Chapter 4
ARCHER
Banks brings the cruiser to a stop on a street lined with townhouses stacked side by side.
Each portion of land boasts, by fast count, five or six units each, but with at least twenty consecutive blocks in a row, this street is jam-packed with parked cars, even in the middle of a workday.
Summer break means kids litter the sidewalks, and since the sun is out, dozens of balls bounce in dozens of different directions.
Tennis balls. Footballs. Basketballs.
Dennison Avenue is an ecosystem within itself, where children mingle, the scent of cooking food wafts in the air, and at least half of these kids clock me and Drake for what we are, even without the cop insignia on the side of our car, or the strip of lights across the top.
This is where middle-class families come to live, but the lower end of middle-class.
The end where residents still get to eat and keep the electricity on, but losing a job or totaling their car could be the straw that breaks a camel’s back.
It’s where each home probably has two working adults, since folks can’t afford otherwise these days, and when summer break hits, childcare falls upon the village and a metric dose of hopes and dreams.
It’s a precarious balancing act most work hard to maintain.
And then there are the single-parent families… like Josey’s.
“We tell it to her directly.” Banks cuts the engine and tugs the keys from the ignition. Unsnapping his seatbelt, he twists and meets my eyes. “We say it straight. We don’t drag out her suffering, and we don’t—”
“You think this is my first day on the job? Shut the fuck up.” I snatch the keys faster than his brain thinks to stop me, then I push out my side and nod for the street biker security crew.
As in, five boys who look older than Mia, but younger than Cato, while they mean-mug us over the top of their handlebars.
“Don’t tell me how to do my fuckin’ job.
” I keep my voice low enough to spare the kids from having to testify in court once I bury this prick in the woods, then dipping my hands—and the keys—into my pockets, I start along the cracked footpath leading toward Josey’s front door.
“You’re the new one around here, Banks, not me.
And maybe you’ve gotten into the habit of coaching, since you spend all your time with Clay nowadays, but I’m not him, and you don’t have seniority over me.
Zip ya lips, bitch, and mind your damn business. ”
“Boggles my mind that Chief Mayet could even look at you and think yeah, this is the asshole I wanna marry. She blind or something?”
“Married me twice. And you don’t get to talk about her unless you want me to shove my gun straight up your asshole and pop your eyeballs out through your ears.
” I move up the two concrete steps out front and knock on Josey’s door.
Lowering my hand, I back up and wait… wait…
wait to fuck up some poor woman’s day. “This isn’t a game, Banks.
And she doesn’t need us shouting over each other while we’re telling her about her dead daughter.
Don’t turn this into a pissing contest just because you wanna feel like top dog.
This is my city, and the only reason you’re here is because you nabbed yourself a nice girl who dreams of working for my wife someday. ”
Footsteps echo inside the townhouse, so I straighten my spine and clamp my lips shut.
Locks disengage inside: one, two, three, then the door opens and a woman who looks horrifyingly like the girl we’ve already studied today, just eighteen years older, stops on the threshold with tears already in her eyes.
She looks from me to Drake, her breath catching and her chest heaving. “No, no, no, no, no.”
I dive forward the instant her knees give out and wrap my arm around her back. I take her hand in mine, while Drake squeezes through the doorway and takes her other side.
“No!” She wails loud enough to alert the kids in the street. “Not my baby! Please, God, no.”
“I’m so sorry, Ms. Ryan.” I kick the door shut and buy her a little privacy, then I half-carry her through the small entryway and into the living room not more than ten feet away. Together, Drake and I lead her to the sofa and set her down on the edge.
Just say it, Arch. Rip the band-aid off.
“My name is Detective Malone. He’s Detective Banks.” I keep her hand in mine and perch on the edge of her short, wooden coffee table. “We’re sorry, but your daughter’s body was discovered inside your car this morning. She died before emergency responders arrived at the scene.”
It’s never fun telling someone they’ve lost a loved one.
It sucks when an adult loses their parent.
It sucks even more when a husband loses his wife, or a wife loses her husband.
But to tell a mom about her dead child? That’s pure torture, and the sound of a grieving mother’s animalistic cries is something I’ve found has a habit of imprinting on a man’s psyche.
