by Lisa Regan
“Look at that,” Josie said, pointing to it. “That wasn’t found in the grave.”
“Maybe she wasn’t wearing it when she died,” Gretchen offered.
“She was a foster kid. It’s quite a nice locket,” Josie pointed out.
“Could be costume jewelry, Boss,” Noah pointed out.
“It could also be important,” Josie insisted.
She herself hadn’t grown up in foster care, but her situation hadn’t been much better; not until after her mother left. Josie hadn’t owned jewelry even remotely as nice as that locket until she’d turned eighteen, when Ray had given her a diamond pendant he’d saved up for months to buy. She’d worn it nonstop through most of college. She still had it.
“Gretchen,” Josie said, “when we’re done here, take a picture of this photo with your phone and go back to Rockview and talk to Maggie Lane. She said that Belinda left her things the second time she disappeared. Ask her if this locket was among them, would you?”
“Sure thing, Boss,” Gretchen said, snapping a picture of the photo with her cell phone.
“When was that picture taken?” Noah asked.
Josie took the photo back from Gretchen, turned it over, and read off the month and year. “March 1984.”
“Maggie said she went missing around Easter in 1984,” Gretchen said, bringing up the internet browser on her phone. Josie watched over her shoulder as she punched in her query. “Easter was April 22nd of that year,” Gretchen added.
Josie picked up the report that Maggie had made. “This is dated the 26th,” she said.
“So we can estimate the date of the murder then,” Noah said. “Sometime on or after April 26, 1984.”
“Yeah but that doesn’t tell us anything about who did it,” Josie answered. “But there are names here of people who were interviewed back then. Here—” she snatched up another piece of paper. “They interviewed Lloyd Todd and his brother, Damon.” She skimmed the faded typewritten words. “Lloyd said they’d been dating on and off since early 1983, broke things off around Christmas of 1983. He saw her at school that day and she seemed fine. He was at track and field practice that evening. His brother and father confirmed this as they were both at the athletic field that night too.”
“It’s going to be impossible to talk to Lloyd Todd,” Gretchen noted. “I mean, he’s in county jail right now awaiting trial. No way is he going to talk to any cops about anything without his lawyer.”
Josie nodded. “He might not even agree to speak with us. Track down the brother then. If the Bellewood PD thought he was worth interviewing back then, maybe he can help us now.”
Gretchen marked down the brother’s name on her notepad. Then she said, “There are some names of people she worked with at the courthouse here too.”
“Track them down as well,” Josie said. “Someone might know who she used to hang around with. Also, see if the DHS has a list of all the girls under Maggie Lane’s care for the time period that Belinda was there. I want names and photos if you can get them. Track as many of them down as you can. I want the most complete picture we can get of this girl’s life in the months before she was killed.”
Noah searched through the rest of the file as Josie spoke. Finally, he came up with a postcard. The Liberty Bell took up one side, the words Greetings from Philadelphia in red letters above it. He handed it to Josie, and she turned it over, staring at the writing on the back of it while her blood turned to ice in her veins.
Maggie: I’m sorry I left without telling you. I met the most wonderful man. We’re in love! He’s whisked me away to Philadelphia and we’re getting married! Please don’t worry about me. Thank you for everything! Belinda
It was dated the day after Belinda Rose’s eighteenth birthday, postmarked out of Philadelphia, and written in Josie’s mother’s handwriting.
Chapter Twenty-Six
JOSIE – SEVEN YEARS OLD
Josie’s stomach clenched and burned. She didn’t remember ever being so hungry. Her mother hadn’t come out of her room in days. Inside the fort of sheets she had made in her bedroom, her belly groaned and felt like it was trying to fold in on itself. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her hands together, whispering, “Dear God in heaven, please bring my daddy back, and Wolfie too, and let me see Gram again, and also please bring more food for me and my mommy.”
As she said the words, she heard voices outside her door. Her mother and a man; it must be Needle. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she heard them walk past her door, and then heard her mother’s bedroom door close.
Then she smelled it. Pizza. It was unmistakable, and her favorite. The smell of it filled her mouth with saliva. As quietly as she could, she opened her door and snuck into the hallway. Her feet were light and soundless on the worn carpet that led from the hall into the living room, ending at the kitchen tile.
The big white box sat on the kitchen table, smells of deliciousness seeping from its creases. Josie’s stomach made a noise so loud, she was sure her mother and Needle heard it. But no sound came from the back of the trailer. She climbed onto a kitchen chair and opened the box. Glancing back to make sure they were still in the bedroom, she picked up a slice that seemed bigger than her head and started eating. She ate until she felt sick and woozy but fuller than she had felt in weeks.
She was on her third slice when a hand came down hard on the back of her head, knocking her from the chair she squatted on.
“Jesus, Belinda,” Needle said as her mother grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of the kitchen.
“Did I say you could eat that pizza?”
Josie said nothing. Her throat felt like it was full of concrete. Tears stung the backs of her eyes, and she concentrated as hard as she could on not letting them fall.
“Belinda,” Needle said. “Come on.”
“You shut up,” she told him.
