The Bones She Buried: A completely gripping, heart-stopping crime thriller(83)

“Did you know what was on the flash drive?” Josie asked him.

“No. I thought perhaps it was what she had given him. I wanted her to know that I was the last person he saw. So I gave the drive back to her. She told me it wasn’t hers. I told her I knew she gave it to Pratt. She said that she hadn’t given anything to him, but she admitted to having files. Internal company documents, she said. She found them in Sutton senior’s office after his death, hidden in a secret panel in his desk. She said no one would ever know where she hid them, and it didn’t matter because she was done with trying to expose Sutton.”

“You weren’t afraid she would try again?” Gretchen said. “She’d already tried three times.”

“I knew she wouldn’t try again,” Ivan said, voice now tinged with sadness. “She didn’t want more deaths on her conscience.”

Josie wanted to tell him those deaths were on his conscience, not Colette’s, but she kept silent.

Ivan continued, “I begged her not to make me kill again. I begged her to pray for my soul. Then Laura was hired by Sutton. Colette promised again to stop, to take it to her grave.”

“So what happened?” Gretchen asked. “Why did you kill her?”

Shock whitened his face. “I didn’t kill her. I would never harm Colette. No one would hurt her. She was a good person.”

“Ivan,” Josie said. “You’ve just confessed to three murders. Why are you lying about Colette’s?”

He put a hand on the table and thrust his neck toward Josie, eyes earnest. “I didn’t kill her.”

“But you killed Beth Pratt, burned her house down, attacked Mason Pratt, killed Brody Wolicki and tried to kill Earl Butler,” Josie pointed out. “And you burned Colette’s house down while me and Noah were still in it.”

His head hung again. “I didn’t want to.”

“Then why did you do it?” Josie said.

For the first time, Ivan looked behind them at the viewing mirror. “I don’t want to talk anymore. I want a deal.”

“What kind of a deal?” Josie asked.

“The kind where I tell you the rest and help you put away Mr. Sutton. You don’t understand. He is still a danger to Laura and all of Colette’s children.”

Josie raised a brow at him. “You’re the one who does his dirty work. Why should we believe that he is a danger to anyone? He’s an elderly man now.”

“Any man with a gun can be dangerous. I’m telling you. He is unpredictable. Cold. I did the things I did because I had to do them. He is not like that. He… enjoys it.”

Josie exchanged a glance with Gretchen. “Give us some time.”

Outside the interrogation room, Gretchen said, “What do you think?”

Josie sighed. “It’s not up to us. I have to call the DA’s office. Although if they know we got information from this guy about Drew Pratt, they’ll probably be willing to work with him.”

“But he already gave up the Drew Pratt murder. That was his bargaining chip,” Gretchen said.

“No. He knows a lot more. If there’s really a mass grave out there, and this guy can give it to us then the DA will work with him. Plus, Sutton’s a big fish with big lawyers. A witness against him might be the only way to get to him. Also, there was a second person, remember? The size ten shoe print at Colette’s house. We need to know if he can name that person.”

“I’ll call the DA’s office,” Gretchen said. “You check in with Lamay.”





Fifty-Eight





“I got nothing, boss,” Lamay said when Josie reached him on his cell phone. “I’m gonna have to dig up the whole yard. You got someone set up for that?”

“Shit, no. I’ll have to talk to Chitwood.” They hadn’t had a plan B.

Lamay was still talking. “I’m thinking if we start at the end of the yard where this grotto is—”

“What did you say?” Josie asked. “About a grotto?”

“There’s a small garden grotto here in the backyard. Has a statute of the Virgin Mary in it. Homeowners say it was left there by the Fraleys when they sold the house. It’s pretty nice. They never took it down even though they’re not religious. They said it felt wrong.”

Josie squeezed the bridge of her nose. “Dan,” she said. “It’s under the grotto.”

“You sure?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sure. Can you move it? Is it small enough for you to move on your own so you can get under it?”

There was a long moment of silence followed by some panting breaths. “I think I need help, boss.”

Josie looked over to hers and Gretchen’s desks in the great room where Gretchen was now talking with Mettner and Hummel. By the looks on all their faces, the search warrant they’d served that morning hadn’t turned up anything useful. “I’m sending Mett and Hummel,” she said. “Sit tight.”

She dispatched Mettner and Hummel to go help Lamay. They hadn’t turned up anything at Sutton Stone’s records storage facility other than what Gretchen had already found in the newspapers.

The DA himself showed up a half hour later with one of his assistant DAs in tow. After meeting with Josie, Gretchen and Chitwood and hearing everything they’d already discovered, the prosecutor offered to keep the death penalty off the table if Ivan was willing to testify against Sutton for any part he had in the murders of Beth Pratt and Brody Wolicki; the attacks on Mason Pratt and Earl Butler and the arsons at Beth Pratt and Colette’s houses. It took another hour of negotiating with Ivan and convincing him that, given all he’d confessed to already, avoiding the death penalty was the best he could hope for.