The screams followed her, echoing all around her as she sprinted along the ridge and fled into the darkness, her feet scrabbling over the brush and loose stones. To her right was a sheer drop, hundreds of feet down. She didn’t know just how far, but she knew the fall would be enough to kill her. To her left was a wall of dense forest.
When the first gunshot sounded, she veered left into the trees.
Branches slapped at her arms and face, slicing thin ribbons of blood into her fair skin. A tree root snagged her toes, sending her flying. Leaves and stones rose up to meet her and her elbow cracked against a large rock, sending an agonizing shot of pain through her arm and up into her skull. Still, she heard the screaming in the distance. Her breath came in gasps as she scrambled to her feet, holding her elbow close to her body. Tears leaked from her eyes, but panic and the will to survive drove her deeper into the forest.
Another gunshot shattered the night.
She had to get as far away from the encampment as she could, but the thickening springtime foliage overhead blocked out the light of the moon, plunging the forest into total darkness. Which way had she come?
Another gunshot cracked like a whip, but as the echo bounced around her, she couldn’t tell which direction it had come from. Using her good arm, she began to move by feeling her way, praying she was going away from the shots, her fingers fumbling over tree trunks and branches, small sticks and stalks crunching beneath her feet. The muscles in her calves cramped. How long had she been running? It felt like hours but it couldn’t have been.
The snap of a nearby branch pierced the roar of panic in her head. She whipped around, but she could see nothing in the blackness. Then came a voice, cold and calm, the sound slicing through her like a knife, paralyzing her.
“Did you really think you could get away?”
“Please,” she whimpered. “Please don’t.”
She felt the hard circle of the gun’s barrel against the base of her skull.
“You’ll never leave me again.”
Smoke billowed from Josie’s oven, thick and black, spilling out around the edges of the door. Coughing, she hit the button to turn off the oven and waved a cloth to clear the smoke. From across the room, the smoke alarm shrieked.
“Shit,” Josie said.
Abandoning the oven, she raced from window to window, flinging them open, trying to wave some of the smoke outside. Over the din of the alarm, she heard Noah’s voice. “Josie? You okay—what the hell?”
She dragged one of her kitchen chairs across the room and stood on it, pulling the smoke alarm off the wall. Then, banging it against the table, she popped the batteries out to silence it. Tossing it aside, she managed a sheepish smile for Noah.
“What are you doing?” he asked, waving a hand to clear some of the smoke from his eyes.
“It’s fine,” she mumbled. “Nothing’s on fire.”
“Looks like something was,” he pointed out.
Josie returned to the oven and, putting mitts on each hand, reached into the blackness in search of the edges of the cake pan. What she pulled out made them both grimace.
“What… was that?” Noah asked.
Josie threw the entire thing into the sink. “It was supposed to be a raspberry coffee cake. Your mom likes raspberries, right?”
Noah’s face twisted into a look Josie recognized as part sympathy, part skepticism and just a little bit of him trying not to laugh. “Uh, yeah, but if you wanted to make something for dessert, brownies would have been fine. Or, like, a bundt cake or something.”
Josie pointed to the kitchen counter where three other bake pans lay in a mangled, blackened heap. “Those are the brownies. That was a bundt cake, and that last one was a chocolate Devil’s food cake from a goddamn Betty Crocker box, which I still managed to burn.”
Noah leaned against the kitchen doorway and covered his mouth with his hand. Josie pointed an oven mitt at him. “Don’t you dare laugh.”
From between his fingers, he said, “Maybe something cold? Jell-O? Something simple.”
“Are you out of your mind? I am not taking Jell-O to your mother’s house for dinner.”
“Something store-bought,” he suggested. “That’s simple.”
There wasn’t a chance in hell that Josie was bringing something simple to Colette Fraley’s house. The woman was the consummate homemaker. Everything she cooked looked delicious and tasted even better. Her garden was lush, colorful and perfectly pruned and she even found time to sew beautiful quilts that she donated to foster children. Colette was the reason Pinterest was invented. People like Josie just couldn’t compare to the Colette Fraleys of the world.
