Her Final Confession: An absolutely addictive crime fiction novel

by Lisa Regan

  “I have my sources,” Josie said. “Did you know the Neals had criminal records?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I knew that,” he replied, his voice edged with irritation. “What’s this got to do with anything?”

  “What if the item that the Strangler took from the Neal scene was a photo of their son?”

  “Not possible.”

  “Why not? Who did the walk-through after their murder?”

  “It was—it was a coworker. Someone Justin worked with.”

  The cab jerked to a halt a block from Penn Station. Josie handed the driver a tip, mouthed a thank you, and got out, dragging her bag along. To Starkey, she said, “A coworker? Not a parent or sibling? Not even a friend?”

  “From what I remember they didn’t have anyone. Everyone in their lives had written them off ’cause of all the drug problems,” Starkey said. “I think a friend came through after the funerals and had a look, but she said nothing was missing.”

  “So it’s possible a photo could have been taken and no one would know,” Josie pressed.

  More silence. Finally, he said, “I guess so, yeah. You done?”

  “No,” Josie said icily. “I’m not. You also said when Devil’s Blade dumped Gretchen in front of the Seattle ATF headquarters that she was ‘cut up’. What did you mean?”

  “What do you think I meant? I meant they sliced her up.”

  Josie passed through the doors of Penn Station, moving along with the throngs of people, and pressed the phone harder against her ear to hear Starkey over the din. “Where did they slice her up?”

  “What kind of question is that?” Now he was sounding like an angry drunk, but Josie pressed forward.

  “Where on her body, Starkey? She must have had cuts or scars. Where were they?”

  “Oh,” he said, the tension in his voice dimming. “Her abdomen. All over. All the way across and back. There were a lot. We had to take photos, you know? For our file. We had the hospital document everything. We had hoped to nail the Devil’s Blade for what they did to her, but ultimately, she wouldn’t help us.”

  “Right,” Josie said. “How deep were the cuts?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, some of ’em were old, like the ones near her breasts. They must have been torturing her—like cutting her up—the whole time.”

  “Did she tell you that? Did she say all the scars were from her… ordeal?”

  He gave an exasperated sigh. “Well, yeah, Quinn. That’s what she told the doctors. I’d been over her file about a hundred times trying to convince her to testify against the Devil’s Blade. How the hell do you think I know all this?”

  “Did she need stitches on the newer cuts?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I mean she was sliced up pretty good, but they were superficial. The newer ones. I remember that. Thinking how lucky she was but also how cruel they were to cut her up just enough that she would be scarred. A pretty young girl like that?”

  Josie wanted to say something snarky about a “pretty young girl” preferring her life to being able to wear a bikini, but she kept quiet.

  “What the hell’s this about, Quinn?” he asked.

  It’s about the lies Gretchen’s told, she thought. To Starkey, she said, “A hunch. We’ll talk later.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  She felt the vibration of her cell phone in her pocket as she maneuvered through Penn Station, but she waited until she was seated on the train to Philadelphia to pull up Noah’s message and read Omar’s text messages. There were several pages of them. Some were between him and his family, mostly having to do with who was getting what for his mother’s birthday, and whether or not he had the time or money to fly home for the weekend to see her. There were several between him and unknown numbers, but they had to do with class assignments and study-group meetings. Then there were the messages between Omar and his roommate, Ethan Robinson. Josie saw immediately what Noah meant. The two seemed to have their own shorthand. Some of them were innocuous, like an exchange where Omar told Ethan not to forget the “guac” when he picked up the Mexican food, and another where Ethan texted Omar to say he’d left a textbook behind.

  Then there were several whose meaning Josie couldn’t divine, like an exchange nearly two weeks earlier:

  Ethan: did u talk 2 him

  * * *

  Omar: yes

  * * *

  Ethan: what did he say

  * * *

  Omar: we’ll talk later

  A few days later, there was another:

  Omar: where are you?

  * * *

  Ethan: getting food why

  * * *

  Omar: I talked to her. She doesn’t believe me. It didn’t go well. When will you be home?

  * * *

  Ethan: what did she say? Did you ask if she’ll do it?

  * * *

  Omar: talk when you get home

  Josie took her notepad out and flipped through it, looking for the information she had jotted after she and Noah reviewed Omar’s phone records. Omar had called Gretchen on the same day as the text exchange with Ethan. Josie was certain that Gretchen was the “she” the two referred to in their exchange.

  There was nothing after that besides mundane, everyday exchanges until the day of Omar’s shooting.

  Omar: this wasn’t a good idea

  * * *

  Ethan: what’s happening

  * * *

  Omar: we shouldn’t have lied.

  * * *

  Ethan: you should abort. Turn around.

  * * *

  Omar: too late

  Several minutes elapsed, and then Ethan texted:

  u there, bro?

  Then a few hours after that, around the time that Josie and Noah were arriving at Gretchen’s house to find Omar dead in Gretchen’s driveway, Ethan texted once more:

  dude, u there????

  Two minutes later, there was a text from Omar’s phone in response:

  You fucked up.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  “Are you out of your damn mind?” Bob Chitwood shouted.

