Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn Book 6)(68)

“You got it, boss,” Gretchen said, disappearing once more.

The search results appeared. Zero results for Tessa Lendhardt in Buffalo, New York. Josie widened the search to Tessa Lendhardt in New York. Nothing. Again, she expanded her search parameters to include the whole country. Nothing.

“What the hell?” she muttered.

“Quinn!” Bob Chitwood’s voice boomed across the room as he emerged from the stairwell. Behind him, Agent Oaks, Gretchen and Mettner filed in, followed by Noah, lurching along on his crutches.

“Chief,” Josie said.

“I’d like a briefing. Now.”

Noah pulled his chair out from under his desk and sat down, hefting his casted leg onto the surface of the desk. Gretchen and Mettner sat at their desks while Oaks and Chitwood remained standing. Everyone looked exhausted and haggard and a bit unkempt. Mettner took his phone out and brought up his note-taking app while Gretchen’s pen poised over her trusty notebook.

“There’s a lot to discuss,” Josie said. She briefed them on everything that she had learned that day: that Amy had admitted to being a patient of Bryce Graham; that the name she had seen him under was Tessa Lendhardt; and that Amy had admitted to assuming the identity of Amy Walsh after her death. She went over everything Bryce Graham had told her about Tessa/Amy, which wasn’t much.

“I checked the TLO XP database but there’s no Tessa Lendhardt in the country, let alone New York.”

“That can’t be,” Chitwood said.

Josie motioned to her computer. “Any of you are welcome to double-check my work, perhaps use a different database. I only used one spelling of the last name, so we should probably check using different spellings.”

“We could also search for other people named Lendhardt in Buffalo, New York,” Noah suggested. “Track them down and see if any of them knew a Tessa.”

“I can have a couple of field agents in the Buffalo office work on that,” Oaks said.

Gretchen said, “Maybe Lendhardt was her married name. She could have been married. We really don’t know anything about this woman.”

“Good point,” Josie said. “We also have her elimination prints from when Hummel and his team processed Lucy’s bedroom—after we found the message from the kidnapper on the talking bear. I can have Hummel pull them, and we can run them through AFIS.”

Chitwood shook his head. “You won’t get anywhere with that unless she committed a crime. You said she told you she’s only forty, right? If she took Amy Walsh’s identity twenty-two years ago, she would have just turned eighteen which means any crime that would have put her into the system would have happened when she was a juvenile. She won’t be in there.”

Gretchen said, “She might be in there. If she was arrested at eighteen but fled.”

Oaks said, “From everything she’s told us, it’s more likely she was running from an abusive partner. Quinn, you’ve spent the most one-on-one time with this woman. You’ve talked to her therapist. Do you think she was on some kind of crime spree at eighteen?”

“No, I don’t.” Josie said. “Maybe running her prints is futile, but I still think it’s an avenue we should exhaust.”

Mettner cleared his throat. “Or we could confront her. Arrest her, even.”

“On what charges?” Noah asked.

Mettner shrugged. “Obstruction of justice. Interfering with an investigation. Identity theft. Fraud.”

Gretchen said, “Then she gets a lawyer. An expensive lawyer. She stops cooperating and maybe her husband does as well.”

“We’re less than twenty-four hours away from the ransom drop,” Josie said. “Which may be our one and only chance to catch this guy. We need the parents’ cooperation. Arresting Amy now would be a serious problem.”

“She broke the law,” Mettner argued.

“Yes,” Josie agreed. “And when this is over, we can address her identity theft, but right now, Lucy might still be alive and the only person the kidnapper will speak with is Amy. We need her.”

Oaks said, “Colin and Amy are at the bank now liquidating assets and trying to gather the cash they need. After that, my agents will take them to Walmart for their waterproof duffel bags.”

“Waterproof,” Noah said. “What’s this guy planning?”

“We don’t know,” Josie said. “Which means he’s going to call back.”

“Which is a problem for someone in this town,” Gretchen said. “Bryce Graham got lucky. The next person whose phone this guy tries to use may not be so lucky.”

Oaks said, “Which means we need Quinn to talk to Amy again and try to get more out of her. No more secrets. Her secret could have gotten Bryce Graham killed today.”

Josie rubbed a hand over her eyes, feeling days’ worth of fatigue in every cell of her body. “I can try again, but I’m not sure I’ll get anything useful in time.”

“And we can’t threaten to arrest her if we want to keep her in play,” Noah said. “So you’ve got no leverage.”

“Besides guilt,” Gretchen said.

“I already tried that,” Josie said. “She didn’t give Bryce Graham up then. I doubt she’ll be forthcoming this time.”