But once the howling slows and the sobbing quietens, the comatose silence feels somehow worse.
“It would help a lot if you could talk to us, Ms. Ryan.” Drake crosses the single, open-plan space, leaving the kitchen behind and setting a delicate china cup on a small side table.
“I know this is the worst day of your life, and I know it hurts. Deep in your heart and soul.” He comes around and sits on the coffee table beside me.
His shoulder touches mine, and his knee taps my thigh, but neither of us can summon the energy to snarl.
Not while Sylvia Ryan stares blankly at her hands.
“Josey’s death wasn’t accidental, Ms. Ryan.
It wasn’t natural. It wasn’t a wild act of nature. ”
Slowly, she brings glittering, bloodshot eyes up.
“Josey was murdered, so if you could talk to us, we promise to do our very best to find who did this to her.”
“What made you report her missing last night?” I keep my voice gentle. My words soft. “Transcripts show you making a report at nine o’clock last night, but Josey is eighteen. It’s summer break. Nine isn’t all that late. What prompted you to make that call?”
She drops her gaze and exhales a shuddering breath. “She was supposed to be home by seven.”
“So only two hours?” Drake presses. “Two hours, and you jump straight to the police, instead of assuming she might’ve caught up with friends?”
She shakes her head. “It wouldn’t have bothered me if she wanted to stay out.
It wouldn’t even have been an issue if she had found a party and decided to get wild for a night.
But she would’ve told me.” Her eyes flicker back to mine.
“We’ve always been really good with communication, and we…
our phones…” She looks around her living room, searching for the device.
“We have that app on our phones that shows where we are. We do that for each other, because we never want the other to worry.”
“Can we see your phone, Ms. Ryan?” I spy it wedged between couch cushions, the bottom half poking out. “It would be helpful if we knew where the app tracked her to last.”
“Yeah, she…” She nods. But she doesn’t grab it. “Yeah.”
Inching forward, I snatch it up and swipe the screen, prepared to ask her for the pin code, but her apps reveal themselves to me anyway. No security needed.
“It stopped working last night at seven-forty-five,” she rasps. “Which is… it’s…” She shakes her head. “I’m not dumb, detectives. I know what that means.”
I take out my phone and pull up my texts to Fletch. Then I copy GPS coordinates across.
Me
I’m sending you the last locations her phone pinged last night. You might find our death scene at one of them. Let me know what’s what.
“It looks like she was at an address about twelve blocks from here. Residential.” I turn the phone and show Sylvia the map. “Do you know whose house this is? She was there until six-thirty.”
“That’s the Carpenters’ house.” Her voice crackles on a whimper.
“Josey’s a really smart girl, detectives.
Really, really smart. She graduated top of her class in May, and got accepted to Copeland U for the fall.
She’s planning to be a forensic psychologist, because she cares about the law and she wants to help…
she…” She drops her face into her hands and groans.
“She’s smart, so the Carpenters… She tutors their eighth-grader, Susan. ”
Susan Carpenter. I glance across and watch as Drake writes her name in his notebook. 8th grade. Then the word address. But he leaves the space after it blank.
“She tutors for a few families,” Sylvia continues on a pained exhale. “She has for years.”
“Could you get us a list of each family?” Drake asks gently. “Their names, their addresses, and if you know it, a typical schedule for when she’d see each one.”
Exhausted, she merely nods and drops her head.
“So she was tutoring Susan last night until six thirty,” I continue.
“You expected her home at seven.” Except, according to the GPS app, Josey drove toward the city afterwards, not home.
“Do you know why she’d go to…” I zoom in on the next check-in point and discover a cinema.
“Maybe she had plans to go to the movies?” I spin the phone and show her.
“Perhaps one of Josey’s friends called her and suggested a movie night? ”
“No, I…” She takes back her phone and clasps it between both hands.
“Tairneyy Keen is her best friend. Her closest friend in the entire world.” Swallowing, she brings swollen eyes up again.
“I thought the same thing you did, so I texted her a couple of times just to check. Tried calling. By seven thirty, I called Tairneyy instead.”
“But they weren’t together?” Drake murmurs.