Find Her Alive

by Regan, Lisa

  “Good,” he said. “Get in. Drive to the end of the driveway. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  He hung up. Josie sat in the driver’s seat, the phone still pressed to her ear. Her breath came fast as her eyes tracked from the cabin to Trinity’s vehicle. Even as her body became overwhelmed by emotion—fear, panic, shock; making her skin crawl, her scalp tingle, and her heart thunder in her chest–—the police officer in her was going over the details she had managed to take in while she was at the back of the cabin. An image of the garish display flashed through her mind.

  Her investigator’s brain worked to remember everything she knew about human decomposition. If Trinity had been taken on the day she’d intended to leave, and killed that same day, that meant that three weeks had passed. That wasn’t enough time for her body to decompose to the point of being skeletal, Josie told herself. Right? She tried to remember everything she’d learned from her time on the job about how long it took for a body to skeletonize, but the knowledge wouldn’t come into focus. She would need the county medical examiner, Dr. Anya Feist. She thought about calling Noah back, but that was stupid. Her team would know to alert Dr. Feist.

  Shaking the morbid thoughts out of her head, Josie pocketed her phone and started her car. Her mind raced so fast, it was dizzying. There was a war within her—sister versus police officer. Emotional versus clinical. Never had she felt so torn in those two different directions.

  She barely remembered driving back out to the main road but there she was, seated in her vehicle, white-knuckling the steering wheel when Noah and Detective Finn Mettner pulled up in Mettner’s car, with two patrol units in tow. Their lights flashed blue and red through the canopy of trees that shielded the gravel road from the sun. Detective Mettner had been with the Denton PD for several years before being promoted from patrol to Detective two years earlier. Since taking on the new role, he had seen his share of difficult cases—including taking the lead on Noah’s mother’s murder. Dedicated and thorough, he was a valuable asset to Denton’s investigative team.

  Josie watched him and Noah emerge from the vehicle and jog over toward her car. Noah opened her door, extending a hand to her. She took it and let him guide her out of the car. Mettner said, “Hummel and the Evidence Response Team should be here in five minutes. We’ll wait for them to secure the scene before we go up. Dr. Feist is on her way as well. Once we start moving, stay off the driveway. If there are any tire tracks, I want to get them.”

  “I already drove up there,” Josie croaked. “I probably destroyed whatever was there.”

  “There might still be something,” Mettner assured her. “If there is, Hummel will find it.”

  Six

  Alex’s favorite time of day was when his mother, Hanna, went into her studio to work. Not only did she let him come inside, but she often sought him out and asked him to help her. He set up her canvases and paints, retrieved brushes and glue, and any other items she needed while she worked. After his adventures in the woods with his father, Alex was very good at sitting still for a long time. While Hanna worked, he sat on a stool behind her, watching and listening to her as she hummed. It was always a variation of the same song. He’d never heard words to the song, but he’d heard her hum it so many times, he could carry the tune in his sleep.

  She was putting the finishing touches on a new painting when she said, “Alex, dear, where is your sister? I think she’d like this one.”

  He felt his throat tighten. Was she serious? “You-you mean… ?” His voice was barely a squeak. He couldn’t even get it out. He hadn’t spoken her name in almost a year. No one ever said it anymore. Sometimes he wondered if he had imagined her. He tried again, only getting out the first syllable.

  Hanna’s eyes narrowed, and the name froze in his throat. She gave him a meaningful look and her tone grew cold. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “Oh,” he breathed.

  She kept her eyes locked on him. “Where is Zandra?”

  He shifted on the stool. “Dad says she has to stay away because she’s sick.”

  Hanna frowned. “Still? She’s been locked away for days. Why don’t you check on her?”

  “I can’t,” he said. “You know the rules.”

  Paintbrush in hand, she turned and looked at him. “Right,” she said. She took a moment to touch a long cut on her painting arm, her fingers tracing over the dark scab. “Well, your father makes the rules. Although, Alex, it would be nice to be able to have both of my children in the studio again.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, although he wasn’t sorry for what had happened to her, only sorry that he hadn’t been strong enough to stop Zandra.

