by Lisa Regan
“It stinks back here,” Gretchen groused.
“Miles Tenney left his wife to live here?” Josie muttered, walking up to the single door at the back of the building. Beside it was a dumpster overflowing with trash. The smell, made worse by the intense summer heat, was enough to churn her stomach.
Gretchen said, “This makes Nathan Cammack’s apartment look like a palace.”
“Cammack’s place wasn’t bad,” Josie said. “Very modern. It definitely didn’t smell this bad.”
The door was solid, with a single doorknob. No deadbolt. Gretchen looked at Josie who shrugged as if to say, “Give it a try.” The knob turned easily in Gretchen’s hand. They walked through the door into a dark, narrow hall with hardwood floors. A musty, unpleasant smell filled Josie’s nostrils. “Did Dee give you an apartment number?”
Gretchen shook her head. “She just gave the street address, followed by ‘first floor left’.”
“The door on the left.”
“Seems that way. Tell me again what Miles Tenney does for a living?”
“Car salesman,” Gretchen answered as they moved more deeply into the building. “At least, that’s what he was doing when I investigated the crash.”
“He must not be very good.”
They passed a door on the right and kept going. Almost at the end of the hall was another door, standing ajar. Gretchen pulled up short and Josie stopped behind her. “Well, this is never a good thing.”
“Not in our business,” Josie agreed. Her hand moved to her holster, unsnapping it.
Over Gretchen’s shoulder, Josie could make out what looked like a small sitting area. An old brown couch that sagged in the middle sat across from a small, overturned table. A television rested on its face. Beside it was a lamp on its side, the shade crumpled. The bulb gave off a dim yellow glow. The wooden paneling of the wall straight ahead was dark but not so dark that they couldn’t make out the blood spatter arcing across it. Josie smelled cigarettes and blood. She pulled her gun from its holster, the weight of it reassuring in her palm. Holding it downward, she tapped Gretchen’s shoulder. Gretchen, too, pulled her weapon. With her free hand, she rapped on the door. “Mr. Tenney,” she called in a loud, clear voice. “It’s Detectives Palmer and Quinn from Denton Police. Mr. Tenney? May we come in?”
Josie ticked off the seconds along with the beats of her heart. Five seconds. Ten.
“Miles Tenney,” Gretchen yelled, louder this time. “This is the police. We need to speak with you, sir.”
Five seconds. Ten.
“If anyone is in there, please come out now with your hands where we can see them.”
No response. Not even a sound. Josie tapped Gretchen’s shoulder again, indicating for her to move forward. They moved as one unit with Josie slightly behind, each one of them taking a different side of the room, sweeping their pistols across the area, searching for any movement. There was nothing. The living room and kitchen were all in one room. The couch back separated the two. A table barely large enough for two people to sit was covered in takeout containers. Two wooden chairs lay next to it, both of them overturned. One had lost two of its legs, large splinters jutting out like daggers where they’d broken off. Covering almost the entire square of tiled floor in the kitchen were pages and pages of what looked like various types of documents. Josie saw more droplets of blood scattered across the papers. At the foot of the fridge was a smashed cell phone, smears of blood dappling the broken pieces.
Turning her attention back to Gretchen, she saw her make a motion toward the left-hand side of the room, indicating a corner with two doorways. Both doors were open. The first was obviously a bathroom, no bigger than a closet. Not even big enough for a full bathtub. There was only a standing shower, no curtain, toilet and sink all crammed together. The next room was a bedroom. A twin mattress lay on the floor, sheets crumpled on top of it. Along the walls were cardboard boxes—rows and rows of them stacked almost to the ceiling. There was no closet.
“Clear,” Gretchen said.
They holstered their weapons and went back into the first room. “I think we’re standing in a crime scene,” Josie said. She took out her phone and called Noah. He would get the team out here to process the apartment and keep the entire thing off the police scanner so that the press didn’t pick up on it. “If there was any doubt that Krystal’s and Faye’s murders were about the bus accident,” Josie said after hanging up. “This puts that to rest. One week, three parents of bus crash victims?”
