by Lisa Regan
With a sigh, Josie returned to her search for details about the double homicide in Philadelphia. There were several articles, but none told Josie much more than what Boyd had told her. The two men had been brutally slain, and Gretchen had worked tirelessly to bring their killers to justice in spite of the witnesses being repeatedly threatened. The Aces members were both sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Case closed. Two years later, Gretchen had sat across from Josie in the office now occupied by Chief Chitwood to interview for a detective position.
Josie spent the better part of the night searching every source available to her, trying to make a connection between James Omar and the Dirty Aces—or any outlaw motorcycle gang. She searched Gretchen Palmer and Dirty Aces; Gretchen Palmer and Devil’s Blade; Gretchen Palmer and James Omar; even Gretchen Palmer and Ethan Robinson. Nothing. There were plenty of news reports quoting Gretchen as a Philadelphia homicide detective on the cases she’d handled, and Josie found the obituary for each one of Gretchen’s grandparents, but nothing else of use.
Again, Josie’s head swirled with unanswered questions, not the least of which was: Where the hell was Gretchen? If she had fled her home as Noah suggested, why hadn’t she taken the $2,000 in her sock drawer? No, Josie was certain she’d been taken. Had the Aces kidnapped her? Made her disappear as revenge for helping put their club members away for life? Was James Omar caught in the crosshairs? Maybe his visit to Gretchen’s house was completely unrelated to Gretchen’s disappearance. Perhaps he had gone to see Gretchen for reasons that had nothing to do with the Dirty Aces, and he’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe the Aces were trying to frame Gretchen for his murder. In which case, they’d done a damn good job. In the morning, Chief Chitwood would issue an arrest warrant, and once the press got wind of it, Gretchen’s trial by publicity would begin.
But what about the photo? Who had pinned the photo to Omar’s body, and why?
Beside her, Trinity stirred, sitting up groggily. She blinked sleepily at the cable box, which showed it was after three in the morning, and then turned to Josie. “Good lord, you’re still at it?”
Josie snapped her laptop closed and threw herself back into the couch cushion with a loud sigh. “And I’m getting nowhere,” she complained.
Trinity shook her head, stood, and took Josie’s arm, dragging her up off the couch and toward the stairs. “’Cause you need to sleep. You’ll have a clearer head if you get some rest.”
Josie let Trinity pull her up the steps. She didn’t protest when Trinity climbed into her king-sized bed, instead of going to the guest room, and promptly started snoring again. Exhausted, Josie got into bed next to her. A little ache yawned open in her heart as she wondered how many nights like this she had missed in the last thirty years—sleeping side by side with her sister. Pushing the thought away and the pain that came with it, her mind turned back to Gretchen, searching for some other angle, some new approach to the case. Again, she thought of the first time she’d met Gretchen. The first interview. Then she thought of what had made Gretchen’s application stand out to her in the first place. All those years of experience, the stellar references. The references. Something sparked in the back of her mind, but as quickly as it came, it was gone. She tried to get it back, but sleep came too quickly.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Noah was already at his desk when Josie arrived for work. He pushed a cup of coffee and a cheese Danish across her desk as she filled him in on all she’d learned in the last twenty-four hours.
“You think the Aces had something to do with this?” he asked.
Josie took a sip of her coffee and opened her desk drawer, searching for Gretchen’s personnel file. “I don’t know. I can’t find anything connecting the Aces, Gretchen, and Omar. Omar is the wild card. He doesn’t fit.”
“And the photo,” Noah pointed out. “That’s pretty odd as well. How is it no one who knows either Omar or Gretchen can identify the boy in the photo?”
“It’s baffling,” Josie agreed. “I know this is a long shot, but do you think you could track down someone in Seth Cole’s family and ask them to have a look at the photo? He was young enough, and he had blond hair.”
“Of course,” Noah said. His computer dinged, and he clicked the mouse a few times. “Remember I told you that I took the liberty of getting a warrant for both Gretchen and Omar’s cell phone records for the last week.”
Josie found Gretchen’s file and put it in the center of her desk. “And you got them already?”
“I got Gretchen’s,” he said. “Still waiting on Omar’s.” Across the room, the department printer hacked and whirred to life. Noah went over to retrieve the pages it spit out. He spread them across his desk, and Josie came around, standing by his side as they studied the list of incoming and outgoing calls.
“There,” Josie said. She pointed to an incoming call from two weeks earlier. “That’s James Omar’s phone number.”
Noah ran his finger down the list and used his other hand to draw a star next to the other times that Omar’s number appeared on the list. “He called her last week and the day of the shooting,” he said. “Looks like they’re all incoming. She never called him.”
“Why?” Josie asked. “What could he possibly have been calling her for? Where would he have gotten her number?”
Noah didn’t bother to answer her questions. He knew she was just voicing frustration. He sat down in his chair. “I’ll identify the rest of these numbers.”