  He cast his gaze downward, but he could feel her eyes on him. He heard her drop the paintbrush into a cup. Then she knelt in front of him, staring up at him. She seemed smaller now that he was almost eleven years old. “My son,” she said. “Look at me. You have to help your sister, do you understand?”

  He nodded.

  She looked behind him, toward the door, and then back into his eyes. “I worry, Alex, that your father will get… carried away with his punishment if these incidents with Zandra continue.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  But he didn’t have a chance to answer. The sound of the front door slamming shut made them both jump. Hanna squeezed his hand and whispered, “Quickly, get downstairs to your studies.”

  Before he could hop off the stool and scurry into the hall, Frances’s heavy steps sounded on the stairs. A moment later, he filled the doorway. “Hanna, what’s he doing in here? Aren’t you working?”

  She smiled. “Yes, I’ve been working all morning. What do you think?” She turned and presented her latest painting with a flourish.

  He raised a brow. “It’s very good,” he said. “But it’s missing something.” Zeroing in on Alex, he said, “Get downstairs. Let your mother concentrate.”

  Alex moved toward the door but Hanna said, “Alex was helping me. He’s fine. Let him stay. He’s not a bother. Maybe he can help me find what’s missing.”

  “He’s a stupid boy, Hanna,” Frances snapped. “You’re an accomplished artist. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Alex slipped past his father into the hallway before either of them could argue over him anymore. As he flew down the steps, he heard his father say, “You go back to work. I’ll check on Zandra.”

  Seven

  Josie, Mettner, and Noah stood beside their vehicles and waited for the Denton PD Evidence Response Team to arrive. In spite of the stillness and natural beauty all around them, Josie couldn’t stop her thoughts from spinning out. Luckily, Mettner took out his phone, pulled up his note-taking app, and started firing off questions. Josie gave him a rundown of everything that had happened in the last six weeks, except that she didn’t elaborate on anything she and Trinity had said to each other before Trinity stormed out of Josie and Noah’s house, only saying they’d had an argument.

  “You haven’t heard from her in a month?” Mettner asked, face bent to the screen as he tapped notes into his phone. “What about friends or family members?”

  “Our mother,” Josie said. “Shannon Payne. She was still in contact with her after Trinity cut me off. We should also talk to my dad and brother. Oh, and Trinity’s assistant. I know they were in touch when Trinity was staying with us.”

  Josie rattled off the phone numbers she knew by heart and looked the others up in her phone. She added, “But could you wait to talk to Shannon? Let me tell her first?”

  “Of course,” Mettner said. “Let’s try to get a handle on what we’re dealing with here first.”

  “Mett,” Josie said, reaching out and touching his forearm. His eyes jerked up toward her. He shot Noah a quick glance before returning his gaze to her. Josie swallowed over a lump in her throat. “What I saw up there—”

  “Remains,” he said. “Noah told me. We’ll handle it.”

  “No,” she said, tugg
ing on his arm. “Not just remains. This is something we haven’t seen before.”

  Mettner opened his mouth to speak, but the sound of wheels on gravel swallowed his response. Two Denton police SUVs pulled in behind the line of vehicles already present. Officers Hummel and Chan got out of the first SUV. Two more members of the ERT got out of the other one. Hummel popped the hatch on the back of his vehicle and the four of them immediately started donning their Tyvek suits and removing equipment needed to process the scene. Mettner jogged over to brief them. Hummel handed him a Tyvek suit and he pulled it on. Josie stayed at her vehicle and watched as they began their ascent up the driveway with Mettner and one of the other uniformed officers in tow, walking on the edges of the gravel, looking for tire tracks, careful not to disturb anything that might be evidence.

  Josie felt Noah’s hand on her shoulder and looked up to see his hazel eyes swimming with concern. “It might not be her,” he said.