Gretchen stood near the open apartment door, surveying the scene. “Except Miles didn’t go willingly. He fought. The killer wounded him. Or he wounded the killer, maybe. We don’t actually know whose blood this is.”
“I’m sure Dee can tell us Miles’ blood type. The ERT can type the blood here at the scene to see whether it’s a match or not.”
Josie walked carefully back toward the kitchen area. Something blue and sparkly peeked out from behind the fridge. It stood out against the wood paneling and dull, drab green of the fridge. Whatever the object was, it looked as though it had fallen from the top of the fridge and gotten lodged near the base of the wall. Leaning down, she saw the shimmer that had caught her eye from across the room was a glittery letter on the outside of a small blue pouch. A capital F. Josie didn’t touch it. She didn’t want to contaminate the crime scene, but she was positive that once the ERT retrieved the pouch from behind the fridge, there would be another silvery letter: a capital C.
F.C. for Frankie Cammack. This was the pouch in which young Frankie had kept her treasured Roosevelt dime. What the hell was it doing in Miles Tenney’s rundown apartment on the wrong side of the city? Josie straightened her body and opened her mouth to call it to Gretchen’s attention, but Gretchen spoke first.
“Ravioli.”
It took a split second for Josie to process the word, completely out of context. It was their panic word. Meant for emotional panic, not to signal physical danger, but Josie immediately knew what Gretchen meant by it. She turned her head to see Gretchen facing the open apartment door, hands up. The barrel of a pistol was pointed at her forehead. All that was visible from where Josie stood was a meaty hand wrapped around its handle. No sleeve, only the black band of a wristwatch. The rest of the gunman’s frame was blocked by the door, which meant that he couldn’t see Josie either.
He said, “What?”
Josie’s heart thundered as her body launched into action. Silently, she took two large steps and fit herself behind the door with her back against the wall so that she couldn’t be seen through the crack. Her Glock was in her hands, pointed upward.
The man said, “Did you say ‘ravioli?’”
“I said, ‘Don’t shoot me.’”
Josie watched as the pinky and ring finger of Gretchen’s left hand slowly folded down toward her palm. Then her thumb tucked in after them until only two fingers remained, pointing toward the ceiling. Two. There were two men.
Gretchen said, “I’m a police officer.”
Laughter. “Sure you are, sweetheart.”
“Put your guns down,” said Gretchen.
“Where’s Miles?” the man asked.
“My colleagues are on their way.”
“Sure, sure,” said the man. “You’re with the police, and all your police buddies just happen to be on their way here. If I put my gun away, will they turn around and go back to the station?”
“Let’s find out,” Gretchen said flatly.
More laughter. “This one’s a pistol. You’re a pistol, you know that? Now, we came for Miles, and if he don’t come with us, we’re taking you.”
There was another male voice, this one lower and raspier. “She don’t look like the wife.”
“So she’s the mistress,” said the first man. “We take her instead.”
The pistol pointed at Gretchen’s head wobbled while the man talked to his friend. Gretchen took the second to meet Josie’s eyes. Josie took one hand off her gun to give Gretchen a sig
nal, hoping she would know what Josie intended. They’d been in some dicey situations before, and they’d always been on the same page. Gretchen gave a curt nod and looked back at the pistol as it stopped wobbling and pointed once more at her face.
“What if she’s really a cop?” Raspy asked.
“I am really a cop,” said Gretchen.
Josie took in a breath and on the exhale, she yelled, “Police! Drop your weapon!”
As expected, there was a second of shock from the other side of the door. The pistol wavered. Gretchen dropped straight down and then rolled to her left, out of the way of the door. Josie lifted her leg and kicked the door as hard as she could. The gunman cried out as his wrist was slammed between the door and its frame. Josie kicked twice more until the pistol dropped. Before Josie could step forward to open the door, a gunshot exploded from the hall. Then another, and another. Wood splintered from the door. A bullet lodged in the wall opposite. Josie’s body had already dropped down. Gretchen was behind her, gun now drawn as well.
