Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
Josie caught a whiff of spoiled food as she entered Dani’s home through the back door.
The evidence response team had processed the place, but the partially cooked pasta and salad remained where they’d been since the night Dani and Cassidy were taken.
Turner stood in the middle of the living room.
He was back in his suit, jacket and all, despite the heat.
For a few moments, she watched him. A slow turn brought him a few feet from the blood congealed on the corner of the coffee table and dried in the carpet.
He didn’t react. Not outwardly. They were more alike than she ever imagined.
Like her, he pushed scary feelings so far down that his insides were nothing more than an emotional pressure cooker.
There was something so defeated about the slouch of his shoulders, the unfocused look in his eyes, the way his feet seemed rooted in place, that made him look like a ghost haunting the house. In a way, she supposed he was.
Without looking directly at her, he said, “I’m guessing there’s no news, or you would have told me already.”
“Nothing yet.”
“Palmer said I could enter the place. I called the landlord, too.”
“Since you’re here,” Josie said, “let me know if there’s anything you think is missing.”
“Not my first rodeo, Quinn,” he said. “I know how this works. You don’t have to walk me through it.”
She followed him through to the kitchen where he started cleaning up. “Turner, have you ever seen Dustin Emmer here in Denton?”
He froze, salad bowl poised over the trash bin. “He was here?”
“We think so. He didn’t come right out and say it but admitted he knew where you lived. Implied he might have been here.”
He dumped the salad into the garbage and took the bowl to the sink. “If I’d seen him, I would have confronted him.”
“He’s a real piece of work,” Josie said. “You were right to help Zara get away from him.”
Turner picked up the pot on the stove and stared at its contents. “You have something to say about Zara?”
“You know what, Turner,” Josie said sharply, exhaustion wearing away her internal filter. “I think you’re the one who’s got something to say, so just spit it out.”
He said nothing. For the next five minutes, she watched him clean and straighten up the kitchen in stubborn silence.
Josie folded her arms over her chest and leaned against the fridge.
The flyer for the Denton East High School art show that had taken place in June caught her attention.
She ran a finger along the front of it, wanting to take it from the fridge, open it and search for Wren’s name.
She realized that the kitchen had gone silent. Turner walked over and took the flyer from beneath the magnet, staring down at it.
“Cassidy’s very talented,” Josie said.
“Yeah,” he replied hoarsely.
He was so shut down, so far away, Josie wanted to coax him back into the moment. She had more questions and she needed him present. Pointing to the flyer, she said, “We think Wren was showcased at the art show, but she didn’t tell us about it.”
“That’s kids,” Turner said. “You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I missed this one. Work. Always goddamn work. Just think, your new kid already hates you. You don’t even have to make the effort.”
There he was.
“Have you looked in Cassidy’s room?”
“Take this.” He shoved the flyer against her chest. “I don’t even want to look at it.”
Josie stuffed it into her pocket. Turner started going through the cabinets, searching until he found a can of carpet stain remover and a roll of paper towels.
She followed him into the living room and watched as he knelt and sprayed the drops of blood.
He tried blotting them, but they weren’t coming out.
“You need peroxide,” she told him.
With a heavy sigh, he dragged himself to his feet and trudged up the stairs to the second floor. Josie went after him, feeling her lack of sleep with every step, her body aching. After this, she’d go home and get some rest. “Turner, you said Zara has a little girl. Is her father in the picture?”
“No,” he grunted, disappearing into the bathroom.
“There’s no one else besides Dustin Emmer who might be looking for her? Might target you for helping her start over?”
“Penny’s dad died when she was a toddler,” he answered, rifling through the bathroom closet.
“When you were still living in Alden, did Dani ever say anything to you about Emmer? Had she seen him lurking around? Had any encounters with him?”
It would be a hell of a lot easier to start digging deeper into Emmer’s life if they could show a direct connection between him and Dani.
Turner leaned a forearm across the wall over the top of the medicine cabinet and rested his head against it, breathing heavily. For the first time in the last half hour, she realized he hadn’t thrummed his fingers against anything or tugged at his beard.
“No,” he said.
“Would she have told you?”
“Why the hell wouldn’t she tell me?” he said, sounding exhausted, as though it were a gargantuan effort to even speak. “At the very least, she would have told Annette. She wouldn’t put Cassidy at risk like that, even if she didn’t want to speak to me.”
“What about Cassidy? Did she know about Emmer?”
He pushed himself away from the cabinet and plucked a small bottle of peroxide from one of the shelves.
Instead of returning downstairs, he lowered himself onto the edge of the tub.
“No. We never told Cass about Emmer. She was so young. We didn’t want to scare the piss out of her.
What were we gonna say? Dad pissed off some stalker perv at work, and now he might show up at your house or school and try to hurt you?
Hell, I don’t even know if I’d say that to her now.
We gave her some generic lesson about strangers and staying aware of your surroundings, to report anything weird immediately.
That sort of thing. For all the good it did. ”
Turner’s chest started heaving again. Josie almost made some joke about her breathing exercises which he routinely called “that weird breathing shit” but he was barely hanging on. Instead, she stepped into the narrow bathroom and took the peroxide from his hands.
Wiggling the bottle in front of Turner’s face, she said, “Come on.”
He trailed after her but stopped at Cassidy’s bedroom door. Their eyes locked for a long, tense moment. Quietly, Josie said, “Should I stay or go?”
