Her Final Confession: An absolutely addictive crime fiction novel

by Lisa Regan

  Noah nodded silently. When Josie chanced a quick glance at him, she saw a muscle in his jaw tick, his gaze set on the scenery flying past his window. Nestled in one of Denton’s quiet, middle-class neighborhoods, Gretchen’s home was a detached two-story red-brick craftsman. It sat on one acre of land with a long, straight driveway leading from the street and running along one side of the house to a garage in the backyard. A tall white fence ran the length of the driveway, cutting off the neighbors on that side. Towering evergreen shrubs barred the view of the neighbors on the other side. On any other day, the house looked cute and welcoming, but today it was surrounded by police cruisers and ambulances. Josie and Noah parked across the street and walked to the driveway, edging around an ambulance parked across its entrance. A strip of crime-scene tape kept them from getting any closer to the house. In front of it stood one of Denton’s patrol officers with a clipboard in his hands.

  “Hummel,” Josie greeted him.

  “Boss,” he responded.

  Josie’s fingers drummed a steady beat against her thigh, but she managed a tight smile. “Just Detective Quinn now, remember?”

  For two years, Josie had served as Denton’s interim chief of police, but had happily returned to her position as detective once the mayor insisted on replacing her with Bob Chitwood. But the staff still called her “Boss.”

  “It’s a hard habit to break,” Noah said, giving Hummel an easy smile.

  Hummel nodded as he entered their names into the log. He gave Noah a quick once-over. “Nice suit.”

  With lightning speed, Josie had changed into her usual khakis and a Denton PD polo shirt under a black jacket, but Noah still looked like something out of a men’s fashion magazine. “I was on my way to dinner when I got the call,” Noah told him.

  Hummel pointed to one of the cruisers parked curbside, its trunk open. “There are Tyvek suits in there.”

  “What’ve you got?” Josie asked Hummel.

  Hummel motioned toward the house, where members of Denton’s evidence response team were working their way across the driveway, yard, and porch, wearing white Tyvek suits. They were busy marking evidence with yellow flags, taking measurements, sketching out the crime scene, and taking photographs. To the left, in the driveway, several yards from the front porch, a white pop-up tarp had been erected. Josie knew that was where the body lay.

  Hummel said, “We got one dead body, Caucasian male, gunshot wound to the back, unarmed, no identification. No one else is here, but the front door was open. We tried reaching Detective Palmer on her cell phone, but it goes straight to voicemail. Cap says she’s not at the station either. Someone saw her there about an hour ago, but now nobody can find her. Dispatch couldn’t raise her. They’re checking the MDT now.”

  “I heard,” Josie said. “If she’s still unreachable a half hour from now, I want Lamay to check the station’s CCTV footage to pinpoint exactly when she left. Who found the body?”

  “The house has one of those security monitoring systems. You know, like the kind where if an alarm gets tripped, they send out the police?”

  “Yeah,” Josie said. “I’m thinking of getting one for my place.”

  “Well, the alarm for the front door went off. Security firm called Detective Palmer, got no answer. They called 911. We rolled up. Found the dead body. Oh, and there’s something else…”

  “What?” Noah asked.

  Hummel shifted from one foot to the other, his mouth briefly forming a thin, nervous straight line before he answered. “It’s best if you just go have a look.”

  Chapter Four

  Once they were properly suited up, Hummel let them pass beneath the crime-scene tape, and they made a beeline for the tarp. Inside, they found a young man’s body face-down on the blacktop. One of their evidence response team officers snapped photos as Josie squatted down next to the corpse. She immediately saw what Hummel was talking about. The man was dressed in jeans, white sneakers, and a green T-shirt, the back of which was now stained red from a single bullet hole just under his left shoulder blade, near his spine. But what made the scene unusual was that someone had used a safety pin to fix a photograph to the collar of his T-shirt.

  “Is that an actual picture?” Noah asked, crouching down beside her.

  With gloved fingers, Josie probed it. “Yeah. Looks old too.”

