Where the Blame Lies(12)

Jimmy nodded. “Sure. I’ve got the list in my car. You know which detectives worked that case? Did you say it was eight or nine years ago?”

“Nine since she was abducted, about eight since she escaped.”

Jimmy shook his head, blowing out a muttered, “Wow,” under his breath. Zach couldn’t agree more. “As far as who worked on it, I think it was Murphy and Bell, but I’ll have to double-check. Bell retired several years back, but Murphy was riding out the DROP program for the next year or so.”

“Meet at the office later to compare notes?” Jimmy asked, turning and moving toward his car.

“Yup,” Zach called, heading toward his own vehicle. Once he was inside and had closed the door, he rolled the window down, hoping some fresh air blowing in his face would help dispel the smell of death. He used a napkin from his glove box to wipe the strong odor of peppermint from beneath his nostrils. He sat there for a minute, going over the information Cathlyn had given them.

Holy shit. His hunch had been right. But why? Why would someone want to recreate the crime committed against Josie Stratton? Casus belli. Where the blame lies. What blame? And what was the connection between the man who abducted Josie nine years before, and the person who’d abducted and starved the girl lying on Cathlyn Harvey’s exam table?

He started his truck, pulling out of the parking lot, a heavy feeling in his chest, the long-ago echo of Josie’s anguished cries ringing in his head.





CHAPTER FIVE


Before



The days melted together, one into the other. Josie tried to think of a way to free herself, but with her hands chained behind her back, she was helpless. She could see a portion of the chains when she looked over her shoulder, but couldn’t tell what the lock looked like, or even where it was. The shackles were tight around her wrists. She had no chance of escaping them.

Sometimes she yelled long and loud until her voice and spirit broke, her cries turning to croaky whimpers as snot trailed from her nose and slid over her lips.

Marshall didn’t come every day and when he did show up, sometimes he only stayed for a few minutes, and other times a little longer. Sometimes he raped her, sometimes he didn’t. Even when he didn’t, she expected it, flinched at every movement he made, until she was so wound up with fear that she almost wished he’d just do it and get it over with. Anticipating the degradation was almost as bad as the reality of it.

When he did violate her, she tried to force her mind to drift away, but she couldn’t. She’d read once about a girl who had been brutally attacked but had no memory of what happened to her. The mind could be your protector, she thought. But apparently hers didn’t work that way, because she couldn’t drift anywhere. She was painfully present each time he laid on top of her, parting her legs and violating her, her dry flesh tearing with his invasion.

She thought of her childhood, how she’d tried to drift away back then too, when her mother had sought her out, drunk and rejected by her father, taking out her anger on Josie in any number of ways. She’d prayed to God to send her father back, to catch her mother hurting her, to protect her, to love her, to stay. Of course, he never had. But she hadn’t been able to block it out back then either. Why couldn’t she? Why was every word, every slam, every stinging slap that came her way seared into her memory, as clear as day? Whatever trick there was to shutting down your mind in the midst of horror, Josie didn’t know it. It was an endless reel of torment. No rest. Only agony.

Marshall had brought her a short bucket, more like a pan really, which she managed to maneuver underneath herself with her feet when she needed to, using her shackled hands to work her shorts down from behind. It was a pitiful set of awkward movements that Josie had mastered after a few days. And though using a bucket for a toilet was a further humiliation, at least he hadn’t left her to sit in her own waste.

He brought her food sometimes, but not every time, and her bones began poking through her skin, making it painful to sleep on the hard, cement floor. Her body ached. She was so hungry, so incredibly hungry.

At first she hated to hear his footsteps on the stairs, the sound of the lock turning. She dreaded his arrival, dreaded what he would do to her. But after what she calculated was a month or so, she began praying to hear his footsteps, praying he’d come back. What if he didn’t? What if he left her to slowly starve to death alone and shackled? She sobbed at the thought, pulling at her chains uselessly again until her wrists bled. The thought alone terrified her. Will I ever be free again, or will I die this way?

He came to her that night, the bulb from the outer hall washing the room in light. He had bread, cheese, sliced turkey, and water. He fed her the food and she ate it hungrily. It was so good it made tears trickle down her cheeks. Then he opened the water, tipping it back so she could drink. Their gazes met and held as she drank the water he offered, his hand cupped under her mouth to catch the drips. His eyes were golden hazel in the darkness of the surrounding ski mask. There was something almost loving in his gaze, like the moment was special to him too, or maybe she was imagining that. Maybe I’m developing Stockholm syndrome, she thought. She’d learned about that in the psychology class she’d taken the semester before. She hadn’t been able to understand how that could happen. It sounded ludicrous. This experience was really furthering her education, she thought, an hysterical laugh bubbling up her throat that she knew would emerge as a sob if she let it out. She swallowed it down along with the last sip of water.