Colette barely tolerated Josie as it was, but for the first time ever, she had tasked Josie with bringing dessert to their monthly dinner. Josie saw the request for what it was—a challenge—and she was damn well going to rise to the occasion. Well, possibly. If she could pass something store-bought off as her own creation.
Josie sagged one hip against the counter. “She’s never going to like me, is she? Even if I could whip up a chocolate soufflé with my eyes shut, it wouldn’t change anything.”
Noah moved across the room in two easy strides and took her by the shoulders. “You’re overthinking this. Just be yourself. She’ll come around.”
No, she won’t, Josie thought, but she didn’t want to have the argument with Noah again. They’d been dating for a year, and in that time Josie had figured out that the most important person in Noah’s life was his mother. He was the youngest of three but his brother lived in Arizona—all the way across the country—and his sister and her husband lived two hours away. Noah’s parents had divorced when he was a teenager, and from what Josie could gather, none of the Fraley children kept in touch with their father.
Josie looked at the clock on her microwave. “I guess it has to be store-bought. We need to be there in a half hour.”
“We’ll tell her that you were busy with work,” Noah offered. “And didn’t have time to bake something.”
Josie barked a laugh and pulled her mitts off. “Somehow, I don’t think that will help.” All talking about work with Colette did was remind her that a few years earlier, Josie had shot her darling son during a particularly tense and complex missing girls case. Both Josie and Noah were high-ranking members of Denton’s police department and in the last few years they’d covered cases so shocking and high-profile, they’d made national news.
Noah started closing the windows. “Just get changed,” he told her. “It will be fine.”
Twenty minutes later, Josie sat in the passenger’s seat of Noah’s car, a box of store-bought brownies in her lap, feeling anything but fine as they weaved through the streets of Denton. The city was roughly twenty-five square miles, many of those miles spanning the untamed mountains of central Pennsylvania, with their one-lane winding roads, dense woods and rural residences spread out far and wide. The population was edging over thirty thousand, and it increased when the college was in session, providing plenty of conflict and crime to keep the Denton Police Department where they both worked pretty busy. Josie’s gut clenched slightly as they pulled into Colette’s driveway. Next time, she promised herself, she was going to make that damn raspberry coffee cake if she had to burn her damn house down.
“That’s weird,” Noah said as he put the car into park.
Josie’s eyes followed his gaze to Colette’s front door, which yawned open. She didn’t have a storm door, just a thick wooden entry door which had been painted a cheery blue and decorated with a handmade spring wreath with sprigs of faux yellow flowers.
Josie left the brownies on the passenger seat and followed Noah up the front walk. Together they ascended the three steps to the concrete landing where potted flowers bracketed the door. “Mom?” Noah called.
Josie put a hand on his arm. “Wait,” she said, her hand reaching for her shoulder holster only to find it wasn’t there because today was her day off. “Should we call this in?”
He smiled uncertainly at her. “Call what in?”
Josie motioned toward the open door. “Something’s wrong,” she whispered.
Noah laughed. “What makes you assume something’s wrong? Mom left the door open. She’s been forgetting stuff lately, remember?”
Josie did remember. Noah and his sister had had several hushed conversations recently about having her tested for Alzheimer’s or dementia even though she was only in her sixties. Still, she couldn’t shake the sense of dread gathering in the pit of her stomach as she followed him through the door into Colette’s living room, which was also decorated in blues. It was late afternoon and the waning sunlight cut across the room, making the hardwood floors gleam. The end table’s small drawer was hanging open, items from inside scattered on the floor: a pair of Colette’s reading glasses, a pack of tissues, a pen and notepad. Josie took a step toward it. There were still some things inside the drawer. Had Colette been looking for something?
“Mom?” Noah called again, moving deeper into the house.
The dining room was dark and undisturbed. Josie wondered if Colette had forgotten they were coming over. Normally, the table would be set by the time they arrived for dinner. In fact, on any other occasion, the entire house would be filled with the smell of Colette’s superb cooking.
“Noah,” she said. “I really think—”
But he was already in the kitchen, calling for his mother again. Josie moved quickly behind him. The overhead light glared down on the kitchen which was neat and clean, everything in its place except for two more drawers that hung open with their contents spread along the counter above them—dish towels, a wine opener, takeout menus, a flashlight, some candles and a lighter.