  It was three and a half by five inches, and it showed a small boy—maybe four or five years old—in profile, running through tall grass. The edges of the photo were yellowed and curled. Even its matte finish seemed faded. The boy was white with shaggy blond hair, and he wore brown corduroy pants and a flannel shirt. His small body was in motion, one arm and one leg raised mid-run when the photo was taken.

  “Look at this,” Josie said. Gingerly, she lifted the photo without removing it from the pin so that Noah could see the back of it, where faint black print announced: 2004.

  “Is that the year it was printed?”

  “Not printed,” Josie said. “Developed. I think maybe this was taken with an actual camera. Looks like thirty-five-millimeter film. Developers often printed the dates on the backs of the photos.”

  “Those places are all closed,” Noah pointed out.

  “True,” Josie said. “But I think it’s safe to say this photo is from 2004.”

  “You think it’s this guy?”

  Josie used her cell phone to quickly snap a picture of the photo. She stood, moving to the man’s head. He had landed with both hands up as though trying to catch his fall. A small pool of blood had gathered beneath his mouth. Only one side of his face was visible, but he looked young. Josie put him in his early twenties. Olive skin, curly black hair. His eyes were closed. “Hard to tell. The photo is from the side, so you really can’t see the boy’s face, but based on skin tone and hair color, my initial impression is no, it’s not.” Her eyes returned to the bullet wound in his back. “Has someone called the medical examiner?” Josie asked.

  Noah nodded. “Hummel did. She’s on her way.”

  “Hummel said he had no ID on him. After Dr. Feist gets a look at him, we’ll roll him over and check his front pockets. Have someone check the vehicles on the street. He might have parked nearby—assuming he drove here. Tell me someone’s canvassing the neighbors.”

  “Hummel dispatched a couple of officers to do that as soon as they locked the scene down.”

  “Great,” Josie said. She moved away from the body, heading to the porch and counting her steps as she went. Twelve paces from the dead man to the base of the steps. Climbing the steps, she saw a yellow evidence marker on the floorboards of the porch, halfway between the top step and the front door. As she drew closer, a shiny nine-millimeter shell casing winked at her in the waning sunlight. One of her team members had circled it in chalk. Josie turned back, looking out at the driveway, putting the scenario together in her head. Had the killer stood here, on the top step, and shot the male in the back? While he was walking away? While he was unarmed? A chill enveloped her.

  One of her ERT officers, Mettner, emerged from inside the house. “Boss? You okay?”

  “Detective Quinn,” she mumbled. “Hummel said the front door was open. Unlocked or ajar?”

  “Ajar,” he said. “No pry marks. The locks are intact. Door’s not busted up.”

  Josie said, “So it doesn’t look like this guy broke in.” It was odd. Knowing how much crime Gretchen had been privy to in her long career, Josie found it hard to believe she was the kind of person who left her doors unlocked—even in Denton, where petty crime would never rival that of a city the size of Philadelphia. Or had she left the stationhouse and come home only to answer the door when the young man arrived there?

  Mettner said, “If he did, it wasn’t through the front door.”

  “So why was the security company notified? What tripped the alarm?”

  Mettner motioned toward the doorway. “The door was left ajar. I guess if it’s left open for longer than ten minutes, an alarm is sent to the sec
urity company.”

  “Is there a keypad?” Josie asked. “To enter in a code?”

  “No, it’s via cell phone. So if the doorframe was damaged or the door was left open too long, the security company would send a message to Gretchen’s phone. She enters in a code, and they know everything’s fine.”

  “But the door could be unlocked, and someone could come in and out without tripping an alarm?”

  Mettner shrugged. “Well, yeah, I guess.”

  “So we have no idea if the door was already unlocked, or if a key was used to open it and leave it ajar?”

  “No, only that it was left open for a long time.”

  “Any indication the male in the driveway was inside the house?” Josie asked.

  “We checked the whole house and didn’t see anything that would prove one way or the other if he was actually inside. No one was here when we rolled up. Nothing looks disturbed. I mean, nothing obvious. We called Detective Palmer—she’d be able to tell us if anything was missing or out of place. But she’s not answer—”

  “I know,” Josie said. “I heard. Did you take photos inside?”

