Chapter 13

"Did you see the cats hanging around the stable?" asked Gretchen as they took a slow walk around the parking lot. The pickup truck that was parked there when they arrived had gone, leaving only the sedan, which they'd looked beneath using a flashlight.

"Yeah." Josie kept her eyes on her side of the lot. "But their fur colors don't match what we found on Jane Doe's body."

There was no way that someone had stabbed two women without leaving some kind of blood evidence behind. If the altercation happened in the Tranquil Trails lot, Josie would expect to find something.

Gretchen didn't take her eyes from her portion of the lot. "Doesn't mean there aren't more cats. Those are just the ones we saw."

Without a warrant, Josie and Gretchen had only been able to look around the portions of the Lees' premises that they'd been given permission to view. Although the house was unremarkable, together, Josie and Gretchen had only seen the first floor. Josie had been able to sneak upstairs, feigning the need to use the restroom, to do a plain-view search of the second floor. Only one of the doors had been closed, but Josie hadn't heard anything from behind it. She still wasn't convinced they didn't have some sort of torture chamber that held a child in their basement. But if they wanted a look, they'd need a warrant, and to get a warrant, they'd need to prove that the crime happened on the property.

Which was why they were now searching for evidence that the stabbings happened in the parking lot. That was still within plain-view parameters.

Once they reached the end of the lot, they turned again, going back over ground they'd already covered twice. "We should get a geofence warrant," Josie said. "To extend from the accident site to here, since this is Mira Summers's last known whereabouts prior to the accident. If the attack happened within those parameters and the killer left with a child in his custody, we might be able to locate him that way."

A geofence was a virtual perimeter around a specific geographic area that enabled police to track which smart devices like cell phones were inside that area during a certain time period. Law enforcement had first started using geofence warrants in 2016. There were people who felt they were a massive invasion of privacy and in fact, in response to them, Google had recently changed the way it treated users' location history, which would now make it more difficult for law enforcement to effectively use geofence warrants, but it was worth a try. Presently the practice was still legal in Pennsylvania.

"Good idea," Gretchen agreed.

They took another pass through the parking lot. At this point, Josie wasn't sure why they were still looking. Although a great deal of blood had been found in Mira Summers's car, Josie would still have expected to find a significant amount wherever the actual stabbing had occurred. If it happened in this lot, it should have been immediately obvious.

A man appeared from behind the house, headed toward them. As he got closer, Josie could see he was likely in his late twenties or early thirties. A drawstring bag swung from one of his thick hands. He was short and stocky with a mop of blond curls tumbling into his eyes. Like Mira's had been, his black riding boots were covered in mud. Thick thighs strained against his jeans. Red print across a black T-shirt proclaimed: I Ride Horses Because Punching People is Frowned Upon.

A fob appeared in his free hand as he approached the sedan. Squinting against the sun, he took in their Denton PD polo shirts and the guns at their waists. "You with the police? What's going on? I don't have no parking tickets due."

Josie and Gretchen walked over and presented their credentials. Josie said, "One of the other Tranquil Trails clients, Mira Summers, was involved in an incident today. We're trying to piece together her movements starting from this morning."

Gretchen added, "We know she was here until about eleven, eleven thirty. Do you remember seeing her?"

"Mira?" he said. "Sure. She's here every Sunday."

Gretchen's notebook was in her hand. "What's your name, sir?"

He clicked the key fob to unlock his doors but made no move to get inside the car. "Todd Stapleton."

"Are you in the therapeutic program?" asked Gretchen.

Todd tossed his bag onto the roof of the car. It landed with a clunk. Josie could see the outline of his riding helmet. "Nah," he said. "Not me. I just like to ride."

"Really?" Gretchen said, eyeing his shirt.

He leaned a hip against the driver's side door and smirked at Gretchen as he folded his powerful arms across his chest. "Really."

Josie said, "Do you know Mira Summers?"

Todd shook his head. "No. Don't know her other than to say hi, and that's all I've ever gotten out of her. She's real quiet. I know that what happened is probably none of my business, but is she under arrest or something?"

Gretchen shook her head. "No, the opposite, in fact. She was stabbed this morning. Her and another woman."

Todd's mouth dropped open. He pushed off the car and looked around, as if the person who'd attacked Mira and Jane Doe might still be lurking nearby. Then he pointed toward the ground at his feet. "Here?"

"That's what we're trying to figure out," Josie said. "Rebecca and Jon didn't see or hear anything."

"Damn." He scanned the trees edging the parking lot. "That don't make a damn bit of sense. I've been coming here five years. It's peaceful, and the people here are great—even the quiet ones like Mira. Who in the hell would do such a thing? You sure it was here?"

"This is the last place that Mira was seen," Gretchen said. "We know she left the stables to come here to the parking lot."

"Did you see anything unusual while you were here today?" asked Josie. "Anyone hanging around that you didn't recognize?"

He scratched the back of his neck. "No, but I was out on the trails."

"How about the other times you've been here?" Gretchen said. "Ever see anything or anyone who seems out of place?"

"I'm not sure. A lot of people come and go from here."

"Have you ever seen Mira Summers with any children?" asked Josie.

"No. Never saw her with any kids."

"How about adults?" Gretchen asked. "Ever see her with any adults?"

His lips pressed together while he considered her question. "Maybe? I don't know if it counts as ‘with her.' I guess it does."

"What's that?" Josie said.

