From Darkness (Hearts & Arrows Book 3)(57)

So, she would go to Rhodes’s house and find a little trash to lift prints from for comparison. If it was on the curb, it was public property. The proof would be enough to convince her father to call Rhodes in as a suspect in the hopes that they could get official prints.

Josie watched the clock until the bus she knew he took was sure to be gone, waiting another twenty agonizing minutes just in case, before grabbing rubber gloves and freezer bags from her passenger seat. She walked around to the side of his house and through the gate where his trash cans stood behind the tall fence.

The neighborhood was quiet, but her heart was a jackhammer, thundering in her ears as she closed the gate behind her.

Josie flipped back the lid to his recycling, digging past cereal and frozen dinner boxes until she found two glass jars and several soda cans. She deposited them into the freezer bags and closed the trash can lid before heading back to her car, glancing around with the loot in her arms, feeling like she’d just stolen the crown jewels.

She raced home with the stolen trash a presence in the car, her thoughts wholly focused on each step to come, afraid of what she would or wouldn’t find, so anxious, she could barely pay attention to drive. When she finally made it into her apartment, she moved with certainty and purpose, unpacking each bag on her bar, lining the containers up neatly on the surface. The area was already prepped with paper towels and her fingerprinting kit, and she sat down in front of the trash, dusting each vessel slowly and meticulously, assessing and noting them as she went.

The jars initially held the most hope with partials on the lids and labels where they had been held while he poured out the contents. Two of the soda cans had a mess of fingerprints, too many to make any sense of. But she found the answer on the final can. There were two solid sets of prints—one with placement from holding the can while it had been opened, the other from pouring it.

Anne’s necklace had a clear, full print so clean that she knew he’d intentionally touched it. There were no prints in the entire apartment with the exception of that necklace, and Josie could only assume that he’d worn gloves. If he had been wearing gloves, then he’d touched her necklace on purpose, which meant the prints were likely from an index finger or thumb.

Discerning which print was which on the can was fairly simple, and she lifted each with precision and care, marking which digit was which based on their locations. Her hands trembled as she laid the prints in her scanner and took a seat at her desk, bouncing her knee as she waited on the machine to warm up, her breath shallow as they pulled up on the screen. She opened them in Photoshop, adjusted the contrast, zoomed in tight, and began the painstaking process of comparing.

Josie started with what she determined to be the thumbprint of his right hand, figuring that would be the most probable match, the most natural way to touch the necklace. Once she located the center swirl, she turned the print from the can so it was the same direction as the one from Anne’s necklace. Starting at the center point, she followed the ring around and out, her pulse beating faster with each match she found.

It was him.

Her hands were numb and cold as she dug out her phone, her fingers trembling as she called her father’s cell.

“Josie. Did you get it?”

She took a breath, her mouth so dry, her lips stuck together. “It’s him.”

Hank sucked in a breath in her ear. “Okay.” He paused. “All right.” Another pause. “What happened?”

“Waited until he left, dug through his recycling. No one saw.” She took a breath and looked at her computer screen in disbelief and relief and fear that he’d somehow slip away. “Dad, he did it. I’ve got proof right here.”

“Is the trash admissible?”

“No. It was in his backyard.”

“Damn. Don’t worry about it, okay? We’re not gonna let him go.”

“I’ll call in the tip when we hang up.”

“All right. As soon as we get the call, I’ll send Walker and Davis to pick him up at work. Come down to the station. I’ll get you into the observation room while we interrogate him.”

“Okay.” Josie could barely comprehend what was happening, but it was happening whether she understood it or not.

“You okay?”

“I really don’t know, Dad. I think I’m in shock. Sometimes I wake up and don’t believe any of it’s real, like I made up the whole thing. Like I fabricated the connections to him just so I had someone to blame. So to be looking at concrete evidence is as reassuring as it is terrifying.”

“I know that feeling. Hurry down here, okay?”

“All right. I’ll see you.”

She hung up and sat back in her chair, composing the call to the anonymous tip line in her mind as she stared at his fingerprints on her monitor. They’d finally caught him.

This is it.



Rhodes waited quietly in the cold, gray interrogation room with his hands in his lap for the detectives to come back. It was a strange feeling—to be picked up at work by cops, to be told they had some questions and that he could come quietly or not. Sitting in that room, he felt like he should be worried, but he wasn’t.

Curiosity trumped all of his emotions.

The door opened, and he looked over his shoulder with a smile at the detectives who walked in with coffee. The one called Davis, he thought, sat across from him and offered a white foam cup while the other, Walker, laid a folder on the table and leaned on the wall behind his partner with his arms folded across his chest.