  “Yeah. Video too.”

  “Great. I want the downstairs printed, okay?”

  “You got it, Boss,” Mettner replied. Josie opened her mouth to correct him but changed her mind. She’d been correcting them all for months. It wasn’t taking. With a glance behind her to where Noah still stood over the body, scribbling furiously in his notebook, Josie slipped through the door.

  Gretchen’s living room was sparsely furnished with a brown microfiber couch, a dark wood coffee table, and, across from that, a small pedestal with an equally small television on top. The floors were hardwood, and aside from a few houseplants, there weren’t many personal touches. Gauzy curtains hung across the windows. In the dining room was a table with its chairs tucked neatly beneath it. A few bills, balled up receipts, and pieces of junk mail dotted the table’s surface. A plastic filing bin sat in the corner of the room. Josie squatted down and lifted the lid to examine its contents. It held only paid bills, homeowner’s and car insurance policies, and a file marked emergency credit card.

  The car.

  Josie knew Gretchen had her own personal vehicle. A Nissan Sentra according to the auto policy. Josie returned to the front door, poked her head outside, and asked Mettner if anyone had checked the garage at the back of the house.

  “Yeah, her personal vehicle is in there,” he answered.

  Noah climbed the porch steps. “Should we issue a BOLO if the MDT doesn’t turn her up? Our guys are already looking for it, but we could bring in the state police.”

  The likelihood of the MDT not locating Gretchen’s vehicle was slim to none. Still, Josie couldn’t shake the discomfort coming to a boil in her stomach. “If the MDT doesn’t turn her up,” Josie said, “then do it.”

  Mettner nodded and pressed a phone to his ear. Noah moved past Josie into the house. “You think Gretchen is in trouble?”

  Josie stepped back inside and put her hands on her hips. “I don’t know. It’s extremely unusual for her to be out of touch like this—or missing.”

  “Do we know that she’s really missing?” Noah asked. “It hasn’t been that long.”

  It hadn’t. No more than two hours had elapsed since the body was found in Gretchen’s driveway. She’d last been seen at the police station while on shift. There could be a logical explanation for why she wasn’t answering any calls or texts—or responding to dispatch. Perhaps her phone had somehow broken. Maybe the car had broken down and she was on foot somewhere.

  “You think I’m overreacting by issuing the BOLO?”

  “Not if we can’t locate her using the MDT,” Noah said. “If she’s in trouble, it’s better to get it out as soon as possible rather than wait. But if her car broke down, or she dropped her phone, and she shows up at the station in the next couple of hours, we’re going to feel like idiots.”

  “Let’s be idiots then,” Josie said decisively. “I don’t want to take any chances, especially if it turns out that she is in trouble.”

  Nodding, Noah said, “What’ve we got in here?”

  Josie panned the living room once again. “Not a hell of a lot from what I can see. There are no obvious signs of a struggle, but like Mettner said, we really wouldn’t know if anything was out of place.”

  “Except here,” Noah said, pointing to one of the end tables. Beside the lamp, a circle of perfect wood shone through an otherwise dusty surface.

  “Maybe she set her coffee mug there this morning,” Josie said. “Then washed it and put it away before she left.”

  Noah’s brow furrowed. “It could be from a vase or a bowl of some kind.”

  “Well, when we find Gretchen, we’ll ask her about it. Make sure it’s been photographed.”

  As Noah went to find Mettner, Josie moved deeper into the house. She had never actually been inside Gretchen’s home. She’d only dropped her off or picked her up for work-related reasons. Now Josie felt a wave of guilt wash over her. Gretchen had been good to her, had understood Josie in ways that other people couldn’t—her intense need for privacy and the personal issues that came with being raised by a toxic mother. Perhaps Josie should have made more of an effort to get to know Gretchen better, to get past the wall of strict professionalism Gretchen always hid behind.

  When Noah returned, they explored the rest of the house. It was neatly kept, but like the living room, held few personal touches. Only in Gretchen’s bedroom did they find some framed family photographs. A 5 x 7 folding frame on top of Gretchen’s dresser held two photographs: an elderly man and woman sitting at a restaurant table, and the same elderly couple in folding lawn chairs with Gretchen leaning down between them, one arm around each of them, her face alight with an uncharacteristic grin.

