From Darkness (Hearts & Arrows Book 3)(56)

“What is the matter with you?” She entered her room and set her things down next to the window, leaning forward to look out the window at the fire escape. “There’s nothing there, buddy.”

He arched his back and rubbed the window, growling again.

“You want out?”

She slid open the horizontal window, and he jetted out as soon as there was enough space for him to fit through. She stuck her head out, shaking it as he paraded up the stairs and sat on the platform above, looking down at her through the small holes in the metal.

Josie looked down as she backed out of the window frame, and her heart stopped for a split second when she saw the smallest sliver of silver chain in the window track, hanging out from under the pane.

“Oh my God,” she breathed.

Her fingers touched the chain, and she knew even just by that small bit of metal that it was Anne’s.

Rhodes had taken it after he killed her, but she never thought, never could have guessed, that it hadn’t made it out of their apartment. That window had been opened and closed a hundred times since then, inspected by the police and by her, and she wondered how in the hell it had stayed hidden for so long.

She trotted into her living room and to her desk where she found a pair of latex gloves, put them on, and grabbed her phone, snapping a few pictures when she reached the window again. Her blood rushed in her ears as she tugged at the chain, attempting to work it out from the track. He must have dropped it when he climbed out the window, and when he’d closed it, it had hooked on something that dragged it back, something it was still hung on. She wiggled the chain with shaking hands, trying to be gentle when all she wanted to do was smash the window and rip the frame apart to get to it.

She tugged the necklace and slid the window back and forth on the track until more slack let out, exposing the clasp, which she opened with trembling hands. Once opened, she threaded the necklace out of the rail and laid it in her palm. The silver pendant with the small bird stamped on it caught the light.

Josie could barely breathe as she picked her phone to snap a few more pictures before she called her dad.

“Hey, Jo.”

“Dad…” Her voice quaked.

“What’s wrong?”

“I…I found Anne’s necklace in the window track.”

He was silent.

She couldn’t stop staring at the necklace in her hand, deciding right then that she would dust it. She wanted the print but didn’t want her father to risk getting caught giving her a copy. If she got it on her own, she could find something to compare it to. She just couldn’t tell Hank. Plausible deniability.

Hank cleared his throat. “Okay. I’m going to send Walker and Davis with a CSI. You want me there?”

“No, it’s okay. I’m okay.”

“Just call me if you change your mind. I’ll have them there within the half hour.”

“All right, Dad.”

Josie didn’t look at her phone as she set it down. She walked to her desk and pulled open the drawer where she kept her lift tape and dusting kit.

All four of the Campbell kids had been educated on lifting prints, which had driven their mother crazy. Sunday afternoons usually meant everything was covered in powder and that all the Scotch tape was gone.

Once she got the baby powder, she took a seat at her desk, her breath shallow and hands cold. Josie dumped out a small amount of powder onto a sheet of paper and dipped her brush into the pile, tapping it on her hand to knock off the excess. She picked up the pendant and dusted it, and when she held it up to the light, she saw it.

Josie had his fingerprint.

Her hands were steadier than her stomach as she laid the necklace down and trimmed off a piece of tape to cover the pendant. She pulled it off slowly and stuck it to a black piece of paper before dusting the back of the pendant, though she found nothing there.

When Josie put away her supplies, burying her trash under other garbage, all that was left was to get rid of the powder from the necklace with the help of a pressurized air can. She could still see the swirling print on the metal, faint and glimmering.

Josie held up the small black paper with the print, the answer to the question that had plagued her every waking moment for half a year. She had him. The man who had haunted her nightmares and killed her best friend. Who had raped and murdered dozens of innocent women.

The paper she held reverently in her hand contained the power to finally put him away.





Day 6





IT WAS EARLY THAT morning, but Josie didn’t care. She’d been sitting there in her car for an hour, watching the digital clock on her dash like she could will it to move faster as she waited for Rhodes to leave for work.

Her heart skipped a beat when he stepped out his front door. He looked just like anyone else, walking the sidewalk to the bus stop where he’d catch his ride into Manhattan, go to his regular job with people who thought he was a regular guy. They probably figured his pastimes were things like drinking beer and playing golf, not strangling young girls and dumping them into the river.

Her father had called her the night before with news that the print had been processed, and when she’d told him she lifted one of her own, he’d said he already knew. Josie had run her plan by him, and he’d agreed to it, knowing he couldn’t stop her anyway and knowing his hands were tied. They had nothing, not even probable cause.