  “I know,” she said, hoping he was right.

  Noah glanced at the driveway. “You want me here with you or up at the scene?”

  “I don’t want you to see that,” Josie said. She pressed her eyes closed, willing the memory of the bones to flush from her brain, but it wouldn’t. It would always be there. It would haunt her nightmares for years, she knew.

  Noah said, “I’m going to see it no matter what, Josie. You know that.”

  “Then go,” Josie told him, opening her eyes. “I’ll wait here for Dr. Feist and call Shannon.”

  He gave her shoulder a squeeze and went over to Hummel’s vehicle to suit up. A few moments later he was gone. A couple of uniformed officers stood along the road like sentries, prepared to keep any passers-by or other curious tenants away should they drive up the road. One stood at the edge of the driveway with a clipboard in hand. He would log people in and out of the crime scene as they passed.

  Josie took out her phone again to call Shannon. At this time of day, she’d be at work. She was a chemist with a large pharmaceutical company called Quarmark. Josie imagined her standing in a lab at that moment, swathed in a white coat, overseeing some experiment with safety goggles covering her eyes. Or maybe she was in her office, reviewing lab results. Josie was about to blast a crater of destruction right into her normal day. She didn’t want to face Shannon. Not yet. She could barely process what was happening. Had someone really taken Trinity? Had Trinity let them? Were those her bones behind the cabin? How was that possible? Before her reluctance got the better of her, she found Shannon’s name in her contacts, and pressed the green call icon beneath her mother’s name.

  Shannon answered after two rings, her voice sounding light and happy. It was a punch to Josie’s gut. “Hi honey, what’s going on?”

  Josie knew from experience that ripping the Band-Aid off swiftly was the best way to deliver bad news. “Shannon, something’s happened to Trinity.”

  Silence. Josie heard Shannon’s breathing grow labored. “Please don’t tell me—please, don’t—is she… is she…”

  “We don’t know,” Josie filled in quickly. She couldn’t tell Shannon about the bones. Not yet. They didn’t know for sure that they belonged to Trinity, and Josie wasn’t about to tell her family anything she didn’t know with complete certainty. “I came to the cabin to try to talk to her. Her car is here. All of her things are packed up and inside it. But she isn’t here.”

  It took several seconds for Shannon’s breathing to slow to the point where she could speak again. “Then she walked off. She’s in the woods or down by the stream. Maybe she went to talk to someone in one of the other cabins. I’ll call her—”

  Josie cut her off. “Her phone is inside the car. She left the landlord a note three weeks ago saying she was leaving. Shannon, when was the last time you were in contact with her?”

  Another beat of silence. Then Shannon said, “I’m not sure. I’d have to look at my texts, maybe my call log. It’s been a few weeks. Things have been crazy at work with my team trying to perfect this new cancer drug. The last time I spoke with her, she had just moved into the cabin. She told me everything was fine. She just needed time to unplug, she said. She was going to stay there.”

  A few weeks.

  Josie closed her eyes, willing the police officer in her to take over. Who else had regular contact with Trinity? Definitely their father, Christian and younger brother, Patrick. She opened her eyes, and when she spoke, her voice sounded strangely calm and confident. “Shannon, this is really important. I need you to contact Christian and Patrick, and find out when they last had contact with her. Can you do that for me?”

  “Of course. Josie, what are you not telling me?”

  “We don’t have all the information yet. My team is at her cabin now—” she stopped speaking before the word processing came out, instead using the words, “looking around. We’re doing everything we can to find out what happened to her.”

  “Do you—do you think someone took her?”

  “We simply don’t know at this point.”

  The phone was silent except for Shannon’s ragged breathing. Josie used two fingers to squeeze the bridge of her nose, willing the tears gathering behind her eyes not to fall. She tried out the word she’d only used once or twice before with Shannon. “Mom.”

  A muffled cry came over the line, as though Shannon had clamped a hand over her mouth to try to stop it.