  “Agnes and Fred,” Josie said.

  “What’s that?” Noah asked, opening the closet door and peering inside.

  “I think these are Gretchen’s grandparents,” Josie said, pointing to the photo. “Gretchen told me they raised her after her mother went to prison for accidentally killing her sister.”

  Noah turned toward her. “Jesus. What happened?”

  Josie turned away from the photos, an intense feeling of discomfort creeping through her at having to explore Gretchen’s private space. But she had to treat this like any other crime scene, and at any other crime scene, they would give the entire house a once-over to make sure nothing important had been missed.

  “Gretchen’s mom had Munchausen by proxy,” Josie said.

  Noah used the cap of his pen to scratch his temple. “That’s the syndrome where the parents make their kids sick for attention, right?”

  Josie nodded. “Yeah. Listen, Gretchen told me that in confidence, so if this all turns out to be nothing—I mean if she shows up in the next half hour with a broken phone and a big apology—please keep it to yourself.”

  “Of course,” Noah said. “But if she doesn’t show up…”

  “I know,” Josie replied. “We have to dig into her private life.”

  “Yeah, we’ll definitely have to track down some family members to see if they’ve heard from her.”

  Josie started pulling out drawers and carefully looking through them. In Gretchen’s sock drawer, she found a wad of cash inside a single sock pushed all the way to the back of the drawer. Without unwrapping it, Josie counted the corners of the bills. They were all hundreds. About $2,000. She waved it toward Noah so he could mark it down before putting it back where she found it and closing the drawer. In the nightstand drawer was a small glass box with red, black, and silver mosaic tiles forming a pattern of flowers. Josie opened it to find a small collection of jewelry. She had never seen Gretchen wear any accessories, but here was a handful of necklaces, bracelets, and rings, along with her name badge from when she worked for the Philadelphia Police Department. “More valuables,” she told Noah.

  He took a quick inventory of the box and scribbl
ed more notes. “So this wasn’t a robbery.”

  “No, I don’t think it was,” Josie agreed. “Mettner said nothing was disturbed, and he was right. Remember when those punks robbed my house? They trashed the place.”

  “Yeah. This place barely looks lived in.”

  With a sigh, Josie left the bedroom, glancing into the other rooms as she went. The first was completely empty, devoid of furniture or even a carpet. Hardwood floors gleamed in the faint twilight seeping through the window. The other room was filled with what looked like moving boxes that hadn’t been unpacked. Josie’s eyes tracked the hastily handwritten labels: KITCHEN, BOOKS, XMAS. Gretchen had lived in this house for at least two years, and yet it still looked as though she had just arrived. Had she not planned to stay in Denton? Josie wondered. She moved deeper into the room, where two boxes caught her attention. One was marked NANA’S KNITTING STUFF, and the other read POP’S TOOLS. Josie frowned. She turned back to the other boxes and took a peek inside the one marked KITCHEN. It was curious that in two years, Gretchen wouldn’t have unpacked all of her kitchen stuff. Inside the box was an array of decorative rooster-themed kitchen items: a paper-towel holder crowned by a ceramic rooster head, salt and pepper shakers in the shape of roosters, hand towels, potholders, placemats. Packed tightly in beside an enormous white rooster-themed cookie jar were two pieces of wall art on distressed wood. One said COUNTRY KITCHEN, and the other said THE ROOSTER MAY CROW, BUT THE HEN DELIVERS THE GOODS.

  The floorboards creaked as Noah walked up behind her. “What’s with all the chickens?” he said, looking over her shoulder.

  “I don’t think these belong to Gretchen.”

  Noah raised a brow. “Yeah, I wouldn’t have pegged Gretchen for someone who decorates her kitchen with cute farm animals. What are you thinking?”

  Josie pointed to the boxes. “I think this is all her grandparents’ stuff. They must have passed away.”

  “Which is going to make it harder for us to track her down if we have to start questioning family members.”