The Bones She Buried: A completely gripping, heart-stopping crime thriller(42)

The storage unit Beth had rented was near the back and out of sight of the road, for which Josie was grateful. They could poke around at their leisure and not have to worry about anyone asking questions. They pulled up behind Mason’s truck and got out. Mason hopped out too, looking exhausted. Josie wondered if he’d even had a chance to sleep. They’d sent him to the ER while the ERT dusted his bedroom and back door for prints. That had only been four or five hours earlier.

He greeted them with a half-hearted wave and fished a set of keys out of his jeans pocket. A moment later they were inside the unit, and Mason flicked on an overhead light which cast a harsh glare over the room. Several rows of plastic bins, stacked shoulder-high, sat on a concrete floor. It smelled musty, and the air was cold.

“I’m really not sure what she kept in here, specifically,” Mason said, tapping a palm against the nearest stack of bins. “But you’re welcome to look as long as you like.” He tossed the key toward Mettner and he caught it. “I’m going home to sleep,” he added. “Just get that back to me when you’re done.”

“Mason,” Josie said as he started to walk back to the truck. “I’d like to have one of our officers inside your house and a unit outside for now, if you don’t mind.”

He scratched his forehead. “I’m not gonna argue, especially after last night.”

They thanked him and got to work. Mettner started looking through the bins on the far left, and Josie checked the ones on the far right. They worked their way toward the middle, finding old clothes, sports memorabilia, kitchenware, some photo albums, Drew Pratt’s framed college degrees and dozens of notebooks filled with Pratt’s handwriting that were obviously notes he had taken on his various cases as an ADA.

“Good lord,” Mettner said, swiping his forearm across his upper lip. The air outside was cool, but the longer they worked in the small storage unit, the warmer and sweatier they became. “It will take us ages to go through all these, and we don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

“Set them aside,” Josie said. “We can have a closer look at them later.”

“What are we looking for?” Mettner asked.

“I don’t know, but I think we’ll know it when we find it.”

They found a collection of shoes and ties, several bins of books, some blankets and sheet sets, and an old tool box.

“Well,” Mettner said. “I know Mason said that Beth thought her father was dead, but it looks like she kept everything he owned.”

Josie felt a small tug at her heart. “There was probably always a part of her that still hoped he would come walking back in through the front door.”

“Check this out,” Mettner said, tugging a small brown box out of one of the plastic bins. On the top, in thick black marker, was the name: Sam. Mettner carried it to the front of the storage unit where the daylight was strongest and the air was coolest. They both knelt on the floor and Josie opened the box. There was a notebook, which looked like an old daily planner, and several loose papers.

“This looks like Drew Pratt’s unofficial ‘file’ on his brother’s death,” Josie said. She tried to imagine what it had been like for Drew Pratt to lose his brother under such odd circumstances; to have grown up with someone and know them intimately and then have them do something so unexpected. Josie had known her husband, Ray, since childhood. They had been best friends, then high school sweethearts and then husband and wife. How would she have reacted if one day Ray had walked off, driven forty miles to a river bank and disappeared, only to wash up a few days later, dead? Like Drew Pratt, she would never have believed it was a suicide. Like Drew Pratt, she would have conducted her own investigation. She would not have been able to let it go.

Mettner leafed through the loose pages. “You’re right. Here’s the autopsy report, and there are some police reports, too.”

“What’s that?” Josie asked, pointing to a stack of typed pages that had been bound together with a thick rubber band.

Mettner pulled them from the bottom of the pile he had taken and riffled through them. “Academic papers written by Samuel Pratt.”

He handed them to Josie. The archaeological terms in the text and titles were foreign to Josie, but she gathered that the papers appeared to have been written about digs Samuel Pratt had done in various countries: Egypt, Italy, Bosnia Herzegovina, China and even a few places in the United States. Josie set them aside and pushed a few more items around inside the box. There was a stapler, a tiny cylinder filled with paper clips, and a desk nameplate that read: Dr. Samuel Pratt. “Some of this is stuff from Samuel Pratt’s office,” Josie said. “The last place he was seen alive.”

Josie picked up the notebook and started flipping pages. There were notes upon notes in Drew Pratt’s crowded scrawl about his brother’s case. Most of it was questions in black ink which Pratt had later answered in blue ink.

Did he get any calls that day at the office?

Secretary reported only one call from department chair about summer class schedule.





* * *



Did anyone stop by his office that day?

Secretary reported one student stopped by to leave an overdue paper.





* * *



Did anyone at the café actually see him?