Chapter Twenty-Seven
“What do you mean, you have to get me out of here?” Josie asked, her eyes wide.
“I mean, this guy is getting bolder. He’s made contact with you, threatened you.
My sergeant feels strongly he’s going to escalate things, and I agree.
We have a lead in Tennessee, which is only a four-hour drive away, and he suggested you come with me.
” Zach ran a hand over his hair. “Listen, Josie, the department simply doesn’t have the manpower to give you the protection you need while also working this case to the best of its ability.
In addition to putting a security detail on Reagan, something is likely to get dropped, and it could cost someone’s life. ”
“Mine?” she asked, her voice bland, emotionless.
“I’m not going to let that happen. But we don’t know what this guy’s next move is.
” They couldn’t do anything about protecting a woman—or women—they didn’t know were on his radar.
But they could do something about protecting Josie.
Frankly, he’d felt relieved when he’d been ordered to spirit her away while also following a lead.
Get her out of the town where this maniac still freely roamed the streets.
Josie nodded, but she still looked troubled. “I’ll go pack.”
An hour later, Zach and Josie met Jimmy at one of the districts, where Zach’s partner gave him a burner phone and cash and verbally gave him the address to the safe house.
Josie turned over her cell phone as well.
It would be monitored by a female officer who would answer it in the event the suspect called again, and they’d attempt a trace.
Zach left Josie in Jimmy’s care at the station so she could give Jimmy her statement about the phone call and what specifically had been said, while Zach made a quick trip to his apartment, threw some clothes in a bag, and gave the lone plant on his windowsill some water.
It had died six months before, but maybe it would rebloom?
What the hell did he know about plants? He wasn’t ready to completely give up on it just yet.
Zach headed back to the station and picked up Josie.
Zach felt a small amount of tension releasing from his shoulders as he drove out of the city limits, south toward Tennessee with Josie beside him. He glanced at her, saw her shoulders lower, and got the feeling she was suddenly able to breathe more easily too.
“Do you know where this safe house is?”
“I only have an address. But I think it’s pretty remote.”
The burner phone in the middle console rang, and Zach glanced at it. Jimmy.
“Hey, man.”
“Yo. You out of the city?”
“Yeah. Just crossing into Kentucky.”
“Drive safe. Like Sarge said, the professor’s still dragging his heels on giving us any kind of list to work with. Do you think Josie might be able to help with that?”
He glanced at Josie’s profile. Some hair had escaped her ponytail and fallen around her face. She looked young and vulnerable, and his foot pressed harder on the gas, eager to put as much distance between her and any possible danger. “I doubt it. I’ll ask.”
Jimmy was silent for a moment. “Listen, I’m sitting here going over this case. Going through the case file, the information on Landish…”
“What is it, Jimmy?” Zach knew his partner, knew when he was hedging.
“Well, listen, it’s just strange. This new guy knowing about those burns on Josie, the rats. I know we talked about potential explanations for both of those things. But Josie said the guy who called her on the phone earlier today did a pretty convincing impression of Landish, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, if he did a convincing impression of Landish now, could he have done a convincing impression of him then?”
“Wait, wait,” Zach said. Jimmy was a good detective, one of the best, but this?
This was far-fetched. “Josie only heard the guy this morning on the phone.” He glanced at her, gave her a small, reassuring smile.
She obviously knew he was talking to Jimmy and that they were discussing her case.
The fact was, she might be able to help them with many aspects of this investigation.
She might be able to provide some missing piece she didn’t even know she had.
“She knew Landish as much more than just a voice.”
Zach saw Josie’s shoulders draw upward a fraction.
“Yeah, I know, but he never took his mask off, right?” Jimmy said.
“From what I understand.”
“I’ve been looking at Landish’s suicide. And there are a few…questions.”
“Such as?”
“Like, for example, they never found a mask at his apartment.”
“He probably ditched it in some garbage can.”
“Possibly. There was also zero DNA belonging to Landish in that warehouse room. There were, however, a few hairs found stuck to that mattress that did not belong to Josie Stratton.”
Zach rubbed at his eye. “I thought it was presumed that mattress was bought used and those hairs probably belonged to the previous owner.”
“Yes. Possibly. The other thing of note is that there were no fingerprints in that room either. Not on the doorknob or anywhere else. It’s almost as if he wiped that room down before police got there.”
“Could Landish have realized Josie was missing very soon after she escaped and took the time to wipe the room down?”
“And then went home and killed himself? What was the point, then?”
“Maybe that part wasn’t planned.”
