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With a nod, he produced a marker and scribbled across the evidence bag. Josie stared at Claudia’s open palm. It was coated in dried blood. Had she used it to try to hold the skin on her head together? Had she been lucid long enough to know what was happening to her, or had the blow rendered her too disoriented? The amount of blood might have terrified her. Sadness settled onto Josie’s shoulders like a familiar cloak. She was good at her job but she hated it, too. She hated it because the lives of people like Claudia Collins were taken far too soon and with terrible violence.
Hummel went to the kitchen doors and called for a colleague. A moment later, Officer Jenny Chan appeared with a camera in hand. “Get some photos of her hand without the box,” he told her.
They stepped back while Chan worked. Josie tried to quiet her mind. The image of Claudia stepping onto the sidewalk and sweeping Harris out of the path of the bike with perfect ease kept replaying in her mind. She catalogued each detail of the encounter, searching for something. But what? That chance meeting had nothing to do with this. What was her brain trying to grasp at such a fever pitch?
“The rings!” Josie said. “Her rings are missing!”
Chan stopped snapping photos. Mettner said, “What rings?”
“She was wearing a very big, very expensive engagement ring and wedding band when I met her. I don’t see them on either of her hands.”
Hummel said, “I’ll go double-check the bedroom where we found the jewelry.”
Chan went back to her task. Dr. Feist snapped off her gloves and sighed. “I’ll let you know what I find after autopsy and exam. I can have something for you by the morning as long as we don’t get any more bodies tonight.”
“Let’s hope not,” Josie said.
SEVEN
Josie’s fingertips felt numb as she grabbed onto the door that led from the Denton Police Department municipal lot into the building. A blast of warmth hit them as she and Mettner entered on the ground floor and started up the stairs. Josie’s cheeks were still stinging from the cold even after they got to the second-floor great room. Noah sat at his desk, typing at his computer. Josie looked around but there was no evidence of Luke or Blue. The Chief’s door was ajar, but the lights were off inside.
“Did you find Landan Clarke’s son?” Josie asked.
Noah kept typing. “Yep. Pretty quick, thank God.” He heaved a sigh and looked up at her with a tight smile. “Honestly? Blue is a rock star. He found that kid in less than five minutes. It was awesome.”
Mettner said, “What about Luke?”
Noah kept his gaze on Josie. She knew without him saying it that it had been awkward. The two hadn’t ever been on bad terms—they hadn’t really been on any terms at all—but everyone knew about Josie’s history with Luke and what he had done to her. What only Noah knew was that there had been one night, long after Luke had finished his prison term and left Denton, that Josie had stayed over at Luke’s house. He’d been helping her chase a lead; she and Noah had been on the outs; and they’d gotten drunk and fallen asleep together. Nothing had happened between them, but Josie was racked with guilt all the same. Afterward, Noah was understanding. He believed her and trusted that nothing had happened. They had never spoken of it again. They hadn’t needed to. Luke was deep in the past.
Except now he wasn’t.
Ignoring Mettner, Noah said, “Heard you guys caught a homicide. Pretty bad, huh?”
“It was weird,” Mettner replied, taking the cue to let the subject of Luke go.
In her pocket, Josie’s cell phone chirped. She took it out to read the text messages while Mettner brought Noah up to speed on what they already knew and what they’d discovered at the scene.
“Well,” Noah said when Mettner was done. “I got back here about a half hour ago and the desk sergeant told me that Margot Huff was in the conference room, Eve Bowers is in Interview Room One and Beau Collins is in Interview Room Two.”
“Guess we should get started,” said Mettner. “I can take one of the assistants. Huff, maybe.”
“Just a minute,” Josie said. “Brennan texted me about Claudia Collins’s phone. Dispatch was able to ping it. Last known location was the Collinses’ home.”
“Which means that it’s still there and the ERT just didn’t find it?” asked Mettner. “That place is huge, but I don’t see Hummel’s team screwing that up. They’re pretty thorough.”
Josie put her phone back into her pocket. “It could just be turned off. If the killer took the phone with him, all he would have to do is turn it off before he left their home and that would account for it still pinging there. We should get a warrant for Claudia’s phone records, though.”
“Agree,” said Mettner. His phone was in his hands. He typed into the notes app, making a list. “I can get that prepared. You two talk to Collins. I’ve seen him on TV a ton of times. He’s really personable, but I’d like for you to get a read on him. After I get the warrant ready, I’ll start with one of the assistants.”
Josie said, “Actually, I’d like to talk with Eve Bowers first, since she was the one who found Claudia. Also, we don’t know if the killer drove right up the driveway and parked at the house, or if he was on foot.”
Noah said, “If I’m going there to murder someone, I’m not going to drive right up to the house. What if someone pulled up after him?”
Mettner said, “Yeah, they had a lot of people coming and going this evening. Seems unwise to park in the driveway. He could have stashed his own vehicle along the road. It’s secluded. The other houses are not even visible from the road. Even if they have security cameras, they wouldn’t have caught anything from the street.”
“True,” Josie said. “There’s another alternative. The Collinses’ house backs up to the city park. The killer could have gotten to it that way. Lots of people walk, jog, and bike through the park, even in the winter. It wouldn’t be suspicious. He could have just hopped off the trail that runs parallel to their street and made his way through the woods to their home. Let’s draw up a geo-fence warrant that will incorporate their street and the city park.”
A geo-fence was an excellent tool for law enforcement in cases like this. It was a location-based technology that allowed police to draw a virtual boundary around a specific geographic area—the city park, for example—and then track which smart devices like cell phones were inside that perimeter during a certain time period. Geo-fence warrants were first employed by law enforcement in 2016 and had been increasing ever since. Some people in other states had raised privacy concerns but for now, it was a tool at their disposal and Josie was going to use it if she could.
