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Cyrus said, “You sure about this?”
Noah shrugged. “I’m as sure as I can possibly be.”
Josie said, “What does she mean when she says, ‘it could be yours’?”
Cyrus stared at the screen where Mathias was frozen in time, watching Jana run away. “Hell if I know. She wasn’t pregnant. I mean, that’s what women say when they tell you they’re carrying your baby, right? ‘It’s yours?’ I suppose ‘it could be yours’ works just as well.”
The Chief said, “I thought of that but then he says—” He leaned over Josie’s shoulder and read from the notepad. “‘Don’t know who is filling your head’ and then he calls her a meddling brat. That doesn’t sound like they’re talking about pregnancy.”
Another sigh from Cyrus. “Well, I don’t know what to make of any of this. If your read is accurate, Tobin wasn’t entirely truthful. He and I never talked about it. We tried not to talk to one another at all, to tell you the truth. I didn’t take his statement, but I’ve read it. He said she was going to meet with someone who could help her find her birth parents. This conversation could be about that, but it sounds like there’s more to it. Whatever that is, only the two of them knew the truth. She’s dead and I’m assuming he’s missing. Otherwise you would have talked to him after Keri Cryer’s murder. You said they were sleeping together.”
“Yes,” said Josie. “He was staying with her. He hasn’t been back to her place. We don’t know where to find him.”
“Well, I can’t help you there. We didn’t exactly keep in touch. You were right about what you said earlier. He didn’t try to see Piper after he got out. Just ran off. I didn’t know he was with some other woman. I just figured he couldn’t face us. Then when he didn’t come to his own wife’s funeral—” He broke off.
Josie turned in her chair and stared at him. “You think he would have felt welcome at Piper’s funeral?” She didn’t add the last part:with you there?
“If he didn’t kill her, then yeah, he should have felt justified in being there. He should have felt justified in coming to see her as soon as he was out. He should have wanted to see her.”
There it was, Josie thought. Cyrus hadn’t complained about Mathias Tobin. He barely uttered a word about the man. Maybe he’d never believed that Mathias shot Piper. Maybe when he was exonerated, that had sat just fine with Cyrus. But not coming to see her once he was free and then not coming to her funeral was an admission of guilt in Cyrus’s eyes.
Cyrus added, “Maybe they were on the outs already when she was shot. When they found Piper, her wedding ring was missing. I always thought maybe she took it off. Maybe they were breaking up and argued and she tossed it. Maybe that’s why he didn’t come back or try to see her. She was never well enough for me to ask her after the shooting. Still, he owed her the respect of coming to her funeral. At the very least.”
“Did you ever ask him about that?” asked Noah. “If they planned to divorce? If he knew what she did with her ring?”
Cyrus shook his head. “Couldn’t. Wasn’t allowed to talk to him. Me being a police officer and her father. His attorney, my boss? They never let me talk to him. Once he went away, it didn’t much matter.”
A quiet knock on the conference room door interrupted them. Cyrus said, “Come in.”
The door swung open. Anya stood there, eyes searching the room until they landed on Cyrus. Her face started to crumple and then she caught herself, pushed down the wave of emotion taking her over. Swallowing, she tried on a smile. It looked more like she was in pain.
She said, “Hello, Cy.”
THIRTY-FOUR
Josie watched a few emotions flash across Cyrus Grey’s face before he got control of himself. Shock, anger, longing, and then fear. They all waited for him to respond but nothing came. From behind Anya, Mettner appeared in the doorframe. “She wanted to come,” he told the room. “But I didn’t want her to be in Bly alone.”
Anya and Cyrus were still staring at one another like no one else existed. When the seconds stretched on into awkwardness, Josie stood up and cleared her throat. Taking her cue, Mettner said, “There is actually something I need to talk to you about. Maybe out here in the hallway?”
If either Anya or Cyrus noticed Josie, Noah and the Chief leave the room, they gave no indication. Without tearing her eyes from Cyrus, Anya sidestepped to let them all pass through the door. Once in the hall, Josie left the door ajar. They may have been old flames, but Josie didn’t trust anyone in Bly. She heard the low murmur of their voices as her team gathered in a tight circle in the hall.
The Chief said, “Do you really have something to tell us or were you just trying to save us from…whatever that was in there?”
Mettner took out his phone and pulled up his notes app. “Hummel processed the Hadlees’ white sedan. Unfortunately, he didn’t get much.”
Noah said, “No DNA? A hair, even?”
Mettner shook his head. “Nothing. However, Hummel asked Luke to bring Blue over, since he’s certified in cadaver and he did alert on the trunk.”
“Human remains?” asked the Chief.
“Yes,” said Mettner. “Blue is trained to know the difference between human remains and animal decomposition. Luke said if he alerted then it is from a human.”
Noah said, “But you just said that they found nothing in the trunk.”
“The dog can still alert if there were remains in there at some point.”
Josie said, “Which means there was a dead body in the trunk of that car at some point.”