  Josie went on, “I will do everything I can to find out what happened to her.”

  “What happened to her? What are you saying, Josie? Because if she’s dead—oh my God. You know I can’t do this. I can’t do this again. I can’t lose another child. I know we found you, but I lived with that loss for thirty years. I know Trinity is a grown woman, but I can’t go through this again. I just can’t, I—”

  “I know,” Josie said, talking over her mother, hoping to stave off Shannon’s rising hysteria. “Shannon, I am being honest with you. I don’t know where she is or what happened to her. My team is working on it. Right now, I need you to talk to Dad and Patrick and then I need all of you to meet me at the Denton Police headquarters. There are questions about Trinity I can’t answer. I’ll need your help.”

  “Of course.”

  Eight

  Josie heard more tires over gravel as she hung up on Shannon. The medical examiner, Dr. Anya Feist’s white pickup truck bounced along the rutted road. She parked behind the ERT vehicles and hopped out, waving to the uniformed officers and striding in Josie’s direction. The sight of the doctor, who had worked so many cases with Josie and her team, had a calming effect on her. Dr. Feist tucked a strand of silver-blonde hair behind one ear as she approached.

  “You don’t look so good,” she told Josie.

  “You don’t need to check my pulse,” Josie told her. “I can already tell you it’s racing.”

  Dr. Feist put her hands into her jeans pockets. “Mettner called me. He told me…” she trailed off.

  Josie said, “I need you to look at the remains. I need to know… if it’s her.”

  “We’ll need dental records. That’s the fastest way to do this. You know that DNA testing can take weeks. Months, even.”

  “I know. Her dentist would be in New York City. I can get in touch with her assistant and find out who she saw there.”

  Dr. Feist nodded. Silence descended between them. All around them, Josie heard the sounds of insects, birds, and a light breeze filtering through the trees. Finally, she said, “Doc, how long does it take for a human body to decompose to the point that it’s skeletonized? It’s years, isn’t it?”

  Dr. Feist stared at her, eyes narrowing. “There’s no easy answer to that, Josie. You know that. Soil, vegetation, sunlight, temperature—all of those things factor in. It could be months or years.”

  “But not days or weeks?”

  “Not typically days, no, although I’m sure there are exceptions. It’s possible for it to happen in weeks. There are circumstances in which a body could be skeletonized in a short amount of ti
me, especially in cases where insects or animals are able to disturb the body. A lot of conditions would have to be just right in order for a body to decompose to that point that quickly, but again, you know this already.”

  Josie tried and failed to smile. “I needed to hear it from you.”

  Dr. Feist nodded. “I’ll suit up and go have a look. Do you want to come have a look with me?”

  Josie suppressed a shudder recalling the remains. She didn’t want to see them again, but she owed it to her sister to find out what was going on. “Yes,” she answered.

  “Will they let you on the scene?”

  Josie said, “I don’t know.”

  Dr. Feist smiled at her. “What is it you say? Sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Once they were properly suited up, they had the uniformed officer log them into the scene. Then Josie followed the doctor up the driveway, both of them staying to the side. They passed two ERT members taking casts of some of the tire tracks where the gravel had worn down to mud. Trinity’s car came into view, the late morning sun beating down on its shiny red frame. A uniformed officer stood at the side of the cabin. He gave Josie a mock salute as she and Dr. Feist approached. “They’re around the back, boss.”

  In the back, Noah and Mettner stood staring down at the bones in the grass while Hummel finished taking photos. When Noah looked up at Josie, she saw the pallor that had come over his features. She hung back while Dr. Feist picked her way over. Mettner’s cell phone rang. He answered it, pressed it to his ear, and stepped away from the scene as Dr. Feist knelt beside the bones. Noah walked over to Josie. “This can’t be her,” he said. “No way would her body have decomposed this quickly.”

  “We don’t know that,” Josie choked out. “Dr. Feist said there are some conditions in which it can happen.”