Another gunshot came, followed by a grunt. The door swung open, and a large man fell forward onto the floor. White T-shirt, jeans, black sneakers. Blood blossomed from a hole in his back. Had his buddy shot him on purpose or by accident? There was no time to figure it out. The echo of the shots reverberated in Josie’s ears. It wasn’t until she heard the slam of a door that she realized that the shooter, Raspy, had run out of the building.
Josie looked back at Gretchen.
“Go,” Gretchen said. “I’ll tend to this guy and call the cavalry. Let them know we’ve got a shooter on foot.”
Josie jumped up, gun pointed downward and took off, jumping over the body of the first man and sprinting down the hallway. She shouldered her way through the door, the sun momentarily blinding her. The smell of the dumpster was just as overpowering as it had been when they arrived. Trying to orient herself, Josie panned the back lot until she spotted Raspy running across the pawn shop parking lot, gun tucked into the back of his waistband. He was taller and thinner than she expected, wearing a pair of khaki cargo pants and black T-shirt. Josie yelled, “Police! Freeze!” but he didn’t even look back at her.
She covered the lot quickly and vaulted the chain-link fence. In her four months of suspension, Josie had run almost every day, sometimes twice a day, punishing her body to keep her mind off Lisette’s murder. Now it paid off. She gained on him quickly, but he was so much taller than her. In a few more strides, he would be out of the parking lot. An old Honda Civic sat between the two of them. Without breaking pace, Josie holstered her weapon, jumped onto the hood, ran up the windshield, and leapt from the roof of the car onto Raspy’s back. He went down face-first with a grunt. Josie straddled him, yanking the gun from his waistband, and tossing it out of his reach.
“Are you crazy?” he screamed beneath her as she pulled his wrists to the small of his back.
“You’re under arrest,” Josie said, cinching handcuffs around his wrists. She read him his Miranda rights as he squirmed beneath her.
“You broke my nose, you stupid bitch!” he complained.
As he lifted his face from the ground, blood poured out of his nostrils.
Josie said, “I’m going to help you stand up now so we can tip your head back and try to stop some of that bleeding.”
“Screw you,” he shouted.
“Let’s go,” Josie told him, sliding a hand under one of his armpits. “Get on your knees and then we’ll stand.”
He wriggled away from her. “Get away from me! You’re not a real cop! This is some bullshit!”
Josie heard footsteps behind her, from the back lot of Miles Tenney’s building. She looked back to see Noah hop the chain-link fence and stride toward them. He looked down at Raspy and grimaced. “I’m sorry to tell you, my friend, but she is a real cop and you should do as she says.”
Chapter Thirty
After writing up their reports back at the station, Josie and Gretchen were sent home for the evening. Chitwood instructed them to put off their interview with Corey Byrne until the following day. Both of their assailants were being held in the hospital under guard, and it was going to take the ERT hours to process Miles Tenney’s apartment, which was now the scene of two crimes—whatever had happened to Miles, and the shooting that took place while Josie and Gretchen were there. Noah and Mettner stayed on-scene to canvass neighbors and check for any video footage at nearby properties to see if they could determine what had happened to Miles. At home, Josie soaked in a hot bubble bath while Trout slept on the mat next to the tub. In her mind, she catalogued all the investigative steps that would need to be taken moving forward, trying to keep her mind off what had happened at Miles Tenney’s apartment.
It wasn’t the first time she’d ever been shot at, but it was the first time since Lisette’s death. Across the film screen of her mind, the scene in the apartment was flash cut with scenes from Lisette’s murder. Over and over again, she heard that first, unexpected shot in her head. When her mind’s eye saw Lisette fall through the door to Tenney’s apartment, bloodied, Josie’s body jerked, the water, now lukewarm, sloshing around her. Trout whined and stood up. He rested his chin on the edge of the tub, ears pointed straight up in the air, big brown eyes filled with concern.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” she told him. “I fell asleep.”
