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Josie sighed. “Mett’s checking on the navigation system. There’s already a BOLO out so someone might see it, and if it turns up on any of the LPRs, we’ll know.”
“We might find it faster if we send more units out to search.”
They passed through a wide break in a row of shrubbery that separated the park from the sidewalk. In a cobblestone clearing, a sign that said “Welcome to Denton’s City Park” greeted them. Next to it was another sign that listed the rules of the park. There were many. Benches were scattered around the space. There were four different paths leading away from the area, each one marked by a sign that indicated which park attractions citizens could find along the way. Playground, carousel, band shell, softball fields, gazebo, pond, jogging and biking trails, community picnic areas. The uniformed officers were gathered in a tight knot beside the trail that led to the playground and carousel.
Noah touched Josie’s arm. She turned toward him, but he wasn’t there. He’d stopped near the path that led to the jogging and biking trails. “What is it?” she asked.
He strode over to one of the benches and circled behind it, squatting down. Josie followed and watched as he took out his phone and snapped photos of some object lodged between two cobblestones. Next, he fished a pair of gloves from his coat pocket and snapped them on. He lifted the object and held it up so that Josie could see. Her heart gave a small flutter before speeding up. Staring back at her from a Pennsylvania’s driver’s license was the face of Eve Bowers.
“She was inside the park,” Josie said.
A few of the uniformed officers had jogged over. One of them offered to get an evidence bag and ran off to his car.
“Or the killer took her and tossed her driver’s license here to throw us off.”
Josie walked up the path a bit, to where the cobblestone ended and both sides of the path were grass, dirt, and dead vegetation. The other officers had already spread out across the clearing, eyes searching the ground for more clues.
Josie said, “It doesn’t matter, does it? We can’t take the chance of not searching the park because if she is here, and there is even the smallest chance he hasn’t killed her yet, we need to find her.”
“If she’s here, he’s here,” Noah said. The uniformed officer who’d offered to get an evidence bag from his car returned. Noah deposited Eve Bowers’s license into the paper bag and the officer took custody of it, using a marker he’d brought with him to properly label the bag.
“I don’t think he’s here,” Josie said. “He wouldn’t stick around.”
“Then he took her in her car,” said Noah. “And planted the license here so we would split our resources in the search. We need to be looking for the car.”
Josie couldn’t disagree. What evidence they had told them that Eve Bowers had left her apartment alone in her own vehicle. Then her phone had pinged outside the city park entrance. That was the last place they could put her. But she wasn’t here and neither was her vehicle. It was a lot harder to hide a vehicle than a person. Splitting the police resources to give the killer more time made sense. He had turned off Claudia Collins’s phone when he left her home. Somehow, he’d encountered Eve Bowers here, used her phone to text Margot, and then most likely turned it off. He knew enough about police procedure to ensure that he couldn’t be tracked by phone, which meant he probably knew that Eve’s vehicle, a fairly recent model, likely had a navigation system in it. It was only a matter of time before the police located it. Making it look like Eve was inside the park was a good distraction.
“What if she’s here?” Josie said.
Noah followed her partway up the path. “Josie, her vehicle’s not here.”
The words from the killer’s text came back to her.THE GAME IS ON.
“He will want her to be found,” Josie said. “I think there is a reasonable chance that he left her here.”
“And what? Drove off in her car?” Noah said. “How would that work? He would have to leave his own vehicle nearby. He may want us to find her, but I’m pretty sure he’s not too eager to get caught.”
Again, Josie couldn’t argue with his logic. “Fine,” she said. “You leave me with a few people here and we’ll search the park. Send a couple of units out to check the tags of all vehicles parked nearby. Everyone else looks for Eve’s car until it’s found either by them or through the navigation system that Mett is running down.”
“Josie, this park is huge.”
“But if you’re right about him trying to throw us off, then you’ll find Eve’s car pretty quickly and we can call off the search here. Anyway, there are still people inside the park just going about their days. We’ve already dodged the press on this for the last eighteen hours. It’s probably best if we don’t attract attention by flooding this park with police officers unless we absolutely have to do so.”
As if on cue, a jogger and another man walking his dog came from one of the trails, staring at the police officers as they exited the park.
“We should call Luke,” Noah said. “We can get something from Eve’s apartment for Blue to scent. If she is here, the dog will find her in minutes.”
Pulling the collar of her coat up around her cheeks, Josie said, “I’m not sure we have time.” She pictured Claudia’s head wound. If the killer attacked Eve the way he’d attacked Claudia, she might bleed out before they found her, if she hadn’t already. Whether Eve was somewhere in the park or halfway across town in her own car, she needed to be located as soon as possible.
Noah took out his phone. “I’ll call him and see how fast they can get here.”
Josie said, “I’ll go get our radios from the car. Then I’ll start here. I’ll work my way across the park.”
Noah nodded. “I’ll get everything else coordinated. Be careful.”
SEVENTEEN
Once she had her radio affixed to the back of her pants, Josie took off at a run, her breath coming out in puffs as she headed up the path leading to the jogging and biking trails. She reached another clearing, this one asphalt, where the path diverged into six different trails. Josie chose the trail that ran along the outermost edge of the eastern side of the park. She’d gone a few feet when something along the side caught her eye. It was nestled among the branches of an unruly hawthorn bush. At first, she thought it was merely a dried leaf but as she drew closer, she saw that it was dark blue. Leaning in for a better look, Josie’s breath caught in her throat.
