The Bones She Buried: A completely gripping, heart-stopping crime thriller(87)

He shrugged. “It’s not over yet.”

Josie nodded. “I know, and we’ll find the person who killed Colette, but you should be proud of what you’ve done.”

His gaze swept to the floor but she could see his smile widening and his shoulders loosening with relief. “Thanks, boss.” He cleared his throat. “Hey, why don’t you take a break? Get some air. I can wrap up the paperwork.”

Josie laughed. “You sure? You’ll be here all night.”

Another shrug. “Part of the job, right?”

She patted his back as she turned to walk away. “You’re all right, Mett.”

While Mettner and everyone went about writing their reports, and Chitwood and the DA locked themselves in Chitwood’s office to plan a press conference, Josie walked out through the back of the station house, near the dumpster and away from the prying eyes of the press camped out front. She called Noah. She wanted to be the first to tell him that his mother wasn’t a killer. That Colette had been trapped in an impossible situation, trying to keep her job and protect her family while making attempts to expose a mass murderer. Josie would always wonder why she didn’t just go to the press. She had had the internal documents. She had been a whistleblower as young as thirteen years old. What had happened?

Noah’s own words came back to her from one of their previous cases. Sometimes people just get it wrong. It was true. It was so easy in hindsight to know what someone should have done. But Colette had been a young mother with explosive information on her hands that she could share with no one. Even Ivan, her childhood friend, was not trustworthy. He had been willing to kill to stop her from exposing her boss. They would never know what had been in Colette’s heart or mind, but she had tried to do the right thing until she couldn’t anymore without risking her own children.

Noah didn’t answer. Josie sent him a text asking him to call her. She thought about calling Laura, but there would be too many questions and Josie wanted Noah to hear the information first. Besides that, they still didn’t know who had killed Colette. He should hear that from her, with assurances that she wasn’t going to quit until she found the killer.

She heard the back door slam closed and looked over to see Gretchen walking toward her. Gretchen pointed to the parking lot exit. “Let’s go get some coffee. We’ve earned it.”

They took the long way, walking around an extra city block to avoid the press. Gretchen ordered coffees and their favorite pastries while Josie chose a table in the back of the small café. Her mind swirled with questions and different elements of the case, working from the beginning to where they now sat, trying to see what she had missed.

“Colette’s murder was not random,” Josie said as soon as Gretchen sat down.

“I know,” Gretchen replied. She turned the tray between them so that the cheese Danishes faced Josie and the pecan-crusted croissants faced her. “So let’s run it down.”

“We can’t trust Ivan’s alibi,” Josie said. “Whoever this lady friend is that he claims to have, she’s going to lie for him. So if we ask her if they were together on the night Colette was killed, she’s going to say yes.”

“Agreed. But Ivan is a size eleven shoe. The print at Colette’s was a size ten. Based on that, I tend to believe Ivan when he says he didn’t kill her. Clearly, he loved her.”

“But the murders were all so similar,” Josie said. “Death by suffocation. Even when he killed Craig Bridges and the Pratt brothers, Ivan drowned them. He’s never used a weapon. What are the odds of two different killers in this case killing in exactly the same way?”

Gretchen’s mouth was full of croissant so she couldn’t speak, but she shook her head vigorously.

“Not the same,” Josie said.

Gretchen nodded.

“Because someone stuffed Colette’s mouth full of dirt.”

Gretchen swallowed. “Yes. Think about that for a moment.”

Josie said, “It’s unnecessary. Based on the knee prints, the large male shoe size, the imprint of Colette’s skull in the dirt—she was being pressed very forcefully into the ground.”

“So whoever was on top of her was strong,” Gretchen added.

“The dirt was a personal thing,” Josie said. She tried to envision it; straddling someone, holding their head in place and stuffing handfuls of dirt into their mouth so deep that it lodged in their throat. “He was angry. He didn’t just want to silence her. He wanted to shut her the hell up. He wanted to hurt her.”

“Who? Gretchen asked. “Who would be that angry with her? Who would want to shut her up? Who would be that close to her?”

Josie’s mind cycled through all the players. Then she said, “Come back to the station with me. I need to look at the alibis again.”





Sixty-One





Back at the station house, it only took Josie fifteen minutes of reviewing Colette’s file to find what she was looking for. She made a call, and her suspicion was confirmed. She immediately called Noah, but he didn’t answer.

“We need to go,” she told Gretchen.

Josie tried calling Noah again as she and Gretchen raced toward his house. No answer. She tried Laura’s phone but got no answer from her either. As the streets of Denton flew past them, Gretchen said, “Call a backup unit.”