  He stood at the head of the conference room table facing Josie, Noah, and Detective Heather Loughlin. Josie had just briefed him on her trip to New York City and all she’d found out from Jack Starkey and the online forum that Trinity had gotten her access to.

  Chitwood went on, “You’re telling me that you think a serial killer from two decades ago on the opposite end of the country is here in Denton now?”

  Josie said, “Yes.”

  “You think that Gretchen, a trained police officer, saw the guy who murdered her husband over two decades ago, and instead of arresting him, she let him shoot Omar and then went with him in her car?”

  “No,” Josie answered. “I mean, yes, I think this guy shot Omar and kidnapped Gretchen. I don’t know what happened, but he obviously had control of the scene and of Gretchen. Otherwise, I’m certain she would have shot him on sight. I think he held her against her will.”

  “And then he let her go?” Chitwood said. “How did that go, exactly? He told her to take the fall for Omar’s murder, and then he said, ‘Oh yeah, Gretchen, if you could not mention that I was there that day, that would be great.’ Do you hear this? ’Cause that’s what you’re telling me. Is that what you think?”

  Josie put a hand on one of her hips. “I don’t have it all worked out yet,” she admitted.

  “No shit!” Chitwood exclaimed. “This is some half-assed shit if I ever heard it.”

  Ignoring his barbs, Josie said, “That’s exactly why I need to have a conversation with Gretchen.”

  “Not going to happen,” Loughlin chirped without malice. She leaned back in her chair, legs kicked out in front of her. One of her feet rocked the chair back and forth. She looked almost bored. “Bowen isn’t going to allow it, especially now.”

  “Then you have a conversation with her,” Josie said. “You get in the room with her. I’ll tell you the approach I would take.”


  Chitwood tapped the table with two fingers. “You’re not listening, Quinn. None of us is getting in a room with Gretchen. Bowen thinks we’re trying to pin the double homicide on her, and I’m not so sure we shouldn’t be. We’ve got her prints inside the house. No alibi for that night.”

  “We don’t have enough to charge her with the Wilkins murders,” Noah said.

  “We also don’t have enough for Quinn’s outlandish theory that someone else was involved in the Omar shooting, and if you think Bowen is going to let us talk to her when we tell him we think she’s taking the fall for a serial killer, he’s going to tell us to go pound sand,” Chitwood said. “He’ll think we’re trying to nail her as accomplice—and if you can prove that someone else was there, I’m not so sure we shouldn’t be. Quinn, you’ve got nothing to support your crazy, half-assed theories.”

  A soft knock sounded on the door, and Lamay shuffled in with a sheaf of papers, which he handed to Josie. With one finger, he pointed to something he had highlighted for her. It took only a few seconds for what she was looking at to register. “Wait a second,” she said. “We might have something. A hair. A gray hair was found in Gretchen’s vehicle, on the driver’s headrest, with the root still attached, which means we can get DNA from it.”

  Chitwood was unimpressed. “Quinn. Gretchen’s got short hair and she’s in her forties. You don’t think she’s got some gray hairs?”

  Noah said, “She dyes it. She keeps it brown.”

  Josie stared at him with a raised brow. She hadn’t suspected he’d be the one to notice such a thing, but she was glad that he had. Turning back to Chitwood, she said, “All I’m asking is that you expedite the analysis on this hair together with the DNA found on Margie Wilkins’s body. If neither of them match the profile of the Seattle Soul Mate Strangler, and they don’t match each other, then you can dismiss all my—what did you call them? Outlandish theories?”

  Chitwood glared at her through narrowed eyes.

  “Test my theory,” Josie went on firmly. “If I’m wrong, I’ll get on board with Gretchen as Omar’s killer.”

  From the corner of her eye, Josie could see Loughlin’s back had straightened and her eyes were locked on Josie with interest.

  “This a hill you want to die on, Quinn?” Chitwood asked.

  Josie thrust her chin forward. “Yes, sir, it is.”

  They stared at one another for a few seconds longer. Josie was gratified when Chitwood broke eye contact first. “Fine,” he said, snatching the report out of Josie’s hands as he passed by her. “I’ll make some phone calls. See how fast we can get this done. But mark my words—I want some arrests in this goddamn Wilkins case. Yesterday. If I don’t get arrests soon, you better believe I’m going to make your lives a living hell.”

  With that, he stalked out of the room.

  Noah said, “That might be an improvement.”

  Josie laughed. Loughlin was still looking at them with interest. She said, “You think there’s something I can say to Bowen to get him to let us have a crack at Gretchen?”

  Josie said, “I think if we could just get to her, she would talk.”

  “She didn’t talk before,” Noah interjected.

  “I know more now,” Josie said. To Loughlin, she instructed, “Ask Bowen to give Gretchen a message.”

  “Which is?” Loughlin asked, taking out her notebook and pen.

  “Ask him to tell Gretchen that I know the truth about Linc Shore and her year with Devil’s Blade. Make sure he says Josie. If she thinks I’ve told everyone, she’ll never talk.”

  Loughlin scribbled down her words, then looked back up. “Anything else?”

