The Bones She Buried: A completely gripping, heart-stopping crime thriller(78)

“So Sutton Stone Enterprises doesn’t contract with security consultants?” Gretchen asked.

“Not that I’m aware of. I mean, it’s certainly not a practice that I know anything about. Maybe Mr. Sutton consulted with him when he was choosing the site security outfit?”

“Not that kind of consultant,” Gretchen said.

“We believe that Mr. Sutton was contracting with Mr. Ulrich for… muscle.”

Laura laughed. “Muscle? What does that mean? What, like a bodyguard? Mr. Sutton hardly needs a bodyguard. We run a number of quarries. Not dangerous stuff.”

Josie said, “Not a bodyguard. More like… an enforcer. A fixer, if you will.”

“What?” Laura said, looking from Josie to Gretchen and back as though waiting for a punchline. “What on God’s green earth would Mr. Sutton need a ‘fixer’ for?”

Ignoring her question, Gretchen asked, “So you’ve never heard of or come into contact with Ivan Ulrich in the context of your work?”

“What? No. I never heard of him until the other day when Josie said my father mentioned him.”

Gretchen asked, “Did your mother ever mention work issues to you?”

“No,” Laura said. “But she worked in Mr. Sutton’s office. I was usually traveling—at least until I took over the Bethlehem site.”

“So she never mentioned anything she might have found or stumbled onto while she worked for Sutton that would have been cause for concern?” Josie asked.

Something flickered in Laura’s eyes. She looked down at her tea. “She said something weird once, but it was during one of her… episodes. You know, when she was showing early signs of dementia. I didn’t take it seriously. It didn’t even really make sense.”

“How long ago was this? What did she say?” Gretchen asked.

Laura put her hands on the top of her belly. “It was last year. She said, ‘I know what they did. It was a big cover-up.’ So I asked her what who did and she said the Suttons. I asked if she meant Mr. Sutton, her old boss, and she said, ‘It wasn’t just him.’ Then I asked her what she was talking about and she said, ‘If I talk, they’ll kill me, and maybe you, too.’ I pressed her on it, but she was off on some other tangent. The thing is that she said a lot of strange and paranoid-sounding things when she wasn’t lucid. I really didn’t take it seriously.”

“Did you ask her about it when she was lucid?” Josie asked.

“Of course,” Laura said. “She laughed and said she’d been watching too many crime dramas on television, probably.”

“Was that the only time she ever said anything like that?” Gretchen asked.

Laura’s hands stroked her belly. Her face crumpled a little. “Well, I mean, she said something strange after that, but I honestly didn’t even bother asking her about it because I just thought it was the dementia talking.”

“What did she say?” Josie asked.

“She said, ‘I know where the bodies are, all the bodies.’”





Fifty-Five





Josie and Gretchen left Laura in the conference room and headed upstairs to where the interrogation rooms were. They checked the closed-circuit video feed to see that Ivan hadn’t moved very much while he was waiting. His coffee cup was empty but other than that, he seemed content to sit very still until someone joined him. He was someone who was very used to being obedient, Josie thought.

“You believe her?” Gretchen asked.

Josie sighed. “I don’t know. It’s hard to believe she didn’t know that Sutton had someone in the wings to do dirty work. But I do believe that she has no idea what Colette was hiding. Your mom’s getting dementia, saying all kinds of odd things knowing the person Colette was, her saying she knew where the bodies were would seem completely outlandish if I were her daughter. I would have believed her when she said she’d been watching too many crime dramas.”

“But Colette was telling the truth,” Gretchen said. “She did know something. She definitely knew what happened to Bridges and the Pratt brothers.”

“Yeah,” Josie agreed. She took out her cell phone and called Lamay, but he hadn’t found anything besides an old wrench buried in the yard. “Keep going,” Josie urged him. “It’s important.” She hung up and pocketed her phone. “Let’s take a crack at Ivan Ulrich.”

“Wait,” Gretchen said as her phone chirped. “It’s Mettner. He got an email from the legal department at Landon’s Sporting Goods outside of Bellewood. Ivan Ulrich’s name is on the list of customers who purchased size eleven Coyote Run boots from their store in the last six months. They tracked it through his customer rewards card.”

“Perfect,” Josie said. “Let’s go.”

They read Ivan his rights and Josie waited for him to ask for an attorney, but he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t realize how much trouble he was in, Josie thought.

Gretchen started by asking where he was on dates and times of the recent spate of crimes: Colette’s murder, Beth Pratt’s murder, the fire at Beth Pratt’s house, the attack on Mason Pratt, the fire at Colette’s home, Wolicki’s murder, and the attack on Earl Butler. He had the same alibi for each date: a lady friend who could confirm that he’d been with her during each of those times. He wrote her name, address and phone number down for them, but Josie set it aside. This woman was obviously someone he had convinced to lie for him. Josie wasn’t buying any of it.