She’d been in enough danger for one day, she decided. Once out of the tub, dried off, and dressed, she sat on the bed and checked her phone for any word from Noah. Nothing yet. With a sigh, she put the phone back on its charger. She meant to wait up for him, but once Trout hopped onto the bed and fit his warm little body against her hip, Josie fell asleep almost instantly. Her dreams were filled with gunshots, with Lisette’s body falling at her feet. Sometimes they were near the forest where it had actually happened, and sometimes they were in the pawn shop lot behind Miles Tenney’s apartment. Always, just as Josie was about to scoop Lisette’s lifeless form into her arms and run for help, a wall of water came crashing in on them from every direction, as if the East Coast had experienced a tsunami so massive that it was cresting in Denton—in the center of Pennsylvania. Beneath the wave, Josie fought for air and tried to hold onto Lisette, but she never could.
Josie woke gasping and clutching at her throat. Trout stood over her, pawing at her arm and licking her face. Sunlight streamed into the room. Once she caught her breath and assured Trout that she was just fine, Josie looked at the clock. It was almost ten a.m. Noah’s side of the bed was empty. Yet, she had slept through the entire night for the first time in four months. New nightmares, different nightmares, but for one night at least, these had allowed for some rest. She snatched up her phone to find a text message from Noah. Got in late. You were out. Didn’t want to wake you. When you get up, come to the station. There’s news.
A half hour later, Josie was dressed and pulling into the municipal parking lot of police headquarters. Amassed around the entrance were four times as many reporters as the day before. Was this just because of the incident at Miles Tenney’s place or had something else developed overnight? Her heart stuttered in her chest as she parked and got out, noticing for the first time that there were several FBI vehicles in the lot. She hurried out of her car, battling past the throng of reporters shouting questions.
“Is it true that Faye Palazzo was found murdered yesterday?”
“Do you believe there’s a serial killer targeting the parents of the West Denton bus crash children?”
“Were you involved in the shooting yesterday in Southwest Denton?”
“Is it true that Miles Tenney was found murdered in his apartment?”
“Who are the men you have in custody? Are the charges related to the murder of Krystal Duncan?”
“What does it mean that there is such a large FBI presence here today?”
“What does this mean for the trial of Virgil Lesko?”
“Are the other parents of the bus crash victims in danger? Or should the public be worried?”
Josie threw out “no comments” like a broken record until she was safely through the door. She ran up the steps and burst into the great room to find the entire team, including Amber and Chief Chitwood, gathered around the detectives’ desks along with FBI Agent Drake Nally, dressed sharply in a gray suit and blue tie.
“Well,” boomed Drake. “If it isn’t Mrs. Noah Fraley!” He strode over and grabbed her in a hug, lifting her off her feet momentarily. Josie squeezed him back, always happy to see him, no matter what the circumstances. “Nice to see you. How are you doing?”
Drake had come from the New York City field office. He lived in Manhattan and dated Josie’s twin sister, Trinity Payne, a famous television journalist. Josie managed a smile for him when he released her. “Fine,” she said.
Drake was tall and rangy, and he had to lean down to look closely at her face. In a low voice, he said, “You sure?”
Josie kept her smile plastered on her face. “If I wasn’t, I sure as shit wouldn’t tell you.”
He laughed and squeezed one of her shoulders. “Trinity said you would say that.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked, walking past him to her desk. Noah kissed her cheek and pulled out her chair for her. When she was seated, he handed her a paper cup of coffee.
“I knew I married you for a reason,” she told him.
Across from her, Gretchen nodded a greeting. Mettner was on the phone, but gave her a small wave. Amber typed away at her laptop, and Chitwood presided over all of them from the side of the room, a silent sentry.
Drake perched himself on the edge of her desk, folding his arms over his chest. “Those two guys you and Palmer had a run-in with yesterday? They’re part of a pretty large crime syndicate based out of New York City. They call themselves Cerberus.”
