Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
It was late afternoon by the time Josie and Gretchen started toward their next destination.
The festival traffic hadn’t let up. The hair salon where Maxine’s closest friend worked was only fifteen minutes away, but Josie could already tell by the line of brake lights in front of them and the way Gretchen slowed that it would take twice as long to get there.
Josie tried to ignore the way her stomach felt like it was permanently curled into a white-knuckled fist. The entire department was doing everything they could.
Even the Chief had stepped up to take on some of the work, interviewing people and checking some of the tips that continued to come in by phone and email.
Still, things just didn’t seem to be moving fast enough.
In her lap, her cell phone chirped with a text from Noah.
Since he had been the one to use the bathroom at Dustin Emmer’s house, giving himself a little tour so he could do a plain-view search, Josie had messaged him while they were still with Hummel to see if he’d noticed any evidence of renovations or home repairs.
Gretchen glanced over at her as she read it.
“He said he didn’t see anything, but he didn’t see the whole house.” Josie sighed. “Not that it matters. We don’t have enough probable cause to get a warrant for Emmer’s house. Or his car, his phone or any other electronic devices.”
“Still, he could have been the guy Cassidy saw.” Gretchen waved to a fellow driver to let him merge into the traffic in front of them.
“We can’t connect him to Maxine Barnes though,” Josie pointed out.
Gretchen laughed as the SUV rolled forward at a pace that had to rival the time it took for grass to grow.
“We can’t connect anything to anything. Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong.
What if the fact that Turner knew Maxine and Dani is just a big coincidence?
What if there’s some other angle? It was Cassidy who saw this guy.
Haven Barnes fought like hell when he came for her.
What if he wanted to eliminate Maxine first so he could have more time with Haven? ”
The thought made Josie want to retch even though her job had made her disturbingly familiar with all manner of sexual predators and the horrific damage they could inflict.
All the sex offenders near the homes of Dani, Maxine, Turner, and near Dani and Maxine’s employers had been interviewed and alibied.
Not that that eliminated the possibility of the crimes being sexually motivated.
“I understand what you’re saying,” Josie said. “I think if this was as simple as this guy having a thing for teenage girls, he would target just teenage girls. He clearly has a thing for mothers and teenage daughters.”
Gretchen put her turn signal on as they inched toward the next cross street. “It’s about the family. Think about it. Both Maxine and Dani were in toxic marriages.”
The words were out of Josie’s mouth before she could stop them. “Dani and Turner’s marriage wasn’t toxic.”
Why the hell was she trying to be fair to him?
“Before he cheated,” Gretchen said, slowing for yet another line of cars in front of them. Apparently a dozen other people had had the same idea of using this side street to get out of the festival traffic.
“He says he didn’t cheat,” Josie pointed out, despite the fact that she didn’t believe him.
Gretchen snorted. “And you just won a billion dollars in a lottery you’ve never heard of and didn’t enter, and I can give you the proceeds if you wire me your life savings.”
“Gretchen.”
“Turner cheated on his wife.”
An ache formed in Josie’s chest. She hated herself for wanting to defend the douchebag even though she agreed with Gretchen.
Perhaps it wasn’t that she wanted to defend his character.
Maybe her sense of protectiveness came from the fact that when she looked at him, she saw herself ten months earlier.
The woman she’d been when Noah, the love of her life, had been abducted.
Broken. Wrecked. Hanging on by a thread so thin that a soft breath would have severed it.
Gretchen tapped her fingers against the steering wheel.
When she spoke, her voice was softer. “Josie, you know I don’t like Turner.
Hell, everyone knows I can’t stand him. Even so, I have a great deal of sympathy for him.
No one deserves to go through this. No one.
I have even more sympathy for Dani and Cassidy, just like I would for anyone in their situation.
I will do everything in my power to help find them.
I don’t have to like Turner to do right by him. ”
“I know,” said Josie.
“But he cheated.”
“He cheated,” Josie said on a long exhale.
“Which made their marriage toxic,” Gretchen said.