As he went to work, Josie opened Gretchen’s personnel file and sifted through it until she found the references. Two of them were from the Philadelphia Police Department—including Steven Boyd. It was the last reference that had set off a spark in her brain the night before as she fell asleep. Gretchen had listed the name, business address, and phone number for Jack Starkey, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in Seattle, Washington. Josie looked again at Gretchen’s resume. Nothing in her work history put her in Seattle. She’d gone to high school in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Then there was a four-year gap from when Gretchen graduated from high school to when she started college. She’d gone on to graduate from Penn State with a degree in criminal justice, then gone directly to the police academy in Philadelphia. She’d worked patrol before moving to homicide, where she had stayed until her move to Denton.
So what was the Seattle connection?
Josie thought back to the interview. Back then, she’d only been interested in Gretchen’s wealth of experience with the Philadelphia Police Department. She remembered asking Gretchen about the four-year gap between high school and college. Gretchen had given a generic answer about taking time off to travel. Josie had asked her how she knew someone in the ATF, and Gretchen had given another generic answer, saying she’d met him at a couple of conferences, but now Josie wondered if that was true. How did she really know Jack Starkey? Had her connection to him been more significant than meeting at a couple of conferences? Had she worked with him during her tenure with Philadelphia PD? How was that possible if he was based in Seattle? Had he worked on the East Coast before he went to Seattle? Linc Shore and Seth Cole had come from Seattle. Josie knew that the ATF worked outlaw motorcycle gangs. There was a very good chance that Starkey had been involved in investigations into the Devil’s Blade gang. Had Gretchen been in touch with Starkey because of the murder of Shore and Cole? Perhaps Gretchen had contacted the Seattle ATF to get more information about the two men.
Josie picked up the phone on her desk and dialed his number, only to get his voicemail, which said he was away at a conference with limited access to his email and voicemail. Suppressing a sigh, Josie left him a message, giving both her cell and work numbers and urging him to call her as soon as possible.
Across from her, Noah finished up a conversation on his cell phone and stared at her with a defeated look. “Seth Cole is not the boy in the photo.”
“Are you sure?”
“I ta
lked to his mother just now. Well, he was adopted at the age of three, but she says it definitely wasn’t him. Also, the rest of the numbers in Gretchen’s records are all local and, from what I can tell, have to do with cases she worked on. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
More dead ends.
Josie leaned her elbows on her desk and put her face in her hands. “Where is she, Noah? What the hell is going on? Chitwood’s going to be out here by the end of the day wanting to issue an arrest warrant.”
“He already did,” said Sergeant Dan Lamay as he ambled up to their desks. A remote control sat in his hand, and he used it to turn on the television affixed to the wall across the room from them. They watched a minute of commercials before the local news came on. Gretchen’s face appeared just above the shoulder of the news anchor, over the words, Arrest Warrant Issued for Denton Officer. Josie only heard snatches of the story: “… college student, James Omar… her home… it is unclear how they knew one another or what led to this deadly confrontation… if you have any information…”
“Jesus,” Josie said.
Lamay turned the television off and placed the remote on her desk. “Sorry, Boss,” he said. “I just thought you should know.”
Josie managed a wan smile for him. “Thanks, Dan.”
He shuffled off, and Josie put her face in her hands again. “This is not good,” she muttered.
The sound of Noah’s chair scraping across tile drew her gaze. He lowered his voice as he leaned into his own desk, talking softly across their two desktops. “Hey, we’re going to find her, okay?”
Alive? Josie wondered. Was Gretchen even still alive?
As if he’d read her mind, Noah added, “She’s going to be fine. So Chitwood issued his arrest warrant? Even if we have to arrest her when we find her, she’ll explain what happened and things will turn out fine.”
Josie’s desk phone jangled, and she snatched it up, hoping it was Jack Starkey calling her back. Instead it was Lamay again, this time calling from the lobby. “Boss,” he said, “dispatch says they’ve got a murder scene over by the city park.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
JANUARY 1994
Seattle, Washington
* * *
The pottery wheel lay in pieces on the table in front of Kristen. It wasn’t fixable. She didn’t know that much about pottery, but she knew she’d broken the wheel beyond repair. With a sigh, she shuffled the detritus around. Darryl was going to be pissed. He’d bought her the wheel and turned their mudroom into a full-blown pottery studio to keep her from getting bored. All because once when they first started dating she’d told him she always wanted to try pottery. She didn’t even want to know how much he’d spent on all the equipment and clay and the kiln.
“Oh my God,” she muttered under her breath. “The kiln.”
It must have cost over $1,000. So, she’d come clean about the wheel, get him to buy her another, and try again. Or maybe she could just get pregnant and be done with the whole thing. That had been the original plan after the restaurant she’d waitressed at closed down. “Stay home,” Darryl had told her. He was making a fortune as a salesman for BMW. They didn’t need her paltry waitressing income. Never mind that she had made a killing in tips. A family was the next step in the evolution of Kristen and Darryl Spokes. But then they’d needed a new roof and the transmission in her car had crapped out. Then Darryl’s mom got sick, and the plan to start their family receded. But Kristen was still stuck at home. When she’d started looking for a job, Darryl had come up with the idea of the pottery studio.