He swallowed. “Stay.”
Turner pushed inside while Josie waited in the doorway.
As usual, his big, rangy frame took up most of the space.
The room wasn’t that large. A twin bed, dresser, and bookshelf were crowded into one corner, almost like afterthoughts.
The rest of the room was filled with art supplies.
Tiered rolling carts packed with cups bursting with different types of pens and markers.
A desk that took up almost an entire wall was covered with sketchbooks and loose drawings in various stages of creation.
Many of the drawings were of people. Josie recognized Turner, Dani, and Annette.
There were plenty of other faces she didn’t.
Teachers and friends, most likely. There were a few sketches of Spot and his octopus as well.
Despite the impressive artwork spread across the table, it was the corkboard above it that caused a hard, guttural sound to push through Turner’s parted lips.
An array of photos of Turner and Cassidy filled its space, leaving little of the corkboard’s surface visible.
Some were from when she was much younger.
Turner in a puffy winter coat, jeans, and heavy boots, dragging a two- or three-year-old Cassidy up a snowy hill.
A six- or seven-year-old Cassidy perched on a purple bike with training wheels.
Her grin was heartbreakingly adorable. Both her front teeth were missing.
Turner stood next to her, a helmet tucked under his arm, grinning at the camera.
He was so much younger, his hair free of gray.
There was a lightness in his smile, his posture.
Pure joy. Another photo showed him and a nine- or ten-year-old Cassidy at an ear-piercing booth.
The kind found in malls. She sat in a chair, frowning, her little brows drawn tightly together.
The resemblance to her dad was strongest in that photo.
Turner knelt before her, holding both her hands.
His mouth was open like he’d been photographed mid-sentence.
“We got her this really fancy printer last year for her birthday. It was expensive as hell.” He pointed to it at the end of the desk. “She wanted to print photos. Of her friends, she said.”
There were more recent photos of the two of them, most of which were selfies.
There were two pictures of just Turner. In one he was sprawled on the couch in his apartment, asleep, mouth hanging open.
Like when she’d knocked on his door last night, he was in a T-shirt and basketball shorts.
One hand rested on his chest, the other bent over his head.
Spot had wedged himself between the couch back and Turner’s hip, depositing the ratty blue octopus on his owner’s stomach.
The other picture was a close-up of Turner’s face.
In his hands were the two owl figurines whose photo he’d texted Cassidy earlier in the week, asking if she’d talk to “these guys.” He had one pressed to each of his cheeks.
Another noise worked its way up his throat. He smoothed his tie down before yanking on his beard three times, four times.
“What’s the story with the owls?” Josie asked.
Blinking, he cleared his throat. “Cass had a thing for owls since she was two and Annette gave her some stuffed owl. Told her all owls were wise. Knew what to do, how to act, what to say. That stuffed owl died in what Dani called ‘The Great Norovirus Disaster.’ Kid had it coming out both ends like a damn fire hose. Wouldn’t let go of the stupid owl.
Weren’t enough cleansers in the world to remove the bacteria from that thing. ”
“That’s gross.”
Turner shot her a quick glance from the corner of his eye. “Be grateful you got to skip the whole toddler thing. It’s nonstop gross. The cute makes up for it and all but…” He shuddered. “It’s not for the faint of heart.”
“You replaced the stuffed owl with those?” Josie asked.
“Nah. They weren’t replacements. Those are the Boo-Hoo owls.
That’s Boo on the left and Hoo on the right.
It was just this stupid thing I made up when she was in pre-K.
Every day she’d come home anxious about something, fixated on it.
Some dumbass kid being mean to her. How she climbed up the slide the wrong way and was worried she’d be in big trouble when she went back to school the next day.
Nervous about doing the right dance in the Christmas show.
I didn’t think four-year-olds had the capacity to worry so much.
” He gave a pained laugh. “Or for so long. Sometimes she couldn’t sleep for worrying.
Like the day she pushed this little boy who tried to take her show-and-tell toy.
She was up all night having an anxiety attack ’cause she thought she was on Santa Claus’s naughty list.”
“So you bought more owls?” Josie coaxed.
He reached out, running a finger over the photo.
“Not just owls. The Boo-Hoo owls. After school we’d have a meeting with them, and she’d tell them all the things that made her upset or scared or angry that day.
She could cry if she wanted. The owls would keep all her worries so she didn’t have to and once she told them everything, she didn’t have to hold onto those things anymore.
The owls would know what to do with that stuff because they were wise.
Dani thought they were so stupid, but the kid slept through the nights after that. ”
Josie felt the sting of tears behind her eyes and almost cursed out loud. She wasn’t a crier. She hated crying. Passionately. She definitely never cried in front of other people. Well, besides her sister, Noah, and Gretchen.
“Fuck, Turner,” she whispered, staring at his profile.
“I don’t do emotional shit,” he said, eyes fixed on the corkboard.
“Me neither.”
He exhaled hard. “Good. Now, Quinn, I’m gonna need you to say something really bitchy. Think you can do that?”
“What do you mean by ‘really bitchy?’”
“For God’s sake, Quinn. Just be yourself.”
That reflexive anger he inspired in her flared. “Being assertive and setting boundaries doesn’t make me bitchy.” Because he had asked for it, she added, “Douchebag.”