Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn Book 6)(44)

Oaks sighed. “I’ll have the staff checked out.”

“Thank you. And I think we should take a closer look at John Bausch.”

Oaks’s brow furrowed. Then he said, “He was one of the school presenters, wasn’t he?”

“Yes. Great memory,” Josie remarked. She knew the FBI was literally tracking down thousands of leads. Even the most mundane and unlikely of suspects were on their list. “He’s the bug expert who visited Lucy’s school a couple of months ago. I had my people send a warrant to the school for the photos the teacher took of him with the children the day he was there.”

“You know, I had a team go to the school. They got a list of all special visitors and presenters at the school going back six months. John Bausch was on that list. I’m quite certain he had an alibi for the day Lucy went missing. One of my agents contacted his office.” Oaks pulled out his phone. After several swipes and scrolls, he tapped his index finger against the screen. “Here it is. I’ve got a note here. My agents talked to his assistant, who is also his wife, and she faxed us a copy of his schedule for the week Lucy went missing. He was in Philadelphia for the weekend, and he was meeting with someone from the Academy of Natural Sciences around the time that Lucy disappeared. That was confirmed by a rep for the Academy. What do you propose we do?”

“Bring him in.”

“You want us to bring in a guy who lives an hour away who has a solid alibi?” Oaks asked.

“Listen, we know we’re not dealing with just one person here,” Josie said. “So maybe Bausch has an alibi, but I don’t know if that firmly rules him out. He may have had help—maybe from the mystery woman who was staying at Jaclyn Underwood’s apartment. Maybe she was his accomplice, and her job was to get close to Jaclyn so she would find out as many intimate details about the Rosses’ lives as possible—and get a copy of Jaclyn’s house key made.”

Oaks’s pinched expression told her he was struggling to find the strength in her reasoning. From her back jeans pocket, Josie pulled out the drawing from the school, unfolded it and handed it to Oaks. “Lucy drew this after Bausch came to her school. There’s another one up in her room. Same drawing.”

Oaks raised a brow. “You want me to bring this guy in based on a child’s drawing?”

“Do we have more pressing leads than this?” Josie pointed out.

“It’s a stretch to call this a lead, Detective Quinn. This man was at Lucy’s school once, two months ago. He has a confirmed alibi for the day that Lucy vanished. There were a half dozen guests at Denton West in the last six months: Bausch, two different children’s authors, the mayor of Denton, the fire marshal and a professional athlete from the Philadelphia Eagles. All of them were checked out. All of them had alibis for the day Lucy vanished. Would you propose we bring in all of those people?”

Josie put a hand on her hip and said, “Only if they chase butterflies.”

Oaks gave her a stunned look before bursting into laughter.

Josie waited for him to finish before she said, “You’d have to be blind not to notice Lucy’s obsession with butterflies.”

Oaks nodded. “Indeed, you’d have to be, and I see your point—if you were an adult trying to gain Lucy’s trust so you could prepare her for something, using her interest would be a great place to start, but it’s a little coincidental, don’t you think? A guy who handles butterflies for a living kidnaps a child who loves butterflies?”

“Not just butterflies,” Josie argued. “He’s primarily a beekeeper, from what Violet Young said. He brought lots of different insects with him.”

“Okay so aside from that you still want to bring in a guy who already checked out?”

“Let my team do it,” Josie said. “My colleague, Detective Gretchen Palmer—she can do it. I’ll have her track him down and bring him into our stationhouse. We’ll talk with him. If it’s nothing, it’s nothing. But if it’s something…”

Oaks sighed. “Then you’ll have my support. You know that.”

“Thank you,” Josie said. As Oaks walked back inside to check on Colin and Amy, Josie took out her phone and called Gretchen.





Twenty-Eight





The day was painfully long. Several calls came in to Amy’s cell phone: the principal of Lucy’s school, calls from Ingrid and Zoey, the mothers of two of Lucy’s friends, and one from the pharmacy to let her know that a prescription was ready. Each time the phone rang, the two FBI agents stationed inside the house, Oaks, Mettner and Josie all converged on the dining room waiting with bated breath until Amy answered, her voice always tremulous, saying a hesitant hello as though she was afraid of what the word would unleash. But the kidnapper didn’t call.

The lack of progress on any leads and absence of any contact from the kidnapper made everyone jittery and agitated. It left far too much time for Amy and Colin to start asking difficult questions that had no ready answers.

“Do you think she’s still alive?”

“What is he doing to her?”

“What does he want?”

“Why won’t he call?”

“Why is this happening?”

Their lives were in a state of suspended animation. But that was what the kidnapper wanted, Josie realized. Neither Amy nor Colin could live their lives not knowing where Lucy was or what was happening to her. It was the cruelest kind of torture. Josie didn’t have to have children of her own to understand this. He was getting pleasure from this, which was why Josie was certain that he would continue the game. He couldn’t take Lucy away from them permanently. Eventually, after a great deal of time had passed, they’d start to resume some of their normal activities. They would begin to live with the uncertainty, begin to eat and shower again and Colin would force himself to go to work because the bills needed to be paid. The absence of Lucy and the not knowing would become their new normal. They would never be at peace again, but they would move out of the acute stage of horror into something more chronic. The kidnapper would want them to stay in the acute phase for as long as possible, she imagined. He was going to drag this out.