"I'm talking last year though," Todd added.

Gretchen's pen hovered above her notepad. "That's okay."

He pointed in the direction of Prout Road. "A few times I was leaving—I usually leave after Mira—and I saw her car parked at the produce stand. There was a guy there, too. He had a white box truck."

A frisson of excitement streaked up Josie's spine. "You saw them together more than once?"

He nodded. "Yeah, that's why I remember it."

"How many, precisely?" Gretchen asked.

Again, he scratched the back of his neck. "Don't know. At least three, maybe. Spring and summer. In the warm weather."

It was warm now. Just from walking around the property, a sheen of sweat covered Josie's skin and dampened her hair. "Was there any writing or anything on the side of the truck? Anything identifying?"

"No. It was just white."

Unlike most witnesses they spoke with, Todd Stapleton was not one to elaborate or bombard them with superfluous details. "What about the man you saw?" Josie asked. "Can you describe him?"

"Didn't get a real good look at him. I was just driving past. The produce stand sits back from the driveway a bit. He was older than me, maybe Jon's age? Maybe younger. Hard to say."

They waited for him to say more. Instead, he turned to the bag resting on top of his car and rifled through it until he came up with a plastic water bottle. Josie waited as he took a long swig and then squirted some down the back of his neck. When he still didn't speak, she said, "Did you see what he was wearing any of the times he was at the produce stand? His hair color? Anything like that?"

"Where's my manners?" He held out the water bottle to Gretchen, who refused, and then to Josie. She felt like she could down an entire gallon of water at the moment, but she wasn't comfortable drinking from Todd Stapleton's bottle.

"No thanks," she told him.

Gretchen said, "Mr. Stapleton. The man you saw?—"

He tossed the bottle back into his bag. "Right, right. He wore a hat, like a baseball cap, but I didn't see what kind. Brownish-gray hair, I think. It was a little long and curly coming out from under the back of the hat. Looked like he had a beard. That's all I could see."

Gretchen scribbled in her notebook. "Tall? Short? Fat? Thin?"

"Average, I guess. Oh wait, you know what I remember? The one time I saw him, he had on a white T-shirt with cut-off sleeves and his arm had like this thick, gnarly scar on it. Right here." He pointed to the outside of his upper left arm, a couple of inches below the shoulder.

Gretchen flipped another page in her notebook and thrust it at Todd, along with her pen. "Could you draw it?"

Todd stared at her offering. His meaty palm rubbed at the back of his neck, fingers digging into the muscle. "I'm not real good at drawing, and like I said, he wasn't that close."

The scar that ran down the side of Josie's face from just below her ear to the center of her chin tingled. "But he was close enough for you to notice his scar, so it must have been pretty big."

"Yeah, I guess." With a sigh, he took Gretchen's notebook and pen and slowly began to draw, speaking as he went. "I'm pretty sure it was on his left arm, but not positive. It was kind of like, diamond-shaped, sort of? Except it didn't have straight lines. It was thick and white. He was real tan, that's why the scar stood out so much. Also, it was really lumpy…" He paused.

Josie tried not to grimace when she saw what he'd drawn. It was just a diamond with a thick border. He started to draw small half-crescents in the middle of it to represent the lumpiness, she guessed. "See? It's hard to show it but the scar looked raised. Like I said, it was gnarly."

The white told Josie that the scar was old but the thickness and raised skin indicated that perhaps it had needed to be stitched but hadn't been.

Gretchen took her notebook back, not doing much to hide her disappointment.

Todd chuckled. "Hey, I told you I couldn't draw."

"It's fine," Josie said. "Thanks for trying. Did you see this man speaking with Mira or interacting with her in any way?"

Todd opened his driver's side door and tossed his bag inside the car, clearly done with this conversation. "Never saw 'em talking. Just saw her car and him and his truck there at the same time. At first I thought he was just dropping stuff off at the stand and she was picking up some things on her way home, but then after I saw them together a few times, I thought they must know one another, or if they didn't before, they ought to by the third time they saw each other there."

"Did you see any children with him?" Josie asked.

A line creased his forehead. "No. None that I could see. Hey, we about done yet? I gotta get home. I really need a shower."

Gretchen took down his personal information and then gave him a business card before they watched him drive off. The second he was out of sight, they began to walk, following the curve in the driveway until the faded produce stand came into view. Driving past it earlier, Josie hadn't paid too much attention but now, as they stood along the edge of the driveway, she could make out where faint tracks had tamped down the grass between the driveway and the stand. Two of the tracks were thin and came from the direction of the stables. The other two were much wider and came from the direction of the road.

Josie's heart picked up its pace, hammering out a rapid beat. This had to be their crime scene.

Using her phone, she started taking photos. She and Gretchen took a wide berth, coming at the stand from an angle that avoided both sets of tracks. Josie was relieved that the rain they'd had in the last month had made parts of the terrain soft and muddy so that the wider tracks were sunk deep enough to make impressions. Hummel could make casts of the tire treads.

Up close, the stand was sturdier than it appeared from the road. The wood, though faded, was in good condition. Here, the mud and grass gave way to gravel. A breeze sighed through the tree branches overhead. For just a moment, Josie had a sense of the quiet and peace all around them. Away from the road, the house, and the parking lot, it felt private, even a bit secluded. The shade offered a cool refuge.

Then she rounded the other side of the stand, and the copious amounts of blood splattered and congealing across the small stones before her told a different story.