The closet door opened in front of Josie, coats hanging from a bar above a dusty, brown bit of carpet. It smelled like cigarette smoke and stale air. Josie screamed, “No! Mommy, no!”
Josie’s mother pushed her inside. “Shut up.”
The carpet was scratchy against Josie’s cheek. “Mommy, you said,” Josie choked out, unable to stop the tears now, “you said if I didn’t tell, I wouldn’t have to go in the closet. Mommy!”
Needle said, “Jesus, Belinda. She’s a kid.”
Her mother pointed a finger at Needle. “You stay out of it.”
“Mommy, please!” Josie cried.
Then the door slammed shut, and the darkness closed in all around her.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Are you sure this is your mother’s handwriting?” Noah asked.
Josie plopped into her chair, the first painful throbs of a headache starting behind her eyes. When Josie didn’t answer him, he said, “Do you have a sample? Something that has her handwriting on it so we could compare?”
“I don’t need a sample,” Josie said.
From the guest chair in front of Josie’s desk, Gretchen said, “Lieutenant Fraley, did you learn to forge your parents’ signatures when you were a teenager?”
He looked at her. “What? No. Why would I need to forge their signatures?”
Gretchen shook her head, a look of mock sadness turning the corners of her mouth downward. “Well,” she said gravely, “you must come from a long line of goody-goodies.”
In spite of herself, Josie laughed long and loud, grateful to Gretchen for easing the tension in the room. Josie felt the tight muscles in her shoulder blades loosen a fraction as she laughed.
Noah raised a brow. “What?”
Josie said, “You’re kidding, right? You can’t forge either one of your parents’ signatures?”
His gaze snapped from Gretchen to Josie. “No. What are you—”
Gretchen cut him off by standing and flipping her open notebook to face him. Josie stood so she could see the page too. On it, in two radically different types of handwriting, Gretchen ha
d written: Agnes Palmer and Fred Palmer. “My grandparents’ signatures,” she offered. “I lived with them during high school. How do you think I successfully cut school seventeen days of my senior year?”
Noah shook his head, but a small smile played on his lips. “So you were an overachiever then, were you?”
Gretchen slapped his shoulder with her notebook but laughed just the same.
Josie took a piece of paper out of the printer on the corner of her desk and signed her mother’s name as she had known it: Belinda Rose.
Both Gretchen and Noah stared at it, wide-eyed. It was a near-perfect match to the handwriting on the postcard. “I started cutting school when I was twelve,” Josie explained. “Also, my mom wasn’t around much, and she didn’t care about school or doctor’s appointments or much else when it came to me, so learning to forge her signature came in pretty handy until she left. Then when I moved in with my grandmother, she caught me trying to learn her handwriting and grounded me for a week.”
The levity in the room leached away as Josie placed her forged signature next to the postcard. She didn’t look at her officers. The throbbing behind her eyes had become a full-on pounding, like a heartbeat. She choked out the words, “Looks like my mother just graduated from person of interest to prime suspect.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
JOSIE – EIGHT YEARS OLD
Josie pounded her fists against the closet door. “Mommy, please!” she cried. “I have to finish my homework.”
There was the sound of something sliding across the living room carpet, then a bang against the closet door. Josie jumped back. The shard of light at the bottom of the door disappeared. Her breath froze in her lungs. The last few times she’d locked Josie in the closet, her mother had pushed one of the living room chairs up against the door so Josie couldn’t get out.
Josie put her hand in front of her face, but she couldn’t see it. Her heart pounded so hard, the sound seemed to fill up the tiny dark space. She sank to the floor, curling into a ball and trying desperately to think of things that made her feel happy, like visiting Gram and going to school. The thought of school made tears sting her eyes; her teacher was going to be disappointed in her when her homework wasn’t finished. It was so unfair. She hadn’t even done anything wrong. She’d come home from school and started her homework, then her mother had stormed in like a tornado, tossing Josie into the closet like an old coat.
When Josie heard the muffled voice of a man, she suddenly understood why. One of her mother’s special friends was there. Josie always had to go into the closet when they came. Sweet-smelling smoke wafted under the door and made her dizzy. The man’s voice was loud and angry. “I told you to have my fucking money, Belinda,” he said. “Where’s my money?”
It wasn’t Needle. Josie had heard this man’s voice before, but she had never seen his face.
Her mother said, “Relax. I told you, I’m good for it.”
“No, you’re not. If you were good for it, you would have it and I wouldn’t have to wait. What do you think this is? I don’t give shit away for free. What do you have? What can you give me right now?”
There was the sound of rustling, drawers being pulled out, things being knocked over. Then her mother said, “All I got is seven dollars.”
A louder sound came; a heavy crash. Josie heard her mother cry out. When she next spoke, her voice sounded all squeezed and strange. “Come… on… let go… we’ll work something out, I promise.”
“Oh yeah? Like what? I want payment now, and I’m going to get it one way or another.”
“You know what—I don’t have money, but there are other things I can do to pay you back.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“I have a girl. You can take her in the back. Do whatever you want.”
“What do you mean, a girl?”