“In Maxine’s case, we know there was abuse, even if it was only emotional, but bottom line?
These women were unhappy. Their daughters were unhappy.
Somehow the killer knew about it and targeted them because of it.
If we could figure out how he knew their marriages were on the rocks, that would be helpful.
The most likely thing is he saw them or met them both in or near their workplaces. ”
“It’s certainly a connection between the two women besides Turner,” said Josie.
“Maybe he strikes up conversations with them and gets them to confide in him,” Gretchen continued. “Or maybe he’s the creepy wallflower guy in the corner of the café or the elevator that no one ever notices but who overhears everything.”
Josie could definitely see Dustin Emmer or someone like him as the invisible lurker eavesdropping on private conversations. “Okay, so he encounters women in bad relationships, and he wants to save them.”
“It’s about the fantasy,” Gretchen said.
Josie thought about Emmer and the fantasy he’d had Zara act out. It was clearly gratifying to him, perhaps for more than sexual reasons, but she wasn’t about to dive into that particular scenario just now. Was there another, more chilling fantasy he had hidden away?
“The killer is recreating the family,” she said.
“Seems like it, yeah.” Gretchen made the turn. Lucky for them the cross street had less traffic.
Josie leaned toward her friend so she could get a look at the speedometer, thrilled to see they were going a whopping fifteen miles an hour now. “We’re looking for someone who lost a mother and daughter, maybe. Or whose family left him.”
“Could be.”
Josie took out her phone and shot a text off to Annette Miller, asking what she knew about Dustin Emmer’s family history. It would be quicker than trying to do the research now, in the car.
“If he’s delusional enough to try to recreate this family unit with a woman and her teenage daughter,” Josie said, “then he’d be searching for the ideal pair.”
“But no woman, no family is going to live up to his ideal,” Gretchen said. “Because he’s crazy.”
“True. What’s his end goal? Killing? As a sort of revenge?”
“Possibly,” Gretchen said. “You never know with these guys. It would make sense. Or he kills them because they don’t live up to his ideal.”
They were silent for a moment while Josie mulled this over, comparing the two families, the two scenes, the two scenarios.
Maxine and Haven had never had a chance.
He’d been far less careful with Dani and Cassidy.
Even though he hadn’t killed them in their home, he’d been sloppy.
Approaching their house in broad daylight, carrying distinctive flowers, appearing on camera even if he didn’t show his face.
He’d left fingerprints. DNA. It was entirely possible that he was having some kind of crisis that was causing him to decompensate rapidly.
Or he’d simply felt more powerful after successfully killing Maxine and Haven, become more arrogant.
“The flowers must be part of recreating his fantasy,” Josie said. “His signature.”
“He brought the flowers to Dani’s house,” Gretchen said. “But he didn’t kill them. Not there. He took them.”
Dani had had the advantage of being awake and aware. She would have tried to talk with him, reason with him. Anyone whose adrenal response didn’t cause them to freeze completely would likely try to negotiate.
“She told him they’d do whatever he wanted,” Josie murmured.
“Makes sense,” Gretchen agreed. “Risky but smart, especially since he had a gun. Buy time. Stay alive. Keep your daughter alive, at any rate.”
“Since he’s using them to recreate his family,” said Josie, “he took them instead of killing them.”
“And as soon as he realizes that they’re not his ideal, he’ll kill them just like he did Maxine and Haven.”
Josie cursed. It had been four days. How long could Dani and Cassidy keep up the twisted charade before he lost patience or could no longer resist the urge to kill? How in the hell were they going to find them in time?
“This guy’s been looking for his perfect pair for a while,” she said. “Which means that Maxine Barnes’s stalker was real.”
“Yes,” Gretchen agreed.
Maxine’s erratic behavior had started a matter of months before she was fired from her job. The recollections of her friends and coworkers would be relatively fresh. It made sense to focus on Maxine Barnes’s friends and family members since their other leads had gone nowhere.
Maxine’s best friend, Angela Lewis, was at the top of that list.