“Hmm,” Jimmy hummed. Zach heard pages rustling in the background. “That doesn’t quite work because when Landish was found, it appeared he’d been dead for several hours at least. Although it was apparently hot in his apartment, which made pinpointing a time of death more difficult.”
Zach thought for a minute, something coming to him. “Were rattraps taken into evidence?”
There was a short pause before Jimmy said, “No. No traps.”
So, he’d removed the rattraps Josie had mentioned?
In essence, he’d wiped down and cleaned the place up—taken anything that wasn’t easily wiped of fingerprints, perhaps?
But how was that possible if he was already dead?
And even if the time of death was inaccurate, he’d have to have snuck into that room the moment Josie had escaped and then run home and shot himself.
Police had been all over both the warehouse room and Landish’s apartment within the hour.
“I’m still reading through all the forensics,” Jimmy went on as Zach’s mind roamed. “But listen, apparently there’s a sister who insists her brother didn’t commit this crime, that it just wasn’t in his nature.”
“I saw that, but, man, how many people do we arrest whose family members insist they didn’t do it, because it just wasn’t in their nature?”
“A hell of a lot.”
“The guy committed suicide.”
“A murder can be made to look like suicide. Listen, I’m just exploring all avenues here. I could be totally off base.”
Exploring all avenues was what they did, what solved cases. Lots of times they started going down a path that turned out to be misguided, but what made them thorough—and what made their solve rate so high—was that they never ignored any possibilities in their investigations, no matter how unlikely.
“What I can’t get my head around is how this new guy made the connection to Professor Merrick. He not only chose UC students, like Josie Stratton, but he chose UC students who had had an affair with the professor.”
That’s what was still bugging Zach too. If they were going with the presumption that a completely different person committed the recent murders—a copycat killer—how had this person known that aspect?
He’d have to have chosen them for that reason, otherwise it was just too coincidental.
Had it been someone who knew Landish and picked up where he left off to fulfill some mission that was personal to both of them?
Or could Jimmy’s questions have merit? Could this “copycat” actually be the person who abducted Josie and kept himself hidden beneath a mask?
“Keep reading that report, and I’ll talk to Josie.
I’ll text you when we get to the location. ”
“One other thing,” Jimmy said. “We got the video surveillance from that grocery store. It was the cousin who hung those articles next to Josie’s flyer. I looked up his picture on his website and compared it to the video footage. No doubt.”
“Shit,” Zach muttered. “I guess I’m not surprised.”
“Nah. Real douche move meant to humiliate her, but no real crime. She could sue him civilly, I guess.” Zach took a hand off the steering wheel and scrubbed at his jaw, doubting Josie had the funds to sue anyone.
Would she even want to waste the time if she did?
So the cousin had hung the posters, and some psycho had broken into her home and left a mutilated rat behind.
He was even more glad they were headed out of town right about now.
“Thanks, Jimmy. We’ll talk soon.”
Zach hung up and placed his phone back in the console. When he looked at Josie, she was staring back at him expectantly. “Will you tell me what Jimmy said?”
Zach first told her about her cousin. She stared glumly ahead but didn’t look surprised. “Well, that solves that,” she murmured.
Zach then explained what Jimmy was questioning regarding Landish.
As he spoke, Josie’s face registered surprise, then denial.
“No, Zach. I identified Marshall Landish immediately, even beneath that mask. It wasn’t just the way he spoke—although that was unique—it was the way he walked, the way he moved, the way he carried himself, the way he smelled.
It was just…it was everything about him. ”
“Except his face. You never saw his face.”
“No, but I was glad for it. Because I figured it meant he had no idea I knew it was him. I hoped that it would make it more likely he’d let me go because he didn’t have to fear being ID’d and arrested.”
Zach nodded. That made sense.
“Also,” Josie went on, “if it was the same guy, he’d not only have had to impersonate Marshall Landish like some professional actor worthy of an Oscar, but it would have meant he staged Marshall’s suicide, planted evidence that would tie him definitively to the crime, laid low for eight years, and then resurfaced to take up abducting girls and starving them to death.
” She was talking fast, obviously distressed, and Zach reached over and put his hand on her knee to offer comfort.
“Hey,” he said, “it’s our job to explore every avenue, no matter how implausible.”
“I know. I know, and I want to be a part of it. I want to help if I can. If there’s something—other than just the copycat aspect—that ties this suspect to Marshall Landish, I want to help you find it.
Maybe he knew him…maybe he”—she bit at her lip—“is avenging his death somehow. I don’t know.
But as far as them being one and the same?
” She shook her head. “It was him. It was Marshall Landish. I don’t have the smallest speck of doubt. ”
But the uncertain expression on her face as she stared out the truck window belied her words.