Chapter 19
NINETEEN
Turner didn’t give her a chance to launch into her questions, instead starting with one of his own. “Did you get anything from NCIC?”
“Not yet,” Josie said. Searches for things like warrants, stolen property, and firearms usually came back within minutes. Anything more complicated than that took more time. “I’m still trying to track down what type of camellias this guy left so maybe we can find him that way.”
“Right.” He reached past her and picked up his phone again. “You need to take this and look through it. Wait, no state police?”
It was the same question that she and Gretchen had posed to the Chief when they got back to the stationhouse.
When Noah had been abducted last year, their department had had no choice but to hand the case over to the state police.
They couldn’t investigate cases involving one of their own.
When the victim or victims were family members, best practices dictated they do the same but technically, they didn’t have to turn the case over to the state police.
Noah’s mother had been murdered in their jurisdiction seven years earlier and the Chief had kept the case in-house.
“No state police,” Josie echoed. “Chief wants us to handle it.”
“Right, okay.” He stood and began pacing again.
“But if you want me to push the issue, I will. The state police have resources that—”
“No.” He shook his head. “No. I want you guys on this. Not a bunch of strangers.”
“There’s a good chance Heather Loughlin could get the case,” Josie pointed out, referring to a state police investigator they worked with often. “She’s excellent.”
“No.” His tone was firmer this time. “Loughlin’s fine but she’s not you.”
Josie’s breath stalled. Under any other circumstances, she would tease the hell out of him for accidentally complimenting her but the situation and the weight of the trust he was placing in her was too heavy for her to say anything but, “Okay.”
Forcing herself to move past the moment, Josie took out her own phone and cued up her recording app before setting it on the table. “I’m going to record this.”
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” he said.
He waited for her to list their names, location, the date and time. Then he started speaking before she could ask her first question.
“What do you need to know? The last time I saw them, right? I haven’t physically seen Dani in two weeks. Ish. You can check my texts. We had a blowout after that.”
“Where did you see her?” Josie rubbed behind one of Spot’s ears as he pushed his octopus onto her thigh.
Turner alternated between wrenching at his beard and cracking his knuckles, still moving like a metronome. “This restaurant called Sandman’s. It’s—”
“I know where it is,” Josie cut him off. “Why were you meeting with her?”
“We were on a date.”
“A date?” Josie tried very hard to keep her mouth from gaping. Obviously Dani was into him. They’d been married. It was just hard to imagine Douchebag on a date with, well, anyone. Was he as smug and annoying on dates as he was generally? Was he as distracted as he usually seemed?
“Yeah. A date. I’m dating my wife again. Trying to, anyway.”
“You’re still married?”
He exhaled. “Yeah. Still married. Despite… everything.”
“What’s everything?” Josie couldn’t help but ask. She’d never seen him wear his wedding band.
Turner’s hand drummed against the sides of his thighs. “All the fighting, I guess. The on again and off again.”
“How long have you been separated?” Josie asked.
He huffed a bitter laugh. “This time? Or the time before that? Or the one before that?”
“How long have you lived in separate residences?” she asked. “How long has Dani been using her maiden name?”
“She started using her maiden name when we still lived in Alden. We had some big blowout and the next day she went back to Schwarber.”
“Did she change Cassidy’s last name, too?”
“What? No. Cassidy’s mine. She’s got my last name. Dani would never go there.”
Clearly, Dani’s neighbor had made an assumption about Cassidy’s surname. “Okay,” Josie said. “Let’s go back to Dani. She went back to her maiden name when you lived in Alden.”
“Yeah. She was trying to make a point. Punish me, I guess. Never mind we were already sleeping in separate bedrooms. Trying not to be home at the same time. When I was at home, she’d be at the gym or getting her nails done.
Whatever got her out of the house.” Back and forth he went.
“When I took this job, it was supposed to be a breakup. The end. That’s what Dani wanted.
I wanted her to follow me. I wanted to keep working on things even though she dropped my name.
She wasn’t into it at first but then she changed her mind.
She agreed to move to Denton, but she would only come if we lived separate lives.
