Where the Blame Lies(7)
It was after two, and there wasn’t much more they could do until morning, so Jimmy grabbed his coat and headed back home to get some sleep. Zach took a few minutes closing down his computer and straightening his desk, hesitating, and then logging back in. It used to be that old cases were exclusively stored in boxes at CIS or by the detective who’d worked the case, but in the last ten years, they’d begun storing cases in the computer instead. He’d probably have to access both the computer and box files to get the full scope of a case from eight years ago, but for now, he’d look at what was on the computer. The eerie feeling about the similarity in the cases could be totally off-base, but it couldn’t hurt to take a peek at what was available to him at that moment before heading home to his empty apartment.
Zach typed in Josie Stratton’s name, some details of the long-ago case appearing in front of him in stark black and white. Josie Stratton, who’d been a nineteen-year-old college student at the University of Cincinnati nine years before, had been abducted by a masked intruder who broke into her apartment as she’d slept, attacked and drugged her. She’d woken up in an abandoned warehouse in Camp Washington, an area that had once housed industrial facilities that had shut down in the eighties. Josie Stratton had spent the next ten months chained to the concrete wall of a room on the bottom floor of what had once been a meatpacking warehouse, being sexually assaulted regularly and only fed sporadically. She’d been tortured, words carved into her skin that weren’t in the file and that he couldn’t remember offhand. He’d heard the nurses whispering about it though as they’d left her room. That poor girl will have to wear that reminder forever.
As if otherwise, she could have easily forgotten.
The DOA found earlier that night had appeared to be in similar restraints, but the location was completely different, and that girl had been held in a basement, not a warehouse. Still, both were abandoned properties, both featured concrete walls, both in areas where no one would hear the screams of a woman being tortured repeatedly over a long period of time.
He wondered who might have called it in and why anonymously? Drug addict or drug seller using the abandoned property for illegal activity? Probable. They might never know for sure.
Zach continued scrolling. There were no official photos on the computer pertaining to the Josie Stratton case. He’d need them to compare scenes, but he didn’t need them to recall Josie’s haunted eyes. There were few details online about how she’d managed to escape, but escape she had, and then she’d flagged down a cab who’d immediately dialed 9-1-1.
The man had worn the ski mask he’d initially attacked her in, but she had been able to identify him by his voice, his smell, and other physical attributes, as her downstairs neighbor, Marshall Landish. When police had shown up at his apartment, they’d found him dead by suicide. A single gunshot wound to the head using a stolen weapon. He’d obviously known they were coming and chosen death over prison. Josie’s DNA had been found on his clothes and on several items in his apartment. With that irrefutable evidence and Josie’s ID, the case was closed.
For the city of Cincinnati anyway. For Josie? Probably not so much.
Find my baby! Please find my baby!
Her words came back to him, the way he’d heard them through the door, clear, but with an hysterical edge she had just barely managed to control.
No, how could Josie Stratton ever move past a crime like the one perpetrated against her? That would have been enough to emotionally take anyone down. But add in the fact that she’d gotten pregnant by her tormenter and birthed his baby—alone and chained—in a cold, abandoned warehouse? His breath hissed through his lips. Christ Almighty.
Marshall Landish had taken the baby—a boy, he thought—shortly before Josie had escaped her hellish dungeon. The baby had never been found, though law enforcement had conducted a massive search.
Find my baby! Please find my baby!
But they never had.
Zach logged out, shrugged on his coat, and headed back out into the clear night, puddles shimmering on the ground of the parking lot. Josie Stratton’s eyes flashed in his mind one final time before he shook off the memory, fired up his truck, and headed home.
CHAPTER TWO
The old farmhouse that had been converted into the Persimmon Woods Bed & Breakfast, had been built in 1822. And from what Josie could tell, it was feeling every bit of its one hundred ninety-seven years. “Damn,” she muttered, as another drip splashed to the aged hardwood floor. She quickly grabbed an additional pot from the kitchen and placed it next to the other two already catching rainwater leaking through the roof. Excellent, she thought, her shoulders drooping. A new roof. Add it to the list. The never-ending list of things that would need to be fixed sooner rather than later if she was going to get the old place up and running and, in a state acceptable for guests.
And she needed guests. She needed income to afford the property taxes on the old place her aunt had left Josie in her will. She needed income to continue to eat. At the thought of going hungry, a stab of emotion pierced her. Emotion too big and complicated to break apart into more descriptive terms. She let the weight of it roll through her and then breathed, letting it go.
A leaky roof. Repairs. That’s what she had to deal with. That’s what was in front of her. And though it was daunting, it could be fixed. Somehow. Some way. She just had to figure out the details.