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Shelly held her hands out toward Kayleigh, in a begging posture. “No, no, Kayleigh, I—”
“I don’t care, Mother. I don’t care about your feelings.” Turning back to Josie, she said, “I’d like to get back in the car now, please.”
FIFTY-FIVE
Blue sat beside the El Camino and issued a single bark. It was dark. The ERT had arrived and set up the halogen lights they usually reserved for poorly lit crime scenes. Both Kayleigh and Henry Thomas had been transported to Denton PD headquarters to be processed hours ago, after it became clear that they were not going to divulge what had happened to Savannah Patchett. Noah had come on shift shortly after that and suggested they bring in Luke and Blue. If Savannah was nearby, he reasoned, they would find her. If, in fact, she’d gone into the woods on her own or because she was following Kayleigh and gotten lost rather than taken by Kayleigh and Thomas, and she was still out there, wandering on her own, Luke and Blue would find her.
They’d gotten a shirt from Shelly Patchett, who hadn’t said more than two words since her conversation with Kayleigh. One of the uniformed officers had driven her home and returned with the shirt, but then Dave Patchett had simply driven her back. They were waiting at the end of Henry Thomas’s driveway.
Josie was waiting for a miracle.
She walked over to Blue, who was now laying in the gravel, gnawing happily on the chew toy that Luke had rewarded him with after he’d alerted. His search hadn’t taken more than ten minutes. He’d circled the cabin, gone inside, and come back out to the driveway, where he’d dutifully given his indication that he’d located Savannah Patchett.
It was the same place he had alerted the night they followed Kayleigh’s scent to the cabin.
Josie said, “That’s an active alert.”
Luke frowned. “Yeah, but Josie, I told you. Dogs can have false alerts.”
Blue’s tail thumped against the gravel when he noticed Josie staring at him. “Twice?” she asked. “In the same place?”
“Sure. I mean, maybe both girls were taken from this spot. Well, I don’t know about Kayleigh. Maybe she got into a car here and left.”
“But Blue doesn’t usually alert when he loses a scent, Luke.”
Luke gave her a pained smile. “Blue is good, Josie, but he’s not perfect.”
Behind the two vehicles, Noah stood in a line with Gretchen, the Chief, and a couple of uniformed officers. He met her eyes. They didn’t have to speak. She knew he was thinking the same thing as her.
Josie looked into the dog’s eyes again. “Blue is perfect, even if his record isn’t.” She spun around in a slow circle. Savannah wasn’t there. They’d checked the cabin again. They’d been all over the property. They’d searched inside both vehicles and under them. Still, Josie glanced inside the windows of the El Camino and its rear bed again, even though she knew both the cab and the bed were empty.
Why did she feel like she was missing something huge?
For the second time in a week.
She said, “Luke, if Henry Thomas killed Savannah and buried her here, would Blue alert?”
Luke stamped a foot against the gravel. “Here? In his driveway?”
“Would he alert?”
“I taught him a passive alert for cadavers but Josie, there’s no way Henry Thomas would have had time to bury an entire body right here in the middle of his driveway and cover it with gravel before you all showed up, even with Kayleigh Patchett’s help. Gretchen said you were here within an hour of the 911 call, and Noah said this car doesn’t have a torque converter, which means it doesn’t move.” He kicked some of the gravel and watched as it flew toward the El Camino, careening off the undercarriage.
Josie squatted down in front of Blue and started clearing gravel away with her hands. Her chest constricted. Had Thomas and Kayleigh really done this here? So close to the burial grounds? Buried the body of another young girl in a place that had held the secret bones of so many other girls for almost a hundred years? Had Kayleigh really done that to her own sister? She had already killed, and she was willing to go to jail without ever revealing Savannah’s whereabouts, Josie thought. It wasn’t a stretch to think that she could murder her own sister.
“Josie,” Luke said.
Noah appeared next to him. “Hey,” he said softly, squatting down beside her.
As if sensing her distress, Blue whimpered. He stepped forward and licked Josie’s face, his long tongue drawing a slobbery trail from her chin to her forehead. “Blue!” she said. Under any other circumstances, she would have laughed. In the moment, she wanted to throw her arms around the dog’s neck, bury her face in his fur, and weep for all the horrible things that had happened on this mountain—for all of the things this mountain had stolen from her personally and for what it was now stealing from the Patchetts. She might not respect their parenting, but she couldn’t bear the thought of Savannah, a classmate of Harris’s, being coldly and savagely murdered, in part by her own sister. Josie settled for scratching behind one of Blue’s ears. She used the back of her other wrist to wipe the slobber from her face, turning her head into it.
She almost missed it.
Noah put a hand on her back. Blue stood up and nudged her, his wet nose pressing into her neck. Her eyes were locked on the rear driver’s side tire of the El Camino. “Just a second, boy,” she murmured. “Noah.” She stood up and walked closer to the car, bending to get a better look at the tire. Noah followed and watched as her fingers touched mud caked in the treads. It was soft, moist. Straightening, she looked around.
“What is it?” Noah asked.
“Just a second.” She walked around the El Camino to where the gravel driveway ended, and the grassy part of the property began.
