The Bones She Buried: A completely gripping, heart-stopping crime thriller(38)

“What about the kids?” Josie asked. “Did he ask about them?”

“He didn’t ask about them, but he did say that he tried over the years to reach out to them, but they were so angry with him for leaving that they didn’t want to talk to him and eventually, he just gave up. He said it would have made it worse for them if he’d come to the funeral.”

“Yeah,” Josie said. “I got that sense from Noah and his sister.”

Mettner said, “I think we should keep looking at the Pratt brothers because that’s what we’ve got to go on and because another Pratt has just been murdered. Let’s go down that rabbit hole and see where it leads for now.”

“Fair enough,” replied Josie.

Mettner asked, “How’d it go with Snyder?”

Josie sipped the coffee, feeling its warmth spread throughout her body and the mental fog of fatigue lifting. She gave Mettner and Gretchen a rundown of her meeting with Patti Snyder.

“Do you believe her?” Gretchen asked.

“I’m not sure,” Josie said. “I mean she had nothing to hide so why would she be so secretive all this time? Why not just come out and say that yes, she had given Drew Pratt the drive, but he never did anything with it?”

“Because that just makes it look even more like she was involved,” Gretchen said. “Before today, we had no firm connection between the two, only speculation. Now we know they did meet, and they did talk, and she gave him evidence of what Judge Sanders was doing. If the public knew that all along—she’d be the main suspect in his disappearance. The Patti Snyder theory would go straight to the top of the list. Although from reading the files, I know she was investigated anyway, and no law enforcement agency could find any evidence that she had an associate who possibly killed Pratt for her.”

“True,” Josie conceded.

Mettner said, “Regardless of whether she killed him or not, now we know Pratt definitely saw the contents of the drive and didn’t investigate.”

Gretchen said, “I can check out Judge Sanders and the Wood Creek guys to see if there’s any connection to Drew Pratt, but if they were involved in his disappearance, they’ve successfully kept it hidden this long. We may not find proof.”

“I’m not sure the Kickbacks thing had anything to do with it.” Josie looked up at Mettner. “Remember what Mason said? Drew started acting strangely two or three weeks before he went missing. He’d already known about the Kickbacks thing for months before that. So what did he find out, or what happened in the two or three weeks before he disappeared to make him so distraught?”

“How the hell could we know, if his own daughter couldn’t figure it out?” Mettner groused.

“It’s worth trying,” Josie said. “Sometimes a fresh set of eyes makes all the difference.”

Mettner slid his phone into his back pocket. “How would we go about figuring out what Drew Pratt was so distraught over right before he died?”

Josie shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe we can take another look inside Beth Pratt’s house? Start there? We can talk to Mason again, too. Maybe he can tell us if Beth kept any notes or documents that belonged to her dad before he went missing. She might have kept some of her dad’s personal effects—maybe all of them. I’d also be interested to see if Drew had notes on Samuel’s death. He was a prosecutor who asked police to take another look at his brother’s death every few years, there’s no way he didn’t maintain some personal file on Samuel’s death.”

“You think that’s something Beth Pratt would have had?” Gretchen asked.

“I think it’s worth looking into,” Josie answered. She looked at the clock. It was already evening. “We’ll get started on it tomorrow. First thing.”





Twenty-Six





Josie drove past Noah’s house after leaving the station. His lights were off, there was no sign of his car and no response when she pulled over to text him. Heading home, she slowed down as she passed the liquor store, every cell in her body longing to stop and buy a bottle of Wild Turkey to drown out all her insecurity over what was happening between Noah and her. She felt the hot burn of alcohol searing her throat just thinking about it, but she had promised herself she wouldn’t do that anymore. It would be so easy, a voice in her head told her. Just a few hours of numbness.

“No,” she muttered out loud, pressing her foot heavily onto the gas pedal and white-knuckling it all the way home.

Once there, she was suddenly relieved that she hadn’t given in as she recognized the cars of both her mother, Shannon Payne, and her friend, Misty Derossi, in her driveway. As she paused just inside her front door, the sounds of female voices and laughter floated toward her from the kitchen. She took a few steps forward and looked in to find not just Shannon and Misty, but also her grandmother, Lisette Matson, at the table. Spread out before them was a vast array of cosmetics—mostly nail polishes and various manicure tools.

“Jo! Jo!” The sound of two-year-old Harris Quinn’s voice startled her. Looking down, she saw him race across the kitchen toward her. Opening her arms, she caught him expertly and scooped him up.

“Hi honey,” she said, planting a kiss on his cheek. All the dark, cloying feelings that had assaulted her in the car were swept away when Harris’s little arms tightened around her neck.