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“I see it,” he said. “Let’s keep going.”
She tore her eyes away from the box, trying to ignore the rush of blood in her ears, and process the rest of what she saw.
The television played a cartoon show that Harris watched so often that Josie could recite each episode from memory. Just on the other side of the half-wall, a dry-erase art easel lay on its side. Markers were scattered on the floor. A standing lamp lay broken in half nearby, a clump of curly brown hair tangled in its cord. Droplets of blood glimmered like rubies in the flickering light of the wrecked lamp.
There had been a struggle in this room. Jasmine Toselli had fought like hell.
Josie’s heartbeat thundered painfully against her rib cage. She tried her best to tamp down her raging anxiety. It was hard not to think of Misty and Harris in this scenario. Imagining the terror that Jasmine and Sam must have felt gave Josie a visceral jolt.
They had to keep moving.
Next they moved into the kitchen, which was an open space that included a dining room set. Josie’s throat almost closed up when she saw the fridge. Drawings of various animals and vehicles and a few dinosaurs covered half of it. The other half was wallpapered with photos of a woman and a young boy. Jasmine and Sam Toselli. At the zoo, at the city park, at a basketball game, at some kind of school awards assembly. Jasmine was younger than Josie had expected with curly brown hair and a wide, vibrant smile. Sam resembled her more than Beau, although Josie could see his resemblance to his father in his eyes and the shape of his jaw. He matched his mother’s smile in every photo, his front tooth gap melting Josie’s heart in the millisecond she took to study the photo. She had to force her attention away from the photos to keep her focus on the scene. A cell phone with a shattered screen lay near the doorway. A bowl of pasta had been dropped between the stove and the table, where two place settings waited. Beside one of them was a juice box.
After clearing the kitchen, they found a door to a basement. Josie was grateful that it was well-lit, having been converted to a home gym. Empty. They moved at a steady, measured pace up to the second floor. Two bedrooms and a bathroom, all undisturbed and empty. As they returned to the living room, Josie let out the breath she was holding, relieved that they hadn’t found Jasmine or Sam already dead. But as soon as the thought passed through her mind, fear replaced it. If they weren’t here, then the killer had them.
Noah stood in the middle of the living room. “She must have been in the kitchen when he showed up. Somehow, he got in. She panicked. He went into the kitchen and attacked her. The fight carried into here.”
Josie tried to picture it. When had Sam had time to leave his message? Had he let the man in? Or had the front door been unlocked? Had Sam tried to run away when the killer confronted Jasmine in the kitchen and then froze? Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to leave his mom. Had he watched from the door, scrawling his message, and tried to run back into the living room when the killer came out of the kitchen with Jasmine, leading to a second altercation? An even more chilling question flashed through Josie’s mind. Did the blood in the living room belong to Sam or Jasmine? Or had one of them injured the killer badly enough to draw blood?
“We need to call Gretchen and Mett,” she said. “And the ERT. We need to know what’s in that box. Right now. This scene has to be processed. The street has to be canvassed. Footage from every single home that has cameras needs to be gathered. The ‘bad man’ in this drawing has a beard. Archie Gamble also has a beard. We need to check with the unit outside of his house.”
Noah holstered his weapon and took out his phone. They went outside and assigned a uniformed officer to guard the scene until the ERT arrived.
Noah said, “I’m calling the state police. We need to get an Amber Alert out on Sam Toselli immediately.”
Josie looked back toward the front door. “We need to prioritize getting that puzzle box open. It’s possible that whatever is in it could help us find them before time runs out.”
FORTY-NINE
“I can’t just open it,” said Hummel. “We have to process the scene. You know this.”
Josie stood on Jasmine and Sam Toselli’s front porch, facing off with him, hands on her hips. Noah was on the street, already on the phone with the state police working to get an Amber Alert out on Sam. “We don’t have time for that, Hummel. Processing a crime scene takes hours. I need to know what’s in that box right now. If there is something inside it that could help us find this mother and her son before they’re murdered, we need to know.”
Hummel sighed, straightened his skull cap, and paced a small circle in front of her.
Josie waved toward the front door. “Chan is in there right now taking photos. You can bring it out, dust it for latent prints right here using aluminum powder, and then open it.”
“That’s not how I usually like to do things,” he said. “You know how these things go when we get to court. If there is even the slightest misstep, a defense attorney will have a field day with it.”
Josie reached out and clamped a hand over his forearm, stopping him in place. “We’re talking about a seven-year-old boy, Hummel. We’ve got this killer’s DNA from multiple other scenes already. If we can find Sam and Jasmine alive, the box won’t matter so much. They’ll be able to testify as witnesses. Please. I’m not asking you to compromise the entire scene. I’m asking you to open a box after it’s been photographed.”
Noah jogged up the steps. “Amber Alert is in the works. Gretchen and Mett will be here within the next sixty seconds. The officer stationed outside Gamble’s house says he’s there and has been all day. I’ve already got uniformed guys canvassing the neighbors to see if we can get anything—maybe someone saw this guy or they have cameras that will show a car.” He stopped talking when he realized neither of them was paying attention. “What’s going on?”
Josie didn’t relinquish Hummel’s arm. She kept her eyes locked with his. “Just open the box,” she said quietly.
It felt like an eternity before he took his other hand and patted hers, sliding out of her grip. “Give me a few minutes.”
Relief rushed through Josie as she watched him disappear into the house, calling for Officer Chan.
Before she could say anything to Noah, Gretchen and Mettner came running down the street. “We got here as soon as we could,” said Mettner.
Josie and Noah joined them on the sidewalk, catching them up while Hummel processed the puzzle box and got it open. As they were talking, all of their phones blared an alarm simultaneously. It was the Amber Alert for Sam Toselli.
Josie closed it out on her phone and clicked on a text message that Chief Chitwood had sent to all of them. “Chief’s going to do a press conference.”
“Then we need to get him all the information we can,” said Gretchen. “This is a pretty dense residential neighborhood. No way someone didn’t see a car. This guy didn’t kidnap a mother and child using his bicycle.”
Noah said, “I’ve already got officers pulling any surveillance footage.”