“What do you think I mean? A kid. You can have her. I’ll talk to her. She’ll do whatever you want.”
“How old?”
Her mother didn’t answer.
“Wait a minute,” the man said. “You mean that little kid? The one with dark hair just like you?”
“I only got one kid,” said her mother.
There was a long, silent moment. Josie knew they were talking about her, but she didn’t understand what they were saying.
When the man spoke next, his voice was filled with disgust. For a moment, he reminded Josie of the way her daddy talked to her mother near the end, before he went away to heaven. “Are you kidding me? You’re kidding, right? You think I’m some kind of pervert?”
“No, no. I didn’t say that.”
“I don’t mess with little kids. That’s disgusting. You’re fucked up, you know that? Give me my shit back.”
Josie heard crashing sounds, grunts, gasps, and then her mother, breathless, begging, “No, please. I can pay you. Just wait.” There was more rustling, the sound of a zipper being pulled down, and then the man took in a sharp breath. Josie’s mother said, “I can take care of the payment myself.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“You didn’t find any pictures of your mother in your grandmother’s photo albums?” Gretchen asked.
Josie stared straight ahead from her place in the passenger’s seat of Gretchen’s department-issue Cruze. “I found two photos of her in profile—she was with my dad—but that was it. In both, her face was turned too far away from the camera for them to be of any use to us. My grandmother never liked her and never got along with her, so I’m not surprised she didn’t take that many photos of her.”
“Sounds like a lot of people didn’t get along with her,” Gretchen noted.
Josie turned her gaze toward the window, watching the working-class neighborhoods of Denton give way to the more affluent areas. They were entering the mayor’s neighborhood, where the houses stood tall and regal on acres of meticulously kept land. Apparently, Damon Todd had also moved from Bellewood to Denton after high school, and had done quite well for himself. It had only taken Gretchen a day to locate him, and when she called him, he had agreed to speak to them with the understanding that it had nothing to do with the charges pending against his brother.
When Josie didn’t speak, Gretchen said, “Boss, I know you don’t want to talk about her, and I don’t need to know… the things she did, but I am one of the lead investigators on this case. It would help if I had a better idea of what she was like.”
Josie knew Gretchen was right. In any investigation Josie ran herself, she would ask family members the same questions. You had to know who you were dealing with—what you were walking into when the day came to confront the person you were hunting.
Gretchen pulled over in front of a large white-and-brick colonial with pillars holding up a portico, bougainvillea lining the front of it. She turned the car off and shifted in her seat, pulling her polo shirt from where it was tucked into her khaki pants and lifting it up, revealing pale flesh beneath.
“What are you doing?” Josie asked.
Gretchen was in her forties and carried some excess weight around her middle. Rolls of doughy skin jostled as she lifted her shirt up to just beneath her breasts.
“Gretchen,” Josie said, slightly alarmed. “I don’t think—”
She stopped speaking when she saw the scars. They crisscrossed Gretchen’s upper abdomen, some of them silver and thin and others purple-pink and thick like cords of rope. “Exploratory abdominal surgery,” Gretchen explained. “Do you know what Munchausen by proxy is?”
Josie swallowed. “That’s that syndrome where parents make their children sick for attention?”
Gretchen smiled and lowered her shirt, tucking it back into her waistband. “Yes, exactly.”
“Your—your mother did that to you?” Josie asked.
Gretchen shook her head. “No, various doctors did it over many years. My mother made them think I needed it.”
“I’m so sorry,” Josie said, feeling stunned, as though Gretchen had just punched her. Gretchen wa
s notoriously private. She had been with them almost a year, and no one knew anything about her. Most of the time she wore a beat-up leather jacket that, combined with her short, spiked hair, gave her the look of a biker, but as far as Josie knew, she didn’t own a motorcycle. The jacket clearly had a story behind it, but no one on the police force had had the nerve to ask about it. Josie understood this need for privacy; she was the same way. Gretchen had always done her job well, and neither Josie nor anyone else on the team had felt the need to pry.
“Look,” Gretchen said, “I know this stuff isn’t easy to talk about. It’s not easy to bare your scars, yeah?”
Josie swallowed and gave a stiff nod.
“Even when those scars are here.” Gretchen tapped an index finger to her temple. “Or here,” she added, tapping the same finger against her heart. “But I know a thing or two about toxic mothers.”
“How did—when did your mother stop?” Josie asked.
“When she killed my sister,” Gretchen said. “She’s been in prison ever since. Muncy. Inmate number OY8977.”
Josie said nothing.
The front door of the colonial opened, and a tall man in his late forties with wavy salt-and-pepper hair walked toward the car.
“Well,” Josie said as she opened her door, “maybe my mother will join her.”
Gretchen smiled as she opened her own door. They met Damon Todd halfway up his driveway and made introductions. Up close, Josie could see that he was good-looking for his age—tan and fit with an easy smile. The polar opposite of his burly, gristle-faced brother. He wore a blue polo shirt and khaki pants, as if he were about to head out golfing. He invited them inside, walking them through a large, high-ceilinged foyer with bags of sports equipment pushed up against one wall.
