Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn Book 6)(47)

“Ame, we’re talking to a guy who kidnapped a seven-year-old girl. You think I should trust him?”

“Oh, so what? You’re not going to give him the money if she’s dead?”

“What?”

“You know damn well ‘what’. You’re not willing to do anything to get her back, are you?”

“Of course I am,” Colin said. His hands came down and hung slack at his waist. “I just wanted to know she was okay. That’s all. I wanted to…” he stopped. When he spoke again, his voice cracked. “I wanted to hear her voice, Ame. Oh God, I just want to hear her voice.”

He dropped to his knees and Amy dropped to hers in front of him. She took him in her arms. “Me too. Me too.”





Twenty-Nine





Wendy Kaplan lived on the top of a mountain in a development called Briar Lane. The small collection of modular homes could only be reached by one of the long, narrow rural roads that snaked from Denton proper out into the thick forests surrounding it. Even if Josie hadn’t been familiar with it, she would only have had to follow the long line of news vehicles to find Kaplan’s house, which was now surrounded by police and emergency vehicles. Josie parked outside the police perimeter and walked a half block to Kaplan’s address.

Like most of the newer developments in Denton, all the houses in Briar Lane looked the same. They came in three colors: tan, gray and white. Some of the residents had added a little character with landscaping and lawn ornaments. She passed a gray house on her right that she knew quite well. It gave her a shiver to think that this missing girl case had now come back almost to the very place that the famous missing girls’ case had started for Josie three years earlier. She knew they weren’t related in any way, obviously, but she couldn’t stop the sense of foreboding that overcame her.

Kaplan’s house was a few doors down, tan-colored with a beautifully landscaped garden in the front yard. An FBI agent stood in the driveway in front of a small red sports car. He nodded at Josie and said, “They’re around back.”

Josie walked between the houses, noticing that Wendy Kaplan had had a tall white privacy fence installed around her backyard. Another agent stood there with Mettner, guarding the entrance.

Josie felt an uptick in her heartbeat. “Mett,” she said. “Why does this look like you’re standing outside of a murder scene?”

He grimaced. “Sorry to tell you, boss, but Wendy Kaplan is dead.”

Josie found the FBI Evidence Response van and suited up appropriately. When she returned to the backyard gate, she found that Mettner had gone off to walk the outer perimeter to see if there were any clues to be found. Josie signed in with the FBI agent and stepped into Wendy Kaplan’s backyard. Like the front, it was beautifully landscaped, leaving little actual yard, its centerpiece a beautiful stone fountain. The water at its base was filled with koi. Between the fountain in the middle of the yard and the sliding glass doors at the back of the house, Josie spotted a woman’s prone body. She was face down. Judging from her stretchy black yoga pants and pink tank top, she had been either returning from or getting ready to go to a yoga class. Her greying hair was long and fanned out over her shoulders, the tips of it turned red from the ever-widening pool of blood in the grass around her torso. One arm was trapped under her body. The other was flung outward to her side, fingertips covered in blood. She hadn’t been dead very long. Oaks stood over her, two other agents at his side, all of them dressed in white Tyvek suits. Josie hung back while he gave out directions.

When he had finished, Oaks walked over to where Josie stood just inside the gate while his agents photographed the body and began processing the scene. “We haven’t turned her over yet,” he said. “But I’m guessing another stab wound.”

“Jesus,” Josie said. She turned and looked up and around but couldn’t see any of the neighbors’ upstairs windows. No one would have been able to see anything happening in Wendy’s backyard.

“Looks like she put up quite the fight,” Oaks said. “The house is a mess. Phone is in the kitchen on the counter. There’s blood on it, so we think he killed her first and then returned to the house and used it to call Amy.” He motioned toward the sliding glass doors. “I’d like you to have a look, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course,” Josie said.

They stepped gingerly through the glass doors. Debris crunched beneath their feet the moment they hit the tile of the kitchen floor. Not glass from the doors, but from the shattered remains of dinner and glassware that had been broken in Wendy Kaplan’s struggle against the killer. The draining board was on the floor. Pieces of thick ceramic plates and mugs lay all over the place. The wooden kitchen table was on its side, one of its legs snapped off. Every appliance that Wendy owned was in a broken heap on the kitchen floor. Her refrigerator door had a large dent in it.

Josie felt a swell of respect for the woman. It seemed wrong that she should die after putting up such a fight. “I hope she hurt him,” she said, eyes searching the detritus.

“Me too,” Oaks answered. He stood in one corner, arms crossed.

Josie stopped her search momentarily and looked over at him. “Is this a test?”

He laughed. “No, not a test. I’m just interested in what you see. Your impressions.”