The Bones She Buried: A completely gripping, heart-stopping crime thriller(34)

Josie kept her voice calm and reasonable. “Noah, I didn’t say she did something wrong. I just said there were some things she was keeping secret. Those secrets may have gotten her killed.”

“My mother didn’t have secrets. I know that you and your grandmother and that evil bitch who raised you all had more secrets than you could keep track of, but—”

Josie cut him off. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you were raised by a pack of liars. Everything about your life was a lie. Now you see things through that filter. You see things that aren’t there. Not every person is lying and devious like what you’re used to. My mother was—”

Josie couldn’t keep her anger in check any longer. She stepped toward him and thrust her chin forward. “Your mother was what? A perfect saint? You think she never told a lie in her entire life?”

“Don’t talk about my mother,” he shouted.

Josie didn’t back down. “Noah, another innocent woman is dead. Like it or not, there is a killer loose in this city. We need to find him.”

He turned away from her.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

He paused at the doorway but didn’t look at her.

“Why are you doing this?” Josie said, the words slipping out high-pitched and filled with emotion before she could snatch them back. “Why are you acting like this?”

“Like what?”

“Like you don’t care that someone killed your mother?”

He turned back, tears in his eyes. “Of course I care that someone killed her. It’s all I can think about. But please, I’m begging you, don’t shit on my mother’s memory.”

“Oh, Noah, I would never—”

He held up a hand to silence her. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Maybe you should go home.”

Tears stung the backs of her eyes, but she bit them back. Afraid anything else she said would only lead to more fighting, she murmured, “If that’s what you want.”

He said nothing. She stood frozen in the kitchen, listening to him move around the house. She heard the jangle of his keys and then the front door close. When his car roared to life out front, she let herself cry.





Twenty-Three





“It’s like I don’t even know who he is anymore,” Josie complained to Gretchen. The two sat across from one another at a table inside Komorrah’s Koffee, which was just a few blocks from the police station. Josie finished off her third cheese Danish and sipped her coffee.

Gretchen picked up a pecan-crusted croissant and put it on the plate in front of her. The moment Gretchen saw Josie, she had decided it was a dozen-pastries type of day and promptly ordered an entire box for them to share. “Well,” Gretchen told her. “People process grief differently. You and I—we lock it away, push it down, and throw ourselves into work.”

“True,” Josie said.

“Some people become very depressed and stop functioning. Some people get angry and lash out. Sounds like Noah is just lashing out.”

Josie put her coffee down and sighed. “But it’s so unlike him. He’s always so… even-tempered and reasonable.”

Gretchen laughed. “Oh, I know. When everyone else is losing their shit, he can walk into a room and diffuse things pretty damn quick.”

“It’s his gift,” Josie agreed. “I wish Chitwood would let you off the desk. Then I could be home with him more and it wouldn’t necessarily have to be me asking the tough questions.”

Gretchen took a bite of her pastry and chewed slowly, her expression thoughtful. After she swallowed, she said, “I don’t know that anyone else asking the questions would make it easier on him.”

“You’re right,” Josie said.

“My third or fourth year in homicide, I caught a case where a woman’s grandson was shot to death. He was only a teenager. She was raising him so it was just the two of them. She was devastated, that was obvious, but she didn’t want to know anything about our investigation. Not until we caught the killer and even then, all she wanted to know was that he was behind bars. Most families are calling six times a day for updates. But there were always one or two who needed to distance themselves from all of it—the murder, the details, the investigation. It’s too much, too painful. That’s where Noah is at the moment. The pain is too big for him right now.”

“He’s so angry.”

“It’s not at you,” Gretchen assured her. “He’s angry at the whole horrible situation. He’s just taking it out on you.”

“Great,” Josie said drily. She picked up her fourth cheese Danish and took a big bite, thinking she’d need to take a run later to burn off all the calories she was consuming. Since she stopped drinking, she’d been doing a lot of stress-eating.

“He’s never lost anyone really close to him, has he?” Gretchen asked.

Josie shook her head. “No, he hasn’t.”

“Well, there’s no blueprint for these things—you know that. He’s going to be in pain for a long time.”

“Do you know if Mettner talked to Mason Pratt’s mother?” Josie asked, changing the subject. Gretchen was right. When she was hurting, work made it better.