Josie clamped a hand onto Noah’s shoulder, turning him toward the back door which was also open. Beneath her palm, she could feel him move with more urgency. As they passed through the back door, Noah called out again, “Mom?”
Their feet sank into the lush grass as they stopped to scan the large backyard. A tall white fence lined with blooming flower beds marked the perimeter, and a small wooden shed sat in one corner. Josie took a step in the direction of the patio in the center of the yard that was crowded with heavy metal furniture, her eyes tracing every inch of the garden. With a gasp, she pointed to something sticking out from one of the beds in the far corner. “Oh my God. Noah, is that—”
The words died in her throat as she sprinted across the yard, Noah behind her.
Colette was on her stomach, her upper body in the flower bed, her protruding feet the only thing visible at a distance. Up close, Josie immediately noticed the gardening gloves on her hands and a small handheld shovel in the dirt a few inches away.
“Mom!” Noah cried, panic ringing in his voice. He dropped to his knees, and Josie fell to hers beside him. Together, they rolled Colette onto her back. Her eyes were closed and dirt smudged her cheeks and clothes. Cold seeped from Colette’s body into Josie’s hands as her fingers searched Colette’s neck for a pulse, but found nothing.
Noah was already leaning into her chest, one hand on top of the other, fingers laced, giving her compressions. As he counted out thirty presses, Josie angled Colette’s chin so that her mouth was open, and pinched her nostrils closed.
“Now!” Noah urged her as he stopped pumping.
Josie’s mouth closed over Colette’s and she exhaled into her, trying to inflate Colette’s lungs. Something fetid and granular stuck to Josie’s lips, and the air wasn’t moving through to Colette’s chest like it should. Coughing, she sat back up and wiped her mouth.
“What are you doing? Jesus, Josie. Keep going. We have to save her,” Noah cried.
He pushed her out of the way and sealed his lips over Colette’s, but after one breath, he also pulled away, coughing and spitting onto the ground.
“It’s soil,” Josie said. “Jesus, Noah, it’s soil.”
She nudged him aside and hooked a finger inside Colette’s mouth, scooping out a small clump of wet brown earth. She repeated the action three or four times but still, the airway wasn’t cleared. Her heart seized in her chest. Beside her, Noah had gone perfectly still, his mouth stretched open in horror. “Help me,” Josie cried. “Help me get her on her side!”
As if he was moving in slow motion, Noah reached forward, grasping his mother’s shoulder and pushing as Josie turned her onto her side, her fingers still scrabbling inside Colette’s mouth, trying to clear it of the hard-packed dirt. When she thought she had most of it out, she turned Colette onto her back again and tried to blow air into her chest. Colette’s airway was completely blocked.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Josie knew that Colette was gone but she couldn’t bear the look of pure terror on Noah’s face, so she kept working. “Call 911,” she barked at him as she moved back to Colette’s chest and restarted the compressions. He didn’t move, his eyes locked on his mother’s face.
Sweat poured from Josie’s forehead as she pumped, dripping off the end of her nose and onto Colette’s lifeless body. “Now, Noah. Go! Call 911!”
Josie worked until her shoulders and arms ached, until her face was streaked with the remains of dirt still packed into Colette’s mouth, until her entire body was soaked with sweat, until the paramedics arrived and pulled her gently away. As if from very far away, she heard them shouting information to one another, taking over for her, and after several minutes she heard one of them call the time of death.
Then she heard a wail—low, guttural and heart-wrenching—tear from Noah’s throat.
Josie sat beside Noah on his mother’s couch, one hand on his back as he curled into himself, elbows on knees, face in his hands, intermittently sobbing and rocking back and forth. As her Evidence Response Team moved in and out of the house, Josie tried to wrap her mind around what had just happened. She had the sensation of watching herself from afar. It didn’t seem real. This had to be happening to someone else, surely. Not them.
“Boss?” Officer Finn Mettner said. She looked up to find him staring down at them. How long had he been there?
“Yes,” she said, voice shaky. Her fingers wiped at her mouth, brushing away the dirt that felt like it would never leave her skin.
Mettner gestured toward the door. “This is a crime scene. If you wouldn’t mind—”
She stood abruptly. “Of course, of course. Noah?”