Start from scratch again although there’s really no starting from scratch with the mother of your kid, but whatever. ”
“Okay, so two weeks ago. Dinner at the Sandman’s. What did you fight about after?”
“I had enrolled Cassidy in a youth art program at the university that meets on weekends starting in September. I didn’t consult Dani. She said if we were going to co-parent then that meant both of us got a say. I told her we wouldn’t need to co-parent if she’d just take me the hell back.”
Again, Josie tried to imagine Turner as a husband.
She could kind of see him as a father, especially after the speech he’d laid on Charles Barnes the other day.
Maybe not a great father, especially to a girl, but she imagined at some point, before his daughter grew old enough to realize what a douchecanoe he was, that she probably enjoyed his snark and irreverence.
Yet Cassidy’s bedroom told a different story—one of closeness with her father, a father she clearly missed even though he was in the same city.
It was the thought of Cassidy missing her dad—whether Josie liked him or not—that snapped her back to the task at hand. “Cassidy. When’s the last time you saw her?”
“A few days before the festival. We were supposed to—” His voice got raspy and he had to swallow twice before resuming. “I told her I’d take her there for the day. She wanted to check out some yoga thing and go up in a hot air balloon.”
“What day?” Josie asked.
“Sunday.”
“The day we caught the Barnes murders. You were working.”
Finally, he stopped pacing, but his fingers kept twitching at his sides. “Yes, I was working. We’ve been swamped, Quinn. You know that. I just—”
“You worked. Instead of taking her to the festival.”
His eyes narrowed. “Don’t get all judgy on me, Quinn. You’re not an expert just because someone dumped a teenager at your front door. I’ve had my kid a lot longer than you’ve had yours.”
There hadn’t been any judgment in her tone because her mind hadn’t even gone there. He was projecting that onto her which meant that Cassidy hadn’t taken his absence well. “Not judging,” she said.
He could lash out at her all he wanted. Right now, she didn’t give a damn about his emotional ineptitude. She had a mother and daughter to find. “What did Cassidy say when you told her you couldn’t take her to the festival?”
“What do you think? She was disappointed. Dani was pissed. She sent me a bunch of angry texts. I tried calling. They wouldn’t take my calls. Complete silence. I figured they needed some time to cool down after this one.”
“This one?”
“Jesus, Quinn. Don’t you and the LT fight at all?”
They didn’t fight much but Noah was everything this irritating, frenetic man was not. She kept that to herself. “When is the last time you heard from either of them?”
“Monday.”
“Where were you when Cassidy came by the stationhouse a few weeks ago?” Josie asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It might matter.”
“Jesus, Quinn. I do this for a living, too, remember? I’m telling you it doesn’t fucking matter.”
“And if you’re telling me it doesn’t matter then that makes me think you’re hiding something.
Are you hiding something, Turner? When I check your phone and the infotainment system in your car, what am I going to find?
Did you intentionally try to keep your whereabouts that day a secret?
Do we need to go to the stationhouse so I can take a formal statement from you?
Don’t make me waste time running down something that really doesn’t matter when I could be using that time and those resources to find your family. ”
They glared at one another. Spot’s tail wagged so hard it made his whole body wriggle.
Like Trout, he could sense the rising tension in the room.
Josie wasn’t about to give Turner the dramatic confrontation he was probably gunning for.
He was the king of deflection. She was the woman who was going to dethrone his infuriating ass.
Leaning closer to him, she said, “I will find out, Turner. You know I will. I always do. What did you call me the first time we met? ‘The great Josie Quinn’? My reputation precedes me for a reason. You’ve had a front row seat for almost two years now.
The only thing I don’t have is a goddamn cape. Do you doubt me?”
Good lord, she sounded like him right now but maybe she needed to put up a facade just like he did. Maybe she needed to speak his language: arrogant bravado.
The irritation drained from Turner’s face. With another tug on his beard, he said, “I was at the cemetery.”
“Which one?”
“Cahill Woodling Cemetery. Outside of Selinsgrove.”
“Stop making me pull teeth,” Josie said. “Who were you visiting?”
“My mother. Happy?”
