Chapter Forty
Zach closed the bedroom door quietly behind him and stepped into the living room before answering his phone. “Hey, Jimmy.”
“Yo. How is she?”
“All right. Sleeping.”
“Good, I’m sure she needs it.”
“Yeah.” Zach sat down on the couch, running his hand down his face, comforted by the fact that his partner recognized Josie’s bravery but also her vulnerability.
They would all work together to keep her safe, work their asses off not only for the women who’d lost their lives at the hands of Charles Hartsman, but also for the woman who’d survived him.
“Listen, I’ve been up since dawn thinking about all of this, and I can’t seem to get that social worker off my mind.”
“Janelle Gilbert? Why?”
“The way she acted when we spoke with her…the way she shouldered the blame for what happened to Charles Hartsman.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah. I probably would. But what I’ve been asking myself is, what would she be willing to do for some kind of absolution?”
“I don’t follow.”
“She just seemed off to me, Cope.”
Zach couldn’t disagree with Jimmy. She’d seemed highly emotional about the case even close to two decades later.
He’d written it off to guilt, nerves. A high level of empathy.
But hell, in her job, Janelle Gilbert had to carry a hundred tragic stories around with her.
Same as him. Same as Jimmy. You either learned to carry that weight, or you crumbled under it.
“Anyway, I looked into her a little and found out that her sister is a lawyer,” Jimmy went on.
“Okay.”
“She specializes in adoptions.”
Zach’s stomach knotted. “What are you thinking?” But he was sure he already knew.
“We need to interview her again. Without Josie. Meet me at her office in an hour?”
Zach glanced unconsciously toward the bedroom where Josie slept peacefully.
Safe in his presence, behind his locked door, his alarm system.
He’d have to make a call, get a couple of uniforms to his place to sit with her while he was gone.
A couple of the best guys he knew. He’d only be gone a short time.
Hell, this might be a dead end. It probably was.
Still, they needed to explore it further.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be there.”
Zach didn’t get up right away, but he sat there in the quiet of his apartment, his mind going back to the night before.
He was worried about her, worried that she hadn’t spoken about what they’d all discovered, though the tears were a step in the right direction.
He thought back to their sex, the desperate nature of it, her assertion that she didn’t know how to have a healthy relationship.
God, his heart felt so heavy. She had so much strength and yet so little trust in herself in some ways.
But who could blame her? She was still trying to figure out how her new reality merged with her old ideas of self.
And of course she had issues regarding sex.
She might always be damaged in that way.
It might rarely come out. It might come out often.
If he was going to be with Josie, he had to know that. He’d need to accept that.
With a heavy sigh, Zach stood and headed for the shower. This had to take a back seat. For now.
* * *
“We apologize for the inconvenience, Ms. Gilbert, but we have some follow-up questions that can’t wait.”
“I wish you’d called, Detectives. I was in an important meeting.” Her short heels clicked on the floor as she led them back to the office they’d sat in the afternoon before.
They took the same seats in front of her desk, Zach aware of the empty third seat where Josie had sat.
Janelle sank down into her chair, gazing expectantly at them, and for the first time, Zach got a good look at her.
She looked ten years older than she’d appeared the day before, dark circles beneath her eyes, her face puffy as though she’d been crying.
That sixth detective sense thrummed through him, the belief that they were about to get information that would catapult their investigation further.
Usually that feeling brought with it a sense of excitement, but right then, it also held a note of dread.
Because what this woman might know would have to do with Josie Stratton’s son, and that meant it had to do with the heart of the woman he loved.
Jimmy sat forward. Janelle Gilbert’s hands trembled where they rested on her desk. She pulled them back, hiding them in her lap. “You seem nervous, Ms. Gilbert.”
“I’m tired,” she said. “Your line of questioning yesterday brought up some emotions I thought I’d dealt with.”
“Yes,” Jimmy said. “I understand. The work you do often must be very emotionally difficult.”
Her shoulders seemed to relax slightly. “Yes. It’s hard not to get involved with the kids I place. I care about them, Detective. I’m invested in their well-being.”
“Of course. Your sister is an adoption attorney, Ms. Gilbert?”
Her face drained of color, causing the dark circles under her eyes to look like bruises, and she glanced back and forth between the two of them quickly. “Y-yes. What does that have to do with anything?”
“The woman who was here with us yesterday, did you recognize her?”
“No,” she croaked, red blotches appearing on her neck. She was lying.
“Her name is Josie Stratton. We believe she was one of Charles Hartsman’s victims. He abducted her, chained her in a warehouse room, raped her, and starved her.
She gave birth to his child, a son, while she was in captivity and then managed to escape.
But not before Charles had taken her son from that warehouse, though. The child’s never been found.”
She was visibly shaking now, not just her hands but her entire frame. “What does that have to do with me?”
“He came to you, didn’t he, Ms. Gilbert?
He came to you because he knew you harbored intense guilt for your role in what happened to him.
You blamed yourself for sending him back to that house of horrors, didn’t you?
So he came to you with that newborn baby boy.
You recognized Josie Stratton yesterday, didn’t you?
You put the pieces together last night.” Jimmy’s voice was clear, calm, somehow hypnotic in its deep tenor.
Janelle Gilbert crumbled, a sob bursting from her mouth as she shrank back in her chair.
“He told me it was his baby. Told me his girlfriend had given birth and then died of a drug overdose. He didn’t know what to do.
I didn’t doubt him, Detective,” she said, her voice high with panic.
“The baby, he, he looked just like him. He was tiny and a little malnourished, but that boy was obviously his. There was no doubt.”
Zach’s heart was drumming a staccato beat, adrenaline pulsing through his veins. Oh dear God. “What did you do with the baby, Ms. Gilbert?”
She grabbed a tissue off her desk, wiped at her nose.
“He asked for my help. I…I had to help him, Detectives.” Her eyes moved quickly between them, beseeching.
“I’d let him down so terribly before. And…
and all he needed was to find a loving home for a son he couldn’t raise.
That’s all. It was a kindness. That’s all. ”
“Your sister help you with that?” Jimmy asked.
She bobbed her head, tears sliding down her cheeks. “Yes, but I’m the one to blame here. I asked for her help, and she gave it because she loves me. Because she thought it was the right thing.”
“Because she thought she was helping an innocent kid with no parents who might otherwise go into the system, the system you could personally verify was full of horror stories.”
“Yes. Yes. We were just trying to help. To do our best for that poor little baby. To send him to a loving home.”
“Didn’t you see the news around then? The hunt for the baby stolen from Josie Stratton?” Jimmy asked, voice still somehow soothing, though Zach heard the underlying note of anger in his partner’s voice, even if Janelle Gilbert did not.
“I read about that crime, about that baby. But the father of that child and the man who’d abducted that woman killed himself. This was clearly Charlie’s son. There was no denying it.”
“Where’d he go, Ms. Gilbert?” Zach asked, his voice low, menacing even to his own ears.
She looked hollowed out, her darkly circled eyes staring vacantly, lips bloodless.
“He was placed with a couple who live in Kentucky, right across the bridge. A loving couple. He was placed with good people, Detectives. I made it right, the thing I’d gotten so wrong the first time. I made it right for Charlie.”