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“Quinn!” he barked. “Are you even listening to me? I said Amber picked the worst week to be on vacation. What good is a press liaison when she’s not here for important shit? Not that there’s anything for her to do, is there? ’Cause the four of you are taking so goddamn long to find this asshole. What did I tell you about dead bodies and serial killers?”

Josie opened her mouth to answer but the Chief didn’t give her a chance to, bellowing instead, “I don’t want them in my city!”

Had he pissed someone off enough to toss their coffee at him or was it just an unfortunate spill? The list of people who would love to throw a hot coffee at this man was long.

As if sensing her curiosity, he opened his arms and glanced down at himself. “Look at this! You know what happens when the press breathes down my neck? The mayor comes next. It wasn’t enough that I had to sit across from her botoxed mutant face for a half hour while she chewed me out for not having a handle on this Last Kiss Killer thing, but then she knocked her coffee over and lucky me, I’m wearing it. I swear she did it on purpose. I had to walk past all those reporters out back looking like this! Where the hell is Fraley?”

Josie blinked. No one liked the mayor but she and the Chief had been at each other’s throats for years. Mostly because he never told her what she wanted to hear. This wasn’t new, but it wasn’t good for Josie or the team. The more the mayor irritated Chief Chitwood, the more unpleasant he would be and his base-level unpleasantness was already quite an achievement.

“He went home.” Under her desk, Josie flexed her legs, the pain in her knees finally receding. “I’m here for another few hours until Turner comes in. Then back on with Gretchen in the morning.”

They were stretched thin, each of them having to pick up doubles between the garden-variety city crime and the Last Kiss Killer investigation.

“Well?” he snapped. “Do you have anything I want to hear? Where are you with this Fisher guy?”

“We talked with his ex-wife,” said Josie. “They met when they were both in their early twenties. Got married within a year. He was very clingy. After a few years, she couldn’t take it anymore so she left. He called her and stopped by her apartment persistently for about six months afterward but eventually stopped when she made it clear it was really over.”

“Sounds like a winner,” the Chief said. “Didn’t you say he was driving for a limo service when he had his DUI?”

“Yes,” said Josie. “Noah talked with the owner of the limo company. Fisher was driving for them fifteen years ago at the time that the Last Kiss Killer murders started. Noah gave him a list of the towns where the first six victims were killed, and he confirmed that their company served those areas often. It’s possible that Fisher drove clients to and from all of those locations, but they don’t keep records going that far back. At least, none that would help us. They don’t have logs of the clients who booked them, the trips they took, or the driver they used from back then. They’ve got a file on Fisher, but it’s only basic stuff. When he was hired, when he was fired, his salary.”

“So he could have been in the areas where the victims were killed at the time they were killed but there’s no way of proving it.”

“Yeah.”

The Chief narrowed his eyes. “Is that it?”

“The timeline fits,” Josie said quickly, already knowing anything she said wasn’t going to satisfy him. They were no closer to finding this killer today than they had been the day he’d murdered Sylvia. “Fisher’s wife left him about a year before the murders started, which could have been the trigger. You know these types usually experience some kind of stressor that tips them over the edge. He got arrested for his DUI a few months after Sylvia was attacked. He served his two-year sentence. It coincides with the Last Kiss Killer disappearing. Then he moved here and befriended Sylvia before getting into a relationship with her.”

“That’s all fine and good, Quinn, but you can’t prove Fisher is the Last Kiss Killer based on a timeline. He’s a creep, no doubt about it, but that doesn’t mean he’s our guy. You better start kicking over some more stones real quick because this isn’t going to cut it. I don’t want any more bodies and I don’t want to spend one more damn second in the mayor’s presence, so you four better come up with something fast, and by fast, I mean yesterday!”

Twenty-Seven

It was almost midnight by the time Josie got home. There was a dull ache in her lower back from sitting at her desk for so many hours, and her eyes were painfully dry from sifting through records and reading what felt like endless reports. Whenever they reached an impasse in an investigation, she went back to what they already knew, hoping to find something she’d missed on her first pass or her second or third. She’d gone back to the police file from Sylvia’s first attack and pored over it again, but had no luck.

Trout came trotting into the foyer, wiggling his butt and whining in greeting. Josie knelt to give him pets and tell him what a good boy he was even though he had thrown up in front of their bedroom door that morning and she’d stepped in it. He was so cute, he could be forgiven anything.

“What are you doing down here?” she murmured, scratching behind his ears.

He had taken to sleeping in Wren’s room most nights. Josie stood up and peeked inside the living room, hoping to find her but there was only Trinity. She sat cross-legged in the center of the couch, her laptop open on the coffee table in front of her as she clicked the television remote. Drake had returned to New York for a work matter but she wore one of his T-shirts with a pair of sleep shorts. Even with her hair up in a messy bun, she looked glamorous.

“Come sit with me,” Trinity said without looking away from the TV.

“In a minute,” said Josie.

Quietly, she went upstairs and put her pistol in its safe before changing into pajamas. Noah was sprawled on his side of the bed, face down, snoring. Josie took a moment to run her fingers through his hair, feeling the lump of scar tissue along the side of his head. The reminder that he’d almost been taken from her. Nearly a year ago, when he was abducted, his captors had shot him in the head and left him for dead. Lucky for Noah—and Josie—the shooter had terrible aim. The bullet had grazed his skull. Sometimes, when the days were hard and the world felt too brutal, she ran her hands through his hair until she found the scar tissue so she could remind herself that no matter how horrific things were in the world, this man was here with her. The salve to all her wounds.

Noah sighed in his sleep and mumbled her name. She kissed his temple and made her way back downstairs. Trinity hadn’t moved. Josie plopped onto the couch beside her, shamelessly peeking at her laptop screen. As expected, there was video footage of Sylvia West’s interview queued up, though her sister seemed more interested in the movie selection on Netflix.

“Where’s Wren?” Josie asked her.

“Her room.”

“How was she today?”

Trinity paused in her scrolling and put the remote down on the table before turning her full attention to Josie. “She was a delight. We went to breakfast at the diner. Then we got mani pedis. She grilled me about all the famous people I’ve met. We took Trout for a walk. Then we sat in here and she sketched while I worked. After that, she made dinner. It was lovely.”

Josie didn’t want to feel gutted. Wren was happy. She’d had a good day. Wasn’t that the point of everything? Did it really matter that she’d had a good day with someone else? She wouldn’t stay mad at Josie forever. Would she? They’d be able to have days like that together eventually. Wouldn’t they?