He didn’t respond. Josie hooked a hand under one of his arms and gently guided him to standing, outside and into the passenger side of his vehicle. “I’ll be right back,” she told him.
Near the front door, one of the other ERT officers, Hummel, had cordoned the stoop off with yellow crime scene tape. He stood at the door with his clipboard, ready to log in each person who passed by him. In the driveway, the trunk of his cruiser stood open. Josie went to it and pulled out a Tyvek suit, slowly pulling it on, together with booties and a skull cap.
She heard footsteps behind her as Mettner appeared next to the trunk. “Hey, boss, we’re all really sorry. This is… hard to believe.” He glanced toward Noah’s car. “How’s Noah?”
Josie followed Mettner’s gaze to where Noah sat staring straight ahead with blank, red-rimmed eyes. “I think he’s in shock. Is Gretchen—I mean, Detective Palmer coming?”Gretchen Palmer was another detective on Denton’s police force. Her calm presence had a way of reassuring Josie and quieting her pounding heart during difficult times. A woman of pure integrity and one of the best investigators Josie had ever known, Gretchen had recently been placed on administrative leave following her involvement in a horrific murder that had happened on her own doorstep and brought secrets of her past into the harsh light of the present. Josie knew that after what had happened, it would take nothing short of a miracle for Gretchen to keep her job. But she also knew that Gretchen had done what she needed to do to protect the people she loved most, so Josie had used all the influence and good will she had in Denton to make sure Gretchen returned to the force in some capacity. Facing resistance from both the Chief and the Mayor of Denton on more than one occasion, Josie had used her press connections to garner support from the public, putting enough pressure on the Chief that he had agreed to bring Gretchen back for a probationary period which had started a week ago.
Mettner frowned. “She’s still on the desk.”
“Even now? Does the Chief know what’s going on?”
Mettner nodded. “Yeah, he knows.”
Josie threw her hands in the air. “Well, I need her here. She’s the most experienced investigator we have, and this is clearly a homicide.”
Mettner grimaced, and immediately Josie felt guilty. The Chief had been grooming him over the last six months to take the step up to detective, especially now, since Gretchen was out of action. He had been on the force for seven years, was meticulous, efficient and eager to learn. Although Josie and Chief Chitwood rarely agreed on anything, she knew Mettner deserved the chance at promotion. She sighed. “Mett, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—it’s just that this is Noah’s mom, you know? Gretchen worked homicide in Philadelphia for fifteen years.”
Mettner waved a hand in the air. “I know,” he said. “It’s okay. I know she’s the most qualified, boss, I get it. But the Chief isn’t budging on this one, so you’ll have to settle for me. I can handle this, you know?”
“I know you can,” Josie replied. “Let’s do a walk-through. I don’t think Noah or I touched or moved anything. We sat on the couch in the living room, but everything else is as it was when we got here. Except the backyard, obviously. We tried to revive her, but she—” Josie broke off and her fingers swiped over her lips one last time. “Her mouth was packed with dirt.”
“Hummel got here first. He said you found her face down in the garden,” Mettner said as he suited himself up.
“Yes, but even if she had a heart attack or a stroke or something and fell, it wouldn’t account for how much dirt was in her mouth. It was packed so deep that it blocked her airway. Mett, this was not an accident. Someone killed her.”
Colette had been kind, gentle and decent. Josie’s heart flipped in her chest at the thought of someone suffocating her. She must have been terrified.
Mettner gently touched Josie’s shoulder, bringing her back to the scene. “We’ll handle this, okay? Do a quick walk-through, then take Fraley home. The rest of us will work this with everything we’ve got.”
Josie nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. She went back to Noah’s vehicle to let him know she would only be a few minutes, but he was still lost somewhere deep where no one could reach him.
Hummel signed the two of them in at the front door and they started in the living room. “We need to know what you touched or moved before you found Mrs. Fraley,” Mettner said.
They moved slowly and carefully through the house as Josie retraced her and Noah’s movements from the time they’d arrived, to them finding Colette dead in the backyard. Mercifully, the team had already photographed Colette’s body, and someone had covered her with a sheet. They would wait until Noah had gone before transporting her to the morgue. Josie talked him through everything that had happened while Mettner used his thumbs to text furiously into a note-taking app on his cell phone. When she finished he gave her a sheepish smile. “I text faster than I write. Plus, I can email myself these notes and they’re already typed.”
