AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Noah said, “You had enough time to script that show. You could have called us.”
Josie said, “How did he contact you?”
He picked up his phone, punched in a passcode and then handed it to Josie. “From Claudia’s phone.”
On the screen was a series of text messages between Beau and the contact he had named “Beautiful Claudia” with three heart emojis after it. Scrolling back, Josie saw several messages between husband and wife about the anniversary dinner and scores of other scheduling issues. There was nothing at all unusual in them unless you counted the lack of emotion or playfulness in their exchanges. Even Josie and Noah sent each other heart and kissing emojis now and then. She went back to the most recent exchange. A message had come in from Claudia’s phone at seven thirty that morning. Two full hours before the show aired. Josie set aside her fury for the moment and read:
Play my game and no one else has to die. Go on air today. Tell them the answer to this question: what is my wife’s greatest failure? Get it right or pay the price. If you don’t go on air at all, there will be consequences.
After that was a series of texts from Beau, each one more and more desperate.
Who is this? What do you want?
Why are you doing this?
Are you still there? Hello? Please answer.
ANSWER ME! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?
There was no response.
Josie scrolled back up to the time period before Claudia’s murder and studied the messages. “You and Claudia have the same model phone?”
He nodded. “We got a deal on them.”
Josie said, “You can tell when she’s read your messages.”
Beau nodded eagerly and pointed to the phone. “Yes! That’s right. You can see from the older messages, it says ‘read’ under them. None of the new messages say that. I don’t understand what happened. What does it mean?”
Josie handed the phone to Noah so that he could look at it. A moment later, he said, “I’ll call dispatch, see if I can get them to ping Claudia’s phone again.”
He slid the phone back across the desk to Beau and left the room. Josie said, “It means that the killer turned off her phone as soon as he knew you’d read his text. He knows enough to leave it turned off most of the time. Otherwise, we would be able to locate him pretty quickly.”
Beau grabbed the phone excitedly and waved it in the air. “But it was on this morning! You can see where he was then, can’t you?”
“That’s what my colleague is checking on right now, yes,” said Josie. Somehow, she didn’t think that it would lead anywhere. So far, the killer had been several steps ahead of them. He was savvy, sophisticated, and seemed to know a fair amount about the ways in which police used technology to track criminals—or at least enough to have eluded them thus far.
“Then we can find him!” Beau said, the naked hope in his voice so childlike and desperate that Josie actually felt badly for him.
“It’s not that simple,” she told him.
“But it is! You ping this, or whatever you do to figure out where it was this morning. You go there. You arrest him and this nightmare is over.”
Josie said, “Mr. Collins, if this guy knows enough to turn her phone on and off so we can’t locate him, I don’t think he would be stupid enough to stay in the place he last turned it on. But we will certainly search the area where it was last turned on for any clues.”
“I did what he said,” Beau said. “I played by his rules. That means he’ll stop, right?”
Josie’s stomach burned. “Mr. Collins, why would this killer want you to go on television and talk about your wife’s greatest failure?"
Beau looked everywhere but at Josie. A framed photo of him and Claudia in front of the Eiffel Tower sat next to his laptop. He picked it up and turned it toward her. “I always wanted to go to Paris,” he said.
Josie wondered where he was going with this. Had he cracked under the stress?
“I grew up on fishing boats in Maine. What did I know about Paris? It seemed like the height of sophistication to me.” He chuckled. “Silly, I know. When we sold the first million copies of our book, Claudia surprised me with a trip to Paris. Look at us. We were so happy.”
Josie took another glance at the photo. It had been taken during the day. Sunlight cascaded over Claudia’s long blonde hair, making it almost as sparkly as her giant smile. Beau stood behind her, his arms circling her waist. His cheek was pressed into her temple as he, too, grinned for the camera. They did, in fact, look happy and very much in love.
Beau said, “That was before…all this. Before we even got our first big royalty check. She actually dipped into our savings to finance that trip, knowing we’d have money from the sale of the book coming after. We were just two broke marriage counselors then.” He laughed. “Feeling like we’d just hit the lottery.”