She was pretty damn far from happy with him, but that didn’t matter right now.
“Cassidy sought you out at the stationhouse because she couldn’t reach you on your cell. Why was that?”
“It died.”
Josie wasn’t sure she believed him, but she moved past that for now. “Why was she looking for you?”
He glanced at Spot. “The dog. He was having an issue with his leg. Seemed like he was in a lot of pain. She wanted to take him to the vet. Dani was at work.”
“She visits you here often?”
“Jesus, Quinn. None of this matters.”
“If it doesn’t matter, then just tell me. Stop wasting time.”
“We don’t have a formal custody arrangement because we’re still married and since Cass is pretty much an adult, we don’t force her to spend a prescribed amount of time with either one of us.
If she wants to be here, she comes here—and yes, she does come and stay sometimes.
She’s got her own room. She loves the stupid dog.
I’m honestly not sure if she comes over to see me or him. ”
Josie had a feeling Cassidy was there to see him as much as she was there to see Spot.
The dog was a convenient reason for her to stay over.
Why she felt she needed a reason was a different story.
Was it Turner putting the distance between them?
Or was it the dynamic between her parents that made her feel as though she had to keep that distance?
For Josie’s purposes, it was irrelevant.
“Let’s talk about Maxine Barnes,” she said. “How many times did you follow up with her after the domestic call?”
“I don’t know. Five? Six?”
“Did you always approach her at home?”
“What are you getting at here, Quinn? ’Cause the clock is ticking.”
“And everyone we can spare is working on finding your family as soon as possible,” she assured him.
“Chief authorized overtime. We’ve got all hands on deck, so even while I’m here talking with you, lots of our people are working the case.
I’m asking because in the past week, Maxine was killed and Dani was abducted and you’ve got connections to them both.
Not only that but Dani works in a medical office building a block away from the one where Maxine worked. ”
“You think this guy saw me with Maxine?”
“Did you approach Maxine at work? None of her coworkers seemed to recognize you when we questioned the staff.”
“Because that was the first time I was ever in that building,” Turner said.
“I didn’t approach Maxine at work, only at home.
But there were a couple of times I ran into her in that café between the buildings.
I was picking up lunch for Dani, trying to soften her up, and Maxine was sitting in there, eating alone. ”
“Did you talk to her?”
“Yeah. I sat and had lunch with her one of those times.”
“Does Dani ever join you for lunch there?”
“Not often but yeah, we’ve eaten there together before if our schedules lined up and she wasn’t in the mood to cut off my balls with a rusty knife.”
Josie left that alone. “Do you know if Dani and Maxine ever came into contact?”
“I wouldn’t know but when I reviewed the contents of Maxine Barnes’s phone, I didn’t see my wife’s name or number in her contacts.
They weren’t connected through social media.
Maybe they met or ran into one another. Maybe they talked, maybe they didn’t but it doesn’t look like they were friends.
Listen, Quinn, you know all the same things I know about the Barnes case.
Did my wife and kid come up during that time? ”
They hadn’t but the questions still needed to be asked.
Josie already knew that Haven Barnes and Cassidy hadn’t gone to the same high school and there were no connections between them via social media.
“Are you aware of Dani having issues with anyone recently?”
“No,” he said. “I’ll make a list of Dani’s friends from back home and here so you can interview them, too.
See if she told them stuff she wouldn’t tell me.
Before you go down this road, ’cause I know what you’re going to ask, Cassidy wasn’t having issues with anyone either, at least not that she or Dani told me about.
I can make a list of her friends too although these kids—you’ll be able to find everyone she knows on social media. What else?”
There was a loose connection between Maxine and Dani in terms of workplace location and the café Turner had mentioned.
However, Josie didn’t believe that the killer had inadvertently targeted two different women because he saw them in the café and they both just happened to have a connection to Turner.
She didn’t believe in those kinds of coincidences.
Still, she’d question all of the café employees and run background checks on each one of them.
“What about you?” she asked. “Would anyone target Dani and Cassidy because of you? Besides Charles Barnes. Obviously, we’ll be taking a much closer look at him, but I need to know if there are others.”