Josie smiled. “Whatever works for you, Mett. Great idea.”
Back to business, he asked, “When was the last time either of you spoke to Mrs. Fraley?”
“I haven’t talked to her since last month. I think Noah spoke with her this morning. I can ask him,” Josie replied.
“Mrs. Fraley lived alone?” Mettner asked.
Josie nodded. “I can get in touch with Noah’s older brother and sister and find out when they last spoke with her. If you could, maybe someone should interview Colette’s friends, neighbors…”
Mettner looked up from his phone. “Yes, I’ve already got someone canvassing.”
“Great,” Josie said.
Another member of their ERT knelt beside Colette’s body. She was a new hire who had come to Denton with a few years of experience working on an Evidence Response Team in a city only slightly larger than Denton. “Officer Chan,” Josie greeted her. “What’ve you got?”
Chan looked up and gave Josie and Mettner a nod, her gloved hands sifting through the dirt that Colette had turned up moments before her death. With her thumb and index finger she lifted a long, beaded object from the soil. Josie squatted down to peer at it. She pointed to the dirt-crusted crucifix that hung from the end. “Is that a rosary?”
Chan fingered a frayed end where the long chain of beads had broken. “Part of one, yes, I think so.”
Mettner bent closer, squinting as Chan held up the rosary for him to inspect. “Looks old.”
“It’s pretty caked with dirt. Might have been here a long time,” Chan agreed.
Mettner turned to Josie. “Maybe she was trying to dig it up? I know the timing isn’t great, but could you ask Noah about this too?”
“Of course,” Josie said, watching as Chan bagged it up for evidence.
Mettner cleared his throat, and Josie tore her eyes away from the upturned garden to meet his.
“We can take it from here,” he said. “I’ll be in touch when we know more. Why don’t you get Noah home? Notify his siblings?”
“Right,” Josie said, still feeling shell-shocked. “Of course.”
Noah didn’t speak on the ride back to his house, or when Josie settled him onto his couch. When she asked for his brother and sister’s phone numbers, the best he could do was hand her his phone. His older brother, Theo, answered on the third ring. The conversation was painful, but Josie knew that Noah was in no position to tell them himself and she felt the other Fraley children should know right away. Noah would need their support sooner rather than later. Theo promised to catch the next available flight. Josie hung up and then immediately called Noah’s sister, Laura. After more shock, more tears, and more questions, Laura agreed to be there within a few hours.
“Should I call your father?” she asked Noah.
Without looking at her, he said, “What for?”
“Oh, well, I know your parents are divorced, but maybe he’d want to be there for you and your brother and sister? Don’t you think he’d want to know?”
“He doesn’t deserve to know, and he hasn’t been there for us since the day he walked out of my mother’s house.”
There was a bitterness in his tone that Josie had never heard from Noah before. She knew that his dad wasn’t in the picture, but she didn’t know much more than that. Noah never talked about it—never talked about his father at all, when she came to think of it. Besides, he was probably right. If Lance Fraley was not involved in his children’s lives, then his presence would hardly be a comfort.
Josie set Noah’s phone on the coffee table and sat beside him, taking his hand in hers. She knew there was nothing she could say. She had lost both her husband and her beloved Chief suddenly and violently four years earlier. The pain was extraordinary and unavoidable, a great wave that would bowl you over and pull you under at any given moment. It wasn’t pain that could be soothed or lessened, you just had to hold on to whatever shred of sanity you had as hard as you could until the current spat you back out into calmer waters. But, she remembered with a shiver, that sea of grief never truly left you, it was always below you, ready to pull you under when you least expected it. There was nothing she could do to shield him from it, and she knew from experience that there was little comfort she could offer. What she could do for him was to try to find out who killed his mother and put that person away forever.
After a pause, she asked, “Noah, is there any reason why rosary beads would be buried in your mother’s garden?”
His head slowly turned in her direction. The redness rimming his eyes made her heart ache for him. “What?” he asked.
“I’m sorry. I know this is a terrible time to a. . .
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