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“In my truck mostly. I scaled down the last few years. Don’t got much left. Just a couple of traps. The other stuff I keep in my storage unit in the basement here till I need it. My girlfriend don’t like me trapping. Says it’s ‘inhumane.’”
“You’ve got some traps out now. How many?”
“Only two.”
“Where are they?”
He scratched his head. “They’re over by—wait—I saw the news. That girl went missing near that bad place. The one where all those girls died.”
“By Henry’s place,” Josie said.
He shook his head vehemently. “None of my traps are there. None.”
“Mr. Lauber,” said Josie. “I need you to be honest with me right now.”
“I am being honest with you!”
Josie made a slow scan of the room. “Really? Because I have never met a trapper who could carry out their business in a tenth-floor apartment with—” She leaned to the side and looked down the hall. “Looks like one bedroom. Doesn’t give you a lot of room to work. Where would you hang your skinning gambrel or mount your fleshing beam?”
He sighed and hung his head. “Okay, okay. Truth is, Henry lets me use his property. When I catch something, which isn’t often. And I got my license. I’m legal. Everything is above board.”
“Okay,” said Josie. “What about Henry? To your knowledge, does he trap illegally?”
“No. I don’t think so. I never saw anything that would make me think that. He never said. I’ve never seen anything up at his place, and I would have said something if he was doing it without a license or out of season. I’m telling you, he wasn’t interested when he was a kid and he’s not now.”
“You must go to his place a lot,” said Josie. “Have you ever seen anyone else there?”
He started shaking his head but then stopped. “Kids.”
Josie felt her heartbeat stutter but kept her voice calm. “What do you mean, kids?”
He waved a hand in the air. “Teenagers. They come up that way a lot. In groups, or boys trying to scare their girlfriends—or maybe impress ’em, who knows? You know what happened up there on that mountain, right? The killers? All those girls?”
“Yes,” Josie said, the word like a piece of gravel in her throat.
“They come up and want to look around. It’s like they think the place is haunted. How else do you think Henry got that place so cheap? No one wants to go up there, much less live up there. I know the city cleared it and planted all those flowers but it’s creepy. I don’t mind visiting Henry there, but I couldn’t live there.”
“The kids, Mr. Lauber,” said Josie. Gretchen reappeared in the living room. She gave a slight shake of her head. She hadn’t found anything.
“Right,” he said. “Kids come up there. I’ve seen them. Henry’s is the only driveway up there. I mean, there were a couple of other driveways leading to where the old properties was on the other side of the flower fields, but they’re overgrown now and one of ’em’s chained so people use his road. They pull right into his place. I guess thinking that no one lives there.”
“You’ve seen them?” asked Josie.
“Sure. Couple of times. Henry goes out and tells them to get lost.”
“Did you ever see Kayleigh Patchett?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I never got a good look at any of them. Just saw they was teenagers.”
Gretchen walked over. “But you could see well enough to know if it was a teenage boy driving or if he had a girlfriend in the passenger’s seat.”
“I guess, but I wasn’t studying them or nothing.”
Josie took out the photo of the mystery boy they’d found on Kayleigh’s phone and showed Lauber. “You ever see this kid out there?”
He hesitated but Josie wasn’t sure if it was because he recognized the kid or because he was nervous about somehow getting the answer wrong. Finally, he said, “I don’t know. I really don’t know. How am I supposed to tell from the side of his face?”
Pocketing her phone, Josie said, “Were you at Henry’s at all yesterday?”
