I mean…” She shrugs. “He filled her up on candy and watched her fall face-first off the slide at the park. He brought her home with a bloody nose and absolutely no clue how to comfort a crying toddler, but still… it seemed his intentions were good.The second visit only lasted an hour instead of the three we’d discussed, then he brought her home and said he had to rush out to something else. She wasn’t bleeding this time, and she wasn’t flying on sugar, so I believed him. The third time, despite confirming twice the day before, he didn’t even turn up. We didn’t hear from him again until she was nine.”

Beside me, Drake writes as quickly as he can.

“It’s like we were playing the same movie on repeat,” she murmurs. “He came around full of promises, said he wanted to be in her life, agreed to short visits, confirmed he’d follow through…”

So he was a deadbeat? Got it.

“The first visit was fast food and sugar. Again. Second time, he didn’t even turn up.Again.But it was worse, because at nine years old, that rejection hit harder. She was excited about the prospect of being like her best friend. Ya know…” She brings devastated eyes up to mine. “Having a dad to call her own. So when he ditched, it was like she was experiencing her first ever breakup. It was horrible. He didn’t contact us again until she was fourteen. He said all the same things and made all the same promises. He even waited outside her school one afternoon. I fully intended to tell him no, he couldn’t see her, since I didn’t want her heart to break again like it had the time before. I didn’t even plan to tell her he’d called, but he went over my head and met her and her friends at the school gates before I could intervene. She didn’t recognize him at first, but once she did, she told him to beat it and never come back.” She brings her tissues up and wipes her nose. “I never spoke badly of him. In fact, except for that short period when she was nine, we never really spoke about him at all. But the three of them—Josey, Tairneyy, and Caleb—came running home after that confrontation at school, whooping and giggling, like comrades returning from battle. Jose said he had the audacity to act offended by herattitude problem.” Her lips curl into an unhappy sneer. “He said shewas rude and ungrateful. Disrespectful. Apparently he tried anger at first, and when that didn’t work, he tried to act hurt. When that didn’t work, he offered to buy her things. He said he’d remarried not so long before, and they had a baby boy, so of course, Josey would want to meet her brother.”

“Did she want to meet him?” Drake asks. “Did she meet him?”

She scoffs. “No. How could he expect her to be attached to this infantshe didn’t even know existed minutes before? Ultimately, she told him to go away and never come back. And he just…” She looks down at her shredded tissue. “He did. Haven’t heard from him since.”

In my peripherals, Drake writes a heavy-handed ‘find father: alibi?’In his notebook.

I mean, it’s about that time.

“Do you think her father might’ve wanted to hurt her?” I shift where I sit and pull her focus away from Drake’s pen. “Was he a violent man?”

“I don’t…” She exhales a shuddering breath. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. He was lazy, ya know? He’d rather seduce a kid who didn’t know better than deal with women his own age, since they’d already figured out he was useless. I honestly don’t know what he did for work, orifhe worked at all. He dropped out of high school, and though he said it was because he had plans to become a famous motocross rider, hindsight tells me he was just too lazy to study. I’d heard rumors about another baby between Jose and that little boy he was telling her about, but I doubt he parented any of them. Parenting is hard work.” She draws a deep breath and expands her chest. “He wasn’t violent with me, but he always had something to say about everyone else: why his parents were the worst. His teachers were the worst. Bosses were the worst. Everything was always someone else’s fault. But I can’t see…” She shakes her head, her jaw trembling as emotion spills from her eyes. “I wouldn’tthinkhe’s responsible for any of this, because that would mean actually getting off his butt anddoingsomething.”

I pick up the cooling cup of tea and hold it in the space between us. “Detective Banks and I will do everything we can to figure this out, alright? I promise we’re gonna try our very best.” Transferring the teacup from my hand to hers, I swipe Drake’s notebook straight out from beneath his arm and tear a page from the back. Snatching his pen, too, and ignoring the feral growl rolling from his chest, I offer both to Sylvia. “Please give us a list of every family Josey tutored, as well as her father’s full name and date of birth.” Straightening my leg and searching my pockets, I take out a card. Not just mine. But Minka’s, too. “You can contact me at any time, alright?” I pass her the first. But then I grip the second and meet her eyes. “You can also call the medical examiner’s office. Chief Mayet, or one of her staff,”Aubree, “will answer your questions if you have any. For right now, Detective Banks and I are gonna head out and start talking to some people.” I trade Minka’s card for the sheet of paper when she’s done. “In the meantime, is there anyone we can call to come sit with you?”

MINKA

“It is two o’clock in the afternoon, August second, and my name is Chief Medical Examiner Minka Mayet. I’m with Doctor Aubree Emeri, and we’re in autopsy suite one inside the George Stanley Medical Examiner’s office, downtown, Copeland City.” I recite all the important details for our record, while, with my hands on my hips, not on the girl naked on my examination table, I circle her body and hate that even though she’s technically an adult, her body still bears the markers of childhood.

Her hips are narrow. Acne scars mark her chin. A fresh pimple she never got the chance to pop bulges on her cheek. And her hands… they’re still so small. So delicate.

“Doctor Emeri?” I drag my eyes across and swallow the grief bubbling at the base of my throat. “Can we confirm the identity of the woman on our table?”

“Yes, Chief.” She sets her hands in her coat pockets and rocks back on her heels. “Visual comparison to her school identification indicates this is Josephine Ryan, no middle name. X-ray analysis confirms historical fractures of the third and fourth metatarsal bones in her left foot. Josephine’s medical records corroborate these breaks; at twelve years old, she suffered a sporting injury. Additionally, X-rays show a historical buckle fracture in the patient’s left radius at the distal end. Josephine Ryan’s medical records indicate a buckle fracture from when she was ten years old. Records show Josephine Ryan has blue eyes, light brown hair, standsat five feet and four inches tall, and weighs approximately one-hundred-and-thirty-eight pounds. Our patient has blue eyes, light brown hair, is five feet and four inches tall, and her current weight falls at one-thirty-three. Odontological consultation is underway; preliminary findings confirm this patient is Josephine Ryan.” She scans Josey’s body with steely blue eyes. “It is my professional opinion we are currently looking at Josephine Ryan.”

“Good. Thank you.” The slice in Josephine’s neck leaves her wide open, but the straight edge we’d otherwise expect in a case like this has been ruined by overnight exposure and the insects that made a meal of her body. Still, I study her with a sad shake of my head. “We’ll begin cutting shortly, but first, I’d like your impressions.”