Except she sucked at pottery. Badly.
“Babe, you okay?”
His words startled her. A glance at the clock on the wall showed it was after eleven. He was late coming home from work again. Well, not work, but the after-work drinks he insisted were absolutely necessary to keep him on the good side of his boss.
“Don’t come in here,” she called, but it was too late. There he stood in his shirtsleeves, tie undone and loose around his neck, a five o’clock shadow stubbling his jaw. One eyebrow cocked.
“What happened?”
Kristen sighed and wiped her clay-covered hands on her jeans. “What happened is I’m not very good at this pottery thing, Darryl.”
He smiled. “You’ll get there.”
She was too tired to argue. He took a step farther into the room and pointed to the table next to her broken pottery wheel. “Is that—?”
“It’s my attempt at a mug.”
He walked over to the table and picked it up. “This is great, Hon.”
Kristen laughed weakly. “Please, don’t.”
It was gray, unglazed, and one side of it slumped as though it had melted. The handle of it hung limply as though it had started to dissolve.
“I’m going to take this to work,” Darryl said, the corners of his mouth twitching.
Kristen slapped his arm. “Stop,” she said, but laughed anyway.
He caught her in his arms and kissed her. “Come to bed,” he told her. “Tomorrow you can make me coffee for my new mug.”
Giggling, she slapped at him again but let him lead her into their bedroom. Clothes dropped to the floor as they moved toward the bed.
Darryl stumbled, falling away from her and catching himself on the bed.
“Are you drunk?” Kristen asked.
“Turn on the light,” he said.
She snapped on her bedside lamp as he came up from the floor with a brown wallet in his hand. He opened it, and his eyebrows kinked upward. “Kristen, who the hell is Travis Green, and why is his wallet on our bedroom floor?”
She was about to tell him that she had no idea, that she’d never heard of Travis Green and had no idea why his wallet was on their bedroom floor. But the light blinked off and there was the sound of a loud hum dying—all the power in the house was out.
“Kristen,” Darryl said.
“What the hell is going on?” Kristen said.
Then a bright light arced across the room, shining first in Darryl’s face and then blinding Kristen. A male voice said, “Yeah, Darryl, what the hell is going on?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
PRESENT DAY
Denton, Pennsylvania
* * *
Denton City Park was a green space between the college campus and Denton’s Main Street where residents walked their dogs, jogged, and held community events. Margie and Joel Wilkins’ single-story ranch-style home was one block away from the park, separated from the sidewalk by a white picket fence. Inside the fence, a large maple tree shaded the front porch. A wooden swing hung from one of its branches. On the porch, colorful potted flowers bracketed white wicker furniture. Josie and Noah stood just outside the gate, speaking with Mettner.
“They’re newlyweds,” he explained. “They were supposed to be in Philadelphia this morning. Apparently, they had planned to go on a cruise with a group of friends and Joel’s sister. When they didn’t show to board the ship, his sister called both their cell phones. Both went straight to voicemail, so she got freaked out. Called the department for a welfare check.”
Josie could tell by the pallor of Mettner’s face that he had been the one to do the check. “Both deceased?” she asked.
Mettner nodded and wiped sweat from his brow, even though it was a crisp fall day. “Yeah. The wife’s in the living room. The husband is in the back of the house, in the master bedroom.”
“You were the only one inside?” Noah asked.
Mettner nodded. “Just me, yeah. Then Hummel came by and helped me set up the perimeter.” He gestured over his shoulder to where Hummel stood at the Wilkins’ front door with his clipboard. “I didn’t disturb anything. I checked them both for pulses even though—” He broke off and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“It’s okay,” Josie told him. “It’s not something you get used to.”
Mettner shook his head like he was trying to shake off his distress. “I never saw a female victim. Not like that,
you know? Her eyes… I just…”
Noah put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right. Call the EMTs and the medical examiner, would you?”
“Sure thing.” With that, Mettner walked off to his patrol car.
Hummel was the unofficial head of their evidence response team, and his vehicle was equipped with everything they’d need to secure and process a scene. He’d left it unlocked so that Josie and Noah could don Tyvek suits and gloves before making their way to the front porch.
“Three homicides in one week,” Hummel commented as he signed them into the crime scene log.
The fact hadn’t escaped Josie’s notice. Her stomach did a somersault as she and Noah entered the house. The interior was just as homey as the outside. The front door opened right into the living room. Shiny hardwood floors creaked beneath their feet. The room was bright and welcoming, with cream walls and two overstuffed blue couches circling a low, glass-topped coffee table. A colorful faux floral arrangement reached from its vase atop the table. Beneath the table a lush periwinkle area carpet cushioned Margie Wilkins’s naked body. The young woman was face-up, mouth yawning open, eyes bulging from her head. The last terrifying moments of her life were frozen on her face. Josie could see why Mettner had gotten so flustered. She was young—probably early to mid-twenties, Josie guessed. They’d find out soon enough when they finished processing the scene and talked to family members.