  “No. Just ask him to deliver that message.”

  Loughlin stood up and tucked her notebook back inside her jacket. “What is the truth about Linc Shore and her year with Devil’s Blade?”

  Josie smiled. “I’m not sure yet. It’s a bluff. I just know she lied about it, but I don’t know why.”

  “How do you know?” Noah asked.

  “Starkey said when they dumped her in front of the ATF building, she was sliced up all over, but that the newer cuts were superficial. They didn’t even require stitches. He said some of them were old, and that she said the old ones were also from whatever had happened to her in the time she’d been gone. Six months ago, when we were working the Belinda Rose case, Gretchen showed me the old scars criss-crossing her upper abdomen. She told me they were from operations her mother convinced doctors to do on her when she was a kid.”

  “My God,” Loughlin said.

  “Her mother had Munchausen’s by proxy,” Noah explained.

  “At first I thought maybe she didn’t want to get into it with the medical staff—about her mother and her past. But I think she really just wanted everyone to believe that the Devil’s Blade had badly tortured her.”

  “But she refused to press charges,” Noah said. “So why would she care about anyone thinking they tortured her the whole time she was with them?”

  “Because she was lying. I’m not sure why yet. I just know there is something more to the story of her year in captivity.”

  “How do you know Gretchen wasn’t lying to you about the scars when she showed them to you?” Loughlin asked.

  Because we were talking about toxic mothers, Josie thought. It was a sacred topic between them. Not something Gretchen would lie about. But this wasn’t something she could explain to Loughlin, so she said, “It would be easy enough to prove. Her mother was convicted of murder and attempted murder. Gretchen’s injuries would have been well-documented in the court records.”

  Loughlin nodded. “Excellent. I’m sure we can get our hands on them if we need to, but hopefully it won’t come to that. I’ll go talk to Andrew Bowen.”

  Noah and Josie watched her go, listening to the sound of her footsteps as they faded. Noah pulled out one of the chairs and sat down. “You read the text messages?”

  “They raise more questions than they answer,” she said.

  Noah leaned back in his chair, lacing his hands together behind his head. “Omar and Robinson were planning something,” he said. “But what?”

  “I don’t know,” Josie answered. “But I’m assuming the ‘she’ is Gretchen.”

  “Has to be. But what did they lie about?”

  “No idea. The problem is that the only two people who can answer that are Omar and Ethan Robinson. Omar is dead, and Robinson is missing,” Josie said. “Did you send the messages to Philly PD?”

  “Yeah, I got in touch with the detective there handling Robinson’s disappearance. He had me email them. He was happy to have them, said he would shake down all of Robinson and Omar’s friends on campus and find out if anyone knew what they were planning. He also told me that they searched Omar and Robinson’s apartment, and that Robinson’s phone and laptop are missing. Robinson doesn’t have his own vehicle. He uses public transportation.”

  “What about bank accounts?” Josie asked. “Credit cards?”

  “Philly PD says he has a bank account that his dad funds, and he keeps an ATM card. They had his dad check the balance. Apparently, he withdrew $3,000 the day Omar was shot. Not long after he got that last text message.”

  “So Ethan ran,” Josie said. “He’s hiding.”

  “Looks that way,” Noah agreed. “Anyway, Philly PD said they’ll let us know if they come up with anything.”

  “That’s great,” Josie said. She felt a small measure of relief knowing that Ethan’s case was being actively handled. Still, there were so many unanswered questions, her head spun. She was wondering what Ethan was running from. And what had he and Omar wanted from Gretchen?

  Noah glanced at the clock. “We’ve still got a little daylight. What do you want to tackle next?”

  She focused her attention on him, letting the swirl of questions float to the back of her mind, where maybe her subconscious would use everything they already knew to tease out some answers. To Noah, she said, “I want to find Amy and J
ustin Neal’s son.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  It took them an hour to track down the couple who had adopted Amy and Justin Neal’s son back in 1994. Since Josie had taken trips to both Philadelphia and New York City in the last week, Noah got the job of cold-calling them and having one of the more awkward conversations that Josie had ever overheard in her life. He got through to them on their landline, and Josie could hear both the husband’s and wife’s voices through Noah’s desktop phone. She imagined one of them talking on a phone in the kitchen while the other sat on a bed upstairs on the other phone.

  Their son was now an adult, and they couldn’t understand why the issue of the adoption was being brought up again. They had taken him on as a foster child when he was still an infant and raised him for several years before the adoption was finalized. That would explain why no one in the Neals’ lives at the time of their murders knew about their son. He’d been taken from them as a baby. His adoptive parents told Noah that their son knew he was adopted, but they would prefer if the matter was not dragged into the light all these years later. As the discussion continued, Josie was glad that Noah had made the call. He was patient and calm, as always, and somehow managed to explain that a photo that might be of their son was found at a crime scene without sending their anxiety sky-rocketing. Finally, they agreed to receive the photo by email to see if the boy pictured was indeed their son. Noah read off his phone number to them three times before hanging up.

  He ran a hand over his face. “It may take them several weeks to access their email and then actually view the photo,” he complained.