Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn Book 6)(96)

“Well,” Oaks said. “It has to be close by. From the time of the drop to the time Quinn caught him in the Ross house, it was only about twenty-four hours. He would have had to go to wherever they stashed her, gotten her, driven her to wherever he was going to leave her and driven back to the Ross household.”

Josie said, “Twenty-four hours could put her anywhere in the state. It doesn’t seem like a lot of time to us, but you could easily drive six hours from here, spend a couple of hours and drive back.”

“Jesus,” Chitwood said. “We’ll never find her. Someone should go back in there and try to get him to tell us.”

“Too bad we can’t beat it out of him,” Noah said.

There were nods all around the table. “I’m going to dream about beating that bastard for the rest of my life,” Oaks muttered. “But that’s not an option.”

“He’s not from here,” Josie said. “Neither was Natalie Oliver.”

“So?” Chitwood said. “I’m not from here. Neither is Palmer. What’s your point?”

“How did he know about Lover’s Cave? That’s a local thing. Not on any map,” Josie said.

Mettner said, “They did recon for months.”

“Still,” Josie said. “Chief, you’ve been here at least a year. Had you ever heard of it before this case?”

“No,” he said. “But I’m not looking for abandoned places to squat.”

“He found out about Lover’s Cave from somewhere. Only locals would know about that.”

Gretchen said, “Kommorah’s Koffee, down the street, they’ve got photos of all the local landmarks and rock formations. I had heard of it because of that wall they have displaying local artists’ and photographers’ work.”

Josie knew the wall. An entire section had been devoted to photographs taken by a local photographer who'd gone on to be quite successful and now traveled the world, freelancing for magazines and websites like National Geographic and the Smithsonian. The pictures were of places that only residents intimate with the city’s geography would know, like the rock formations found in the forests surrounding the city. She knew them well: Broken Heart, the Stacks, Turtle, Lover’s Cave, and the Overlook.

“Mett,” she said. “Run down to Komorrah’s and take a photograph of the wall, would you?”

Wordlessly, Mettner jogged from the room. Chitwood said, “Are you serious, Quinn? You’re going to look for this kid based on some pictures hanging in a coffee shop? You do understand that Lucy could get killed out there while you’re playing these games with this monster, don’t you?”

“He’s been in the area for months. Back before they’d taken Lucy, before anyone was looking for them, they could have gone to Kommorah’s many times.”

“It’s very popular,” Noah pointed out.

Chitwood shot him a dirty look.

Josie went on, “Maybe they were there one day, waiting for their order, and they happened to look at the wall. Maybe he got the bright idea to use one of those places as a drop location.”

“I think you’re talking out of your ass, Quinn.”

Oaks said, “You have any better ideas for narrowing our search area, Chief?”

Chitwood didn’t answer. He turned away from them and started pacing the room. Josie’s phone chirped. She opened Mettner’s text message and pulled up the photograph. “I see the Stacks. It wouldn’t be there. They’re right behind the high school where Oliver was killed. Broken Heart—that’s also near Denton East. Near enough for her to find her way out of the woods pretty quickly. Turtle…”

Noah said, “That’s behind a residential area. That area of woods isn’t very big.”

“You’re right,” Josie agreed. “It’s not very big. It’s right behind the trailer park where I grew up.”

“What else is on there?” Noah asked.

“The Overlook,” Josie said.

“Is that like a lovers’ lane?” Gretchen asked.

Josie and Noah laughed. Josie said, “No, the name is a joke. It’s this huge rock that sits smack in the middle of the woods. It stands almost straight up but it’s angled so you can actually walk to the top of it.”

“And you can slide back down,” Noah said. “It’s really like a giant slide.”

Josie said, “It’s huge, about the height of a tree. Flat on the top.”

“It doesn’t really overlook anything,” Noah said. “It just takes you to the treetops. It just looks really cool. Plus, it’s just weird. Sitting there in the middle of the forest.”

Gretchen said, “Can you find it on this map?”

She reached over to the laptop and zoomed out of the game lands they had been looking at. Pointing to various locations to orient them, she said, “Here’s west Denton—the city park, the elementary school, the Ross household. Here’s the middle of the city where we are now. Here’s Denton East High school, then the Stacks and behind that the abandoned textile mill. Where is the Overlook?”

Noah said, “It’s north.”

Josie pointed to a rural road snaking up and out of Denton proper toward the top of the screen. “If you take that route north, it would be on the left. There are some hiking trails. You might even be able to see it on satellite.” She clicked, moving the area into the center of the screen and zooming in until a misshapen gray shape poking through the treetops came into view. “There,” Josie said.